"Oddly enough, few analysts are multi-millionaires."
A bunch of people who are consistently wrong about financial matters not being multi-millionaires isn't odd. Odd would be lots of them being multi-millionaires _despite_ being wrong all the time!
"they're not smart enough to put their money on their words."
I reckon they're far smarter than the people who _do_ put money on their words after paying them for an expensive report.
"The best analyst of all would show a proven record of success, highlighted with comments like "I bought that stock at $n and sold at 15x$n which is what I knew would happen."
Anyone with that level of success is unlikely to stay in the analyst business though, because writing all those reports takes up time that could otherwise be devoted to sitting in a bathtub full of Don Perignon and beautiful naked women while wearing a money hat. Thus, those who still call themselves "analysts" are by definition idiots, because all the clever ones retired at 30 to spend their lives moving between luxurious and exotic locations in gold executive jets.
Nintendo don't seem to have met demand in some European countries, where the only way to get a Wii or DS Lite is by putting your name on a waiting list. This is very unusual so soon after the XMas buying madness has passed, when most people are having panic attacks after their credit card bills arrive and tell them how much they really spent, and retailers are therefore accustomed to discounting excess items rather than being sold out of things that people are queuing up to buy at full retail price.
"Most game analysts were cautious, but some thought to use it to push their opinion and personal philosophy about the future of gaming, and now they're looking silly because of it..."
Actually, I think it was more a case of the usual analyst bullshit practice of predicting future market trends by looking at past ones. This was what resulted in the Internet bubble at the end of the last century, where analysts confidently predicted that stock prices in any company that sold something on the Internet would continue to rise because _they had been rising_, resulting in both individual and corporate investors paying hundreds of dollars each for shares in companies that were selling at a loss to compete with bricks-and-mortar outfits that didn't have to factor mailing costs into their retail prices because people go there and pick the stuff up themselves.
A far better source than Wikipedia (as if anything could be a worse source on many matters!) is the Catholic Church itself. The decrees of the First Vatican Council which took place between 1869 and 1870 (full text at http://www.piar.hu/councils/ecum20.htm) say:
"when the Roman pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church "
Note the "defines a doctrine" and "or morals" parts. The Pope can, and several have, declare that certain actions which are not condemned by Biblical texts to be sins, which effectively damns those who practice them. He also traditionally had more direct powers of damnation against individuals which I will describe a little later in this post.
"It is meant to settle disagreements on doctrine, not for the Pope to be set above others"
I would respectfully suggest that the above text quite clearly sets the Pope above all others.
"I severely doubt that it would ever be used to damn someone, and if you think it is so, I would welcome you to cite a source"
The usual form of damning a person or group was by declaring them Anathema. Only the Pope could do this via a ceremony formulated by Pope Zachary which includes the following words:
"we deprive (Name) himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment."
NB: various "Vatican II" canons and acts during the 20th century first reduced the severity of Anathema to that of normal (minor) excommunication, and then removed all mention of it -- note though that, as has happened in the past, such reforms can be repealed by papal fiat.
"analysts still anticipated the Wii would only sell (slightly) more than the Gamecube did and the PS3 would control 75% of the market"
That's because analysts have demonstrated an ability to be wrong so often that it cannot be explained by probability alone, and must therefore be due to some sort of supernatural power that they posses.
Use patents seem to get granted for things where not only is there significant prior art, but also years of common practice if the moaning in the medical profession about some of them is anything to go by. This is possibly why they're not recognised by WIPO, and are are considered invalid in some countries that seem to respect other types of patent, while certain other countries only recognise the ones that obviously required significant amounts of research and development.
"I don't think MS is permitted to enable converting formats to export into iTunes. MS format supports subscriptions. iTunes does not. Converting and making it drag and drop will break the you don't continue to subscribe, your tunes break."
The solution is a simple one: refuse to convert stuff people don't own outright. As a licensee, Apple would have access to the relevant SDKs, and could thus easily detect and reject subscription files, which is essentially what some of the older players do (you can put subscription files on them, but they won't play!).
"On this point, MS won't or can't permit converting to another format that does not support the subscription model and they may argue that in court and blame Apple for not putting it in their hardware."
The point would however be moot if Apple don't convert such files, because iPods would not be able to play them.
"Do you think MS would permit changing DRM formats. This is a format war."
