but this ignores the fact that a lot of software companies are/do require contacting them to install software/get updates/run the programs/etc. which i see as becoming more and more prevalent in the future.
With the proliferation of spyware, virii, and other malicious crap, I don't mind at all having to go to the company and get updates. I do this with Linux, Firefox, ThunderBird, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice.org, etc.
The internet is a key part of the infrastructure of many countries and no matter if you believe the current situation is broken or not, countries that have a key part of their infrastructure will consider this situation broken.
First off, how is it broken? You say you disagree, but why? You disagree because another country disagrees? Brazil did not always collect taxes on the internet. (If they did then I must say I envy everyone who has lived there before the internet was invented.) But they knew that the US was in control when they started that move. So what has suddenly broken that they are worried about it this much? My guess is nothing has broken. Some guy just came up with the idea, everyone else got all worried about it, but there's no substance to it.
Here's an analogy. I am in a well-lit room. I can see everything in the room such that there is not a place where anyone can hide. As I walk out of the room I turn off the light. Something in my brain remembers a horror movie and suddenly I start to worry about somebody in that room coming from behind and killing me. There's no substance there. None at all. I have no logical reason to be afraid. It's the same with this. Some guy mentions that the US is in control of the DNS servers as if it's a bad thing and suddenly everyone is afraid of what won't happen. Just non-sensical silliness.
You are just as dumb as the GP. First because you use the same stupid tactic. Second, because if America did take th internet away such that you couldn't access it, what you do you with the WWW?
While I don't agree with the sentiments of the GP, your argument is just as silly and stupid. If America takes the internet from you, what will you do with the world wide web? Also, while Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland, he was an American when he invented the telephone. The vast majority of computer invention was also done by the American Department of Defense. I'm not totally sure about the history of cars, but I do know the Japanese have perfected it (Honda and Toyota) and I will gladly continue to give them a portion of my revenue for such. And then the ever disputed TV debate. If you choose Philo Farnsworth as the inventor then you have an American. If you choose Vladimir Zworykin then you have chosen an Russian born inventor who did the inventing in America for an American company.
Concerning paper, I also believe it was the ancient egyptians who did that.
Now my feelings about the matter: So yeah the Americans invented it. Let's give the ones who did so some gratitude. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they should have all control over it. It is global. However, I don't particularly see anything wrong at the moment with the situation and I do see a lot of problems that would come with a changing of hands. So there is nothing to fix. Let's just leave things alone. To be honest, with the amount of money coming from the US into the UN, and the military that the US has, I have a feeling that at this point in time, if the US were to fall into utter chaos, then probably the rest of the world, including the UN, would be in about the same state. I could be wrong.
Note that I am not saying that the US is keeping the world together single handedly. I'm just saying that if they are in a bad state, it's a good bet that the rest of the world is also.
I've got a '91 Honda Civic with over 235k miles on it. My wife has a her own car. She sells Mary Kay and is very close to winning a brand new car. I'll be dead before we get rid of my Honda. I absolutely love that car.
write their own software and not link to any GPL'd code
I think this answers what I've been wondering for a while. That is: If I write my own program nearly all from scratch, but use a single call to some Linux API (let's say a simple network call) do I then fall under the GPL and have to give up all my code? Or do I only have to release the part where I make the network call? Or is it only if I statically link the network call in as opposed to a dynamic call?
Which proves the point. The added revenue from these games alone is worth it to the Wal-Marts, EB Games, etc.,to tell their employees to ask for ID. And if their employees fail to follow such a store policy, they will be reprimanded and eventually replaced because they are expendable. We're talking replacing a Wal-Mart store clerk here, not John Carmack. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "what you suggested." The only thing I suggested is that asking for ID is worth the added revenue of being able to sell these games. Stores don't sell NC-17 and adult only videos because they aren't a cash cow. Look at the top selling movies and you will see most are G, PG and PG-13. Then look at the top selling videos and you will find even less PG-13 and R rated films. You could indicate that the porn industry makes billions each year but not for anyone film and it's from a lot of places, including the internet. But 17+ and 18+ games aren't like that. They're wildly popular, much more so than any one R, NC-17, are adult-only movie. They are a cash cow. Comparing the two is ridiculous.
