$100 doesnt buy much these days...there is a reason that laptops dont sell for under $450...they cost money One problem is it that $100 buys plenty in the places that a lot of these laptops are supposed to be going. So, maybe we should just feed them fish instead of teaching them to fish. That way they'll always be dependent on us.
Also, for the last time, these are *not* going to 3rd world countries. For example, they are going to Argentina and Brazil.
From what I've read here on/., there are already far too many politicians working on Open Source projects (well, mainly the Linux Kernel I refer to here). Doing something like this would probably make it worse. Maybe.
But I suppose that could be corrected with a bottom weighted moderation system to discourage back rubbing exchanges.
Many (if not most) similar committees and associations are made up not of the right people for the job, but instead those that were corralled into the positions or couldn't find anything better.
On the other hand, Microsoft's primary goal is to maintain their privileged monopoly wherever and however possible. I actually had an eerie conversation with a Microsoft paralegal, who described her job as "palm-greasing officials in the Asian market". She also described how the executive were no longer concerned with making money, "they're in a position to change the world". I asked her what level of government they planned to get elected, and she replied, "why would they run for office? That would be a demotion!" And that was almost 10 years ago.
Assuming she was giving a truthful account, and her office was directly below Bill Gates, so I imagine she does know what goes on, the Microsoft executive believe that since power is available to them, they are entitled to use their influence wherever and however possible, and that their ability to do so justifies itself.
So show me a group of vigilante multi-billionaires and I'll show you dozens of half-witted committees that bend to their will, despite overwhelming reasoning to do otherwise.
Much of me wishes MS the very best of the best in these endeavors. No, seriously.
Because I really don't feel like we (the US) have a final trump card (nukes don't count) we could use if we absolutely needed to, should it no longer be in China's best interests to keep the USA in their back pocket. Say, when their economy no longer needs ours to keep theirs employed. I don't think our politicians will have the guts to sanction China before it's too late. So at this time, when they no longer need us, I imagine they will call in our debt, and scoff as we fall off our mighty economic pedestal.
It would be mutually assured destruction for them to try this...now. But there will come a day when the destruction would no longer be mutual.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I don't see how we can continue to import like crazy without exporting something they want besides cash. Either that, or stay so far ahead of them on the efficiency curve (with the help of better technology) that we can continue to fund all this importing we do. Except, it's much harder to improve our GDP than it is for them (because we're the innovators of tech and they simply adopt it...may times without paying for it first...to improve their GDP).
We need to come up with things they want to buy, because they have a fricking lot more people that we could sell to.
For the most part the DC didn't need a 'mod'. Almost all of them were perfectly capable of reading CD-Rs and executing homebrew code, which is why it was one of the most pirated consoles ever. Would closing this have helped them keep the boat afloat any longer? They were in a tough position but I hear they had some crazy good online games.
Just take a look at the number of pro-Chinese, anti-*everything*-western comments on Youtube in relation to the Tibet issues, as well as what happened in Tiananmen square. One of the comments on a BBC video of the TS incident stated that GWB, CNN, Fox, BBC were all incredibly biased and that this [TS] never happened.
Careful, the government over there runs their own TOR servers to watch people that use them, and it's likely someone has sniffed your text on the way to the Slashdot servers.
I don't like the idea of all the bandwidth the Ubuntu guys have to pay for to keep us up to date patching every program every week. I was thinking they should integrate Bittorrent with the updater. There are lots of packages and who needs what changes all the time, but for the people that always update when they get the notification it would save them a lot of bandwidth.
No, This time it's true for real. They only just fixed the bug that was keeping wireless from correctly working correctly on all the bcm4318 chipsets (of which mine was one). (I was involved in the process that's how I know, it was literally ironed out a week ago).
I agree. I would like less Reddit/Digg style stories. That's not what attracts me to slashdot, it's the in depth discussion, which simply isn't generated by stories like this.
Perhaps slashdot could use a submissions detailing how far bittorrent has come, that covers all the latest in legal uses of bitorrent, so we can go use them.
I download linux torrents just so I can spend 24/7 uploading them, just to prove bittorrent has good uses.
Not good enough in my opinion. Why? Because CBC, and ESPECIALLY Blizzard, would probably not put a up a fight. It'd be cheaper for them to just pay the extra bandwidth.
We need to start coming up with more legitimate uses of Bittorrent, because "My favorite Linux Distribution" isn't going to be enough to keep legislation/judges ruling Bittorrent illegal because it's "filesharing"
This is a great way to do it, offer all the keynote sessions on bittorrent.
Until now we've had a few bands release their album on bittorrent, and that's about it.
All that lack of progress goes away if you turn off UAC all together.
