Sony is probably the worst offender, by giving us a stripped down PS3 at nearly twice the price as the US and Japan (There's only so much "tax" and "import costs" can account for).
Rock band is actually cheaper to import from the US than it is to buy in the shops (it's almost twice the price when you buy the set and the game!). This is really nothing new, but it's still infuriating the way we get treated.
It does seem to be an unwritten rule that electronics must be priced much higher in Europe than in the USA. That's where the article is leading: since profits are so much higher in Europe, Nintendo is sending more of its limited production in that direction.
What is not explained is why they don't increase their prices in the USA.
did the article just speculate? Seems so to me. There's no indication here that Reiser has been involved in the discussions. To say "all doubt has been quelled" is premature, since nothing new has been added.
Agreed. I will admit that I have remarkably little sympathy for those who have to reconfig their sites to standards, If only it was true that anyone would be forced to reconfig to standards. I think what Microsoft is actually suggesting is that they can simply add a meta tag and carry on as before.
I think you've touched on the real issue there. Popular Linux builds have themselves been ready for the desktop for years. What is still missing from Linux that Vista has is applications that are ready for typical end users.
I think you have a point, it was exactly the same when I switched to Linux in 1993. Linux was better than Windows 3.1, of course, in all kinds of fundamental ways that most users didn't care about.
It perhaps would have turned out better if RMS had cloned DOS first, and gradually upgraded it to something decent once the world was hooked.
They keep the laptop, computer plus some external drives and let me go. Still working on getting them back, Classic sign of a corrupt government, they can steal from you arbitrarily and there's very little you can do about it.
You joke, but I've actually contemplated keeping a spare hard drive and sticking it in coming into the U.S. just for the entertainment value of watching the border security folks see a completely blank hard drive and watching how they react.
For even more fun, load it up from/dev/random. If they make a copy of it, you can have the satisfaction of imagining 5 years of NSA supercomputer time spent trying to decode it.
The following section of 35 U.S.C. states the requirements relating to enabling disclosures:
35 U.S.C. 112 Specification.
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
In that case, and at least theoretically (i.e. the Examiner would have to catch it), the application could be rejected for not having an enabling disclosure. The idea behind the patent system is to only be able to get patents on inventions you provide an enabling disclosure for, in other words actually invented. Glancing at the patent application, it seems to suggest it can be implemented using computers, communications and input devices. It shouldn't be too hard, given that, for a person skilled in the art to slap one together.
The courts are not going to agree that it is constitutionally problematic that they cannot comply due to reasonable manpower issues. "Change your business model if you can't screen what you sell" is going to be the likely response from even a liberal court. Anyway, it's not "impossible for these businesses to comply with". They can simply refuse to sell any books at all to the under-18s, so it's no harder than enforcing age limits on alcohol and tobacco. Children need to be protected after all, and while it's true that perhaps some books may not be harmful, it's better to be safe than sorry.
So they're going to pretend to be competent enough to play in the "Enterprise Management" arena. Like they pretend to be competent enough to play in every arena they've entered... So they have noticed that Linux exists, that's novel. I suppose it's part of "pretending to be competent".
What's an Atari 2600? I guess that's something people of each decade faces, people born in the 2000's will lament that people born in the 2010's haven't heard of the Playstation 3 or Windows XP.
Or in the not too distant future senior citizens won't have participated in WW2 or remember a time before TV...
Lament an ignorance of the Playstation 3 or Windows XP? You must be joking. I hope that Sony and Microsoft will be only footnotes in dusty history lessons for the 2010's generation.
I wouldn't worry about WW2 either, there will be plenty of other wars to talk about. I hope I live to see a time after TV.
"Now all the Chinese need is an equal dose of cynicism about their own leaders and culture, and they will be fine."
What makes you think that there aren't vast numbers of Chinese who are cynical about their government (local and national)? The fact that a country which strictly controls communications hasn't let us know about such things doesn't mean they don't exist. I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are quite cynical about their government, although at the same time generally deferential. Perhaps I should have said: once the Chinese can freely express an equal dose of cynicism about their own leaders and culture, they will be fine.
They kept their currency values (read labor cost) low by buying up US debt, which kept the dollar high, Japan may have done the same thing.
That sure was nice of them, though I'm not sure it's a good idea to trade actual stuff for little pieces of paper. Especially when the US government controls the value of that paper. Recently I've been wondering if the recent inflation of the dollar is nothing less than the theft of half of China's currency reserves.
Yes, it's quite peculiar. It looks like they have now seen the light, and taking more of an interest in useful things, e.g., shares in mining companies.
If the poor performance of the US continues for long, its government may lose the privilege of being able to cheaply borrow money in its own currency. Instead it would be forced like many other governments to borrow in a hard currency such as the Euro.
I think you're missing the greater implications that this case has caused, though.
I'll give you an even greater implication. The whole World Wide Web works this way, and always has done. It suggests to me that once our entire body of information is stored on computer, the only reliable information will be that which can (and is regularly) reproduced, i.e., a subset of mathematics and hard sciences.
This circular shows some admirable cynicism about the view of the West. Now all the Chinese need is an equal dose of cynicism about their own leaders and culture, and they will be fine.
If they REALLY want to go after internet sources of funding for terrorists they should start with the spam / phishing/identity theft gangs.
I suspect the spam/phishing/identity theft industry has better uses for it's money than sponsoring terrorism. Women, drugs, fast cars and boats, whatever.
