I'm not certain, but I know that Intel plans on using a 22 nm process as the next step after the current 32 nm process that is being used for their newest chips. They've estimated that the first chips using a 22 nm process would be released in the second half of 2011. There may be a technical reason not to use a 25 nm process for CPUs, but if they already have a 22 nm process being developed for CPU usage, there's no point in using a 25 nm process.
Or the only way that Apple could get that content was to agree to higher prices from the publisher. I think all of the book companies have seen how much of a pain in the ass it was for the music industry to get Apple to raise prices and don't want them to have that kind of control over them. It's only self-interest on the part of the publishers. Apple is pretty late to the digital book market, so I imagine they were willing to agree with whatever terms they needed to in order to make the deal.
Besides, as long as the Kindle store is available on the iPad (They already have an iPhone app so I don't see why Amazon wouldn't be able to sell books.) consumers will be able to shop around for the best price. Personally I wish all of the online digital media stores would take a page from Valve's book and have weekly deals like Steam does. A lot of game publishers have fould that a half-off sale will net them a ridiculous number of sales. I recall reading that one independent developer sold more copies of his game during a one day holiday sale than had sold during all other days (Prior to that point.) combined.
I've found I'm a lot more willing to purchase something I may have only been mildly interested in previously if it's on sale. Valve saw a 3000% increase in sales of Left for Dead when they offered it half-off for a weekend. They also said that they sold more copies of the game during the sale than when it was first released, which almost never happens with video games.
I'm sorry, but you completely miss the point. Open source software isn't inherently good or bad, but the concept of openness isn't something that always best suits the needs of most consumers or something that will always serve them well. I think that the GP would have been better off saying computer skills more so than programming skills as there are a lot of computer users that might not know how to download and install programs. This probably isn't as prevalent in the younger generations, but I've worked with a lot of people who use computers and don't understand how to do this things.
The examples you mention aren't in the same ballpark as computers. They're all appliances that the user doesn't attempt to install additional software on or modify in any way. They may all as well run by magic as far as the end user is concerned because for most users they'll never need to touch that part of the device. I don't care whether my TV uses open source firmware or not. I just care that it works. I'd prefer that I never have to worry about mucking around at that level even if I have the ability to see and modify the code the drives my TV.
Free software doesn't guarantee that it's virus free. I recall a while back that someone had slipped some form of malware into the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox without anyone noticing. I'm also free to grab an open source program and add malware of my own and redistribute a malware-laden binary and fool users into downloading it. They lack the computing skills to know how to use MD5 or even the knowledge of what MD5 actually is. I also recall that at one point there was an exploit where arbitrary code buried within a particular image format would execute due to vulnerabilities in the software used to display it.
I think that the GP's assertion that there would be less spamming is correct. If spammers cannot use compromised computers to send out spam, they would need to use their own machines which can easily be blacklisted. Masses of phishing emails couldn't be sent out without the email providers being easily able to shut it down. People will still be subject to phishing, but on a much smaller scale.
A gated store doesn't necessarily mean that malware will never get through. It's entirely possible that someone could release an app that sends out spam in the background, but because Apple has a kill switch they can solve that problem even if their users are incapable of solving it themselves. Of course, having this power requires a great amount of responsibility on Apple's part. If they are abusive of it, the backlash will cost them customers and bring down government scrutiny upon them. Similarly, if Microsoft could kill all of the malware on Windows PCs don't you think they wouldn't want to do so? The amount of money it would save would be enormous.
I tend to agree with the points you have brought up, but I feel you really didn't understand what the GP was attempting to say. There is a trade off between a walled garden and an open field. Most users don't care for the advantages that the open field gives them. To use a car metaphor, driving a manual transmission gives you greater control and efficiency, but most people prefer to drive an automatic as it is much easier for them to do so. Also, the constant ad hominem attacks in your post really make you look like a jerk. It completely detracts from the good points that you made and makes your post look like the rantings of an angry person more so than a structured logical argument.
Sometimes companies purchase another smaller company just to keep it out of the hands of the competition.
From what I've heard, Apple was in talks with AdMob before Google purchased them. I also heard a rumor that Apple bought Lala because Google was in negotiations to purchase them.
Neither company has much overlap into the business areas of the other, but both are large and experiencing incredible growth. I believe that they're both very afraid of each other, though. If Apple were to run away with mobile phones like they have with the iPod, what's to stop them from creating their own alternative to Google and putting them out of business. I'm sure Apple also sees Google as a threat in some similar way as well.
It seems as though this simple pissing contest is turning into a full out arms race.
