Technically yes, but it means nothing - because if a President expresses his/her wish to declare a war, Congress is going to rubber-stamp it anyway.
Ever since WWII, this has been the case, and no President has felt it necessary to perform the formality of asking Congress first, before declaring war.
I don't see this as some sort of permanent upgrade. Hopefully, most of the U.S. population will have access to either DSL or cable, or another emerging high-speed Inet access medium within a few more years.
By the time everyone owns really good HDTV's and cares whether or not a station is broadcasting an uncompressed HD signal, the market will hopefully have dwindled for 1-way high speed Inet over a TV signal.
Dunno how many people remember, but when the first Star Wars films were fresh from the theater, Lucas allowed R2D2 and C3PO to show up in several Sesame Street episodes, right along-side Big Bird and crew.
He's *always* been a proponent of connecting the films to popular culture at the time of their release, in an attempt to gain more fans.
Nowdays, kids are more likely to watch the cartoons on Nickelodeon (Spongebob, Rugrats, etc.), and/or be into the latest boy/girl band crazes.
Huh?
Every war since WWII has been undeclared.
The concept of declaring war is generally considered obsolete. The President, quite clearly, has the power as "Commander in Chief" to declare war.
Re:Think Monsanto are bad? Check out Union Carbide
on
Monsanto and PCBs
·
· Score: 2
Well, I don't claim to know all the details of why this Union Carbide gas tank exploded - but it sounds much more to me like an accident than something willful on the part of the U.C. management/owners.
Quite frankly, here in the U.S. - we regularly have issues with homes exploding from natural gas leaks. It may not kill thousands at a time, but local gas companies have their lines running into most homes in America -- not concentrated in just a few tanks someplace. Most people consider it an acceptable risk because they like the benefits of natural gas (hot water, dry clothes, heat in the winter). What benefits were people getting from the product U.C. was producing in India?
When things go wrong, we're always quick to point fingers at the companies - but we sure do like to buy their products when they benefit us. Double-standards.....
Perhaps you should take another look at the conclusions you draw, and rethink them?
Despite the popularity of bashing any corporation in America (assuming it's A. large, and B. profitable), the basic rules of economics still hold true.
A company will *not* grow in profitability unless the consumers feel their products are worthwhile, and keep buying them!
If I make a new company called "Acme Death Rays" and build hand-held devices that instantly kill people a dozen at a time, at just the press of a little button - so what? If a large enough percentage of the population desires one, and buys it from me, then I became profitable only because I provided the people with a device they wanted.
(The more likely result is my death ray business would cost more to sustain than it would earn, and it would go under quickly. If it doesn't, then perhaps that illustrates the moral state of the population, or perhaps it doesn't. You'd have to see who my customers are to make that determination.)
Monsanto does need to be punished if they've clearly violated laws. No contest there. All I'm saying is that an act of willfull pollution by a corporation doesn't equate to throwing out the free market and Capitalism as unworkable.
Sometimes you fully realize that the gift-giver was trying their best to give you what you wanted, and you *do* appreciate that. Still, there's no reason I can fathom not to exchange the item for something more useful to you, if you can't use what you've got.
For example, when we got married, my wife and I picked out a China set we really liked. Only problem is, nobody bought us any of it except for a couple pieces. (It was a very expensive set, and as we thought more about it later, we realized it wasn't practical. Most of our friends wouldn't have the kind of money to be able to afford to give us that type of China.)
We ended up exchanging the odd pieces we had, and got a complete 4 person place-setting of a much cheaper set instead. This seemed like the best thing to do under the circumstances, and gave us a useable/complete set.
Now, we received one more piece for the original China set from my parents, as an Xmas gift. They didn't know we changed our China set decision - so they really thought they were doing us a favor. Still, I'd be silly to hang onto the piece they gave us. It doesn't go with anything else we have....
Huh? Every time I've ever been in a situation where I didn't have the money required to pay for gasoline I pumped first, they required that I leave my driver's license with them at the counter, until I returned with the money.
I'm sure it would be the same situation if you tried to give them a $100 bill for $9 or $10 in gas, and they refused to take $100's. They'd just hang onto your ID or license until you went someplace and got change.
Wow - imagine finding another "local" on here. Heh... Not sure what your "handle" was on there, but yeah, it's funny. I dialed up Junk Drawer just a couple weeks ago from work, just to test a modem in a laptop. (I couldn't get an Internet PPP connection to work in Windows NT, and wanted to make sure the modem was functional. I used Hyperterminal and dialed up Junk Drawer, and it worked!) I couldn't remember my password to actually log in -- but I know they're real good about keeping old user accounts active for years, in case you call back sometime.
