>While I can understand HP's position to a point, I can't escape thinking that maybe, >just maybe, they should have been improving their product to the maximum extent possible anyway, regardless of what MS did or didn't say or promise.
No, you are missing the point entirely, as has already been stated.
HP doesn't go out and just build the most awesome computers they can. They build a whole array of systems, from low-end to high-end, so that customers with different amounts of money to spend have a product to choose from.
The problem here is that Microsoft set the low-end benchmark requirement at a certain level, which HP built to, and then Microsoft lowered the requirement for the benefit of Intel. Now Intel can undercut HPs low-end systems with its cheaper, even less powerful systems.
As borizz notes, there's nothing to say that you can force an appliance to override your pre-set power budget, or alter the budget itself.
Obviously if you set an unrealistic or unmeetable budget but you still want, say, the air conditioner or TV or microwave to run, you'll want a way to override the budget.
So what's the point of setting the budget then? By allowing the consumer to try and cap energy spending to a level they are comfortable with and alerting them when they exceed it so they can choose whether the additional cost is really necessary or not.
That works if you have the staff that understands the app and the systems it runs on/needs to run. Unfortunately, a lot of managers see "free" software and dive on that not understanding that they need people to maintain/support that.
And why wouldn't they think that? To me, there is still a whole lot of confusion revolving around "free software" and "open source". To me, they have always been synonymous. If I can go download it and use it legally for free, then it's free. You call call it open source, open wide, whatever you want, if I can downloaded it and use it legally for free, I don't care.
Now I'm learning that maybe it really isn't supposed to be free, it's a teaser, like 0% interest rates on credit cards. Sure, we give you this freeeeee software, but really what we are hoping is that you buy a service subscription from us. Well if I'm going to pay for the software, now I'm back to shopping around for the best commercial deal again.
Sure I have to have an IT guy who knows how to install and maintain the apps. This is true no matter who I buy the software from.
I have long suggested that appliances should be smart, and I should be able to set a monthly power budget and let my appliances figure out together how to optimally function to meet that budget.
You don't even need to broadcast the price through the outlet to do this. Each device should be able to measure its own power consumption and if I have budgeted X number of kilowatts for the month they should collectively figure out how to achieve that.
I have heard this one before, too. The idea is that since revolutions historically have seldom resulted in a better situation than before the revolution, armed revolution is futile or bad.
I counter that if one is being oppressed to the point where violence is the only remaining viable option a people are right and just in such armed resistance no matter what the outcome of their resistance.
We cannot shrug off the right to armed resistance of tyranny for fear of the consequences.
I strongly recommend sticking to peaceful means.
Armed rebellion should always be the action of last resort. But we need to insure that we always have the means to resort to it if necessary.
You missed my point. Protecting the second amendment at the exclusion of the others is flat out insane if resisting tyranny is the point of the second amendment. Would you let someone rape your daughter so you can keep a gun to protect her from rapists?
Obviously not. But the question you asked was, "What good is the right to own guns if the gun owners let the government take away all their other rights?"
The implication here is that there is no good to the right to own guns if gun owners let the government take away all their other rights.
While one can never know what will be the spark to light the fires of rebellion, nor how many liberties we will forgo before resisting, arms must always be at hand so that resistance is possible should the collective will be summoned.
If the collective will is never summoned? Then the frog will boil. But it will not be for lack of means to resist.
What good is the right to own guns if the gun owners let the government take away all their other rights?
This is another common argument against the right to keep and bear arms. The logic seems to be that since firearm owners are not standing up to the erosion of their liberties there is thus no reason for them to be armed.
One must bear in mind that having the means to resist tyranny does not guarantee the will to resist tyranny. Apathy is far more dangerous than not being armed, but this does not mean being armed as insurance against tyranny is not a good idea.
Your guns are useful to defend your freedom only when the government does not have that force multiplied eight thousand fold. And that's just for the one F-16.
The usual old saw, "guns can't compete with tanks".
I don't disagree with you there, but you're not disagreeing with me either, really - if the law becomes tyrannical, how will privacy "rights" still have practical value?
Because if your government becomes tyrannical, but you still have some level of privacy, you can engage in insurrection with the possibility of not getting caught.
If you have already ceded your right to privacy, and then the government becomes tyrannical, you have no chance at successful revolution.
Perhaps we merely disagree on how wide the slippery slope is... If we end up in a totalitarian state which nevertheless claims to offer some kind of privacy, like "we won't put surveillance cameras in bathrooms, but everything else you do will be reported", we're still screwed. No recourse if someone invents evidence against us about our subversive bathroom activities, no appeal if they bribe a judge, no consequences if the local boss' nephew puts a camera in the ladies' room "by mistake", etc.
