Wait a minute. Maybe it's not the actual spam itself that's profitable. There's an illusion that it is, so it's the selling of spam that's profitable.
In other words, you don't get paid for spamming Viagra, you get paid for selling the computer time to the people who think they'll get rich spamming Viagra.
This is truly insightful.
So the 'people selling viagra' never make a dime. But the 'people selling the sending of viagra spam' to the 'people selling viagra' make money.
Moreover, the 'peope selling the sending of viagra spam are probably the very people convincing the 'people selling viagra' that they can make money at it, and should hire them to send their spam.
Genius.
Only one question remains... given the obviously dubious ethics of the 'people selling the sending of viagra spam', and the fact that they would know there is no money to be made on viagra, why do they bother following through on their sale? I mean, why not just tell their customer they sent the spam, show them some falsified log 'proving' it, or even send to 1% of their list including their clients address, instead of the entire list, and just walk away with the cash?
They have the exclusive right to distribute that OS.... Normally, I'm against harsh "intellectual property" laws, but this is Apple's investment in a huge competitive advantage, and they've earned it.
Psystar buys legal copies OS X to ship with its units.
Apple tolerates a few hackers jumping through hoops to get it running on commodity PCs, as long as that means they lose maybe 0.1% of their potential customers.
Actually, they are losing far more than that. I won't buy a Mac because they won't make one with the specs and form factor I want. I'm interested in an 'imac tower', and a 12" macbook with a decent video card, gps, and a cellular data option. (I'd gladly give up the internal cdrom for an express card slot. I'd also be interested in a tablet-mac... and the axiotron is pretty sweet, but it would be even better if using the stylus was optional, the price wasn't so high, and the little hiccups like auto-rotating the screen based on orientation were worked out.
My other big wish list for OSX is virtualization. I'd pay $350-400 (up two twice the retail price for OSX) for a copy that I could legally run in VMWare on non-apple hardware.(Yes I know leopard server allows for virtualization, but only on apple hardware [which I don't like], and it costs $500.)
Despite the overwhelming legal precedent against them (I don't know of any official retailer that has gotten away with installing pirated versions of Windows on commodity PCs), they figure it's worth the risk.
What legal precendent. No one has -ever- done anything like this before. Pirated copies of windows are not remotely in the same category as legally purchased copies of os x.
If they argue that they paid for every shrink-wrapped copy of OS X, then they stand a moderately better chance of succeeding.
There's no "if" about it.
The -only- question is whether or not the eula that requires the os be run on apple brand hardware will stick or not.
And its a VERY complicated question.
On apple's side:
They have the EULA in place that clearly forbids it. That sure beats trying to deal with this on pure copyright.
They have a dubious legal precedent in the blizzard case that suggests that violating an eula makes an in computer, or even in RAM copy an unauthorized copy.
They also have the DMCA which can come into play with its protection of 'technical measures'. After all, Apple, doesn't just have the EULA, the code actually tries to check the hardware, and the psystar people have to defeat it to install OSX. This itself may be illegal.
On Psystar's side:
we have first sale doctrine - they bought OSX. They can do what they want with it, including resell it. There was an ebay related case against the makers of autocad I think over this... someone was selling used copies of autocad, and the courts ruled this was legal under first sale, despite autocad's protestation that it was against the EULA. (This is also potentially a counter precedent to the blizzard one too... as it ruled the first sale doctrine rights couldn't be stripped by the shrink wrapped EULA.)
We also have an exception in the DMCA that provides for deafeating copyright measures for interoperability. Clearly Psystar could argue that they only modified OSX to make it interoperate with the non-apple hardware. There is a printer related precedent that might come into play, where some printer manufacturer tried to prevent a competitor from releasing replacement ink via a DMCA lawsuit, and lost, because the competitor had reverse engineered the printer software to figure out how to get their cartridges to 'interoperate' with the printer. This is particularly salient because it shows the DMCA interoperation clause being successfully used in a case where the OEM specifically sought to prevent interoperation... indeed the entire point of the drm was to lock out competition. -- And they lost.
Psystar also potentially can continue to operate simply by ceasin
I don't know about the specifications of your reproductive system, but I could make 3 babies with 3 women in 9 months with no physiological problems (the psychological effect will be different though).
But I only want one baby faster, not three.
What you mean is that a woman will take at least 27 months to make 3 babies from 3 men. (for the sake of simplicity we don't count twins or more here)
That's true, but I could add more women and get 3 babies in 9 months instead of 27.
Aren't a lot of games and apps single-threaded? Hmmm. I figured that dual/quad-core wasn't all it's cracked up to be. So, essentially, if I have a single-threaded app on a quad core, it'll perform at 1/4th the potential speed.
Yes, although, most high end games and game engines actually are multi-threaded. Few are designed to take advantage of more than 2 cores though, and none that I know of will use 8 or 300,000...
So, essentially, if I have a single-threaded app on a quad core, it'll perform at 1/4th the potential speed.
Not necessarily. If you have 3 women can you make a baby in 3 months instead of 9? Given that it still takes 9 months and 2 of the women are idle, would you say that these women are performing at 1/3rd the potential speed? Same sort of logic applies here. If the task is inherently sequential, having more cores (or ladies) won't make it any faster.
Somethings -are- highly parellizable, like ray-tracing or cutting down all the trees in a forest.. and other things are partly parallelizable... like changing tires (a pit crew can change 4 tires at once... but adding more staff to allow you to change 5 tires at once doesn't make your team any faster...)
That doesn't leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.
Yes, in general computing applications, an 8GHz CPU would be faster than a quad core 2GHz. (And even under optimal parallilizable situations the 2ghz quadcore would just barely surpass the 8ghz cpu due to lower task switching overhead.) So the faster single cpu is almost always better. The reason we have quad core 2Ghz cpus is that they are much much more practical to actually make, and a lot of the stuff that takes a long time (rendering 3d, encoding movies, etc is actually highly parellizable so we do see a benefit. And much of the single threaded sequential stuff we see is waiting on hard drive performance, network bandedith, or user input... so cpu isn't the bottleneck there anyway.
The funny thing is that it teeter-totters back and forth from one core to the other. I wish I knew what made it do that.
