Because like everything else in the race to the bottom they used the absolute least powerful hardware that would still function. It is obvious you've never taken a hardware appraisal of the under $80 routers because we are talking maybe 2Mb of NVRAM and a Mb of RAM along with the cheapest shit 200Mhz or less ARM CPU.
These things will actually overheat if you hook 4 PCs to them and try to pump some serious data through them, you honestly think they'll handle a quadrupling of the address space? Sure you can TRY to update the firmware, but I can tell you what will happen on the vast majority you try it on: You'll have a router that goes from handling a couple of PCs full time and other devices occasionally to a device that runs hot as a firecracker and shuts down after a few hours, and that is just with a single PC. Add in mixed address on the LAN (because some devices like networked TVs and DVD players won't be able to handle IPV6 either) and the resulting overhead and you'll have a router that will be lucky to run 8 hours without dropping packets and stuttering.
The simple fact is these sub $80 routers were made with just enough hardware to barely do the task at hand and I don't care how well you optimize the code the CPU simply won't handle the overhead. Most have little specialized chips built in that take the load off NAT so dropping that won't help. Look at it this way: No matter how well you optimize the engine an S10 just can't go from hauling a little pull behind to hauling single wides, it just ain't got the muscle. If you look at the guts of these sub $80 routers, which are the vast majority currently in use (and most of which don't support wwdrt or tomato either) it just don't have the resources to do the job. It will be cheaper and easier for both the OEMs and users to simply dump it on the third world's doorstep than to try to force hardware that slow to do a job that it was never envisioned doing.
Finally as for "people will be going from G to N anyway"? You have NO idea how many non wireless routers are out there running in these homes and SMBs, do you? We are probably talking a good 50-100 of them for every wireless router. Thanks to their cheapness and easy availability these things have bloomed all over the place and if it wasn't for IPV6 not having backwards compatibility (which like dropping NAT in IPV6 is stupid and based on engineering prejudice IMHO) these machines would probably run for another decade, but all those millions will be dropped ON TOP of all the wireless routers. think about how many CRTs you saw dumped when LCDs became affordable? It will be JUST like that. The amount of waste generated when the switch is flipped is gonna be truly mind boggling, with routers and switches (hell I even know a few places still using hubs on low resource requiring back ends) of all makes and sizes all hitting the dump almost on the same day. It'll be a mess no matter how you look at it.
I still think MY idea for a new/. MSFT icon is best...Picture Ballmer's head with his tongue sticking out wearing an "I Heart Apple!" beanie. Considering how "me too!" MSFT has been since Ballmer took over from old Bill I think it would fit the company direction perfectly. Besides it would be karma for the way we MSFT users and admins made fun of Apple when the Pepsi guy was running it into the ground. Now the shoe is on the other foot as they got the visionary back and MSFT got taken over by another Pepsi guy.
As for TFA, don't VMWare View customers get upgrades? I thought that was pretty much SOP for companies like VMWare, you buy the product you get updates and upgrades. Hell of a lot better than Quickbooks whose standard answer is "Buy the new version!" at several hundred a pop when they can't bother to provide updates to fix their bad code.
That is why one of my most popular setups right now is dual boots, as it is cheaper to buy XP Home licenses and set up dual boots on the new Win 7 machines than it is to upgrade to the latest Quickbooks, especially if they have one of the pro packages. It is a PITA but I can see why SMBs are hooked on QB like crack, as you can run a small business and have the whole thing automated and taken care of by a single "Quickbooks girl" (for some reason it is ALWAYS a girl) and it eliminates a TON of paperwork. At least the VMWare View users can just go get the upgrade and be done with it.
As for blaming MSFT that really ain't fair. Did anybody here look at the leaked Win2K source code? MSFT already jumps through crazy hoops trying to keep some of the badly coded third party stuff working and lets face it, Windows wasn't made to be VMed in the first place. I'm sure it probably came down to leave a gaping security hole or fix it and let VMWare issue a patch/upgrade. After all it is backwards compatibility that keeps people on Windows in the first place.
Not how quickly I got downmodded for daring to put MSNBC in the same sentence as Fox? this place if so leftist it ain't funny, not that I care as I'm a "common sense" centrist which sadly doesn't have a party anymore, as BOTH sides have become so rooted in dogma and bullshit they both stink to high heaven.
As for games you really need to try what I do, I use a combo of Good Old Games and Amazon. GOG is the "anti-DRM" game site with ALL the games being completely DRM free, no activations, no need for cracks, no discs, nothing, and with Amazon it is simple to see if a game has activation bullshit by simply looking at the comments. If I look at the comments and see "GFWL! Don't buy!!" I simply walk away, as my experience with GFWL has been nothing but bad.
Finally I'd say even the BBC is starting to have more spin than I'd like, look at how quickly they jumped on the "Lynch wikileaks!" boat even though some of the leaks showed us fucking over the Brits (by selling the Russians all the data we had on British missiles to get them in on START) so frankly now for world news I go with al jazeera. Kinda sad when the only thing that is nearly spin free is the Arabic broadcasts, but from what I've seen their news is pretty much "boots on the ground" reporting what they see as opposed to the talking heads telling us what to think which has become the norm in the USA.
Exactly! I had a truly wonderful tutor for HS (eating pavement at 60MPH+ tends to tear up one somewhat) and she told me flat footed "I'm going to concentrate on math because honestly you and flowery prose don't mix" and she was absolutely right, I hated comp and strictly was a "noun verb noun" kind of guy, whereas I excelled at math and science.
Of course I thought it hilarious when at my year end test out one of the teachers accused me of cheating on the English portion because I used words so far above my peers. Ms Edwards (wonderful tutor..you rocked Ms Edwards!) took one look at my supposed "cheating" and laughed right at the teacher in front of me. She said "His mom was reading Asimov to him when other kids got "Horton hears a Who" but it is beyond easy to tell if Kevin wrote anything, as he strictly writes "noun verb noun" and that is what this is. You can't blame the kid because he reads higher books and frankly he deserves an apology" which I got.
The difference between a teacher and a great teacher is a great teacher learns enough about her students that she knows what they are and aren't capable of. Ms Edwards knew that getting me to think in flowery prose simply wasn't going to happen and with my love of all things tech was pointless so she concentrated on mathematics and science and gave me just enough English comp that I could use it when I needed it. But she was never insulting or made me feel like it wasn't possible for me to pick something up, she just knew "my brain didn't work that way" and tailored my education towards the things I excelled at while giving me enough of the others to get by.
Hi Mr AC! You know what I find hilarious about all the "GFWL/Online limited activation/DRM hell" bullshit? Is that five minutes after the games comes out there will be a "Razor1911 No activation all good LOL" and you know what? it will "just work" and will run better than the legitimate game thanks to losing all the DRM bloat. Yet again it shows legit customers get fucked, while pirates get the good stuff.
That is why I didn't buy Bioshock II even though I loved the first one and only buy from GOG and Amazon now. If I see "GFWL! DON'T BUY!" on the review page at Amazon it can go rot, that shit sucks. The one time I tried it I spent more time fight GFWL than I did fighting the bad guys in the game! Screw that mess. If I can't just slap on a NoDVD and play when I want they can go to hell. I bought it, its mine, I'm not paying for "limited use" activation crap!
As for TFA? "Fox gets as close to outright lying as possible to push an agenda" news at 11. Anyone that watches either Fox or MSNBC and expects anything other than "four alarm fire makes way for GLORIOUS new tractor factory!" is frankly deluding themselves. MSNBC gives you bleeding heart love the nanny state, Fox gives you bible thumping yay war rah rah. Does this surprise anyone?
Hell anyone that trusts the MSM with jack anymore has to be nuts. just look at how they all tripped over themselves to condemn Wikileaks for daring to tell us peasants anything that is going on with our tax money. I hadn't seen THAT much government booty kissing in decades. At least with Fox and MSNBC you know it is nothing but propaganda. The sad part is that anyone would seriously consider either a source for news.
