These get used at present, but usually only for preview copies of movies sent to reviewers ; they aren't used for general purposes because they are a giant pain in the ass to do and fairly easy to remove.
It's unlikely they'll ever catch on though ; for starters, they're probably obliterated by something as simple as transcoding the file, so they won't serve as much of a threat to casual redistributors.
Besides, it would be even worse if you *could* play DRM files on your friends box ; the studios would insist that it have a call-home telltale that let them bill you for it..... "Unauthorised screening to a new audience! Pay your $40 again!"
It's not about airport checkins. That's just the palatable "face" (hur hur) of the technology.
The real use of this is to identify you in locations where you are not presenting your ID ; in the street, in shops, on public transport.
We already have a reliable biometric system for passports and other photo-ID. It's called a "photograph". Making a machine do the work only makes sense if you want to do a lot more of it.
If I can get the original media for, as you point out, £14 rather than £20, watch it, and if I so desire, trade it, sell it on, etc. I can then rip and transcode it, and play it on the device of my choice. Very useful for my work laptop, which is from the stone age and has no DVD-ROM.
Or I can download it for *more money*. And get a complimentary physical backup of the DRM-ised file, which I cannot trade or sell on.
They are either not thinking this through at all, or they are just waving it in the breeze as a token gesture to the courts ; "look, we tried, but those smelly hackers kept on breaking the law!"
"Discount" is a misnomer. You think it's a discount? It's not.
The card scheme has to be paid for. It costs money to print cards, run the database that collates the data, money for the analysts.
The reason that these cards exist is because of a piece of research regarded as a classic in the marketing community ; that the bulk of supermarket profits are from a small subset of customers. These schemes were set up to research the profiles of these customers. A supermarket with this kind of data can restructure their shelves and stocks to encourage the custom of these "prime" customers and discourage the ones that have low profit thresholds.
Not unsurprisingly, the kind of customer that provides the greatest profits is not the kind of customer that benefits most from "low, low" prices.
Supermarkets are not going to sell at a loss ; so
- Their costs have increased (because of the cards)
- They have to assume that given the choice, all their customers will take the card, and set their prices accordingly. Therefore the "card" price is the normal price with normal margins (which have now gone up because of the increased cost of the card system).
- The non-card price is just gravy. Depending on how determined the supermarket is to gain coverage for their database, they will set their non-card prices anywhere from "higher" to "punitive".
In other words, the supermarkets using these schemes are not interested in the business of single mothers and other unprofitable undesirables.
Tiffany will be chasing those selling diamonds on eBay, not because they are counterfeit, but because resale of diamonds is anaethaema to the De Beers cartel.
If you auction second-hand diamond jewellery, it suddenly has resale value. Since diamonds don't wear out, deBeers really don't want that, because their fortune depends on their control of the price of diamonds. If you could sell diamonds for anything like their market price, people would be more inclined to do so, the market would be flooded with the enormous number of precut diamonds in the hands of people everywhere and the price would drop like a (shiny but pointless...) stone.
De Beers spend a great deal of effort persuading you to attach sentimental value to these small chunks of carbon, in order to dissuade you from selling them. Jewellers will rarely offer anything close to market price for second-hand stones, because they know if they do, their lucrative first-hand business would dry up.
people who meet the clinical definition of sociopaths
Alas, this group is disproportionately represented amongst those in charge of large corporations.
Some people are pointing out that veracity has evolutionary benefits (on a group level). However, it would seem that we have managed to create an corporate environment where sociopathy is the prime survival trait.
I bought it. Then I downloaded a pirate copy, because Starforce wouldn't let it work on my machine.
I did the same thing with Halo, but for a different reason ; the disk has a scratch. I need the burned ISO to install it, and (irony!), the original to get the copy protection to work.
Or at least, every Euro. Expect the US to follow suit rapidly as the two major power blocs tend to copy each others' authoritarian ideas.
Hitachi is developing RFID tags for the EU (the "mu" chip) which are small enough to embed in paper currency. In terms of data, this is no better than the present system of unique serial numbers on each note. The rub is that since an RFID tag can be read far more easily and quickly, and remotely, you can track which notes are passed out in transactions at the bank, and note when they come back in. You can even trace their movements in the field, if you put pickup loops in places of interest.
The cash economy, which is relatively untraceable at present, becomes as trackable at electronic transactions. And government gains insight into the behaviour of its' citizens, and a means to determine when that behaviour varies in a way they deem "abnormal".