Note: This is not to say M-Rated games are more popular than T- or E-rated games. They aren't. All I am saying is that certain of those games (ie, Doom, Half-life, Diablo, Halo, etc.) are big money makers.
Not if the vendors decide it is too much of a hassle or liability to have to card purchasers to carry the game.
You are probably right. They will decide that the extra income from the Halo, GTA, Half-Life, Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, and Diablo series is not worth the trouble of implementing a policy wherein an expendable-minimum-wage-replace-at-will employee has to ask for ID. It'll never work.
There may be some good to this. Get hypothetical with me for a minute.
Let's say he writes what is really going to be a really stupid law. Then let's pretend that the legislature of Florida puts it up to a vote. They and their constituents can see just how over-the-top stupid it is and vote it down. Then that may put a stop to all other such laws.
Less hypothetical and more likely to happen: Some 16 yr old playing GTA in Florida goes over-the-top and kills him for it.
So I'm being nitpicky here: In 2055 the patent on mp3 will have run out and even if it didn't, if the US government falls, and North America is in anarchy, then mp3 will be free from any North American patent laws. And even if that wasn't the case, Just because all of those things happen, doesn't mean that your iPod and iTunes still on your late 90's hardware won't work all of the sudden. Though, in 2055, I think I might be surprised if any late 90's hardware is working all that well.
You mean Microsoft will be the #1 database vendor, #1 groupware vendor, will have a flourishing $10 billion services division, and will support dozens of open source software projects?
Which is to say, a whole lot worse off than MS is now.
While there may have been some anti-trust scrutiny, the biggest reason IBM had substandard stuff was the same reason MS has substandard stuff now. They were playing catch up. The Apple II was making a killing in the newly formed PC market and IBM hadn't seen it coming. But since IBM was so big it took a long time to start any project and get it off the ground. So they seperated a team to see if they could have a PC in only a years time. They didn't have the time to start from the ground up so they just took off the shelf hardware. They only wanted MS to provide BASIC. They also went after some guy who I forget who had written a popular OS at the time, which I forget the name of right now. But he made a dumb decision, or rather his wife did, and so MS jumped at the chance to quickly rewrite it. IBM was forced into substandard simply because they were so big and couldn't change. MS is getting into the same boat. They are so big they can't change too fast. They have to buy other companies software and then improve it from there, and as we all know, they don't really improve too much. Give them 10 years and MS will be as relevant as IBM.
Also easy. If their servers are in CA, they charge you taxes if you live in CA, otherwise, they do not. That goes back to the companies deciding what is going to be best for their consumers.
When I go to a store I am charged for the sales tax where that store is. IOW, where the point of the transaction takes place. An example. If I buy something from CompUSA, I get charged sales tax where that CompUSA is, not where they have their warehouse or where the corporate headquarters are. So it is where the server that does the transaction is. And then it doesn't matter. Let's say Company A has two servers for transactions, one in State A and one in State B. Where ever I get routed to do the transaction is where I pay taxes. If I get routed to the server in State A, I pay State A's tax, and likewise if I get routed to the server in State B. Again, this is incentive for companies to put their servers in a state that has little or no sales tax. Thus, easy fix.
You have a point there. Taxes are so crazy for each state/county/parish/city/country/etc. But if I were to travel to CA and buy your product directly from you, then the city/county/state/country where your store is would get those taxes. So it is an easy fix. Where ever your internet-based store is, is where the tax money goes. This would get all the companies to to put their stores in those places with the lowest tax rates. Then those states will actually be "enticing" the companies by offering lower tax rates(which is not what they are doing now, that is called a threat).