It is indeed, but any refusal by MS would be tantamount to playing into Apple's hands, because (a) they could use it to show national and EC legislators that their non-support of other DRM formats wasn't a matter of choice ("we tried, but nasty old MS wouldn't let us"), and (b) it would divert legal attention away from Apple and towards Microsoft, who the EC has already been bashing for anti-competitive behaviour.
"If MS would license the format to Apple it would be required to be suported in the hardware so an Apple iPod would have to connect to a Windows PC and use the Windows DRM client Media Player."
Which would again provide Apple with a very effective argument with European legal bodies, who have already ruled that Media Player was an illegal attempt at using Microsoft's Windows monopoly to dominate another market, and ordered them to produce an OEM version of Windows that didn't include it.
"This is something Apple would not permit, so we are in a DRM format standoff."
But one where Apple holds all the cards. If MS are willing to license their DRM on Apple's terms (i.e. the ones I described previously), then Apple will have the only player capable of using the two dominant DRM formats, and therefore get to sell more iPods while at the same time removing most of the grounds for reasonable European criticisms; an MS refusal on the other hand also gives Apple a very effective "out" with the Europeans without having to change anything about their store, player, or software, and has the added bonus of turning the Sauron-like gaze of the European Commission back towards Microsoft on the eve of their planned European Zune launch.
"I personally however doubt they would take the same approach on DCA and give someone a monopoly on DCA, as DCA saves lives."
The people who discovered it may not take such action, but that doesn't mean the US won't hand a use patent to one of its big corporations if they apply for one. You don't have to prove you came up with a particular use to be granted a patent on it, only that no prior patents exist (unlike standard patents, use patents aren't invalidated by prior art).
"An existing drug cannot be re-patented for a new application."
Yes it can, and drug companies do it all the time as a way of prolonging patents on medications almost indefinitely. They're called "use patents", and seem absurdly easy to get in the US, where the FDA hands them out to big pharma all the time. Some examples (there are thousands of others):
AZT, a failed anti-cancer drug from the 1960s was patented as an AIDS treatment by what is now GlaxoSmithKilne in the mid 1980s.
Thalidomide, originally produced in the 1950s and infamous for causing birth defects is now subject to several use patents by a number of different companies for treating various conditions. The most recent of these was obtained in 2006.
Prozac as a treatment for Post Menstrual Stress was patented by Eli lilly & Co. in 2000.
"It would be absurd if this were the case - someone discovers aspirin can be used to thin the blood, and suddenly every company manufacturing aspirin has to stop?"
There are in fact several current use patents for Aspirin (or rather, acetosalicylic acid, as Aspirin is a trademark), e.g. putting it in gelatine so it can be applied to the skin. The fact that it has been used on the skin via willow bark poultices for thousands of years, or that gelatine isn't exactly new technology isn't a barrier to getting a use patent in the patent-happy US.
"All three high profile cases show the callous disregard for the health and well-being of people and a single-minded focus on profit - whatever the human cost."
Here's a fourth one: AZT as an AIDS treatment. The drug was initially produced in the early 1960s under a NIH grant as a cancer treatment, but wasn't particularly efficacious and had nasty side effects, so it fell out of usage. Then, in the mid 1980s, three scientists from the National Cancer Institute who were working with a couple of others from Burroughs-Welcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) discovered that it was effective against the AIDS virus, and after a small trial that cost very little (the initial Welcome scientists were working at the National Cancer Institute and using their facilities, so Welcome's initial investment amounted to two peoples' wages), Burroughs-Welcome were given a usage patent by the FDA on this previously public domain medication, and proceeded to charge the _highest price of any treatment in prior history_ for something that was extremely cheap and easy to produce. Furthermore, this patent was upheld by the US Supreme Profit Ensurers (those people who decided that "eminent domain" lets local governments take your property and sell it to someone else whenever they feel like it) against challenges by AIDS organisations two separate occasions.
"This is why some contries are threatening single vendor player/store solutions to make their store and players play fair with competing players and sources of content."
IMO Microsoft will be watching what happens to Apple in Europe before releasing their Zune there, because any countries who show a willingness to play hardball with the iTunes store will probably be even more harsh on a US-style policy for the Zune, because they'll regard it as an attempt to use the Windows monopoly to establish another monopoly in a different market, which is illegal in the EU.