Which is great until H.265 is released and the whole problem repeats itself. It's also a matter of the FTC letting Apple purchase all of these companies (Some probably won't want to sell their patents.) and Apple actually wanting to spend all of this money for something that benefits them in no way at all. Maybe some goodwill but most people won't even understand what's being talked about.
Since most hardware buying built these days has H.264 decoding built in somewhere, wouldn't it just be sufficient for browsers to pass the decoding off to the hardware without implementing anything else beyond that? All we need for this is a few system calls that allow the browser to determine if there is hardware decoding available and then make the appropriate calls to use it.
Hardware always costs money to make so a price will always be charged for it which keeps the patent holders happy and every browser can support H.264 without having to write or implement a decoder in software. The only people this doesn't work out for are the folks with legacy hardware, but a lot of them will eventually upgrade to something new.
It wouldn't end civilization in the sense that we're all dead and gone, but the world would collectively flip shit and the reaction from scared, panic-filled people and the politicians looking to take advantage of the whole problem would lead to a lot of adverse effects.
Just look at the shit storm caused by 9/11. All of that has happened from two buildings being destroyed. Imagine the reaction from millions of deaths and a city being leveled, especially if it's a city belonging to some super power. My thoughts are that the world would collectively move towards something out of 1984. I feel as though this would be bad.
I think your company isn't one that's overly chummy with the government. The RIAA is already buying politicians and writing copyright legislation. If they're already doing that, I don't think they have to worry too much about the law coming down on them for something as minor as whores and blow. You're really underestimating the industry if you don't think that this goes on behind closed doors. After all, this is the same industry that would buy drugs for the big-name bands that were working on new albums.
Just because a story seems incredulous doesn't necessarily make it untrue. I imagine there are still a few executives in the recording industry who like to party like rock stars.
Re:HTML5 for the win? Sorry, that's not a codec.
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YouTube Revamp Imminent?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Ideally yes, but for everyone with a smart phone or other device that can't afford to waste CPU (And by extension battery life.) on decoding video when it has a perfectly good H.264 hardware decoder, Ogg is not a good solution.
Linux desktop market share is maybe 1% at most. Linux actually has a good showing in the mobile phone space, but these devices all include H.264 hardware decoders so they don't run into the same issues as desktop Linux.
The only place Theora makes any real amount of sense is on the desktop and Linux is largely an also ran in that space at the current time.
It matters because the smart phones, iPods, and other small devices that are becoming a major way that people consume content don't have Ogg Theora hardware decoders. These devices do have H.264 hardware decoders and won't have to use the CPU to decode and playback the video, saving a lot of battery life.
As far as I know, there aren't even any Theora hardware decoders in existence, or if there are they aren't being mass produced. There's also not a lot of point in making one either as Ogg isn't a widely used video codec so that hardware won't see much use. Do you see the vicious cycle that's been formed? Even if someone were to mass produce the chips and someone else were to actually include them in their hardware, by the time they reach any fragment of market share, the rest of the world will have moved on to H.265.
I think that the manufacturers realized that netbooks were an even faster race to the bottom with an even more razor-thin margin than the notebook space. They'd rather sell you a slightly higher-end machine, for which they can net a slightly higher profit. When Microsoft said they wanted to use Windows 7 to raise netbook prices it was a definite appeal to manufacturers who realized that cheap, low margin netbooks were cannibalizing their notebook sales.
First of all, not everyone is being completely adverse to religion. The marketing team behind Dante's Inferno actually hired a group of people to pretend to be Christians protesting the game. Even if such a thing would be considered poor taste, it's not going to affect game sales at all. The same people who would actually protest or boycott a game over religion would never buy your game anyway. Hell, I actually heard more about the game because some religious people were offended by the fake protest and made enough noise that it was picked up by a few news outlets. Free advertising right there.
The other way to look at it is that games are trying to be a form of art. If they're not willing to tackle religion, they're just throwing away their legitimacy. Whether you're religious or not, I think you would agree that religion plays a major role in the world today and as such is an interesting topic to explore from a narrative standpoint. It's not even necessary to single out a religion by name, but exploring ideas such as polytheism, religious crusades, or corruption of religious institutions can add something interesting to a game. In fact, I think that an exploration of some philosophy is something that is sadly lacking from so many games today. If someone were to make a game exploring these themes I would be tempted to buy it, even if the gameplay weren't as good as another title in the genre.
From my experiences Apple probably isn't much better in terms of reliability than most other companies, but as you mentioned that may just be a first generation issue. What I think they really excel at is customer service when things go wrong. My brother had purchased an Macbook that had several problems with varying components. He hadn't purchased an extended warranty, but every time Apple fixed the problem and didn't charge him for it, even after the warranty had run out.
You might pay a little bit more for their products (Or a lot more if the product is nearing a refresh.), but I think that their customer service is more than worth it.
