If I choose to ride a car, motorcycle, subway, do I pay different costs of I get hurt because of who is at fault?
Yes. Your health insurance (assuming you have it) will pick up the bill and it will sue (on your behalf) the insurance of the party at fault. If you don't have insurance you're welcome to bring action against the party that was responsible for your injury.
However, these weren't my biggest addictions in the slightest, but I wasn't quite ready to give up on facebook and similar social networking things. It didn't seem like much at the time. Afterall, I was still being "social" and wasn't becoming reclusive. It was essentially a substitute for hanging out with real people in real life. And besides - a lot of us got together on Fridays for movie night. Thing was - even during these movie nights I'd still be checking facebook despite everyone close to me was right in front of me.
What is amusing is that you've hit the nail right on the head. I am sitting here writing this post and looking at my Facebook chat list. Most of the people who I used to be out with on a Wed night are online on Facebook. More to the point, things like MSN and ICQ that used to be busy aren't. All those people moved over to Facebook as soon as it had chat because it has "games". I bet if I actually bring up the page I'll see dozens of game updates and other nonsense from them.
Another point is that the Internet brings easy (free!) access to content. You can download a movie in under an hour and queue up 2 or 3 more while you're watching the first. I have friends who literally have piles of terabyte hard disks with all the crap they've downloaded. They invest countless hours into devising cataloging schemes so they can know they have something and not download it again (not so they can find it and access it).
These were the very same friends who used to go out instead of sitting home watching downloaded crap.
And yes, I'm aware the irony of pointing out online that everyone is online and not going out anymore.
Or like having a judge rule on a contract case where they once were an attorney representing someone during a breach of contract case?
This is far different. This judge was not once a lawyer on a bunch of "random" cases. This judge invested considerable time and effort into becoming an RIAA lobbyist before taking this position as a judge.
From the torrent freak article:
And yes, one of the leading lobbyists on record was Beryl Howell, who was paid $415,000 between 2004 and 2008.
That's a hundred grand a year to lobby for the industry. It smacks of bias to me!
In fact, my car dealer would love it if I put diesel in the tank. It damages the fuel pump, filter, injectors so badly they need to be replaced. That's a time consuming and costly exercise and they make a fortune from you when you do it.
But, Android is more than just those components. The glue that holds them together is not licensed under a GPL-style license. That glue is called "Android".
Android's rich variety of open source software assets are grouped into external and internal categories. Two major external components the Linux kernel and WebKit - are governed by reciprocal licenses (GPLv2, LGPL.) In addition to the two major external components an additional 30+ internal components (dbus, grub, emma, e2fsprogs, bluez, Bison, etc.) also use reciprocal licenses (GPL, LGPL, CPL, etc.) Twenty-eight components use the GPL and five use the LGPL while others use non-OSI licenses such as the OpenSSL combined license and the Bzip2 license.
I should have pasted the whole of section 4 of the LGPL, which also makes it clear that you must provide all information required for the user to reinstall the new shared library of their choice.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that the manufacturers of mainstream Anroid devices can't lock them down so the people that buy them can't put on their own versions of self-baked Android. It's not Android's fault, but it damn well is Android's problem:(
I'm pretty sure that parts of the LGPL (which a parts of Android are undoubtedly licensed under) makes it clear that the user must be able to:
0) Convey the Minimal Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, and the Corresponding Application Code in a form suitable for, and under terms that permit, the user to recombine or relink the Application with a modified version of the Linked Version to produce a modified Combined Work, in the manner specified by section 6 of the GNU GPL for conveying Corresponding Source. 1) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (a) uses at run time a copy of the Library already present on the user's computer system, and (b) will operate properly with a modified version of the Library that is interface-compatible with the Linked Version.
I'd argue that a locked bootloader prevents me doing just that, since I can't update the firmware image with my replacement library and expect it to boot.
1) Some men like to see women breastfeeding, it turns them on.
And some men are turned on by a gorgeous full figured woman walking down the street fully clothed. Should we call being a gorgeous full figured woman porn now?
2) Some people think peeing in public is offensive. Peeing is just as natural as breastfeeding.
Piss gets all over stuff, and it eventually starts to smell. That's a lot different to breast feeding.
3) There is no need to breastfeed in public.
There's no need to post as Anonymous Coward, yet you still did. Don't like it, don't stare at it. Babies need to eat. They aren't clued up enough yet to be able to wait. A baby will decide that it is hungry and it will make a scene until it gets what it wants. Why should the mother not be able to feed it there and then on the spot. Just because you are some kind of "the body is special for me and my girlfriend" prude the baby should go hungry or the mother should have to get up and walk for ages to find a designated area?
