I think marketers are "cursed, booed, spit on..." because they take a bad product and make it look good. People buy said product, take it home and use it, find out it is a piece of crap, then curse, boo, spit on the marketers.:-)
It is a bit like the shyster lawyers who take clients who don't have a real case, yet win it and bankrupt some poor innocent person. Use your powers for good, not evil.
More on topic, I think video games have become "Hollywoodized." Most go strictly by formulas now. FPS, RTS, RPG, zombie, horror. And most of the games we would have called video games in the '80s are referred to as "mini-games." At least our computers aren't locked down like the consoles (yet), so anyone has an opportunity to make their own games...
That's interesting, because I've been burned by people who don't release the source code and put something "funny" in the executable. Okay, maybe not me so much as various friends and acquaintances. I get to clean up the mess.
The thing he is saying about people putting their name on his work, how will only releasing binaries protect him? Someone could just as easily repackage his binaries as their own and sell them.
... then sue the RIAA into the ground for patent infringement. I'm sure IBM has a "typing information into computer keyboard" patent lying around somewhere...
3) I realize that music is not a possession but a thing to be licensed but is owned and even controlled by someone else.
It used to be music wasn't owned or controlled by anyone...except for fascist regimes.
As for boycotting the RIAA not doing any good, I agree. In fact they will still get money from you because of compulsory licenses. If you buy something from a company who advertises on a music playing radio station or a store which plays music, you are indirectly paying money to the RIAA. I won't even go into the costs of them suing anyone who produces tech they don't like.
So you are saying to shift the cost onto merchants, so we all have to pay more is a better plan? The CC companies require their merchants to charge the same for all types of transactions, so if you pay with cash, you have to pay more even though you don't use a credit card. How is this not "pay to play" like the above poster said? Also, even if you pay your cards off monthly, you are still maintaining a debt, unless you are redefining "debt."
A corporation is far more than a tax tool, since generally you can't lose more money than you put in. With a partnership or sole proprietorship, if your business goes under, you and your partners are generally liable for all its debts. It doesn't matter if someone screwed you or even if your partner cashed in all the business's assets and bank accounts and moved to some exotic island. What do you think will happen if your business is sued? What if business isn't as good as you thought it would be, and your company racked up lots of credit? This is why you should never be in a partnership, and you should be very careful about starting a sole proprietorship. You may pay double taxes with certain types of corporations, but it may be worth it. Also look at LLCs (limited liability company)
IANAL, you should really consult one if you plan to start or buy a business. Making a mistake can cost you more than those who chose to get an ARM mortgage, especially the ones who couldn't afford it in the first place.
The common problem of criminals violating the spirit of the law while not violating the technical letter of the law. In the same thread, "reasonable doubt" also comes to mind.
Corrupt politics. It seems to me the entertainment "industry" spends a higher percentage of their income on bri^W campaign contributions than other industries.
The RIAA has already essentially been given a monopoly. They get to "distribute fairly" all the license fees from compulsory licenses for radio, and I assume for blank music CDs. Look in copyright law, who do you think is the current organization to represent rights holders? (I forget the exact terms / phrase they used)
Hmmm... it seems part of my problem was not having the correct tools for UDF ( I think I was trying to use mkisofs with the udf option ). The proper tools for Linux appear to be on Sourceforge.
Thank you Sourceforge, Inc. for both slashdot and your open source site.:-) I should really be thinking about renewing my subscription to slashdot. I'm sure it helps pay for both sites...
I have been wondering what filesystem I should use for a flash card. Especially if I need compatibility. FAT doesn't quite fit the bill, especially if MS starts suing people over it. UDF seems to be the answer. (Wikipedia page)
It already has native drivers in most, if not all operating systems, MS windows (apparently XP doesn't have write support), Macs, Linux and even FreeBSD (as I understand). Frome what I understand, it is intended to reduce the number of writes (intended for rewritable CDs/DVDs), so it should give the longest life to the card. It supports many Posix / Unix filesystem features (hard/sym linking, sparse files, long filenames without ugly hacks, etc...)
However, I have troubles figuring out how to make Linux autodetect UDF, so I am not sure in my experiments I am creating the FS correctly.
What other choices are out there? For linux specific, ext2 seems to be the choice for native stuff, plus cramfs (sp?) for read-only. (I'm thinking of making a bootable flash card for my Asus EEE). I will probably have to use FAT for my digital camera as this is the only format it supports, but it appears to be the old-fashoned DOS shortname (not vfat or 32), so I guess these patents are not a problem?