As long as your ISP (Which if you are in the USA is pretty much all of them) is still handing out and using IPV4 addresses you are just hunky dory bud. My guess is it'll be a couple more years before most USA ISPs are willing to flip the switch to IPV6 only, if they ever do. I mean hell, look how long it has taken to kill the damned floppy disc (I STILL find FDCs on new motherboards, what's the point when they all support USB firmware updating now?) and there is a hell of a lot more than will break switching to IPv6 than killing the floppy.
As for what it is, let your old pal Hairyfeet lay it down for you, nice and easy. The old IPv4 is 32bits, which means it has a max of 4.3 billion addresses, which thanks to everything trying to get on the net isn't enough supposedly. I say supposedly because last I read less than 15% of the addresses out there are actually in use and the rest are either vacant or held by squatters. If they would crack down on squatters and those that have been sitting on tons of addresses not being used we could probably get another 15+ years.
Now the new IPv6 is 128bits long, which equals a frankly too damned big to wrap your head around number of addresses, but it basically means you could give everyone and their dog thousands of addresses and never make a dent in the damned thing. But even though they could see the "uh oh" coming for...what? A decade and a half now? Someone got the bright idea not to bake in backwards compatibility with IPv4, which was frankly damned stupid IMHO. With a decade and a half if they would have baked it in everything now would simply ignore IPv6 and use the IPv4 wrapped in an IPv6 address and shit wouldn't break, but they didn't for whatever reason.
Which means when they finally DO flip the switch and force IPv6 only you, and me, and millions of other folks are gonna cause the biggest toxic waste dump on the third world since CRTs went out of style when all those millions of routers like yours and mine head straight to the trash. Sad we're gonna have to dump literally trainloads of working hardware into the dumpster, but with no backwards compatibility and the simple fact is despite what so many here keep saying (Its just firmware! Bullshit.) the vast majority of the under $80 routers out there simply don't have the RAM nor CPU nor NVRAM to do IPv6. Linksys, Trendnet/Zonenet, hell just about everyone short of a $100 Apple will be heading by boat to some waste polluted city to be stripped of metals just like the CRTs went.
TLDR? It'll work for now, but don't buy any new ones for a couple of years and if that one dies buy an Apple router.
Here let me help, BTW I'm not working for them, I just got tired of dealing with infected PCs and basically ran through just about every AV until I found the right one that worked for me and my family and users.
The link is here but for those that don't RTFL basically they have combined an AV using a default deny policy with a virtualized environment where the file system and registry is virtualized to the app being run. The big problem with many AV is they are basically blacklist so if an app doesn't match the list or get caught by heuristics they are boned, and Comodo takes the opposite approach by treating everything as potential malware and sandboxing it unless you specifically (which it will pop up with a box that will let you choose between "Always sandbox" always allow" or you can sandbox or allow once) tell it not to.
Personally I love the way Comodo does things, and it has worked wonders for my users. I just tell them "leave it in the sandbox" and everything works without biting them in the ass, and if they have one or two resource intensive apps like Photoshop or QuickBooks I run them once and tell Comodo not to sandbox those apps. Although frankly I think I'm gonna stop doing that as I haven't even noticed it slowing down my games thanks to its built in "game mode" that lowers resource intensive tasks while you game, pretty cool.
Hell it is 100% free for home OR business use, no restrictions (They make their money on the pro version with live support and with their server apps) so why not give it a spin? you have nothing to lose, and unlike some OTHER AVs I could name (cough cough...AVG) I have NEVER had an update screw up Windows, and I have been running it along with my family and customers for nearly 2 years now. No nagging, no emails, no limited updates, no resource hogging (currently using just 56Mb and 0% CPU), just a damned nice free AV.
If you or the user is on Vista/7 I recommend Comodo AV, If on XP I recommend the also free Comodo Internet Security, due to the fact the WinXP Firewall doesn't block outgoing and the firewall in Comodo IS is better than the XP one. For the ultimate "fool proof PC" you should pair it with the also free Comodo Time Machine which gives them a simple way if they manage to somehow bork Windows to be back up and running in minutes with NO skill required (just push F11 at boot, choose restore time, that's it) and is much better IMHO than System Restore. Hell they even make their own free browser based on Chromium with better security baked in, which I'm using right now and is actually quite nice and fast.
So give them a try and if you like it pass it around to your friends/family/coworkers. They really do make some really good products that take a lot of the risk out of Windows.
Or you can have it pretty butt simple (and free to boot!) by just giving your family/customers Comodo AV which by default runs everything in a sandbox unless you tell it not to. Makes it real easy to deal with those that are "clicky clicky" happy and since it has a whitelist of "known clean after scanning" Windows system files it doesn't interfere with things like Windows Update.
So if anybody here has friends/family or customers that get infected waaay too often, give Comodo AV a try. It is free, easy to install, its default are sensible and err on the side of caution, and so far none of my users have gotten a single bug in over a year since I switched them to it, and these folks could get more viruses than a Bangkok Whore, so that is saying something!
Well that and the fact that there are some seriously stupid users on Windows. Believe me I knowshe opened and ran a password protected zip file with me sitting right exactly there and telling her "What are you doing? Don't open that! It's a virus!" and I got "Its from my BFF Kim, and she wouldn't do that! Stop being so paranoid." and then promptly infected the living hell out of her machine.
So Linux guys, be happy where you are. Drop to your knees and thank RMS that Linux is still CLI heavy in Ubuntu if anything goes wrong, and the whole Linux setup seems "too hard" for the average Windows user. Be glad, oh dear Lord be glad. Because if you ever manage to lure them over the malware writers will be right behind them and your pretty OS will be turned into a giant festering turd. because users like that will happily run "Happy_Puppy.sh" or "Hot_Porn.py" and follow the nice instructions the virus writers hand them.
Hell you can write a Linux virus in 5 easy steps just by using the social engineering that I see every damned day on Windows. With those kinds of users all the fancy security in the world is worthless, because they are more than happy to follow instructions if they think they get a goodie at the end...shudder...
So while I'm glad that MSFT killed autorun frankly I can't remember the last time I saw it used as an attack vector on a PC I had to work on. Nowadays it is usually the "ZOMG! U got teh Viruz! Run this "Viruzkillz.exe" to kill it!!!" Or the classic "Having trouble viewing the free porn? Just run the "Supercodec.exe" to get all the free action right now!!!". Man they fall for those two every time..
I wonder how much profit Foxconn is making on the worker's misery? I mean Good Lord in the article you linked to it says they are talking of moving to Vietnam to lower production costs If this doesn't show this "free trade race to the bottom" benefits no one but the top 1% I don't know what does.
I mean China lets you dump toxic waste out the back door, pollute its air and rivers worse than the USA did in the 1800s, and treat workers little better than slaves, and that STILL isn't enough? What does Vietnam offer, one free child worker for every four purchased? The profit margins they must be making on the iShiny have got to be beyond insane, yet their greed still isn't satisfied. Is it any wonder so many see corporations as the embodiment of evil?
Hi Kalidor! It sounds like you and the others are jumping through some serious logic hoops trying to justify piracy which i doubt will fly in court anymore than the "You can use it for Linux ISOs" did for grokster.
Look, personally I think its ALL bullshit, the founding fathers never intended "forever minus a single day" copyrights and if anything thanks to fast and easy distribution I believe it should be less than what they originally set it, say 10 years tops. But that don't change the fact that the law as it is ain't on your side, and all the *.A.A will have to do is trot out a list (which they'll get during discovery) showing that not a single rewarded uploader was sharing legal content to have it shot all to shit.
Look, its like that guy that read all the laws on automatic machine guns and found they were all based on trigger pull so he built a Sten without a trigger and tried selling it. Sure by one interpretation of the law he was legal since there was no trigger pull involved, but that didn't keep the courts from shutting down his doors. I honestly doubt you believe the average judge is gonna buy your argument anymore than I do when they see how much content is being posted on Hotfile daily. DMCA notices don't mean shit if three seconds after "Inception 1080p rip" is taken down they simply allow someone to put up "Inception 1080p rip LOL!".
