welcome to the beginnings a world where you LEASE all of your electronics (or in the case of PCs the software running on them) to keep the corperations in control of every aspect of life...
It's not necessarily a bad thing. Leasing the equipment will always guarantee you free replacement hardware and upgrades in the future. So instead of dropping $500 on a box you spend $5 a month (or whatever)... that's much more cost efficient! It'd take you around 8 years to get a return on your purchase of the equipment over just leasing it! How many of you out there still have working 8 year old TiVos?
I believe the term you're looking for is "innovates". Microsoft Officially Innovated Massive with that $1 billion cash pile they set aside for innovation of their products.
Meanwhile, all the criminals who really know what they're doing will send messages PGP encrypted, or use even more sophisticated methods of encrypting their files, and hiding who the messages are travelling between.
Your average criminal, even high level mafia bosses, aren't that bright when it comes to encryption. I think you're giving them too much credit.
What the hell is with releasing a new version so quickly? I just installed Sarge on my new web host and was hoping to get at least 2-3 years out of it as stable before I had to upgrade. Shit.
3. I don't remember seeing Episodes IV through VI (I was more into Star Trek as a kid) and I'd like to pick them up to find out what happens with this whole Darth Vader guy from Episode III that I just watched last week for the first time. Does he ever figure out he has two kids? Will he make up with Obi Wan? Whatever happened to the Jedi order? Did it die off or are there still Jedi out there? What about Yoda? Whatever happens to him?
I think I'm officially hooked on this whole Star Wars thing and I'm dying to know how it all turns out so I'll be sure to pick up these DVDs. For example, whatever happens to Jar Jar Binks after Episode III? Hopefully Episode IV will clear that up.
I remember there used to be a company called VA Linux that IPO'd at some absurdly high price (over $300 a share!) and some open source guy bragged about how he was an instant millionaire now. By the time his stock vested it was practically worthless though and he was eating crow. ROFL. I wonder whatever happened to that company. I just looked them up and apparently they're now called VA Software (probably trying to flee angry stockholders) trading at $5 a share.
send rational letters and email to your reps; not that they will listen, but so they know folks are paying attention.
Maybe what we really need to do is start a Citizen's Rights PAC to bribe our Congressmen with trips to Scotland for golfing outings or Rome for fact finding missions regarding the preservation of artwork. At least maybe we could try to level the playing field with Hollywood. How about we get everyone in the country that uses any kind of intellectual property to send $1 to each Congressman? Come on, you can sacrifice your XBox 360 savings fund to bribe our government officials.
If you'd ever read the GPL, you'd notice that source only needs to distributed to the people who got the binary, and the binary can be charged for.
Ah right, the old "charge $150,000 for the binary because the first person that buys it will just redistribute the source code completely legally under the terms of the GPL" approach.
Yeah but try to play Fear or Oblivion at 1600X1200 resolution with all features on and AF at 16X on your 6600 and then tell me a 500.00 card isn't better
I rarely play games at more than 800x600 anyway so no loss for me. My $150 GeForce 6600 card came with a $50 instant rebate for a video game at Best Buy so I picked up a copy of Battlefield 2 with the card. It plays absolutely fine on my AMD Athlon XP 2400+ system with the 6600 card at 800x600. It's AGP to boot! I imagine I'll need a better motherboard and processor if I really wanted to take advantage of some higher performance graphics cards, but I have other priorities at this time in my life. Maximizing my 401(k), building a house, putting away money for my child's college education, etc.
Have you sat back and thought about how far that $500 would go if you didn't just throw it away on a piece of computer equipment that will be obsolete in 3 months? For example, find some financial calculators and do some calculations of putting $500 every 3 months into a high growth rate mutual fund or stocks for example. I bet you'd be pleasantly suprised by the kind of growth your investment would return. Who am I kidding eh? This is Slashdot. Spend spend spend fools! Spend so my stocks will increase in value! Woohoo.
I guess this is a stupid question, but how does the electric company know when you're using your power? On my house there's just a meter that gets read once a month. Subtract amount A from amount B and that's your energy usage for the month. How would they know if you used it during the day or not? I guess businesses must have different meters.
