There are two major problems with your conclusion. They are:
1. If I explain something to you, and you - instead of answering to whatever I said - start making corrections to my grammar, it suggests to me that you have no good answer to whatever I just said. After all, if you did, then why not say it ? And since you are being pedantic instead of just admitting you don't have an answer further declines my opinion of you.
2. Who are you to claim that a certain usage of words and expressions is correct and another is not ? Who defines what is correct english and by what authority do they define this ? No matter how much it galls certain obsessive-compulsive control freaks, natural language is not computer language and does not need to conform to any specific formula, as long as it is easy to undertand by the target(s) of the communication.
Because of these two problems, your judgement of these people as ignorant is false. You, on the other hand, are likely to come across as an arrogant asshole to them. They are showing rather great self-control in replying somewhat politely instead of answering as I would: "Up yours".
Stop trying to make people conform to your or your favorite authority figure of choices definition of "correct" words and instead concentrate on the message the words carry.
Right.
Let's take these one at a time.
1) I never said I've called people out on it. It's not worth my time, because I know they don't give a shit already. I do see it done quite regularly, though. Also, how do you know if what they said was deserving of a proper answer instead or not? Perhaps the grammar correction was included with a proper answer, so as to help educate someone, allowing them to appear more intelligent due to using proper grammar. You're making quite a few assumptions here about these situations.
2) Languages have rules. All of them, even English, as crazy as the rules might be at times. Language does need to comform to a formula, otherwise you can't communicate. If there were no rules to language, I could say anything I want, such as "bleeble snatch, wouldn't poop? wood." This "sentence" makes no sense to you because it doesn't adhere to any of the rules of the English language. To go back to the original example, "I could care less" means you are capable of caring less, which means you care at least some tiny bit about it. What people are usually intending to say is "I couldn't care less." Couldn't being a contraction of the words could and not, in other words, they have absolutely no care for something. It means two different things. To use another example that I've seen before which I particularly enjoy, while this is more about writing than actual word useage, a comma is the difference between "I helped my uncle, Jack, off his horse" and "I helped my uncle Jack off his horse". There is a rule to the language and not following that rules gives a completely different meaning. Obviously, as far as "I could care less" there is the suggested sarcastic delivery, which is possible, but anyone who wants to use sarcasm in written communications does so at their own risk. The primary clue that something is delivered as sarcasm is a verbal queue in the tone of their voice. We cannot hear this in writing and so people likely may think you just said something stupid rather than sarcastic.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q= define%3Asarcasm&btnG=Search http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q= define%3Airony&btnG=Search Looks like it depends on exactly where you get your definition from. The majority of definitions define sarcasm as a type of verbal irony (which is why it does not work well in written word, it's verbal), many of which also specify saying the opposite of what you mean. To use your example, "The weather is far worse than Hurricane Katrina" would fall under sarcasm because the weather today is, in fact, not far worse than Hurricane Katrina. I did see at least one that defined sarcasm as exaggerating, though, rather than saying the opposite.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sarcasticAc cording to the American Heritage Dictionary, which is the source used on dictionary.com/reference.com, they are synonyms and differ in subtlety.
he Lone Ballmer toure plans to play 30 venues in 90 days, with 3 nights at each. It will feature such classics as "Developers, Devolpers" along with new hits such as "I'm Gonna Fucking Kill $FOO", a scale model of Stonehenge built from office chairs and Ballmer himself dressed in Andre the Giant's classic leotard.
I think that the problem may have been, that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. Alright?
The phrase "I could care less" is a sarcastic version of "I couldn't care less." They mean the same thing. Why not worry about something else, like "very unique," or even the absurd dilution of "awesome."
Certainly an interesting and likely valid usage that I hadn't thought of before. That probably is where "I could care less" instead of "couldn't" originated from. Unfortunately, I have a hard time believing that this is what is intended by the majority (or even a large but minority percentage) of people who I see use this. Usually the people who I see say "I could care less" seem to have an understanding of the english language no better than an elemtary schooler. When called out for using it, I have never seen the intelligent response you gave, but instead "I don't care. You know what meant", which suggests to me that they're just ignorant and not paying attention to the words they use.
I wonder how long we have until the Linux kernel becomes "dangers, adult material" because of all the cussing in comments in the source. It's in the code, after all, and just takes a text editor to view. No matter that it doesn't actually show up in the proper, normal, intended running of the software.
So... same last name, apparently same completely retarded view of video game violence. Is this a a family member or is there just something inherently wrong with people who have the last name Thompson?