If you look at task manager, there what? some 40+ processes running. The OS rotates them onto an off of the 2 cores based on what they all need in terms of cpu time. So your 'cpu heavy task' gets pulled off a core to give another task a timeslice, and then once its off, it can be scheduled back onto either core. Ideally should stay on one core to maximize level one cache hits, etc, but if its been off the core long enough for the other processes to cache all new memory it doesn't really matter which one it gets assigned to, and in any case flipping from one to the other every now and then makes a almost immeasurably small performance difference.
btw - the 'set processor affinity' feature tells the OS that you really want this process to run on a given cpu/core, instead of hopping around. But in most cases its not something one needs (or gains any benefit) from doing.
If astronomers couldn't change the number of planets as new information became available, then astronomy would be dogma instead of a science.
This isn't dogma vs science.
To me the pluto demotion has been a great illustration of science at work. Educators should be using it as an example of the difference between science and dogma. Mistake made, mistake corrected.
What mistake? The IAU had a vague traditional definition of planet that really didn't set any hard boundaries, except that they be 'special' (vis a vis asteroids). Suddenly we went from adding a new 'planet' every few hundred years or so to having a whole bunch show up all at once, and for aesthetic reasons (AESTHETIC NOT SCIENTIFIC!!) deciding to narrow down the definition rather than add a big pile of new 'planets', that probably belonged in their own category anyway. So they come up with a defintion, and 'planet' Pluto isn't in it.
So Pluto's reclassification isn't realy a "correction"; its more like arguing how big a mountain has to be, picking a number, and then then going around the country side making a big fuss about renaming a bunch of "Mount such-and-such" as "such-and-such Hill" and vice versa.
That's not a triumph of science. That's a triumph of stupidity.
. Recently I walked into a Sprint store and the sales rep told me that there was NO way I can buy a Palm Centro phone without a data plan.
I can't speak to your specific situation, but I can tell you that sometimes the rules are different for multi-carrier vendors like best buy vs carrier-specific vendors like the 'sprint store'.
It may well be that there was no way -he- could sell you a palm without data. It may be against Sprint policy. It may even be blocked in the computer systems he uses to activate product.
It may well be that he honestly didn't know best buy could.
It also may well be that the guy at best buy broke the rules, and wasn't supposed to sell you a palm without data; it may be that the computer systems BB uses are different, and his computer let him do it so he did it.
Perhaps, in this scenario, the fact that he broke the rules will result in the carrier 'punishing' best buy by denying the residuals or some sort of subsidy clawback on that activation and since best buy employees are hourly paid that doesn't really affect them, so they don't really care... or maybe you bought the extended warranty, and best buy is willing to eat the carrier penalty to make a sale with extended warranty...or maybe it will get tracked back to him and he'll be bawled out by some management flunky later on...
Just saying... there are a lot more possibilities than you've accounted for.
Yeah, but why do they design mobile phones so shittily? Isn't it a scam?
I could understand with the first generation, but by now, don'tcha think they ought to have figured out a way to get a waterproof seal over the battery when you close the lid??? I think it's pathetic.
Actually back in the old days I saw a Motorola 2-way unit sitting in a fishbowl at a tradeshow. People could come up use it, and then put it back in the fishbowl. Its not that they can't make them waterproof... its that they can't make them water proof, feature rich, light, 4 millimeters thick, stays cool while you use it, and on top of all that cheap.
Most cellphones are actually quite water reistant, and I've seen countless survive drink spills, and even falls into sinks and worse. But the engineering tradeoffs mean most are still fairly vulnerable. You -can- get waterproof phones though... manufacturers do make units designed to survive immersion... Sony, LG, Fujitsu and others have all released waterproof models. And for the rest, there is a thriving market for waterproof cases.
And its not just the battery cover... the keypad, buttons, charging port, along with the hinges and slides of phones that do that -- are all potential entrances. There are membranes and coatings in place - and the better devices -are- fairly resistant, but if you want water 'proof' you'll have to make some tradeoffs, and the market despite its moaning about liquid damage doesn't exactly snap up the water proof options that are available.
Liquid damage? You mean when they take your phone in the back to "check it", bring it back a few seconds later and show you a red dot under your batter cover?
A reputable dealer will flip it open and remove the battery cover right in front of you to check that dot with you.
The red dots in my experience with cellular has been a pretty accurate predictor. And in virtually every red dot case I've ever seen, when at the customers insistence that they've never been anywhere near moisture ever and at their expense we've had our service technicians open the unit -- significant corrosion was invariably plain to see.
A phone can be sopping without getting dunked. An unlucky drop or two on the ground, or not putting the battery cover on properly and the water proofing can easily be compromised. Once that's the case, water vapor and humitity from being left in a pocket on the counter while you take a hot shower, or on a windowsill at night... etc... and the inside of the phone will be full of condensation, which rapidly turns in it into a useless paperweight.
All that said, I wouldn't doubt a disreputable dealer might do what you describe.
If you genuinely suspect a scam, take the device someplace reputable, and have them check the actual electronics -- if they are bone dry and free of corrosion, you have a lawsuit on your hands.
But don't be surprised if the insides come back looking like they spent a week at the bottom of a lake.
No, not every paper, but there certainly are papers like that.
That is precisely the point I am making.
If the Wall Street journal wants to write 'news' articles reporting on the 'fact' that 'these are the contents of someone's blog', then while legal, they are reduced to super market tabloid status.
A friend of mine works for a company selling the iPhone 2. According to him if you lose your iPhone 2 you will 1. Have to pay full price to get a new one (not too surprising imo) and
This is true of all cell phones. Not only if you 'lose it', but if you damage it in ways that are not covered by warranty, or if you damage it out of warranty. (most cell phones have a 1 year warranty although you can often buy extended warranty.) however liquid damage and physical damage are never covered.
2. Re-sign up for a 2 year contract.
This really makes no sense.
There is -always- an early termination provision that can be exercised if the phone is lost, or you move out of country or whatever. Here in Canada on Rogers, for an iphone, it is the greater of $100 or $20 per month remaining in the contract, to a maximum of $400.
Based on that losing the iphone 2.5 years in, one could always payout $120 (20$x6 months), and then get a new one on a 3 year contract for $199... (or whatever they would be at that point.)
And that's 'worst case'. Usually if you have the intention of signing a new 3 year contract and your well into an existing contract the carrier will offer you a some sort of 'deal'.
Now suppose you lost an iphone on day 2 of your 3 year contract, typically, you'd simply have to replace it at full price, and you'd still be held to the terms of your original contract. Its absurd that they would tack on an extra 2 years (a 5 year contract on a cell phone?!), and even more absurd that you'd have your contract shortened.
