However, this is still peanuts compared to the impact a better mass transit system would have. Manchester in England added a light rail system to the derision of the then-Conservative Government, who called it a total waste of public money. It slashed road usage in the areas it served by a third. That's the kind of waste we could do with more of.
Hate to break it to you, but NYC already has one of the best mass transit systems in the world. It's the biggest by track mileage, and the 4th most used in the world. It's why so few people who live in NYC don't even own cars. NYC is so dependent on it's subway and bus system that of the three 24 hour subway systems in the world, two of them are in NYC (the subway network, and the PATH train which goes to New Jersey).
The subway network is under constant renovation though because of it's heavy use as well. They just finished a new station at South Ferry for the Staten Island Ferry Terminal connection to the Seventh Avenue Line, and they're once again working on the Second Avenue Line (though to be fair, they've been working on building the Second Avenue line for about 75 years now, give or take, so I'm not exactly holding my breath).
Ummm, problem with that. It doesn't say "He says he stole laptops" it says "He has been seen with many different laptops, which he claims are either being fixed for friends, or are being tested for the university (where he works)" [both of these aren't direct quotes, they're paraphrased] and it implies that his roommate thinks they're stolen.
Right now I have... 3 notebooks in my room, only one of which belongs to me. Even at college it wasn't uncommon for me to have someone else's notebook at any given time. So to say that that represents suspicion of criminal behavior is absurd, since he's described as being an expert in computers, and even works for the university's IT department. If he has no, or few computer skills, then it'd be suspicious.
And as for the changing of grades, I suspect that's largely false, since the university did not claim to have incurred any intrusions in their network, and surely a professor would have noticed this at some point or another if this were happening often. Their only evidence is hearsay (from the guy who he has a grudge with).
One a side note, I find it interesting that the warrant is very descriptive of the items which the police are allowed to take, yet describes a computer as "a CPU." Granted it says it's "not limited to this" and that it's for "all object which store data in any form," but when was the last time your scanner stored data? Or your processor for that matter (other than when it's handling data, that is, turned on). It's not like someone's going to store all their secrets in a processor register...
I've seen weirder things in the city (I live in NYC).
I once saw a girl walking a watermelon on a leash. and by walking, I mean draggin... on a leash, like it was a dog. She was about 25. Lots of people here do strange things for fun or art:P Not to mention the myriad of weird advertising campaigns we have.
Or perhaps you're referring to the term cyberspace. First used in published form by Vernor Vinge, True Names 1981
Actually, in True Names it was never called cyberspace, if I recall. Though it was the first fully thought out description of it, I think they called it Other Plane or something like that if my memory serves me correctly.
But Neuromancer wasn't the first book to use the term cyberspace anyway... That was the short story Burning Chrome, written by William Gibson in 1982, which takes place in the same universe as the Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer and it's sequels) as well as the short story Johnny Mnemonic.
So really it's:
Cyberspace. William Gibson, Burning Chrome 1982
Wow, where to begin. First of all, you can bind the hardware play/pause keys in the settings. The option's there, I know, I use it. Second, not only does it have rewind and fast forward, but you can set the amount as well. Seriously dude, look at the hotkey settings once in your life. You can make long, medium, and short jumps using different key combos and set exactly how many seconds you want it to jump with each.
Has any Windows user here other than myself even used VLC in the last year? Their interface was completely redone and is very similar to mpc now...
It would indeed be amazing. Might screw with our telecommunications due to it's close proximity but we'd likely avoid the ecosystem destroying gamma ray bursts since Betelgeuse is angled such that the plane of the explosion would not be directed toward us. That being said, it'd likely be as bright, or potentially even brighter than the moon when it explodes, which would be awe inspiring.
You determine the age of a star based on several factors, but it's primarily based on the ratio of elements within the star.
The life of a star is a continual struggle between the force of gravity, pulling the star inward, and the force of the fusion process taking place within the star, pushing it outward. As the fusion process continues, the hydrogen is fused into progressively heavier elements up until the point where it reaches iron. Fusing iron creates no net gain in energy, as the fusion process for iron requires more energy than is generated. By measuring the spectrum of a star, the stellar mass, ratio of elements, and other characteristics can be observed, which, coupled with existing data about stellar life cycles, and stellar classifications, can be used to determine the star's lifespan.
Figuring out the lifespan of a star isn't new science, the trick here is that they believe their prior models of stellar evolution and stellar lifecycles may be incorrect. And if you actually read the article, you would understand as much because they say it in plain English toward the end.