4) I don't like to see nude women too often.
You, sir, are homosexual (your post suggests you are male)! Or one of those aforementioned prudes. It's different when your significant other walks around naked because you are (usually) allowed to touch.
Once it's normal for people to walk naked, there is nothing exciting about seeing your girlfriend or boyfriend nude when you make love. Exhibitionists harm my sex life, this violates my rights.
I had to leave this in as its own point - what rights? Is it some fundamental human requirement for life to not see naked people? You, sir, are an idiot.
5) It's been observed that most women who support public breastfeeding have higher exhibitionist tendencies (can't find the research article, sorry... But I'll post it if I find it). And men who support public breastfeeding scored higher on voyeur tendencies.
These women I talked to DO NOT want to show their breasts, even when breastfeeding, they want the option to breastfeed privately in a place that is more sanitary than a public washroom.
Are you serious? So some prudes you know don't want the world to see their tits. Big deal. The rest of us don't care. They are free to leave and find a quiet out of the way place and listen to baby scream the whole way there. As for the "article", explain to me how these exhibitionist tendencies come from doing something that is completely natural and a requirement to life?
6) Breastfeeding in public is unsanitary. You pee in a toilet or against a tree, not on the floor in a store, so why should breastfeeding be done anywhere? What if a woman breastfeeds her baby while drinking coffee at Starbucks and some of her milk drips on the table? Gross!
We already talked about why we don't (as adults) randomly pee all over the place. I'll leave it as an exercise to you to go back and re-read it, since I'm sure you already forgot what I said.
Oh noes, what if some dribbling Anonymous Coward from Slashdot goes to Starbucks and dribbles all over the table. Gross. Or the same takes his snotty cold-infected nose to Starbucks and sneezes all over the place without covering his face. Gross! I think Anonymous Slashdot Cowards should be banned from Starbucks!
I had a reversing camera as an option when I purchased my new car a while back. I decided to not take it. Saved a few hundred dollars. Honestly, the field of view is so limited that you still have to actually look behind you. All the time you have your head turned you're not looking at the camera anyway.
I do have the sonar reversing sensors installed - they are sensitive enough to pick up something as small as a basketball behind the car and also respond to objects directly beside the rear of the car, so I can tell if there's something to the side.
These are a far better option than a reversing camera - which in my view is a waste of time.
Copyright is a misleading term - there is no fundamental human right to profit or ownership. Modern society only affords you a few true "rights" (I put this in quotes, since "rights" is a product of people). Copyright is not a fundamental human right in the same way as the right to breathe, the right to freedom of speech and the right to safety.
As others have said, the intention of copyright is to allow creators a/short term/ monopoly on their work such that they can profit. This ability to profit provides incentive to create works. Art may or may not be the property of society, but it is important for society to continue to function and grow. Short term copyright is what allows this.
Modern copyright and other IP laws are at odds with the noble goals. They are moving to proving creators the ever-lasting ability to make insane profits from "their" works and actually not providing much incentive to create. In some cases (patents) the incentive to create has actually been totally removed, since the patent system has been so badly raped that almost everything you can think of is covered by some obscenely broad patent or another. In the case of copyrights, we're seeing more and more remakes of movies and music which had fallen out of copyright. The remake is covered by $INSANE_COPYRIGHT_LENGTH copyright so the studios are free to profit forever off it. They're not creating - they're rehashing.
I am agnostic, so the religious freedoms don't affect me
Oh, but they do. If the white Christian lunatics (the very same ones who protest about mosques) in the US got their way you wouldn't be allowed to be agnostic. Don't think for a minute that an explicitly noted right to religious freedom doesn't affect you; it is the very underpinning of your being allowed to be agnostic (undecided - since, in the context of your post it sounded like you meant atheist).
Given that X-rays are used as a part of the follow-up care when implanting pacemakers, I wouldn't worry about X-rays in particular. Google also has some academic studies if you're interested.*
The concern is that in a hospital setting you are able to receive immediate medical assistance. In the middle of a crowded airport how long would that assistance take?
Pacemakers were just an example. I'm sure there's other things, but I just couldn't think of any off the top of my head.
I don't really give a rat's arse if they look at a picture of my cock. I've lost count of the number of other people that have seen it. FFS, if they want to see it they can just ask.