And under this scenario, if you lost your iphone on the 2nd day, and they wanted to rope you into a 5 year contract, and charge you $600 replacement, you would simply exercise the early termination: $400. And then sign up to a new 3 year: $199. Same $600 bucks, but only a 3 year contract.
So the front page of every newspaper next week should be: "Two headed alien michael jackson baby!"...... according to an eye witness who posted on his blog, Michael Jackson gave birth to a 2 headed alien child. Pictures were also on the blog, and blogger insists they aren't photoshopped too!!...
It may be the truth that some blogger posted this, but that hardly makes it 'news' or makes the story satisfy any sort of journalistic integrity.
We get lots of help desk calls because some stupid(but innocent) user spells an email address wrong and they don't get a bounce and they blame us for not delivering it.
Vs getting lots of help desk calls because some stupid(but innocent) user gets dozens of email bounce messages to email he never sent?
If somebody has a problem with back scatter then they obviously don't have their SPF records set up correctly. They aren't so innocent. I'm getting spam traffic from their domain.
I'm not following. I'm sure you realize that SPF doesn't prevent people from sending spam traffic with someone elses domain name on it. That SPF only lets them tell you which hosts are authorized to send mail for their domain. It doesn't do jack squat in stopping spammers from sending you spam with their domain from unauthorized hosts. So I'm not sure why you think its their fault you are getting spam traffic from their domain.
And their properly set up spf doesn't prevent backscatter. Their SPF record isn't a factor to that, and your bounce messages are coming from your authorized server.
Or have I misunderstood something.
The problem gets worse when the spam lists blame a properly configured SPF configuration for back scatter. To solve that the bounces all come from a host that is on every black list know which is sort of embarrassing but seems to keep most people happy.
I'm afraid you lost me here. Its not clear to me what you are trying to say.
So now I ask what is the defference between flying inside a simulator in Kansas or in a real plan with blacked out windows except for the degree of risk to the crew. In both cases flying means punching in commands to an autopilot and reacting to various threats detected by instruments.
The main difference is that the odds of losing your connection to the plane is far lower. Latency is considerably lower too.
Following the RFC fucks the innocent bystander, not the spammer. Is following the RFC worth fucking innocent bystanders over?
Either respect the RFC, or come up with a solution with at least as much attention as the RFCs were given.
In the meantime, while you come up with a solution, I'll disregard the RFC for this situation, because fucking innocent bystanders over while the world figures out a 'real solution' isn't acceptable.
It's the closest comparison, I'll admit; with the little wrinkle that I don't remember the schoolchildren in the Narnia books ever actually having to go to school.
On the other hand I don't remember the schoolchildren in Narnia ever doing anything supernatural. They were in an impossible magical world, and had extraordinary adventures, but remained far more ordinary than Harry Potter ever was.
You have to be born into Harry Potter's world - otherwise you were just a poor oblivious muggle. But anyone of us could have gone to Narnia.
Actually, I think that's her major innovation....the protagonists... they're 21st century British schoolkids.
The children in Narnia are 20th century British schoolkids. Yeah real innovative. Sure you can argue that Peter/Susan/Edmund/Lucy had some destiny in Narnia but the same could be said of Potter. And the children of Narnia started out, and ended up 20th century schoolkids. Eustace, and Jill were even less 'extraordinary' if such a thing were possible. As were Polly and Digory of The Magician's Nephew.
And recall that Digory didn't fight the Witch, or defeat an army... his greatest challenge was to fetch an Apple, and his moment of greatest triumph? Resisting the temptation to steal one to save his dying mother. Its brilliant in its simplicity. And its moving in a way that Harry Potter just isn't.
Then it's my turn to call your assessment dishonest. Would it be fair to say that Linux is far inferior to Windows because "most people" are unable to grasp the intricacies of its foibles?
Yes it would, if it were true. I think at this point though, Windows edge is largely momentum and mindshare. Linux is not far inferior. To put it in terms of blu-ray, though would 'upgrading' from XP to Linux really benefit your average web-app/email/mp3 playing/photo sharing person? Not appreciably. Same with blu-ray... some small set benefit a lot, most gain little. (and in the case of linux, have to potentially give up a lot too.)
Would it be fair to say that a Ferrari Enzo is no better than Honda Civic because "most people" cannot drive a Ferrari hard enough to bring out its pedigree?
It would be fair to say that the average person is not well served by a Ferrari Enzo. They are terrible commuter cars, lousy for grocery shopping, spend far more time in the shop than a Civic, and cost orders of magnitude more to purchase, maintain, fuel up, and insure. If on top of all that you aren't going to have the opportunity to drive it hard enough to 'bring out its pedigree' the only point in owning one would be as part of a dick waving contest with your peers. Is that a good reason to own one? Or buy blu-ray?
Would it be fair to say Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is no better than an arts & crafts store copy because "most people" aren't art experts and wouldn't know the difference?
Good analagy. If you can't tell the difference between the original and a copy, what is the point of shelling out for the expensive original? Some sort of internal satisfaction of knowing that you have the real thing? Is that a reason to invest in blu-ray? 'I can't tell the difference from my couch, but I get great satisfaction in knowing its better'?? Seems like faulty logic to me. At least the mona lisa original has investment value...your home theatre is obsolete and depreciating fast before you've finished plugging it in.
I think you either give too much credit to those with uber-theaters or take away too much credit from the average consumer.
The 'average consumer' still doesn't even have an HDTV. From that its trivial to conclude that the average consumer doesn't benefit from bluray. The percentage of HDTV consumers who -might- benefit from blu-ray starts off a distinct minority. Even if we were to agree that 100% of HDTV owners would be blinded by the difference blu-ray made to their setup, it would still top out as significantly less than the majority of consumers. And I contend that the percentage of HDTV owners would see blu-ray as more than a minor upgrade to their setup to be FAR LESS than 100%, marginalizing the group even more. Even if it were HALF of HDTV owners that would be 1/6th the population... there is simply no way a 1/6th or smaller minority can represent 'average consumers'.
I understand your point but I think you underestimate how prevalent home theaters are, even ones with screens larger than 100".
As of the end of 2007, 70% of households in the US did not have an HDTV. bluray is pointless for them.
Of the remaining 30%, 40-60% have never viewed any HD programming or content. Clearly these guys aren't setting up dedicated home theatre rooms.