And I'm sure that through discovery they'll find that groups like Rapidshare and Hotfile and making all their money off of hot content which be honest...you KNOW this. You know it, I know it, it ain't some big secret here. They have just been able to skirt based on grey areas which I'm sure the courts will be closing but quick. All they have to do is see that 90%+ of the content that goes through their network is illegal to rule that there is no significant non infringing use. But again we all know this, so you want to snatch? Cool, I couldn't care less. but lets call a spade a spade, okay? Be honest, that's all I ask.
I don't know...imagine if Google, MSFT, and Apple got together and decided to kill them bastards dead and split the media access evenly amongst themselves? Google might not be able to do it solo, but you put those three together? They could do it. Apple could load iTunes to the brim, Google TV wouldn't have anymore BS, and MSFT would make the X360 a hell of an entertainment center. And all three in the past have been pissed off or pissed on by the MPAA or its members.
So I'd say its doable, but you'd really need Gates and Jobs back at the helm, because I don't see Ballmer and Cook having the stones. Page and Brin probably do though.
The problem at least here in the US is more and more carriers are going to metered billing to keep from actually having to reinvest their massive profits into their infrastructure and groups like Onlive are betting the farm on infrastructure that isn't there and likely won't be for the foreseeable future to most folks.
Just look at the stink with Comcast wanting paid for allowing Netflix, now imagine a service that blows through bandwidth so hard it makes Netflix look like passing GIFs on BBS. Does anybody seriously think this is gonna fly? How are they planning on getting the entire nation's ISPs to come together and use those massive profits for upgrades? OnLive just seems to be going "la la la I can't hear you" when it comes to that crucial fact, and unless they can afford to pay every single ISP to host an OnLive server locally the bandwidth will kill them. I just don't see this being sustainable for mobile or any other market short of someone with Google money rolling out their own fiber with it.
Hi DRSquare! In this case while what you are saying appears to be true, if you look at it logically, you are forgetting something about us hairless monkeys that makes all the difference here...personality sells and what you need is for the athlete to be both good at the game AND a personality to put butts in the seats.
This is why players like Elway and Montana are remembered long after they are out of the game, because they had personality which made them more than great athletes it made them entertaining and that is ultimately what is it about, no different than pro wrestling although I'll get labeled hater just for daring to say it.
So while the games may not be rigged (well most of the time, after reading "North Dallas Forty" I'm not so sure on some of them) winning will only get so many butts in the seats if the players have the personalities of rocks, you need a draw, someone the fans can root for. Be it the plucky kid that is green but has a good heart, the grizzled veteran trying to have that one great season before hanging up his cleats, or the rock star with the million dollar arm that throws like there is just no tomorrow people want to root for the hero. And THAT is what adds up to a serious difference in profits, especially with items like merchandise. Hell look at how many bought 49ers stuff with Montana was king, or Dallas gear when they had Staubach/Dorsett? That is serious money for the owners, which equals serious money for the player that grabs them headlines.
Hi MR AC! While I agree with most of what you are saying, the big "uh oh" that Hotfile did was this: they reward popular uploaders which kinda blows all your other arguments out of the water. Because by doing that they aren't just "charging for the bandwidth" they are actively encouraging people to upload...well...hot files.
Because doing so gets them bonuses they otherwise wouldn't get if they uploaded legal files because those Linux ISO or tunes of your band will NEVER get even a fiftieth of the hits say the latest HD Rip will get. It's just common sense.
So I'd say THAT is the line where they screwed up and will probably get bit in the ass. With the others IIRC the only "rewards" are for buying a membership which just as you say pays for more bandwidth and can be easily explained as such. But by rewarding those that upload popular files simply for that reason? Well THAT was some kind of stupid.
Well if it is like my shop we don't even carry laptops, instead we order them based on what the customers want. I learned a long time ago that laptops are here today, old later today and the prices are so volatile carrying any stock of the things ends up biting you in the ass.
But for just $65 over the cost of the laptop shipped I give my customers the "it just works" package, where it is clean as a whistle, it has a real full AV, not some time limited crap, it is programmed to update, clean, defrag the reg and HDD, and will even check once a week to see if there are updates to the most popular third party apps like flash, hell I even give them a full burning suite.
So I bet if you talked to your local mom&pop they probably have something similar set up, and once you've had one with the "it just works" setup you really don't want to go back. I've got a customer about to hand me $150 and a box of parts because he wanted a new desktop to go with his new widescreen and after setting up his laptop he'd rather pay the difference and have a "it just works" desktop than deal with all the bloatware and setup crap. When I'm done all he has to do is flip the switch and go, and people are happy to pay for that ease of use, which I'm happy to provide;-)
Actually I'd say its a smart move. After all who has more to lose LG, who gets but a tiny fraction of their money from BD players and last I heard their big markets were smart phones and LCD TVs? Or Sony, who has a pretty big chunk of their business tied to the PS3 and who is finally making them at a profit and still needs to catch up to the X360 in terms of sales? If this goes through, even for only a month or two it'll hurt Sony bad with a capital B, whereas banning all LG BD players won't even make a dent in their quarterly reports.
But this to me points out something that is wrong with our current patent system, in that instead of protecting the little guy patents have become WMDs to be trotted out by the megacorps. The worst part about it isn't when the megacorps fight each other like King Kong VS Godzilla, it is how they use them to pretty much insure the field stays amongst themselves. I mean can you even imagine trying to come out with a new graphics card design with all the patents the big three have? Or trying to come up with a new X86 like Cyrix and Winchip did back in the day? If you had less than 100 billion the lawyers would crush you like a bug!
That is why I think the USPTO needs to be a hell of a lot more stingy when it comes to handing out patents, and software patents needs to DIAF. Throughout our history we have always had to "stand on the shoulders of giants" to reach new heights, but with the rise of the multinational corporation those shoulders now have patents up the ying yang. That is why I think once they get up to speed the next big breakthroughs will probably come from India and China, simply because there you'll be able to try new ideas and build upon existing tech without an army of lawyers and a mountain of cash. I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese just hack in a subset of X86 into those new Dragon CPUs they are working on, giving them the best of ARM and X86 and giving us the finger. After all they can do it, whereas unless you are AMD or Intel you simply can't even try here, the lawyers will bury you.
Sorry about that but I've been given the "You should get a 5770" lecture about 250 times now and reaaaallly didn't want to hear it yet again. And I guess/. just doesn't have the Greybeards anymore, or they would have gotten the "Happy BDay Mr President" was an old JFK joke because that is what Monroe gave him for his BDay. So no my GF isn't going to show up in a ribbon. And for the other poster it is every weekend now that she had to move 200 miles away to take care of her dad, but BDays are special, with steak and lots of being treated like a king, gotta love BDays.
You know you are getting old when you have to explain your jokes, it is like when I make my usual "about as useful and future proof as an 8-track" comment and all the guys around me go "What's an 8-track?". Hell my kids don't even know what an LP is! The only comfort I get is knowing their kids will go "What are DVDs? You mean you got movies on plastic? Why? Did your Internet not work?"
Funny how I got modded down for pointing this out, isn't it? BTW you brought up Ubuntu, which Linux guys ALWAYS trot out as "See we can do dumb!" but you are wrong, oh so wrong. You see you will need to dumb down Ubuntu another 4 or 5 levels before it will be acceptable by Joe Consumer!
Example: Why do you think Dell throws up warnings all over the place if you try to buy a Dell by just browsing to their site? Did MSFT throw them a bribe? Nope, they have enough experience to know as I do that home users don't even know WHAT an OS is and think they are all the same. I hear a dozen times a day "it has Windows" which could mean Win95-Win 7, and the user has NO clue there are any differences! So you will either have to make installing Windows software seamless ala ReactOS or put up a dozen "This is NOT Windows!" signs when they attempt it or they will BLAME YOU.