But you will have the recourse to engage in revolutionary activities with the possibility of not getting caught.
In short: once you're screwed, you're screwed. YES privacy rights are important, but only insofar as rights in general have meaning. Making an argument to defend one right by suggesting that it will become more valuable if all other rights go away does not persuade me.
You are making the assumption that once a tyranny happens you are screwed. So long as the ability to resist is preserved, you are not screwed. This is why, for example, our founders enumerated the right to keep and bear arms in our Constitution. It provides the means for resistance against an oppressive tyranny - even if and after such a tyranny comes to pass.
I have never owned an ipod, and I have no desire to own one.
I listen to music in three places - my garage, my car, and my office.
In my garage, I have a stereo.
In my car, I have a radio.
In my office, I have a computer.
The last portable music player I owned was a cassette Sony Walkman way back in the 80s when I was a kid. The novelty of having portable music didn't last long for me. Probably because the batteries ran out so fast and my folks weren't going to buy me batteries every 3 days!
As an engineer, I tend to always look at problems in their extremes. If it is possible, though unlikely, that a certain condition could result in a catastrophic failure, it is far better to alter the design so that the certain condition cannot happen ever rather than take a chance that it will only happen rarely.
Moreover, in terms of liberty, I tend to favor the views of our founding fathers (United States). For example, they enumerated the right to keep and bear arms in the event, however unlikely, that our government would turn into an oppressive tyranny. Will this scenario eventuate? Is it likely? Who knows. I'm not willing to give up the right to keep and bear arms in the hope that it is not.
We must always be ever-watchful over our liberties. Sometimes slopes are not slippery. But it's safer to assume that they all are.
"If the law is changed to cover past offenses retroactively, all bets are off."
Who's talking about retroactivity?
What I'm saying is this: If you allow a system to be set in place whereby you basically have no privacy, then if any law should come into being that is immoral or unjust you have no recourse but to comply.
Let us suppose, for example, that we live in an era with no privacy as the OP suggests, and that the government is aware of all you do. Then let us suppose a law is passed to make picking your nose punishable by death (not retroactively). Since you already abdicated your privacy, you must comply with the law, or face death. Moreover, since you have already abdicated your privacy, you also have no means to rebel or resist such tyranny.
This is why the idea that "I don't have anything to hide, so the government can search me at any time" is a very slippery slope. Sure, you may not have anything to hide today. But what if you have just cause to have something to hide tomorrow?
I have a pretty stout machine, even if it is a few years old.
I did not mess with the framerate.
All I did was use DeCSS to rip the DVD (which worked), and then a variety of different tools to try and transcode to.AVI. Nothing worked - everything produced video/audio sync problems. The support forums I visited showed that I was not unique in experiencing this problem.
The biggest problem with most of the tools I tried was that there were too many options to set, and I suspect I never got the right combination of settings to make it work.
The Slysoft Clone DVD mobile is nice. You just pick the input file, pick an output file, and pick the resolution of the output you want. Works great.
"There's also a key element here: I don't do anything illegal and I'm honest with friends and family. One might say, "What happens when you do?" to which I will reply, "Then I guess I'm going to jail like I should." If someone comes to me with beef about something I wrote, then it's up to me to defend my position."
There is a problem with this position.
You are making the assumption that nothing will happen in the future to make currently acceptable, moral, lawful behavior illegal.
If the law changes in such a way as to be tyrannical and you have allowed no possibility for revolt without getting caught you have sealed your fate long before the tyranny came to pass.
I played around with the "free" rippers and re-encoders for weeks and could never resolve audio/video synchronization issues.
Finally I broke down and purchased SlySoft's Any DVD ripper and their Clone DVD mobile. Now I have my entire DVD collection as.avi files - with no FBI warnings, commercials, etc., etc..
Look, my entertainment system consists of a 1998 vintage 27" RCA CRT TV, a $20 Walmart DVD player, a $100 tuner, and a DLink Media Player for playing my ripped DVD collection (which conveniently skips all ads, FBI warnings, etc. etc.).
Amazon shows a single 32" LCD HDTV for $667, but most of them are $1000+.
At $500 I might consider buying an HDTV, but I'm not spending $1000 on one.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this any surprise? Internet reporters are unlikely to have a mega-media-corporation backing them up with armies of attorneys to save them.
Couldn't hold his pee pee!
>While I can understand HP's position to a point, I can't escape thinking that maybe,
>just maybe, they should have been improving their product to the maximum extent possible anyway, regardless of what MS did or didn't say or promise.
No, you are missing the point entirely, as has already been stated.
HP doesn't go out and just build the most awesome computers they can. They build a whole array of systems, from low-end to high-end, so that customers with different amounts of money to spend have a product to choose from.