So that leaves about 15% of households who have an HDTV -and- use it for HD content. What percentage of them do you think have 100" TVs in home theatres with a blu-ray player vs 42" TVs in living rooms with an ATSC tuner, or HD satellite, etc?
The percentage of the total market that would really benefit from bluray is a probably Anyone with such a setup would benefit from bluray, even average people would see the difference,
Sure a tiny fraction of the population would see significant benefit from bluray. Far less than 10%. Probably in the 1%-2% range. That's not 'average people', that's the home theatre elite. "Average people" still don't even have an HDTV.
and I assure you anyone spending the money on a theater would care, a lot. There is a multibillion dollar market for home movie projectors, there is definately a market for bluray.
I agree. But its billion dollar niche market, and will be for a several years yet.
Yeah Asimov's Foundation is probably a bit dry. I first tried it when I was ~11 and got lost. I somehow didn't clue in that it was a collection of short stories, not a novel proper.
The Robot novels are probably a good fit though, especially I, Robot. Other classic titles that spring to mind for an avid pre-teen age group are The Chyrsalids, The Tripods Trilogy, (The White Mountains, City of Gold and Lead, Pool of Fire), Ender's War, Tron, Fantastic Voyage
A little higher up on the difficulty scale: Ringworld, Dune, The Mote in God's Eye, Rendezvous with Rama, Foundation, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Flowers for Algernon,
Maybe a little older - The Handmaid's Tale, Brave New World, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, A Clockwork Orange
This comparison doesn't work. What they ARE doing is opening their webservers and calling it a public SERVICE.
The public can -view- the sites, but you've got to 'signup' to post, and signing up is registration process with a EULA, etc.
A closer real-world equivalent would be if you were chatting with a friend in the forecourt of a gas station, and the owner came out and told you you can no longer say what you just said,
Yes. He could ask you to leave if he found your conversation offensive, and refuse to ever allow you back in. If you posted it on a bulletin board he'd made available, Yes he could take it down.
So what exactly makes the internet different?
that you have to take it back,
cite plase. of any service that has ever required -that-?
and that anyone who heard it and wants to write it in a history book is not entitled to refer to that gas station's public service as part of the historical event.
Ah but doing -that- is protected speech. They can rattle their sabres and send out threatening legal mumbo, but if you want to write a book critical of siteX or mentioning an incident on siteX, there really is nothing they can do to stop you, at worst they can ban you from using their service.
Yeah, because we all know competitors are offering better terms of service, right?
What could be better than the terms of service you could offer yourself? Its not exactly rocket science to setup a web server with some images on it, now is it? And there are plenty of free open source CMS systems to make it even easier.
According to court precedent, this is not the case when serious constitutional rights are abrogated. Companies are not allowed to cam the lady's restroom, nor are they allowed to engage in discriminatory polices on premises.. in the regular world the government has sued again and again for violation of constitutional rights based on this (think the civil rights era). Yet you say it's perfectly OK for webhosts to be capriciously discriminatory.
No. I didn't avoid that point. I just didn't think it really applied. Given that I view posting content on someone elses website to be akin to submitting content to a newspaper or magazine, 'capricious discrimination' by the publisher has been par for the course, and well accepted by society since the beginning.
It has -always- been the case that you couldn't had no right to coerce someone else to include your content in their documents, even if they were making space available for paid or contributed content.
Prohibitions on discrimination based on the race, gender, etc of the person making the contributions are relatively new, and a profound EXCEPTION to the status quo. And I think, even on the net, if you could demonstrate that your post was deleted or rejected because you were 'black' or 'female' you could probably sucessfully sue.
But if they rejected what you wrote for something in its content they found objectionable, that has ALWAYS been their perogative. The internet isn't special or different or new in this regard.
And your recourse has ALWAYS been to buy or hire a printer to print what you want printed. And the same applies on the internet -- buy a PC, get an ip address, publish your content, or colo with an ISP who won't censor it -- there are countless.
except theyre renting it out to individuals for the express purpose of their own expression, whether it's for directly paid fees or advertising revenue from traffic.
Sort of like a newspaper or magazine advertisement or editorial column then?
Their interference/censorship at any point in this process is equivalent to a landlord entering your house in the dead of night and ripping down your kids rap posters because he doesn't like that "negro music".
So when the paper refuses to run something they find offensive in the ad space I've purchased or refuse to run the column I wrote this week that's equivalent to people sneaking into my kids rooms at night to remove their rap star posters?
Get real.
false dichotomy. I am not opening my house and advertising it as a public forum like these web hosts are.
There's your mistake. They aren't opening their web servers and calling it a public forum. Read the terms of service... they actually read much like the submission guidelines for a newspaper or magazine ad.
And nobody is forcing you to visit the websites or view the pictures hosted there, but they have an obligation to treat people equally and not discriminate on them based on political views or aesthetic tastes.
Good luck posting an ad for your S&M party in the local church newsletter, or even a campaign ad for the pro-abortion / gay marriage candidate. Its their forum not yours. They might be offering to let people contribute content to it or even sell space, but its their space, not yours, and they have final say on what goes in it, not you.
If you want to post something on the internet, retain all your rights to the content, AND be protected by the first amendment: just host it yourself. If no one will print your ad you can always print your own handbills, similiarly on the internet you can host your own content.
It's not about re-purchasing your entire DVD collection.
That's a big part of it.
BD players can also read DVDs so there's no point in that.
And when I bought a DVD player I could still leave my VCR hooked up. Yet there was still a point in re-purchasing a lot of my movies on DVD. The quality and convenience of DVD was that much better.
As you agree yourself, BD isn't nearly as compelling. Its a much more minor upgrade.
It's about future purchases. If you have the choice between one or the other [when BDs become as cheap as DVDs], BDs will become the default choice.
When BDs become as cheap as DVDs, absolutely.
In the meantime though, while BD's routinely cost 30% to 300% more, and BD players cost 400% more, what should the choice be? I buy most of my DVDs PV for $5-12. I would have to pay $20-30 for the BD.
If they were the same price, sure I'd pick BD, and when BD can be had PV for $5-12, I will... unless they die out and are replaced with something else before that happens. But until then...
Slashdot Mirror
Wait a minute. Maybe it's not the actual spam itself that's profitable. There's an illusion that it is, so it's the selling of spam that's profitable.