On the other hand, it would enable a secure method of controlling who can have access to your identity. Right now all I need is your social security number, your name, and a couple of details like your address and I can get credit in your name. I'd much rather have a strong smart card that authorized the use of my identity and credentials before any financial transactions could take place. I don't fear my government, I fear the identity thieves.
It's hard finding interesting stuff to download in full speed from single sources, but it's really convenient when downloading torrents from multiple seeders.
Yet another proof of the fact that the more bandwidth you give an individual their their home, the greater the likelihood they'll use it to start pirating copyrighted material. Join with me to say HELL NO to high speed broadband links in homes. Nobody needs more than a 128kbps ISDN link.
/BG
Reinventing the wheel again and again and again
on
WebOS Market Review
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· Score: 5, Insightful
If people wanted to use an X terminal they'd buy X terminals. People don't buy $500-$2000 computers just to handicap themselves by running some web-based operating system and using their computer as a dumb terminal. We went through similar hype years ago with the whole network computing idea of using a dumbed-down network appliance box and accessing software from an online application provider. That fell flat on its face as well. How many times do these people have to keep trying to reinvent the same concept over and over before they realize that people LIKE having a fat client on their desktop so they don't have to be connected 24/7 to a network?
I really don't understand why people vote for politicians who are bought & sold so easily (and cheaply).
I have a better idea to help stomp out terrorism: Decrease the amount of years copyright protection applies to 5 years in order to spur new innovation and content creation rather than hoarding and milking of old material that should've entered the public domain decades ago. Copyright isn't about creating some kind of intellectual property that can be traded and acquired by successive businesses, it's about encouraging innovative new creative works. How does the Beatles songs still being copyright protected encourage them to make new albums? Half of them are farking dead!
But these movies are clearly being subsidized by the commercial success they have here in the USA. If they weren't selling well here you could be damn certain they wouldn't be able to drop the price down that low in oriental markets. These guys are just trying to make a decent living and profit enough to afford to make us more high quality movies. Piracy only hurts those efforts, not helps it.
Except that they can't. If they could, they wouldn't be sobbing about piracy and using the government as a club to beat down their customers.
Have you been to a store lately? ALL the DVDs are $20 a piece. Of course people are buying them at $20 a piece. The only people that bother to pirate movies are cheap ass bastards who don't mind watching a low-quality rip of a movie. Compressing 9 gigs of a DVD down to a 700 meg DivX rip makes it look like fucking ass.
Apparently it IS possible to sell them for such a price. Why not here? This just proves that they CAN sell for less but do not WANT to.
Ummm, DUH! Of course they could sell DVDs for $1.50 here in the USA, but they can also sell them for $19.95. If people stopped buying $20 DVDs they'd quickly start falling in price to the point where people started buying them. The trouble is, there are enough people out there with enough disposable income that a $20 DVD isn't a big deal to them, thus the market prices DVDs around $20 here in the USA for new releases.
I only watch a film once, so why pay more for a DVD than it costs to watch in the theater?
Why would you even buy the movie in the first place then? Just go rent it for $3.50 (or whatever) at your video store. You're certainly not the market they're aiming for if you don't collect movies and watch them multiple times... or do you use that excuse to justify pirating them via BitTorrent or Usenet?
Finally, a tech company that will pay handsomely for my military skills when I get out. But how will I lead my commando team against the Axis-of-Do-No-Evil without being spotted on Google Earth? Confound it!
I wouldn't worry too much about it. Google's maps are so outdated that my development shows up as nothing but a bulldozed 300 acre plot of land. They're at least 2 or 3 years out of date.
Because a law will come and require this kind of tech in all sets
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Once these sets start to become available it's only a matter of time. They sure are going out of their way to make television something to avoid with all these new anti-commercial-skipping technologies and DRM built into new HDTV sets and such. Makes you either want to baby that old 19" CRT you have or just give up on it altogether and just watch content on the Internet instead. It won't be long before all that is Windows-Media-DRM enforced only though too.
One has to wonder if Sun is ripe for a takeover by the likes of Google. There is alot of speculation on this and it kinda makes sense. What's Sun's bread and butter these days?
I would hope Google would complete their acquisition of Disney before we start speculating about Sun. One at a time folks, one at a time.
