Uh... Bribery is not illegal. There are certain types of bribes that are illegal, but much like being a monopoly, it is not inherently illegal. You know, if I offer may local mayor a new car in exchange rezoning some land I own, it's a crime. If I offer my son a new car in exchange for mowing the lawn, I may be a crappy parent, but I certainly have not committed a crime.
And that is exactly it. If I am just buying a license, then those who are "selling" it are committing fraud. If I see and ad that says a product is for "Sale", go into a store and see a sign under the product that says "Sale", go to the register, pay for the product and get a "Sales" receipt... For the manufacturer of the product to still own that product, SOMEONE must have committed fraud.
The reason you have NEVER had a problem with your hammer being taken away is because XP is the first 'hammer' to have a self destruct mode. While false positives are a known fact, that is not what I am talking about. I'm talking about the fact that periodically Windows needs to be reinstalled. Yes, XP is dramatically more stable than 9x was, but yes, even XP needs to be reinstalled if you do any significant amount of loading and unloading of software. One day, MS is going to decide that XP is end of life. Then they are going to stop authenticating XP. When that happens, what you have installed will be the end of the line.
"You can flip over a screwdriver to pound in nails, but why not just use the hammer?"
because the screwdriver manufacturer hasn't installed a "Feature" that makes the tool cease to function, forcing you to call the hammer manufacturer to ask permission to regain use of that hammer you bought. All the while knowing that at some point, the hammer manufacturer is going to decide they want to sell their new hammers, so they will stop giving permission to the old hammer owners to keep using their purchased hammers.
The real question would be, "Why would you buy a screwdriver, when you can rent a hammer?"
"Lastly, there's another issue. What happens when the sun goes behind a cloud? You need to be able to cover the entire slack in an instant, because you NEED a constant power output. That means you NEED enough GAS powerplants to power the whole world too, as they're the only type of power plant you can literally turn the dial and turn up the output."
And that is what fuel cells are really for. Forget having hydrogen delivered to your home so that you can use a fuel cell as a generator. No, you use photovolic at the home to generate a tank of Hydrogen so that you can convert it back to electricity when you need it. The real promise of fuel cells is for use as a very clean battery.
How about we put them some place that is already covered. You know like above houses. Kind of like... say... a roof. I don't know how many square miles of the US is rooftops, but I bet if you added it up, you wouldn't need much in the way of non-building covering space for whatever extra power was needed to power the US.
Isn't copyright infringement a crime now, and not just a civil issue? Shouldn't these people be arrested and charged with a crime? You know, as in "The people vs.".
Who do we contact to let them know that we expect the law to be enforced against a high profile criminal who has publicly admitted their guilt?
Actually, that would be barter, and you are actually supposed to pay taxes on barter transactions. The issue is really that if you have to pay income tax on WoW, you would also need to pay taxes on a game of monopoly.
If kids couldn't tell the difference between pretend and real, we would have never gotten to Pac-Man. Have you ever looked at what kids used to play? They wouldn't look at any graphics on the screen. They would chase down real people tie them to a tree, and physically pretend to cut their scalp off. It is a game that you might have heard of, "Cowboys and Indians". They would pretend to kill each other in cold blood with guns. They would physically act out violent crimes when they would play "Cops and Robbers". If exposure to pretend violence were have any real effect on kids, we wouldn't have made it this far.
Also IF disk space it cheap. Oh, it is, so storing in FLAC IS the way to go. Of course I keep it stored in Flac for use in the house, and a second copy re-encoded from the Flac to MP3 for easy transfer to portables.
Because when fraud is commited with a regular credit card, the process goes like this:
Fraud occurs
Bill comes
You discover fraud
You dispute charges
End of story
Whereas the story for check cards will more like go like this:
Fraud occurs
You get a notice from your landlord/mortgage company that your check bounced
You get a notice from your credit card company that your check has bounced and that your 6.9% credit card is now a 21% credit card
You discover the fraud
You dispute the charges
A day or two later the money might show back up in your account
Your credit suffers
You pay a ton more money on raised interest rates
You spend a large amount of time trying to clean up all the cascaded damage that occurred from the check card fraud
The banks know that the check cards have extreamly bad security. That is the point. To shift the risk to you.
The thing about these commercials that always got me was that they showed that you didn't need ID AND you didn't need a pin. They actively advertised that they were easy to commit fraud with. Combine that with the fact that the event that will make you notice the fraud is when your checks like rent or your mortgage payment start bouncing. It amazes me that people actually carry these 'take my money for free' cards.