Additionally, when will the media stop referenceing hot coffee? While rockstar took a retarded route in defending themselves initially, the fact is, while the code to show it existed in the game it took a 3rd party modification to make it actually accessible. Why is that so goddamned hard to understand?
Really, if this results in any change at all, it won't be removal of misleading tags. It's just going to be the addition of a lot of really disturbing porn so that the tags are no longer misleading. Remove the word furby? The hell with that, just get someone to violate a furby and add it to the collection. You're legal and have attracted a bunch of new visitors, both fetishists and people visiting for the "WTF?" factor.
But couldn't they find a better way to check on these marshals? Like a secret shopper program or something?
I read that as "Secret chopper program". I was wondering how you intended to keep the helicopter hovering right outside the window of the air marshall, watching to make sure he's not slacking, from being spotted.
f you are filling up the bagging area then.... YOU ARE TRYING TO BUY TOO MUCH STUFF USING SELF CHECKOUT!
Maybe I just have a couple really big things? It's happened to me more than once. I still love the self checkout as long as I don't have to wait behind someone, but there are very valid complaints/problems with it.
Self-checkout should be _strictly_ reserved for people who have about 5 things _max_. When I see people with a cart full of groceries pull up to a self-checkout station I just laugh... it will take them _forever_...
I've only ever been to walmarts that have them. It's usually marked as 10 or 20 item max. Now someone with half a brain can still usually even go through 20 items pretty damn quick, but it does increase the problem with filling up the bagging area. A couple gallons of milk, a few boxes of cereal, a gallon of OJ and you're already pressed for space. Should the limit be lower? Perhaps, but that's for walmart to deal with, if it's marked as 10 items, then a person with 10 items (not counting for more obvious things, such as a huge tv or something) should have no qualms about using it.
I assume that if it was profitable for cell phone companies to find a way to create a net neutral infrastructure, there would already be steps in that direction. It seems to me that the biggest reason that they are insisting on controlling their own networks is that it is simply more profitable to them, no surprise the telcom giant want to do the same to the internet.
I don't know. I work in "the industry" and I can't make a bit of sense out of it, really. I think what the carriers are going for is keeping it restrictive and offering their own services in the form of wap portals, brew and j2me apps as storefronts, to sell ringtones and backgrounds to you, etc. All of these controlled and owned by the carrier. It sort of makes sense, until someone else goes and changes the model, which is easy enough to do.
Don't lock down your phones, allow people to put ringtones on them however they want, that right there will attract a lot of customers if they can put their own mp3s, etc on them. Want them DRM'd? Ok, no problem (we're not discussing whether DRM is right or not), provide a way for the users to upload to you, then you send it back to them with proper DRM, no problem at all. Make it easier for third parties to do business over your network. That means you'll have more third parties giving you money and more choice for your customers, which should result in more customers, which means more money. While charging per SMS/MMS plus the monthly fee might cost more, how many more people would get your SMS and MMS services if they could just pay an extra flat $5 or $10/month for unlimited messaging? I highly doubt most people are actually going to send what costs the carriers more than that. Keep a fee on the inbound through the SMSC/MMSC that the third parties and aggregators are sending through, just don't charge your actual customers per sent and received MMS.
Honestly, the only reason I can see for the current business model to be successful is that for some reason no one has tried opening their network up a bit yet.
Of course for the telecom giants it's a bit different. The market is already here and built. They're not trying to gain new customers, it's just a matter of how many customers they would lose or retain by making these changes. I imagine they might come out on top without net neutrality because people "can't live without the internet" theese days, and most know too little to realize the new problems they come across are due to their provider to know to switch, on the off chance they actually have another choice who isn't doing the same thing. So, it probably is more likely to be profitable for the telcos to do this to the internet.
His entire argument is that any game that's more popular than his, especially MMOs, takes away from his game....Really, that isn't an argument, it's stating the obvious.
Yes and no. The difference is that with a "normal" game you will beat it and then move on to the next game. Obviously there are exceptions to this, and I suppose moreso on pc than consoles, with the multitude of multiplayer strategy games, etc But on average, I believe most MMOs will end up being played more fanatically than other games over a much longer time period. On top of that they have continued monthly costs that other games generally don't, eating into the funds that otherwise could have gone towards other games.
While I enjoyed Fable and will certainly buy Fable 2, we heard the same lines about how innovative and different Fable was going to be. Then it wasn't. I don't really see anything to get excited about here other than that there will be a Fable 2, which we already knew.