Another Example: As you say Ubuntu is just "debian with pretty" which makes it completely unacceptable to the vast majority of home consumers, why? Because Ubuntu is STILL CLI heavy and home users won't stand for it. Contrary to/. groupthink home users will NOT learn and have NO desire to be anything like the nerds here. Think about your last Debian Apt Upgrade..did you use CLI even once? Have you needed or used CLI in the last 6 months? If so it is NOT ready for home users end of discussion. Hell most home users won't go near Windows control panel because it is scary, you think you can drop them in a 70s era term and expect them to deal? Get real!
So if anything your post proves my point: What Linux users consider "easy" and "noobish" is about 100 levels more difficult than a home user will deal with. If it has more complexity than your average DVD player they won't have it. I have Windows users that haven't done anything but run their programs for years between problems, you just don't get that with Linux that frankly isn't designed to be a desktop but a server anyway. I sat up a half a dozen boxes here at the shop and ran Ubuntu on them from 6-9.04 and not a single one survived the 6 month update cycle without "something" getting broke. Sound, wireless (a lot) video (everything but old Intel IGPs) always something broke and the first and only answer was "open up bash and type.
So I hate to burst yours and the other Linux guys bubbles, but you say "open up bash and type" to a home user, you know what the very next words out of their mouth will be? "How much for Windows Home again?"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the courts shot that down when Apple tried to claim the desktop?
While I couldn't give a crap about yet another Tetris ripoff (Advice to author...TETRIS SUCKED! If you are gonna rip something off, at least make it something good like Contra or something! Sheesh!) what I do care about is companies trying to patent/copyright ordinary things like blocks. If we don't watch it corps will just patent/copyright every damned thing and you won't be able to do squat without cutting a check...or are we already there?
I look at it as a "some good some bad" kinda thing. On the good side whereas I used to have to blow a couple of hundred every year and a half just to have decent framerates I've been playing for nearly 3 years now on an HD4650 with decent FPS, and will be getting an upgrade* to a 4830 from my GF (along with a nice home cooked dinner and a weekend of wild monkey sex, yay me!) in a couple of weeks for my BDay. So cheap game playing (along with the cheaper game prices) I would put as a plus.
On the downside is what TFA is talking about, but frankly I've found the biggest offenders were shitty games anyway, so that is just like the rotten cherry on the shit sundae. For example I picked up turning point:fall of liberty in the bargain bin and it would have actually been enjoyable if it weren't for the fact that without an X360 controller the thing is completely unplayable. It is obvious they just tacked on PC controls without actually seeing that they worked, which of course they don't. But then again I've found plenty of bargain titles with GREAT controls, like the "Just Cause" series, which if you haven't tried it...imagine you mixed GTA and being a superhero, that's the only way I know to describe it. Stealing a chopper in midair is too much fun!
But considering how many titles we PC gamers have to choose from dealing with the occasional shitty port seems like a small price to pay. Between Amazon and GOG I've got more games than I know what to do with, I don't have to spend crazy money just toi have some crazy fun,...ehhh..we don't have much to complain about really. It ain't like the old days where you better break out your wallet if you wanted more than a slideshow from the current games, which I'll take over the occasional console port suckage any day.
*Yes if it were me I'd have bought a 5770 for around $120, but my GF has had it rough at work lately and I wanted to make it a cheap gift from her. I told her I'd be happy with her nakked wearing a ribbon, happy BDay Mr President optional but appreciated, but that is my bonus gift apparently and she wants one that is presentable in front of my family, hence the 4830.
Not only that but with control of the last mile in the hands of a couple of corps and cherry picking many rural places get no choice or outrageous prices.
A friend tried to service his area by talking his boss into going in on a T-1 and subletting use, but the local teleco (who only offers $60 a month dialup to those not in town) found out and pulled his access to the backbone, with a "just try and sue us" nasty letter to boot. His lawyer said "sure you'll win, but it'll cost a million and a half and a decade in court and they KNOW you can't afford it" so now those folks are still stuck on dialup because the teleco refuses to upgrade their lines or add any DSLAMs and they and the local cableco haven't moved an inch in ANY direction in nearly 20 years here.
So I'm ALL for it. Use that money to lay broadband from coast to coast, and then let the monopolies compete. If they want to be the only provider in an area? Well then they better lay down 50Mbps fiber before we get there and offer fair prices. Because as it is in rural areas like I'm in there is very little service, the service offered is crazy priced, which keeps the poor from having any access, and it is just gouging all around. i mean $67 for DSL, and $103 for basic cable (which they won't unbundle so you HAVE to take it) with Internet? Talk about price gouging!
Do you want to pay $400 instead of $350 for the same machine? No, well say hello to bloatware! It isn't that these guys just decided "Hey,lets raise our support costs and piss off our customers but make a little scratch out the gate" no, it WAS US that demanded it thanks to the "race to the bottom".
There are literally thousands of places online you can buy bloatware free computers, or you can stop by your local mom and pop shop and have a nice PC custom built to YOUR specs (just finishing up a nice $579 quad core for a customer here myself) but all of these will cost more than the bottom of the barrel HP or Dell, because the bloatware allows for lower prices by paying the OEM upfront to install crap. Last I head the profit margin on a low end Dell was something like $8, yet the bloatware netted $50, that is because the bloatware lowers the selling price thus letting Dell undercut everybody but the other giant OEMs. Of course I love it because people get pissed and bring it to me to clean it, thanks Dell!
And OT but when is/. gonna fix these ^%$&^$&^$ comment boxes? The other boxes were perfectly nice and worked well (except for idle) and now I have to wonder now that the comments are dropping all over the place that folks aren't getting fed up like I am in typing and squinting when we have giant screens. C'mon/. you can do better! Hell if you can't hire one of the real coders here and they'll be happy to do it right!
As a guy that deals with Windows home users all day, allow me to answer that: It takes out about 10 minutes of arguing with a customer over the phone on" how to get the CD thingie to work".
Before autorun it would be "Okay do you see My computer on the desktop? No? Okay go to start>computer....the start button...the little round button thing in the lower left corner...no the left, that is the taskbar on the right where the clock is..okay you found the start button now go to computer..on the upper right side...no the right" Get the picture? It is so much easier to say "stick in the disc, a menu will pop up, go "clicky clicky next next next".
Am I proud that we have to lower security in Windows? No, but after dealing with so many users that frankly couldn't find their ass with Mapquest and a GPS unit I understand, oh Lord how I understand. Sadly short of setting everyone up with thin clients (or using SteadyState, which MSFT seriously boned the pooch by getting rid of thanks to WGA BS in Win 7) to make a machine useful for the clueless, which lets face it are the ones driving sales in the first place, you have to allow stupid shit like autorun. Otherwise you get what I put up above, which is conversations I've had WAAAAY too often dealing with home users.
Which is why I've been saying for years Linux guys need to quit with the "Year of the Linux desktop" nonsense, because for Linux to reach that point they'll have to embrace all that they hate about Windows. You can give up CLI, home users won't touch it. Give up complexity, because home users want "clicky clicky" shiny happy GUIs. Better add in the cruft of backwards compatibility as well, as users HATE having to learn new things and will want to keep their old apps forever.
Doesn't sound too fun, does it Linux guys? Believe methey simply have NO desire to learn and hate anything more complex than a toaster, which is why you have to have autorun like in TFA. I've had to deal with customers actually forcing me to re-enable autorun after Windows disabled it for security, as they'd rather have the risk than have to open up My Computer.
So Linux guys, next time you think everyone should use Linux just think of some of the totally clueless Windows users you've had to deal with and then imagine having to dumb down Linux until they could use it. Scary damned thought ain't it? Hell that kind of stupidity spreads like the damned clap, to where you even get total morons in places where they shouldn't be. Tomorrow I get to go to a customer's house and have it out with the local WISP because they in their infinite wisdom say "computers shouldn't have firewalls because it "breaks the wifi".. I'm sure that after a couple of rounds of arguing with these braintrusts I've have a really nice headache. I don't even want to know how many infected machines I'm gonna have to deal with because this numbnuts are telling people to shut off Windows firewall "so they can have wifi". God save me from morons!