... Why? Have you ever read the books about him? The fact is that he was a very astute scientist, who, due to his public position, was able to extend scientific and logical thought to a lot of fields which rarely see them, and he was eccentric enough to be honest regardless of the consequences. That's something we rarely see in this world, and in my humble opinion, worthy of hype.
Ever used GameFaqs? All of their written FAQs are text files. They just use php to shove them into pre tags so they can put some links at the top. A few years ago they didn't even do that though, and just linked directly to the txt
In 2005, there was a major layoff of teachers from the public school system of Minneapolis. That same year, there was a dramatic surge in the number of hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast.
As such, either 1) Laying off teachers causes hurricanes 2) Hurricanes cause teachers to be laid off 3) Teacher get laid off in Minneapolis for the same reason hurricanes form, namely, warm water and air currents off the east coast of Africa moving toward the colder central Atlantic ocean
Correlation implies absolutely nothing without substantially stronger evidence to tie the threads together, and no, anecdotal evidence doesn't count.
My question to you would be... why does the intent matter?
Though a tremendous portion of the American annual budget goes toward the Military-Industrial Complex, a tremendous amount also goes toward initiatives such as DARPA, which helps fund more applied research than almost anyone, and in support countless universities and research centers. We have commercial air travel today because the US military helped jump start the commercial aviation sector before World War 2 (The Luftwaffe alone had more planes the all the Allies combined, and we knew we'd need private commercial help manufacturing aircraft in those quantities). The internet itself exists because the US military was seeking a way to maintain communications in the event that a major city was destroyed with an atomic bomb, causing a disruption in telephone communications. We have atomic energy because of the Manhattan Project, we have mass-produced Penicillin because of World War 2, along with radar, jet propulsion, and the birth of rocketry. Even going back to the Revolutionary War, the US government invested heavily in mechanized manufacturing and research into interchangeable parts for firearms.
The fact is that the military is often willing to make investments into technologies that no one else is willing to even look at. Our investments in war have done terrible things. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, countless deaths in every war we've been in, etc. But many of these wars and conflicts would have taken place without the technology, and without the investments we've made into the military. The fact is that technology, in particular engineering, advances by leaps and bounds when war is at it's heels. Though we should never forget the cost at which it comes, it's important to realize that technology often has ripple effects and sometimes, like the internet, it becomes something wholly different than what was intended.
There's a reason that Venus' nickname is "The Morning Star";) You're not gonna see it at high noon or anything, but it's rather visible for a little while after dawn, and before sunset, and typically just looks like an abnormally bright star. I used to see it quite often when getting ready to go to school as a kid. Since the ISS moves though, it may be difficult to tell it apart from an airplane:/
Spoken like a man who has absolutely no idea how our nation's network infrastructure works.
Ever heard of the "last mile"? The reason many areas in the US have broadband providers holding local monopolies is because running cable to homes is one of the most expensive undertakings you can make. To say that other providers should run cable to homes to compete for a market would be to say "They should spend millions on construction and infrastructure for a slim chance at succeeding in the local market." It's just not cost effective, and it's difficult to justify to investors. Additionally, in many areas there just isn't sufficient interest to warrant this investment because the local population doesn't see the appeal of broadband, even just for upgrading phone lines for DSL.
In my area we have both Fios and Cable broadband, but one of my coworkers, who lives in Queens in NYC, doesn't have any broadband access, because he lives on the other side of a highway, and neither the cable company nor the phone company are willing to run wires a block for him and his neighbors, despite very vocal arguments. But you wanna tell me they'd be willing to spring for thousands of square miles for a population that's still primarily indifferent to the technology? I doubt it.
It's unfortunate, but broadband is very much an "if you build it they will come" technology, where the consumer often doesn't see the benefit of it until they've actually used it. This makes for a very precarious investment for communications companies, and is one of the biggest obstacles to improving our infrastructure.
Ummm, how about a link? Or a description? Or something? Not saying you're wrong, but I never heard about Apple looking into AR, and a quick Google search for Apple and "Augmented Reality" revealed no readily available information, other than a 3rd party application someone made on the iPhone running at 10FPS, which does not count as "Apple making it"
Actually, most large corporations don't "get XP." They have mass volume licenses. I used to work in IT in the NYC branch of one of the top 5 largest companies in the world. We used an automatic build disc and the volume license. Whether XP wass still being sold in stores or not made absolutely no difference to us. The only thing of significance was ending security update support, but that's been extended several times now.