"You can't buy a player which will play iTunes tracks and Yahoo music's unlimited monthly subscription library"
It isn't the players that are the problem, but the software that manages them. I thus reckon that an easy way around Apple's mounting European problems would be for them to license Windows Media DRM for their iTunes program only so that people could drag files on to it just as they can with non-DRM Windows Media now, and have them converted to FairPlay-encoded AAC files for uploading to an iPod. This would in all probability satisfy most European governments _and_ the recording industry while allowing Apple to maintain their iPod lock-in because the conversion would only go in one direction. IMO they'd sell even more iPods if they did this, because they'd then have the only player on the market capable of using the two dominant DRM formats.
The Pope can do more than excommunicate. In traditional catholic doctrine, God speaks to humanity through the Pope, so if the Pope says a person or group is damned (this has happened in the past), then God has said so, and they are therefore damned.
"Before the shipped Windows 95, they ensured that all major software (and ipod support is `major' now a days) worked."
Except for their own. I used an old version of Word to write help files because it was extremely small and fast. However, when Win95 came out, it would pop up a dialog saying "This version of Word isn't compatible with Windows-95. Please contact your dealer or a Microsoft representative for an upgrade". This seemed just a little too convenient for an OS whose usual response to a software incompatibility was a BSOD, so by way of experiment, I tried using a resource editor to change the "1.2" in a version string to "10.0", and Behold! It ran perfectly, sans warning dialogs, and continued to do so under Windows-98 (can't speak for XP because I haven't tried).
"Apple drove all Microsoft's GUI competitors out of the market (the GEM desktop, among a few others)"
This is a revisionist view of computing history. Although Apple sued both DR and MS for allegedly copying the appearance and feel of MacOS, this was right at the beginning (in the case of GEM before it was even being sold), and both companies (i.e. MS and DR) chose to settle out of court by changing certain things rather than fight, which was a tacit admission to having done precisely what Apple said (GEM in particular was originally a clone of MacOS appearance-wise). If anything, DR got the better deal than MS, because all they had to do was remove the trash can and change the way menus were activated, whereas MS removed overlapping windows, thereby crippling Windows 1.0.
Like Windows (which was also notably unsuccessful at that time) GEM also suffered from two major technical limitations that were inherent in IBM PCs and clones at the time: (1) few had enough RAM to run it, and even those with the money for a full complement of 640K didn't have a whole lot available for programs once GEM had loaded; and (2) the period's graphics hardware, if indeed such was present, wasn't usually up to running a serious GUI resolution-wise, and even if it had been, the fact that it wasn't hardware accelerated meant that the feeble 4.77MHz 8088 that most PCs had was doing all the drawing. Contrast this with the Atari ST 520, with its 8MHz 68000 CPU, 512MB RAM, high-resolution bit-mapped display and included mouse (very few PC clones came with mice at that time), and it isn't hard to see why GEM had a lot more success on that system than was the case with the IBM PC.
Note though that, even without the technical limitations, GEM on IBM PCs and clones would still have failed because Digital Research's marketing for it was (typically for them) so weak that it was obvious even to the programmers who were working on it(!!!), all of whom fled for greener pastures some time before DR finally decided to can the project. It did however continue on the Atari ST (the ST version was maintained and improved by an entirely different team within Atari itself) for several years until a series of marketing snafus killed that system, and Atari with it.
"I never understood why to delete a file you drag it to the trash"
You mean as opposed to Windows XP, where you select "delete" from a menu and it sends the file to the recycle bin instead of deleting it. Of course, Joe Windows-user will know that this is happening because the icon for the recycle bin helpfully looks exactly same irrespective of whether there's anything in it or not.
"and to eject a cd you drag it to the trash"
Or use the "eject" key on the keyboard, or right-click / (ctrl-click for curmudgeonly one button mouse users) on the icon for the drive, and select "eject".
"I like the pc approach better...it just works... hit the eject button on the cd and out pops the cd.... if the application locked the cd drive then it doesn't eject."
Same with a Mac -- hit the eject button on the keyboard, and out pops the CD / DVD, unless it is locked by an application.
"Why should I need a software command to eject a read-only cd or dvd?"
Because you'd have a lot of trouble with modern small form-factor Windows PCs and slim notebooks which have slot-loading drives with no buttons on them if Windows didn't also have the ability to use soft commands, although these are of course a special variety of Washingtonian soft command that is of notably better quality than the Californian ones that OS X comes with.
