Apple is just the current target... ANY electronics company does the exact same thing. Price has become the all consuming motivator for the american people and can make or break a business. When we are sending the message that we care more about price than quality or ethics what do you expect companies to do?
WE THE CONSUMER make it profitable to do this... that is the only place blame can be placed.
Personaly I think City of Heroes/Villians did a good job at this. Pretty much fun at all levels, you get through the first few "boring" ones in an evening if you know what your doing and if you don't you need the time to learn anyway.
Sure there are money farmers etc but there is an equal number of people who simply give away money because they don't care. Items do not matter as much in that game and the items that do matter you are given many ways to aquire that do not involve farming etc.
Hell I pay people 50k a pop to jump off skyscrapers because I think it is funny.
The key there is make the money not matter, then it is not a problem if the economy goes bust because the economy is not important to the enjoyment of the game.
I am on a mac and use a logitec trackman with two buttons and a wheel. Shockingly the same I use for windows... and it works just the same. I have yet to run into an app that did not support the right click.
If your going to fling FUD just make sure and know what your saying;)
I recently tried to get DirectTV but wanted thier TiVo DVR. They informed me they had one that was "upgraded" which according to the person in India I was talking to meant it had 100gb HD rather than 80GB. This was thier argument on why I should use thier peice of junk which I have seen and does not compare instead of TiVo which I LIKE. I informed them I was likely going to just put a 250gb HD in it anyway and so please give me the TiVo version and they refused.
If Cox can offer me a TiVo DVR I will happily go with them instead of DirectTV soley for that reason. I would rather have satelite but my desire for a satelite is vastly overshadowed by my desire for TiVo.
As it is I have no cable or satalite because I refuse to watch TV on thier schedule, and I want the TiVo DVR experience. A stand alone TiVo is not an option as digital cable and digital satelite require a seperate box to enforce DRM so the quality of recording on the DVR goes way down. By trying to force me to do it "thier way" all these companies have done is ensure I will do without. It is simply not worth it.
The minute a company offers to let me do it the way -I- want instead of trying to enforce thier way they will get my money. If Cox does this TiVo move they will be allowing what I want and will get my money simply to say STUFU to DirectTV for dumping what I thought was an ideal solution.
Actualy copyright came into existance to let people copy books. It was the RIGHT to COPY printed material for your own use. It had nothing to do with protecting companies at the time.
The fact today copyright has been so perverted people actualy think it was intended to protect companies instead of people makes me sick and just goes to show how down hill things have gone.
Dell has never and will never ship the quality of parts that come standard in a Mac on the systems you are showing. They are built for profit margin, so will use whatever the cheapest parts are.
Ask a die hard gamer to build a laptop with only parts he trusts and knows in order to get a fair comparison. I bet you that machine is NOT cheap.
Actually you are espousing one of the most common misconceptions about the first Amendment. It protects free speech in a PUBLIC FORUM. My email is in no way shape or form public.
It travels from a privately owned computer, over privately owned wire to my privately owned ISP which I then download from onto my privately owned computer. Where exactly does the email ever enter a public forum hence making it protected?
People can easily see my address from the street... does this give them the right to drop their trash on my lawn? No, they would be subject to a fine for littering. Even if it is a flier of some sort, espousing a political opinion, they will still be fined for littering. Same should apply to spammers.
Correction... China is still a dictatorship... according to communist theory (which china does not practice) free speech and criticism of the government is NESSISARY, not something to be stifled.
Yell at them for their policy all you want, but get out of the cold war era and blame them correctly. I will use one of my favorite quotes from an American president:
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
I gotta agree with previos response... all married guys know marriage = lack of sex. "GLBT" however is purely about who you do and do not wish to have sex with.
I am equal opertunity when it comes to inapropriate topics intruding in my game... someone starts running around saying "I am hetro, I am hetro" I will tell them to stuff it just as fast.
I play games to escape all the PC don't offend anyone politics I have to deal with every day and live in a world where the good guys and the bad guys are very easy to spot. That is why I play such games and when that changes I leave for a different game.
I agree... I just tried to get phones and a T1 put in for my companies new location and SBC in SIX weeks could not acomplish it.
Two weeks before deadline I gave up when they were telling me mid April for a March 30th move and went with a third party for the T1... they got it in 7 days, a reasonable time frame.