The problem here is that Microsoft set the low-end benchmark requirement at a certain level, which HP built to, and then Microsoft lowered the requirement for the benefit of Intel. Now Intel can undercut HPs low-end systems with its cheaper, even less powerful systems.
HP has every right to be extremely pissed off.
Great work if you can get it. Need 20 million in funding? Drop a wrench into something that looks complicated. :)
I wonder if I can spend some of my karma down at Taco Bell for a burrito?
As borizz notes, there's nothing to say that you can force an appliance to override your pre-set power budget, or alter the budget itself.
Obviously if you set an unrealistic or unmeetable budget but you still want, say, the air conditioner or TV or microwave to run, you'll want a way to override the budget.
So what's the point of setting the budget then? By allowing the consumer to try and cap energy spending to a level they are comfortable with and alerting them when they exceed it so they can choose whether the additional cost is really necessary or not.
That works if you have the staff that understands the app and the systems it runs on/needs to run. Unfortunately, a lot of managers see "free" software and dive on that not understanding that they need people to maintain/support that.
And why wouldn't they think that? To me, there is still a whole lot of confusion revolving around "free software" and "open source". To me, they have always been synonymous. If I can go download it and use it legally for free, then it's free. You call call it open source, open wide, whatever you want, if I can downloaded it and use it legally for free, I don't care.
Now I'm learning that maybe it really isn't supposed to be free, it's a teaser, like 0% interest rates on credit cards. Sure, we give you this freeeeee software, but really what we are hoping is that you buy a service subscription from us. Well if I'm going to pay for the software, now I'm back to shopping around for the best commercial deal again.
Sure I have to have an IT guy who knows how to install and maintain the apps. This is true no matter who I buy the software from.
I have long suggested that appliances should be smart, and I should be able to set a monthly power budget and let my appliances figure out together how to optimally function to meet that budget.
You don't even need to broadcast the price through the outlet to do this. Each device should be able to measure its own power consumption and if I have budgeted X number of kilowatts for the month they should collectively figure out how to achieve that.
Violent revolutions tend to become dictatorships.
I have heard this one before, too. The idea is that since revolutions historically have seldom resulted in a better situation than before the revolution, armed revolution is futile or bad.
I counter that if one is being oppressed to the point where violence is the only remaining viable option a people are right and just in such armed resistance no matter what the outcome of their resistance.
We cannot shrug off the right to armed resistance of tyranny for fear of the consequences.
I strongly recommend sticking to peaceful means.
Armed rebellion should always be the action of last resort. But we need to insure that we always have the means to resort to it if necessary.
You missed my point. Protecting the second amendment at the exclusion of the others is flat out insane if resisting tyranny is the point of the second amendment. Would you let someone rape your daughter so you can keep a gun to protect her from rapists?
Obviously not. But the question you asked was, "What good is the right to own guns if the gun owners let the government take away all their other rights?"
The implication here is that there is no good to the right to own guns if gun owners let the government take away all their other rights.
While one can never know what will be the spark to light the fires of rebellion, nor how many liberties we will forgo before resisting, arms must always be at hand so that resistance is possible should the collective will be summoned.
If the collective will is never summoned? Then the frog will boil. But it will not be for lack of means to resist.
What good is the right to own guns if the gun owners let the government take away all their other rights?
This is another common argument against the right to keep and bear arms. The logic seems to be that since firearm owners are not standing up to the erosion of their liberties there is thus no reason for them to be armed.
One must bear in mind that having the means to resist tyranny does not guarantee the will to resist tyranny. Apathy is far more dangerous than not being armed, but this does not mean being armed as insurance against tyranny is not a good idea.
Your guns are useful to defend your freedom only when the government does not have that force multiplied eight thousand fold. And that's just for the one F-16.
The usual old saw, "guns can't compete with tanks".
Ask the Iraqis, Afghans, and Viet Cong about it.
You fight the tyranny *before* it happens, through political means, so that you don't have to use that shotgun.
Indeed we should all fight tyranny before it happens.
But we should all be armed in case tyranny happens in any case.
I don't run any plugins with Firefox. Ads don't bother me - I mentally screen them out anyway.
I don't disagree with you there, but you're not disagreeing with me either, really - if the law becomes tyrannical, how will privacy "rights" still have practical value?
Because if your government becomes tyrannical, but you still have some level of privacy, you can engage in insurrection with the possibility of not getting caught.
If you have already ceded your right to privacy, and then the government becomes tyrannical, you have no chance at successful revolution.