In other words, you don't get paid for spamming Viagra, you get paid for selling the computer time to the people who think they'll get rich spamming Viagra.
This is truly insightful.
So the 'people selling viagra' never make a dime. But the 'people selling the sending of viagra spam' to the 'people selling viagra' make money.
Moreover, the 'peope selling the sending of viagra spam are probably the very people convincing the 'people selling viagra' that they can make money at it, and should hire them to send their spam.
Genius.
Only one question remains... given the obviously dubious ethics of the 'people selling the sending of viagra spam', and the fact that they would know there is no money to be made on viagra, why do they bother following through on their sale? I mean, why not just tell their customer they sent the spam, show them some falsified log 'proving' it, or even send to 1% of their list including their clients address, instead of the entire list, and just walk away with the cash?
They have the exclusive right to distribute that OS. ... Normally, I'm against harsh "intellectual property" laws, but this is Apple's investment in a huge competitive advantage, and they've earned it.
Psystar buys legal copies OS X to ship with its units.
Apple tolerates a few hackers jumping through hoops to get it running on commodity PCs, as long as that means they lose maybe 0.1% of their potential customers.
Actually, they are losing far more than that. I won't buy a Mac because they won't make one with the specs and form factor I want. I'm interested in an 'imac tower', and a 12" macbook with a decent video card, gps, and a cellular data option. (I'd gladly give up the internal cdrom for an express card slot. I'd also be interested in a tablet-mac... and the axiotron is pretty sweet, but it would be even better if using the stylus was optional, the price wasn't so high, and the little hiccups like auto-rotating the screen based on orientation were worked out.
My other big wish list for OSX is virtualization. I'd pay $350-400 (up two twice the retail price for OSX) for a copy that I could legally run in VMWare on non-apple hardware.(Yes I know leopard server allows for virtualization, but only on apple hardware [which I don't like], and it costs $500.)
Despite the overwhelming legal precedent against them (I don't know of any official retailer that has gotten away with installing pirated versions of Windows on commodity PCs), they figure it's worth the risk.
What legal precendent. No one has -ever- done anything like this before. Pirated copies of windows are not remotely in the same category as legally purchased copies of os x.
If they argue that they paid for every shrink-wrapped copy of OS X, then they stand a moderately better chance of succeeding.
There's no "if" about it.
The -only- question is whether or not the eula that requires the os be run on apple brand hardware will stick or not.
And its a VERY complicated question.
On apple's side:
They have the EULA in place that clearly forbids it. That sure beats trying to deal with this on pure copyright.
They have a dubious legal precedent in the blizzard case that suggests that violating an eula makes an in computer, or even in RAM copy an unauthorized copy.
They also have the DMCA which can come into play with its protection of 'technical measures'. After all, Apple, doesn't just have the EULA, the code actually tries to check the hardware, and the psystar people have to defeat it to install OSX. This itself may be illegal.
On Psystar's side:
we have first sale doctrine - they bought OSX. They can do what they want with it, including resell it. There was an ebay related case against the makers of autocad I think over this... someone was selling used copies of autocad, and the courts ruled this was legal under first sale, despite autocad's protestation that it was against the EULA. (This is also potentially a counter precedent to the blizzard one too... as it ruled the first sale doctrine rights couldn't be stripped by the shrink wrapped EULA.)
We also have an exception in the DMCA that provides for deafeating copyright measures for interoperability. Clearly Psystar could argue that they only modified OSX to make it interoperate with the non-apple hardware. There is a printer related precedent that might come into play, where some printer manufacturer tried to prevent a competitor from releasing replacement ink via a DMCA lawsuit, and lost, because the competitor had reverse engineered the printer software to figure out how to get their cartridges to 'interoperate' with the printer. This is particularly salient because it shows the DMCA interoperation clause being successfully used in a case where the OEM specifically sought to prevent interoperation... indeed the entire point of the drm was to lock out competition. -- And they lost.
Psystar also potentially can continue to operate simply by ceasin
I don't know about the specifications of your reproductive system, but I could make 3 babies with 3 women in 9 months with no physiological problems (the psychological effect will be different though).
But I only want one baby faster, not three.
What you mean is that a woman will take at least 27 months to make 3 babies from 3 men. (for the sake of simplicity we don't count twins or more here)
That's true, but I could add more women and get 3 babies in 9 months instead of 27.
Aren't a lot of games and apps single-threaded? Hmmm. I figured that dual/quad-core wasn't all it's cracked up to be. So, essentially, if I have a single-threaded app on a quad core, it'll perform at 1/4th the potential speed.
Yes, although, most high end games and game engines actually are multi-threaded. Few are designed to take advantage of more than 2 cores though, and none that I know of will use 8 or 300,000...
So, essentially, if I have a single-threaded app on a quad core, it'll perform at 1/4th the potential speed.
Not necessarily. If you have 3 women can you make a baby in 3 months instead of 9? Given that it still takes 9 months and 2 of the women are idle, would you say that these women are performing at 1/3rd the potential speed? Same sort of logic applies here. If the task is inherently sequential, having more cores (or ladies) won't make it any faster.
Somethings -are- highly parellizable, like ray-tracing or cutting down all the trees in a forest.. and other things are partly parallelizable... like changing tires (a pit crew can change 4 tires at once... but adding more staff to allow you to change 5 tires at once doesn't make your team any faster...)
That doesn't leave me with a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.
Yes, in general computing applications, an 8GHz CPU would be faster than a quad core 2GHz. (And even under optimal parallilizable situations the 2ghz quadcore would just barely surpass the 8ghz cpu due to lower task switching overhead.) So the faster single cpu is almost always better. The reason we have quad core 2Ghz cpus is that they are much much more practical to actually make, and a lot of the stuff that takes a long time (rendering 3d, encoding movies, etc is actually highly parellizable so we do see a benefit. And much of the single threaded sequential stuff we see is waiting on hard drive performance, network bandedith, or user input... so cpu isn't the bottleneck there anyway.
The funny thing is that it teeter-totters back and forth from one core to the other. I wish I knew what made it do that.
If you look at task manager, there what? some 40+ processes running. The OS rotates them onto an off of the 2 cores based on what they all need in terms of cpu time. So your 'cpu heavy task' gets pulled off a core to give another task a timeslice, and then once its off, it can be scheduled back onto either core. Ideally should stay on one core to maximize level one cache hits, etc, but if its been off the core long enough for the other processes to cache all new memory it doesn't really matter which one it gets assigned to, and in any case flipping from one to the other every now and then makes a almost immeasurably small performance difference.
btw - the 'set processor affinity' feature tells the OS that you really want this process to run on a given cpu/core, instead of hopping around. But in most cases its not something one needs (or gains any benefit) from doing.