That could be a big deal IF, and that is IF spelled in all caps, someone can get a video capture card and IR transmitter to work as easy as plugging in a controller.
I've been actually downgrading machines around the house. Epias with 1200MHz are just fine for 99% of the tasks, use less power and are completely silent. I'll keep my primary work machine as a power system, and I might have a medium level machine for my wife to game on, but that will usually be turned off.
"Besides, Microsoft with its Vista madness and other idiocies seems to be determined to self-destruct."
The PC industry has always been more about who was last to shoot themselves in the foot than it was about who had the best product. Lucky for Microsoft all of their real competitors had died of fatal wounds before they could hit themselves. Everyone except Apple that is, but they were in intesive care, barely hanging on when MS really started to hurt themselves. Of course now, Apple has recovered nicely, and there is a new fresh kid on the block in Linux, so when MS shoots themselves with all this disable-ware, they might not be as lucky as before.
Eh... You say that like that is a bad thing. As much as society does not want to admit it, most women ( and I'm talking about greater than a 95% ) do or have exchanged sex for monetary gain. When a man buys a woman he does not know (often when he does know her) a beer in a bar, both parties in that transaction know that the man is offering goods in exchange for sex. Unfortunately for the guy, the law does not require the woman to keep up her end of this barter. Just remember...
In America, it is an insult to offer a woman money for sex. We work off a barter system!
Now, before you run off the handle thinking I'm a woman hater or something, you should understand that women don't exchange sex for goods because they are inherently 'whores'. It is because it is traditional to exchange goods for sex. In fact, at one time it was absolutely necessary. It isn't easy chasing a caraboo down for dinner when your 9 months pregnant after all. Then you add that the reason men don't trade sex for money is that there simply is very little market for it. Why would anyone pay for something when they could be the one getting paid for the exact same action. It would make very little sense.
Times are changing though... I have known a couple of men that would sleep with women because the bought them stuff. This is likely due to making your own money being less of a physical act. Once you have your own money, you can start looking for things other than a paycheck.
Obviously I don't have real figures, but I have the strong suspicion that consoles loose money the way movies loose money... in the accounting office. Even if they loose some money on each console, there is great value in having sold a lot of units. We live in a team society. Whether it is voting for the presidential candidate that you think will win, to placing your value as a person on what football team you like, people are worried about picking a looser, even it it meets their needs. If Sony can sell twice as many units the first year as MS, their second year will be better. Price is a problem though...
"I don't know why so many people seem to think there is some vast inchoate yearning on the part of the general public to run Linux."
Because your making it up. Most people don't care what OS they are running. The only reason I said Linux is because it is extremely unlikely that MS is going to port Windows to the PS3 and offer Sony an incredibly cheap OEM price. Of the OS choices that could be ported to the PS3, Linux is the most advanced by a very wide margin, and given that 2 Linux distros have already been ported it is the obviouse OS choice for people that DO NOT care what OS they are running. They also have no need for a high powered personal computer in the on the PS3. The primary reason to have a high power PC is for gaming. Given that the vast majority of gaming would not be done from the OS, a relatively slow personal computer would be just fine for most.
And Linux can't even win the desktop, what makes you think the average consumer will care about installing Linux on the PS3?
Average consumers don't care about Linux. They don't care about any OS. The fact that they are faced with a system that can play games, or are faced with a similar system that can play games, surf the net, do real word processing, or make spreadsheets, will play a real roll. As I tried to point out in the original post, the price is definitely going to be a problem for them, and could make the personal computer side of the system a non-factor.
The PS3 has the potential to do very well. I think they will screw it up (they are Sony after all), but the fact that you can install Linux on these systems, could do a lot for their market share. The multi-computer household is here today. People have their primary Windows box for the Windows only stuff. How many people would like to have a second system in the kids room or study for web surfing and word processing, and would see the PS3 as good multi-purpose machine, much like the C64 of old. The problem is that you can get a brand new PC for $150 if you really watch the sales. Few people are going to spend $600-$800 to do the same thing on the PS3. If 3D can get working in Linux on the PS3, this will help, as then home brew can get a foothold.
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Uh... Bribery is not illegal. There are certain types of bribes that are illegal, but much like being a monopoly, it is not inherently illegal. You know, if I offer may local mayor a new car in exchange rezoning some land I own, it's a crime. If I offer my son a new car in exchange for mowing the lawn, I may be a crappy parent, but I certainly have not committed a crime.