If that were enough to guarantee that it would be impossible to be held legally responsible for product failures or shortcomings, it would be sufficient to attach a EULA to all medication that states the provider is not in any was responsible for death or disability caused by the drug. There's no way something like that would hold up in court if people experience severe problems from the drug.
Microsoft might be responsible if they advertised their product as never causing any problems or resulting in loss of user data under any circumstances or entered into a contract in which they claimed responsibility for data loss due to their software or losses due to security breaches. I'm guessing that they don't explicitly ever state this point and don't enter into any legally binding contracts that make them financially responsible for those problems.
If people have problems with Microsoft software, either Microsoft can offer to help or resolve the issue, or the company can migrate away from Microsoft solutions. They could file a lawsuit, but it would probably be difficult if not impossible to prove that Microsoft software was the entire cause of the problem. If someone didn't apply patches, there's some conflict with other third party software, or any other number of possible scenarios that cast doubt on the fault resting with Microsoft, the companies legal team would probably not recommend going to court over it.
Microsoft software may have all kinds of problems or issues, but I've never seen Microsoft state that this wouldn't happen. All you normally get is some "The best computing money can buy!" marketing fluff which really doesn't mean anything as 'best computing' is completely open to interpretation and has no legal definition. Hell, everyone claims to have the best computer experience money can buy for some definition of "best computer experience".
As I said, I don't subscribe to your ethics, so I could case less if you judge me based on them. It won't make me feel guilty or bad about myself. I could just as easily turn the debate around and call you unethical for robbing Peter to pay Paul, but that's not very constructive. What I stated was simple fact. There's nothing outside of my own morality which would obligate me to do anything in that situation.
I don't go around responding arguments from pro-choice advocates with something like: "This is the part where those who oppose limitations on something as heinous and disgusting as abortion show their their true colors: selfish, self-centered, irresponsible, unethical assholes with no regard for human life."
In case you're wondering, I generally dislike abortion and would rather people not resort to it, but I don't believe that my feelings on the matter should be imposed on anyone else. Imposing my beliefs on anyone else limits their freedoms.
We have are just going to have to agree to disagree on our opinion of universal health care. You're probably not going to change my mind and ad hominem attacks aren't going to do anything to further your beliefs either.
I agree with much of what you say, but it will still be necessary to have health insurance to cover serious health issues.
It's unlikely that you will ever be presented with dental bill in the hundreds of thousand of dollars, but that's a possibility for a hospital bill. Most people can't pay that out of pocket, so they get insurance to cover those cases. The main problem, as you point out, is that people have started to use insurance to cover all medical expenses, even those that could be easily paid for out of pocket, such as check-ups or minor medical procedures which are not overly complex.
Technology can be used to drive down the costs of medicine more than any method of health insurance. It's possible to imagine that in the future, heart surgery need not be complex or expensive. Of course, there will be some need bleeding edge procedure which is incredibly expensive to take the old expensive procedures place.
I have no objection to a public option, so long as it is both optional and not my only option. I do not, however, wish to be stuck paying for something that I do not want.
Why should you be forced to pay for some condition of mine for which you are in no way responsible. If you shot me, I might have a case for seeking financial compensation from you for medical expenses, but otherwise why should you pay?
As I said, I have absolutely no objection to government-run health care as long as my participation is voluntary and I can choose another provider at any time.
Also, I am currently forced to pay into many of the services I do not wish to pay into. I'll be lucky if Social Security is still around, let alone worth anything at all, by the time I expect to be able to collect any of it. Try telling to the government that you won't pay. They'll most likely just laugh at you, but if they wanted to, they could imprison you.
"you are willfully or ignorantly avoiding the fact that if you are passed out on the ground, we can't simply walk by you, we have to take you to the hospital, or we aren't being ethical."
I don't subscribe to your ethics, so I don't believe your conclusion follows. I'm only imposing on society, if I think society needs to solve all of my problems at no cost to me. If you are passed out on the ground, I can simply choose to walk by without caring. Police officers or other public servants may be required to offer assistance as part of their job, but as a member of the public no such obligations exist for me.
I would probably see if you were alive and needed further help, since it doesn't really cost me anything, but after that it's not my problem. If you don't have insurance or can't pay for your medical bills, you can only get help at the expense of someone else, either through their charity or through force. Medical care isn't some unlimited resource that can be freely conjured up at need. It has a cost, and I don't see why I should be stuck paying for you or anyone else if I am unable to limit that cost to myself by running your life for you.
In a certain sense it could be considered irresponsible not to have insurance or wealth stored to deal with any kind of emergency. I do not believe it is right to force my beliefs of what constitutes responsible behavior on anyone else as long as they do not force their beliefs on me. What I consider irresponsible is to let people make their own free choices, many of which I would consider poor or irresponsible, and then force me to pay for the consequences of their own actions.