"I still have faith in that mankind isn't going to play stupid forever"
We've been consistently stupid about far more important things than Steve Jobs for thousands of years, so I predict with utter confidence that we will continue to do stupid things for the next few thousand. Some examples:
"The slopes of that mountain with smoke coming out of the top are really fertile. Let's build a town there, on top of those burnt roofs sticking out of the rock."
"Anybody who can't see that our king / god / culture is better than theirs is evil."
"Oh look, there's a thunder storm coming. Lucky for us that this tree was nearby to shelter under, because there aren't any others for miles around. Ha ha, look at all those stupid animals lying down in the rain instead of being dry and cosy under this tree like us clever humans..."
"But he had such an honest face!"
"If we do the same thing in exactly the same way enough times, but try a bit harder each time, we will eventually be successful".
"The authorities, from their special safe place that is reserved for those in authority, assure citizens that there is no need to be alarmed."
"I actually (insert task that requires excellent hand-eye coordination, concentration, and temporal awareness) better after a few drinks."
"My mum says you can't get pregnant if you pee / stand on your head / pick petunias afterwards."
"He said that if we gave him all our earthly possessions, we'd be rewarded after we die, because the meek are really favoured, and the only to be totally meek is by having bugger all and doing what you're told."
"It must be true, otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to put it in a book / on TV news / in a newspaper"
"Of course there's no evidence. That's how you know it's a real conspiracy!"
"You shouldn't believe everything you hear unless I'm saying it".
They've tried that on several prior occasions, but completely failed to help Linux in any notable way, despite a notably valiant effort five years ago.
"11hz mp3s sound terrible at high volumes compared to 44hz"
I fully agree. 11hz is after all below the threshold of human hearing (if of course any reasonable speaker system could produce it, and one lived in a place large enough for more than a tiny fraction of the wave to fit in a room), so you wouldn't get any apparent sound at all, whereas a 44Hz MP3 would at least be able to produce some dull thuds.
This is precisely what I was thinking. If I'd bought a PS/3 over XMas (or received one as a gift from a wealthy and generous friend), I'd be curious enough about Blu-Ray media to shell out for one or two disks just to see what all the fuss was about, especially considering the dearth of worthwhile games for it at the moment. However, unless the experience was so mind-blowingly amazing that watching anything else was worse than having my eyeballs injected with shit, I'd be unlikely to buy any more for quite a while afterwards (if at all) because they're rather expensive, and to be honest, I doubt that the majority of movies would gain enough from being in HD to justify paying extra for it.
IMO therefore, a lot of commotion is being made over what is after all only _two weeks_ of sales data that concerns a period just after XMas, when a lot of people got PS3s, and will naturally want to see what they can do with them.
"And this is why the vast majority of large corporations today would accurately be called "psychopaths" if they were actual people."
i think they'd actually be classed as sociopaths rather than psychopaths, i.e. those without a conscience who regard anyone or anything that stands between them and their goals as an obstacle that must be permanently removed by whatever means are deemed necessary.
"Complete and total irresponsibility..and they're PROUD of this."
The problem is not one of pride, but the fact that they legally obligated to behave in this way because of something called "fiduciary responsibility", which basically means they must do everything possible to maximise their value to shareholders. If you create a framework where being a sociopath is a prerequisite for survival, the most sociopathic organisms will have an advantage, so they'll progressively dominate their environment until nothing else exists.
"hey I like profit as much as the next guy but not at that price"
Unfortunately, the laws that govern corporations are what makes them behave in the way they do, because they effectively have no choice in the matter. The owners of a privately held company are free to make ethical decisions even if they result in reduced profits because they are only responsible to themselves, but the executive officers of a publicly held one who did the same without seeking shareholder approval would risk being sued by those shareholders for acting contrary to their fiduciary responsibilities.
IMO we only have ourselves to blame for this situation, because these unpleasant entities aren't things that occur in nature, but are entirely of our own creation, and thus behave in the way that we as a society have programmed them to. And because they are things we created, they can be changed according to our whims, but the will to do so is lacking because those who we have chosen to give the power to effect those changes are benefiting greatly from keeping them just as they are.
Slashdot Mirror
"Oddly enough, few analysts are multi-millionaires."
A bunch of people who are consistently wrong about financial matters not being multi-millionaires isn't odd. Odd would be lots of them being multi-millionaires _despite_ being wrong all the time!
"they're not smart enough to put their money on their words."
I reckon they're far smarter than the people who _do_ put money on their words after paying them for an expensive report.
