Wasn't it Clinton who visited for some big event in a NKorean stadium, only to find out later that the speeches all denounced the US as he sat there smiling?
Sounds like you've been listening to too much rush limbaugh. Clinton has never publically visited North Korea, as president or otherwise.
Disney themeparks are known for having run their LCOS projectors for about 12x7 and the bulbs are rated for only 1000 hours but the "word" was they pushed them well past 3000 hours - basically until the bulb died.
You are out of step with the market. Current models will do 3k-6k hours per bulb, and don't forget that is until the bulb reaches half brightness - you lose around 20% of original brightness in the first few hundred hours and then it is a long slow smooth curve. I use a high-gain screen and my current bulb is now at about 260% of its duty cycle and still plenty bright. I have two more bulbs in the closet and I'll probably upgrade to a new projector before I have to use either of them.
So, on the low end you are talking 9 hours of viewing per day, every day of the year for the whole year which is frankly completely unreasonable and on the high end 3 hours per day, every day for almost 11 years before you have to change the bulb. In 10 years, that projector will be llllong obsolete, probably even in just 5 years.
Bulb price is not an issue anymore.
Plus, no one has stated it here, but the lumens on this current LED projector are in the double-digit range. LEDs are getting brighter, but not bright enough to challenge the cheap 2K lumen bulb projectors anytime soon - particularly since LEDs are not as efficient as bulbs at high power. Low power, LEDs kick ass, but high power, HID still rules the roost for lumens per watt and halogen isn't that far behind. Give it a minimum of 5 years before LED projectors are of comparable brightness.
FFDSHOW - a top-notch xvid decoder, but more importantly also real-time high-quality video "manipulator" including scaling, transformations, noise removal, subtitling, color correction, macro-deblocking, etc - the list is huge. Play your DVDs through FFDSHOW with the right settings and the good ones start to look almost like HDTV. I don't know of any one proprietary product, or even group of products, that comes close to this level of functionality.
dScaler a very high-quality video de-interlacer for both live and batch processing
DRC - digital room correction and BurteFIR an audio convolver - together they are able to turn your $100 cheap-ass stereo system into something comparable to a $5K-$10K setup. (Ok, there is expensive hardware out there to do something similar, but no software, proprietary or otherwise)
If you mirror across two disks and put the into storage, and one develops some minor errors, it is not possible to tell which one has the errors
Exceptionally incorrect, prepare for smackdown.
All data on a hard disk is protected by very sophisticated error detection and correction elgorithms. The chance of getting "some minor errors" is effectively nil - either they are corrected by the disc's controller, or the controller returns a "sector unreadble" error - which is what keys any effective mirroring system to go get the data from the second disk. You just don't get bad data from modern hard disks.
This is why God RAID-5 was invented.
No, raid-5 was invented to maintain the I in RAID. Mirroring doubles your costs, RAID-5 only increases them by one disk out of the N disks in the parity group, where N is usually but not limited to 4-5 drives.
People are saying that it is easier to focus on the background this way compared to just blacking the people out from the image. But I don't think so, I found myself staring at the "ghost" trying to figure out what fit that shape. For example, the last one was pretty easy, it is clearly the silhouette of a girl standing on a bed holding a teddy-bear. They should have at least rounded the edges of the ghosts so that there was only a big ethereal blob with no definition to catch the eye.
Here in Belgium for example, it IS legal to make a copy of something you already own.
Maybe you should read what I wrote again.
In the USA making the copy yourself is defensible, relying on someone else to make the copy for you is not (easily) defensible. Are you so sure that such a subtle difference does not also exist in Belgium law? If your copyright law is even just one tenth as labrythine as the USA's, chances are that you won't even be able to tell if it is legal or not by reading it.
And if you already own a copy of the work, then it is not illegal. I know I've downloaded a movie on more than one occasion when my DVD got scratched beyond repair.
Sorry dude, downloading a copy of something you already own is copyright infringement. Technically, making a backup is also infringement. Fair use is only a defense against prosecution for such an infringement, and it is generally considered a strong enough defense to defend you in the case of duping your own disc for backup. But letting someone else dupe their disc for you is a lot harder to defend under the aegis of fair use.
For a relevant example - consider mp3.com. They came up with a service where you could purchase a copy of any of 80,000 different CDs they would pop your legit, original recording disc in the mail and then at the same time make it possible for you to immediately listen to a streaming mp3 version of the exact same album. Or, you could prove you had physical posession of the disc by inserting it into your PC's cdrom and running a validation program from mp3.com and they would also make the streaming version available to you, at no charge.