No one's saying that Fingerworks shouldn't have received anything for their work, but the fact is, they WERE retarding innovation. And the reality still is the fact that the iPhone only happened because Apple was large enough to buy Fingerworks. If someone like IBM held the patents, and didn't want to give them up, or do anything with them, then this is bad for consumers and for technology in general.
The easiest solution I see is to require mandatory patent licensing after, say, 5 years or so. That way there's still some exclusive rights, but it allows others to build upon your work after a more reasonable amount of time.
Right, because Apple's been well-known lately to rest on its laurels.
Yeah! Apple's multi-touch tablet notebook is totally the best thing on the market!
What's that? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm being told that they don't even have so much as a traditional tablet with a digitizer, let alone one with multi-touch.
Here's what you're not getting: From the looks of it, this patent basically gives them exclusive rights to a multi-touch gesture system. Now I ask you, how exactly are you going to make an alternative UI for a touch screen that does not use gestures? Or even different kinds of gestures for that matter. Gestures work because of innate instincts and preconceptions about the physical world, as well as our own assumptions. The law cannot change what works and what doesn't as a gesture. Do you really want to have, let's say 3 multi-touch devices, each of which are forced to use 3 different gestures for the same damn action just because they're from different companies?
In theory, patents are great, but in reality, they've never really worked the way they were supposed to. In the beginning, it was almost impossible to enforce a patent (see Evan's Mill, or the Cotton Gin), and now, it's too easy to do so. 20 years is a long damn time, and the end result is either going to be companies completely ignoring the patent, or Apple setting back any significant developments with this particular technology by DECADES. Think about it, decades.
You might not realize this, but multi-touch has been around since the early 80s, and one of the reasons no one's cared is because of the patent on it. The reality is that the person/group who invents an innovation is not always the person/group that can best bring it to market, or make the most out of it technologically. Hell, Apple's the one that bought out FingerWorks, the original patent holder for lots of other multi-touch tech, but wasn't really getting anywhere in their implementation. Now imagine for a moment that it was the other way around. A small company named Fingerworks wants to build the iPhone in the mid-00's, but can't because a giant company, Apple, holds the patent, but it kind of floundering in its use. Yeah, that's totally spurring innovation right there.
To be honest, I hope that Apple's just doing this to collect royalties.
That's a remarkably ignorant statement to make. The elderly would ESPECIALLY be interested in computer and the internet, because they often have a ton of free time, and little to spend it on. The issue is that they don't see the value in it, not that they don't want it. My own parents didn't even see the need for it either until they discovered YouTube. My dad managed to find a video of a concert he went to with my mom back in the Soviet Union in the 70s. And my mom found a social networking site that her old classmates were using (it's a Russian site) and got in contact with a bunch of people she hadn't spoken to in decades. And when I showed them how to use Skype for international calls, and gave them a webcam so they can video chat with me, they were blown away.
Keep in mind, they're very nearly computer illiterate, and I routinely get phone calls asking me how to send emails, or how to copy and paste something. But they most definitely see the value in it now that they've realized what's available. Additionally, they always though things like video chat would be very complicated to use, but Skype is relatively simple and easy to learn.
The only reason for this situation is because these are people who grew up without computers and have a false sense of the possibilities and usefulness of the internet. They're not accustomed to it, and reject something new reflexively. This is slowly changing however as things like the Wii and DS are capturing more and more older people, and simpler to use applications (and friends and relatives who help explain them) are allowing them to better make use of their computers.
I love how you try SO hard to take his comment apart, but apparently failed at reading it. You see, there's this thing called context, where you actually have to read the words AROUND a phrase or sentence to fully understand the meaning.
The poster did not say that marketing is always constant at all times under all circumstances. The poster said that, comparing marketing for a song that is distributed digitally, or one that's distributed physically, the difference, if there even is one, is negligible. If an artist is popular with a certain demographic, you're most likely going to be marketing to that group in the same way, regardless of how it's distributed. The difference between having a brick and mortar store erect a cardboard stand to advertise a cd isn't all that different from the price to have a digital music store show an ad for the album on their homepage. So yes, the net impact of marketing is almost nothing in this comparison, as the marketing strategy would be unlikely to change one way or the other.
Please learn to actually read comments you're replying to before flaming them.