That got rid of all my frustrations (well except that my Nvidia drivers are locking up the system about 1-2x per week, and that XP is still faster for gaming); and except for gaming, I don't spend any more time in XP.
Vista has vastly improved boot caching/defragging of some sort as well; I get to a usable desktop immediately after logging in, and clicking firefox as soon as I can opens a window within about 3-5 seconds, as opposed to in XP where I have to wait 10, sometimes 20 seconds to do the same on my spankin-fast computer.
Then it's solved! They should just pay us better to keep us complacent, and our wives won't blow up at us for being poor husbands, and then we won't feel driven, in turn, to blow things up as well.
But, if someone pirates a song/album and then turns around and buys it because he or she likes it, the industry counts it as BOTH a $X loss due to piracy AND a $X gain due to the sale. I think a more accurate representation would be that person pirates [band]. Then, they're in Walmart and see the newest album from [band], and, in their desire to have it to listen to immediately on the way home, and desire to support the band, buy the CD.
I wonder if a way for them to capitalize on this concept would be to offer cheap subscription to DRM free music more than 5 years old. This way they're not exactly losing money (because albums do most of their sales within the first 5 years), but they're gaining viewership which is free advertisement for the current albums out. IE, you find a band you love, listen to their current albums, want more, but the 3 most recent albums are 5 years old, so you go out and buy that album.
Culture is always on the move, to be in you want to have the latest fashion and to be hip you want the latest music.
The music industry could lure both the casual pop listeners and the hardcore music enthusiasts by supplying a non-DRM'd subscription model in chunks of 6 months and 1 year (reasonable, to keep people from subscribing for one month a year and that's it). Say, $10/month for the 6-month plan and $8/month for the 1 year plan. This gets you access to all music.
Even more sustainable would be to do this with movies, because they could probably get away with a "basic" service where you only get movies from the last 6-months, and a "premium" service that lets you have access to the entire movie catalog. Most people, me included, would buy the movies-from-the-last-6-months access, because I generally am not interested in seeing many movies twice. The "premium" service would exist for movie buffs who like to have everything all the time.
Such a service would curb pirating very much I imagine. Opportunity cost isn't bad. Work 2hours at minimum wage and get a month of music.
Since everything would be tracked, monies could transparently be distributed to the bands most downloaded, and finally there wouldn't be incentive for the industry to hype any one band, they'd instead be interested in keeping revenue by pushing bands to develop new, artful albums (instead of the mass produced "music" we have now).
Slashdot Mirror
Also, for the last time, these are *not* going to 3rd world countries. For example, they are going to Argentina and Brazil.
From what I've read here on /., there are already far too many politicians working on Open Source projects (well, mainly the Linux Kernel I refer to here). Doing something like this would probably make it worse. Maybe.
But I suppose that could be corrected with a bottom weighted moderation system to discourage back rubbing exchanges.
Many (if not most) similar committees and associations are made up not of the right people for the job, but instead those that were corralled into the positions or couldn't find anything better.
On the other hand, Microsoft's primary goal is to maintain their privileged monopoly wherever and however possible. I actually had an eerie conversation with a Microsoft paralegal, who described her job as "palm-greasing officials in the Asian market". She also described how the executive were no longer concerned with making money, "they're in a position to change the world". I asked her what level of government they planned to get elected, and she replied, "why would they run for office? That would be a demotion!" And that was almost 10 years ago.
Assuming she was giving a truthful account, and her office was directly below Bill Gates, so I imagine she does know what goes on, the Microsoft executive believe that since power is available to them, they are entitled to use their influence wherever and however possible, and that their ability to do so justifies itself.
So show me a group of vigilante multi-billionaires and I'll show you dozens of half-witted committees that bend to their will, despite overwhelming reasoning to do otherwise.
Much of me wishes MS the very best of the best in these endeavors. No, seriously.Because I really don't feel like we (the US) have a final trump card (nukes don't count) we could use if we absolutely needed to, should it no longer be in China's best interests to keep the USA in their back pocket. Say, when their economy no longer needs ours to keep theirs employed. I don't think our politicians will have the guts to sanction China before it's too late. So at this time, when they no longer need us, I imagine they will call in our debt, and scoff as we fall off our mighty economic pedestal.
It would be mutually assured destruction for them to try this...now. But there will come a day when the destruction would no longer be mutual.
Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but I don't see how we can continue to import like crazy without exporting something they want besides cash. Either that, or stay so far ahead of them on the efficiency curve (with the help of better technology) that we can continue to fund all this importing we do. Except, it's much harder to improve our GDP than it is for them (because we're the innovators of tech and they simply adopt it...may times without paying for it first...to improve their GDP).