No question that you owned a legit copy because you just bought it and they just snail mailed it, or you had to physically put it into your computer. BUT, mp3.com lost big time in court and the settlement destroyed most of the money raised by their IPO and ultimately resulted in them being acquired and smothered by one of the RIAA members.
Here's a quickee link about the case and settlements.
You keep missing the point.... You can't prove the viability of orginal OSS projects based on Red Hat's experience.
I never said that was the intent.
The point of citing Redhat is to show that there are business models that can and do make money with Free software. You are the one who has abritrarily narrowed the field of discussion to only "original OSS projects" because it doesn't necessarily match Redhat (although having acquired cygnus they certainly do have some 'original OSS projects' in their line-up). It would be absurd to expect me to list ALL of the companies making money with Free software, there are plenty more than just Redhat and IBM, I just chose two well known examples because everyone knowns about them.
That's pretty much the question I posed to you and you didn't provide any evidence to support it.
That's just bullshit. You admit to asking an unanswerable question and then think you've shown something by it? Tell you what. You show that IBM's hardware and services business is doing worse now with Free software than they would have without it and I'll fully concede.
So I guess Linus has contributed "very little" to Linux since he qualifies as someone working with Linux.
That is absolutely correct. Linus is the author of a very small number of lines of code in the current Linux kernel. You seem to keep making my points for me.
My point was that the economic viability of developing for OSS can't be judged by Red Hat's experience because 95% development was already done before they got involved.
You seriously underestimate the amount of code refresh that has occured in the linux kernel and operating evironment over the last 6-7 years. As an educated guess, I'd put the turnover at over 200% since redhat's first involvement.
Regardless, your point is moot because what matters is the going forward, not the looking back. Say Redhat was a brand new player to the game, with no code submitted until Jan 1st, 2005. That would not invalidate the new value they add and the money they pay their engineers to do it -- just like anyone else is free to do the same. Like I said originally, it is about getting paid for the value created, not creating value once and then getting paid just to make copies.
Do you claim that IBM's hardware and service income is growing faster now that it supports Linux than it did before? That would be the relevent question if you wanted to prove that OSS was economically viable.
Nope, all that matters is that IBM's hardware and services business is doing better with Free software than it would WITHOUT Free software. Hard to prove one way or the other, but empirically IBM seems to be doing well enough holding 2nd place with more than 20% of the $1B+ per quarter market for Linux servers. And according to recently published press releases, their linux-based services income is far exceeding their own internal projections and is expected to exceed their linux-based hardware income within 2-5 years.
So what percentage of Linux development has been done by Redhat? Very little. They mostly distributors of other's work. They have more in common with Walmart then MS.
ANYONE working with Linux will contribute "very little" - it doesn't matter if they are a business or not. That's because no one owns all of Linux and the established base of code is now huge. Every interested party works on the parts they care about. Redhat certainly does more than their share of the work.
Yes IBM is using OSS to drive the sale of proprietary software. It's the sale of proprietary software that funds their OSS code.
You imply that proprietary, shrink-wrap style software pays for 100% of IBM's involvement. That is FAR from the case. IBM sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of hardware running linux. IBM also sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of consulting services and support contracts for systems that use Linux and other Free software.
The idea that the happiest people are those who have a passion for their profession is nothing new. Linus is just restating that old truism in the context of working with Free software. But in reality it applies just as much to the proprietary coder too and just as much to an advertising exec and even to a call-girl, or (dare I say it) lawyers (there are A LOT of unhappy lawyers out there).
Linus's statement seems to have brought out the latent belief in a lot of people that "you can't make money writing Free software." This belief is a falsehood and it only takes a few seconds of rational thought to discover that.
1) Redhat makes money, the employees of Redhat make money. Redhat works with 100% Free software, thus working with Free software CAN and IS profitable.
2) Last I read, IBM currently has over 600 engineers employed working on Free software, maybe even just Linux alone. Those guys are getting paid and IBM ain't doing it for charity, they are doing it to add value to the services and products that they sell their customers.
The way you personally can make money from Free software is not by selling identical shrink wrapped copies, that only works for old-school, copyright-cartel, value-sucking companies. Instead, you make money by ADDING value to Free software. In other words, custom development. This works for the 1-man contract developer as well as huge consulting organizations like IBM's Global Services. Take currently existing Free software and build on it to solve a specific customer's specific requirements. You get paid for that work and, depending on the contract, the effort either stays within the client company or is shared back to the rest of the world. The GPL is designed specifically for that kind of situation and it is no surprise given that RMS often worked on contract tweaking GNU software for individual clients.