And that is exactly it. If I am just buying a license, then those who are "selling" it are committing fraud. If I see and ad that says a product is for "Sale", go into a store and see a sign under the product that says "Sale", go to the register, pay for the product and get a "Sales" receipt... For the manufacturer of the product to still own that product, SOMEONE must have committed fraud.
The reason you have NEVER had a problem with your hammer being taken away is because XP is the first 'hammer' to have a self destruct mode. While false positives are a known fact, that is not what I am talking about. I'm talking about the fact that periodically Windows needs to be reinstalled. Yes, XP is dramatically more stable than 9x was, but yes, even XP needs to be reinstalled if you do any significant amount of loading and unloading of software. One day, MS is going to decide that XP is end of life. Then they are going to stop authenticating XP. When that happens, what you have installed will be the end of the line.
"You can flip over a screwdriver to pound in nails, but why not just use the hammer?"
because the screwdriver manufacturer hasn't installed a "Feature" that makes the tool cease to function, forcing you to call the hammer manufacturer to ask permission to regain use of that hammer you bought. All the while knowing that at some point, the hammer manufacturer is going to decide they want to sell their new hammers, so they will stop giving permission to the old hammer owners to keep using their purchased hammers.
The real question would be, "Why would you buy a screwdriver, when you can rent a hammer?"
Not only that, we may end up with covered freeways.
"Lastly, there's another issue. What happens when the sun goes behind a cloud? You need to be able to cover the entire slack in an instant, because you NEED a constant power output. That means you NEED enough GAS powerplants to power the whole world too, as they're the only type of power plant you can literally turn the dial and turn up the output."
And that is what fuel cells are really for. Forget having hydrogen delivered to your home so that you can use a fuel cell as a generator. No, you use photovolic at the home to generate a tank of Hydrogen so that you can convert it back to electricity when you need it. The real promise of fuel cells is for use as a very clean battery.
How about we put them some place that is already covered. You know like above houses. Kind of like... say... a roof. I don't know how many square miles of the US is rooftops, but I bet if you added it up, you wouldn't need much in the way of non-building covering space for whatever extra power was needed to power the US.
Isn't copyright infringement a crime now, and not just a civil issue? Shouldn't these people be arrested and charged with a crime? You know, as in "The people vs.".
Who do we contact to let them know that we expect the law to be enforced against a high profile criminal who has publicly admitted their guilt?
Actually, that would be barter, and you are actually supposed to pay taxes on barter transactions. The issue is really that if you have to pay income tax on WoW, you would also need to pay taxes on a game of monopoly.
If kids couldn't tell the difference between pretend and real, we would have never gotten to Pac-Man. Have you ever looked at what kids used to play? They wouldn't look at any graphics on the screen. They would chase down real people tie them to a tree, and physically pretend to cut their scalp off. It is a game that you might have heard of, "Cowboys and Indians". They would pretend to kill each other in cold blood with guns. They would physically act out violent crimes when they would play "Cops and Robbers". If exposure to pretend violence were have any real effect on kids, we wouldn't have made it this far.
Also IF disk space it cheap. Oh, it is, so storing in FLAC IS the way to go. Of course I keep it stored in Flac for use in the house, and a second copy re-encoded from the Flac to MP3 for easy transfer to portables.
Personally, I would rather see the stereos outlawed. They are far more of a distraction, and less useful. What's that? No one wants to ban stereos?
Because when fraud is commited with a regular credit card, the process goes like this:
Fraud occurs
Bill comes
You discover fraud
You dispute charges
End of story
Whereas the story for check cards will more like go like this:
Fraud occurs
You get a notice from your landlord/mortgage company that your check bounced
You get a notice from your credit card company that your check has bounced and that your 6.9% credit card is now a 21% credit card
You discover the fraud
You dispute the charges
A day or two later the money might show back up in your account
Your credit suffers
You pay a ton more money on raised interest rates
You spend a large amount of time trying to clean up all the cascaded damage that occurred from the check card fraud
The banks know that the check cards have extreamly bad security. That is the point. To shift the risk to you.
The thing about these commercials that always got me was that they showed that you didn't need ID AND you didn't need a pin. They actively advertised that they were easy to commit fraud with. Combine that with the fact that the event that will make you notice the fraud is when your checks like rent or your mortgage payment start bouncing. It amazes me that people actually carry these 'take my money for free' cards.