If you can't be a good example, at least you can be a horrible warning. If someone chooses not to take care of their health, let them be a horrible warning.
as for making you spread your beliefs: why force people to believe in god? why not make it voluntary? because people are fucking irresponsible, and they won't believe in god, follow his rules, or a whole bunch of other things they need but are usually too stupid to understand why they need it. so you NEED to force them because if given a choice, people won't do the right thing. which is have faith and have their souls safe from damnation. you HAVE to, because it is your RESPONSIBILITY as a member of GOD'S CHILDREN from which you derive SALVATION.
I hope you know realize why your argument sounds fucking ridiculous. I would have no objection to government health care if my participation were voluntary. Otherwise, you're essentially removing choice and freedom from the equation. If you want me to foot the bill for someone else's medical care, you can sure as hell bet I'm going to want to have a say in how their life is run. They'd better damn well eat right, quit smoking and drinking, not engage in any risky behavior, and must exercise properly. If they're hellbent on taking away my freedom, they can kiss theirs goodbye as well.
You can go ahead and bring out the list of all of the wonderful things that I get from taxes or society, but save yourself the trouble. If they cost something, I'd prefer to pay based on what I consume, not some blanket tax from the federal government that pays for all kinds of crap I don't want ranging from social security to wars in the Middle East.
Why bother to address any of his concerns (regardless of the slanted manner they're presented.) when you can just post logical fallacies. I'm sure for a certain subset of people, the OP is just putting words in their mouths, but there are going to be some people who tow the line on this and suggest that there's nothing wrong with this or attempt to downplay it. This is really just another straw man that detracts from any actual discussion of the topic and quickly degenerates into a flame war.
The partisan goons from all political parties or groups (Yes, even the small third parties.) are the reason governments keep getting away with this crap. They're too busy levying accusations of "Well your guy did it too and you didn't have a problem with it then." or the like, that anyone telling government to knock this shit off gets drown out in the crap-flood of idiocy flowing forth from the mouths of these partisan idiots.
Worse yet, these worthless gits are the ones shown on television all of the time. The news stations have become less about facts, information, or rational thoughts and more about becoming a political version of Jerry Springer. It's not just Fox news that's guilty of this either. The saddest bit is that we deserve every single thing we get, as We the People seem to keep voting for it.
"Public good," a statement so ambiguous and open to interpretation that any idiot can come along and claim something is for the public good. The US Constitution has left those things (e.g. education and health care.) to the states or the people. If State X makes some bad policies it's a lot easier to move to another state than if the entire country is shoehorned into one bad policy and your ability to emigrate is severely more limited.
I don't know about that. Intel's offerings that are slated to come out 1Q - 1H of 2010 could give AMD some problems. Right now AMD has the performance advantage in the server space, but Gulftown will likely trump their offerings. Arrandale also looks quite impressive, especially the quad core i7 with an 18 watt TDP. The cores only run at 1.2 GHz, but with their Turbo boost the chip can clock up to 2.2 GHz. That will offer some amazing battery life for laptops and still provide good performance. I do believe some of the Arrandale processors will have a GPU on die as well. Granted it's an Intel GPU, but it offers some great power and cost savings over having to include a discrete card.
AMD doesn't look to have anything great coming out until late 2010 or early 2011 based on their roadmap. It helps that ATI is kicking ass in the graphics space. Right now they're winning on price and power. If they can get more of their 5800 series out in the market and release the mobile versions of those cards sooner rather than later, they'll be able to push a lot of hardware that way. However, they're not a real threat to Intel until they can get their SOC products out the door and offer a really compelling reason to go with their products.
Settling their legal issues with Intel will also help them a lot in the long run, but they're not out of the woods yet. They're still having financial problems, but if they can get through the next 18 months they'll be in great shape. The fact that they've been ahead of schedule on a lot of their new chips in the last year has probably helped substantially as well. AMD is in good position for the long term, but they need to decent sales in the coming quarters, which may be difficult to do with Intel releasing a lot of great new chips, especially in the mobile market where AMD hasn't been particularly strong recently.
Why not just use a smart phone if 90% of what you do is web browsing and email? Today's smart phones are capable of providing a good user experience for these tasks and if it's something the phone can't handle, the netbook probably can't either. I suppose the one major alternative is document editing, but who knows what phones will be capable of in the next few years.
For me, netbooks fall into the overly-large phone or underpowered notebook category. If they work for you or your needs, great, but they don't fit the needs of everyone and I think that's something that too many people forget.
