I don't think anti-smoking and anti-waste-glorification are very "right-wing". In fact I think most of the PC in the modern day are mostly "left-wing". (Or at least thats how I see it from a European perspective.) Not to long ago I watched the movie called bamboozled and then took the time to review my collection of old looney-toons merry melodies and Tom and Jerry episodes.
I wouldn't show some of those old cartoons to my or anyone else's kids for anything. Most of them are extremely violent and a fair number are downright racist.
It is very clear to me from your post that you are not a medical professional. I you were you would know that your premise is off. With that I mean your premise that health care prices are NOT elastic. They very much ARE elastic. There are so many unnecessary tests and medication, so many costly procedures that are performed without any real benefit over less costly alternatives simply because the patient has a wrong idea of real value. A patient looking for an answer or a cure when there is none will spend more than 10 times the resources required for the initial diagnosis. BTW If you want to toot the benefits of social health care you may want to step outside the UK. The UK NHS is little better than the US if you compare it to the system in Belgium or Holland. Then again there you see the adverse affects that I'm talking about more clearly as well. Over consumption of medication, unnecessary procedures and mass testing and vaccination of the entire population for just about any disease know to man (I may be exaggerating just a tad) has brought the overall cost to 18.000.000.000 for a population of a little 10.000.000. Projects like free mammography for all women aged 35 and higher have more than tripled the amount of cancer surgery without any real impact on the number of actual cancers. (This is because cancer incidence does not necessarily mean that the unidentified tissue will actually develop into cancer) These increased and unnecessary operations have increased the likelihood of cardiac and vascular problems with the patient that have undergone the surgery and all of this is payed by everyone. Overconsumption is NOT just a problem with the well insured American patients in their privatized system, but also in the highly socialized government health care system of Belgium. Neither provides a solution to this problem and the fact does remain that patients and doctors experimenting with new treatments and looking for answers were there are none to constitute a VERY elastic pricing that right up the alley of the free market. Sure, if you break a leg you have to fix it, but there are more than one way to fix it and to revalidate afterwards. Faster, ways, slower ways, more expensive ways. The options are endless. The only way your argument can make any sense is if there are clear and conservative definitions on which treatments are considered "non elastic" required basic healthcare and which are elective and nice to have. If we don't take the best of both worlds, socialize ONLY the absolute basics and privatize the rest we will continue to fail with either system.
If you really think these answers helped, you might consider thinking again... Seriously! I think the OP of this thread hit the mail on the head! This question can not be answered by brief comments. If you rely on brief comments to answer your questions on the subject you'll most likely make faulty decisions. So I implore you. Don't know this guy for giving the only sound advice you read in this thread. Sometimes insulting the guy asking stupid questions is the only way to help others, by avoiding they put to much stock in inevitable stupid answers!
Has Slashdot because a self-help group for the tech illiterate now?
"For example, say I have 3x500gb drives in RAID 5 and over time replace all of them with 1TB drives. Instead of reading one big 3tb drive, it will still read 1.5tb. Is this true?"
NO. You will not read 1.5 TB you will have only 1TB. Now do a search and read up! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels# RAID_5_usable_size
This patent is a JOKE! The idea of pausing and rewinding (no longer live) TV is older than even the PC itself. I know quite a few people who had elaborate tape winders in mind to buffer magnetic tape and play it while recording allowing the same functionality that is protected by this so called patent. Also, there are many examples of prior art here, ever since capture cards first emerged.
This Patent sucks. I don't care how popular TiVo is, they don't own an idea!
Jurgen Verstrepen was never a talkshowhost, and certainly not in the American sense of the word. He had a talk radio show for a couple of months on a new radio station with a couple of thousand listeners.
Secondly, the "biggest party" referred to (Vlaams Blok aka Vlaams Belang) is only the biggest party in 1 city in the country, and does NOT participate in government on ANY level in the entire country.
"And switching banks because of browser compatibility isn't an option for most people."
Why the hell not? Not enough banks out there? Anything difficult about changing banks? Come on... Changing banks over browser compatibility is as easy as changing slippers.
Why the HELL would they choose WMCE for this hardware!? Actually going to the trouble of getting past DRM just to encode it to MS proprietary format? How silly can you get?
First off, what if I don't want to watch it 100 times What if I just one more time in a year or so. Or when I can watch it with a friend in a couple of months. Or which ever combination I would choose to.
The fact that my right to view a program should expire is ludicrous.
Anyway, saying this is a mental issue rather than a practical one, pretty much accuses any collector of anything to be mentally unbalanced. I for one like to collect all Simpsons episodes. Not that I'm actually going to watch them all again, but if I were to think of a certain moment in a certain episode I could find and view it. Does that mean that I'm mentally imbalanced? Ehmm.. Wel ok... It probably does... Point being should I not be allowed to be?
Also, are you aware that quite a bit of series do pretty well on DVD? wink wink...