This is what my research tells me, but it is not much.
I used to do raytracing on a 100MHz 486. I also seem to have a vague memory of raytracing being done without floating point....actually I remember seeing a program in ST Resource (I think that was the name) which raytraced on the Atari ST (history). I think I would only get a black screen because I didn't understand how to use it properly (probably didn't have any lighting). That computer used a 68000 processor. It didn't have floating point at all and it was only 8 MHz, and I'm sure the number of instructions per clock was worse than this wall wart's processor.
Are you kidding? Not enough CPU power? 1.2 GHz is enough for me to do raytracing!
Anyway, if you are going to do video encoding and translate your camera's pics from raw, it is not as if you need to sit and watch it. Just let the device run and do the work. 5 Watts isn't that much.
Perhaps sites taking credit cards should have their keys signed by credit card issuers. I would have more confidence if at Visa or Mastercard or American Express indicated the site is valid and may be trusted. Though I also think we should be using cryptography or at least have limited throw away accounts for transactions, so you don't risk losing your entire bank account or balance limit to fraud.
I do not understand since financial institutions are the major reasons to use SSL certificates, why they don't print their SHA fingerprints on every statement. If I had their fingerprint on my bank's or credit card's statement, then I could easily see if someone is spoofing their site.
The only thing is how much effort you have to go to find the fingerprint. To see the fingerprint in Firefox, you have to click on the lock, select view certificate, then find the fingerprint among twenty or so lines of hex and crap. Not nearly as bad as it used to be, as I remember, you had to click through a huge tree to find what you wanted.
I like how they decided to print the domain name next to the lock. Maybe they should do something similar with the SHA fingerprint too.
As for just private browsing, you may not need a CA at all. I think most forms of snooping governments and other bulk privacy invaders use are passive, so just having a site encrypted is enough....unless you think you are targeted for investigation. Though the ssh method of warning when keys change can help protect with this. I am not sure CAs can protect you from active government investigations at any rate. I'm sure they obey any court order such as a wiretapping warrant anyway.
Ahh, the power of versioning (Re:Backward Comp...)
on
BASH 4.0 Released
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· Score: 1
Just build the binary and install it as/bin/bash-4.0 or bash4, and you can use the new version, while your scripts don't break. If you want to start testing, try running some of your scripts under the new version. When you are more confident, you can symlink/bin/sh to your new bash4.
Many binaries use this type of protocol: gimp, gcc, and several others. It allows you to use multiple versions at once, if you wish. The default one is just a symbolic link from say gimp to gimp-2.4 -- Simple. Effective. Easy.
Since you're a developer you (should) know that everything gets copied everywhere a zillion times in the natural execution of the application code.
How is this different than people use textbooks? People "copy" them into not only their notes, but their brain, "a zillion times." Or music? Any CD player which has skip protection copies the data to a RAM buffer to carry out its function. Any MP3 player copies the data to a decoder chip which probably also is copied to a RAM buffer before it is copied to the D/A converter. I could go on, but if you don't get it at this point, you are either screwing with me or are really stupid.
In fact, "copyright" law should have been named distribution rights law because that is what it does. It doesn't really try to enforce copying like you claim it does. It enforces the authors right to control redistributing the material so he or she can make a profit off of his / her work as if that work were a real physical object. If someone copies a work they purchased for their use (as long as they have the material in their possession), that is within the spirit of copyright law. If someone gives (distributes) a copy to someone else while not assigning them the original copy they procured, this is breaking the spirit of copyright law.
...and file formats and APIs don't really complicate anything, at least with US law. (Your jurisdiction my vary) Last time I checked the US Copyright Office site, it said names, recipes, numbers and the results of math and the like were not copyrightable. Computer algorithms are the same as "math." Function names and calling them would apply to this category, would they not?
Obviously anyone can claim what copyright is supposed to be, but this is the way I see it.
I would also like to point out the constant asinine claims where many "businessmen" say they can micromanage, demand payment, and otherwise control something they have sold to another are an affront to the basic concept of property. Once you sell something, it isn't yours to control!
At least it would be a positive meaning instead of "nasty pirates who steal software and put spyware and trojans on it," which many of the media and the MCSEs who run IT shop call it. Plus, calling user generated content "open source" is a little in the spirit of true Open Source. Anyone can look at it, use it and modify it. Though it would be important to teach people the difference between proprietary and locked down vs. open and accessible. Having the ability to create their own content may show them the difference.
