I didn't conflate capitalism with anything. Capitalism is an anathema to medical care all on its own. Even setting the legal and monopolistic issues aside.
When pure ideal capitalism meets medicine it results in blackmail. Capitalism at its heart seeks to set prices to maximize profits, and exact just as much from consumers as they are willing to pay.
If they could get away with it, medicine would operate like used car salesmen, the price would not be posted, if you asked it would be "make me an offer". And the gamemanship to determine what the maximum you will pay for the car will ensue.
Except in the case of medicine that simply amounts finding out what you *have*. Because if the consumer walks away from the table he's chosen death. And if the consumer walks away with any assets left they were a missed opportunity for the salesman, because if he'd held out for them -- he'd have gotten them too.
Sure there's a few out there who would choose death over insolvency in order to leave something for their children etc, but most people when offered even the chance at life will go for it, at any price.
--
2nd nobody tells a person in need of a kidney they aren't "worthy" of having one.
Opposing human cloning, selling of human embreyos, and creation of human/animal hybrids is not extreme.
Cloning of entire humans is not extreme, but theres a lot of people who'd love to be able to replace a finger, or an ear, or get a skin graft after a burn... banning ALL THAT starts to get extreme.
Selling embryos -- ok, yeah, i think all of us find it repugnent when capitalism meets medicine...whether its fetuses or kidneys or even simply being denied the cure to your disease because the 90 cent pills you need are being charged at $2000 a dose (to cover 'research', 'development', 'shareholder profits', and 'litigation & insurance expenses'). Most of us will concede that the drug corps -need- to cover r&d, legal, and still lookout for the shareholder... but its still 'evil' to let a person die over few pills where the incremental cost of *those* pills was under a dollar.
And the creation of animal human hybrids? Again, sure rejecting the creation of the habitants of the Island of Doctor Moreau isn't 'extreme'. But what if you needed a new heart and they could grow the cloned your own heart inside a pig host, along with a supply of your own blood to use in the transplant operation? It would give you a heart that wouldn't be rejected, solve blood supply issues, and may neatly dodge the issue of cloning full on 'human beings' for organ harvesting.
I think I saw that scam once on the TeeVee, you just have an accomplice waiting back in the truck with a throw away cell phone. The number on the forged warrant conveniently matches it.
Seems like a market then exists where you could on-sell your IP addresses for $$$. Prices go up too high, market forces then result in IPv6 implementation. What's the problem?
The way ipv4 addressing is structured. 209.112.155.123 and 209.112.155.124 are in the same block. They don't have to be next door neighbours in the real world, but they do have to be 'close' to each other from the networks point of view. That will mean they belong to the same ISP, in the same city, and quite probably a fairly small chunk of that city.
IP addresses, by virtue of the numbers that make them up have to be hooked up to the network in a specific place in order for packets to find them. They exist in 'blocks' for convenient routing. The "routing tables" that you hear about describe where to send traffic addressed to a specific block should go. For example a backbone router A might know that traffic destined for 209.x.x.x goes "thatta way"... and and another router B further down the line might know that 209.112.x.x goes "through that pipe there"... and so forth, until it finally reaches a router C that says hey that destination block is right on the LAN here!
If 209.112.115.122 were suddenly "sold" to a guy in another city all his packets would would still end up at Router C, where they would be undeliverable because the owner isn't connected directly to that router.
As a rough analagy it would be like "selling your home address", but not your home. Even if you transfer the address to a guy in china all the mail is going to end up at your door step. Sure you could make special arrangements to have it forwarded back to china (and you can do this with ip too)... but that has two repurcussions:
1) The guy in china still needs a chinese address for the forwarded mail to arrive at so he's accomplished nothing!
2) Any mail addressed to him, even from his next door neighbour is going to be shipped around the world because it won't know its supposed stay in china until it arrives at your place. The chinese post office will see the Dutch (or whatever) address on the evelope and ship it off for a round trip through Holland...
So pay the experts for the really creative stuff and get the robot to do the 'basic' drudge work. Once your product has passed the robot then have the experts look at it.