Just like Company A can entice me from Company B by offering a lower price, State C can entice Company B from State D by offering lower tax rates. Now Company B has a lower total price after taxes than Company A and they have won me back.
If that fails I suggest a Boston Tea Party type revolt. We intercept the internet and dump it in the bay so that the motherland gets nothing from their internet tax!
I agree. Blu-ray is the way to go. HD-DVD just won't be big enough. I loved the reasons MS gave for why they supprted HD-DVD. One said that it was slightly bigger. Then another reason is that with HD-DVD you could put the old DVD format on another layer so that someone without a new player could still buy the same disk and not come home and find that they can't play it. But that just seriously takes away a lot of the capacity of the HD-DVD...as in a whole layer. So the HD-DVD is down to 15 GB. Wow. So now we're comparing something that is 15GB to 30GB. So they're saying that a High-def version of a movie (which is nearly 7 times as many pixels per frame, not including information for progressive scan over interaced) can fit in only twice as much space as a DVD? I call bs.
Plus, last I read, HD-DVD doesn't have anything even in the lab that is bigger than 30 GB, whereas Bluy-ray has a prototype of 100GB. MS ought to screw off. They are supprting it for two reasons. One is the whole console war, and the second is HD-DVD will use Micorsofts own codec whereas Blu-ray will not. MS just has their panties in a wad.
And to all those who think this is a propietary Sony product, they should read this FAQ. Sony, HP, Pioneer, Hitachi, TDK, Samsung, Philips, etc. were all in on the process. In fact it was TDK that made the 100GB version. HD-DVD is a very shallow replacement and will only require a new replacement in just a few years time. Blu-ray has potential, not just as a media disk, but also as a storage disk. With people having full hard-drives over 250 GB now, would you rather back that up on 9 HD-DVDs, or 3 Blu-rays. Shutup and die MS and Intel.
Pointing can be using a visual pointer on the screen.
You just said it right there. This could be the controller to allow better support for FPSs, RTSs and MMOs for consoles. This can be a just a like a mouse, only better. Aside from the new kind of control schemes this will allow for that haven't been thought up yet, this also allows for all the previous ones already thought up, and some that were previously not possible on consoles but were on PCs. Imagine a little add on to this with 17 buttons, like one of those number pad addons for laptops, and you have keyboard functionality that can sit in your lap. Then WarCraft III could be played on the couch. This controller is awesome.
OTOH, Sony is catering only to the "hardcore" gamers
I'm glad you put hardcore in quotes. I tend to think most of the Sony gamers are really lamers, (Not all, just most), and I've decided that those who buy the XBox are 95% more likely to have done so because gaming is "cool" now, and they want to be "cool." I'm getting tired of hearing people getting "hardcore" and "fanboy" mixed up.
Dictionary.com gives three definitions. First is intensely loyal. I think that is where a hardcore gamer is. Someone who is intensely loyal to games. But not a specific game, that would just make you a hardcore Zelda fan, or hardcore Soul Calibur fan, or a hardcore Dead or Alive fan (which is hardcore in completely other ways). A hardcore gamer is one who thrills in new games while still enjoying the old. Any game they can get a hold of is another opportunity.
Unfortunately, most "hardcore" gamers are more like definition number 2. They don't want things to change. When change occurs, that's when you can tell the diehards from the blowhards. The diehards rejoice in change as yet another opportunity. The blowhards reject change because they're part of the elite and change means that they might not be part of the elite anymore. Diehards don't care if they're in the elite club or not.
A similar thing is true for programming. You have the old school hackers. These are the people who are great. They rejoice with a new language with all the learning and challenges that are inherent in that. Then you have the latest technical school grad who knows ASP.Net and never wants that to change. He may be a "hardcore" ASP.Net programmer, but if the newest fad in web programming comes along, they whine and complain about how it's not "hardcore," or their version thereof.