What I object to is being bombarded with a "minimal" dose of radiation - unnecessarily. Yet, when asked the TSA employee couldn't tell me the specifics of the dose or type of radiation. He said "it's not radiation, it's a scanner". They have no idea how the machine works, they don't know what prior medical issues I have that may be upset by receiving low dose X-rays. These things are dangerous. How long before they manage to stop someone's pacemaker in one of these things?
it's convenient, but if enough people request a pat-down, then it will become a lot more inconvenient for them to ask you to be subjected to it.
And if enough people start requesting the pat-down and it takes too long they'll just pass laws that say everyone must go through the scanner, unless they have very good reason not to, or they don't fly.
And can you tell both the location and momentum of an electric company service truck simultaneously...
Given I have no idea at all where the electric company (also phone and cable) trucks are and I've been waiting all day, I'm going to say it's possible that I inadvertently gleaned very precise information as to its momentum.
Uhhh.... Sorry to break this to you since you "taught" C++. That function doesn't compile. Maybe next time learn the language you are teaching. "error C4716: 'somefunction' : must return a value"
I hate to break it to you, chump, but quoting only MSVC's error for this doesn't mean it compiles. It means that it fails to compile on MSVC. G++ certainly will compile that example just fine. It will warn you about it only if you turn on -Wall.
The standard left the behaviour in this case undefined and it's up to the compiler vendor what to do. Microsoft chose to default to an error. The G++ team decided to allow it and not even warn by default. Curiously, you will probably find that the default option set by the MSVC GUI explicitly enables all warnings. Try poking about and making sure that the default compiler warning level is set and not everything. You may find it compiles even on MSVC.
In your case here the compiler can easily tell that program flow will NEVER reach the end of the function. It (hopefully) won't even emit machine instructions to test true == true except with optimization completely disabled.
Regardless of the complexity of the conditional the compiler may or may not be able to make the call for you. If it can't decide it should definitely emit a warning. I know that GCC/G++ does with warnings enabled. The standard doesn't explicitly make this case an error so the compiler has no place emitting an error.
Also, in the case of this particular function, string has a default constructor so it's perfectly possible to return without actually instantiating a return value. The compiler knows how to give you the default one (even if that's not what you intended).
string *function() { if (true) return new string(""); else {} }
This case is much more dangerous because the compiler doesn't know how to instantiate a pointer type - there's no default constructor for it. You might get zero (and a corresponding segfault later) or you might get random jibberish that points into allocated memory (and probably crash because it's not a string type there). Who knows, you might fluke it and actually get a pointer to an existing string and not even know that you fucked up royally until weeks down the track. G++ doesn't warn you about this because it knows you'll never return uninitialized values. Change "true" to (a>10) and pass a to the function - G++ still won't warn you without enabling -Wall.
The moral of this story is always compile with warnings enabled and always fix the warnings where possible.
Best Buy is selling PS3s with a tacked on charge for something the PS3s automatically do on their own (You ahve to hit the button to agree to a TOS, but it's three button presses and automated).
That's not strictly true - you have to configure your PS3 to connect to your network. Then you have to ensure your network is connected to the Internet. This might involve plugging in network cables or setting up wireless network keys. Some people don't have the Internet at home. Sure, you can get the updates on disk or USB stick but there's probably a charge for that too.
There are conceivably a few consumers out there who do not have the means to get the automatic updates and a few games out there that require the latest firmware at their time of pressing.
Yet these same aggressive young men are the ones that start new businesses, thinking they've got what it takes to make it big, even though realistically the odds are against them. These same young men manage to convince investors and shareholders that they have got what it takes.
Thing is, the investors are usually the older types. They made their money already and are now financing startups. These people will invest in a company with someone they think is a poor lead if they think the company product looks good.
Once you have a few investors you have a board - stocked with the older types who invested - who make most of the major decisions for you. The CEO is really just a face for the board and the person who makes day to day minor decisions about the running of the company. If the CEO turns out to be useless he can be neutered by board action.
This is why these companies succeed. Not because the young punk with his penis size at stake is doing a good job. It also helps if they're filling a niche and not just being a me-too knock off.
Slashdot Mirror
If I choose to ride a car, motorcycle, subway, do I pay different costs of I get hurt because of who is at fault?
Yes. Your health insurance (assuming you have it) will pick up the bill and it will sue (on your behalf) the insurance of the party at fault. If you don't have insurance you're welcome to bring action against the party that was responsible for your injury.