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Because like everything else in the race to the bottom they used the absolute least powerful hardware that would still function. It is obvious you've never taken a hardware appraisal of the under $80 routers because we are talking maybe 2Mb of NVRAM and a Mb of RAM along with the cheapest shit 200Mhz or less ARM CPU.
These things will actually overheat if you hook 4 PCs to them and try to pump some serious data through them, you honestly think they'll handle a quadrupling of the address space? Sure you can TRY to update the firmware, but I can tell you what will happen on the vast majority you try it on: You'll have a router that goes from handling a couple of PCs full time and other devices occasionally to a device that runs hot as a firecracker and shuts down after a few hours, and that is just with a single PC. Add in mixed address on the LAN (because some devices like networked TVs and DVD players won't be able to handle IPV6 either) and the resulting overhead and you'll have a router that will be lucky to run 8 hours without dropping packets and stuttering.
The simple fact is these sub $80 routers were made with just enough hardware to barely do the task at hand and I don't care how well you optimize the code the CPU simply won't handle the overhead. Most have little specialized chips built in that take the load off NAT so dropping that won't help. Look at it this way: No matter how well you optimize the engine an S10 just can't go from hauling a little pull behind to hauling single wides, it just ain't got the muscle. If you look at the guts of these sub $80 routers, which are the vast majority currently in use (and most of which don't support wwdrt or tomato either) it just don't have the resources to do the job. It will be cheaper and easier for both the OEMs and users to simply dump it on the third world's doorstep than to try to force hardware that slow to do a job that it was never envisioned doing.
Finally as for "people will be going from G to N anyway"? You have NO idea how many non wireless routers are out there running in these homes and SMBs, do you? We are probably talking a good 50-100 of them for every wireless router. Thanks to their cheapness and easy availability these things have bloomed all over the place and if it wasn't for IPV6 not having backwards compatibility (which like dropping NAT in IPV6 is stupid and based on engineering prejudice IMHO) these machines would probably run for another decade, but all those millions will be dropped ON TOP of all the wireless routers. think about how many CRTs you saw dumped when LCDs became affordable? It will be JUST like that. The amount of waste generated when the switch is flipped is gonna be truly mind boggling, with routers and switches (hell I even know a few places still using hubs on low resource requiring back ends) of all makes and sizes all hitting the dump almost on the same day. It'll be a mess no matter how you look at it.
I still think MY idea for a new /. MSFT icon is best...Picture Ballmer's head with his tongue sticking out wearing an "I Heart Apple!" beanie. Considering how "me too!" MSFT has been since Ballmer took over from old Bill I think it would fit the company direction perfectly. Besides it would be karma for the way we MSFT users and admins made fun of Apple when the Pepsi guy was running it into the ground. Now the shoe is on the other foot as they got the visionary back and MSFT got taken over by another Pepsi guy.
As for TFA, don't VMWare View customers get upgrades? I thought that was pretty much SOP for companies like VMWare, you buy the product you get updates and upgrades. Hell of a lot better than Quickbooks whose standard answer is "Buy the new version!" at several hundred a pop when they can't bother to provide updates to fix their bad code.
That is why one of my most popular setups right now is dual boots, as it is cheaper to buy XP Home licenses and set up dual boots on the new Win 7 machines than it is to upgrade to the latest Quickbooks, especially if they have one of the pro packages. It is a PITA but I can see why SMBs are hooked on QB like crack, as you can run a small business and have the whole thing automated and taken care of by a single "Quickbooks girl" (for some reason it is ALWAYS a girl) and it eliminates a TON of paperwork. At least the VMWare View users can just go get the upgrade and be done with it.
As for blaming MSFT that really ain't fair. Did anybody here look at the leaked Win2K source code? MSFT already jumps through crazy hoops trying to keep some of the badly coded third party stuff working and lets face it, Windows wasn't made to be VMed in the first place. I'm sure it probably came down to leave a gaping security hole or fix it and let VMWare issue a patch/upgrade. After all it is backwards compatibility that keeps people on Windows in the first place.
Not how quickly I got downmodded for daring to put MSNBC in the same sentence as Fox? this place if so leftist it ain't funny, not that I care as I'm a "common sense" centrist which sadly doesn't have a party anymore, as BOTH sides have become so rooted in dogma and bullshit they both stink to high heaven.
As for games you really need to try what I do, I use a combo of Good Old Games and Amazon. GOG is the "anti-DRM" game site with ALL the games being completely DRM free, no activations, no need for cracks, no discs, nothing, and with Amazon it is simple to see if a game has activation bullshit by simply looking at the comments. If I look at the comments and see "GFWL! Don't buy!!" I simply walk away, as my experience with GFWL has been nothing but bad.
Finally I'd say even the BBC is starting to have more spin than I'd like, look at how quickly they jumped on the "Lynch wikileaks!" boat even though some of the leaks showed us fucking over the Brits (by selling the Russians all the data we had on British missiles to get them in on START) so frankly now for world news I go with al jazeera. Kinda sad when the only thing that is nearly spin free is the Arabic broadcasts, but from what I've seen their news is pretty much "boots on the ground" reporting what they see as opposed to the talking heads telling us what to think which has become the norm in the USA.
Exactly! I had a truly wonderful tutor for HS (eating pavement at 60MPH+ tends to tear up one somewhat) and she told me flat footed "I'm going to concentrate on math because honestly you and flowery prose don't mix" and she was absolutely right, I hated comp and strictly was a "noun verb noun" kind of guy, whereas I excelled at math and science.
Of course I thought it hilarious when at my year end test out one of the teachers accused me of cheating on the English portion because I used words so far above my peers. Ms Edwards (wonderful tutor..you rocked Ms Edwards!) took one look at my supposed "cheating" and laughed right at the teacher in front of me. She said "His mom was reading Asimov to him when other kids got "Horton hears a Who" but it is beyond easy to tell if Kevin wrote anything, as he strictly writes "noun verb noun" and that is what this is. You can't blame the kid because he reads higher books and frankly he deserves an apology" which I got.
The difference between a teacher and a great teacher is a great teacher learns enough about her students that she knows what they are and aren't capable of. Ms Edwards knew that getting me to think in flowery prose simply wasn't going to happen and with my love of all things tech was pointless so she concentrated on mathematics and science and gave me just enough English comp that I could use it when I needed it. But she was never insulting or made me feel like it wasn't possible for me to pick something up, she just knew "my brain didn't work that way" and tailored my education towards the things I excelled at while giving me enough of the others to get by.
Hi Mr AC! You know what I find hilarious about all the "GFWL/Online limited activation/DRM hell" bullshit? Is that five minutes after the games comes out there will be a "Razor1911 No activation all good LOL" and you know what? it will "just work" and will run better than the legitimate game thanks to losing all the DRM bloat. Yet again it shows legit customers get fucked, while pirates get the good stuff.
That is why I didn't buy Bioshock II even though I loved the first one and only buy from GOG and Amazon now. If I see "GFWL! DON'T BUY!" on the review page at Amazon it can go rot, that shit sucks. The one time I tried it I spent more time fight GFWL than I did fighting the bad guys in the game! Screw that mess. If I can't just slap on a NoDVD and play when I want they can go to hell. I bought it, its mine, I'm not paying for "limited use" activation crap!
As for TFA? "Fox gets as close to outright lying as possible to push an agenda" news at 11. Anyone that watches either Fox or MSNBC and expects anything other than "four alarm fire makes way for GLORIOUS new tractor factory!" is frankly deluding themselves. MSNBC gives you bleeding heart love the nanny state, Fox gives you bible thumping yay war rah rah. Does this surprise anyone?
Hell anyone that trusts the MSM with jack anymore has to be nuts. just look at how they all tripped over themselves to condemn Wikileaks for daring to tell us peasants anything that is going on with our tax money. I hadn't seen THAT much government booty kissing in decades. At least with Fox and MSNBC you know it is nothing but propaganda. The sad part is that anyone would seriously consider either a source for news.
