The parent said, "what company likes getting their arm twisted?". I pointed out that the answer is HP, all the way to the bank, any way they can get it, be it with MS (who they are still very closely tied to) or with Apple.
So, yeah, your enumerated points 1 and 3 are right, but they don't mean you disagree.
As for point 2, yeah, MS is a Napster partner but they weren't betting the farm on music downloads. If anything, MS benefits regardless of what service people use on a PC, because all the people who were thinking about buying a Mac to get the integrated package of computer, song manager, and player, now get all that on a Windows platform.
In the end, HP sells more computers, MS sells more Windows licenses, and Apple sells more iPods with some under a different brand name. Everybody gets off except Napster.
The same company that likes being tied up and handcuffed to the bed, while Billy Boy whispers "you've been a bad company" in its ears...
Seriously, though, how does eschewing Napster for iTunes benefit HP from the point-of-view of independent operation? Instead of being dependent on Napster and MS, and having to develop or purchase and promote an unknown player, they're dependent on Apple, and get a really popular, already developed, and expertly promoted player to go with.
It has nothing to do with gaining indepedence from MS, which pretty well missed the music downloading boat anyways, and everything to do with riding the iPod's wave. Meanwhile, there's still Trusted Computing chugging away and all their computers still ship with Windows...
The idea is that the government would not recognize 'marriage' as that legal gateway. You need to specify next of kin? Just sign a form saying who your next of kin is. Insurance extends to your "spouse and kids"? Just change it to "kids and one other person". This isn't just for gay people. What about people who care for indigents? Or siblings? Or, yeah, even roommates, who cares? The fact that marriage bestows any extra legal rights is ridiculous.
Plus it frees up religious marriage to be just that, religious. Marriage begins to have nothing to do with the state and everything to do with the church. God's happy because people aren't vowing in his name just to get a tax break. The state's happy because they don't have to listen to this damn debate anymore. The people are happy because they get all their rights without being tied to an archaic religious ceremony, or conversely, because they can express their vows before God knowing that the reason they're doing so has nothing to do with state recognition. Everybody gets to be happy, except the turdfuck rightwing ideological zealots who feel they have to force everyone into a particular belief system.
I'm thinking the reason Neo's powers extended to the 'real' world, and the reason Smith was able to take over a body in the real world, is that the software programs that were Neo and Smith were successfully ported to run on the hardware available, i.e., the human nervous system and whatever additional components are included in all the little knobs, plugs, and metal things implanted in those bodies.
In addition, you must remember that at no point do the humans ever hardline directly to the matrix. They hardline to their ship's system, which then connects to the matrix with a wirelss signal. This is the whole point of achieving "broadcast depth."
Neo has just become aware that he can connect the body he's inhabiting in the same way the ship connects, like WiFi. You'll notice that at no point in the movie are Neo's powers used except when at broadcast depth, and the only things that show up in Neo's vision after his eyes are destroyed are the electronic entities, which exist as nodes in the information grid which Neo can now access directly.
He can't see trinity, but he can see the program Smith, which would definitely have a presence on the network, and he can see all the machines, which would have to be somehow connected so as to receive directives. You'll remember the sentinels used wireless access, the little dishes pointing back up to the surface of the earth?
So how do these things get destroyed? Neo's power is not a true physical power, it's an information control power. Just as he's able to receive the information, he is also able to feed it back in. He does not only have control in the Matrix, but he is able to port to all the connected information grids, including the machines; in fact, the whole reason the machines are worried about Smith is because they know he poses a threat to their own information grid. Is it too much to extrapolate from that that Neo has a comparable power? The attacks Neo makes in the real world, then, are the direct result of sending, say, self destruct or off instructions through the communication grid.
It all fits together. I never again want to hear that Neo's real world powers don't make sense.
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So, yeah, your enumerated points 1 and 3 are right, but they don't mean you disagree.
As for point 2, yeah, MS is a Napster partner but they weren't betting the farm on music downloads. If anything, MS benefits regardless of what service people use on a PC, because all the people who were thinking about buying a Mac to get the integrated package of computer, song manager, and player, now get all that on a Windows platform.
In the end, HP sells more computers, MS sells more Windows licenses, and Apple sells more iPods with some under a different brand name. Everybody gets off except Napster.
Seriously, though, how does eschewing Napster for iTunes benefit HP from the point-of-view of independent operation? Instead of being dependent on Napster and MS, and having to develop or purchase and promote an unknown player, they're dependent on Apple, and get a really popular, already developed, and expertly promoted player to go with.
It has nothing to do with gaining indepedence from MS, which pretty well missed the music downloading boat anyways, and everything to do with riding the iPod's wave. Meanwhile, there's still Trusted Computing chugging away and all their computers still ship with Windows...
So don't worry. HP still likes it rough.
The idea is that the government would not recognize 'marriage' as that legal gateway. You need to specify next of kin? Just sign a form saying who your next of kin is. Insurance extends to your "spouse and kids"? Just change it to "kids and one other person". This isn't just for gay people. What about people who care for indigents? Or siblings? Or, yeah, even roommates, who cares? The fact that marriage bestows any extra legal rights is ridiculous.
Plus it frees up religious marriage to be just that, religious. Marriage begins to have nothing to do with the state and everything to do with the church. God's happy because people aren't vowing in his name just to get a tax break. The state's happy because they don't have to listen to this damn debate anymore. The people are happy because they get all their rights without being tied to an archaic religious ceremony, or conversely, because they can express their vows before God knowing that the reason they're doing so has nothing to do with state recognition. Everybody gets to be happy, except the turdfuck rightwing ideological zealots who feel they have to force everyone into a particular belief system.
I'm thinking the reason Neo's powers extended to the 'real' world, and the reason Smith was able to take over a body in the real world, is that the software programs that were Neo and Smith were successfully ported to run on the hardware available, i.e., the human nervous system and whatever additional components are included in all the little knobs, plugs, and metal things implanted in those bodies. In addition, you must remember that at no point do the humans ever hardline directly to the matrix. They hardline to their ship's system, which then connects to the matrix with a wirelss signal. This is the whole point of achieving "broadcast depth." Neo has just become aware that he can connect the body he's inhabiting in the same way the ship connects, like WiFi. You'll notice that at no point in the movie are Neo's powers used except when at broadcast depth, and the only things that show up in Neo's vision after his eyes are destroyed are the electronic entities, which exist as nodes in the information grid which Neo can now access directly. He can't see trinity, but he can see the program Smith, which would definitely have a presence on the network, and he can see all the machines, which would have to be somehow connected so as to receive directives. You'll remember the sentinels used wireless access, the little dishes pointing back up to the surface of the earth? So how do these things get destroyed? Neo's power is not a true physical power, it's an information control power. Just as he's able to receive the information, he is also able to feed it back in. He does not only have control in the Matrix, but he is able to port to all the connected information grids, including the machines; in fact, the whole reason the machines are worried about Smith is because they know he poses a threat to their own information grid. Is it too much to extrapolate from that that Neo has a comparable power? The attacks Neo makes in the real world, then, are the direct result of sending, say, self destruct or off instructions through the communication grid. It all fits together. I never again want to hear that Neo's real world powers don't make sense.