However, these weren't my biggest addictions in the slightest, but I wasn't quite ready to give up on facebook and similar social networking things. It didn't seem like much at the time. Afterall, I was still being "social" and wasn't becoming reclusive. It was essentially a substitute for hanging out with real people in real life. And besides - a lot of us got together on Fridays for movie night. Thing was - even during these movie nights I'd still be checking facebook despite everyone close to me was right in front of me.
What is amusing is that you've hit the nail right on the head. I am sitting here writing this post and looking at my Facebook chat list. Most of the people who I used to be out with on a Wed night are online on Facebook. More to the point, things like MSN and ICQ that used to be busy aren't. All those people moved over to Facebook as soon as it had chat because it has "games". I bet if I actually bring up the page I'll see dozens of game updates and other nonsense from them.
Another point is that the Internet brings easy (free!) access to content. You can download a movie in under an hour and queue up 2 or 3 more while you're watching the first. I have friends who literally have piles of terabyte hard disks with all the crap they've downloaded. They invest countless hours into devising cataloging schemes so they can know they have something and not download it again (not so they can find it and access it).
These were the very same friends who used to go out instead of sitting home watching downloaded crap.
And yes, I'm aware the irony of pointing out online that everyone is online and not going out anymore.
Or like having a judge rule on a contract case where they once were an attorney representing someone during a breach of contract case?
This is far different. This judge was not once a lawyer on a bunch of "random" cases. This judge invested considerable time and effort into becoming an RIAA lobbyist before taking this position as a judge.
From the torrent freak article:
And yes, one of the leading lobbyists on record was Beryl Howell, who was paid $415,000 between 2004 and 2008.
That's a hundred grand a year to lobby for the industry. It smacks of bias to me!
In fact, my car dealer would love it if I put diesel in the tank. It damages the fuel pump, filter, injectors so badly they need to be replaced. That's a time consuming and costly exercise and they make a fortune from you when you do it.
See here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2046324&cid=35567912
28 components use GPL, 5 use LGPL, etc.
But, Android is more than just those components. The glue that holds them together is not licensed under a GPL-style license. That glue is called "Android".
Android's rich variety of open source software assets are grouped into external and internal categories. Two major external components the Linux kernel and WebKit - are governed by reciprocal licenses (GPLv2, LGPL.) In addition to the two major external components an additional 30+ internal components (dbus, grub, emma, e2fsprogs, bluez, Bison, etc.) also use reciprocal licenses (GPL, LGPL, CPL, etc.) Twenty-eight components use the GPL and five use the LGPL while others use non-OSI licenses such as the OpenSSL combined license and the Bzip2 license.
From http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2010/09/android-opening-a-digital-pandoras-box/index.htm
The bits of Android that Google created or could change the license on are APL. But there's still a lot that's not.
I should have pasted the whole of section 4 of the LGPL, which also makes it clear that you must provide all information required for the user to reinstall the new shared library of their choice.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean that the manufacturers of mainstream Anroid devices can't lock them down so the people that buy them can't put on their own versions of self-baked Android. It's not Android's fault, but it damn well is Android's problem :(
I'm pretty sure that parts of the LGPL (which a parts of Android are undoubtedly licensed under) makes it clear that the user must be able to:
0) Convey the Minimal Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, and the Corresponding Application Code in a form suitable for, and under terms that permit, the user to recombine or relink the Application with a modified version of the Linked Version to produce a modified Combined Work, in the manner specified by section 6 of the GNU GPL for conveying Corresponding Source.
1) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (a) uses at run time a copy of the Library already present on the user's computer system, and (b) will operate properly with a modified version of the Library that is interface-compatible with the Linked Version.
(From http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html)
I'd argue that a locked bootloader prevents me doing just that, since I can't update the firmware image with my replacement library and expect it to boot.
It's radiation - you can't see it even with your eyes open. No problem!
You just had to post anonymously didn't you...
1) Some men like to see women breastfeeding, it turns them on.
And some men are turned on by a gorgeous full figured woman walking down the street fully clothed. Should we call being a gorgeous full figured woman porn now?
2) Some people think peeing in public is offensive. Peeing is just as natural as breastfeeding.
Piss gets all over stuff, and it eventually starts to smell. That's a lot different to breast feeding.
3) There is no need to breastfeed in public.
There's no need to post as Anonymous Coward, yet you still did. Don't like it, don't stare at it. Babies need to eat. They aren't clued up enough yet to be able to wait. A baby will decide that it is hungry and it will make a scene until it gets what it wants. Why should the mother not be able to feed it there and then on the spot. Just because you are some kind of "the body is special for me and my girlfriend" prude the baby should go hungry or the mother should have to get up and walk for ages to find a designated area?