I say let all the "hardcore" gamers play their shiny PS3's and XBox 360's. The true hardcore probably will, too. They can flame each other about how their console of choice displays more polys, has HDR, and all the other $graphic_of_the_day items. The true hardcore will also be playing with a revolution, enjoying more games for the sake of enjoying more games.
Yesm but the way RDP and VNC work is totally different. RDP has so much less information to send over the network because you can only use it on other Windows comps, so all the GUI stuff is available on the local machine. VNC is cross-platform and so doesn't necessarily have the remote GUI on the local machine, all of it has to be sent over the network. Which is slower, but you gain cross-platform ability. I regularly use VNC from Windows to Gnome, Gnome to Gnome, Gnome to Windows, and Windows to Gnome. RDP would only allow one of those scenarios.
Why of course. Civil Engineers are civil people. Electrical engineers use electricity. Industrial Engineers use industries. Mechanical Engineers use mechanical things. It makes so much sense to me now.
See, the Phantom was right all along. They've just been biding their time. Sony and MS are going to be sad in the end. Nintendo kinda got it with the ability to download all their old games. But alas, the phantom will pwn the competition in this next round./sarcasm
Your post makes no sense. HD = High Definition, which both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray have. Even TV will have HD. What is BD? Bondage and Discipline? Biological Defense? Bachelor of Divinity? With this in consideration here are the answers to your questions.
oes this mean that the x86 Apple will be HD?
Yes. Apple will support High Definition on their x86 lines.
or will Intel make a box that will contain BD?
Dunno. What is BD? But probably not, since Intel makes CPU's and such, not computers.
Maybe Apple will have support for HD, but not have it stock in their systems.
Yes they will have support for High Definition, and they will stock it in their systems.
Slashdot Mirror
With the proliferation of spyware, virii, and other malicious crap, I don't mind at all having to go to the company and get updates. I do this with Linux, Firefox, ThunderBird, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice.org, etc.
First off, how is it broken? You say you disagree, but why? You disagree because another country disagrees? Brazil did not always collect taxes on the internet. (If they did then I must say I envy everyone who has lived there before the internet was invented.) But they knew that the US was in control when they started that move. So what has suddenly broken that they are worried about it this much? My guess is nothing has broken. Some guy just came up with the idea, everyone else got all worried about it, but there's no substance to it.
Here's an analogy. I am in a well-lit room. I can see everything in the room such that there is not a place where anyone can hide. As I walk out of the room I turn off the light. Something in my brain remembers a horror movie and suddenly I start to worry about somebody in that room coming from behind and killing me. There's no substance there. None at all. I have no logical reason to be afraid. It's the same with this. Some guy mentions that the US is in control of the DNS servers as if it's a bad thing and suddenly everyone is afraid of what won't happen. Just non-sensical silliness.
You are just as dumb as the GP. First because you use the same stupid tactic. Second, because if America did take th internet away such that you couldn't access it, what you do you with the WWW?
Concerning paper, I also believe it was the ancient egyptians who did that.
Now my feelings about the matter: So yeah the Americans invented it. Let's give the ones who did so some gratitude. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they should have all control over it. It is global. However, I don't particularly see anything wrong at the moment with the situation and I do see a lot of problems that would come with a changing of hands. So there is nothing to fix. Let's just leave things alone. To be honest, with the amount of money coming from the US into the UN, and the military that the US has, I have a feeling that at this point in time, if the US were to fall into utter chaos, then probably the rest of the world, including the UN, would be in about the same state. I could be wrong.
Note that I am not saying that the US is keeping the world together single handedly. I'm just saying that if they are in a bad state, it's a good bet that the rest of the world is also.
I've got a '91 Honda Civic with over 235k miles on it. My wife has a her own car. She sells Mary Kay and is very close to winning a brand new car. I'll be dead before we get rid of my Honda. I absolutely love that car.
I think this answers what I've been wondering for a while. That is: If I write my own program nearly all from scratch, but use a single call to some Linux API (let's say a simple network call) do I then fall under the GPL and have to give up all my code? Or do I only have to release the part where I make the network call? Or is it only if I statically link the network call in as opposed to a dynamic call?