If it doesn't get passed the robot then you just saved a bunch of money by not bothering the expensive experts. If it does get passed the robot, then hopefully the so-called experts will no what its already passed and will focus their expensive time on being 'creative'.
We generally let our compilers proof-read our code for errors before we have it peer-reviewed. This could be the same thing. No point in wasting someones time to find flaws that the machine can find on its own.
Puerto Rico is pretty popular with the tourists too. Beside which, it is a much more forgiving swim.
I suppose Alaska would work ok too. You could argue they can walk through Canada... but even if they get into Canada without any papers there is no way the American's would let him (back) in.:)
You planning on saying that to someone in the state of Hawaii too?
Swim it!
Or perhaps you'll suggest they cross a nontrivial slice of the pacific in a raft they construct themselves? There is a good chance someone will survive if enough try.
And if they don't like it then they're just being diffult and 'choosing' to restricted to the island. Nothing the government should be concerned about.
In fact, Hawaii looks to be a great place to relocate political dissendents.
I can hear it now... "No, no, they're not "imprisoned" they can leave whenever they like... except by air... or ship. They aren't granted a constitutional right to those modes of travel after all, and so us denying them those priviledges is not really imprisonment at all! They're just choosing to stay."
In other words, 39% chose creationism, as there is no discernable difference between creationism and ID.
No. ID masquerades as a scientific theory. ID people beleive they actually have a scientific basis for their beleif. Creationism makes no bones about the fact that you simply take it on faith.
Furthermore, creationism and evolution aren't strictly incompatible to the average human being that can easily maintain double standards, hypocritical, and even paradoxical beliefs. I know a lot of people that attribute the creation of the universe to God (without going so far as to take the book of genesis at literal face value), and beleive in the theory of evolution too.
True, but the problem is that the GPL is the de facto Open Source license, and in most people's minds is synonymous with Open Source.
I'm afraid I don't see the problem there.
First, the GPLv2 is not going to be superceded by the GPLv3 except at the express wishes of the authors. Even software written under v2 or later, as I understand it, cannot be further *restricted* by clauses in v3. So even if the gnu foundation become a bunch of raving lunatics we wouldn't be bound to follow them.
Second, the only people who SHOULD be affected by the anti-DRM clauses are those who misappropriate GPL code in the first place. Because as was pointed out nobody is likely to actually GPL a DRM scheme, for obvious reasons.
The main concern is fear that the GPLv3 may over-reach its goal and impact developers, corporations, and individuals in ways that haven't been foreseen (e.g. for example putting the file system permissions model into a grey area). I think that is a legitimate concern. But one that can be satisfactorily addressed by the draft process.
Adding DRM and spyware limitations means we cross into judging the user intent.
True. But this is the GPL -- GNU Public License... not 'merely' an open source license. GNU has always had a philisophical bent. They are enshrining a bit more of that philosophy in the license.
Furthermore, denying things that are already defined "illegal" in the license is redundant. If it's illegal, it's illegal. There's no need to put it in the license to prevent people from doing it.
It can make it easier to prosecute offenders.
I'm also against the DRM restrictions because I know the purpose of DRM extends well beyond music and videos. Corporations (and even some individuals) need strict control of their private data. I'm concerned that restricting DRM implmentations means entering grey area with respect to controlling data on corporate and shared computers.
A legitimate concern. But you seem to be a victim of FUD. DRM lets external 'copyright holders' or 'content creators' impose restrictions on the functioning/operations of MY system/software. The situations you describe of corporations and indivuals needing strict control of their private data is entirely different because the control is solidly in the hands of the corporation or individual owning the system, where it belongs.
I concede that "DRM" probably needs to be well defined as such to counter the FUD.
No media company would implement their DRM under the GPL anyway.
Except that Sony's Rootkit for example did contain GPLed software. Ooops.
If a DRM implementation were GPL'd, someone could modify it so the decrypted data flows elsewhere. The GPL just doesn't offer a means to control information flow in software against the user's wishes.