Doesn't happen. A very common misconception, and an easy one to imply from Einsteins' famous equation.
Energy has mass. Which is why you see a transfer of mass in a given energy-transfer process. As the parent points out, since the energy transfer in chemical reactions is relatively low, the mass transfer is infititesimal.
Einsteins' equation tells us the mass that energy posesses. The mass difference you see in nuclear reactions is the mass of the energy released. All the matter is preserved intact ; it is merely shuffled into a new configuration. Some parts of that configuration have a lower resting energy. The energy is redistributed amongst the products of the reaction, maybe as kinetic energy of the products, maybe as the binding energies in the products, maybe as photons (photons possess no intrinsic mass, their mass is entirely due to the mass of their energy). No matter is lost. No energy is lost. It just gets shuffled around some.
SPE and WPC stress that petroleum proved reserves should be based on current economic conditions, including all factors affecting the viability of the projects. SPE and WPC recognize that the term is general and not restricted to costs and price only. Probable and possible reserves could be based on anticipated developments and/or the extrapolation of current economic conditions. (emphasis mine).
In other words, the "gold standard" means of defining "reserves" allows producers to take into account the price of oil and the cost of extraction. If the price of oil rises, those bodies of oil which would previously be uneconomic to extract suddenly become worthwhile.
Hence the ability to triple your reserves in a very short time, with no requirement for extra discovery or exploration. It just happens that oil fields that you were previously ignoring start to look viable because the prices are high.
In no way does this reflect an increase in actual real amounts of hydrocarbons. But it does mean that you can increase CONFIDENCE in the supply. Almost by definition, reserves will start to increase the moment any kind of shortage begins.
Of course, it doesn't account for the inevitable increase in price (remember, if prices drop, reserves will DESCREASE instantly). Most of the benefits of oil to the economy are linked to it's high energy profit ratio. As this decreases, the inherent value of the oil decreases, and you end up in an economic downspiral. And that's the real kicker of "Peak Oil". We'll probably never actually drink the oil fields dry, we'll just get to the point where the world economy is so crippled that we can't afford to extract, refine, or ship it.
New passports in Britain are already biometric ; currently, the only biometric being used is face-recognition. The passport form comes with a sheet of regulations for your new passport photo that those in the know will instantly recognise as being for the purpose of enabling a machine to recognise your face more easily, things like guidelines on the aspect of your face, position in the photo, no background detail, etc.
This thing is destined for the Euro note, and probably the US Dollar as well.
What with the GPS tracking that is planned to be mandatory for all road vehicles in Europe, Galileo (for it's ability to work in urban zones, which GPS is not so hot at), and RFID pickups tracking notes seamlessly, European governments will have unprecedented intelligence on the movements of their citizens.
No-one politically minded seriously believes the Labour Party (presently the party in government in Britain) to be socialists.
Their policies are virtually indistinguishable from the Conservative (right-wing) party, the previous government. They have continued to privatise what were once national industries, in niches that should be nationalised. They are behaving just like any other organisation that is slightly giddy from a heady infusion of corporate money.
The only difference between them and the right-wing party is that at least the right-wing guys are honest enough to admit that they are capitalist bastards. In fact, I think the Conservatives are actually more liberally minded - at least they advocate personal choice as a good thing (even if the choice is basically "pay the corporations lots of money for a shitty service, or starve and die"). The Labour party just make it compulsory to pay the corporations to provide a shitty service.
The third party is probably the most honest, in that they admit that our public services are all fucked up and they would need to raise taxes to pay to fix them. Which is why the British public will never vote them into power, because they are quite happy to pay corporate bastards and bitch about it, but threaten to deny them a few beers a year to make sure they can get access to a (state healthcare) dentist, and they'll go for the beer every time. Never mind that they will probably save more money than they would spend in taxes.
If all the owners were to decide to take a unified stand on a moral issue, they have the power to see it through.
In the case of Bechtel, this just isn't likely to happen. Bechtel, for reference, is the company that took over the water facilities in Cochabamba, hiked the local water prices by ridiculous amounts, and tried to make it illegal for local people to collect rainwater. They were thrown out by what can only be considered as a peoples revolution.
Just because you are a "Family Company" doesn't mean that your corporation is all cuddly and nice.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that excessive cleanliness can contribute to the development of autoimmune diseases, like Crohns and asthma.