--- As mentioned on wikipedia --- This article has recently been linked from Slashdot. Please keep an eye on the page history for errors or vandalism. ---
How did slashdotians get that rep? Why does Wikipedia think Slashdotians would want to vandalise their pages. Or more to the point.. Why does wikipedia think that Slashdotians that would want to vandalise Wikipedia, would actually WAIT until there is a hyperlink from slashdot in order to do so??
Price point taken...
And the other point you raised are definitely valid. Re-downloading should not really be a problem should it?
1.99$ still feels like a lot, mainly because the lack of "packaging". Not just physical packaging, but also menu access on dvd player "packaging". And yes also because of the volatile nature of the file. Like you say a disk crash would be a terrible way to lose all your payed for video collection.
because of ads. I felt betrayed by MAD. They turned a black end white plain paper funny magazine into a glossy colored piece of advertisement crap. And what's worse expected me to pay for it.
Now isn't that different from an ad on a free website? I find ads on things I pay for far more offensive than adds on free media. Which is why I'm puzzled that people tend NOT to protest ads in magazines but DO black ads from Internet.
The problem is they have no point of reference when it comes to software.
If you buy a secondhand car for 50$ you're probably not going to complain to the previous owner if it break down after say 20000 miles. Hell, 20000 miles for 50$ is great value for money.
But if your brand new Benz, $70000 automobile, breaks down after 20000 miles, you better believe there is going to be hell to pay.
People understand value and price when it comes to cars. They don't when it comes to software. When I was in college a friend asked me if I could write a customized accounting and invoicing system for his company. When I told him "sure that will be $20000" he laughed his ass off. In the end he settled for a buggy script that added up totals from his invoices which were stored in XL files and a mail-merge type office application to generate the headers for quotes and invoices. He payed me $300 and complained about it too.
Slashdot Mirror
...and yet where's the second pic to prove that it orbits?
How could a second pic prove that?
I don't think anti-smoking and anti-waste-glorification are very "right-wing". In fact I think most of the PC in the modern day are mostly "left-wing". (Or at least thats how I see it from a European perspective.) Not to long ago I watched the movie called bamboozled and then took the time to review my collection of old looney-toons merry melodies and Tom and Jerry episodes.
I wouldn't show some of those old cartoons to my or anyone else's kids for anything. Most of them are extremely violent and a fair number are downright racist.
It is very clear to me from your post that you are not a medical professional. I you were you would know that your premise is off. With that I mean your premise that health care prices are NOT elastic. They very much ARE elastic. There are so many unnecessary tests and medication, so many costly procedures that are performed without any real benefit over less costly alternatives simply because the patient has a wrong idea of real value. A patient looking for an answer or a cure when there is none will spend more than 10 times the resources required for the initial diagnosis. BTW If you want to toot the benefits of social health care you may want to step outside the UK. The UK NHS is little better than the US if you compare it to the system in Belgium or Holland. Then again there you see the adverse affects that I'm talking about more clearly as well. Over consumption of medication, unnecessary procedures and mass testing and vaccination of the entire population for just about any disease know to man (I may be exaggerating just a tad) has brought the overall cost to 18.000.000.000 for a population of a little 10.000.000. Projects like free mammography for all women aged 35 and higher have more than tripled the amount of cancer surgery without any real impact on the number of actual cancers. (This is because cancer incidence does not necessarily mean that the unidentified tissue will actually develop into cancer) These increased and unnecessary operations have increased the likelihood of cardiac and vascular problems with the patient that have undergone the surgery and all of this is payed by everyone. Overconsumption is NOT just a problem with the well insured American patients in their privatized system, but also in the highly socialized government health care system of Belgium. Neither provides a solution to this problem and the fact does remain that patients and doctors experimenting with new treatments and looking for answers were there are none to constitute a VERY elastic pricing that right up the alley of the free market. Sure, if you break a leg you have to fix it, but there are more than one way to fix it and to revalidate afterwards. Faster, ways, slower ways, more expensive ways. The options are endless. The only way your argument can make any sense is if there are clear and conservative definitions on which treatments are considered "non elastic" required basic healthcare and which are elective and nice to have. If we don't take the best of both worlds, socialize ONLY the absolute basics and privatize the rest we will continue to fail with either system.
If you really think these answers helped, you might consider thinking again... Seriously! I think the OP of this thread hit the mail on the head! This question can not be answered by brief comments. If you rely on brief comments to answer your questions on the subject you'll most likely make faulty decisions. So I implore you. Don't know this guy for giving the only sound advice you read in this thread. Sometimes insulting the guy asking stupid questions is the only way to help others, by avoiding they put to much stock in inevitable stupid answers!
Has Slashdot because a self-help group for the tech illiterate now? "For example, say I have 3x500gb drives in RAID 5 and over time replace all of them with 1TB drives. Instead of reading one big 3tb drive, it will still read 1.5tb. Is this true?" NO. You will not read 1.5 TB you will have only 1TB. Now do a search and read up! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels# RAID_5_usable_size
Yada, Yada, Yada... All this is useless to me as long as we can't buy anything over here in Europe.