Agreed. Nobody would GPL a DRM implementation. However, it appears the less scrupulous among us have no bones about appropriating GPL code to use in a non-GPLed DRM implementation. (Which of course is already a violation of the GPL.) This just gives the GPL more teeth when its violated in *this* way, which as I mentioned before undermines EVERYTHING the GNU people stand for.
What is so tough to understand about recording more than one could possibly consume?
11-tuners is like living inside a grocery store because your not sure what you'll want for lunch.
I have an HD dual tuner PVR myself -- I can already easily record more than I can watch. Once a week I scan the movie channels for stuff I might want to see, along with a selection of regular series recordings.
I can't keep up with it *now*; adding 9 more tuners is just pointless. I mean I see your point that having the ability to pick and choose and discard -- and that's cool -- but if you know you are only going to watch less than 5 hours of TV a day you really don't need to be capturing 200 hours a day; any reasonable person could 'short list' that 200 hours down to a much smaller selection of say 10 hours worth that they might actually want, knowing that in the end they'll be lucky to watch even half of that.
The only real advantage to additional tuners would be conflict resolution. But in the last year I've only had two or three 3-way scheduling conflicts, and in every case I was able to easily find one of the programs in another timeslot; although if I'd had to conduct triage on the spot and just give one up that would hardly have been a problem.
So assuming he finds 11 items to actually simultaneously record, and given that practically nothing scheduled is less than 1/2 hour in length, this thing running for 1/2 hour gives him 5:30 worth of TV to watch. (Assuming that all he watches are sitcoms with 8 minutes of commercials each, he's still got a minimum of 4:02 hours per 0:30 hours of recording... and probably more because he's likely recording a movie or seven in their too.
4 hours of TV a day is already getting high - if the PVR runs for a full hour, it becomes a full time job just to watch all that TV. If the PVR runs for 3 hours at capacity daily he will be recording far more content than he can possibly ever consume.
I do to. But only because in those days the speed told you something useful. That hasn't been true for several years now. 2 GHz out of one model is the same as 3GHz out of another which implies that 2.5GHz out of the 2nd model is slower than 2GHz out of the first.
At this stage it would be like asking car makers to put horsepower ratings in the name of each model. Consider a Lotus Elise 190 vs a Honda Prelude 190 vs a Ford Mustang 300 vs a Dodge Ram 235 vs a Porsche 911S 355 -- did the engine rating really add anything useful?
I mean the Elise is like half the the 911S, and the lowest rated, yet its easily the 2nd, possibly even the fastest off the mark - meanwhile the 911 at 355 is just not built to haul your yacht home but the much weaker RAM will do it handily.
I mean yeah the number has meaning, and 'more is better'...but without the context of the whole package it doesn't tell you anything useful. There's no overridingly practical use that should make it part of the name of the product. It should be an available spec sure... but not the product name.
No. There's nothing new here. Games met the economy thousands of years ago. There have always been people willing to cheat to get ahead in a game; and when there is real money to be made the cheaters come out of the woodwork.
Its simple really.
Games have rules.
Those rules may forbid the sale of in game assets for real world assets or they don't. People who violate the rules are cheating and should be removed from the game, and prevented from playing again.
---
You can't go to a Scrabble competition and pay the guy to your left for the letters you want. You can't go to Vegas and pay the dealer to give you the hand you'd like to have. You can't slip the monopoly banker an extra $20 for some additional monopoly money, and maybe the title to Boardwalk. etc etc etc.
Doing so is called cheating. Getting caught will get you removed from the game, and likely ensure that the people you play with will refuse to play with you in the future. Even being suspected of cheating will rapidly diminish the number of people willing to play with you.
MMogs are no different. Except that right now the other players have a hard time isolating cheaters and a limited ability to do anything about them except refuse to group with them; and the game host has little incentive to remove them; as they are paying customers. As long as the host feels they are getting more customers by allowing the cheaters to play then they lose from people refusing to the play the game due to the hosts inaction cheaters will prosper.
So ostracising suspected cheaters has become the prevalent, and really the only way to retaliate at this time.
I think eventually we'll see mmogs stabilize into games that explicitly allow gold farming, and games (or servers) that in response to a customer demand for 'purity' - do not. It will be interesting to see how the two models fare... but there is certainly room for both.