So forget all this baloney that Free software "takes away jobs" and the like because it doesn't. Instead, Free software is about not having to re-invent the wheel so that business that USE software can do more for less and are thus even more efficient in the long run. That efficiency helps the ENTIRE economy, not just a select few members of the copyright cartel.
Can you find such a page on HP's website for HPUX, or Sun's website for Solaris, or even IBM's website for AIX? Without looking for more than 30 seconds, I couldn't find any such pages. I did find a lot of stuff like IBM's linux page - case studies, customer testominals, white papers, etc.
I think you are reading too much into things, IBM's just marketing Linux the way everybody in the same market does. Plus, consider this - the only place that is going to toot the horn for Windows is Microsoft, or one of their paid shills. There are horns tooting for linux all over the place, "open source marketing" means different parties can handle different parts of the marketing effort - while microsoft's "propietary marketing" means they have to do it all themselves. Poor little micro...
TV is full of idiotic shows that make women look perfect
Have ya watched "Joey?"
In high-def?
I used to think Drea de Matteo was hot - very sexy on the Sopranos. Then I watched a few episodes of Joey in 1920x1080. She is worn out. Hardly looking perfect and then there is her character, quite far from perfect. On that show, everyone is a total doofus.
Sometimes the nephew isn't quite as big a doofus as everyone else, but that's about it. Heck, Ling's character is a parody of the "perfect woman" -- she looks totally smokin hot, but she is all OCD on the inside.
This isn't one that the consumer can win. DRM will always be with us - so shape it.
That is such fatalistic BULLSHIT.
Just because a couple of big name game companies don't have the economic creativity of a 12 year old does not mean we have to suffer DRM.
There ARE ways to make BIG money selling BIG games without DRM.
Just off the top of my head - Valve could have sold an online-only version of HL2. Part of the marketing for the online version would be that once sales of online-HL2 reached a pre-determined level, they would release off-line edition for little, or even no additional money. No DRM necessary, and yet they can almost guarantee a profit. No worries about piracy, because the online-only edition is not piratable (if they design their servers correctly), and the offline version is already paid for, profit included, before it is even released.
I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to skin that cat. But as long as corporate weiner suckers like yourself are willing to swallow the fascist load that DRM is unavoidable, there will be little incentive for companies to try DRM-free ways to profitability because they always take the path of least resistance.
Quit sucking up and start resisting. Resisting anti-consumer changes is your duty as a consumer in this consumerist world.
Re:Offline games require online reporting = BOGUS
on
Steam Users Steamed
·
· Score: 1
or watching a movie bought on another continent.
Indeed, region coding has nothing to do with pirates and yet is the most commonly cracked form of DRM in existence today.
Chalk, one mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $99,999
A more accurate analogy to MS's embrace-and-extend business model is:
Chalk, one mark: $1
Being the only mainframe consultant in the phonebook: $99,999
In otherwords, MS (and any other market dominating vendor, for that matter) has the luxury of being the only available option - no one but MS can feasibly replace the Windows TCP/IP network stack because no one but MS has the Windows source. That doesn't make their 1% of the effort to integrate the BSD stack worth $99,999, it means they've got an effective monopoly and thus prices are all out of whack with respect to actual value.
It's very telling that few scientists have changed their views on GW after entering the field. They usually go in with prejudice, and their tests come out in their favor.
Your post is chock full of outlandish unsubstantiated claims. Could you at least provide one, high-quality, citatation for this claim? If you want to back up any of your other claims, please feel free to do so too, I'd be mightly impressed if you could find much REAL science for them either.
The BBC article seems to take this Scientific Alliance (even the name drips of corporate PR'ism) at face value, either that or the British sense of sarcasm so dry as to be beyond subtle.
So, I looked them up myself and found the following links pretty quickly:
SourceWatch and GMwatch which seem to coroborate the claims of duplicitousness in the original submission.
Slashdot Mirror
I make that same trip for the same reason quite often.
Why post AC? Afraid that cgenman will kick your ass for seeing his girlfriend?
Wasn't it Clinton who visited for some big event in a NKorean stadium, only to find out later that the speeches all denounced the US as he sat there smiling?
Sounds like you've been listening to too much rush limbaugh.
Clinton has never publically visited North Korea, as president or otherwise.