I have the perfect compromise! Just draw boobs and vampire fangs on Tux. If that isn't enough, draw him having sex with a hot ass female penguin while he sucks the blood out of a mermaid and stabs Bill Gates with the Sword of Gnu. Mwahhahaha!!!
Is that a hurdle? Why would it be? Maybe it is because I live in the western US, but I don't see the US as very populated. Go nearly anywhere outside of the major cities in Oregon, Idaho, Utah and it is mostly empty--just wilderness and some farmland. I haven't been in California for a while, but as I recall, it seems most of the land there is also wilderness and farmland.
Is it because there isn't enough room for farmland to feed the people?
As for all the naysayers denouncing the $10 laptop: I've seen 100MHz Microcontroller with 16MB of RAM for less money[1], and that is plenty of processing power for the average person. It won't do video or high end games, but it can do web browsing, word processing and even photo editing. Though, I am sure the thing would have a really cheap display. (Old fashioned LCD?) Maybe it wouldn't be down to $10(US) right away, but if they designed it right, I imagine they could get close.
I've seen several hundred MHz motherboard+cpu combos for about $30 at Newegg. I don't see why people think shooting for low cost computers is such a crazy idea. It is just salespeople in the "civilized" world don't want to sell anything that cheap. They don't give a piece of crap about anyone who doesn't throw tonnes of money around/away. No wonder the jackoffs in Wallstreet and the big banks need a fucking bailout. They waste money and demand others do the same.
[1] this was a few years ago, but I imagine prices have come down if any changes.
I thought Google Groups was for searching Usenet? I think they did add their own groups, and you have to click the "more" box, but last time I used it, I think it worked fine. No low quality web forms...
I have been thinking about a P2P style search system. Why not have all your friends and friends of friends help index sites, then you wouldn't have to depend on some centralized automated system to find sites. I think it could be done with a daemon and firefox plugin. The browser automatically indexes pages, and people mark bad sites and add keywords as they surf (via a button on the toolbar). The index may not be as big as Google, but I would think it would be more useful at times. Google would also still be there when you need it...
I think it would be hard to game. There are tonnes of "advertisers" doing this. I remember trying to search info about doctors in my area, and I kept getting placeholder sites which had absolutely no info about the specific doctor, even though the search result looked like it did. This is search engine spam.
Forgot to mention, video and flash would be a problem, but then it is the same with low cost smartphones too.
Then again, if you packaged this netbook with an attachable phone and made it interoperate with wireless internet usb cards, you could attack the low price cell and netbook market at the same time. Why not make it a hip belt attachment and when closed, sized as a largish PDA? Maybe it would be too geeky.:-)
The only problem is the cost of the display. As I have seen, 100 MHz microcontrollers with 16 MB of RAM are plenty cheap. I seem to remember my computer from 1996 having those specs and it browsed the web just fine. It also did image editing with GIMP just fine, as viewing documents, and etc. I didn't really use it for word processing much, but it seemed to be fine there too (wysiwyg mode may not be so fast).
In fact, doesn't the Nintendo DS have those specs and is under $150? Yeah, the screen doesn't have great resolution and is small, and it doesn't have a keyboard, but there was a web browser for it, and enterprising individuals ported Linux to it, and others wrote an organiser...
You mean how the "capacitors" are just etched parallel wires and the silicon is used as the dielectric? (or something like that) So the transistor will also have capacitance because the traces which make it will also have the same effect? This sounds correct to me...
Sort of how any wire is an antenna, because an antenna is just a wire. Radio waves are just electro-magnetic waves which will create a small electric current in any conducting substance. And a modulating electric current will create radio waves. In fact, this is why computers can interfere with your TV. It all fits together, doesn't it?
I want to know if such techniques could be used to run your own program or your own OS of your choice on your box when the time comes "trusted computing" is used to lock down many computers. After all, Microsoft locked down the Xbox, how long until they and the entertainment industry convince some computer manufacturers to create a locked down "multimedia PC" or cellphone or other devices?
Look around, it is probably already happening. Yes, people have cracked the Xbox to run Linux, but that doesn't always mean they will be able to do the same for new machines.
Wholesale price of CDs: then why don't you show some listings for the wholesale price, so we can use it. When I said "they", I meant the record companies, distributors, and retailers together, since most people (including me) don't have easy access to the amounts distributors and retailers pay for their inventory.
Actual retail price: true, but this is another problem. Though the supposed "real" retail price Amazon lists is more towards $18 per CD. Though since in my experience (and there was a story on slashdot several years ago), Amazon manipulates prices for each person, you can never be sure of the average price. Some may pay $9, but others may pay $20. Physical stores such as walmart have a similar issue with differing locations. The price you pay in idaho will most likely be different than the price you pay in New York.