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I'm not certain, but I know that Intel plans on using a 22 nm process as the next step after the current 32 nm process that is being used for their newest chips. They've estimated that the first chips using a 22 nm process would be released in the second half of 2011. There may be a technical reason not to use a 25 nm process for CPUs, but if they already have a 22 nm process being developed for CPU usage, there's no point in using a 25 nm process.
Or the only way that Apple could get that content was to agree to higher prices from the publisher. I think all of the book companies have seen how much of a pain in the ass it was for the music industry to get Apple to raise prices and don't want them to have that kind of control over them. It's only self-interest on the part of the publishers. Apple is pretty late to the digital book market, so I imagine they were willing to agree with whatever terms they needed to in order to make the deal.
Besides, as long as the Kindle store is available on the iPad (They already have an iPhone app so I don't see why Amazon wouldn't be able to sell books.) consumers will be able to shop around for the best price. Personally I wish all of the online digital media stores would take a page from Valve's book and have weekly deals like Steam does. A lot of game publishers have fould that a half-off sale will net them a ridiculous number of sales. I recall reading that one independent developer sold more copies of his game during a one day holiday sale than had sold during all other days (Prior to that point.) combined.
I've found I'm a lot more willing to purchase something I may have only been mildly interested in previously if it's on sale. Valve saw a 3000% increase in sales of Left for Dead when they offered it half-off for a weekend. They also said that they sold more copies of the game during the sale than when it was first released, which almost never happens with video games.
I'm sorry, but you completely miss the point. Open source software isn't inherently good or bad, but the concept of openness isn't something that always best suits the needs of most consumers or something that will always serve them well. I think that the GP would have been better off saying computer skills more so than programming skills as there are a lot of computer users that might not know how to download and install programs. This probably isn't as prevalent in the younger generations, but I've worked with a lot of people who use computers and don't understand how to do this things.
The examples you mention aren't in the same ballpark as computers. They're all appliances that the user doesn't attempt to install additional software on or modify in any way. They may all as well run by magic as far as the end user is concerned because for most users they'll never need to touch that part of the device. I don't care whether my TV uses open source firmware or not. I just care that it works. I'd prefer that I never have to worry about mucking around at that level even if I have the ability to see and modify the code the drives my TV.
Free software doesn't guarantee that it's virus free. I recall a while back that someone had slipped some form of malware into the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox without anyone noticing. I'm also free to grab an open source program and add malware of my own and redistribute a malware-laden binary and fool users into downloading it. They lack the computing skills to know how to use MD5 or even the knowledge of what MD5 actually is. I also recall that at one point there was an exploit where arbitrary code buried within a particular image format would execute due to vulnerabilities in the software used to display it.
I think that the GP's assertion that there would be less spamming is correct. If spammers cannot use compromised computers to send out spam, they would need to use their own machines which can easily be blacklisted. Masses of phishing emails couldn't be sent out without the email providers being easily able to shut it down. People will still be subject to phishing, but on a much smaller scale.
A gated store doesn't necessarily mean that malware will never get through. It's entirely possible that someone could release an app that sends out spam in the background, but because Apple has a kill switch they can solve that problem even if their users are incapable of solving it themselves. Of course, having this power requires a great amount of responsibility on Apple's part. If they are abusive of it, the backlash will cost them customers and bring down government scrutiny upon them. Similarly, if Microsoft could kill all of the malware on Windows PCs don't you think they wouldn't want to do so? The amount of money it would save would be enormous.
I tend to agree with the points you have brought up, but I feel you really didn't understand what the GP was attempting to say. There is a trade off between a walled garden and an open field. Most users don't care for the advantages that the open field gives them. To use a car metaphor, driving a manual transmission gives you greater control and efficiency, but most people prefer to drive an automatic as it is much easier for them to do so. Also, the constant ad hominem attacks in your post really make you look like a jerk. It completely detracts from the good points that you made and makes your post look like the rantings of an angry person more so than a structured logical argument.
Haven't you read 1984?
Freedom *is* Slavery.
Sometimes companies purchase another smaller company just to keep it out of the hands of the competition.
From what I've heard, Apple was in talks with AdMob before Google purchased them. I also heard a rumor that Apple bought Lala because Google was in negotiations to purchase them.
Neither company has much overlap into the business areas of the other, but both are large and experiencing incredible growth. I believe that they're both very afraid of each other, though. If Apple were to run away with mobile phones like they have with the iPod, what's to stop them from creating their own alternative to Google and putting them out of business. I'm sure Apple also sees Google as a threat in some similar way as well.
It seems as though this simple pissing contest is turning into a full out arms race.