Yep! There was also a lady named Violet, who was famous for doing really nice ANSI artwork screens for BBS's. When I had my BBS, I received a message from her one day, saying she decided to make several screens for my bulletin board. All of her artwork was signed with a VV in the bottom corner, as I recall.
Yeah - I remember it too. Before I had a PC clone though, I owned a Tandy Color Computer (CoCo), and they had a similar BBS product for it. You had to call with a special terminal package that only ran on CoCo machines. Needless to say, it didn't last very long.
Personally, I still want to know why everyone's so interested in every digital camera on the market getting multi-mondo-megapixels of resolution in the first place??
If I'm really concerned about high resolution photos, then I'm probably going to shell out the $'s for a high-end camera (digital or not). If I go the digital route, probably would be best to do it with a digital camera back for a traditional 35mm camera.
If I'm like 90% of the digital camera buyers, I just want to shoot quick pictures of my stuff to post on eBay, make cool Windows.BMP backgrounds out of pictures of my friends and pets, and have an easy way to email photos around. For these purposes, resolutions above 1024x768 are usually more hinderance than help! Your average Windows desktop runs no more than 1024x768 resolution, and you don't want more than either 640x480 or even 320x200 for a small.JPG to upload to eBay or email to a relative.
Most people using these higher-resolution cameras end up shrinking their photos in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, so they're a manageable size to upload.
Definitely... I find it amazing how accustomed we've all gotten to asking someone to repeat what they just said ("Huh?" "Put the yellow cup next to WHAT?" "Come again?") - yet we have no patience for a computer/machine not grasping 99.99% of what we say the first time its spoken.
The problem with voice recognition systems is we expect them to work better than we do!
Maybe I'm thinking of something different, but I recall a show we watched in the 70's called "Project Blue Book". It was one of those weekly TV shows along the lines of "Unsolved Mysteries" or something, except it told 2 or 3 UFO stories on each episode. They'd do the standard interviews with people, show some photos when they were available, and give explanations (if scientists offered any). Haven't seen that on the air in a long time..... forgot all about it until now. Oh well.
Yeah - my thoughts too!
The comment below is a little disconcerting, because we're dangerously close to where a Smith & Wesson *will* become worried about govt. holding them liable if someone kills a child with one of their handguns!
The problem is much larger than people not differentiating when it comes to computer technology vs. illegal use of said technology. This refusal to differentiate happens with even simple, relatively low-technology products and services!
As a whole, we have a need to shift blame. AKA. It's currently understood that if you do a poor job of shoveling snow and ice off of your driveway, and someone comes along and slips/falls on it, you are responsible if they sue you. Since it's *your* property and they chose to walk on it without your consent or invitation, I fail to see how this makes any logical sense! When this does make sense to lawyers and judges though, how can we move beyond that to encryption and programming issues??
"You'd think this would be an easy distinction to understand: We live in a country where 10 children are killed by hand guns every day. But Smith and Wesson doesn't worry that the FBI will come arrest them because someone used their technology to commit a crime."
No way... A common GUI has nothing to do with why Linux hasn't dominated the desktop space.
That's a defecit in MS products, NOT an advantage.
The reason has MUCH more to do with what comes pre-loaded on a new PC, and the "critical mass" of users who have already learned the Windows way of doing things. Once you sell a new user that first PC with Windows on it, you set them on the road of learning that one style of desktop. If they started out with X and KDE (with options to use Gnome or other desktops with just a few clicks of the mouse), they'd be just as comfortable with that.
I'm glad you made this comment, because it was exactly what I was about to post myself, otherwise.
The breakdown of funds distribution from a CD sale is very interesting and enlightening - but it should leave the reader with that one, lingering question: Why the h*ll do musicians agree to these terms in the first place?
Honestly, I think some of it is just old habits dying hard. "It's the way it's always been done, and so it must be the right way to market our music." Some of it is probably ignorance, too. "I don't really know anything about recording my own CDs in-house. I'm not very technical like some of these people."
More importantly though, the recording industry works on a basic principle: "As long as the musician is happy with his/her lifestyle, we can get away with taking the rest of the profits ourselves." Not much different than the way the IRS and taxes work in the U.S. if you think about it. Most people don't really complain as long as they feel like they've got enough money. In the music industry, you get the bonus of fame and adoring fans, too - on top of the paycheck. They'd rather have a few percent of BIG $'s than 0% (which they'll end up with if they don't put out a saleable product).