Though I would say the record industry is "hurting" because of the formula pop crap "one hit wonder" model, aside from the current state of the economy--among other things.
Slashdot Mirror
I think marketers are "cursed, booed, spit on..." because they take a bad product and make it look good. People buy said product, take it home and use it, find out it is a piece of crap, then curse, boo, spit on the marketers. :-)
It is a bit like the shyster lawyers who take clients who don't have a real case, yet win it and bankrupt some poor innocent person. Use your powers for good, not evil.
More on topic, I think video games have become "Hollywoodized." Most go strictly by formulas now. FPS, RTS, RPG, zombie, horror. And most of the games we would have called video games in the '80s are referred to as "mini-games." At least our computers aren't locked down like the consoles (yet), so anyone has an opportunity to make their own games...
That's interesting, because I've been burned by people who don't release the source code and put something "funny" in the executable. Okay, maybe not me so much as various friends and acquaintances. I get to clean up the mess.
The thing he is saying about people putting their name on his work, how will only releasing binaries protect him? Someone could just as easily repackage his binaries as their own and sell them.
It would be: "All your base pair are belong to us!"
... then sue the RIAA into the ground for patent infringement. I'm sure IBM has a "typing information into computer keyboard" patent lying around somewhere...
It used to be music wasn't owned or controlled by anyone...except for fascist regimes.
As for boycotting the RIAA not doing any good, I agree. In fact they will still get money from you because of compulsory licenses. If you buy something from a company who advertises on a music playing radio station or a store which plays music, you are indirectly paying money to the RIAA. I won't even go into the costs of them suing anyone who produces tech they don't like.
So you are saying to shift the cost onto merchants, so we all have to pay more is a better plan? The CC companies require their merchants to charge the same for all types of transactions, so if you pay with cash, you have to pay more even though you don't use a credit card. How is this not "pay to play" like the above poster said? Also, even if you pay your cards off monthly, you are still maintaining a debt, unless you are redefining "debt."
A corporation is far more than a tax tool, since generally you can't lose more money than you put in. With a partnership or sole proprietorship, if your business goes under, you and your partners are generally liable for all its debts. It doesn't matter if someone screwed you or even if your partner cashed in all the business's assets and bank accounts and moved to some exotic island. What do you think will happen if your business is sued? What if business isn't as good as you thought it would be, and your company racked up lots of credit? This is why you should never be in a partnership, and you should be very careful about starting a sole proprietorship. You may pay double taxes with certain types of corporations, but it may be worth it. Also look at LLCs (limited liability company) IANAL, you should really consult one if you plan to start or buy a business. Making a mistake can cost you more than those who chose to get an ARM mortgage, especially the ones who couldn't afford it in the first place.
I would say it is a combination of:
Hmmm... it seems part of my problem was not having the correct tools for UDF ( I think I was trying to use mkisofs with the udf option ). The proper tools for Linux appear to be on Sourceforge.
Thank you Sourceforge, Inc. for both slashdot and your open source site. :-) I should really be thinking about renewing my subscription to slashdot. I'm sure it helps pay for both sites...
I have been wondering what filesystem I should use for a flash card. Especially if I need compatibility. FAT doesn't quite fit the bill, especially if MS starts suing people over it. UDF seems to be the answer. (Wikipedia page)
It already has native drivers in most, if not all operating systems, MS windows (apparently XP doesn't have write support), Macs, Linux and even FreeBSD (as I understand). Frome what I understand, it is intended to reduce the number of writes (intended for rewritable CDs/DVDs), so it should give the longest life to the card. It supports many Posix / Unix filesystem features (hard/sym linking, sparse files, long filenames without ugly hacks, etc...)
However, I have troubles figuring out how to make Linux autodetect UDF, so I am not sure in my experiments I am creating the FS correctly.
What other choices are out there? For linux specific, ext2 seems to be the choice for native stuff, plus cramfs (sp?) for read-only. (I'm thinking of making a bootable flash card for my Asus EEE). I will probably have to use FAT for my digital camera as this is the only format it supports, but it appears to be the old-fashoned DOS shortname (not vfat or 32), so I guess these patents are not a problem?
This is what my research tells me, but it is not much.