Magic the Gathering has 'draft' tournaments for players who like to compete on luck of the draw and skill, and 'constructed' for players who like to bring their wallets.
You realize of course, that this would mean electing people who are left wing or at the very least centered (around here we call them 'liberals' but in the US that's apparently tantamount to being a communist and probably terrorist now too), instead of 'right wing' (democrats), or 'really right wing' (republicans) both of which typically ideologically favour corporate interests over consumer interests.
It's never been clear to me why they don't give away every copy in the first place.
Lots of reasons:
1) They don't have to. With a million-plus people buying it, and lag/over crowding being one of their major challenges the last thing they needed is more players. The price on the box kept the influx of players at a (barely) containable rate.
You'll note that many of the older smaller mmorgs *do* now offer the game for free (at least the base game, possibly with some of the earlier expansions). Partly because the initial development has been paid for (at least in the case of more venerable titles like Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, Eve Online, Dark Ages of Camelot etc) and partly because they need to attract new blood to keep the game going.
2) To pay for development/ new development. Sure they probably *could* charge you 20/mo and give you free expansions instead of 15.00 month with a 20 dollar expansion 3 times a year... but expansion boxes look good on the shelves and attract press/reviewer attention while free downloadable expansions get almost no external hype so its a better marketing model to release for pay expansions.
3) Another side effect is that it helps keep out the riff raff. Scammers, spammers, and so forth are notorious for using the free-with-14-day-free-trial accounts to try their scam/hack/dupe/spam tricks with because if the account is banned they lost nothing.
"re-inventing google"? You say that like its a bad thing? I for one would like to see as many quality alternatives to google as possible.
If you want google to "not be evil" you should too. The only thing that is going to keep them remotely honest in the long term is the availability of quality alternatives.
what is the point of running XP on a Mac/Intel box?
1) Games
2) The option to run Windows only software when your preference is MacOS X. Basically this is the same as above but with broader scope.
3) For all of those IT types supporting a mixed environment, especially outsourced consultants. Being able to walk into a clients environment and work in *their* native environment has a lot of value... as good as the interoperability is these days, the ability to try programX or configurationY on your laptop no matter what the client is running, be it Windows, Linux, or MacOSX is priceless.
Last time I checked, GM was required to sell the individual parts that make up their vehicles.
Funny how that all depends on where they draw the line of 'individual parts'.
You crack the housing on the rearview mirror -- you can't buy that 'individual part'... you need to buy the entire rearview mirror "assembly" a several hundred dollar part comprising of the housing, the mounting bracket, the motor, the rearview glass, etc.
Furthermore, if you add up the cost of all those individual parts you could buy several brand new cars.
Because they are not being broadcast into your private property. They are being broadcast within his own private property and spill over into yours.
If your neighbor calls out to his kids in the yard that its dinner time, and you can hear him from your yard would you show up at his table ready to eat? After all, "it was a clear invitation for dinner broadcast into your private property" right? Your neighbor wasn't speaking in code, and his door was unlocked too.
Perhaps your neighbour ought to install some sort of sound dampener -- say a 20ft tall concrete wall, at the border between your yards to ensure you don't get confused? Perhaps with a lead sheet inside to keep his radio waves from entering your property too?
Communication not intended for you ought to be ignored by you. Common courtesy and all that.
You obviously DON'T want a free ad laden email. Big surprise. Nobody DOES.
And if.mac offered an ad laden but free system you STILL wouldn't use it as you'd still use gmail.
So my point: "that there is no point to.mac offering ad laden email service" still stands.:p.mac is a helluva lot more than an email address though, and THAT is where the value comes from. Its not for everyone, but solid web hosting, and an unparalleled level of application integration (calendering, syncing, web publishing, podcasting, etc...) that is easy enough for the average Joe-Sixpack to use -- there *IS* a lot of value there.
Its not $100 for an email address.
Level 1 - there should be no level 1. If you want free ad laden email get a crappy MS hotmail account. The point of.mac is that its NOT crappy ad laden email.