Disney themeparks are known for having run their LCOS projectors for about 12x7 and the bulbs are rated for only 1000 hours but the "word" was they pushed them well past 3000 hours - basically until the bulb died.
That is quite weak, first off "Secret Service" != FBI and "investigation TRYING to obtain names and IP addrs" != everybody put on a watchlist.
10-year cost on your $1000 projector: $4000.
You are out of step with the market. Current models will do 3k-6k hours per bulb, and don't forget that is until the bulb reaches half brightness - you lose around 20% of original brightness in the first few hundred hours and then it is a long slow smooth curve. I use a high-gain screen and my current bulb is now at about 260% of its duty cycle and still plenty bright. I have two more bulbs in the closet and I'll probably upgrade to a new projector before I have to use either of them.
So, on the low end you are talking 9 hours of viewing per day, every day of the year for the whole year which is frankly completely unreasonable and on the high end 3 hours per day, every day for almost 11 years before you have to change the bulb. In 10 years, that projector will be llllong obsolete, probably even in just 5 years.
Bulb price is not an issue anymore.
Plus, no one has stated it here, but the lumens on this current LED projector are in the double-digit range. LEDs are getting brighter, but not bright enough to challenge the cheap 2K lumen bulb projectors anytime soon - particularly since LEDs are not as efficient as bulbs at high power. Low power, LEDs kick ass, but high power, HID still rules the roost for lumens per watt and halogen isn't that far behind. Give it a minimum of 5 years before LED projectors are of comparable brightness.
How about:
FFDSHOW - a top-notch xvid decoder, but more importantly also real-time high-quality video "manipulator" including scaling, transformations, noise removal, subtitling, color correction, macro-deblocking, etc - the list is huge. Play your DVDs through FFDSHOW with the right settings and the good ones start to look almost like HDTV. I don't know of any one proprietary product, or even group of products, that comes close to this level of functionality.
dScaler a very high-quality video de-interlacer for both live and batch processing
DRC - digital room correction and BurteFIR an audio convolver - together they are able to turn your $100 cheap-ass stereo system into something comparable to a $5K-$10K setup. (Ok, there is expensive hardware out there to do something similar, but no software, proprietary or otherwise)
and the next release of MS Windows will be called "Windows 980"
If you mirror across two disks and put the into storage, and one develops some minor errors, it is not possible to tell which one has the errors
Exceptionally incorrect, prepare for smackdown.
All data on a hard disk is protected by very sophisticated error detection and correction elgorithms. The chance of getting "some minor errors" is effectively nil - either they are corrected by the disc's controller, or the controller returns a "sector unreadble" error - which is what keys any effective mirroring system to go get the data from the second disk. You just don't get bad data from modern hard disks.
This is why God RAID-5 was invented.
No, raid-5 was invented to maintain the I in RAID. Mirroring doubles your costs, RAID-5 only increases them by one disk out of the N disks in the parity group, where N is usually but not limited to 4-5 drives.
It is creepy.
People are saying that it is easier to focus on the background this way compared to just blacking the people out from the image. But I don't think so, I found myself staring at the "ghost" trying to figure out what fit that shape. For example, the last one was pretty easy, it is clearly the silhouette of a girl standing on a bed holding a teddy-bear. They should have at least rounded the edges of the ghosts so that there was only a big ethereal blob with no definition to catch the eye.
Here in Belgium for example, it IS legal to make a copy of something you already own.
Maybe you should read what I wrote again.
In the USA making the copy yourself is defensible, relying on someone else to make the copy for you is not (easily) defensible. Are you so sure that such a subtle difference does not also exist in Belgium law? If your copyright law is even just one tenth as labrythine as the USA's, chances are that you won't even be able to tell if it is legal or not by reading it.
And if you already own a copy of the work, then it is not illegal. I know I've downloaded a movie on more than one occasion when my DVD got scratched beyond repair.
Sorry dude, downloading a copy of something you already own is copyright infringement. Technically, making a backup is also infringement. Fair use is only a defense against prosecution for such an infringement, and it is generally considered a strong enough defense to defend you in the case of duping your own disc for backup. But letting someone else dupe their disc for you is a lot harder to defend under the aegis of fair use.
For a relevant example - consider mp3.com. They came up with a service where you could purchase a copy of any of 80,000 different CDs they would pop your legit, original recording disc in the mail and then at the same time make it possible for you to immediately listen to a streaming mp3 version of the exact same album. Or, you could prove you had physical posession of the disc by inserting it into your PC's cdrom and running a validation program from mp3.com and they would also make the streaming version available to you, at no charge.