I suppose your mail server that requires you to log in is "treating you like a hacker"?
My mail server that requires me to login is not persistant. It has no way of knowing that I'm the same person who knew the password yesterday. Windows, on the other hand, is persistant when installed by a valid user/owner. It is installed once, verified to be valid, and that is not going to change.
"If it was valid yesterday, why would it not be today?"
Um, because the flag that says it was valid yesterday could just be set by a patch/crack?
And do you think that someone who is using a pirated copy is not then just going to go get a different key, find the latest wga patch to fake verification, etc? Do you think that there's not going to be a crack for it out within a day even though there is for everything else? The only person it's going to negatively effect is the person who legitimately purchased XP, installed it, was verified to be good and then later someone pirates it, uses their reg key (it's already happened), and now their valid copy of windows is no longer valid because MS decided it needed to check every day. The valid user now has to call MS on the phone, try to prove they're the rightful, valid, owner of the license (I'm not sure if this has been attempted or how well it worked, but they shouldn't have to in any case) or potentially go buy yet another copy of windows (assuming they still want to use windows). The pirate who used the key? They'll just input a new one and get on with their day, barely inconvenienced because they know that's part of pirating windows and knew from the beginning.
I believe what is being referred to are the extra circuits that are built into DRAM. They have "spares" built into them assuming that a certain percentage are going to be bad, in which case one of the spare circuits is used instead.
Unfortunately I don't, but I know a few people have it as their firewalls caught it and asked if it should be allowed or not. I'd imagine some searching on the web would turn it up eventually. That or I bet the tools from sysinternals would probably be useful in figuring it out.
When was the last time you saw a small, quality, company being bought out by a large company be good for anyone other than the large company? It's rarely good for the employees of the smaller company, who get a nice, big, paycheck, but frequently end up hating their job and ultimately quitting or being fired. It's even more rarely good for the users of the product when corporate ethics and ideals start being applied to their software which was previously being written and overseen by someone who truly cared about the project.
Now, I have no numbers to show, so perhaps it's just that we only hear about/remmeber the bad ones. But let's have a look... we've got the majority of previously great companies EA has bought up and killed, along with their great games, we've got Norton products, for a more obscure one, how about thespark.com?
The problem, as has been said thousands of times on slashdot and elsewhere, is that these measures don't stop piracy. They do, on the other hand, sometimes cause problems for legitimate users. On top of that, WGA is little more than spyware and treats me like a criminal checking everyday to make sure that my copy of windows is valid. If it was valid yesterday, why would it not be today? Add to the mix that when I purchased my copies (plural.) of XP, this WGA was not part of the software or even something that the public had been told would be in the future.
Also, much of the complaint this time around, at least in regards to this, is not just that WGA sucks. It's that very good, useful, high quality software which has previously been available to anyone will likely be made available only to people who install useless DRM from MS. While MS may have the right to do whatever they want with the software now that they've purchased the company, it doesn't mean people have to be happy about it.
If it is done properly, this could work out well, imo. I love a game with a good story, for sure, but you know, I don't actually go back and play those games more than once. I know what's going to happen in the story after I've played through once, so a story centered game has little point for me to play again. The games that I play over and over have little to no story, from the old NES and Atari games, to newer stuff such as Guitar Hero, Gran Turismo, or Katamari Damacy (which you could argue has a story, but it's hardly important to the gameplay). These are the games that I play again and again, because it's about the gameplay and none or very little of the enjoyment is tied into watching the story unfold.
"WTF is that all about? Are these people perhaps trying to suggest that open-source software is valuable, and that its developers should charge for it?"
Stage 1: Establish tht open source has a cost in real money.
Stage 2: Get Hired as consultants by microsoft to state this in press releases..... well, you know the tune
I don't think that's what they're going for. I think it's a more good intentioned "this is a rough estimate of what this software is worth if you were to develop it/this is what it cost the people who are now providing it to you".
Of course, I can't imagine how it's accurate... are they figuring a 40 hr work week just on that software for each person involved for however long it's been in development? Are they using some estimate based on software is X lines of code and on average a developer can write Y lines of code per day/week/month/year?
I don't know about Samsung and Hynix, but Infineon charging less would be unlikely to benefit any of us anyway. Infineon primarily provides DRAM to manufacturers to put into their computers... Sun, etc. Even if those guys get cheaper RAM, I'm sure they're not going to sell their computers any cheaper.
More than a two hundred piece skeletal structure and fully thought controlled through a high speed interface with zero lag.