"The best analyst of all would show a proven record of success, highlighted with comments like "I bought that stock at $n and sold at 15x$n which is what I knew would happen."
Anyone with that level of success is unlikely to stay in the analyst business though, because writing all those reports takes up time that could otherwise be devoted to sitting in a bathtub full of Don Perignon and beautiful naked women while wearing a money hat. Thus, those who still call themselves "analysts" are by definition idiots, because all the clever ones retired at 30 to spend their lives moving between luxurious and exotic locations in gold executive jets.
And he was telling the truth, because his foot wasn't damaged.
Nintendo don't seem to have met demand in some European countries, where the only way to get a Wii or DS Lite is by putting your name on a waiting list. This is very unusual so soon after the XMas buying madness has passed, when most people are having panic attacks after their credit card bills arrive and tell them how much they really spent, and retailers are therefore accustomed to discounting excess items rather than being sold out of things that people are queuing up to buy at full retail price.
"Most game analysts were cautious, but some thought to use it to push their opinion and personal philosophy about the future of gaming, and now they're looking silly because of it..."
Actually, I think it was more a case of the usual analyst bullshit practice of predicting future market trends by looking at past ones. This was what resulted in the Internet bubble at the end of the last century, where analysts confidently predicted that stock prices in any company that sold something on the Internet would continue to rise because _they had been rising_, resulting in both individual and corporate investors paying hundreds of dollars each for shares in companies that were selling at a loss to compete with bricks-and-mortar outfits that didn't have to factor mailing costs into their retail prices because people go there and pick the stuff up themselves.
A far better source than Wikipedia (as if anything could be a worse source on many matters!) is the Catholic Church itself. The decrees of the First Vatican Council which took place between 1869 and 1870 (full text at http://www.piar.hu/councils/ecum20.htm) say:
"when the Roman pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA,
that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians,
in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority,
he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church
"
Note the "defines a doctrine" and "or morals" parts. The Pope can, and several have, declare that certain actions which are not condemned by Biblical texts to be sins, which effectively damns those who practice them. He also traditionally had more direct powers of damnation against individuals which I will describe a little later in this post.
"It is meant to settle disagreements on doctrine, not for the Pope to be set above others"
I would respectfully suggest that the above text quite clearly sets the Pope above all others.
"I severely doubt that it would ever be used to damn someone, and if you think it is so, I would welcome you to cite a source"
The usual form of damning a person or group was by declaring them Anathema. Only the Pope could do this via a ceremony formulated by Pope Zachary which includes the following words:
"we deprive (Name) himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment."
The Catholic Encyclopaedia has a rather good article on Anathema and a variant of it called Anathema Maranatha at: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01455e.htm.
NB: various "Vatican II" canons and acts during the 20th century first reduced the severity of Anathema to that of normal (minor) excommunication, and then removed all mention of it -- note though that, as has happened in the past, such reforms can be repealed by papal fiat.
"analysts still anticipated the Wii would only sell (slightly) more than the Gamecube did and the PS3 would control 75% of the market"
That's because analysts have demonstrated an ability to be wrong so often that it cannot be explained by probability alone, and must therefore be due to some sort of supernatural power that they posses.
Use patents seem to get granted for things where not only is there significant prior art, but also years of common practice if the moaning in the medical profession about some of them is anything to go by. This is possibly why they're not recognised by WIPO, and are are considered invalid in some countries that seem to respect other types of patent, while certain other countries only recognise the ones that obviously required significant amounts of research and development.
"I don't think MS is permitted to enable converting formats to export into iTunes. MS format supports subscriptions. iTunes does not. Converting and making it drag and drop will break the you don't continue to subscribe, your tunes break."
The solution is a simple one: refuse to convert stuff people don't own outright. As a licensee, Apple would have access to the relevant SDKs, and could thus easily detect and reject subscription files, which is essentially what some of the older players do (you can put subscription files on them, but they won't play!).
"On this point, MS won't or can't permit converting to another format that does not support the subscription model and they may argue that in court and blame Apple for not putting it in their hardware."
The point would however be moot if Apple don't convert such files, because iPods would not be able to play them.
"Do you think MS would permit changing DRM formats. This is a format war."
It is indeed, but any refusal by MS would be tantamount to playing into Apple's hands, because (a) they could use it to show national and EC legislators that their non-support of other DRM formats wasn't a matter of choice ("we tried, but nasty old MS wouldn't let us"), and (b) it would divert legal attention away from Apple and towards Microsoft, who the EC has already been bashing for anti-competitive behaviour.