As long as your ISP (Which if you are in the USA is pretty much all of them) is still handing out and using IPV4 addresses you are just hunky dory bud. My guess is it'll be a couple more years before most USA ISPs are willing to flip the switch to IPV6 only, if they ever do. I mean hell, look how long it has taken to kill the damned floppy disc (I STILL find FDCs on new motherboards, what's the point when they all support USB firmware updating now?) and there is a hell of a lot more than will break switching to IPv6 than killing the floppy.
As for what it is, let your old pal Hairyfeet lay it down for you, nice and easy. The old IPv4 is 32bits, which means it has a max of 4.3 billion addresses, which thanks to everything trying to get on the net isn't enough supposedly. I say supposedly because last I read less than 15% of the addresses out there are actually in use and the rest are either vacant or held by squatters. If they would crack down on squatters and those that have been sitting on tons of addresses not being used we could probably get another 15+ years.
Now the new IPv6 is 128bits long, which equals a frankly too damned big to wrap your head around number of addresses, but it basically means you could give everyone and their dog thousands of addresses and never make a dent in the damned thing. But even though they could see the "uh oh" coming for...what? A decade and a half now? Someone got the bright idea not to bake in backwards compatibility with IPv4, which was frankly damned stupid IMHO. With a decade and a half if they would have baked it in everything now would simply ignore IPv6 and use the IPv4 wrapped in an IPv6 address and shit wouldn't break, but they didn't for whatever reason.
Which means when they finally DO flip the switch and force IPv6 only you, and me, and millions of other folks are gonna cause the biggest toxic waste dump on the third world since CRTs went out of style when all those millions of routers like yours and mine head straight to the trash. Sad we're gonna have to dump literally trainloads of working hardware into the dumpster, but with no backwards compatibility and the simple fact is despite what so many here keep saying (Its just firmware! Bullshit.) the vast majority of the under $80 routers out there simply don't have the RAM nor CPU nor NVRAM to do IPv6. Linksys, Trendnet/Zonenet, hell just about everyone short of a $100 Apple will be heading by boat to some waste polluted city to be stripped of metals just like the CRTs went.
TLDR? It'll work for now, but don't buy any new ones for a couple of years and if that one dies buy an Apple router.
Here let me help, BTW I'm not working for them, I just got tired of dealing with infected PCs and basically ran through just about every AV until I found the right one that worked for me and my family and users.
The link is here but for those that don't RTFL basically they have combined an AV using a default deny policy with a virtualized environment where the file system and registry is virtualized to the app being run. The big problem with many AV is they are basically blacklist so if an app doesn't match the list or get caught by heuristics they are boned, and Comodo takes the opposite approach by treating everything as potential malware and sandboxing it unless you specifically (which it will pop up with a box that will let you choose between "Always sandbox" always allow" or you can sandbox or allow once) tell it not to.
Personally I love the way Comodo does things, and it has worked wonders for my users. I just tell them "leave it in the sandbox" and everything works without biting them in the ass, and if they have one or two resource intensive apps like Photoshop or QuickBooks I run them once and tell Comodo not to sandbox those apps. Although frankly I think I'm gonna stop doing that as I haven't even noticed it slowing down my games thanks to its built in "game mode" that lowers resource intensive tasks while you game, pretty cool.
Hell it is 100% free for home OR business use, no restrictions (They make their money on the pro version with live support and with their server apps) so why not give it a spin? you have nothing to lose, and unlike some OTHER AVs I could name (cough cough...AVG) I have NEVER had an update screw up Windows, and I have been running it along with my family and customers for nearly 2 years now. No nagging, no emails, no limited updates, no resource hogging (currently using just 56Mb and 0% CPU), just a damned nice free AV.
If you or the user is on Vista/7 I recommend Comodo AV, If on XP I recommend the also free Comodo Internet Security, due to the fact the WinXP Firewall doesn't block outgoing and the firewall in Comodo IS is better than the XP one. For the ultimate "fool proof PC" you should pair it with the also free Comodo Time Machine which gives them a simple way if they manage to somehow bork Windows to be back up and running in minutes with NO skill required (just push F11 at boot, choose restore time, that's it) and is much better IMHO than System Restore. Hell they even make their own free browser based on Chromium with better security baked in, which I'm using right now and is actually quite nice and fast.
So give them a try and if you like it pass it around to your friends/family/coworkers. They really do make some really good products that take a lot of the risk out of Windows.
Or you can have it pretty butt simple (and free to boot!) by just giving your family/customers Comodo AV which by default runs everything in a sandbox unless you tell it not to. Makes it real easy to deal with those that are "clicky clicky" happy and since it has a whitelist of "known clean after scanning" Windows system files it doesn't interfere with things like Windows Update.
So if anybody here has friends/family or customers that get infected waaay too often, give Comodo AV a try. It is free, easy to install, its default are sensible and err on the side of caution, and so far none of my users have gotten a single bug in over a year since I switched them to it, and these folks could get more viruses than a Bangkok Whore, so that is saying something!
Well that and the fact that there are some seriously stupid users on Windows. Believe me I knowshe opened and ran a password protected zip file with me sitting right exactly there and telling her "What are you doing? Don't open that! It's a virus!" and I got "Its from my BFF Kim, and she wouldn't do that! Stop being so paranoid." and then promptly infected the living hell out of her machine.
So Linux guys, be happy where you are. Drop to your knees and thank RMS that Linux is still CLI heavy in Ubuntu if anything goes wrong, and the whole Linux setup seems "too hard" for the average Windows user. Be glad, oh dear Lord be glad. Because if you ever manage to lure them over the malware writers will be right behind them and your pretty OS will be turned into a giant festering turd. because users like that will happily run "Happy_Puppy.sh" or "Hot_Porn.py" and follow the nice instructions the virus writers hand them.
Hell you can write a Linux virus in 5 easy steps just by using the social engineering that I see every damned day on Windows. With those kinds of users all the fancy security in the world is worthless, because they are more than happy to follow instructions if they think they get a goodie at the end...shudder...
So while I'm glad that MSFT killed autorun frankly I can't remember the last time I saw it used as an attack vector on a PC I had to work on. Nowadays it is usually the "ZOMG! U got teh Viruz! Run this "Viruzkillz.exe" to kill it!!!" Or the classic "Having trouble viewing the free porn? Just run the "Supercodec.exe" to get all the free action right now!!!". Man they fall for those two every time..
I wonder how much profit Foxconn is making on the worker's misery? I mean Good Lord in the article you linked to it says they are talking of moving to Vietnam to lower production costs If this doesn't show this "free trade race to the bottom" benefits no one but the top 1% I don't know what does.
I mean China lets you dump toxic waste out the back door, pollute its air and rivers worse than the USA did in the 1800s, and treat workers little better than slaves, and that STILL isn't enough? What does Vietnam offer, one free child worker for every four purchased? The profit margins they must be making on the iShiny have got to be beyond insane, yet their greed still isn't satisfied. Is it any wonder so many see corporations as the embodiment of evil?
Hi Kalidor! It sounds like you and the others are jumping through some serious logic hoops trying to justify piracy which i doubt will fly in court anymore than the "You can use it for Linux ISOs" did for grokster.
Look, personally I think its ALL bullshit, the founding fathers never intended "forever minus a single day" copyrights and if anything thanks to fast and easy distribution I believe it should be less than what they originally set it, say 10 years tops. But that don't change the fact that the law as it is ain't on your side, and all the *.A.A will have to do is trot out a list (which they'll get during discovery) showing that not a single rewarded uploader was sharing legal content to have it shot all to shit.
Look, its like that guy that read all the laws on automatic machine guns and found they were all based on trigger pull so he built a Sten without a trigger and tried selling it. Sure by one interpretation of the law he was legal since there was no trigger pull involved, but that didn't keep the courts from shutting down his doors. I honestly doubt you believe the average judge is gonna buy your argument anymore than I do when they see how much content is being posted on Hotfile daily. DMCA notices don't mean shit if three seconds after "Inception 1080p rip" is taken down they simply allow someone to put up "Inception 1080p rip LOL!".