If this is true, then OpenMail is doomed.
Quite frankly, no-one (save a few fanatics) is going to put forth lots of effort to convince a company to add enough functionality to a product so it becomes viable to purchase. It's Samsung's duty to add the things that are lacking, since they're picking up someone else's failing product.
I'm not going to recommend OpenMail to *any* colleges or businesses until they first prove that they have the programming ability to fix the problems in the current product, and add functionality (such as calendar/scheduling) that users have come to expect in Exchange Server.
Well, honestly, I think HP and OpenMail was much like IBM and OS/2. They never really tried to make the product superior, because deep down, the majority of people working for them didn't really believe in it to start with.
We purchased Manage-X and Openview from HP about a year and a half ago, and a couple of HP reps came out to our site to train us on the products, take us out to dinner, etc. I brought up OpenMail at that time, because their latest release had just come out and I was playing with it on a Linux server. Their immediate reaction was "Ugh... OpenMail? That's a terrible product."
I tried to probe them for reasons why they disliked it, but I guess they realized they shouldn't talk so badly about one of their own software packages. They just made comments like "Well, I haven't actually used the very latest version, but in the past it just wasn't very user-friendly."
Yeah, but there are two other things to consider. First and foremost, what kind of long-term injury are you potentially causing with the exercise/workouts? I think this is worth considering, despite the "health conscious" folks who want to discount it as irrelevant.
People who jog a lot end up with bad knees, and knee surgery is not only quite expensive, but unreliable. Once you get a knee replacement, you can count on repeated future surgeries to maintain it.
Look at any ex professional athlete, and they've got all sorts of physical problems ranging from bad backs to arthritis to worn out joints.
It really seems like common sense to just reduce the calorie intake if you're gaining undesireable weight. Trying to exercise/work-out is the less efficient and safe way to accomplish the same goal.
You know, heat dissipation of CPUs is something I was just thinking about recently. It seems rather inefficient to try to cool a CPU with a powered cooling device (fan, peltier, etc.) - when all of that waste heat could instead be harnessed and used. I realize it isn't going to provide lots and lots of power, but even if a cooling-cap was built that used heat to power the lights on the front of the case, it'd be a start.
I guess people figure the initial cost of this type of energy-saving cooler would far outweigh its benefits? Still, it would just be a "gee-whiz" cool thing to have in your new PC - and might become more worthwhile as production increases and economies of scale take effect.
No, you're not really correct. Outlook *and* Outlook Express are both free products. Even though Outlook comes with every copy of Microsoft Office, it's really just thrown into the bundle. You're not really paying for it. As it was pointed out already, MS makes their money on the client access licenses they require you to purchase to make connections to their Exchange server.
Whenever you buy a copy of Exchange Server, they even throw in a set of install CDs of Outlook for Mac and PC. They hope you'll install lots of free copies of Outlook so you have to pay them big $'s for all those connection licenses.
You're absolutely right, and make an excellent point. I do, however, have a lot of faith in people to re-engineer hardware to break through the barriers placed in the way of functionality.
Back when they proclaimed it illegal to sell police scanners that let you listen to cell-phone frequencies in the 800Mhz range, people came out with a slew of modifications to re-enable the missing frequencies.
When they sold the Playstation so it wouldn't run copies of game CDs, they released hacked chips to solder in the unit and fix the problem.
When Apex was forced to quit selling DVD players with the "loophole menu" in them to disable Macrovision and region codes, hackers created custom firmware to flash into them to restore these capabilities.
As long as individuals remain interested in the inner workings of hardware, control will always be regained from the industry. Keeping control in software just means a larger percentage of the population has the knowledge and ability to make the changes needed.
I have one of these Aiwa MP3 CD players in my Ford Ranger truck. I've had it for close to 4 months now - and I like it a lot for the relatively low price.
I agree that it has some issues with skipping, but I've found it's only really bad about it when you use re-recordable CDRW discs in it. (It's cool that it can read those at all, really, since most players don't.)
The lack of in-song resume on MP3s is a little annoying, but not a "show stopper" by any means. (It does resume in the middle of songs if you're playing standard music CDs.)
I really think the biggest factor in how much a car CD player skips is in the installation. I had a friend with a Sony CD/receiver that always skipped in his car. One day, he got fed up and shoved a couple pieces of foam packing material around the unit. Problem solved!
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Technically yes, but it means nothing - because if a President expresses his/her wish to declare a war, Congress is going to rubber-stamp it anyway.