That said, I agree that there should be an intermediate tier below 100.00 for people who want the features but dont need the bandwidth or capacity -- I'd sign up myself then. But then, how many existing.mac subscribers would a lower tier cannibalize vs how many new.mac subscribers they'd pick up with a lower tier. As always... that's a business call.
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I didn't conflate capitalism with anything. Capitalism is an anathema to medical care all on its own. Even setting the legal and monopolistic issues aside.
When pure ideal capitalism meets medicine it results in blackmail. Capitalism at its heart seeks to set prices to maximize profits, and exact just as much from consumers as they are willing to pay.
If they could get away with it, medicine would operate like used car salesmen, the price would not be posted, if you asked it would be "make me an offer". And the gamemanship to determine what the maximum you will pay for the car will ensue.
Except in the case of medicine that simply amounts finding out what you *have*. Because if the consumer walks away from the table he's chosen death. And if the consumer walks away with any assets left they were a missed opportunity for the salesman, because if he'd held out for them -- he'd have gotten them too.
Sure there's a few out there who would choose death over insolvency in order to leave something for their children etc, but most people when offered even the chance at life will go for it, at any price.
--
2nd nobody tells a person in need of a kidney they aren't "worthy" of having one.
Opposing human cloning, selling of human embreyos, and creation of human/animal hybrids is not extreme.
Cloning of entire humans is not extreme, but theres a lot of people who'd love to be able to replace a finger, or an ear, or get a skin graft after a burn... banning ALL THAT starts to get extreme.
Selling embryos -- ok, yeah, i think all of us find it repugnent when capitalism meets medicine...whether its fetuses or kidneys or even simply being denied the cure to your disease because the 90 cent pills you need are being charged at $2000 a dose (to cover 'research', 'development', 'shareholder profits', and 'litigation & insurance expenses'). Most of us will concede that the drug corps -need- to cover r&d, legal, and still lookout for the shareholder... but its still 'evil' to let a person die over few pills where the incremental cost of *those* pills was under a dollar.
And the creation of animal human hybrids? Again, sure rejecting the creation of the habitants of the Island of Doctor Moreau isn't 'extreme'. But what if you needed a new heart and they could grow the cloned your own heart inside a pig host, along with a supply of your own blood to use in the transplant operation? It would give you a heart that wouldn't be rejected, solve blood supply issues, and may neatly dodge the issue of cloning full on 'human beings' for organ harvesting.
I think I saw that scam once on the TeeVee, you just have an accomplice waiting back in the truck with a throw away cell phone. The number on the forged warrant conveniently matches it.
Seems like a market then exists where you could on-sell your IP addresses for $$$. Prices go up too high, market forces then result in IPv6 implementation. What's the problem?
The way ipv4 addressing is structured. 209.112.155.123 and 209.112.155.124 are in the same block. They don't have to be next door neighbours in the real world, but they do have to be 'close' to each other from the networks point of view. That will mean they belong to the same ISP, in the same city, and quite probably a fairly small chunk of that city.
IP addresses, by virtue of the numbers that make them up have to be hooked up to the network in a specific place in order for packets to find them. They exist in 'blocks' for convenient routing. The "routing tables" that you hear about describe where to send traffic addressed to a specific block should go. For example a backbone router A might know that traffic destined for 209.x.x.x goes "thatta way"... and and another router B further down the line might know that 209.112.x.x goes "through that pipe there"... and so forth, until it finally reaches a router C that says hey that destination block is right on the LAN here!
If 209.112.115.122 were suddenly "sold" to a guy in another city all his packets would would still end up at Router C, where they would be undeliverable because the owner isn't connected directly to that router.
As a rough analagy it would be like "selling your home address", but not your home. Even if you transfer the address to a guy in china all the mail is going to end up at your door step. Sure you could make special arrangements to have it forwarded back to china (and you can do this with ip too)... but that has two repurcussions:
1) The guy in china still needs a chinese address for the forwarded mail to arrive at so he's accomplished nothing!