It sounds great, but over years of regular use I have found that mine has developed lag and continues to get worse. While it's certainly lasted long enough to not really warrant a complaint, the problem is that there's no way to replace it with a new, non-laggy one, and it's become too much a part of my life to just quit using it.
Whatever happened to the peer to patent system [slashdot.org] the USPTO was going to use? Is this thing [jot.com] a failed idea already?
If I understood properly at the time, peer to patent was a voluntary peer review. Only patents that the submitter requested be reviewed through that system were going to be. Obviously, no one knowingly submitting or owning a shady patent was going to request that their patent be reviewed.
I have no interest in a video or audio ipod, nor do I have interest in this. Why should i? If I want an MP3 player I'll get a much cheaper generic one that is less likely to be stolen and doesn't involve brand name price inflation. If I want a portable video player I'll get a PSP and hack it.
You enjoy that audio-less mp3 player if you find one. Personally, I like to hear my mp3s.
On a more serious note, keep in mind that people who are going to be modifying hardware and firmware are not MS' target audience. People who want fancy gadgets that "just work" (sort of...) are MS' target audience.
Can anyone blame MS for trying to turn of pirated copies of Windows if they can? It's not like they are hiring lawyers for this either, if the rumor is true, it will be a technological switch, not legal one. Of-course this just gives MS competition more room in the market.
Yeah, I can blame them for it. It's going to have 0 effect on the people they are supposedly trying to stop. Even if it does somehow hamper that "real pirates" for lack of a better way to say it, those people aren't going to go out and pay for windows, they're going to pirate something else or use something that is legally free. So it's most likely not going to harm the people they claim it's intended to and it's not going to get them paid for the majority of pirated copies of Windows. It will, and does, at least in a small way affect the privacy of legal windows users and if the WGA required deal turns out to be true, steps on privacy even moreso and potentially costs legal, valid, users extra money.
So, no benefit to MS, no benefit to valid users, no harm to pirates, potential harm to valid users. Yeah, I can blame them.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point, that should be "off of his horse", technically. In either case there's a big difference, though ;)
Right.
Let's take these one at a time.
1) I never said I've called people out on it. It's not worth my time, because I know they don't give a shit already. I do see it done quite regularly, though. Also, how do you know if what they said was deserving of a proper answer instead or not? Perhaps the grammar correction was included with a proper answer, so as to help educate someone, allowing them to appear more intelligent due to using proper grammar. You're making quite a few assumptions here about these situations.
2) Languages have rules. All of them, even English, as crazy as the rules might be at times. Language does need to comform to a formula, otherwise you can't communicate. If there were no rules to language, I could say anything I want, such as "bleeble snatch, wouldn't poop? wood." This "sentence" makes no sense to you because it doesn't adhere to any of the rules of the English language. To go back to the original example, "I could care less" means you are capable of caring less, which means you care at least some tiny bit about it. What people are usually intending to say is "I couldn't care less." Couldn't being a contraction of the words could and not, in other words, they have absolutely no care for something. It means two different things. To use another example that I've seen before which I particularly enjoy, while this is more about writing than actual word useage, a comma is the difference between "I helped my uncle, Jack, off his horse" and "I helped my uncle Jack off his horse". There is a rule to the language and not following that rules gives a completely different meaning. Obviously, as far as "I could care less" there is the suggested sarcastic delivery, which is possible, but anyone who wants to use sarcasm in written communications does so at their own risk. The primary clue that something is delivered as sarcasm is a verbal queue in the tone of their voice. We cannot hear this in writing and so people likely may think you just said something stupid rather than sarcastic.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q= define%3Asarcasm&btnG=Search= define%3Airony&btnG=Search
c cording to the American Heritage Dictionary, which is the source used on dictionary.com/reference.com, they are synonyms and differ in subtlety.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q
Looks like it depends on exactly where you get your definition from. The majority of definitions define sarcasm as a type of verbal irony (which is why it does not work well in written word, it's verbal), many of which also specify saying the opposite of what you mean. To use your example, "The weather is far worse than Hurricane Katrina" would fall under sarcasm because the weather today is, in fact, not far worse than Hurricane Katrina. I did see at least one that defined sarcasm as exaggerating, though, rather than saying the opposite.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sarcasticA
I think that the problem may have been, that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. Alright?
Certainly an interesting and likely valid usage that I hadn't thought of before. That probably is where "I could care less" instead of "couldn't" originated from. Unfortunately, I have a hard time believing that this is what is intended by the majority (or even a large but minority percentage) of people who I see use this. Usually the people who I see say "I could care less" seem to have an understanding of the english language no better than an elemtary schooler. When called out for using it, I have never seen the intelligent response you gave, but instead "I don't care. You know what meant", which suggests to me that they're just ignorant and not paying attention to the words they use.