Ever since WWII, this has been the case, and no President has felt it necessary to perform the formality of asking Congress first, before declaring war.
I don't see this as some sort of permanent upgrade. Hopefully, most of the U.S. population will have access to either DSL or cable, or another emerging high-speed Inet access medium within a few more years.
By the time everyone owns really good HDTV's and cares whether or not a station is broadcasting an uncompressed HD signal, the market will hopefully have dwindled for 1-way high speed Inet over a TV signal.
Dunno how many people remember, but when the first Star Wars films were fresh from the theater, Lucas allowed R2D2 and C3PO to show up in several Sesame Street episodes, right along-side Big Bird and crew.
He's *always* been a proponent of connecting the films to popular culture at the time of their release, in an attempt to gain more fans.
Nowdays, kids are more likely to watch the cartoons on Nickelodeon (Spongebob, Rugrats, etc.), and/or be into the latest boy/girl band crazes.
Huh?
Every war since WWII has been undeclared.
The concept of declaring war is generally considered obsolete. The President, quite clearly, has the power as "Commander in Chief" to declare war.
Well, I don't claim to know all the details of why this Union Carbide gas tank exploded - but it sounds much more to me like an accident than something willful on the part of the U.C. management/owners.
Quite frankly, here in the U.S. - we regularly have issues with homes exploding from natural gas leaks. It may not kill thousands at a time, but local gas companies have their lines running into most homes in America -- not concentrated in just a few tanks someplace. Most people consider it an acceptable risk because they like the benefits of natural gas (hot water, dry clothes, heat in the winter). What benefits were people getting from the product U.C. was producing in India?
When things go wrong, we're always quick to point fingers at the companies - but we sure do like to buy their products when they benefit us. Double-standards.....
Perhaps you should take another look at the conclusions you draw, and rethink them?
Despite the popularity of bashing any corporation in America (assuming it's A. large, and B. profitable), the basic rules of economics still hold true.
A company will *not* grow in profitability unless the consumers feel their products are worthwhile, and keep buying them!
If I make a new company called "Acme Death Rays" and build hand-held devices that instantly kill people a dozen at a time, at just the press of a little button - so what? If a large enough percentage of the population desires one, and buys it from me, then I became profitable only because I provided the people with a device they wanted.
(The more likely result is my death ray business would cost more to sustain than it would earn, and it would go under quickly. If it doesn't, then perhaps that illustrates the moral state of the population, or perhaps it doesn't. You'd have to see who my customers are to make that determination.)
Monsanto does need to be punished if they've clearly violated laws. No contest there. All I'm saying is that an act of willfull pollution by a corporation doesn't equate to throwing out the free market and Capitalism as unworkable.
Sometimes you fully realize that the gift-giver was trying their best to give you what you wanted, and you *do* appreciate that. Still, there's no reason I can fathom not to exchange the item for something more useful to you, if you can't use what you've got.
For example, when we got married, my wife and I picked out a China set we really liked. Only problem is, nobody bought us any of it except for a couple pieces. (It was a very expensive set, and as we thought more about it later, we realized it wasn't practical. Most of our friends wouldn't have the kind of money to be able to afford to give us that type of China.)
We ended up exchanging the odd pieces we had, and got a complete 4 person place-setting of a much cheaper set instead. This seemed like the best thing to do under the circumstances, and gave us a useable/complete set.
Now, we received one more piece for the original China set from my parents, as an Xmas gift. They didn't know we changed our China set decision - so they really thought they were doing us a favor. Still, I'd be silly to hang onto the piece they gave us. It doesn't go with anything else we have....
Huh? Every time I've ever been in a situation where I didn't have the money required to pay for gasoline I pumped first, they required that I leave my driver's license with them at the counter, until I returned with the money.
I'm sure it would be the same situation if you tried to give them a $100 bill for $9 or $10 in gas, and they refused to take $100's. They'd just hang onto your ID or license until you went someplace and got change.
Wow - imagine finding another "local" on here. Heh... Not sure what your "handle" was on there, but yeah, it's funny. I dialed up Junk Drawer just a couple weeks ago from work, just to test a modem in a laptop. (I couldn't get an Internet PPP connection to work in Windows NT, and wanted to make sure the modem was functional. I used Hyperterminal and dialed up Junk Drawer, and it worked!) I couldn't remember my password to actually log in -- but I know they're real good about keeping old user accounts active for years, in case you call back sometime.