I used to do raytracing on a 100MHz 486. I also seem to have a vague memory of raytracing being done without floating point. ...actually I remember seeing a program in ST Resource (I think that was the name) which raytraced on the Atari ST (history). I think I would only get a black screen because I didn't understand how to use it properly (probably didn't have any lighting). That computer used a 68000 processor. It didn't have floating point at all and it was only 8 MHz, and I'm sure the number of instructions per clock was worse than this wall wart's processor.
Are you kidding? Not enough CPU power? 1.2 GHz is enough for me to do raytracing!
Anyway, if you are going to do video encoding and translate your camera's pics from raw, it is not as if you need to sit and watch it. Just let the device run and do the work. 5 Watts isn't that much.
Kids these days.
Depends upon how the site is used.
Perhaps sites taking credit cards should have their keys signed by credit card issuers. I would have more confidence if at Visa or Mastercard or American Express indicated the site is valid and may be trusted. Though I also think we should be using cryptography or at least have limited throw away accounts for transactions, so you don't risk losing your entire bank account or balance limit to fraud.
I do not understand since financial institutions are the major reasons to use SSL certificates, why they don't print their SHA fingerprints on every statement. If I had their fingerprint on my bank's or credit card's statement, then I could easily see if someone is spoofing their site.
The only thing is how much effort you have to go to find the fingerprint. To see the fingerprint in Firefox, you have to click on the lock, select view certificate, then find the fingerprint among twenty or so lines of hex and crap. Not nearly as bad as it used to be, as I remember, you had to click through a huge tree to find what you wanted.
I like how they decided to print the domain name next to the lock. Maybe they should do something similar with the SHA fingerprint too.
As for just private browsing, you may not need a CA at all. I think most forms of snooping governments and other bulk privacy invaders use are passive, so just having a site encrypted is enough. ...unless you think you are targeted for investigation. Though the ssh method of warning when keys change can help protect with this. I am not sure CAs can protect you from active government investigations at any rate. I'm sure they obey any court order such as a wiretapping warrant anyway.
Just build the binary and install it as /bin/bash-4.0 or bash4, and you can use the new version, while your scripts don't break. If you want to start testing, try running some of your scripts under the new version. When you are more confident, you can symlink /bin/sh to your new bash4.
Many binaries use this type of protocol: gimp, gcc, and several others. It allows you to use multiple versions at once, if you wish. The default one is just a symbolic link from say gimp to gimp-2.4 -- Simple. Effective. Easy.
How is this different than people use textbooks? People "copy" them into not only their notes, but their brain, "a zillion times." Or music? Any CD player which has skip protection copies the data to a RAM buffer to carry out its function. Any MP3 player copies the data to a decoder chip which probably also is copied to a RAM buffer before it is copied to the D/A converter. I could go on, but if you don't get it at this point, you are either screwing with me or are really stupid.
In fact, "copyright" law should have been named distribution rights law because that is what it does. It doesn't really try to enforce copying like you claim it does. It enforces the authors right to control redistributing the material so he or she can make a profit off of his / her work as if that work were a real physical object. If someone copies a work they purchased for their use (as long as they have the material in their possession), that is within the spirit of copyright law. If someone gives (distributes) a copy to someone else while not assigning them the original copy they procured, this is breaking the spirit of copyright law.
...and file formats and APIs don't really complicate anything, at least with US law. (Your jurisdiction my vary) Last time I checked the US Copyright Office site, it said names, recipes, numbers and the results of math and the like were not copyrightable. Computer algorithms are the same as "math." Function names and calling them would apply to this category, would they not?
Obviously anyone can claim what copyright is supposed to be, but this is the way I see it.
I would also like to point out the constant asinine claims where many "businessmen" say they can micromanage, demand payment, and otherwise control something they have sold to another are an affront to the basic concept of property. Once you sell something, it isn't yours to control!
At least it would be a positive meaning instead of "nasty pirates who steal software and put spyware and trojans on it," which many of the media and the MCSEs who run IT shop call it. Plus, calling user generated content "open source" is a little in the spirit of true Open Source. Anyone can look at it, use it and modify it. Though it would be important to teach people the difference between proprietary and locked down vs. open and accessible. Having the ability to create their own content may show them the difference.
How about torcs.sourceforge.net ?
I have the perfect compromise! Just draw boobs and vampire fangs on Tux. If that isn't enough, draw him having sex with a hot ass female penguin while he sucks the blood out of a mermaid and stabs Bill Gates with the Sword of Gnu. Mwahhahaha!!!