4) I don't like to see nude women too often.
You, sir, are homosexual (your post suggests you are male)! Or one of those aforementioned prudes. It's different when your significant other walks around naked because you are (usually) allowed to touch.
Once it's normal for people to walk naked, there is nothing exciting about seeing your girlfriend or boyfriend nude when you make love. Exhibitionists harm my sex life, this violates my rights.
I had to leave this in as its own point - what rights? Is it some fundamental human requirement for life to not see naked people? You, sir, are an idiot.
5) It's been observed that most women who support public breastfeeding have higher exhibitionist tendencies (can't find the research article, sorry... But I'll post it if I find it). And men who support public breastfeeding scored higher on voyeur tendencies.
These women I talked to DO NOT want to show their breasts, even when breastfeeding, they want the option to breastfeed privately in a place that is more sanitary than a public washroom.
Are you serious? So some prudes you know don't want the world to see their tits. Big deal. The rest of us don't care. They are free to leave and find a quiet out of the way place and listen to baby scream the whole way there. As for the "article", explain to me how these exhibitionist tendencies come from doing something that is completely natural and a requirement to life?
6) Breastfeeding in public is unsanitary. You pee in a toilet or against a tree, not on the floor in a store, so why should breastfeeding be done anywhere? What if a woman breastfeeds her baby while drinking coffee at Starbucks and some of her milk drips on the table? Gross!
We already talked about why we don't (as adults) randomly pee all over the place. I'll leave it as an exercise to you to go back and re-read it, since I'm sure you already forgot what I said.
Oh noes, what if some dribbling Anonymous Coward from Slashdot goes to Starbucks and dribbles all over the table. Gross. Or the same takes his snotty cold-infected nose to Starbucks and sneezes all over the place without covering his face. Gross! I think Anonymous Slashdot Cowards should be banned from Starbucks!
So, you want to pay more for new cars, I don't
I had a reversing camera as an option when I purchased my new car a while back. I decided to not take it. Saved a few hundred dollars. Honestly, the field of view is so limited that you still have to actually look behind you. All the time you have your head turned you're not looking at the camera anyway.
I do have the sonar reversing sensors installed - they are sensitive enough to pick up something as small as a basketball behind the car and also respond to objects directly beside the rear of the car, so I can tell if there's something to the side.
These are a far better option than a reversing camera - which in my view is a waste of time.
I wonder if they offer airmail!
Copyright is a misleading term - there is no fundamental human right to profit or ownership. Modern society only affords you a few true "rights" (I put this in quotes, since "rights" is a product of people). Copyright is not a fundamental human right in the same way as the right to breathe, the right to freedom of speech and the right to safety.
As others have said, the intention of copyright is to allow creators a /short term/ monopoly on their work such that they can profit. This ability to profit provides incentive to create works. Art may or may not be the property of society, but it is important for society to continue to function and grow. Short term copyright is what allows this.
Modern copyright and other IP laws are at odds with the noble goals. They are moving to proving creators the ever-lasting ability to make insane profits from "their" works and actually not providing much incentive to create. In some cases (patents) the incentive to create has actually been totally removed, since the patent system has been so badly raped that almost everything you can think of is covered by some obscenely broad patent or another. In the case of copyrights, we're seeing more and more remakes of movies and music which had fallen out of copyright. The remake is covered by $INSANE_COPYRIGHT_LENGTH copyright so the studios are free to profit forever off it. They're not creating - they're rehashing.
But I'll do it for $749.99!
I am agnostic, so the religious freedoms don't affect me
Oh, but they do. If the white Christian lunatics (the very same ones who protest about mosques) in the US got their way you wouldn't be allowed to be agnostic. Don't think for a minute that an explicitly noted right to religious freedom doesn't affect you; it is the very underpinning of your being allowed to be agnostic (undecided - since, in the context of your post it sounded like you meant atheist).
Given that X-rays are used as a part of the follow-up care when implanting pacemakers, I wouldn't worry about X-rays in particular. Google also has some academic studies if you're interested.*
The concern is that in a hospital setting you are able to receive immediate medical assistance. In the middle of a crowded airport how long would that assistance take?
Pacemakers were just an example. I'm sure there's other things, but I just couldn't think of any off the top of my head.