"If MS would license the format to Apple it would be required to be suported in the hardware so an Apple iPod would have to connect to a Windows PC and use the Windows DRM client Media Player."
Which would again provide Apple with a very effective argument with European legal bodies, who have already ruled that Media Player was an illegal attempt at using Microsoft's Windows monopoly to dominate another market, and ordered them to produce an OEM version of Windows that didn't include it.
"This is something Apple would not permit, so we are in a DRM format standoff."
But one where Apple holds all the cards. If MS are willing to license their DRM on Apple's terms (i.e. the ones I described previously), then Apple will have the only player capable of using the two dominant DRM formats, and therefore get to sell more iPods while at the same time removing most of the grounds for reasonable European criticisms; an MS refusal on the other hand also gives Apple a very effective "out" with the Europeans without having to change anything about their store, player, or software, and has the added bonus of turning the Sauron-like gaze of the European Commission back towards Microsoft on the eve of their planned European Zune launch.
"I personally however doubt they would take the same
approach on DCA and give someone a monopoly on DCA,
as DCA saves lives."
The people who discovered it may not take such action, but that doesn't mean the US won't hand a use patent to one of its big corporations if they apply for one. You don't have to prove you came up with a particular use to be granted a patent on it, only that no prior patents exist (unlike standard patents, use patents aren't invalidated by prior art).
"An existing drug cannot be re-patented for a new application."
Yes it can, and drug companies do it all the time as a way of prolonging patents on medications almost indefinitely. They're called "use patents", and seem absurdly easy to get in the US, where the FDA hands them out to big pharma all the time. Some examples (there are thousands of others):
AZT, a failed anti-cancer drug from the 1960s was patented as an AIDS treatment by what is now GlaxoSmithKilne in the mid 1980s.
Thalidomide, originally produced in the 1950s and infamous for causing birth defects is now subject to several use patents by a number of different companies for treating various conditions. The most recent of these was obtained in 2006.
Prozac as a treatment for Post Menstrual Stress was patented by Eli lilly & Co. in 2000.
"It would be absurd if this were the case - someone discovers aspirin can be used to thin the blood, and suddenly every company manufacturing aspirin has to stop?"
There are in fact several current use patents for Aspirin (or rather, acetosalicylic acid, as Aspirin is a trademark), e.g. putting it in gelatine so it can be applied to the skin. The fact that it has been used on the skin via willow bark poultices for thousands of years, or that gelatine isn't exactly new technology isn't a barrier to getting a use patent in the patent-happy US.
"All three high profile cases show the callous disregard for the
health and well-being of people and a single-minded focus on profit -
whatever the human cost."
Here's a fourth one: AZT as an AIDS treatment. The drug was initially produced in the early 1960s under a NIH grant as a cancer treatment, but wasn't particularly efficacious and had nasty side effects, so it fell out of usage. Then, in the mid 1980s, three scientists from the National Cancer Institute who were working with a couple of others from Burroughs-Welcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) discovered that it was effective against the AIDS virus, and after a small trial that cost very little (the initial Welcome scientists were working at the National Cancer Institute and using their facilities, so Welcome's initial investment amounted to two peoples' wages), Burroughs-Welcome were given a usage patent by the FDA on this previously public domain medication, and proceeded to charge the _highest price of any treatment in prior history_ for something that was extremely cheap and easy to produce. Furthermore, this patent was upheld by the US Supreme Profit Ensurers (those people who decided that "eminent domain" lets local governments take your property and sell it to someone else whenever they feel like it) against challenges by AIDS organisations two separate occasions.
"This is why some contries are threatening single vendor player/store solutions to make their store and players play fair with competing players and sources of content."
IMO Microsoft will be watching what happens to Apple in Europe before releasing their Zune there, because any countries who show a willingness to play hardball with the iTunes store will probably be even more harsh on a US-style policy for the Zune, because they'll regard it as an attempt to use the Windows monopoly to establish another monopoly in a different market, which is illegal in the EU.