Is that a hurdle? Why would it be? Maybe it is because I live in the western US, but I don't see the US as very populated. Go nearly anywhere outside of the major cities in Oregon, Idaho, Utah and it is mostly empty--just wilderness and some farmland. I haven't been in California for a while, but as I recall, it seems most of the land there is also wilderness and farmland.
Is it because there isn't enough room for farmland to feed the people?
As for all the naysayers denouncing the $10 laptop: I've seen 100MHz Microcontroller with 16MB of RAM for less money[1], and that is plenty of processing power for the average person. It won't do video or high end games, but it can do web browsing, word processing and even photo editing. Though, I am sure the thing would have a really cheap display. (Old fashioned LCD?) Maybe it wouldn't be down to $10(US) right away, but if they designed it right, I imagine they could get close.
I've seen several hundred MHz motherboard+cpu combos for about $30 at Newegg. I don't see why people think shooting for low cost computers is such a crazy idea. It is just salespeople in the "civilized" world don't want to sell anything that cheap. They don't give a piece of crap about anyone who doesn't throw tonnes of money around/away. No wonder the jackoffs in Wallstreet and the big banks need a fucking bailout. They waste money and demand others do the same.
[1] this was a few years ago, but I imagine prices have come down if any changes.
I thought Google Groups was for searching Usenet? I think they did add their own groups, and you have to click the "more" box, but last time I used it, I think it worked fine. No low quality web forms...
I have been thinking about a P2P style search system. Why not have all your friends and friends of friends help index sites, then you wouldn't have to depend on some centralized automated system to find sites. I think it could be done with a daemon and firefox plugin. The browser automatically indexes pages, and people mark bad sites and add keywords as they surf (via a button on the toolbar). The index may not be as big as Google, but I would think it would be more useful at times. Google would also still be there when you need it...
I think it would be hard to game. There are tonnes of "advertisers" doing this. I remember trying to search info about doctors in my area, and I kept getting placeholder sites which had absolutely no info about the specific doctor, even though the search result looked like it did. This is search engine spam.
Forgot to mention, video and flash would be a problem, but then it is the same with low cost smartphones too.
Then again, if you packaged this netbook with an attachable phone and made it interoperate with wireless internet usb cards, you could attack the low price cell and netbook market at the same time. Why not make it a hip belt attachment and when closed, sized as a largish PDA? Maybe it would be too geeky. :-)
The only problem is the cost of the display. As I have seen, 100 MHz microcontrollers with 16 MB of RAM are plenty cheap. I seem to remember my computer from 1996 having those specs and it browsed the web just fine. It also did image editing with GIMP just fine, as viewing documents, and etc. I didn't really use it for word processing much, but it seemed to be fine there too (wysiwyg mode may not be so fast).
In fact, doesn't the Nintendo DS have those specs and is under $150? Yeah, the screen doesn't have great resolution and is small, and it doesn't have a keyboard, but there was a web browser for it, and enterprising individuals ported Linux to it, and others wrote an organiser...
You mean how the "capacitors" are just etched parallel wires and the silicon is used as the dielectric? (or something like that) So the transistor will also have capacitance because the traces which make it will also have the same effect? This sounds correct to me...
Sort of how any wire is an antenna, because an antenna is just a wire. Radio waves are just electro-magnetic waves which will create a small electric current in any conducting substance. And a modulating electric current will create radio waves. In fact, this is why computers can interfere with your TV. It all fits together, doesn't it?
I want to know if such techniques could be used to run your own program or your own OS of your choice on your box when the time comes "trusted computing" is used to lock down many computers. After all, Microsoft locked down the Xbox, how long until they and the entertainment industry convince some computer manufacturers to create a locked down "multimedia PC" or cellphone or other devices?
Look around, it is probably already happening. Yes, people have cracked the Xbox to run Linux, but that doesn't always mean they will be able to do the same for new machines.
Wholesale price of CDs: then why don't you show some listings for the wholesale price, so we can use it. When I said "they", I meant the record companies, distributors, and retailers together, since most people (including me) don't have easy access to the amounts distributors and retailers pay for their inventory.
Actual retail price: true, but this is another problem. Though the supposed "real" retail price Amazon lists is more towards $18 per CD. Though since in my experience (and there was a story on slashdot several years ago), Amazon manipulates prices for each person, you can never be sure of the average price. Some may pay $9, but others may pay $20. Physical stores such as walmart have a similar issue with differing locations. The price you pay in idaho will most likely be different than the price you pay in New York.
Though I would say the record industry is "hurting" because of the formula pop crap "one hit wonder" model, aside from the current state of the economy--among other things.