Wow, you certainly are a fine thinker, man. I'm really moved by your profound analysis, and I'd say your knowledge of world economics and politics derives from playing too much Warcraft.
You mix things as if you were making some economical Mint Julep. No matter how I concentrate, I cannot think of a programmer in so dire "life threatening conditions" as to do a hackjob in exchange for some potatoes for supper. In India, for example, programmers are certainly paid less than in the US, but they are paid nonetheless, and they're hardly "starving". The very requirements of knowledge that programming has make programmers a more or less well paid "elite", in any country.
Hacking is also done sometimes for "political" or "economical" reasons, but mostly just for the kicks of it. Most hackers are kids, usually in the first world countries, that have too much time, a computer in front of them, and enough boredness in their lifes as to think bringing down some computer is a funny thing. Third world kids are hardly that motivated. They have to, as you say, take care of their "life threatening" problems.
Also, I'll think very unintelligently of anyone that puts Russia (or France, for that matter) in the thirld world. Of course, Russia's economy has suffered a lot lately, but it remains a powerful country and economy, with loads of resources and human potential. And I'm not Russian, anyway.
And, lastly, ethics are not proportionate to wellness, nor does integrity. Wallets are accessories to human beings, not the other way around.
Well, not exactly. Burning a cd just to rip it back to mp3 doesn't only make it harder by one step. You've got to put into the equation the cost of those 5 cds you don't actually need and you wasted, unless you go for CD-RW, which is a lot slower to burn, and costs a lot more. Also, every time you encode to mp3 you have a loss of sound quality, since mp3 is a lossy compression algorithm.
Therefore, I also see this as a lock down, since Apple is making it harder, costlier and worst to just put your legally purchased music into your player. So, the only reason here is to make you buy that iPod of theirs which concludes it is using their proprietary technologies to tie you up to their product.
I've got an Olivetti PC-1, a 512KB of RAM, no hardisk, 1 3.5" disk drive, NEC V-20 processor piece of equipment. It still works quite well. Of course, this is not my primary computer (which is as new as I could afford, a 2.66 GHz P4). That box is from around 1985. I also travelled the 486 - Pentium - Pentium II - Pentium III road, but never kept anything. Funny thing that I still own the very first computer I ever bought.
Sadly, the monochrome CGA monitor that came along with it fried a few months ago, and I haven't been able to find a replacement for it. It can be used with the tv set as a monitor, and once in a while I pop it out and do something in it. It cannot use anything newer than DOS 5.0, maybe 6.0 is fine also, but I haven't proved. Also, I ran out of copies of DOS, and haven't popped it out in a while.
One day, I'll see if it can run Linux... perhaps one older version, since I doubt it will be able to drive the 2.4 kernel, or even 2.2... anybody has tried something in that sense?
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Wow, you certainly are a fine thinker, man. I'm really moved by your profound analysis, and I'd say your knowledge of world economics and politics derives from playing too much Warcraft. You mix things as if you were making some economical Mint Julep. No matter how I concentrate, I cannot think of a programmer in so dire "life threatening conditions" as to do a hackjob in exchange for some potatoes for supper. In India, for example, programmers are certainly paid less than in the US, but they are paid nonetheless, and they're hardly "starving". The very requirements of knowledge that programming has make programmers a more or less well paid "elite", in any country. Hacking is also done sometimes for "political" or "economical" reasons, but mostly just for the kicks of it. Most hackers are kids, usually in the first world countries, that have too much time, a computer in front of them, and enough boredness in their lifes as to think bringing down some computer is a funny thing. Third world kids are hardly that motivated. They have to, as you say, take care of their "life threatening" problems. Also, I'll think very unintelligently of anyone that puts Russia (or France, for that matter) in the thirld world. Of course, Russia's economy has suffered a lot lately, but it remains a powerful country and economy, with loads of resources and human potential. And I'm not Russian, anyway. And, lastly, ethics are not proportionate to wellness, nor does integrity. Wallets are accessories to human beings, not the other way around.
Well, not exactly. Burning a cd just to rip it back to mp3 doesn't only make it harder by one step. You've got to put into the equation the cost of those 5 cds you don't actually need and you wasted, unless you go for CD-RW, which is a lot slower to burn, and costs a lot more. Also, every time you encode to mp3 you have a loss of sound quality, since mp3 is a lossy compression algorithm. Therefore, I also see this as a lock down, since Apple is making it harder, costlier and worst to just put your legally purchased music into your player. So, the only reason here is to make you buy that iPod of theirs which concludes it is using their proprietary technologies to tie you up to their product.
I've got an Olivetti PC-1, a 512KB of RAM, no hardisk, 1 3.5" disk drive, NEC V-20 processor piece of equipment. It still works quite well. Of course, this is not my primary computer (which is as new as I could afford, a 2.66 GHz P4). That box is from around 1985. I also travelled the 486 - Pentium - Pentium II - Pentium III road, but never kept anything. Funny thing that I still own the very first computer I ever bought. Sadly, the monochrome CGA monitor that came along with it fried a few months ago, and I haven't been able to find a replacement for it. It can be used with the tv set as a monitor, and once in a while I pop it out and do something in it. It cannot use anything newer than DOS 5.0, maybe 6.0 is fine also, but I haven't proved. Also, I ran out of copies of DOS, and haven't popped it out in a while. One day, I'll see if it can run Linux... perhaps one older version, since I doubt it will be able to drive the 2.4 kernel, or even 2.2... anybody has tried something in that sense?