Slashdot Mirror
Hate to break it to you, but NYC already has one of the best mass transit systems in the world. It's the biggest by track mileage, and the 4th most used in the world. It's why so few people who live in NYC don't even own cars. NYC is so dependent on it's subway and bus system that of the three 24 hour subway systems in the world, two of them are in NYC (the subway network, and the PATH train which goes to New Jersey).
The subway network is under constant renovation though because of it's heavy use as well. They just finished a new station at South Ferry for the Staten Island Ferry Terminal connection to the Seventh Avenue Line, and they're once again working on the Second Avenue Line (though to be fair, they've been working on building the Second Avenue line for about 75 years now, give or take, so I'm not exactly holding my breath).
What does syphilis have to do with anything?
Ummm, problem with that. It doesn't say "He says he stole laptops" it says "He has been seen with many different laptops, which he claims are either being fixed for friends, or are being tested for the university (where he works)" [both of these aren't direct quotes, they're paraphrased] and it implies that his roommate thinks they're stolen.
Right now I have... 3 notebooks in my room, only one of which belongs to me. Even at college it wasn't uncommon for me to have someone else's notebook at any given time. So to say that that represents suspicion of criminal behavior is absurd, since he's described as being an expert in computers, and even works for the university's IT department. If he has no, or few computer skills, then it'd be suspicious.
And as for the changing of grades, I suspect that's largely false, since the university did not claim to have incurred any intrusions in their network, and surely a professor would have noticed this at some point or another if this were happening often. Their only evidence is hearsay (from the guy who he has a grudge with).
One a side note, I find it interesting that the warrant is very descriptive of the items which the police are allowed to take, yet describes a computer as "a CPU." Granted it says it's "not limited to this" and that it's for "all object which store data in any form," but when was the last time your scanner stored data? Or your processor for that matter (other than when it's handling data, that is, turned on). It's not like someone's going to store all their secrets in a processor register...
Conficker Worm: Hi guys, what's up? What're you all reading? Did I miss anything?
I've seen weirder things in the city (I live in NYC).
:P Not to mention the myriad of weird advertising campaigns we have.
I once saw a girl walking a watermelon on a leash. and by walking, I mean draggin... on a leash, like it was a dog. She was about 25. Lots of people here do strange things for fun or art
Actually, in True Names it was never called cyberspace, if I recall. Though it was the first fully thought out description of it, I think they called it Other Plane or something like that if my memory serves me correctly.
But Neuromancer wasn't the first book to use the term cyberspace anyway... That was the short story Burning Chrome, written by William Gibson in 1982, which takes place in the same universe as the Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer and it's sequels) as well as the short story Johnny Mnemonic.
So really it's:
Cyberspace. William Gibson, Burning Chrome 1982
Wow, where to begin. First of all, you can bind the hardware play/pause keys in the settings. The option's there, I know, I use it. Second, not only does it have rewind and fast forward, but you can set the amount as well. Seriously dude, look at the hotkey settings once in your life. You can make long, medium, and short jumps using different key combos and set exactly how many seconds you want it to jump with each.
Has any Windows user here other than myself even used VLC in the last year? Their interface was completely redone and is very similar to mpc now...
It would indeed be amazing. Might screw with our telecommunications due to it's close proximity but we'd likely avoid the ecosystem destroying gamma ray bursts since Betelgeuse is angled such that the plane of the explosion would not be directed toward us. That being said, it'd likely be as bright, or potentially even brighter than the moon when it explodes, which would be awe inspiring.
You determine the age of a star based on several factors, but it's primarily based on the ratio of elements within the star. The life of a star is a continual struggle between the force of gravity, pulling the star inward, and the force of the fusion process taking place within the star, pushing it outward. As the fusion process continues, the hydrogen is fused into progressively heavier elements up until the point where it reaches iron. Fusing iron creates no net gain in energy, as the fusion process for iron requires more energy than is generated. By measuring the spectrum of a star, the stellar mass, ratio of elements, and other characteristics can be observed, which, coupled with existing data about stellar life cycles, and stellar classifications, can be used to determine the star's lifespan. Figuring out the lifespan of a star isn't new science, the trick here is that they believe their prior models of stellar evolution and stellar lifecycles may be incorrect. And if you actually read the article, you would understand as much because they say it in plain English toward the end.