I wonder how long we have until the Linux kernel becomes "dangers, adult material" because of all the cussing in comments in the source. It's in the code, after all, and just takes a text editor to view. No matter that it doesn't actually show up in the proper, normal, intended running of the software.
So... same last name, apparently same completely retarded view of video game violence. Is this a a family member or is there just something inherently wrong with people who have the last name Thompson?
Additionally, when will the media stop referenceing hot coffee? While rockstar took a retarded route in defending themselves initially, the fact is, while the code to show it existed in the game it took a 3rd party modification to make it actually accessible. Why is that so goddamned hard to understand?
Really, if this results in any change at all, it won't be removal of misleading tags. It's just going to be the addition of a lot of really disturbing porn so that the tags are no longer misleading. Remove the word furby? The hell with that, just get someone to violate a furby and add it to the collection. You're legal and have attracted a bunch of new visitors, both fetishists and people visiting for the "WTF?" factor.
I read that as "Secret chopper program". I was wondering how you intended to keep the helicopter hovering right outside the window of the air marshall, watching to make sure he's not slacking, from being spotted.
Maybe I just have a couple really big things? It's happened to me more than once. I still love the self checkout as long as I don't have to wait behind someone, but there are very valid complaints/problems with it.
I've only ever been to walmarts that have them. It's usually marked as 10 or 20 item max. Now someone with half a brain can still usually even go through 20 items pretty damn quick, but it does increase the problem with filling up the bagging area. A couple gallons of milk, a few boxes of cereal, a gallon of OJ and you're already pressed for space. Should the limit be lower? Perhaps, but that's for walmart to deal with, if it's marked as 10 items, then a person with 10 items (not counting for more obvious things, such as a huge tv or something) should have no qualms about using it.
I don't know. I work in "the industry" and I can't make a bit of sense out of it, really. I think what the carriers are going for is keeping it restrictive and offering their own services in the form of wap portals, brew and j2me apps as storefronts, to sell ringtones and backgrounds to you, etc. All of these controlled and owned by the carrier. It sort of makes sense, until someone else goes and changes the model, which is easy enough to do.
Don't lock down your phones, allow people to put ringtones on them however they want, that right there will attract a lot of customers if they can put their own mp3s, etc on them. Want them DRM'd? Ok, no problem (we're not discussing whether DRM is right or not), provide a way for the users to upload to you, then you send it back to them with proper DRM, no problem at all. Make it easier for third parties to do business over your network. That means you'll have more third parties giving you money and more choice for your customers, which should result in more customers, which means more money. While charging per SMS/MMS plus the monthly fee might cost more, how many more people would get your SMS and MMS services if they could just pay an extra flat $5 or $10/month for unlimited messaging? I highly doubt most people are actually going to send what costs the carriers more than that. Keep a fee on the inbound through the SMSC/MMSC that the third parties and aggregators are sending through, just don't charge your actual customers per sent and received MMS.
Honestly, the only reason I can see for the current business model to be successful is that for some reason no one has tried opening their network up a bit yet.
Of course for the telecom giants it's a bit different. The market is already here and built. They're not trying to gain new customers, it's just a matter of how many customers they would lose or retain by making these changes. I imagine they might come out on top without net neutrality because people "can't live without the internet" theese days, and most know too little to realize the new problems they come across are due to their provider to know to switch, on the off chance they actually have another choice who isn't doing the same thing. So, it probably is more likely to be profitable for the telcos to do this to the internet.
Yes and no. The difference is that with a "normal" game you will beat it and then move on to the next game. Obviously there are exceptions to this, and I suppose moreso on pc than consoles, with the multitude of multiplayer strategy games, etc But on average, I believe most MMOs will end up being played more fanatically than other games over a much longer time period. On top of that they have continued monthly costs that other games generally don't, eating into the funds that otherwise could have gone towards other games.
While I enjoyed Fable and will certainly buy Fable 2, we heard the same lines about how innovative and different Fable was going to be. Then it wasn't. I don't really see anything to get excited about here other than that there will be a Fable 2, which we already knew.
My mail server that requires me to login is not persistant. It has no way of knowing that I'm the same person who knew the password yesterday. Windows, on the other hand, is persistant when installed by a valid user/owner. It is installed once, verified to be valid, and that is not going to change.