Yea, that sounds a lot less complicated than downloading the AdBlock extension, right clicking on an add and telling it to block it. What are you smoking? Try doing that on a site like Fark where ads are served off the same host as the image tags and such and vast portions of the site will begin to look like ass. Blocking by URL is 100 times better than blocking based on hostname.
It doesn't matter how we spend the money, only that it gets spent on something, and as long as that something came from inside the country.
Exactly. There are a lot of brainwashed free software people out there that just don't seem to understand that what's good for Microsoft is what is good for America. America isn't into manufacturing goods as much as it used to so it needs to rely on new and innovative companies like Microsoft to market technology, services, and intellectual property to remain prosperous. We should be applauding Microsoft for their success, not discouraging their growth.
Hahaha, how did you get moderated to +5 and I got moderated down to -1? You asked if BSD was really dying and I answered truthfully that Wind River no longer produces BSD so it is a dead product. Sheesh. It's not offtopic if I'm replying to a question someone poses in an on-topic post!
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It's not necessarily a bad thing. Leasing the equipment will always guarantee you free replacement hardware and upgrades in the future. So instead of dropping $500 on a box you spend $5 a month (or whatever)... that's much more cost efficient! It'd take you around 8 years to get a return on your purchase of the equipment over just leasing it! How many of you out there still have working 8 year old TiVos?
I believe the term you're looking for is "innovates". Microsoft Officially Innovated Massive with that $1 billion cash pile they set aside for innovation of their products.
Your average criminal, even high level mafia bosses, aren't that bright when it comes to encryption. I think you're giving them too much credit.
3. I don't remember seeing Episodes IV through VI (I was more into Star Trek as a kid) and I'd like to pick them up to find out what happens with this whole Darth Vader guy from Episode III that I just watched last week for the first time. Does he ever figure out he has two kids? Will he make up with Obi Wan? Whatever happened to the Jedi order? Did it die off or are there still Jedi out there? What about Yoda? Whatever happens to him? I think I'm officially hooked on this whole Star Wars thing and I'm dying to know how it all turns out so I'll be sure to pick up these DVDs. For example, whatever happens to Jar Jar Binks after Episode III? Hopefully Episode IV will clear that up.
I remember there used to be a company called VA Linux that IPO'd at some absurdly high price (over $300 a share!) and some open source guy bragged about how he was an instant millionaire now. By the time his stock vested it was practically worthless though and he was eating crow. ROFL. I wonder whatever happened to that company. I just looked them up and apparently they're now called VA Software (probably trying to flee angry stockholders) trading at $5 a share.
Maybe what we really need to do is start a Citizen's Rights PAC to bribe our Congressmen with trips to Scotland for golfing outings or Rome for fact finding missions regarding the preservation of artwork. At least maybe we could try to level the playing field with Hollywood. How about we get everyone in the country that uses any kind of intellectual property to send $1 to each Congressman? Come on, you can sacrifice your XBox 360 savings fund to bribe our government officials.
Ah right, the old "charge $150,000 for the binary because the first person that buys it will just redistribute the source code completely legally under the terms of the GPL" approach.
I rarely play games at more than 800x600 anyway so no loss for me. My $150 GeForce 6600 card came with a $50 instant rebate for a video game at Best Buy so I picked up a copy of Battlefield 2 with the card. It plays absolutely fine on my AMD Athlon XP 2400+ system with the 6600 card at 800x600. It's AGP to boot! I imagine I'll need a better motherboard and processor if I really wanted to take advantage of some higher performance graphics cards, but I have other priorities at this time in my life. Maximizing my 401(k), building a house, putting away money for my child's college education, etc.
Have you sat back and thought about how far that $500 would go if you didn't just throw it away on a piece of computer equipment that will be obsolete in 3 months? For example, find some financial calculators and do some calculations of putting $500 every 3 months into a high growth rate mutual fund or stocks for example. I bet you'd be pleasantly suprised by the kind of growth your investment would return. Who am I kidding eh? This is Slashdot. Spend spend spend fools! Spend so my stocks will increase in value! Woohoo.
I guess this is a stupid question, but how does the electric company know when you're using your power? On my house there's just a meter that gets read once a month. Subtract amount A from amount B and that's your energy usage for the month. How would they know if you used it during the day or not? I guess businesses must have different meters.