Which is great until H.265 is released and the whole problem repeats itself. It's also a matter of the FTC letting Apple purchase all of these companies (Some probably won't want to sell their patents.) and Apple actually wanting to spend all of this money for something that benefits them in no way at all. Maybe some goodwill but most people won't even understand what's being talked about.
Since most hardware buying built these days has H.264 decoding built in somewhere, wouldn't it just be sufficient for browsers to pass the decoding off to the hardware without implementing anything else beyond that? All we need for this is a few system calls that allow the browser to determine if there is hardware decoding available and then make the appropriate calls to use it.
Hardware always costs money to make so a price will always be charged for it which keeps the patent holders happy and every browser can support H.264 without having to write or implement a decoder in software. The only people this doesn't work out for are the folks with legacy hardware, but a lot of them will eventually upgrade to something new.
It wouldn't end civilization in the sense that we're all dead and gone, but the world would collectively flip shit and the reaction from scared, panic-filled people and the politicians looking to take advantage of the whole problem would lead to a lot of adverse effects.
Just look at the shit storm caused by 9/11. All of that has happened from two buildings being destroyed. Imagine the reaction from millions of deaths and a city being leveled, especially if it's a city belonging to some super power. My thoughts are that the world would collectively move towards something out of 1984. I feel as though this would be bad.
I think your company isn't one that's overly chummy with the government. The RIAA is already buying politicians and writing copyright legislation. If they're already doing that, I don't think they have to worry too much about the law coming down on them for something as minor as whores and blow. You're really underestimating the industry if you don't think that this goes on behind closed doors. After all, this is the same industry that would buy drugs for the big-name bands that were working on new albums.
Just because a story seems incredulous doesn't necessarily make it untrue. I imagine there are still a few executives in the recording industry who like to party like rock stars.
Ideally yes, but for everyone with a smart phone or other device that can't afford to waste CPU (And by extension battery life.) on decoding video when it has a perfectly good H.264 hardware decoder, Ogg is not a good solution.
Linux desktop market share is maybe 1% at most. Linux actually has a good showing in the mobile phone space, but these devices all include H.264 hardware decoders so they don't run into the same issues as desktop Linux.
The only place Theora makes any real amount of sense is on the desktop and Linux is largely an also ran in that space at the current time.
It matters because the smart phones, iPods, and other small devices that are becoming a major way that people consume content don't have Ogg Theora hardware decoders. These devices do have H.264 hardware decoders and won't have to use the CPU to decode and playback the video, saving a lot of battery life.
As far as I know, there aren't even any Theora hardware decoders in existence, or if there are they aren't being mass produced. There's also not a lot of point in making one either as Ogg isn't a widely used video codec so that hardware won't see much use. Do you see the vicious cycle that's been formed? Even if someone were to mass produce the chips and someone else were to actually include them in their hardware, by the time they reach any fragment of market share, the rest of the world will have moved on to H.265.
I think that the manufacturers realized that netbooks were an even faster race to the bottom with an even more razor-thin margin than the notebook space. They'd rather sell you a slightly higher-end machine, for which they can net a slightly higher profit. When Microsoft said they wanted to use Windows 7 to raise netbook prices it was a definite appeal to manufacturers who realized that cheap, low margin netbooks were cannibalizing their notebook sales.
So what you're saying is that it was ewenique?
First of all, not everyone is being completely adverse to religion. The marketing team behind Dante's Inferno actually hired a group of people to pretend to be Christians protesting the game. Even if such a thing would be considered poor taste, it's not going to affect game sales at all. The same people who would actually protest or boycott a game over religion would never buy your game anyway. Hell, I actually heard more about the game because some religious people were offended by the fake protest and made enough noise that it was picked up by a few news outlets. Free advertising right there.
The other way to look at it is that games are trying to be a form of art. If they're not willing to tackle religion, they're just throwing away their legitimacy. Whether you're religious or not, I think you would agree that religion plays a major role in the world today and as such is an interesting topic to explore from a narrative standpoint. It's not even necessary to single out a religion by name, but exploring ideas such as polytheism, religious crusades, or corruption of religious institutions can add something interesting to a game. In fact, I think that an exploration of some philosophy is something that is sadly lacking from so many games today. If someone were to make a game exploring these themes I would be tempted to buy it, even if the gameplay weren't as good as another title in the genre.
From my experiences Apple probably isn't much better in terms of reliability than most other companies, but as you mentioned that may just be a first generation issue. What I think they really excel at is customer service when things go wrong. My brother had purchased an Macbook that had several problems with varying components. He hadn't purchased an extended warranty, but every time Apple fixed the problem and didn't charge him for it, even after the warranty had run out.
You might pay a little bit more for their products (Or a lot more if the product is nearing a refresh.), but I think that their customer service is more than worth it.