I told them as I cancled the T1 order the phones were next if they could not get them in on time so they "expadited" the order. Which, as far as I can tell, means "put actual effort."
The real kicker was after everything was done and we have our third party T1 put in over SBC lines in a fraction of the time SBC could do it, I get an e-mail from our SBC account rep saying he could not get hold of me could I give him my phone number. I am going to frame it! An email from the phone company asking for my phone number.
Good thing I did not let them put the T1 in or I could not have gotten the e-mail!
I completely agree... there is no reason a manufacturer should be held responsible for people forcing thier products to preform outside of specifications. As of yet I have never seen a specification on overclocking and in fact ALL processor and memory manufacturers say DO NOT DO THIS.
Case in point: If you overclock a CPU, and it fries, you submit it for warrenty and they find out you are liable for FRAUD. That is right, you could face a fine or go to jail for trying to get it replaced. This should be a hint.
This attitude is what created the problems this country faces today. We have railroaded ourselves into two political parties and limited our own choices by this very line of logic.
My vote for a third party canidate is NOT a vote for the guy I do not like... it is a vote FOR the one I do. End of story, end of any possible argument or logical conclusion. What MAKES it a vote for the other guy is that the sheep masses are too dumb to realize they CAN actualy infuence things.
If I vote my contience, and what I believe in is it not likely SOMEONE shares my beliefs? If everyone votes the way they truely believe and not for who they think will win, guess what... they just might win.
Even if they do not, 2-5% vote is significant in political circles and WILL be noticed. So your canidate did not win, I will bet you my life savings the one who did will take a good hard look at why those 2-5% voted the way they did. It is a sign of discontent, and discontent is a politicians worst nightmare.
The ONLY reason this does not work is unlike every other country in the world except Japan we have narrowed our choices to the point of outrite sillyness. You want a choice? MAKE ONE. Don't be a friggin sheep like parent.
I agree... if consumers just stick to thier guns the companies trying to pull this junk will be forced to give in to stay competative.
What happens if "no drm" becomes a selling point because someone figured out how to do it? What if people for one month only buy music that they can actualy use according to law?
What if shareholders (ie the consumers themselves) realised THEY control the company and voted DRM out?
I know... a lot of unlikely scenarios but a guy can dream.
This is pure FUD, why is it even posted here?
The article was mildly interesting but the title was misleading and blatantly AMD fanboy. While I realize that is popular around here give me a break... if you want a real processor war do it on fair grounds, not mud slinging.
I agree. Success and ethics are not one and the same. Also keep in mind America is NOT a free market economy in any sense of the word. Government regulations protect businesses to an incredible degree these days, in order to counter balance that they MUST step in when a company over steps their bounds.
Others have said it I will re-iterate, Microsoft knew the rules, they are not secret, and they willingly and blatantly broke them. They bought politicians (I witnessed this first hand working on a campaign so don't tell me it did not happen) in order to reduce/eliminate their US anti-trust lawsuit penalties and it worked. That is UNETHICAL and NOT free-market behavior. That is ILLIGAL and IMMORAL. They SHOULD be punished and I for one am glad the EU seems to have the balls to do what the US could not.
The other thing to consider is weather or not this browser is forced on the user. How many sites REQUIRE IE in order to view the site?
Far too many in IMHO. I was amazed even SonicWALL, a security appliance forces the use of IE. When confronted with this thier response was "most of our users run windows so we didn't think it was a big deal" (praphrased). Hell they even make you load IE to report that you think them requiring IE is a bug.
They left IBM/Motorola due to supply problems... Tell me why they would go to another company with supply problems?
All the AMD zealots here seem to continually forget AMD's biggest problem, they cannot produce. Going with Intel is a BUSINESS decision as much as a technical one. We can debate the relative merits till the cows come home and it does not matter one bit.
For the sake of this argument (and only to remove it as a possible sticking point) I will grant that AMD has a superior processor. Bottom line, that is irrelevant. The reason companies like Dell stick with Intel is because Intel offers them a good discount (reasoning and anti-trust not part of this) and more importantly they can deliver VOLUME consistently and without a problem.
Apple has had their share of issues with supply from IBM/Motorola, why would it be in their interests to repeat that? Intel will offer them staff, resources for testing, many things AMD has never been able to offer a business partner. In the business word, these things are very valuable.
Umm... pretty much any sect of Christianity or Catholisism? Have you read the bible lately?