The theory being that your immune system has historically had a lot to do.... and when confronted by the microbial desert presented by modern living in a bleached-up house, gets a bit bored and starts vandalising the house.....
Since you just committed a felony, I'd imagine it's worth a jail sentence or at least a fine.....
Title 18 United States Code, Section 331
Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or
Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened -
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both
---------
Since you're melting it with a view to selling the valuable metal content at more than it's face value, I'd say this qualifies under the second clause, as you are selling altered US coinage.
I'm not talking about a prescription stronger than necessary ; I'm talking about glasses that move the focal plane of your vision backward, but within your normal boundaries when viewing close objects. Having observed that when I view close objects for long periods, my distance vision gets worse, and that when I make an effort to view distant objects, my distance vision improves, my hypothesis is that reducing the focal effort my eyes make to view close objects will reduce the effect on my distance vision.
You are not smarter than someone who went to med school for years for it.
I graduated from medical school in '98, and have some fairly objective evidence that I am smarter than at least 80% of the people in my class.
Its been studied to death in the past.
When presenting past studies as an argument in a scientific discussion, it is customary to provide a bibliographic reference. I would actually be interested to see this study.
The digital equivalent of sharing books by leaving them around would be putting a bluetooth node in this thing, and a piece of software that shares the catalogue (or a subset) of ebooks installed with fellow e-bookers (and other bluetooth nodes) in the area. The user could then download his choice of reading material from other users.
I can see this being a real boon for commuters. I can even see it being a real advantage for (e-)print media - you could download the newspaper (without pictures), or your subscription to a magazine, just by walking into a "Bluebook zone" and pushing a button.
Hell, since an e-book is such a small filesize compared to music, you could even allocate a certain amount of storage space to *uploads*, as long as you made sure the formats were bulletproof in terms of viral infection vectors (ASCII files seem pretty harmless as long as you only treat them as ASCII). The equivalent of leaving a paperback lying around in a public place - upload something to someone who would not have otherwise read it!
I wonder if it has an expansion bus you can get at....
I first started to get nearsighted around the age of 18. At the time, I was revising for exams and staring at textbooks for hours on end.
I've noted that if I spend a greater proportion of my time reading or using a VDU close-up, my sight becomes "shorter", and distant objects and large sign text become fuzzier.
If I make a concerted effort to exercise my eyes by looking at distant objects and *really* concentrating on getting them in sharp focus, this trend reverses.
One thing I keep meaning to try is a pair of -0.5 or -1.0 Dioptre eyeglasses to move the focal plane of my vision back a few feet when using a screen or reading. I reckon this could reduce the effects of short distance fixation for long periods, reduce eyestrain, and maybe even help restore my once-perfect distance vision.
An optician I asked about this just didn't seem to get it ; it would seem the culture is very much geared toward giving you glasses that compensate for your aquired vision defects, which in my experience is going to make your vision deteriorate faster. This doesn't seem to be a surprise, really.
I have VS.Net Express installed. All of it (except J#).
That's VB, C#, C++ and Visual Web Developer.
The only one of these that does not, by default, have "resource file" listed amongst it's "New Item" template list is VB. All the others permit you to add a resource file and edit strings, and add images, icons, audio clips, and other material to the file. The file iteself is an XML file, and could thus feasibly be edited by hand.
You can get around the lack of the template in VB by the staggeringly hard step of adding a new text file to the project and sticking ".resx" on it instead of ".txt", henceforth the resource editor will be used to open it.
Ok, you can't edit icons, bitmaps and cursors. For that, you might need to get a free editor.
Or is there something staggering that the VS.NET 2003 does for you that the VS Express one doesn't (other than those pesky bitmaps)? (no, really, I want to know what I'm missing...)
The interop and unmanaged code features get big billing... why do you think that is?
Aside from the angle of OS lock-in, which the interop features do, of course, promote, the MS coder base has a large number of individuals who are used to hitting the Windows API, even from VB6. For those individuals, having to learn a nice shiny new managed API only to find out that it doesn't support the advanced techniques they are used to might be a bit much.
Don't forget that Microsoft engineers are largely just, well, engineers. The same as you. The difference is that the rest of us have to look at them through a thick layer of asshat-glass erected by MS PHBs. To create a product that had no access to the underlying OS would be as unthinkable as removing the same features to call out to binary libraries from Java.