No question that you owned a legit copy because you just bought it and they just snail mailed it, or you had to physically put it into your computer. BUT, mp3.com lost big time in court and the settlement destroyed most of the money raised by their IPO and ultimately resulted in them being acquired and smothered by one of the RIAA members.
Here's a quickee link about the case and settlements.
He was being facetious, either to be funny or to make a comment about legalities. Not clear to me.
HOWEVER...
Australians can be extradited to the USA for similar offenses that are not illegal in their own country.
You keep missing the point....
You can't prove the viability of orginal OSS projects based on Red Hat's experience.
I never said that was the intent.
The point of citing Redhat is to show that there are business models that can and do make money with Free software. You are the one who has abritrarily narrowed the field of discussion to only "original OSS projects" because it doesn't necessarily match Redhat (although having acquired cygnus they certainly do have some 'original OSS projects' in their line-up). It would be absurd to expect me to list ALL of the companies making money with Free software, there are plenty more than just Redhat and IBM, I just chose two well known examples because everyone knowns about them.
That's pretty much the question I posed to you and you didn't provide any evidence to support it.
That's just bullshit. You admit to asking an unanswerable question and then think you've shown something by it? Tell you what. You show that IBM's hardware and services business is doing worse now with Free software than they would have without it and I'll fully concede.
So I guess Linus has contributed "very little" to Linux since he qualifies as someone working with Linux.
That is absolutely correct. Linus is the author of a very small number of lines of code in the current Linux kernel. You seem to keep making my points for me.
My point was that the economic viability of developing for OSS can't be judged by Red Hat's experience because 95% development was already done before they got involved.
You seriously underestimate the amount of code refresh that has occured in the linux kernel and operating evironment over the last 6-7 years. As an educated guess, I'd put the turnover at over 200% since redhat's first involvement.
Regardless, your point is moot because what matters is the going forward, not the looking back. Say Redhat was a brand new player to the game, with no code submitted until Jan 1st, 2005. That would not invalidate the new value they add and the money they pay their engineers to do it -- just like anyone else is free to do the same. Like I said originally, it is about getting paid for the value created, not creating value once and then getting paid just to make copies.
Do you claim that IBM's hardware and service income is growing faster now that it supports Linux than it did before? That would be the relevent question if you wanted to prove that OSS was economically viable.
Nope, all that matters is that IBM's hardware and services business is doing better with Free software than it would WITHOUT Free software. Hard to prove one way or the other, but empirically IBM seems to be doing well enough holding 2nd place with more than 20% of the $1B+ per quarter market for Linux servers. And according to recently published press releases, their linux-based services income is far exceeding their own internal projections and is expected to exceed their linux-based hardware income within 2-5 years.
Seems like you are being delibertly myopic.
So what percentage of Linux development has been done by Redhat? Very little. They mostly distributors of other's work. They have more in common with Walmart then MS.
ANYONE working with Linux will contribute "very little" - it doesn't matter if they are a business or not. That's because no one owns all of Linux and the established base of code is now huge. Every interested party works on the parts they care about. Redhat certainly does more than their share of the work.
Yes IBM is using OSS to drive the sale of proprietary software. It's the sale of proprietary software that funds their OSS code.
You imply that proprietary, shrink-wrap style software pays for 100% of IBM's involvement. That is FAR from the case. IBM sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of hardware running linux. IBM also sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of consulting services and support contracts for systems that use Linux and other Free software.
The idea that the happiest people are those who have a passion for their profession is nothing new. Linus is just restating that old truism in the context of working with Free software. But in reality it applies just as much to the proprietary coder too and just as much to an advertising exec and even to a call-girl, or (dare I say it) lawyers (there are A LOT of unhappy lawyers out there).
Linus's statement seems to have brought out the latent belief in a lot of people that "you can't make money writing Free software." This belief is a falsehood and it only takes a few seconds of rational thought to discover that.
1) Redhat makes money, the employees of Redhat make money. Redhat works with 100% Free software, thus working with Free software CAN and IS profitable.
2) Last I read, IBM currently has over 600 engineers employed working on Free software, maybe even just Linux alone. Those guys are getting paid and IBM ain't doing it for charity, they are doing it to add value to the services and products that they sell their customers.