2) Any mail addressed to him, even from his next door neighbour is going to be shipped around the world because it won't know its supposed stay in china until it arrives at your place. The chinese post office will see the Dutch (or whatever) address on the evelope and ship it off for a round trip through Holland...
So pay the experts for the really creative stuff and get the robot to do the 'basic' drudge work. Once your product has passed the robot then have the experts look at it.
If it doesn't get passed the robot then you just saved a bunch of money by not bothering the expensive experts. If it does get passed the robot, then hopefully the so-called experts will no what its already passed and will focus their expensive time on being 'creative'.
We generally let our compilers proof-read our code for errors before we have it peer-reviewed. This could be the same thing. No point in wasting someones time to find flaws that the machine can find on its own.
Puerto Rico is pretty popular with the tourists too. Beside which, it is a much more forgiving swim.
:)
I suppose Alaska would work ok too. You could argue they can walk through Canada... but even if they get into Canada without any papers there is no way the American's would let him (back) in.
Nope, you just choose not to walk.
You planning on saying that to someone in the state of Hawaii too?
Swim it!
Or perhaps you'll suggest they cross a nontrivial slice of the pacific in a raft they construct themselves? There is a good chance someone will survive if enough try.
And if they don't like it then they're just being diffult and 'choosing' to restricted to the island. Nothing the government should be concerned about.
In fact, Hawaii looks to be a great place to relocate political dissendents.
I can hear it now... "No, no, they're not "imprisoned" they can leave whenever they like... except by air... or ship. They aren't granted a constitutional right to those modes of travel after all, and so us denying them those priviledges is not really imprisonment at all! They're just choosing to stay."
In other words, 39% chose creationism, as there is no discernable difference between creationism and ID.
No. ID masquerades as a scientific theory. ID people beleive they actually have a scientific basis for their beleif. Creationism makes no bones about the fact that you simply take it on faith.
Furthermore, creationism and evolution aren't strictly incompatible to the average human being that can easily maintain double standards, hypocritical, and even paradoxical beliefs. I know a lot of people that attribute the creation of the universe to God (without going so far as to take the book of genesis at literal face value), and beleive in the theory of evolution too.
True, but the problem is that the GPL is the de facto Open Source license, and in most people's minds is synonymous with Open Source. I'm afraid I don't see the problem there. First, the GPLv2 is not going to be superceded by the GPLv3 except at the express wishes of the authors. Even software written under v2 or later, as I understand it, cannot be further *restricted* by clauses in v3. So even if the gnu foundation become a bunch of raving lunatics we wouldn't be bound to follow them. Second, the only people who SHOULD be affected by the anti-DRM clauses are those who misappropriate GPL code in the first place. Because as was pointed out nobody is likely to actually GPL a DRM scheme, for obvious reasons. The main concern is fear that the GPLv3 may over-reach its goal and impact developers, corporations, and individuals in ways that haven't been foreseen (e.g. for example putting the file system permissions model into a grey area). I think that is a legitimate concern. But one that can be satisfactorily addressed by the draft process.
Adding DRM and spyware limitations means we cross into judging the user intent.
True. But this is the GPL -- GNU Public License... not 'merely' an open source license. GNU has always had a philisophical bent. They are enshrining a bit more of that philosophy in the license.
Furthermore, denying things that are already defined "illegal" in the license is redundant. If it's illegal, it's illegal. There's no need to put it in the license to prevent people from doing it.
It can make it easier to prosecute offenders.
I'm also against the DRM restrictions because I know the purpose of DRM extends well beyond music and videos. Corporations (and even some individuals) need strict control of their private data. I'm concerned that restricting DRM implmentations means entering grey area with respect to controlling data on corporate and shared computers.
A legitimate concern. But you seem to be a victim of FUD. DRM lets external 'copyright holders' or 'content creators' impose restrictions on the functioning/operations of MY system/software. The situations you describe of corporations and indivuals needing strict control of their private data is entirely different because the control is solidly in the hands of the corporation or individual owning the system, where it belongs.
I concede that "DRM" probably needs to be well defined as such to counter the FUD.
No media company would implement their DRM under the GPL anyway.