We need to come up with things they want to buy, because they have a fricking lot more people that we could sell to.
oh. :(
Just take a look at the number of pro-Chinese, anti-*everything*-western comments on Youtube in relation to the Tibet issues, as well as what happened in Tiananmen square. One of the comments on a BBC video of the TS incident stated that GWB, CNN, Fox, BBC were all incredibly biased and that this [TS] never happened.
Careful, the government over there runs their own TOR servers to watch people that use them, and it's likely someone has sniffed your text on the way to the Slashdot servers.
I hope you don't disappear.
I don't like the idea of all the bandwidth the Ubuntu guys have to pay for to keep us up to date patching every program every week. I was thinking they should integrate Bittorrent with the updater. There are lots of packages and who needs what changes all the time, but for the people that always update when they get the notification it would save them a lot of bandwidth.
so is the pronunciation "post-gresskwel"?
But those figures for retirement don't take into account inflation, which is usually right about the savings account interest rate.
And just how many of the masses are running RAID 1 arrays? None.
As for the wireless card, did you enable the restricted drivers for it?
No, This time it's true for real.
They only just fixed the bug that was keeping wireless from correctly working correctly on all the bcm4318 chipsets (of which mine was one). (I was involved in the process that's how I know, it was literally ironed out a week ago).
Just because they put it all in the summary doesn't mean we'll read it before posting!
Well these multivitamins I take before I go to bed have all that stuff and more, like licopene. I'm sure that's just what the planktons need.
I think you mean breeder reactor, or perhaps Fast Breeder Reactor.
I agree. I would like less Reddit/Digg style stories. That's not what attracts me to slashdot, it's the in depth discussion, which simply isn't generated by stories like this.
Perhaps slashdot could use a submissions detailing how far bittorrent has come, that covers all the latest in legal uses of bitorrent, so we can go use them.
I download linux torrents just so I can spend 24/7 uploading them, just to prove bittorrent has good uses.
Not good enough in my opinion. Why? Because CBC, and ESPECIALLY Blizzard, would probably not put a up a fight. It'd be cheaper for them to just pay the extra bandwidth.
We need to start coming up with more legitimate uses of Bittorrent, because "My favorite Linux Distribution" isn't going to be enough to keep legislation/judges ruling Bittorrent illegal because it's "filesharing"
This is a great way to do it, offer all the keynote sessions on bittorrent.
Until now we've had a few bands release their album on bittorrent, and that's about it.
guess you're right;
had free access to it though so I wasn't shelling out any money, guess that's why I hate it less.
If I paid $100 for this, I probably would be irritated.
Eh.
All that lack of progress goes away if you turn off UAC all together.
That got rid of all my frustrations (well except that my Nvidia drivers are locking up the system about 1-2x per week, and that XP is still faster for gaming); and except for gaming, I don't spend any more time in XP.
Vista has vastly improved boot caching/defragging of some sort as well; I get to a usable desktop immediately after logging in, and clicking firefox as soon as I can opens a window within about 3-5 seconds, as opposed to in XP where I have to wait 10, sometimes 20 seconds to do the same on my spankin-fast computer.
Then it's solved! They should just pay us better to keep us complacent, and our wives won't blow up at us for being poor husbands, and then we won't feel driven, in turn, to blow things up as well.
I wonder if a way for them to capitalize on this concept would be to offer cheap subscription to DRM free music more than 5 years old. This way they're not exactly losing money (because albums do most of their sales within the first 5 years), but they're gaining viewership which is free advertisement for the current albums out. IE, you find a band you love, listen to their current albums, want more, but the 3 most recent albums are 5 years old, so you go out and buy that album.
Culture is always on the move, to be in you want to have the latest fashion and to be hip you want the latest music.
The music industry could lure both the casual pop listeners and the hardcore music enthusiasts by supplying a non-DRM'd subscription model in chunks of 6 months and 1 year (reasonable, to keep people from subscribing for one month a year and that's it). Say, $10/month for the 6-month plan and $8/month for the 1 year plan. This gets you access to all music.
Even more sustainable would be to do this with movies, because they could probably get away with a "basic" service where you only get movies from the last 6-months, and a "premium" service that lets you have access to the entire movie catalog. Most people, me included, would buy the movies-from-the-last-6-months access, because I generally am not interested in seeing many movies twice. The "premium" service would exist for movie buffs who like to have everything all the time.
Such a service would curb pirating very much I imagine. Opportunity cost isn't bad. Work 2hours at minimum wage and get a month of music.
Since everything would be tracked, monies could transparently be distributed to the bands most downloaded, and finally there wouldn't be incentive for the industry to hype any one band, they'd instead be interested in keeping revenue by pushing bands to develop new, artful albums (instead of the mass produced "music" we have now).
I think it makes for a funny metaphor that our constitution's writing is fading as we as a country stray from its principles.