And I'm sure that through discovery they'll find that groups like Rapidshare and Hotfile and making all their money off of hot content which be honest...you KNOW this. You know it, I know it, it ain't some big secret here. They have just been able to skirt based on grey areas which I'm sure the courts will be closing but quick. All they have to do is see that 90%+ of the content that goes through their network is illegal to rule that there is no significant non infringing use. But again we all know this, so you want to snatch? Cool, I couldn't care less. but lets call a spade a spade, okay? Be honest, that's all I ask.
I don't know...imagine if Google, MSFT, and Apple got together and decided to kill them bastards dead and split the media access evenly amongst themselves? Google might not be able to do it solo, but you put those three together? They could do it. Apple could load iTunes to the brim, Google TV wouldn't have anymore BS, and MSFT would make the X360 a hell of an entertainment center. And all three in the past have been pissed off or pissed on by the MPAA or its members.
So I'd say its doable, but you'd really need Gates and Jobs back at the helm, because I don't see Ballmer and Cook having the stones. Page and Brin probably do though.
The problem at least here in the US is more and more carriers are going to metered billing to keep from actually having to reinvest their massive profits into their infrastructure and groups like Onlive are betting the farm on infrastructure that isn't there and likely won't be for the foreseeable future to most folks.
Just look at the stink with Comcast wanting paid for allowing Netflix, now imagine a service that blows through bandwidth so hard it makes Netflix look like passing GIFs on BBS. Does anybody seriously think this is gonna fly? How are they planning on getting the entire nation's ISPs to come together and use those massive profits for upgrades? OnLive just seems to be going "la la la I can't hear you" when it comes to that crucial fact, and unless they can afford to pay every single ISP to host an OnLive server locally the bandwidth will kill them. I just don't see this being sustainable for mobile or any other market short of someone with Google money rolling out their own fiber with it.
Hi DRSquare! In this case while what you are saying appears to be true, if you look at it logically, you are forgetting something about us hairless monkeys that makes all the difference here...personality sells and what you need is for the athlete to be both good at the game AND a personality to put butts in the seats.
This is why players like Elway and Montana are remembered long after they are out of the game, because they had personality which made them more than great athletes it made them entertaining and that is ultimately what is it about, no different than pro wrestling although I'll get labeled hater just for daring to say it.
So while the games may not be rigged (well most of the time, after reading "North Dallas Forty" I'm not so sure on some of them) winning will only get so many butts in the seats if the players have the personalities of rocks, you need a draw, someone the fans can root for. Be it the plucky kid that is green but has a good heart, the grizzled veteran trying to have that one great season before hanging up his cleats, or the rock star with the million dollar arm that throws like there is just no tomorrow people want to root for the hero. And THAT is what adds up to a serious difference in profits, especially with items like merchandise. Hell look at how many bought 49ers stuff with Montana was king, or Dallas gear when they had Staubach/Dorsett? That is serious money for the owners, which equals serious money for the player that grabs them headlines.
Hi MR AC! While I agree with most of what you are saying, the big "uh oh" that Hotfile did was this: they reward popular uploaders which kinda blows all your other arguments out of the water. Because by doing that they aren't just "charging for the bandwidth" they are actively encouraging people to upload...well...hot files.
Because doing so gets them bonuses they otherwise wouldn't get if they uploaded legal files because those Linux ISO or tunes of your band will NEVER get even a fiftieth of the hits say the latest HD Rip will get. It's just common sense.
So I'd say THAT is the line where they screwed up and will probably get bit in the ass. With the others IIRC the only "rewards" are for buying a membership which just as you say pays for more bandwidth and can be easily explained as such. But by rewarding those that upload popular files simply for that reason? Well THAT was some kind of stupid.
Well if it is like my shop we don't even carry laptops, instead we order them based on what the customers want. I learned a long time ago that laptops are here today, old later today and the prices are so volatile carrying any stock of the things ends up biting you in the ass.
But for just $65 over the cost of the laptop shipped I give my customers the "it just works" package, where it is clean as a whistle, it has a real full AV, not some time limited crap, it is programmed to update, clean, defrag the reg and HDD, and will even check once a week to see if there are updates to the most popular third party apps like flash, hell I even give them a full burning suite.
So I bet if you talked to your local mom&pop they probably have something similar set up, and once you've had one with the "it just works" setup you really don't want to go back. I've got a customer about to hand me $150 and a box of parts because he wanted a new desktop to go with his new widescreen and after setting up his laptop he'd rather pay the difference and have a "it just works" desktop than deal with all the bloatware and setup crap. When I'm done all he has to do is flip the switch and go, and people are happy to pay for that ease of use, which I'm happy to provide ;-)
Actually I'd say its a smart move. After all who has more to lose LG, who gets but a tiny fraction of their money from BD players and last I heard their big markets were smart phones and LCD TVs? Or Sony, who has a pretty big chunk of their business tied to the PS3 and who is finally making them at a profit and still needs to catch up to the X360 in terms of sales? If this goes through, even for only a month or two it'll hurt Sony bad with a capital B, whereas banning all LG BD players won't even make a dent in their quarterly reports.
But this to me points out something that is wrong with our current patent system, in that instead of protecting the little guy patents have become WMDs to be trotted out by the megacorps. The worst part about it isn't when the megacorps fight each other like King Kong VS Godzilla, it is how they use them to pretty much insure the field stays amongst themselves. I mean can you even imagine trying to come out with a new graphics card design with all the patents the big three have? Or trying to come up with a new X86 like Cyrix and Winchip did back in the day? If you had less than 100 billion the lawyers would crush you like a bug!
That is why I think the USPTO needs to be a hell of a lot more stingy when it comes to handing out patents, and software patents needs to DIAF. Throughout our history we have always had to "stand on the shoulders of giants" to reach new heights, but with the rise of the multinational corporation those shoulders now have patents up the ying yang. That is why I think once they get up to speed the next big breakthroughs will probably come from India and China, simply because there you'll be able to try new ideas and build upon existing tech without an army of lawyers and a mountain of cash. I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese just hack in a subset of X86 into those new Dragon CPUs they are working on, giving them the best of ARM and X86 and giving us the finger. After all they can do it, whereas unless you are AMD or Intel you simply can't even try here, the lawyers will bury you.
Sorry about that but I've been given the "You should get a 5770" lecture about 250 times now and reaaaallly didn't want to hear it yet again. And I guess /. just doesn't have the Greybeards anymore, or they would have gotten the "Happy BDay Mr President" was an old JFK joke because that is what Monroe gave him for his BDay. So no my GF isn't going to show up in a ribbon. And for the other poster it is every weekend now that she had to move 200 miles away to take care of her dad, but BDays are special, with steak and lots of being treated like a king, gotta love BDays.
You know you are getting old when you have to explain your jokes, it is like when I make my usual "about as useful and future proof as an 8-track" comment and all the guys around me go "What's an 8-track?". Hell my kids don't even know what an LP is! The only comfort I get is knowing their kids will go "What are DVDs? You mean you got movies on plastic? Why? Did your Internet not work?"
Funny how I got modded down for pointing this out, isn't it? BTW you brought up Ubuntu, which Linux guys ALWAYS trot out as "See we can do dumb!" but you are wrong, oh so wrong. You see you will need to dumb down Ubuntu another 4 or 5 levels before it will be acceptable by Joe Consumer!
Example: Why do you think Dell throws up warnings all over the place if you try to buy a Dell by just browsing to their site? Did MSFT throw them a bribe? Nope, they have enough experience to know as I do that home users don't even know WHAT an OS is and think they are all the same. I hear a dozen times a day "it has Windows" which could mean Win95-Win 7, and the user has NO clue there are any differences! So you will either have to make installing Windows software seamless ala ReactOS or put up a dozen "This is NOT Windows!" signs when they attempt it or they will BLAME YOU.