Except that Sony's Rootkit for example did contain GPLed software. Ooops.
If a DRM implementation were GPL'd, someone could modify it so the decrypted data flows elsewhere. The GPL just doesn't offer a means to control information flow in software against the user's wishes.
Agreed. Nobody would GPL a DRM implementation. However, it appears the less scrupulous among us have no bones about appropriating GPL code to use in a non-GPLed DRM implementation. (Which of course is already a violation of the GPL.) This just gives the GPL more teeth when its violated in *this* way, which as I mentioned before undermines EVERYTHING the GNU people stand for.
So the moon might just be our precursers garbage dump? Who knew!?
What is so tough to understand about recording more than one could possibly consume?
11-tuners is like living inside a grocery store because your not sure what you'll want for lunch.
I have an HD dual tuner PVR myself -- I can already easily record more than I can watch. Once a week I scan the movie channels for stuff I might want to see, along with a selection of regular series recordings.
I can't keep up with it *now*; adding 9 more tuners is just pointless. I mean I see your point that having the ability to pick and choose and discard -- and that's cool -- but if you know you are only going to watch less than 5 hours of TV a day you really don't need to be capturing 200 hours a day; any reasonable person could 'short list' that 200 hours down to a much smaller selection of say 10 hours worth that they might actually want, knowing that in the end they'll be lucky to watch even half of that.
The only real advantage to additional tuners would be conflict resolution. But in the last year I've only had two or three 3-way scheduling conflicts, and in every case I was able to easily find one of the programs in another timeslot; although if I'd had to conduct triage on the spot and just give one up that would hardly have been a problem.
So assuming he finds 11 items to actually simultaneously record, and given that practically nothing scheduled is less than 1/2 hour in length, this thing running for 1/2 hour gives him 5:30 worth of TV to watch. (Assuming that all he watches are sitcoms with 8 minutes of commercials each, he's still got a minimum of 4:02 hours per 0:30 hours of recording ... and probably more because he's likely recording a movie or seven in their too.
4 hours of TV a day is already getting high - if the PVR runs for a full hour, it becomes a full time job just to watch all that TV. If the PVR runs for 3 hours at capacity daily he will be recording far more content than he can possibly ever consume.
I do to. But only because in those days the speed told you something useful. That hasn't been true for several years now. 2 GHz out of one model is the same as 3GHz out of another which implies that 2.5GHz out of the 2nd model is slower than 2GHz out of the first.
At this stage it would be like asking car makers to put horsepower ratings in the name of each model. Consider a Lotus Elise 190 vs a Honda Prelude 190 vs a Ford Mustang 300 vs a Dodge Ram 235 vs a Porsche 911S 355 -- did the engine rating really add anything useful?
I mean the Elise is like half the the 911S, and the lowest rated, yet its easily the 2nd, possibly even the fastest off the mark - meanwhile the 911 at 355 is just not built to haul your yacht home but the much weaker RAM will do it handily.
I mean yeah the number has meaning, and 'more is better'...but without the context of the whole package it doesn't tell you anything useful. There's no overridingly practical use that should make it part of the name of the product. It should be an available spec sure... but not the product name.
No. There's nothing new here. Games met the economy thousands of years ago.
There have always been people willing to cheat to get ahead in a game; and when there is real money to be made the cheaters come out of the woodwork.
Its simple really.
Games have rules.
Those rules may forbid the sale of in game assets for real world assets or they don't. People who violate the rules are cheating and should be removed from the game, and prevented from playing again.
---
You can't go to a Scrabble competition and pay the guy to your left for the letters you want. You can't go to Vegas and pay the dealer to give you the hand you'd like to have. You can't slip the monopoly banker an extra $20 for some additional monopoly money, and maybe the title to Boardwalk. etc etc etc.
Doing so is called cheating. Getting caught will get you removed from the game, and likely ensure that the people you play with will refuse to play with you in the future. Even being suspected of cheating will rapidly diminish the number of people willing to play with you.