Yep! There was also a lady named Violet, who was famous for doing really nice ANSI artwork screens for BBS's. When I had my BBS, I received a message from her one day, saying she decided to make several screens for my bulletin board. All of her artwork was signed with a VV in the bottom corner, as I recall.
Yeah - I remember it too. Before I had a PC clone though, I owned a Tandy Color Computer (CoCo), and they had a similar BBS product for it. You had to call with a special terminal package that only ran on CoCo machines. Needless to say, it didn't last very long.
Personally, I still want to know why everyone's so interested in every digital camera on the market getting multi-mondo-megapixels of resolution in the first place??
.BMP backgrounds out of pictures of my friends and pets, and have an easy way to email photos around. For these purposes, resolutions above 1024x768 are usually more hinderance than help! Your average Windows desktop runs no more than 1024x768 resolution, and you don't want more than either 640x480 or even 320x200 for a small .JPG to upload to eBay or email to a relative.
If I'm really concerned about high resolution photos, then I'm probably going to shell out the $'s for a high-end camera (digital or not). If I go the digital route, probably would be best to do it with a digital camera back for a traditional 35mm camera.
If I'm like 90% of the digital camera buyers, I just want to shoot quick pictures of my stuff to post on eBay, make cool Windows
Most people using these higher-resolution cameras end up shrinking their photos in Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, so they're a manageable size to upload.
Definitely... I find it amazing how accustomed we've all gotten to asking someone to repeat what they just said ("Huh?" "Put the yellow cup next to WHAT?" "Come again?") - yet we have no patience for a computer/machine not grasping 99.99% of what we say the first time its spoken.
The problem with voice recognition systems is we expect them to work better than we do!
Maybe I'm thinking of something different, but I recall a show we watched in the 70's called "Project Blue Book". It was one of those weekly TV shows along the lines of "Unsolved Mysteries" or something, except it told 2 or 3 UFO stories on each episode. They'd do the standard interviews with people, show some photos when they were available, and give explanations (if scientists offered any). Haven't seen that on the air in a long time..... forgot all about it until now. Oh well.
Yeah - my thoughts too!
The comment below is a little disconcerting, because we're dangerously close to where a Smith & Wesson *will* become worried about govt. holding them liable if someone kills a child with one of their handguns!
The problem is much larger than people not differentiating when it comes to computer technology vs. illegal use of said technology. This refusal to differentiate happens with even simple, relatively low-technology products and services!
As a whole, we have a need to shift blame. AKA. It's currently understood that if you do a poor job of shoveling snow and ice off of your driveway, and someone comes along and slips/falls on it, you are responsible if they sue you. Since it's *your* property and they chose to walk on it without your consent or invitation, I fail to see how this makes any logical sense! When this does make sense to lawyers and judges though, how can we move beyond that to encryption and programming issues??
"You'd think this would be an easy distinction to understand: We live in a country where 10 children are killed by hand guns every day. But Smith and Wesson doesn't worry that the FBI will come arrest them because someone used their technology to commit a crime."
Unless there's something here I'm missing, what's to prevent people mirroring the Ximian servers that serve up these patches to the client?
The patches are all open source to begin with.
If you think Ximian overcharges for their "express" service, why doesn't someone with lots of bandwidth set up an alternate site at a lower cost?
No way... A common GUI has nothing to do with why Linux hasn't dominated the desktop space.
That's a defecit in MS products, NOT an advantage.
The reason has MUCH more to do with what comes pre-loaded on a new PC, and the "critical mass" of users who have already learned the Windows way of doing things. Once you sell a new user that first PC with Windows on it, you set them on the road of learning that one style of desktop. If they started out with X and KDE (with options to use Gnome or other desktops with just a few clicks of the mouse), they'd be just as comfortable with that.
I'm glad you made this comment, because it was exactly what I was about to post myself, otherwise.
The breakdown of funds distribution from a CD sale is very interesting and enlightening - but it should leave the reader with that one, lingering question: Why the h*ll do musicians agree to these terms in the first place?
Honestly, I think some of it is just old habits dying hard. "It's the way it's always been done, and so it must be the right way to market our music." Some of it is probably ignorance, too. "I don't really know anything about recording my own CDs in-house. I'm not very technical like some of these people."
More importantly though, the recording industry works on a basic principle: "As long as the musician is happy with his/her lifestyle, we can get away with taking the rest of the profits ourselves." Not much different than the way the IRS and taxes work in the U.S. if you think about it. Most people don't really complain as long as they feel like they've got enough money. In the music industry, you get the bonus of fame and adoring fans, too - on top of the paycheck. They'd rather have a few percent of BIG $'s than 0% (which they'll end up with if they don't put out a saleable product).