Note: This is not to say M-Rated games are more popular than T- or E-rated games. They aren't. All I am saying is that certain of those games (ie, Doom, Half-life, Diablo, Halo, etc.) are big money makers.
You are probably right. They will decide that the extra income from the Halo, GTA, Half-Life, Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, and Diablo series is not worth the trouble of implementing a policy wherein an expendable-minimum-wage-replace-at-will employee has to ask for ID. It'll never work.
Let's say he writes what is really going to be a really stupid law. Then let's pretend that the legislature of Florida puts it up to a vote. They and their constituents can see just how over-the-top stupid it is and vote it down. Then that may put a stop to all other such laws.
Less hypothetical and more likely to happen: Some 16 yr old playing GTA in Florida goes over-the-top and kills him for it.
Either case is a win.
So I'm being nitpicky here: In 2055 the patent on mp3 will have run out and even if it didn't, if the US government falls, and North America is in anarchy, then mp3 will be free from any North American patent laws. And even if that wasn't the case, Just because all of those things happen, doesn't mean that your iPod and iTunes still on your late 90's hardware won't work all of the sudden. Though, in 2055, I think I might be surprised if any late 90's hardware is working all that well.
Which is to say, a whole lot worse off than MS is now.
While there may have been some anti-trust scrutiny, the biggest reason IBM had substandard stuff was the same reason MS has substandard stuff now. They were playing catch up. The Apple II was making a killing in the newly formed PC market and IBM hadn't seen it coming. But since IBM was so big it took a long time to start any project and get it off the ground. So they seperated a team to see if they could have a PC in only a years time. They didn't have the time to start from the ground up so they just took off the shelf hardware. They only wanted MS to provide BASIC. They also went after some guy who I forget who had written a popular OS at the time, which I forget the name of right now. But he made a dumb decision, or rather his wife did, and so MS jumped at the chance to quickly rewrite it. IBM was forced into substandard simply because they were so big and couldn't change. MS is getting into the same boat. They are so big they can't change too fast. They have to buy other companies software and then improve it from there, and as we all know, they don't really improve too much. Give them 10 years and MS will be as relevant as IBM.
Also easy. If their servers are in CA, they charge you taxes if you live in CA, otherwise, they do not. That goes back to the companies deciding what is going to be best for their consumers.
When I go to a store I am charged for the sales tax where that store is. IOW, where the point of the transaction takes place. An example. If I buy something from CompUSA, I get charged sales tax where that CompUSA is, not where they have their warehouse or where the corporate headquarters are. So it is where the server that does the transaction is. And then it doesn't matter. Let's say Company A has two servers for transactions, one in State A and one in State B. Where ever I get routed to do the transaction is where I pay taxes. If I get routed to the server in State A, I pay State A's tax, and likewise if I get routed to the server in State B. Again, this is incentive for companies to put their servers in a state that has little or no sales tax. Thus, easy fix.
Just like Company A can entice me from Company B by offering a lower price, State C can entice Company B from State D by offering lower tax rates. Now Company B has a lower total price after taxes than Company A and they have won me back.
If that fails I suggest a Boston Tea Party type revolt. We intercept the internet and dump it in the bay so that the motherland gets nothing from their internet tax!
Plus, last I read, HD-DVD doesn't have anything even in the lab that is bigger than 30 GB, whereas Bluy-ray has a prototype of 100GB. MS ought to screw off. They are supprting it for two reasons. One is the whole console war, and the second is HD-DVD will use Micorsofts own codec whereas Blu-ray will not. MS just has their panties in a wad.