Or maybee they just don't remeber why software patents SUCK. http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
EXCUSE ME!!
This patent is a JOKE! The idea of pausing and rewinding (no longer live) TV is older than even the PC itself. I know quite a few people who had elaborate tape winders in mind to buffer magnetic tape and play it while recording allowing the same functionality that is protected by this so called patent. Also, there are many examples of prior art here, ever since capture cards first emerged.
This Patent sucks. I don't care how popular TiVo is, they don't own an idea!
Jurgen Verstrepen was never a talkshowhost, and certainly not in the American sense of the word. He had a talk radio show for a couple of months on a new radio station with a couple of thousand listeners.
Secondly, the "biggest party" referred to (Vlaams Blok aka Vlaams Belang) is only the biggest party in 1 city in the country, and does NOT participate in government on ANY level in the entire country.
"And switching banks because of browser compatibility isn't an option for most people."
Why the hell not? Not enough banks out there? Anything difficult about changing banks? Come on... Changing banks over browser compatibility is as easy as changing slippers.
Seriously. Lodge a complaint to your bank that their website only runs with crappy web-browsers and demand they change it.
No WAY! 90% of Unix problems become aparent AFTER a reboot.
Why the HELL would they choose WMCE for this hardware!? Actually going to the trouble of getting past DRM just to encode it to MS proprietary format? How silly can you get?
Probably!
Lets hope so.
For now MythTV doesn't have any problems. But what if legislation in the US starts making honoring the broadcast flag mandatory on all DVR systems?
Theoretically a law like that would include any free or open source system. There is no exempt for them.
First off, what if I don't want to watch it 100 times What if I just one more time in a year or so. Or when I can watch it with a friend in a couple of months. Or which ever combination I would choose to.
The fact that my right to view a program should expire is ludicrous.
Anyway, saying this is a mental issue rather than a practical one, pretty much accuses any collector of anything to be mentally unbalanced. I for one like to collect all Simpsons episodes. Not that I'm actually going to watch them all again, but if I were to think of a certain moment in a certain episode I could find and view it. Does that mean that I'm mentally imbalanced? Ehmm.. Wel ok... It probably does... Point being should I not be allowed to be?
Also, are you aware that quite a bit of series do pretty well on DVD? wink wink...
What the hell!
--- As mentioned on wikipedia ---
This article has recently been linked from Slashdot.
Please keep an eye on the page history for errors or vandalism.
---
How did slashdotians get that rep? Why does Wikipedia think Slashdotians would want to vandalise their pages. Or more to the point.. Why does wikipedia think that Slashdotians that would want to vandalise Wikipedia, would actually WAIT until there is a hyperlink from slashdot in order to do so??
Price point taken... And the other point you raised are definitely valid. Re-downloading should not really be a problem should it? 1.99$ still feels like a lot, mainly because the lack of "packaging". Not just physical packaging, but also menu access on dvd player "packaging". And yes also because of the volatile nature of the file. Like you say a disk crash would be a terrible way to lose all your payed for video collection.
I find the price seriously TO HIGH. This is the equivalent of 24$ per seson which if I'm not mistaken is MORE than buying the entire thing on DVD.
Seriously don't you think that downloaded material should be less expensive than de hardcopy equivalent?
"I see a good number of people watching movies on portable devices."
Yeah right... I can see it now...
Mugger:"Hand over your money!"
Passenger:"Shht, I'm watching Bachelor"
Mugger:"OH, is that hot blond still in there?"
Passenger:"Yeah, now hush I'm trying to watch this."
Mugger:"Sorry..."
because of ads. I felt betrayed by MAD. They turned a black end white plain paper funny magazine into a glossy colored piece of advertisement crap. And what's worse expected me to pay for it.
Now isn't that different from an ad on a free website? I find ads on things I pay for far more offensive than adds on free media. Which is why I'm puzzled that people tend NOT to protest ads in magazines but DO black ads from Internet.
The problem is they have no point of reference when it comes to software.
If you buy a secondhand car for 50$ you're probably not going to complain to the previous owner if it break down after say 20000 miles. Hell, 20000 miles for 50$ is great value for money.
But if your brand new Benz, $70000 automobile, breaks down after 20000 miles, you better believe there is going to be hell to pay.
People understand value and price when it comes to cars. They don't when it comes to software. When I was in college a friend asked me if I could write a customized accounting and invoicing system for his company. When I told him "sure that will be $20000" he laughed his ass off. In the end he settled for a buggy script that added up totals from his invoices which were stored in XL files and a mail-merge type office application to generate the headers for quotes and invoices. He payed me $300 and complained about it too.
Seriously though... How can a comment be overrated before it's rated?
Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I meant "Apple is as bad or even worse than MS in many ways"
I agree, Apple is worse than MS in many ways. The only reason why it isn't so apparent is their complete lack of market share.