On the other hand, it would enable a secure method of controlling who can have access to your identity. Right now all I need is your social security number, your name, and a couple of details like your address and I can get credit in your name. I'd much rather have a strong smart card that authorized the use of my identity and credentials before any financial transactions could take place. I don't fear my government, I fear the identity thieves.
Yet another proof of the fact that the more bandwidth you give an individual their their home, the greater the likelihood they'll use it to start pirating copyrighted material. Join with me to say HELL NO to high speed broadband links in homes. Nobody needs more than a 128kbps ISDN link.
If people wanted to use an X terminal they'd buy X terminals. People don't buy $500-$2000 computers just to handicap themselves by running some web-based operating system and using their computer as a dumb terminal. We went through similar hype years ago with the whole network computing idea of using a dumbed-down network appliance box and accessing software from an online application provider. That fell flat on its face as well. How many times do these people have to keep trying to reinvent the same concept over and over before they realize that people LIKE having a fat client on their desktop so they don't have to be connected 24/7 to a network?
I have a better idea to help stomp out terrorism: Decrease the amount of years copyright protection applies to 5 years in order to spur new innovation and content creation rather than hoarding and milking of old material that should've entered the public domain decades ago. Copyright isn't about creating some kind of intellectual property that can be traded and acquired by successive businesses, it's about encouraging innovative new creative works. How does the Beatles songs still being copyright protected encourage them to make new albums? Half of them are farking dead!
But these movies are clearly being subsidized by the commercial success they have here in the USA. If they weren't selling well here you could be damn certain they wouldn't be able to drop the price down that low in oriental markets. These guys are just trying to make a decent living and profit enough to afford to make us more high quality movies. Piracy only hurts those efforts, not helps it.
Have you been to a store lately? ALL the DVDs are $20 a piece. Of course people are buying them at $20 a piece. The only people that bother to pirate movies are cheap ass bastards who don't mind watching a low-quality rip of a movie. Compressing 9 gigs of a DVD down to a 700 meg DivX rip makes it look like fucking ass.
Ummm, DUH! Of course they could sell DVDs for $1.50 here in the USA, but they can also sell them for $19.95. If people stopped buying $20 DVDs they'd quickly start falling in price to the point where people started buying them. The trouble is, there are enough people out there with enough disposable income that a $20 DVD isn't a big deal to them, thus the market prices DVDs around $20 here in the USA for new releases.
Why would you even buy the movie in the first place then? Just go rent it for $3.50 (or whatever) at your video store. You're certainly not the market they're aiming for if you don't collect movies and watch them multiple times... or do you use that excuse to justify pirating them via BitTorrent or Usenet?
I wouldn't worry too much about it. Google's maps are so outdated that my development shows up as nothing but a bulldozed 300 acre plot of land. They're at least 2 or 3 years out of date.
It still has a Boobies tag if you're a TFer. Even the Foobies.com links have Boobies tags.
Ding ding ding. We have a winner. Once these sets start to become available it's only a matter of time. They sure are going out of their way to make television something to avoid with all these new anti-commercial-skipping technologies and DRM built into new HDTV sets and such. Makes you either want to baby that old 19" CRT you have or just give up on it altogether and just watch content on the Internet instead. It won't be long before all that is Windows-Media-DRM enforced only though too.
I would hope Google would complete their acquisition of Disney before we start speculating about Sun. One at a time folks, one at a time.
Yea, that sounds a lot less complicated than downloading the AdBlock extension, right clicking on an add and telling it to block it. What are you smoking? Try doing that on a site like Fark where ads are served off the same host as the image tags and such and vast portions of the site will begin to look like ass. Blocking by URL is 100 times better than blocking based on hostname.
Exactly. There are a lot of brainwashed free software people out there that just don't seem to understand that what's good for Microsoft is what is good for America. America isn't into manufacturing goods as much as it used to so it needs to rely on new and innovative companies like Microsoft to market technology, services, and intellectual property to remain prosperous. We should be applauding Microsoft for their success, not discouraging their growth.
Hahaha, how did you get moderated to +5 and I got moderated down to -1? You asked if BSD was really dying and I answered truthfully that Wind River no longer produces BSD so it is a dead product. Sheesh. It's not offtopic if I'm replying to a question someone poses in an on-topic post!