And do you think that someone who is using a pirated copy is not then just going to go get a different key, find the latest wga patch to fake verification, etc? Do you think that there's not going to be a crack for it out within a day even though there is for everything else? The only person it's going to negatively effect is the person who legitimately purchased XP, installed it, was verified to be good and then later someone pirates it, uses their reg key (it's already happened), and now their valid copy of windows is no longer valid because MS decided it needed to check every day. The valid user now has to call MS on the phone, try to prove they're the rightful, valid, owner of the license (I'm not sure if this has been attempted or how well it worked, but they shouldn't have to in any case) or potentially go buy yet another copy of windows (assuming they still want to use windows). The pirate who used the key? They'll just input a new one and get on with their day, barely inconvenienced because they know that's part of pirating windows and knew from the beginning.
I believe what is being referred to are the extra circuits that are built into DRAM. They have "spares" built into them assuming that a certain percentage are going to be bad, in which case one of the spare circuits is used instead.
Unfortunately I don't, but I know a few people have it as their firewalls caught it and asked if it should be allowed or not. I'd imagine some searching on the web would turn it up eventually. That or I bet the tools from sysinternals would probably be useful in figuring it out.
When was the last time you saw a small, quality, company being bought out by a large company be good for anyone other than the large company? It's rarely good for the employees of the smaller company, who get a nice, big, paycheck, but frequently end up hating their job and ultimately quitting or being fired. It's even more rarely good for the users of the product when corporate ethics and ideals start being applied to their software which was previously being written and overseen by someone who truly cared about the project.
Now, I have no numbers to show, so perhaps it's just that we only hear about/remmeber the bad ones. But let's have a look... we've got the majority of previously great companies EA has bought up and killed, along with their great games, we've got Norton products, for a more obscure one, how about thespark.com?
The problem, as has been said thousands of times on slashdot and elsewhere, is that these measures don't stop piracy. They do, on the other hand, sometimes cause problems for legitimate users. On top of that, WGA is little more than spyware and treats me like a criminal checking everyday to make sure that my copy of windows is valid. If it was valid yesterday, why would it not be today? Add to the mix that when I purchased my copies (plural.) of XP, this WGA was not part of the software or even something that the public had been told would be in the future.
Also, much of the complaint this time around, at least in regards to this, is not just that WGA sucks. It's that very good, useful, high quality software which has previously been available to anyone will likely be made available only to people who install useless DRM from MS. While MS may have the right to do whatever they want with the software now that they've purchased the company, it doesn't mean people have to be happy about it.
If it is done properly, this could work out well, imo. I love a game with a good story, for sure, but you know, I don't actually go back and play those games more than once. I know what's going to happen in the story after I've played through once, so a story centered game has little point for me to play again. The games that I play over and over have little to no story, from the old NES and Atari games, to newer stuff such as Guitar Hero, Gran Turismo, or Katamari Damacy (which you could argue has a story, but it's hardly important to the gameplay). These are the games that I play again and again, because it's about the gameplay and none or very little of the enjoyment is tied into watching the story unfold.
I don't know about Samsung and Hynix, but Infineon charging less would be unlikely to benefit any of us anyway. Infineon primarily provides DRAM to manufacturers to put into their computers... Sun, etc. Even if those guys get cheaper RAM, I'm sure they're not going to sell their computers any cheaper.
It sounds great, but over years of regular use I have found that mine has developed lag and continues to get worse. While it's certainly lasted long enough to not really warrant a complaint, the problem is that there's no way to replace it with a new, non-laggy one, and it's become too much a part of my life to just quit using it.
You enjoy that audio-less mp3 player if you find one. Personally, I like to hear my mp3s.
On a more serious note, keep in mind that people who are going to be modifying hardware and firmware are not MS' target audience. People who want fancy gadgets that "just work" (sort of...) are MS' target audience.
Yeah, I can blame them for it. It's going to have 0 effect on the people they are supposedly trying to stop. Even if it does somehow hamper that "real pirates" for lack of a better way to say it, those people aren't going to go out and pay for windows, they're going to pirate something else or use something that is legally free. So it's most likely not going to harm the people they claim it's intended to and it's not going to get them paid for the majority of pirated copies of Windows. It will, and does, at least in a small way affect the privacy of legal windows users and if the WGA required deal turns out to be true, steps on privacy even moreso and potentially costs legal, valid, users extra money.
So, no benefit to MS, no benefit to valid users, no harm to pirates, potential harm to valid users. Yeah, I can blame them.