And to all those who think this is a propietary Sony product, they should read this FAQ. Sony, HP, Pioneer, Hitachi, TDK, Samsung, Philips, etc. were all in on the process. In fact it was TDK that made the 100GB version. HD-DVD is a very shallow replacement and will only require a new replacement in just a few years time. Blu-ray has potential, not just as a media disk, but also as a storage disk. With people having full hard-drives over 250 GB now, would you rather back that up on 9 HD-DVDs, or 3 Blu-rays. Shutup and die MS and Intel.
Wow. I was wrong. Thank you. That makes me feel stupid.
You just said it right there. This could be the controller to allow better support for FPSs, RTSs and MMOs for consoles. This can be a just a like a mouse, only better. Aside from the new kind of control schemes this will allow for that haven't been thought up yet, this also allows for all the previous ones already thought up, and some that were previously not possible on consoles but were on PCs. Imagine a little add on to this with 17 buttons, like one of those number pad addons for laptops, and you have keyboard functionality that can sit in your lap. Then WarCraft III could be played on the couch. This controller is awesome.
I'm glad you put hardcore in quotes. I tend to think most of the Sony gamers are really lamers, (Not all, just most), and I've decided that those who buy the XBox are 95% more likely to have done so because gaming is "cool" now, and they want to be "cool." I'm getting tired of hearing people getting "hardcore" and "fanboy" mixed up.
Dictionary.com gives three definitions. First is intensely loyal. I think that is where a hardcore gamer is. Someone who is intensely loyal to games. But not a specific game, that would just make you a hardcore Zelda fan, or hardcore Soul Calibur fan, or a hardcore Dead or Alive fan (which is hardcore in completely other ways). A hardcore gamer is one who thrills in new games while still enjoying the old. Any game they can get a hold of is another opportunity.
Unfortunately, most "hardcore" gamers are more like definition number 2. They don't want things to change. When change occurs, that's when you can tell the diehards from the blowhards. The diehards rejoice in change as yet another opportunity. The blowhards reject change because they're part of the elite and change means that they might not be part of the elite anymore. Diehards don't care if they're in the elite club or not.
A similar thing is true for programming. You have the old school hackers. These are the people who are great. They rejoice with a new language with all the learning and challenges that are inherent in that. Then you have the latest technical school grad who knows ASP.Net and never wants that to change. He may be a "hardcore" ASP.Net programmer, but if the newest fad in web programming comes along, they whine and complain about how it's not "hardcore," or their version thereof.
I say let all the "hardcore" gamers play their shiny PS3's and XBox 360's. The true hardcore probably will, too. They can flame each other about how their console of choice displays more polys, has HDR, and all the other $graphic_of_the_day items. The true hardcore will also be playing with a revolution, enjoying more games for the sake of enjoying more games.
Yesm but the way RDP and VNC work is totally different. RDP has so much less information to send over the network because you can only use it on other Windows comps, so all the GUI stuff is available on the local machine. VNC is cross-platform and so doesn't necessarily have the remote GUI on the local machine, all of it has to be sent over the network. Which is slower, but you gain cross-platform ability. I regularly use VNC from Windows to Gnome, Gnome to Gnome, Gnome to Windows, and Windows to Gnome. RDP would only allow one of those scenarios.
note: check my sig.
Why of course. Civil Engineers are civil people. Electrical engineers use electricity. Industrial Engineers use industries. Mechanical Engineers use mechanical things. It makes so much sense to me now.
See, the Phantom was right all along. They've just been biding their time. Sony and MS are going to be sad in the end. Nintendo kinda got it with the ability to download all their old games. But alas, the phantom will pwn the competition in this next round. /sarcasm
Yes, it is quite possible to have a High Definition Blu-ray drive. After all, that is the whole point. Oh, you meant HD-DVD/Blu-ray. Nevermind.
oes this mean that the x86 Apple will be HD?
Yes. Apple will support High Definition on their x86 lines.
or will Intel make a box that will contain BD?
Dunno. What is BD? But probably not, since Intel makes CPU's and such, not computers.
Maybe Apple will have support for HD, but not have it stock in their systems.
Yes they will have support for High Definition, and they will stock it in their systems.