If astronomers couldn't change the number of planets as new information became available, then astronomy would be dogma instead of a science.
This isn't dogma vs science.
To me the pluto demotion has been a great illustration of science at work. Educators should be using it as an example of the difference between science and dogma. Mistake made, mistake corrected.
What mistake? The IAU had a vague traditional definition of planet that really didn't set any hard boundaries, except that they be 'special' (vis a vis asteroids). Suddenly we went from adding a new 'planet' every few hundred years or so to having a whole bunch show up all at once, and for aesthetic reasons (AESTHETIC NOT SCIENTIFIC!!) deciding to narrow down the definition rather than add a big pile of new 'planets', that probably belonged in their own category anyway. So they come up with a defintion, and 'planet' Pluto isn't in it.
So Pluto's reclassification isn't realy a "correction"; its more like arguing how big a mountain has to be, picking a number, and then then going around the country side making a big fuss about renaming a bunch of "Mount such-and-such" as "such-and-such Hill" and vice versa.
That's not a triumph of science. That's a triumph of stupidity.
. Recently I walked into a Sprint store and the sales rep told me that there was NO way I can buy a Palm Centro phone without a data plan.
I can't speak to your specific situation, but I can tell you that sometimes the rules are different for multi-carrier vendors like best buy vs carrier-specific vendors like the 'sprint store'.
It may well be that there was no way -he- could sell you a palm without data. It may be against Sprint policy. It may even be blocked in the computer systems he uses to activate product.
It may well be that he honestly didn't know best buy could.
It also may well be that the guy at best buy broke the rules, and wasn't supposed to sell you a palm without data; it may be that the computer systems BB uses are different, and his computer let him do it so he did it.
Perhaps, in this scenario, the fact that he broke the rules will result in the carrier 'punishing' best buy by denying the residuals or some sort of subsidy clawback on that activation and since best buy employees are hourly paid that doesn't really affect them, so they don't really care... or maybe you bought the extended warranty, and best buy is willing to eat the carrier penalty to make a sale with extended warranty...or maybe it will get tracked back to him and he'll be bawled out by some management flunky later on...
Just saying... there are a lot more possibilities than you've accounted for.
Yeah, but why do they design mobile phones so shittily? Isn't it a scam?
I could understand with the first generation, but by now, don'tcha think they ought to have figured out a way to get a waterproof seal over the battery when you close the lid??? I think it's pathetic.
Actually back in the old days I saw a Motorola 2-way unit sitting in a fishbowl at a tradeshow. People could come up use it, and then put it back in the fishbowl. Its not that they can't make them waterproof... its that they can't make them water proof, feature rich, light, 4 millimeters thick, stays cool while you use it, and on top of all that cheap.
Most cellphones are actually quite water reistant, and I've seen countless survive drink spills, and even falls into sinks and worse. But the engineering tradeoffs mean most are still fairly vulnerable. You -can- get waterproof phones though... manufacturers do make units designed to survive immersion... Sony, LG, Fujitsu and others have all released waterproof models. And for the rest, there is a thriving market for waterproof cases.
And its not just the battery cover... the keypad, buttons, charging port, along with the hinges and slides of phones that do that -- are all potential entrances. There are membranes and coatings in place - and the better devices -are- fairly resistant, but if you want water 'proof' you'll have to make some tradeoffs, and the market despite its moaning about liquid damage doesn't exactly snap up the water proof options that are available.
Liquid damage?
You mean when they take your phone in the back to "check it", bring it back a few seconds later and show you a red dot under your batter cover?
A reputable dealer will flip it open and remove the battery cover right in front of you to check that dot with you.
The red dots in my experience with cellular has been a pretty accurate predictor. And in virtually every red dot case I've ever seen, when at the customers insistence that they've never been anywhere near moisture ever and at their expense we've had our service technicians open the unit -- significant corrosion was invariably plain to see.
A phone can be sopping without getting dunked. An unlucky drop or two on the ground, or not putting the battery cover on properly and the water proofing can easily be compromised. Once that's the case, water vapor and humitity from being left in a pocket on the counter while you take a hot shower, or on a windowsill at night... etc... and the inside of the phone will be full of condensation, which rapidly turns in it into a useless paperweight.
All that said, I wouldn't doubt a disreputable dealer might do what you describe.
If you genuinely suspect a scam, take the device someplace reputable, and have them check the actual electronics -- if they are bone dry and free of corrosion, you have a lawsuit on your hands.
But don't be surprised if the insides come back looking like they spent a week at the bottom of a lake.
No, not every paper, but there certainly are papers like that.
That is precisely the point I am making.
If the Wall Street journal wants to write 'news' articles reporting on the 'fact' that 'these are the contents of someone's blog', then while legal, they are reduced to super market tabloid status.
A friend of mine works for a company selling the iPhone 2. According to him if you lose your iPhone 2 you will 1. Have to pay full price to get a new one (not too surprising imo) and
This is true of all cell phones. Not only if you 'lose it', but if you damage it in ways that are not covered by warranty, or if you damage it out of warranty. (most cell phones have a 1 year warranty although you can often buy extended warranty.) however liquid damage and physical damage are never covered.
2. Re-sign up for a 2 year contract.
This really makes no sense.
There is -always- an early termination provision that can be exercised if the phone is lost, or you move out of country or whatever. Here in Canada on Rogers, for an iphone, it is the greater of $100 or $20 per month remaining in the contract, to a maximum of $400.
http://www.rogers.com/cms/html/iphone_vpterms.shtml
Based on that losing the iphone 2.5 years in, one could always payout $120 (20$x6 months), and then get a new one on a 3 year contract for $199... (or whatever they would be at that point.)
And that's 'worst case'. Usually if you have the intention of signing a new 3 year contract and your well into an existing contract the carrier will offer you a some sort of 'deal'.
Now suppose you lost an iphone on day 2 of your 3 year contract, typically, you'd simply have to replace it at full price, and you'd still be held to the terms of your original contract. Its absurd that they would tack on an extra 2 years (a 5 year contract on a cell phone?!), and even more absurd that you'd have your contract shortened.