I don't really give a rat's arse if they look at a picture of my cock. I've lost count of the number of other people that have seen it. FFS, if they want to see it they can just ask.
What I object to is being bombarded with a "minimal" dose of radiation - unnecessarily. Yet, when asked the TSA employee couldn't tell me the specifics of the dose or type of radiation. He said "it's not radiation, it's a scanner". They have no idea how the machine works, they don't know what prior medical issues I have that may be upset by receiving low dose X-rays. These things are dangerous. How long before they manage to stop someone's pacemaker in one of these things?
it's convenient, but if enough people request a pat-down, then it will become a lot more inconvenient for them to ask you to be subjected to it.
And if enough people start requesting the pat-down and it takes too long they'll just pass laws that say everyone must go through the scanner, unless they have very good reason not to, or they don't fly.
He was in possession of a stolen motorized bicycle.
And can you tell both the location and momentum of an electric company service truck simultaneously...
Given I have no idea at all where the electric company (also phone and cable) trucks are and I've been waiting all day, I'm going to say it's possible that I inadvertently gleaned very precise information as to its momentum.
Uhhh.... Sorry to break this to you since you "taught" C++. That function doesn't compile. Maybe next time learn the language you are teaching.
"error C4716: 'somefunction' : must return a value"
I hate to break it to you, chump, but quoting only MSVC's error for this doesn't mean it compiles. It means that it fails to compile on MSVC. G++ certainly will compile that example just fine. It will warn you about it only if you turn on -Wall.
The standard left the behaviour in this case undefined and it's up to the compiler vendor what to do. Microsoft chose to default to an error. The G++ team decided to allow it and not even warn by default. Curiously, you will probably find that the default option set by the MSVC GUI explicitly enables all warnings. Try poking about and making sure that the default compiler warning level is set and not everything. You may find it compiles even on MSVC.
string function(){if(true){return string("");}else{}}
In your case here the compiler can easily tell that program flow will NEVER reach the end of the function. It (hopefully) won't even emit machine instructions to test true == true except with optimization completely disabled.
Regardless of the complexity of the conditional the compiler may or may not be able to make the call for you. If it can't decide it should definitely emit a warning. I know that GCC/G++ does with warnings enabled. The standard doesn't explicitly make this case an error so the compiler has no place emitting an error.
Also, in the case of this particular function, string has a default constructor so it's perfectly possible to return without actually instantiating a return value. The compiler knows how to give you the default one (even if that's not what you intended).
string *function() { if (true) return new string(""); else {} }
This case is much more dangerous because the compiler doesn't know how to instantiate a pointer type - there's no default constructor for it. You might get zero (and a corresponding segfault later) or you might get random jibberish that points into allocated memory (and probably crash because it's not a string type there). Who knows, you might fluke it and actually get a pointer to an existing string and not even know that you fucked up royally until weeks down the track. G++ doesn't warn you about this because it knows you'll never return uninitialized values. Change "true" to (a>10) and pass a to the function - G++ still won't warn you without enabling -Wall.
The moral of this story is always compile with warnings enabled and always fix the warnings where possible.
Best Buy is selling PS3s with a tacked on charge for something the PS3s automatically do on their own (You ahve to hit the button to agree to a TOS, but it's three button presses and automated).
That's not strictly true - you have to configure your PS3 to connect to your network. Then you have to ensure your network is connected to the Internet. This might involve plugging in network cables or setting up wireless network keys. Some people don't have the Internet at home. Sure, you can get the updates on disk or USB stick but there's probably a charge for that too.
There are conceivably a few consumers out there who do not have the means to get the automatic updates and a few games out there that require the latest firmware at their time of pressing.
The word "fucktards" comes to mind. This is what you get when you have some kind of right to own a gun combined with a bunch of low-IQ fuckwits.
Take their guns away from them. They are too stupid to have them.
Yet these same aggressive young men are the ones that start new businesses, thinking they've got what it takes to make it big, even though realistically the odds are against them. These same young men manage to convince investors and shareholders that they have got what it takes.
Thing is, the investors are usually the older types. They made their money already and are now financing startups. These people will invest in a company with someone they think is a poor lead if they think the company product looks good.
Once you have a few investors you have a board - stocked with the older types who invested - who make most of the major decisions for you. The CEO is really just a face for the board and the person who makes day to day minor decisions about the running of the company. If the CEO turns out to be useless he can be neutered by board action.
This is why these companies succeed. Not because the young punk with his penis size at stake is doing a good job. It also helps if they're filling a niche and not just being a me-too knock off.