That could be a big deal IF, and that is IF spelled in all caps, someone can get a video capture card and IR transmitter to work as easy as plugging in a controller.
I've been actually downgrading machines around the house. Epias with 1200MHz are just fine for 99% of the tasks, use less power and are completely silent. I'll keep my primary work machine as a power system, and I might have a medium level machine for my wife to game on, but that will usually be turned off.
"Besides, Microsoft with its Vista madness and other idiocies seems to be determined to self-destruct."
The PC industry has always been more about who was last to shoot themselves in the foot than it was about who had the best product. Lucky for Microsoft all of their real competitors had died of fatal wounds before they could hit themselves. Everyone except Apple that is, but they were in intesive care, barely hanging on when MS really started to hurt themselves. Of course now, Apple has recovered nicely, and there is a new fresh kid on the block in Linux, so when MS shoots themselves with all this disable-ware, they might not be as lucky as before.
Eh... You say that like that is a bad thing. As much as society does not want to admit it, most women ( and I'm talking about greater than a 95% ) do or have exchanged sex for monetary gain. When a man buys a woman he does not know (often when he does know her) a beer in a bar, both parties in that transaction know that the man is offering goods in exchange for sex. Unfortunately for the guy, the law does not require the woman to keep up her end of this barter. Just remember...
In America, it is an insult to offer a woman money for sex. We work off a barter system!
Now, before you run off the handle thinking I'm a woman hater or something, you should understand that women don't exchange sex for goods because they are inherently 'whores'. It is because it is traditional to exchange goods for sex. In fact, at one time it was absolutely necessary. It isn't easy chasing a caraboo down for dinner when your 9 months pregnant after all. Then you add that the reason men don't trade sex for money is that there simply is very little market for it. Why would anyone pay for something when they could be the one getting paid for the exact same action. It would make very little sense.
Times are changing though... I have known a couple of men that would sleep with women because the bought them stuff. This is likely due to making your own money being less of a physical act. Once you have your own money, you can start looking for things other than a paycheck.
Obviously I don't have real figures, but I have the strong suspicion that consoles loose money the way movies loose money... in the accounting office. Even if they loose some money on each console, there is great value in having sold a lot of units. We live in a team society. Whether it is voting for the presidential candidate that you think will win, to placing your value as a person on what football team you like, people are worried about picking a looser, even it it meets their needs. If Sony can sell twice as many units the first year as MS, their second year will be better. Price is a problem though...
"I don't know why so many people seem to think there is some vast inchoate yearning on the part of the general public to run Linux."
Because your making it up. Most people don't care what OS they are running. The only reason I said Linux is because it is extremely unlikely that MS is going to port Windows to the PS3 and offer Sony an incredibly cheap OEM price. Of the OS choices that could be ported to the PS3, Linux is the most advanced by a very wide margin, and given that 2 Linux distros have already been ported it is the obviouse OS choice for people that DO NOT care what OS they are running. They also have no need for a high powered personal computer in the on the PS3. The primary reason to have a high power PC is for gaming. Given that the vast majority of gaming would not be done from the OS, a relatively slow personal computer would be just fine for most.
And Linux can't even win the desktop, what makes you think the average consumer will care about installing Linux on the PS3?
Average consumers don't care about Linux. They don't care about any OS. The fact that they are faced with a system that can play games, or are faced with a similar system that can play games, surf the net, do real word processing, or make spreadsheets, will play a real roll. As I tried to point out in the original post, the price is definitely going to be a problem for them, and could make the personal computer side of the system a non-factor.
Yes. Yes I do. Obviously Sony does as well, or they would not have done it. Besides, it has happened before.
She just was extra careful not to die between Saturday night and Sunday morning....
The PS3 has the potential to do very well. I think they will screw it up (they are Sony after all), but the fact that you can install Linux on these systems, could do a lot for their market share. The multi-computer household is here today. People have their primary Windows box for the Windows only stuff. How many people would like to have a second system in the kids room or study for web surfing and word processing, and would see the PS3 as good multi-purpose machine, much like the C64 of old. The problem is that you can get a brand new PC for $150 if you really watch the sales. Few people are going to spend $600-$800 to do the same thing on the PS3. If 3D can get working in Linux on the PS3, this will help, as then home brew can get a foothold.
Which might be why they don't make nuclear power plants out of granite.