The way you personally can make money from Free software is not by selling identical shrink wrapped copies, that only works for old-school, copyright-cartel, value-sucking companies. Instead, you make money by ADDING value to Free software. In other words, custom development. This works for the 1-man contract developer as well as huge consulting organizations like IBM's Global Services. Take currently existing Free software and build on it to solve a specific customer's specific requirements. You get paid for that work and, depending on the contract, the effort either stays within the client company or is shared back to the rest of the world. The GPL is designed specifically for that kind of situation and it is no surprise given that RMS often worked on contract tweaking GNU software for individual clients.
So forget all this baloney that Free software "takes away jobs" and the like because it doesn't. Instead, Free software is about not having to re-invent the wheel so that business that USE software can do more for less and are thus even more efficient in the long run. That efficiency helps the ENTIRE economy, not just a select few members of the copyright cartel.
Can you find such a page on HP's website for HPUX, or Sun's website for Solaris, or even IBM's website for AIX? Without looking for more than 30 seconds, I couldn't find any such pages. I did find a lot of stuff like IBM's linux page - case studies, customer testominals, white papers, etc.
I think you are reading too much into things, IBM's just marketing Linux the way everybody in the same market does. Plus, consider this - the only place that is going to toot the horn for Windows is Microsoft, or one of their paid shills. There are horns tooting for linux all over the place, "open source marketing" means different parties can handle different parts of the marketing effort - while microsoft's "propietary marketing" means they have to do it all themselves. Poor little micro...
TV is full of idiotic shows that make women look perfect
Have ya watched "Joey?"
In high-def?
I used to think Drea de Matteo was hot - very sexy on the Sopranos. Then I watched a few episodes of Joey in 1920x1080. She is worn out. Hardly looking perfect and then there is her character, quite far from perfect. On that show, everyone is a total doofus.
Sometimes the nephew isn't quite as big a doofus as everyone else, but that's about it.
Heck, Ling's character is a parody of the "perfect woman" -- she looks totally smokin hot, but she is all OCD on the inside.
This isn't one that the consumer can win. DRM will always be with us - so shape it.
That is such fatalistic BULLSHIT.
Just because a couple of big name game companies don't have the economic creativity of a 12 year old does not mean we have to suffer DRM.
There ARE ways to make BIG money selling BIG games without DRM.
Just off the top of my head - Valve could have sold an online-only version of HL2. Part of the marketing for the online version would be that once sales of online-HL2 reached a pre-determined level, they would release off-line edition for little, or even no additional money. No DRM necessary, and yet they can almost guarantee a profit. No worries about piracy, because the online-only edition is not piratable (if they design their servers correctly), and the offline version is already paid for, profit included, before it is even released.
I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to skin that cat. But as long as corporate weiner suckers like yourself are willing to swallow the fascist load that DRM is unavoidable, there will be little incentive for companies to try DRM-free ways to profitability because they always take the path of least resistance.
Quit sucking up and start resisting. Resisting anti-consumer changes is your duty as a consumer in this consumerist world.
or watching a movie bought on another continent.
Indeed, region coding has nothing to do with pirates and yet is the most commonly cracked form of DRM in existence today.
Chalk, one mark: $1
Knowing where to put it: $99,999
A more accurate analogy to MS's embrace-and-extend business model is:
Chalk, one mark: $1
Being the only mainframe consultant in the phonebook: $99,999
In otherwords, MS (and any other market dominating vendor, for that matter) has the luxury of being the only available option - no one but MS can feasibly replace the Windows TCP/IP network stack because no one but MS has the Windows source. That doesn't make their 1% of the effort to integrate the BSD stack worth $99,999, it means they've got an effective monopoly and thus prices are all out of whack with respect to actual value.
They want good TV, and they want it now.
You mean they want to be numbed and they want to be brain-dead now.
If MS could come up with IPTequila, then they would have something customers want.
People should stop caring so much about this.
Come on Scott McNealy, we know it's you.
If you are going to astroturf, you shouldn't do it with a username of "Sun Fan" -- we all know who Sun's number one fan is after all...
It's very telling that few scientists have changed their views on GW after entering the field. They usually go in with prejudice, and their tests come out in their favor.
Your post is chock full of outlandish unsubstantiated claims. Could you at least provide one, high-quality, citatation for this claim? If you want to back up any of your other claims, please feel free to do so too, I'd be mightly impressed if you could find much REAL science for them either.
The BBC article seems to take this Scientific Alliance (even the name drips of corporate PR'ism) at face value, either that or the British sense of sarcasm so dry as to be beyond subtle.
So, I looked them up myself and found the following links pretty quickly:
SourceWatch and GMwatch which seem to coroborate the claims of duplicitousness in the original submission.