"You can't buy a player which will play iTunes tracks and Yahoo music's unlimited monthly subscription library"
It isn't the players that are the problem, but the software that manages them. I thus reckon that an easy way around Apple's mounting European problems would be for them to license Windows Media DRM for their iTunes program only so that people could drag files on to it just as they can with non-DRM Windows Media now, and have them converted to FairPlay-encoded AAC files for uploading to an iPod. This would in all probability satisfy most European governments _and_ the recording industry while allowing Apple to maintain their iPod lock-in because the conversion would only go in one direction. IMO they'd sell even more iPods if they did this, because they'd then have the only player on the market capable of using the two dominant DRM formats.
The Pope can do more than excommunicate. In traditional catholic doctrine, God speaks to humanity through the Pope, so if the Pope says a person or group is damned (this has happened in the past), then God has said so, and they are therefore damned.
"Christians don't have the power to damn someone to Hell"
The Pope can, and 500 million catholics seem to reckon he's a Christian.
"Before the shipped Windows 95, they ensured that all major software (and ipod support is `major' now a days) worked."
Except for their own. I used an old version of Word to write help files because it was extremely small and fast. However, when Win95 came out, it would pop up a dialog saying "This version of Word isn't compatible with Windows-95. Please contact your dealer or a Microsoft representative for an upgrade". This seemed just a little too convenient for an OS whose usual response to a software incompatibility was a BSOD, so by way of experiment, I tried using a resource editor to change the "1.2" in a version string to "10.0", and Behold! It ran perfectly, sans warning dialogs, and continued to do so under Windows-98 (can't speak for XP because I haven't tried).
"Needless to say, it does not support DRM in any format so iTunes, Zune, and Plays for Sure are all incompatible with it"
Whereas with any player that does support DRM, only two out of those three would be incompatible...
"Apple drove all Microsoft's GUI competitors out of the market (the GEM desktop, among a few others)"
This is a revisionist view of computing history. Although Apple sued both DR and MS for allegedly copying the appearance and feel of MacOS, this was right at the beginning (in the case of GEM before it was even being sold), and both companies (i.e. MS and DR) chose to settle out of court by changing certain things rather than fight, which was a tacit admission to having done precisely what Apple said (GEM in particular was originally a clone of MacOS appearance-wise). If anything, DR got the better deal than MS, because all they had to do was remove the trash can and change the way menus were activated, whereas MS removed overlapping windows, thereby crippling Windows 1.0.
Like Windows (which was also notably unsuccessful at that time) GEM also suffered from two major technical limitations that were inherent in IBM PCs and clones at the time: (1) few had enough RAM to run it, and even those with the money for a full complement of 640K didn't have a whole lot available for programs once GEM had loaded; and (2) the period's graphics hardware, if indeed such was present, wasn't usually up to running a serious GUI resolution-wise, and even if it had been, the fact that it wasn't hardware accelerated meant that the feeble 4.77MHz 8088 that most PCs had was doing all the drawing. Contrast this with the Atari ST 520, with its 8MHz 68000 CPU, 512MB RAM, high-resolution bit-mapped display and included mouse (very few PC clones came with mice at that time), and it isn't hard to see why GEM had a lot more success on that system than was the case with the IBM PC.
Note though that, even without the technical limitations, GEM on IBM PCs and clones would still have failed because Digital Research's marketing for it was (typically for them) so weak that it was obvious even to the programmers who were working on it(!!!), all of whom fled for greener pastures some time before DR finally decided to can the project. It did however continue on the Atari ST (the ST version was maintained and improved by an entirely different team within Atari itself) for several years until a series of marketing snafus killed that system, and Atari with it.
"I never understood why to delete a file you drag it to the trash"
You mean as opposed to Windows XP, where you select "delete" from a menu and it sends the file to the recycle bin instead of deleting it. Of course, Joe Windows-user will know that this is happening because the icon for the recycle bin helpfully looks exactly same irrespective of whether there's anything in it or not.
"and to eject a cd you drag it to the trash"
Or use the "eject" key on the keyboard, or right-click / (ctrl-click for curmudgeonly one button mouse users) on the icon for the drive, and select "eject".
"I like the pc approach better...it just works... hit the eject button on the cd and out pops the cd.... if the application locked the cd drive then it doesn't eject."
Same with a Mac -- hit the eject button on the keyboard, and out pops the CD / DVD, unless it is locked by an application.
"Why should I need a software command to eject a read-only cd or dvd?"
Because you'd have a lot of trouble with modern small form-factor Windows PCs and slim notebooks which have slot-loading drives with no buttons on them if Windows didn't also have the ability to use soft commands, although these are of course a special variety of Washingtonian soft command that is of notably better quality than the Californian ones that OS X comes with.