Slashdot Mirror
These get used at present, but usually only for preview copies of movies sent to reviewers ; they aren't used for general purposes because they are a giant pain in the ass to do and fairly easy to remove.
It's unlikely they'll ever catch on though ; for starters, they're probably obliterated by something as simple as transcoding the file, so they won't serve as much of a threat to casual redistributors.
Besides, it would be even worse if you *could* play DRM files on your friends box ; the studios would insist that it have a call-home telltale that let them bill you for it..... "Unauthorised screening to a new audience! Pay your $40 again!"
It's not about airport checkins. That's just the palatable "face" (hur hur) of the technology.
The real use of this is to identify you in locations where you are not presenting your ID ; in the street, in shops, on public transport.
We already have a reliable biometric system for passports and other photo-ID. It's called a "photograph". Making a machine do the work only makes sense if you want to do a lot more of it.
WHY would I want to do this?
If I can get the original media for, as you point out, £14 rather than £20, watch it, and if I so desire, trade it, sell it on, etc. I can then rip and transcode it, and play it on the device of my choice. Very useful for my work laptop, which is from the stone age and has no DVD-ROM.
Or I can download it for *more money*. And get a complimentary physical backup of the DRM-ised file, which I cannot trade or sell on.
They are either not thinking this through at all, or they are just waving it in the breeze as a token gesture to the courts ; "look, we tried, but those smelly hackers kept on breaking the law!"
"Discount" is a misnomer. You think it's a discount? It's not.
The card scheme has to be paid for. It costs money to print cards, run the database that collates the data, money for the analysts.
The reason that these cards exist is because of a piece of research regarded as a classic in the marketing community ; that the bulk of supermarket profits are from a small subset of customers. These schemes were set up to research the profiles of these customers. A supermarket with this kind of data can restructure their shelves and stocks to encourage the custom of these "prime" customers and discourage the ones that have low profit thresholds.
Not unsurprisingly, the kind of customer that provides the greatest profits is not the kind of customer that benefits most from "low, low" prices.
Supermarkets are not going to sell at a loss ; so
- Their costs have increased (because of the cards)
- They have to assume that given the choice, all their customers will take the card, and set their prices accordingly. Therefore the "card" price is the normal price with normal margins (which have now gone up because of the increased cost of the card system).
- The non-card price is just gravy. Depending on how determined the supermarket is to gain coverage for their database, they will set their non-card prices anywhere from "higher" to "punitive".
In other words, the supermarkets using these schemes are not interested in the business of single mothers and other unprofitable undesirables.
If you auction second-hand diamond jewellery, it suddenly has resale value. Since diamonds don't wear out, deBeers really don't want that, because their fortune depends on their control of the price of diamonds. If you could sell diamonds for anything like their market price, people would be more inclined to do so, the market would be flooded with the enormous number of precut diamonds in the hands of people everywhere and the price would drop like a (shiny but pointless...) stone.
De Beers spend a great deal of effort persuading you to attach sentimental value to these small chunks of carbon, in order to dissuade you from selling them. Jewellers will rarely offer anything close to market price for second-hand stones, because they know if they do, their lucrative first-hand business would dry up.
Alas, this group is disproportionately represented amongst those in charge of large corporations.
Some people are pointing out that veracity has evolutionary benefits (on a group level). However, it would seem that we have managed to create an corporate environment where sociopathy is the prime survival trait.
I bought it. Then I downloaded a pirate copy, because Starforce wouldn't let it work on my machine.
I did the same thing with Halo, but for a different reason ; the disk has a scratch. I need the burned ISO to install it, and (irony!), the original to get the copy protection to work.
Or at least, every Euro. Expect the US to follow suit rapidly as the two major power blocs tend to copy each others' authoritarian ideas.
Hitachi is developing RFID tags for the EU (the "mu" chip) which are small enough to embed in paper currency. In terms of data, this is no better than the present system of unique serial numbers on each note. The rub is that since an RFID tag can be read far more easily and quickly, and remotely, you can track which notes are passed out in transactions at the bank, and note when they come back in. You can even trace their movements in the field, if you put pickup loops in places of interest.
The cash economy, which is relatively untraceable at present, becomes as trackable at electronic transactions. And government gains insight into the behaviour of its' citizens, and a means to determine when that behaviour varies in a way they deem "abnormal".
MASS IS NOT CONVERTED TO ENERGY
Doesn't happen. A very common misconception, and an easy one to imply from Einsteins' famous equation.