If that were enough to guarantee that it would be impossible to be held legally responsible for product failures or shortcomings, it would be sufficient to attach a EULA to all medication that states the provider is not in any was responsible for death or disability caused by the drug. There's no way something like that would hold up in court if people experience severe problems from the drug.
Microsoft might be responsible if they advertised their product as never causing any problems or resulting in loss of user data under any circumstances or entered into a contract in which they claimed responsibility for data loss due to their software or losses due to security breaches. I'm guessing that they don't explicitly ever state this point and don't enter into any legally binding contracts that make them financially responsible for those problems.
If people have problems with Microsoft software, either Microsoft can offer to help or resolve the issue, or the company can migrate away from Microsoft solutions. They could file a lawsuit, but it would probably be difficult if not impossible to prove that Microsoft software was the entire cause of the problem. If someone didn't apply patches, there's some conflict with other third party software, or any other number of possible scenarios that cast doubt on the fault resting with Microsoft, the companies legal team would probably not recommend going to court over it.
Microsoft software may have all kinds of problems or issues, but I've never seen Microsoft state that this wouldn't happen. All you normally get is some "The best computing money can buy!" marketing fluff which really doesn't mean anything as 'best computing' is completely open to interpretation and has no legal definition. Hell, everyone claims to have the best computer experience money can buy for some definition of "best computer experience".
As I said, I don't subscribe to your ethics, so I could case less if you judge me based on them. It won't make me feel guilty or bad about myself. I could just as easily turn the debate around and call you unethical for robbing Peter to pay Paul, but that's not very constructive. What I stated was simple fact. There's nothing outside of my own morality which would obligate me to do anything in that situation.
I don't go around responding arguments from pro-choice advocates with something like: "This is the part where those who oppose limitations on something as heinous and disgusting as abortion show their their true colors: selfish, self-centered, irresponsible, unethical assholes with no regard for human life."
In case you're wondering, I generally dislike abortion and would rather people not resort to it, but I don't believe that my feelings on the matter should be imposed on anyone else. Imposing my beliefs on anyone else limits their freedoms.
We have are just going to have to agree to disagree on our opinion of universal health care. You're probably not going to change my mind and ad hominem attacks aren't going to do anything to further your beliefs either.
I agree with much of what you say, but it will still be necessary to have health insurance to cover serious health issues.
It's unlikely that you will ever be presented with dental bill in the hundreds of thousand of dollars, but that's a possibility for a hospital bill. Most people can't pay that out of pocket, so they get insurance to cover those cases. The main problem, as you point out, is that people have started to use insurance to cover all medical expenses, even those that could be easily paid for out of pocket, such as check-ups or minor medical procedures which are not overly complex.
Technology can be used to drive down the costs of medicine more than any method of health insurance. It's possible to imagine that in the future, heart surgery need not be complex or expensive. Of course, there will be some need bleeding edge procedure which is incredibly expensive to take the old expensive procedures place.
I have no objection to a public option, so long as it is both optional and not my only option. I do not, however, wish to be stuck paying for something that I do not want.
Why should you be forced to pay for some condition of mine for which you are in no way responsible. If you shot me, I might have a case for seeking financial compensation from you for medical expenses, but otherwise why should you pay?
As I said, I have absolutely no objection to government-run health care as long as my participation is voluntary and I can choose another provider at any time.
Also, I am currently forced to pay into many of the services I do not wish to pay into. I'll be lucky if Social Security is still around, let alone worth anything at all, by the time I expect to be able to collect any of it. Try telling to the government that you won't pay. They'll most likely just laugh at you, but if they wanted to, they could imprison you.
"you are willfully or ignorantly avoiding the fact that if you are passed out on the ground, we can't simply walk by you, we have to take you to the hospital, or we aren't being ethical."
I don't subscribe to your ethics, so I don't believe your conclusion follows. I'm only imposing on society, if I think society needs to solve all of my problems at no cost to me. If you are passed out on the ground, I can simply choose to walk by without caring. Police officers or other public servants may be required to offer assistance as part of their job, but as a member of the public no such obligations exist for me.
I would probably see if you were alive and needed further help, since it doesn't really cost me anything, but after that it's not my problem. If you don't have insurance or can't pay for your medical bills, you can only get help at the expense of someone else, either through their charity or through force. Medical care isn't some unlimited resource that can be freely conjured up at need. It has a cost, and I don't see why I should be stuck paying for you or anyone else if I am unable to limit that cost to myself by running your life for you.
In a certain sense it could be considered irresponsible not to have insurance or wealth stored to deal with any kind of emergency. I do not believe it is right to force my beliefs of what constitutes responsible behavior on anyone else as long as they do not force their beliefs on me. What I consider irresponsible is to let people make their own free choices, many of which I would consider poor or irresponsible, and then force me to pay for the consequences of their own actions.