Another Example: As you say Ubuntu is just "debian with pretty" which makes it completely unacceptable to the vast majority of home consumers, why? Because Ubuntu is STILL CLI heavy and home users won't stand for it. Contrary to /. groupthink home users will NOT learn and have NO desire to be anything like the nerds here. Think about your last Debian Apt Upgrade..did you use CLI even once? Have you needed or used CLI in the last 6 months? If so it is NOT ready for home users end of discussion. Hell most home users won't go near Windows control panel because it is scary, you think you can drop them in a 70s era term and expect them to deal? Get real!
So if anything your post proves my point: What Linux users consider "easy" and "noobish" is about 100 levels more difficult than a home user will deal with. If it has more complexity than your average DVD player they won't have it. I have Windows users that haven't done anything but run their programs for years between problems, you just don't get that with Linux that frankly isn't designed to be a desktop but a server anyway. I sat up a half a dozen boxes here at the shop and ran Ubuntu on them from 6-9.04 and not a single one survived the 6 month update cycle without "something" getting broke. Sound, wireless (a lot) video (everything but old Intel IGPs) always something broke and the first and only answer was "open up bash and type.
So I hate to burst yours and the other Linux guys bubbles, but you say "open up bash and type" to a home user, you know what the very next words out of their mouth will be? "How much for Windows Home again?"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the courts shot that down when Apple tried to claim the desktop?
While I couldn't give a crap about yet another Tetris ripoff (Advice to author...TETRIS SUCKED! If you are gonna rip something off, at least make it something good like Contra or something! Sheesh!) what I do care about is companies trying to patent/copyright ordinary things like blocks. If we don't watch it corps will just patent/copyright every damned thing and you won't be able to do squat without cutting a check...or are we already there?
I look at it as a "some good some bad" kinda thing. On the good side whereas I used to have to blow a couple of hundred every year and a half just to have decent framerates I've been playing for nearly 3 years now on an HD4650 with decent FPS, and will be getting an upgrade* to a 4830 from my GF (along with a nice home cooked dinner and a weekend of wild monkey sex, yay me!) in a couple of weeks for my BDay. So cheap game playing (along with the cheaper game prices) I would put as a plus.
On the downside is what TFA is talking about, but frankly I've found the biggest offenders were shitty games anyway, so that is just like the rotten cherry on the shit sundae. For example I picked up turning point:fall of liberty in the bargain bin and it would have actually been enjoyable if it weren't for the fact that without an X360 controller the thing is completely unplayable. It is obvious they just tacked on PC controls without actually seeing that they worked, which of course they don't. But then again I've found plenty of bargain titles with GREAT controls, like the "Just Cause" series, which if you haven't tried it...imagine you mixed GTA and being a superhero, that's the only way I know to describe it. Stealing a chopper in midair is too much fun!
But considering how many titles we PC gamers have to choose from dealing with the occasional shitty port seems like a small price to pay. Between Amazon and GOG I've got more games than I know what to do with, I don't have to spend crazy money just toi have some crazy fun,...ehhh..we don't have much to complain about really. It ain't like the old days where you better break out your wallet if you wanted more than a slideshow from the current games, which I'll take over the occasional console port suckage any day.
*Yes if it were me I'd have bought a 5770 for around $120, but my GF has had it rough at work lately and I wanted to make it a cheap gift from her. I told her I'd be happy with her nakked wearing a ribbon, happy BDay Mr President optional but appreciated, but that is my bonus gift apparently and she wants one that is presentable in front of my family, hence the 4830.
Not only that but with control of the last mile in the hands of a couple of corps and cherry picking many rural places get no choice or outrageous prices.
A friend tried to service his area by talking his boss into going in on a T-1 and subletting use, but the local teleco (who only offers $60 a month dialup to those not in town) found out and pulled his access to the backbone, with a "just try and sue us" nasty letter to boot. His lawyer said "sure you'll win, but it'll cost a million and a half and a decade in court and they KNOW you can't afford it" so now those folks are still stuck on dialup because the teleco refuses to upgrade their lines or add any DSLAMs and they and the local cableco haven't moved an inch in ANY direction in nearly 20 years here.
So I'm ALL for it. Use that money to lay broadband from coast to coast, and then let the monopolies compete. If they want to be the only provider in an area? Well then they better lay down 50Mbps fiber before we get there and offer fair prices. Because as it is in rural areas like I'm in there is very little service, the service offered is crazy priced, which keeps the poor from having any access, and it is just gouging all around. i mean $67 for DSL, and $103 for basic cable (which they won't unbundle so you HAVE to take it) with Internet? Talk about price gouging!
Do you want to pay $400 instead of $350 for the same machine? No, well say hello to bloatware! It isn't that these guys just decided "Hey,lets raise our support costs and piss off our customers but make a little scratch out the gate" no, it WAS US that demanded it thanks to the "race to the bottom".
There are literally thousands of places online you can buy bloatware free computers, or you can stop by your local mom and pop shop and have a nice PC custom built to YOUR specs (just finishing up a nice $579 quad core for a customer here myself) but all of these will cost more than the bottom of the barrel HP or Dell, because the bloatware allows for lower prices by paying the OEM upfront to install crap. Last I head the profit margin on a low end Dell was something like $8, yet the bloatware netted $50, that is because the bloatware lowers the selling price thus letting Dell undercut everybody but the other giant OEMs. Of course I love it because people get pissed and bring it to me to clean it, thanks Dell!
And OT but when is /. gonna fix these ^%$&^$&^$ comment boxes? The other boxes were perfectly nice and worked well (except for idle) and now I have to wonder now that the comments are dropping all over the place that folks aren't getting fed up like I am in typing and squinting when we have giant screens. C'mon /. you can do better! Hell if you can't hire one of the real coders here and they'll be happy to do it right!
As a guy that deals with Windows home users all day, allow me to answer that: It takes out about 10 minutes of arguing with a customer over the phone on" how to get the CD thingie to work".
Before autorun it would be "Okay do you see My computer on the desktop? No? Okay go to start>computer....the start button...the little round button thing in the lower left corner...no the left, that is the taskbar on the right where the clock is..okay you found the start button now go to computer..on the upper right side...no the right" Get the picture? It is so much easier to say "stick in the disc, a menu will pop up, go "clicky clicky next next next".
Am I proud that we have to lower security in Windows? No, but after dealing with so many users that frankly couldn't find their ass with Mapquest and a GPS unit I understand, oh Lord how I understand. Sadly short of setting everyone up with thin clients (or using SteadyState, which MSFT seriously boned the pooch by getting rid of thanks to WGA BS in Win 7) to make a machine useful for the clueless, which lets face it are the ones driving sales in the first place, you have to allow stupid shit like autorun. Otherwise you get what I put up above, which is conversations I've had WAAAAY too often dealing with home users.
Which is why I've been saying for years Linux guys need to quit with the "Year of the Linux desktop" nonsense, because for Linux to reach that point they'll have to embrace all that they hate about Windows. You can give up CLI, home users won't touch it. Give up complexity, because home users want "clicky clicky" shiny happy GUIs. Better add in the cruft of backwards compatibility as well, as users HATE having to learn new things and will want to keep their old apps forever.
Doesn't sound too fun, does it Linux guys? Believe methey simply have NO desire to learn and hate anything more complex than a toaster, which is why you have to have autorun like in TFA. I've had to deal with customers actually forcing me to re-enable autorun after Windows disabled it for security, as they'd rather have the risk than have to open up My Computer.
So Linux guys, next time you think everyone should use Linux just think of some of the totally clueless Windows users you've had to deal with and then imagine having to dumb down Linux until they could use it. Scary damned thought ain't it? Hell that kind of stupidity spreads like the damned clap, to where you even get total morons in places where they shouldn't be. Tomorrow I get to go to a customer's house and have it out with the local WISP because they in their infinite wisdom say "computers shouldn't have firewalls because it "breaks the wifi".. I'm sure that after a couple of rounds of arguing with these braintrusts I've have a really nice headache. I don't even want to know how many infected machines I'm gonna have to deal with because this numbnuts are telling people to shut off Windows firewall "so they can have wifi". God save me from morons!