Energy has mass. Which is why you see a transfer of mass in a given energy-transfer process. As the parent points out, since the energy transfer in chemical reactions is relatively low, the mass transfer is infititesimal.
Einsteins' equation tells us the mass that energy posesses. The mass difference you see in nuclear reactions is the mass of the energy released. All the matter is preserved intact ; it is merely shuffled into a new configuration. Some parts of that configuration have a lower resting energy. The energy is redistributed amongst the products of the reaction, maybe as kinetic energy of the products, maybe as the binding energies in the products, maybe as photons (photons possess no intrinsic mass, their mass is entirely due to the mass of their energy). No matter is lost. No energy is lost. It just gets shuffled around some.
.. if you use the right strain, road rage in traffic jams becomes a thing of the past..
"Hey man, you cut me up!"
* inhales DHC rich exhaust fumes *
"Who cares, dude. Wanna grab some pie?"
Part of the reasoning is that the term "Reserve" does not refer to the actual, physical quantity of oil present.
From This document
SPE and WPC stress that petroleum proved reserves should be based on current economic conditions, including all factors affecting the viability of the projects. SPE and WPC recognize that the term is general and not restricted to costs and price only. Probable and possible reserves could be based on anticipated developments and/or the extrapolation of current economic conditions. (emphasis mine).
In other words, the "gold standard" means of defining "reserves" allows producers to take into account the price of oil and the cost of extraction. If the price of oil rises, those bodies of oil which would previously be uneconomic to extract suddenly become worthwhile.
Hence the ability to triple your reserves in a very short time, with no requirement for extra discovery or exploration. It just happens that oil fields that you were previously ignoring start to look viable because the prices are high.
In no way does this reflect an increase in actual real amounts of hydrocarbons. But it does mean that you can increase CONFIDENCE in the supply. Almost by definition, reserves will start to increase the moment any kind of shortage begins.
Of course, it doesn't account for the inevitable increase in price (remember, if prices drop, reserves will DESCREASE instantly). Most of the benefits of oil to the economy are linked to it's high energy profit ratio. As this decreases, the inherent value of the oil decreases, and you end up in an economic downspiral. And that's the real kicker of "Peak Oil". We'll probably never actually drink the oil fields dry, we'll just get to the point where the world economy is so crippled that we can't afford to extract, refine, or ship it.
New passports in Britain are already biometric ; currently, the only biometric being used is face-recognition. The passport form comes with a sheet of regulations for your new passport photo that those in the know will instantly recognise as being for the purpose of enabling a machine to recognise your face more easily, things like guidelines on the aspect of your face, position in the photo, no background detail, etc.
This thing is destined for the Euro note, and probably the US Dollar as well.
What with the GPS tracking that is planned to be mandatory for all road vehicles in Europe, Galileo (for it's ability to work in urban zones, which GPS is not so hot at), and RFID pickups tracking notes seamlessly, European governments will have unprecedented intelligence on the movements of their citizens.
No-one politically minded seriously believes the Labour Party (presently the party in government in Britain) to be socialists.
Their policies are virtually indistinguishable from the Conservative (right-wing) party, the previous government. They have continued to privatise what were once national industries, in niches that should be nationalised. They are behaving just like any other organisation that is slightly giddy from a heady infusion of corporate money.
The only difference between them and the right-wing party is that at least the right-wing guys are honest enough to admit that they are capitalist bastards. In fact, I think the Conservatives are actually more liberally minded - at least they advocate personal choice as a good thing (even if the choice is basically "pay the corporations lots of money for a shitty service, or starve and die"). The Labour party just make it compulsory to pay the corporations to provide a shitty service.
The third party is probably the most honest, in that they admit that our public services are all fucked up and they would need to raise taxes to pay to fix them. Which is why the British public will never vote them into power, because they are quite happy to pay corporate bastards and bitch about it, but threaten to deny them a few beers a year to make sure they can get access to a (state healthcare) dentist, and they'll go for the beer every time. Never mind that they will probably save more money than they would spend in taxes.
Pah.
In the case of Bechtel, this just isn't likely to happen. Bechtel, for reference, is the company that took over the water facilities in Cochabamba, hiked the local water prices by ridiculous amounts, and tried to make it illegal for local people to collect rainwater. They were thrown out by what can only be considered as a peoples revolution.
Just because you are a "Family Company" doesn't mean that your corporation is all cuddly and nice.