And under this scenario, if you lost your iphone on the 2nd day, and they wanted to rope you into a 5 year contract, and charge you $600 replacement, you would simply exercise the early termination: $400. And then sign up to a new 3 year: $199. Same $600 bucks, but only a 3 year contract.
If they had written a story about the blog entry?
So the front page of every newspaper next week should be: "Two headed alien michael jackson baby!"... ... according to an eye witness who posted on his blog, Michael Jackson gave birth to a 2 headed alien child. Pictures were also on the blog, and blogger insists they aren't photoshopped too!!...
It may be the truth that some blogger posted this, but that hardly makes it 'news' or makes the story satisfy any sort of journalistic integrity.
We get lots of help desk calls because some stupid(but innocent) user spells an email address wrong and they don't get a bounce and they blame us for not delivering it.
Vs getting lots of help desk calls because some stupid(but innocent) user gets dozens of email bounce messages to email he never sent?
If somebody has a problem with back scatter then they obviously don't have their SPF records set up correctly. They aren't so innocent. I'm getting spam traffic from their domain.
I'm not following. I'm sure you realize that SPF doesn't prevent people from sending spam traffic with someone elses domain name on it. That SPF only lets them tell you which hosts are authorized to send mail for their domain. It doesn't do jack squat in stopping spammers from sending you spam with their domain from unauthorized hosts. So I'm not sure why you think its their fault you are getting spam traffic from their domain.
And their properly set up spf doesn't prevent backscatter. Their SPF record isn't a factor to that, and your bounce messages are coming from your authorized server.
Or have I misunderstood something.
The problem gets worse when the spam lists blame a properly configured SPF configuration for back scatter. To solve that the bounces all come from a host that is on every black list know which is sort of embarrassing but seems to keep most people happy.
I'm afraid you lost me here. Its not clear to me what you are trying to say.
So now I ask what is the defference between flying inside a simulator in Kansas or in a real plan with blacked out windows except for the degree of risk to the crew. In both cases flying means punching in commands to an autopilot and reacting to various threats detected by instruments.
The main difference is that the odds of losing your connection to the plane is far lower. Latency is considerably lower too.
No, fuck the spammer.
Following the RFC fucks the innocent bystander, not the spammer. Is following the RFC worth fucking innocent bystanders over?
Either respect the RFC, or come up with a solution with at least as much attention as the RFCs were given.
In the meantime, while you come up with a solution, I'll disregard the RFC for this situation, because fucking innocent bystanders over while the world figures out a 'real solution' isn't acceptable.
Software does become public domain after copyright on it expires.
Abandonware is software that is no longer available, but hasn't been around long enough for copyright to expire.
The issue with copyright here isn't that it exists, its that its way too long.
It's the closest comparison, I'll admit; with the little wrinkle that I don't remember the schoolchildren in the Narnia books ever actually having to go to school.
On the other hand I don't remember the schoolchildren in Narnia ever doing anything supernatural. They were in an impossible magical world, and had extraordinary adventures, but remained far more ordinary than Harry Potter ever was.
You have to be born into Harry Potter's world - otherwise you were just a poor oblivious muggle. But anyone of us could have gone to Narnia.
Actually, I think that's her major innovation....the protagonists... they're 21st century British schoolkids.
The children in Narnia are 20th century British schoolkids. Yeah real innovative. Sure you can argue that Peter/Susan/Edmund/Lucy had some destiny in Narnia but the same could be said of Potter. And the children of Narnia started out, and ended up 20th century schoolkids. Eustace, and Jill were even less 'extraordinary' if such a thing were possible. As were Polly and Digory of The Magician's Nephew.
And recall that Digory didn't fight the Witch, or defeat an army... his greatest challenge was to fetch an Apple, and his moment of greatest triumph? Resisting the temptation to steal one to save his dying mother. Its brilliant in its simplicity. And its moving in a way that Harry Potter just isn't.
Then it's my turn to call your assessment dishonest. Would it be fair to say that Linux is far inferior to Windows because "most people" are unable to grasp the intricacies of its foibles?
Yes it would, if it were true. I think at this point though, Windows edge is largely momentum and mindshare. Linux is not far inferior. To put it in terms of blu-ray, though would 'upgrading' from XP to Linux really benefit your average web-app/email/mp3 playing/photo sharing person? Not appreciably. Same with blu-ray... some small set benefit a lot, most gain little. (and in the case of linux, have to potentially give up a lot too.)
Would it be fair to say that a Ferrari Enzo is no better than Honda Civic because "most people" cannot drive a Ferrari hard enough to bring out its pedigree?
It would be fair to say that the average person is not well served by a Ferrari Enzo. They are terrible commuter cars, lousy for grocery shopping, spend far more time in the shop than a Civic, and cost orders of magnitude more to purchase, maintain, fuel up, and insure. If on top of all that you aren't going to have the opportunity to drive it hard enough to 'bring out its pedigree' the only point in owning one would be as part of a dick waving contest with your peers. Is that a good reason to own one? Or buy blu-ray?
Would it be fair to say Da Vinci's Mona Lisa is no better than an arts & crafts store copy because "most people" aren't art experts and wouldn't know the difference?
Good analagy. If you can't tell the difference between the original and a copy, what is the point of shelling out for the expensive original? Some sort of internal satisfaction of knowing that you have the real thing? Is that a reason to invest in blu-ray? 'I can't tell the difference from my couch, but I get great satisfaction in knowing its better'?? Seems like faulty logic to me. At least the mona lisa original has investment value...your home theatre is obsolete and depreciating fast before you've finished plugging it in.
I think you either give too much credit to those with uber-theaters or take away too much credit from the average consumer.
The 'average consumer' still doesn't even have an HDTV. From that its trivial to conclude that the average consumer doesn't benefit from bluray. The percentage of HDTV consumers who -might- benefit from blu-ray starts off a distinct minority. Even if we were to agree that 100% of HDTV owners would be blinded by the difference blu-ray made to their setup, it would still top out as significantly less than the majority of consumers. And I contend that the percentage of HDTV owners would see blu-ray as more than a minor upgrade to their setup to be FAR LESS than 100%, marginalizing the group even more. Even if it were HALF of HDTV owners that would be 1/6th the population... there is simply no way a 1/6th or smaller minority can represent 'average consumers'.
I understand your point but I think you underestimate how prevalent home theaters are, even ones with screens larger than 100".