... Why? Have you ever read the books about him? The fact is that he was a very astute scientist, who, due to his public position, was able to extend scientific and logical thought to a lot of fields which rarely see them, and he was eccentric enough to be honest regardless of the consequences. That's something we rarely see in this world, and in my humble opinion, worthy of hype.
Maybe so, but I have to get to work, so if you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if you could go ahead and put $20 on pump #3
So how does that make them less of a website that uses plain text files? :P
Ever used GameFaqs? All of their written FAQs are text files. They just use php to shove them into pre tags so they can put some links at the top. A few years ago they didn't even do that though, and just linked directly to the txt
Your examples are speculation, not truth. There is a difference.
In 2005, there was a major layoff of teachers from the public school system of Minneapolis. That same year, there was a dramatic surge in the number of hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast.
As such, either
1) Laying off teachers causes hurricanes
2) Hurricanes cause teachers to be laid off
3) Teacher get laid off in Minneapolis for the same reason hurricanes form, namely, warm water and air currents off the east coast of Africa moving toward the colder central Atlantic ocean
Correlation implies absolutely nothing without substantially stronger evidence to tie the threads together, and no, anecdotal evidence doesn't count.
My question to you would be... why does the intent matter?
Though a tremendous portion of the American annual budget goes toward the Military-Industrial Complex, a tremendous amount also goes toward initiatives such as DARPA, which helps fund more applied research than almost anyone, and in support countless universities and research centers. We have commercial air travel today because the US military helped jump start the commercial aviation sector before World War 2 (The Luftwaffe alone had more planes the all the Allies combined, and we knew we'd need private commercial help manufacturing aircraft in those quantities). The internet itself exists because the US military was seeking a way to maintain communications in the event that a major city was destroyed with an atomic bomb, causing a disruption in telephone communications. We have atomic energy because of the Manhattan Project, we have mass-produced Penicillin because of World War 2, along with radar, jet propulsion, and the birth of rocketry. Even going back to the Revolutionary War, the US government invested heavily in mechanized manufacturing and research into interchangeable parts for firearms.
The fact is that the military is often willing to make investments into technologies that no one else is willing to even look at. Our investments in war have done terrible things. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, countless deaths in every war we've been in, etc. But many of these wars and conflicts would have taken place without the technology, and without the investments we've made into the military. The fact is that technology, in particular engineering, advances by leaps and bounds when war is at it's heels. Though we should never forget the cost at which it comes, it's important to realize that technology often has ripple effects and sometimes, like the internet, it becomes something wholly different than what was intended.
There's a reason that Venus' nickname is "The Morning Star" ;) You're not gonna see it at high noon or anything, but it's rather visible for a little while after dawn, and before sunset, and typically just looks like an abnormally bright star. I used to see it quite often when getting ready to go to school as a kid. Since the ISS moves though, it may be difficult to tell it apart from an airplane :/
Spoken like a man who has absolutely no idea how our nation's network infrastructure works.
Ever heard of the "last mile"? The reason many areas in the US have broadband providers holding local monopolies is because running cable to homes is one of the most expensive undertakings you can make. To say that other providers should run cable to homes to compete for a market would be to say "They should spend millions on construction and infrastructure for a slim chance at succeeding in the local market." It's just not cost effective, and it's difficult to justify to investors. Additionally, in many areas there just isn't sufficient interest to warrant this investment because the local population doesn't see the appeal of broadband, even just for upgrading phone lines for DSL.
In my area we have both Fios and Cable broadband, but one of my coworkers, who lives in Queens in NYC, doesn't have any broadband access, because he lives on the other side of a highway, and neither the cable company nor the phone company are willing to run wires a block for him and his neighbors, despite very vocal arguments. But you wanna tell me they'd be willing to spring for thousands of square miles for a population that's still primarily indifferent to the technology? I doubt it.
It's unfortunate, but broadband is very much an "if you build it they will come" technology, where the consumer often doesn't see the benefit of it until they've actually used it. This makes for a very precarious investment for communications companies, and is one of the biggest obstacles to improving our infrastructure.
Ummm, how about a link? Or a description? Or something? Not saying you're wrong, but I never heard about Apple looking into AR, and a quick Google search for Apple and "Augmented Reality" revealed no readily available information, other than a 3rd party application someone made on the iPhone running at 10FPS, which does not count as "Apple making it"
In short: [citation needed]
Actually, most large corporations don't "get XP." They have mass volume licenses. I used to work in IT in the NYC branch of one of the top 5 largest companies in the world. We used an automatic build disc and the volume license. Whether XP wass still being sold in stores or not made absolutely no difference to us. The only thing of significance was ending security update support, but that's been extended several times now.