I'm not even convinced that terrorism would require access to a large amount of money. For all we know, somebody could finance terrorism by working at McDonalds. Doesn't this mean that McDonalds should face the crackdown too, just to be on the safe side?
Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers the individual subordinate to the interests of the state, party or society as a whole. Fascists seek to forge a type of national unity, usually based on (but not limited to) ethnic, cultural, racial, and/or religious attributes. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: patriotism, nationalism, statism, militarism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, corporatism, populism, collectivism, autocracy and opposition to political and economic liberalism.
What about all the independent musicians? Do you think they will get a share in this tax?
What about software developers, movie makers, authors of books, magazines and newspaper articles, photographers, web page authors including bloggers, etc? Don't they deserve a share of the cash too?
But then, i don't claim to understand religious people.
Neither do I. The only reason that Wilders' film is newsworthy is because of the expected backlash from muslims. Now that it's newsworthy, its audience will be orders of magnitude higher than it would have been otherwise.
They should learn to ignore such "provocation" like reasonable adults. If they really believe that the movie is offensive to their god, then why not leave it to their god to determine the punishment?
The article describes the site's content before NetSol pulled the plug as a single page with the film's title, an image of the Koran, and the words "Coming Soon.
This seems accurate to me - I saw the site before it was pulled. I can't see how it would take Network Solutions more than a minute to decide that there was no violation of their terms of service.
The brokers, market makers etc, will use their inside information that the CEO is about to dump shares and front run.
Do direct-to-market brokers not exist in the USA? I.e., where the orders are placed through a web interface or some other software and go directly onto the stock exchange order book without manual intervention.
Slashdot Mirror
Gee...for the good old days of "criminal cooperatives".....
The new way doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me. If all you get is bureaucracy and a pay scale, you may as well work for the government.
I wonder if there are any special fringe benefits for the rank-and-file cybercriminal.
It does seem to be an unwritten rule that electronics must be priced much higher in Europe than in the USA. That's where the article is leading: since profits are so much higher in Europe, Nintendo is sending more of its limited production in that direction.
What is not explained is why they don't increase their prices in the USA.
I think you've touched on the real issue there. Popular Linux builds have themselves been ready for the desktop for years. What is still missing from Linux that Vista has is applications that are ready for typical end users.
I think you have a point, it was exactly the same when I switched to Linux in 1993. Linux was better than Windows 3.1, of course, in all kinds of fundamental ways that most users didn't care about.
It perhaps would have turned out better if RMS had cloned DOS first, and gradually upgraded it to something decent once the world was hooked.
You joke, but I've actually contemplated keeping a spare hard drive and sticking it in coming into the U.S. just for the entertainment value of watching the border security folks see a completely blank hard drive and watching how they react.
For even more fun, load it up from"any and all operating systems" - probably means Windows AND Macintosh.
Because it may turn out to be a foreign copyright holder? What then for all those international treaties the USA is always boosting?
The USA seems like an unlikely country to be promoting copyright reform.
Lament an ignorance of the Playstation 3 or Windows XP? You must be joking. I hope that Sony and Microsoft will be only footnotes in dusty history lessons for the 2010's generation.
I wouldn't worry about WW2 either, there will be plenty of other wars to talk about. I hope I live to see a time after TV.
They kept their currency values (read labor cost) low by buying up US debt, which kept the dollar high, Japan may have done the same thing.
That sure was nice of them, though I'm not sure it's a good idea to trade actual stuff for little pieces of paper. Especially when the US government controls the value of that paper. Recently I've been wondering if the recent inflation of the dollar is nothing less than the theft of half of China's currency reserves.
Yes, it's quite peculiar. It looks like they have now seen the light, and taking more of an interest in useful things, e.g., shares in mining companies.
If the poor performance of the US continues for long, its government may lose the privilege of being able to cheaply borrow money in its own currency. Instead it would be forced like many other governments to borrow in a hard currency such as the Euro.
This circular shows some admirable cynicism about the view of the West. Now all the Chinese need is an equal dose of cynicism about their own leaders and culture, and they will be fine.
Or any stock market, for that matter. People will pay more when they think other people want it too, regardless of how cheap it was yesterday.
I suspect the spam/phishing/identity theft industry has better uses for it's money than sponsoring terrorism. Women, drugs, fast cars and boats, whatever.
I'm not even convinced that terrorism would require access to a large amount of money. For all we know, somebody could finance terrorism by working at McDonalds. Doesn't this mean that McDonalds should face the crackdown too, just to be on the safe side?
Wikipedia's definition:
Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers the individual subordinate to the interests of the state, party or society as a whole. Fascists seek to forge a type of national unity, usually based on (but not limited to) ethnic, cultural, racial, and/or religious attributes. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: patriotism, nationalism, statism, militarism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, corporatism, populism, collectivism, autocracy and opposition to political and economic liberalism.
Does this sound like the modern USA?
What about software developers, movie makers, authors of books, magazines and newspaper articles, photographers, web page authors including bloggers, etc? Don't they deserve a share of the cash too?
Neither do I. The only reason that Wilders' film is newsworthy is because of the expected backlash from muslims. Now that it's newsworthy, its audience will be orders of magnitude higher than it would have been otherwise.
They should learn to ignore such "provocation" like reasonable adults. If they really believe that the movie is offensive to their god, then why not leave it to their god to determine the punishment?