If you can't be a good example, at least you can be a horrible warning. If someone chooses not to take care of their health, let them be a horrible warning.
as for making you spread your beliefs: why force people to believe in god? why not make it voluntary? because people are fucking irresponsible, and they won't believe in god, follow his rules, or a whole bunch of other things they need but are usually too stupid to understand why they need it. so you NEED to force them because if given a choice, people won't do the right thing. which is have faith and have their souls safe from damnation. you HAVE to, because it is your RESPONSIBILITY as a member of GOD'S CHILDREN from which you derive SALVATION.
I hope you know realize why your argument sounds fucking ridiculous. I would have no objection to government health care if my participation were voluntary. Otherwise, you're essentially removing choice and freedom from the equation. If you want me to foot the bill for someone else's medical care, you can sure as hell bet I'm going to want to have a say in how their life is run. They'd better damn well eat right, quit smoking and drinking, not engage in any risky behavior, and must exercise properly. If they're hellbent on taking away my freedom, they can kiss theirs goodbye as well.
You can go ahead and bring out the list of all of the wonderful things that I get from taxes or society, but save yourself the trouble. If they cost something, I'd prefer to pay based on what I consume, not some blanket tax from the federal government that pays for all kinds of crap I don't want ranging from social security to wars in the Middle East.
You can't have freedom without responsibility.
Why bother to address any of his concerns (regardless of the slanted manner they're presented.) when you can just post logical fallacies. I'm sure for a certain subset of people, the OP is just putting words in their mouths, but there are going to be some people who tow the line on this and suggest that there's nothing wrong with this or attempt to downplay it. This is really just another straw man that detracts from any actual discussion of the topic and quickly degenerates into a flame war.
The partisan goons from all political parties or groups (Yes, even the small third parties.) are the reason governments keep getting away with this crap. They're too busy levying accusations of "Well your guy did it too and you didn't have a problem with it then." or the like, that anyone telling government to knock this shit off gets drown out in the crap-flood of idiocy flowing forth from the mouths of these partisan idiots.
Worse yet, these worthless gits are the ones shown on television all of the time. The news stations have become less about facts, information, or rational thoughts and more about becoming a political version of Jerry Springer. It's not just Fox news that's guilty of this either. The saddest bit is that we deserve every single thing we get, as We the People seem to keep voting for it.
"Public good," a statement so ambiguous and open to interpretation that any idiot can come along and claim something is for the public good. The US Constitution has left those things (e.g. education and health care.) to the states or the people. If State X makes some bad policies it's a lot easier to move to another state than if the entire country is shoehorned into one bad policy and your ability to emigrate is severely more limited.
I don't know about that. Intel's offerings that are slated to come out 1Q - 1H of 2010 could give AMD some problems. Right now AMD has the performance advantage in the server space, but Gulftown will likely trump their offerings. Arrandale also looks quite impressive, especially the quad core i7 with an 18 watt TDP. The cores only run at 1.2 GHz, but with their Turbo boost the chip can clock up to 2.2 GHz. That will offer some amazing battery life for laptops and still provide good performance. I do believe some of the Arrandale processors will have a GPU on die as well. Granted it's an Intel GPU, but it offers some great power and cost savings over having to include a discrete card.
AMD doesn't look to have anything great coming out until late 2010 or early 2011 based on their roadmap. It helps that ATI is kicking ass in the graphics space. Right now they're winning on price and power. If they can get more of their 5800 series out in the market and release the mobile versions of those cards sooner rather than later, they'll be able to push a lot of hardware that way. However, they're not a real threat to Intel until they can get their SOC products out the door and offer a really compelling reason to go with their products.
Settling their legal issues with Intel will also help them a lot in the long run, but they're not out of the woods yet. They're still having financial problems, but if they can get through the next 18 months they'll be in great shape. The fact that they've been ahead of schedule on a lot of their new chips in the last year has probably helped substantially as well. AMD is in good position for the long term, but they need to decent sales in the coming quarters, which may be difficult to do with Intel releasing a lot of great new chips, especially in the mobile market where AMD hasn't been particularly strong recently.
Why not just use a smart phone if 90% of what you do is web browsing and email? Today's smart phones are capable of providing a good user experience for these tasks and if it's something the phone can't handle, the netbook probably can't either. I suppose the one major alternative is document editing, but who knows what phones will be capable of in the next few years.
For me, netbooks fall into the overly-large phone or underpowered notebook category. If they work for you or your needs, great, but they don't fit the needs of everyone and I think that's something that too many people forget.
So I guess this means P != NP. I guess that salesman is out of luck.