It reads very much like the Koran... a lot of things about peace, a lot of things about violence and punishment.
That was the culture when these things were written. Savior religions will all have the same basic undertones as they were by and large concieved in the same era. That was what people wanted to hear at the time.
How many crusades did European Christians conduct? How many slaughtered in the name of "God" and saying it was "his will." They are no different than the Muslim factions now. Some agree, some don't.
Actualy there are a lot... they are just not news worthy.
The only thing that makes news these days is hatered, fear and death. Why do you think people are moving in that direction?
I worked as a network security consultant for a overall security firm a while back and I will never forget a bank we were hired to test.
One of our guys was able to bully his way into the presidents office by wearing a suit and acting beligirent, grabbed this password off his monitor sticky note (actualy I think it was on the top of his keyboard if I remember right) and we had full access.
First off, the president should not HAVE full access. He does not need it. He needs email, word, powerpoint and a special password to approve transactions. Second, knowing the power that password has he should NEVER write it down. As a network admin I would probably be tempted to physicaly slap him if I saw that.
Just an example of why people should be limited to what they need to do. Human error is inevitably the biggest security flaw that exists in any system.
.NET is not compared to cross platform development environments because it is not. It is windows centric and only works there. That gives it it's own catagory I lovingly call "not worth discussing as it is functionaly useless to me."
Therefore java will enter into a comparison and be worth comparing because it does something the common web designer may use or impliment. PHP/MySql is popular because it works, and it will run on any platform and almost all hosts support it. Java is a close second in terms of support server side. I cannot run.NET stuff at any hosting company that will promise me 99.999% up time. Why? You simply cannot promise that on a windows server.
The.NET framework I would not learn nor impliment if you payed me Well... maybe if you payed me a LOT, but Microsoft already turned me down when they gave me a job offer and I told them it would cost half a mill a year plus benefits and stock options on a 5 year contract for me to sell my soul and give up every moral principle I hold dear. Hey, everyone has thier price, I just admit mine.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple is just the current target... ANY electronics company does the exact same thing. Price has become the all consuming motivator for the american people and can make or break a business. When we are sending the message that we care more about price than quality or ethics what do you expect companies to do?
WE THE CONSUMER make it profitable to do this... that is the only place blame can be placed.
I take it you are going to be the first to volunteer to have cameras installed in your house and office for people to watch you at their whim?
Personaly I think City of Heroes/Villians did a good job at this. Pretty much fun at all levels, you get through the first few "boring" ones in an evening if you know what your doing and if you don't you need the time to learn anyway.
Sure there are money farmers etc but there is an equal number of people who simply give away money because they don't care. Items do not matter as much in that game and the items that do matter you are given many ways to aquire that do not involve farming etc.
Hell I pay people 50k a pop to jump off skyscrapers because I think it is funny.
The key there is make the money not matter, then it is not a problem if the economy goes bust because the economy is not important to the enjoyment of the game.
I am on a mac and use a logitec trackman with two buttons and a wheel. Shockingly the same I use for windows... and it works just the same. I have yet to run into an app that did not support the right click.
;)
If your going to fling FUD just make sure and know what your saying
I recently tried to get DirectTV but wanted thier TiVo DVR. They informed me they had one that was "upgraded" which according to the person in India I was talking to meant it had 100gb HD rather than 80GB. This was thier argument on why I should use thier peice of junk which I have seen and does not compare instead of TiVo which I LIKE. I informed them I was likely going to just put a 250gb HD in it anyway and so please give me the TiVo version and they refused.
If Cox can offer me a TiVo DVR I will happily go with them instead of DirectTV soley for that reason. I would rather have satelite but my desire for a satelite is vastly overshadowed by my desire for TiVo.
As it is I have no cable or satalite because I refuse to watch TV on thier schedule, and I want the TiVo DVR experience. A stand alone TiVo is not an option as digital cable and digital satelite require a seperate box to enforce DRM so the quality of recording on the DVR goes way down. By trying to force me to do it "thier way" all these companies have done is ensure I will do without. It is simply not worth it.
The minute a company offers to let me do it the way -I- want instead of trying to enforce thier way they will get my money. If Cox does this TiVo move they will be allowing what I want and will get my money simply to say STUFU to DirectTV for dumping what I thought was an ideal solution.