You should get a bit of dirt in your life.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that excessive cleanliness can contribute to the development of autoimmune diseases, like Crohns and asthma.
The theory being that your immune system has historically had a lot to do.... and when confronted by the microbial desert presented by modern living in a bleached-up house, gets a bit bored and starts vandalising the house.....
Since you just committed a felony, I'd imagine it's worth a jail sentence or at least a fine.....
Title 18 United States Code, Section 331
Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes,
falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of
the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current
or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States;
or
Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells,
or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the
United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced,
mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened -
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five
years, or both
---------
Since you're melting it with a view to selling the valuable metal content at more than it's face value, I'd say this qualifies under the second clause, as you are selling altered US coinage.
Sample (sadly, not Mr Formby).
You are not smarter than someone who went to med school for years for it.
I graduated from medical school in '98, and have some fairly objective evidence that I am smarter than at least 80% of the people in my class.
Its been studied to death in the past.
When presenting past studies as an argument in a scientific discussion, it is customary to provide a bibliographic reference. I would actually be interested to see this study.
You're right, I should take some time to draw ray diagrams before I express my opinion.
The digital equivalent of sharing books by leaving them around would be putting a bluetooth node in this thing, and a piece of software that shares the catalogue (or a subset) of ebooks installed with fellow e-bookers (and other bluetooth nodes) in the area. The user could then download his choice of reading material from other users.
I can see this being a real boon for commuters. I can even see it being a real advantage for (e-)print media - you could download the newspaper (without pictures), or your subscription to a magazine, just by walking into a "Bluebook zone" and pushing a button.
Hell, since an e-book is such a small filesize compared to music, you could even allocate a certain amount of storage space to *uploads*, as long as you made sure the formats were bulletproof in terms of viral infection vectors (ASCII files seem pretty harmless as long as you only treat them as ASCII). The equivalent of leaving a paperback lying around in a public place - upload something to someone who would not have otherwise read it!
I wonder if it has an expansion bus you can get at....
I'd agree with your experience.
I first started to get nearsighted around the age of 18. At the time, I was revising for exams and staring at textbooks for hours on end.
I've noted that if I spend a greater proportion of my time reading or using a VDU close-up, my sight becomes "shorter", and distant objects and large sign text become fuzzier.
If I make a concerted effort to exercise my eyes by looking at distant objects and *really* concentrating on getting them in sharp focus, this trend reverses.
One thing I keep meaning to try is a pair of -0.5 or -1.0 Dioptre eyeglasses to move the focal plane of my vision back a few feet when using a screen or reading. I reckon this could reduce the effects of short distance fixation for long periods, reduce eyestrain, and maybe even help restore my once-perfect distance vision.
An optician I asked about this just didn't seem to get it ; it would seem the culture is very much geared toward giving you glasses that compensate for your aquired vision defects, which in my experience is going to make your vision deteriorate faster. This doesn't seem to be a surprise, really.
They hate rental outfits.
Sony, of course, have gone so far as to engineer around them ever happening.
Hmm.
I have VS.Net Express installed. All of it (except J#).
That's VB, C#, C++ and Visual Web Developer.
The only one of these that does not, by default, have "resource file" listed amongst it's "New Item" template list is VB. All the others permit you to add a resource file and edit strings, and add images, icons, audio clips, and other material to the file. The file iteself is an XML file, and could thus feasibly be edited by hand.
You can get around the lack of the template in VB by the staggeringly hard step of adding a new text file to the project and sticking ".resx" on it instead of ".txt", henceforth the resource editor will be used to open it.
Ok, you can't edit icons, bitmaps and cursors. For that, you might need to get a free editor.
Or is there something staggering that the VS.NET 2003 does for you that the VS Express one doesn't (other than those pesky bitmaps)? (no, really, I want to know what I'm missing...)
Aside from the angle of OS lock-in, which the interop features do, of course, promote, the MS coder base has a large number of individuals who are used to hitting the Windows API, even from VB6. For those individuals, having to learn a nice shiny new managed API only to find out that it doesn't support the advanced techniques they are used to might be a bit much.
Don't forget that Microsoft engineers are largely just, well, engineers. The same as you. The difference is that the rest of us have to look at them through a thick layer of asshat-glass erected by MS PHBs. To create a product that had no access to the underlying OS would be as unthinkable as removing the same features to call out to binary libraries from Java.