"I still have faith in that mankind isn't going to play stupid forever"
We've been consistently stupid about far more important things than Steve Jobs for thousands of years, so I predict with utter confidence that we will continue to do stupid things for the next few thousand. Some examples:
"The slopes of that mountain with smoke coming out of the top are really fertile. Let's build a town there, on top of those burnt roofs sticking out of the rock."
"Anybody who can't see that our king / god / culture is better than theirs is evil."
"Oh look, there's a thunder storm coming. Lucky for us that this tree was nearby to shelter under, because there aren't any others for miles around. Ha ha, look at all those stupid animals lying down in the rain instead of being dry and cosy under this tree like us clever humans..."
"But he had such an honest face!"
"If we do the same thing in exactly the same way enough times, but try a bit harder each time, we will eventually be successful".
"The authorities, from their special safe place that is reserved for those in authority, assure citizens that there is no need to be alarmed."
"I actually (insert task that requires excellent hand-eye coordination, concentration, and temporal awareness) better after a few drinks."
"My mum says you can't get pregnant if you pee / stand on your head / pick petunias afterwards."
"He said that if we gave him all our earthly possessions, we'd be rewarded after we die, because the meek are really favoured, and the only to be totally meek is by having bugger all and doing what you're told."
"It must be true, otherwise they wouldn't be allowed to put it in a book / on TV news / in a newspaper"
"Of course there's no evidence. That's how you know it's a real conspiracy!"
"You shouldn't believe everything you hear unless I'm saying it".
They've tried that on several prior occasions, but completely failed to help Linux in any notable way, despite a notably valiant effort five years ago.
"11hz mp3s sound terrible at high volumes compared to 44hz"
I fully agree. 11hz is after all below the threshold of human hearing (if of course any reasonable speaker system could produce it, and one lived in a place large enough for more than a tiny fraction of the wave to fit in a room), so you wouldn't get any apparent sound at all, whereas a 44Hz MP3 would at least be able to produce some dull thuds.
This is precisely what I was thinking. If I'd bought a PS/3 over XMas (or received one as a gift from a wealthy and generous friend), I'd be curious enough about Blu-Ray media to shell out for one or two disks just to see what all the fuss was about, especially considering the dearth of worthwhile games for it at the moment. However, unless the experience was so mind-blowingly amazing that watching anything else was worse than having my eyeballs injected with shit, I'd be unlikely to buy any more for quite a while afterwards (if at all) because they're rather expensive, and to be honest, I doubt that the majority of movies would gain enough from being in HD to justify paying extra for it.
IMO therefore, a lot of commotion is being made over what is after all only _two weeks_ of sales data that concerns a period just after XMas, when a lot of people got PS3s, and will naturally want to see what they can do with them.
"And this is why the vast majority of large corporations today would accurately be called "psychopaths" if they were actual people."
i think they'd actually be classed as sociopaths rather than psychopaths, i.e. those without a conscience who regard anyone or anything that stands between them and their goals as an obstacle that must be permanently removed by whatever means are deemed necessary.
"Complete and total irresponsibility..and they're PROUD of this."
The problem is not one of pride, but the fact that they legally obligated to behave in this way because of something called "fiduciary responsibility", which basically means they must do everything possible to maximise their value to shareholders. If you create a framework where being a sociopath is a prerequisite for survival, the most sociopathic organisms will have an advantage, so they'll progressively dominate their environment until nothing else exists.
"hey I like profit as much as the next guy but not at that price"
Unfortunately, the laws that govern corporations are what makes them behave in the way they do, because they effectively have no choice in the matter. The owners of a privately held company are free to make ethical decisions even if they result in reduced profits because they are only responsible to themselves, but the executive officers of a publicly held one who did the same without seeking shareholder approval would risk being sued by those shareholders for acting contrary to their fiduciary responsibilities.
IMO we only have ourselves to blame for this situation, because these unpleasant entities aren't things that occur in nature, but are entirely of our own creation, and thus behave in the way that we as a society have programmed them to. And because they are things we created, they can be changed according to our whims, but the will to do so is lacking because those who we have chosen to give the power to effect those changes are benefiting greatly from keeping them just as they are.
Sodding lameness filter. I'll try again, using different characters:
(insert name of company that sells stuff to everyday home users) doesn't care about the everyday home user. They care about their money.