If this is true, then OpenMail is doomed.
Quite frankly, no-one (save a few fanatics) is going to put forth lots of effort to convince a company to add enough functionality to a product so it becomes viable to purchase. It's Samsung's duty to add the things that are lacking, since they're picking up someone else's failing product.
I'm not going to recommend OpenMail to *any* colleges or businesses until they first prove that they have the programming ability to fix the problems in the current product, and add functionality (such as calendar/scheduling) that users have come to expect in Exchange Server.
Well, honestly, I think HP and OpenMail was much like IBM and OS/2. They never really tried to make the product superior, because deep down, the majority of people working for them didn't really believe in it to start with.
We purchased Manage-X and Openview from HP about a year and a half ago, and a couple of HP reps came out to our site to train us on the products, take us out to dinner, etc. I brought up OpenMail at that time, because their latest release had just come out and I was playing with it on a Linux server. Their immediate reaction was "Ugh... OpenMail? That's a terrible product."
I tried to probe them for reasons why they disliked it, but I guess they realized they shouldn't talk so badly about one of their own software packages. They just made comments like "Well, I haven't actually used the very latest version, but in the past it just wasn't very user-friendly."
Yeah, but there are two other things to consider. First and foremost, what kind of long-term injury are you potentially causing with the exercise/workouts? I think this is worth considering, despite the "health conscious" folks who want to discount it as irrelevant.
People who jog a lot end up with bad knees, and knee surgery is not only quite expensive, but unreliable. Once you get a knee replacement, you can count on repeated future surgeries to maintain it.
Look at any ex professional athlete, and they've got all sorts of physical problems ranging from bad backs to arthritis to worn out joints.
It really seems like common sense to just reduce the calorie intake if you're gaining undesireable weight. Trying to exercise/work-out is the less efficient and safe way to accomplish the same goal.
You know, heat dissipation of CPUs is something I was just thinking about recently. It seems rather inefficient to try to cool a CPU with a powered cooling device (fan, peltier, etc.) - when all of that waste heat could instead be harnessed and used. I realize it isn't going to provide lots and lots of power, but even if a cooling-cap was built that used heat to power the lights on the front of the case, it'd be a start.
I guess people figure the initial cost of this type of energy-saving cooler would far outweigh its benefits? Still, it would just be a "gee-whiz" cool thing to have in your new PC - and might become more worthwhile as production increases and economies of scale take effect.
No, you're not really correct. Outlook *and* Outlook Express are both free products. Even though Outlook comes with every copy of Microsoft Office, it's really just thrown into the bundle. You're not really paying for it. As it was pointed out already, MS makes their money on the client access licenses they require you to purchase to make connections to their Exchange server.
Whenever you buy a copy of Exchange Server, they even throw in a set of install CDs of Outlook for Mac and PC. They hope you'll install lots of free copies of Outlook so you have to pay them big $'s for all those connection licenses.
You're absolutely right, and make an excellent point. I do, however, have a lot of faith in people to re-engineer hardware to break through the barriers placed in the way of functionality.
Back when they proclaimed it illegal to sell police scanners that let you listen to cell-phone frequencies in the 800Mhz range, people came out with a slew of modifications to re-enable the missing frequencies.
When they sold the Playstation so it wouldn't run copies of game CDs, they released hacked chips to solder in the unit and fix the problem.
When Apex was forced to quit selling DVD players with the "loophole menu" in them to disable Macrovision and region codes, hackers created custom firmware to flash into them to restore these capabilities.
As long as individuals remain interested in the inner workings of hardware, control will always be regained from the industry. Keeping control in software just means a larger percentage of the population has the knowledge and ability to make the changes needed.
I have one of these Aiwa MP3 CD players in my Ford Ranger truck. I've had it for close to 4 months now - and I like it a lot for the relatively low price.
I agree that it has some issues with skipping, but I've found it's only really bad about it when you use re-recordable CDRW discs in it. (It's cool that it can read those at all, really, since most players don't.)
The lack of in-song resume on MP3s is a little annoying, but not a "show stopper" by any means. (It does resume in the middle of songs if you're playing standard music CDs.)
I really think the biggest factor in how much a car CD player skips is in the installation. I had a friend with a Sony CD/receiver that always skipped in his car. One day, he got fed up and shoved a couple pieces of foam packing material around the unit. Problem solved!