Actualy copyright came into existance to let people copy books. It was the RIGHT to COPY printed material for your own use. It had nothing to do with protecting companies at the time.
The fact today copyright has been so perverted people actualy think it was intended to protect companies instead of people makes me sick and just goes to show how down hill things have gone.
Dell has never and will never ship the quality of parts that come standard in a Mac on the systems you are showing. They are built for profit margin, so will use whatever the cheapest parts are.
Ask a die hard gamer to build a laptop with only parts he trusts and knows in order to get a fair comparison. I bet you that machine is NOT cheap.
Actually you are espousing one of the most common misconceptions about the first Amendment. It protects free speech in a PUBLIC FORUM. My email is in no way shape or form public.
It travels from a privately owned computer, over privately owned wire to my privately owned ISP which I then download from onto my privately owned computer. Where exactly does the email ever enter a public forum hence making it protected?
People can easily see my address from the street... does this give them the right to drop their trash on my lawn? No, they would be subject to a fine for littering. Even if it is a flier of some sort, espousing a political opinion, they will still be fined for littering. Same should apply to spammers.
Correction... China is still a dictatorship... according to communist theory (which china does not practice) free speech and criticism of the government is NESSISARY, not something to be stifled.
Yell at them for their policy all you want, but get out of the cold war era and blame them correctly. I will use one of my favorite quotes from an American president:
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
I gotta agree with previos response... all married guys know marriage = lack of sex. "GLBT" however is purely about who you do and do not wish to have sex with.
I am equal opertunity when it comes to inapropriate topics intruding in my game... someone starts running around saying "I am hetro, I am hetro" I will tell them to stuff it just as fast.
I play games to escape all the PC don't offend anyone politics I have to deal with every day and live in a world where the good guys and the bad guys are very easy to spot. That is why I play such games and when that changes I leave for a different game.
I agree... but according to U.S. law someone is not a criminal until they have been found guilty.
Or is my knowledge of the contitution slipping now that it is being re-written by Bush?
I agree... I just tried to get phones and a T1 put in for my companies new location and SBC in SIX weeks could not acomplish it.
Two weeks before deadline I gave up when they were telling me mid April for a March 30th move and went with a third party for the T1... they got it in 7 days, a reasonable time frame.
I told them as I cancled the T1 order the phones were next if they could not get them in on time so they "expadited" the order. Which, as far as I can tell, means "put actual effort."
The real kicker was after everything was done and we have our third party T1 put in over SBC lines in a fraction of the time SBC could do it, I get an e-mail from our SBC account rep saying he could not get hold of me could I give him my phone number. I am going to frame it! An email from the phone company asking for my phone number.
Good thing I did not let them put the T1 in or I could not have gotten the e-mail!
I completely agree... there is no reason a manufacturer should be held responsible for people forcing thier products to preform outside of specifications. As of yet I have never seen a specification on overclocking and in fact ALL processor and memory manufacturers say DO NOT DO THIS.
Case in point: If you overclock a CPU, and it fries, you submit it for warrenty and they find out you are liable for FRAUD. That is right, you could face a fine or go to jail for trying to get it replaced. This should be a hint.
This attitude is what created the problems this country faces today. We have railroaded ourselves into two political parties and limited our own choices by this very line of logic.
My vote for a third party canidate is NOT a vote for the guy I do not like... it is a vote FOR the one I do. End of story, end of any possible argument or logical conclusion. What MAKES it a vote for the other guy is that the sheep masses are too dumb to realize they CAN actualy infuence things.
If I vote my contience, and what I believe in is it not likely SOMEONE shares my beliefs? If everyone votes the way they truely believe and not for who they think will win, guess what... they just might win.
Even if they do not, 2-5% vote is significant in political circles and WILL be noticed. So your canidate did not win, I will bet you my life savings the one who did will take a good hard look at why those 2-5% voted the way they did. It is a sign of discontent, and discontent is a politicians worst nightmare.
The ONLY reason this does not work is unlike every other country in the world except Japan we have narrowed our choices to the point of outrite sillyness. You want a choice? MAKE ONE. Don't be a friggin sheep like parent.
I agree... if consumers just stick to thier guns the companies trying to pull this junk will be forced to give in to stay competative.
What happens if "no drm" becomes a selling point because someone figured out how to do it? What if people for one month only buy music that they can actualy use according to law?
What if shareholders (ie the consumers themselves) realised THEY control the company and voted DRM out?