You've clearly never played an FPS on a tablet. Literally point and click ;)
No one's saying that Fingerworks shouldn't have received anything for their work, but the fact is, they WERE retarding innovation. And the reality still is the fact that the iPhone only happened because Apple was large enough to buy Fingerworks. If someone like IBM held the patents, and didn't want to give them up, or do anything with them, then this is bad for consumers and for technology in general.
The easiest solution I see is to require mandatory patent licensing after, say, 5 years or so. That way there's still some exclusive rights, but it allows others to build upon your work after a more reasonable amount of time.
Yeah! Apple's multi-touch tablet notebook is totally the best thing on the market!
What's that? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm being told that they don't even have so much as a traditional tablet with a digitizer, let alone one with multi-touch.
Here's what you're not getting: From the looks of it, this patent basically gives them exclusive rights to a multi-touch gesture system. Now I ask you, how exactly are you going to make an alternative UI for a touch screen that does not use gestures? Or even different kinds of gestures for that matter. Gestures work because of innate instincts and preconceptions about the physical world, as well as our own assumptions. The law cannot change what works and what doesn't as a gesture. Do you really want to have, let's say 3 multi-touch devices, each of which are forced to use 3 different gestures for the same damn action just because they're from different companies?
In theory, patents are great, but in reality, they've never really worked the way they were supposed to. In the beginning, it was almost impossible to enforce a patent (see Evan's Mill, or the Cotton Gin), and now, it's too easy to do so. 20 years is a long damn time, and the end result is either going to be companies completely ignoring the patent, or Apple setting back any significant developments with this particular technology by DECADES. Think about it, decades.
You might not realize this, but multi-touch has been around since the early 80s, and one of the reasons no one's cared is because of the patent on it. The reality is that the person/group who invents an innovation is not always the person/group that can best bring it to market, or make the most out of it technologically. Hell, Apple's the one that bought out FingerWorks, the original patent holder for lots of other multi-touch tech, but wasn't really getting anywhere in their implementation. Now imagine for a moment that it was the other way around. A small company named Fingerworks wants to build the iPhone in the mid-00's, but can't because a giant company, Apple, holds the patent, but it kind of floundering in its use. Yeah, that's totally spurring innovation right there.
To be honest, I hope that Apple's just doing this to collect royalties.
That's a remarkably ignorant statement to make. The elderly would ESPECIALLY be interested in computer and the internet, because they often have a ton of free time, and little to spend it on. The issue is that they don't see the value in it, not that they don't want it. My own parents didn't even see the need for it either until they discovered YouTube. My dad managed to find a video of a concert he went to with my mom back in the Soviet Union in the 70s. And my mom found a social networking site that her old classmates were using (it's a Russian site) and got in contact with a bunch of people she hadn't spoken to in decades. And when I showed them how to use Skype for international calls, and gave them a webcam so they can video chat with me, they were blown away.
Keep in mind, they're very nearly computer illiterate, and I routinely get phone calls asking me how to send emails, or how to copy and paste something. But they most definitely see the value in it now that they've realized what's available. Additionally, they always though things like video chat would be very complicated to use, but Skype is relatively simple and easy to learn.
The only reason for this situation is because these are people who grew up without computers and have a false sense of the possibilities and usefulness of the internet. They're not accustomed to it, and reject something new reflexively. This is slowly changing however as things like the Wii and DS are capturing more and more older people, and simpler to use applications (and friends and relatives who help explain them) are allowing them to better make use of their computers.
I love how you try SO hard to take his comment apart, but apparently failed at reading it. You see, there's this thing called context, where you actually have to read the words AROUND a phrase or sentence to fully understand the meaning.
The poster did not say that marketing is always constant at all times under all circumstances. The poster said that, comparing marketing for a song that is distributed digitally, or one that's distributed physically, the difference, if there even is one, is negligible. If an artist is popular with a certain demographic, you're most likely going to be marketing to that group in the same way, regardless of how it's distributed. The difference between having a brick and mortar store erect a cardboard stand to advertise a cd isn't all that different from the price to have a digital music store show an ad for the album on their homepage. So yes, the net impact of marketing is almost nothing in this comparison, as the marketing strategy would be unlikely to change one way or the other.
Please learn to actually read comments you're replying to before flaming them.