As of the end of 2007, 70% of households in the US did not have an HDTV. bluray is pointless for them.
Of the remaining 30%, 40-60% have never viewed any HD programming or content. Clearly these guys aren't setting up dedicated home theatre rooms.
So that leaves about 15% of households who have an HDTV -and- use it for HD content. What percentage of them do you think have 100" TVs in home theatres with a blu-ray player vs 42" TVs in living rooms with an ATSC tuner, or HD satellite, etc?
The percentage of the total market that would really benefit from bluray is a probably Anyone with such a setup would benefit from bluray, even average people would see the difference,
Sure a tiny fraction of the population would see significant benefit from bluray. Far less than 10%. Probably in the 1%-2% range. That's not 'average people', that's the home theatre elite. "Average people" still don't even have an HDTV.
and I assure you anyone spending the money on a theater would care, a lot. There is a multibillion dollar market for home movie projectors, there is definately a market for bluray.
I agree. But its billion dollar niche market, and will be for a several years yet.
Yeah Asimov's Foundation is probably a bit dry. I first tried it when I was ~11 and got lost. I somehow didn't clue in that it was a collection of short stories, not a novel proper.
The Robot novels are probably a good fit though, especially I, Robot. Other classic titles that spring to mind for an avid pre-teen age group are The Chyrsalids, The Tripods Trilogy, (The White Mountains, City of Gold and Lead, Pool of Fire), Ender's War, Tron, Fantastic Voyage
A little higher up on the difficulty scale: Ringworld, Dune, The Mote in God's Eye, Rendezvous with Rama, Foundation, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Flowers for Algernon,
Maybe a little older - The Handmaid's Tale, Brave New World, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, A Clockwork Orange
This comparison doesn't work. What they ARE doing is opening their webservers and calling it a public SERVICE.
The public can -view- the sites, but you've got to 'signup' to post, and signing up is registration process with a EULA, etc.
A closer real-world equivalent would be if you were chatting with a friend in the forecourt of a gas station, and the owner came out and told you you can no longer say what you just said,
Yes. He could ask you to leave if he found your conversation offensive, and refuse to ever allow you back in.
If you posted it on a bulletin board he'd made available, Yes he could take it down.
So what exactly makes the internet different?
that you have to take it back,
cite plase. of any service that has ever required -that-?
and that anyone who heard it and wants to write it in a history book is not entitled to refer to that gas station's public service as part of the historical event.
Ah but doing -that- is protected speech. They can rattle their sabres and send out threatening legal mumbo, but if you want to write a book critical of siteX or mentioning an incident on siteX, there really is nothing they can do to stop you, at worst they can ban you from using their service.
Yeah, because we all know competitors are offering better terms of service, right?
What could be better than the terms of service you could offer yourself? Its not exactly rocket science to setup a web server with some images on it, now is it? And there are plenty of free open source CMS systems to make it even easier.
I notice your careful avoidance of this point:
According to court precedent, this is not the case when serious constitutional rights are abrogated. Companies are not allowed to cam the lady's restroom, nor are they allowed to engage in discriminatory polices on premises.. in the regular world the government has sued again and again for violation of constitutional rights based on this (think the civil rights era). Yet you say it's perfectly OK for webhosts to be capriciously discriminatory.
No. I didn't avoid that point. I just didn't think it really applied. Given that I view posting content on someone elses website to be akin to submitting content to a newspaper or magazine, 'capricious discrimination' by the publisher has been par for the course, and well accepted by society since the beginning.
It has -always- been the case that you couldn't had no right to coerce someone else to include your content in their documents, even if they were making space available for paid or contributed content.
Prohibitions on discrimination based on the race, gender, etc of the person making the contributions are relatively new, and a profound EXCEPTION to the status quo. And I think, even on the net, if you could demonstrate that your post was deleted or rejected because you were 'black' or 'female' you could probably sucessfully sue.
But if they rejected what you wrote for something in its content they found objectionable, that has ALWAYS been their perogative. The internet isn't special or different or new in this regard.
And your recourse has ALWAYS been to buy or hire a printer to print what you want printed. And the same applies on the internet -- buy a PC, get an ip address, publish your content, or colo with an ISP who won't censor it -- there are countless.
except theyre renting it out to individuals for the express purpose of their own expression, whether it's for directly paid fees or advertising revenue from traffic.
Sort of like a newspaper or magazine advertisement or editorial column then?
Their interference/censorship at any point in this process is equivalent to a landlord entering your house in the dead of night and ripping down your kids rap posters because he doesn't like that "negro music".
So when the paper refuses to run something they find offensive in the ad space I've purchased or refuse to run the column I wrote this week that's equivalent to people sneaking into my kids rooms at night to remove their rap star posters?
Get real.
false dichotomy. I am not opening my house and advertising it as a public forum like these web hosts are.
There's your mistake. They aren't opening their web servers and calling it a public forum. Read the terms of service... they actually read much like the submission guidelines for a newspaper or magazine ad.
And nobody is forcing you to visit the websites or view the pictures hosted there, but they have an obligation to treat people equally and not discriminate on them based on political views or aesthetic tastes.
Good luck posting an ad for your S&M party in the local church newsletter, or even a campaign ad for the pro-abortion / gay marriage candidate. Its their forum not yours. They might be offering to let people contribute content to it or even sell space, but its their space, not yours, and they have final say on what goes in it, not you.
If you want to post something on the internet, retain all your rights to the content, AND be protected by the first amendment: just host it yourself. If no one will print your ad you can always print your own handbills, similiarly on the internet you can host your own content.
It's not about re-purchasing your entire DVD collection.
That's a big part of it.
BD players can also read DVDs so there's no point in that.
And when I bought a DVD player I could still leave my VCR hooked up. Yet there was still a point in re-purchasing a lot of my movies on DVD. The quality and convenience of DVD was that much better.
As you agree yourself, BD isn't nearly as compelling. Its a much more minor upgrade.
It's about future purchases. If you have the choice between one or the other [when BDs become as cheap as DVDs], BDs will become the default choice.
When BDs become as cheap as DVDs, absolutely.
In the meantime though, while BD's routinely cost 30% to 300% more, and BD players cost 400% more, what should the choice be? I buy most of my DVDs PV for $5-12. I would have to pay $20-30 for the BD.
If they were the same price, sure I'd pick BD, and when BD can be had PV for $5-12, I will... unless they die out and are replaced with something else before that happens. But until then...