I know... a lot of unlikely scenarios but a guy can dream.
This is pure FUD, why is it even posted here? The article was mildly interesting but the title was misleading and blatantly AMD fanboy. While I realize that is popular around here give me a break... if you want a real processor war do it on fair grounds, not mud slinging.
I agree. Success and ethics are not one and the same. Also keep in mind America is NOT a free market economy in any sense of the word. Government regulations protect businesses to an incredible degree these days, in order to counter balance that they MUST step in when a company over steps their bounds.
Others have said it I will re-iterate, Microsoft knew the rules, they are not secret, and they willingly and blatantly broke them. They bought politicians (I witnessed this first hand working on a campaign so don't tell me it did not happen) in order to reduce/eliminate their US anti-trust lawsuit penalties and it worked. That is UNETHICAL and NOT free-market behavior. That is ILLIGAL and IMMORAL. They SHOULD be punished and I for one am glad the EU seems to have the balls to do what the US could not.
The other thing to consider is weather or not this browser is forced on the user. How many sites REQUIRE IE in order to view the site? Far too many in IMHO. I was amazed even SonicWALL, a security appliance forces the use of IE. When confronted with this thier response was "most of our users run windows so we didn't think it was a big deal" (praphrased). Hell they even make you load IE to report that you think them requiring IE is a bug.
For the record... I hate you.
They left IBM/Motorola due to supply problems...
Tell me why they would go to another company with supply problems?
All the AMD zealots here seem to continually forget AMD's biggest problem, they cannot produce. Going with Intel is a BUSINESS decision as much as a technical one. We can debate the relative merits till the cows come home and it does not matter one bit.
For the sake of this argument (and only to remove it as a possible sticking point) I will grant that AMD has a superior processor. Bottom line, that is irrelevant. The reason companies like Dell stick with Intel is because Intel offers them a good discount (reasoning and anti-trust not part of this) and more importantly they can deliver VOLUME consistently and without a problem.
Apple has had their share of issues with supply from IBM/Motorola, why would it be in their interests to repeat that? Intel will offer them staff, resources for testing, many things AMD has never been able to offer a business partner. In the business word, these things are very valuable.
Umm... pretty much any sect of Christianity or Catholisism?
Have you read the bible lately?
It reads very much like the Koran... a lot of things about peace, a lot of things about violence and punishment.
That was the culture when these things were written. Savior religions will all have the same basic undertones as they were by and large concieved in the same era. That was what people wanted to hear at the time.
How many crusades did European Christians conduct? How many slaughtered in the name of "God" and saying it was "his will." They are no different than the Muslim factions now. Some agree, some don't.
Actualy there are a lot... they are just not news worthy. The only thing that makes news these days is hatered, fear and death. Why do you think people are moving in that direction?
It was not a UFO it was a weather baloon... I mean swamp gass... No I mean space dust capsul *grumbles having to remember the right cover story*
I worked as a network security consultant for a overall security firm a while back and I will never forget a bank we were hired to test.
One of our guys was able to bully his way into the presidents office by wearing a suit and acting beligirent, grabbed this password off his monitor sticky note (actualy I think it was on the top of his keyboard if I remember right) and we had full access.
First off, the president should not HAVE full access. He does not need it. He needs email, word, powerpoint and a special password to approve transactions. Second, knowing the power that password has he should NEVER write it down. As a network admin I would probably be tempted to physicaly slap him if I saw that.
Just an example of why people should be limited to what they need to do. Human error is inevitably the biggest security flaw that exists in any system.
.NET is not compared to cross platform development environments because it is not. It is windows centric and only works there. That gives it it's own catagory I lovingly call "not worth discussing as it is functionaly useless to me."
.NET stuff at any hosting company that will promise me 99.999% up time. Why? You simply cannot promise that on a windows server.
.NET framework I would not learn nor impliment if you payed me Well... maybe if you payed me a LOT, but Microsoft already turned me down when they gave me a job offer and I told them it would cost half a mill a year plus benefits and stock options on a 5 year contract for me to sell my soul and give up every moral principle I hold dear. Hey, everyone has thier price, I just admit mine.
Therefore java will enter into a comparison and be worth comparing because it does something the common web designer may use or impliment. PHP/MySql is popular because it works, and it will run on any platform and almost all hosts support it. Java is a close second in terms of support server side. I cannot run
The