Perhaps we merely disagree on how wide the slippery slope is... If we end up in a totalitarian state which nevertheless claims to offer some kind of privacy, like "we won't put surveillance cameras in bathrooms, but everything else you do will be reported", we're still screwed. No recourse if someone invents evidence against us about our subversive bathroom activities, no appeal if they bribe a judge, no consequences if the local boss' nephew puts a camera in the ladies' room "by mistake", etc.
But you will have the recourse to engage in revolutionary activities with the possibility of not getting caught.
In short: once you're screwed, you're screwed. YES privacy rights are important, but only insofar as rights in general have meaning. Making an argument to defend one right by suggesting that it will become more valuable if all other rights go away does not persuade me.
You are making the assumption that once a tyranny happens you are screwed. So long as the ability to resist is preserved, you are not screwed. This is why, for example, our founders enumerated the right to keep and bear arms in our Constitution. It provides the means for resistance against an oppressive tyranny - even if and after such a tyranny comes to pass.
If a businesses' privacy policy is more than one sentence long it means they don't have one.
The article asks, "Is Fair Use decided by who has the most money?"
The answer, of course, is yes.
Money decides nearly everything.
I have never owned an ipod, and I have no desire to own one.
I listen to music in three places - my garage, my car, and my office.
In my garage, I have a stereo.
In my car, I have a radio.
In my office, I have a computer.
The last portable music player I owned was a cassette Sony Walkman way back in the 80s when I was a kid. The novelty of having portable music didn't last long for me. Probably because the batteries ran out so fast and my folks weren't going to buy me batteries every 3 days!
As an engineer, I tend to always look at problems in their extremes. If it is possible, though unlikely, that a certain condition could result in a catastrophic failure, it is far better to alter the design so that the certain condition cannot happen ever rather than take a chance that it will only happen rarely.
Moreover, in terms of liberty, I tend to favor the views of our founding fathers (United States). For example, they enumerated the right to keep and bear arms in the event, however unlikely, that our government would turn into an oppressive tyranny. Will this scenario eventuate? Is it likely? Who knows. I'm not willing to give up the right to keep and bear arms in the hope that it is not.
We must always be ever-watchful over our liberties. Sometimes slopes are not slippery. But it's safer to assume that they all are.
"If the law is changed to cover past offenses retroactively, all bets are off."
Who's talking about retroactivity?
What I'm saying is this: If you allow a system to be set in place whereby you basically have no privacy, then if any law should come into being that is immoral or unjust you have no recourse but to comply.
Let us suppose, for example, that we live in an era with no privacy as the OP suggests, and that the government is aware of all you do. Then let us suppose a law is passed to make picking your nose punishable by death (not retroactively). Since you already abdicated your privacy, you must comply with the law, or face death. Moreover, since you have already abdicated your privacy, you also have no means to rebel or resist such tyranny.
This is why the idea that "I don't have anything to hide, so the government can search me at any time" is a very slippery slope. Sure, you may not have anything to hide today. But what if you have just cause to have something to hide tomorrow?
I have a pretty stout machine, even if it is a few years old.
I did not mess with the framerate.
All I did was use DeCSS to rip the DVD (which worked), and then a variety of different tools to try and transcode to .AVI. Nothing worked - everything produced video/audio sync problems. The support forums I visited showed that I was not unique in experiencing this problem.
The biggest problem with most of the tools I tried was that there were too many options to set, and I suspect I never got the right combination of settings to make it work.
The Slysoft Clone DVD mobile is nice. You just pick the input file, pick an output file, and pick the resolution of the output you want. Works great.
"There's also a key element here: I don't do anything illegal and I'm honest with friends and family. One might say, "What happens when you do?" to which I will reply, "Then I guess I'm going to jail like I should." If someone comes to me with beef about something I wrote, then it's up to me to defend my position."
There is a problem with this position.
You are making the assumption that nothing will happen in the future to make currently acceptable, moral, lawful behavior illegal.
If the law changes in such a way as to be tyrannical and you have allowed no possibility for revolt without getting caught you have sealed your fate long before the tyranny came to pass.
I played around with the "free" rippers and re-encoders for weeks and could never resolve audio/video synchronization issues.
Finally I broke down and purchased SlySoft's Any DVD ripper and their Clone DVD mobile. Now I have my entire DVD collection as .avi files - with no FBI warnings, commercials, etc., etc..
n/t
Look, my entertainment system consists of a 1998 vintage 27" RCA CRT TV, a $20 Walmart DVD player, a $100 tuner, and a DLink Media Player for playing my ripped DVD collection (which conveniently skips all ads, FBI warnings, etc. etc.).
Amazon shows a single 32" LCD HDTV for $667, but most of them are $1000+.
At $500 I might consider buying an HDTV, but I'm not spending $1000 on one.