MMogs are no different. Except that right now the other players have a hard time isolating cheaters and a limited ability to do anything about them except refuse to group with them; and the game host has little incentive to remove them; as they are paying customers. As long as the host feels they are getting more customers by allowing the cheaters to play then they lose from people refusing to the play the game due to the hosts inaction cheaters will prosper.
So ostracising suspected cheaters has become the prevalent, and really the only way to retaliate at this time.
I think eventually we'll see mmogs stabilize into games that explicitly allow gold farming, and games (or servers) that in response to a customer demand for 'purity' - do not. It will be interesting to see how the two models fare... but there is certainly room for both.
Magic the Gathering has 'draft' tournaments for players who like to compete on luck of the draw and skill, and 'constructed' for players who like to bring their wallets.
Me.
I would gladly pay Apples prices to dual boot MacOS X and Windows.
I need to use both OSes. 1 MacBook no matter how expensive it is, will be cheaper, lighter, and more convenient, than 1 MacBook *and* a PC laptop.
You realize of course, that this would mean electing people who are left wing or at the very least centered (around here we call them 'liberals' but in the US that's apparently tantamount to being a communist and probably terrorist now too), instead of 'right wing' (democrats), or 'really right wing' (republicans) both of which typically ideologically favour corporate interests over consumer interests.
It's never been clear to me why they don't give away every copy in the first place.
Lots of reasons:
1) They don't have to. With a million-plus people buying it, and lag/over crowding being one of their major challenges the last thing they needed is more players. The price on the box kept the influx of players at a (barely) containable rate.
You'll note that many of the older smaller mmorgs *do* now offer the game for free (at least the base game, possibly with some of the earlier expansions). Partly because the initial development has been paid for (at least in the case of more venerable titles like Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, Eve Online, Dark Ages of Camelot etc) and partly because they need to attract new blood to keep the game going.
2) To pay for development/ new development. Sure they probably *could* charge you 20/mo and give you free expansions instead of 15.00 month with a 20 dollar expansion 3 times a year... but expansion boxes look good on the shelves and attract press/reviewer attention while free downloadable expansions get almost no external hype so its a better marketing model to release for pay expansions.
3) Another side effect is that it helps keep out the riff raff. Scammers, spammers, and so forth are notorious for using the free-with-14-day-free-trial accounts to try their scam/hack/dupe/spam tricks with because if the account is banned they lost nothing.
"re-inventing google"? You say that like its a bad thing? I for one would like to see as many quality alternatives to google as possible.
If you want google to "not be evil" you should too. The only thing that is going to keep them remotely honest in the long term is the availability of quality alternatives.
what is the point of running XP on a Mac/Intel box?
1) Games
2) The option to run Windows only software when your preference is MacOS X. Basically this is the same as above but with broader scope.
3) For all of those IT types supporting a mixed environment, especially outsourced consultants. Being able to walk into a clients environment and work in *their* native environment has a lot of value... as good as the interoperability is these days, the ability to try programX or configurationY on your laptop no matter what the client is running, be it Windows, Linux, or MacOSX is priceless.
Last time I checked, GM was required to sell the individual parts that make up their vehicles.
Funny how that all depends on where they draw the line of 'individual parts'.
You crack the housing on the rearview mirror -- you can't buy that 'individual part'... you need to buy the entire rearview mirror "assembly" a several hundred dollar part comprising of the housing, the mounting bracket, the motor, the rearview glass, etc.
Furthermore, if you add up the cost of all those individual parts you could buy several brand new cars.
Because they are not being broadcast into your private property. They are being broadcast within his own private property and spill over into yours.
If your neighbor calls out to his kids in the yard that its dinner time, and you can hear him from your yard would you show up at his table ready to eat? After all, "it was a clear invitation for dinner broadcast into your private property" right? Your neighbor wasn't speaking in code, and his door was unlocked too.
Perhaps your neighbour ought to install some sort of sound dampener -- say a 20ft tall concrete wall, at the border between your yards to ensure you don't get confused? Perhaps with a lead sheet inside to keep his radio waves from entering your property too?
Communication not intended for you ought to be ignored by you. Common courtesy and all that.
You obviously DON'T want a free ad laden email. Big surprise. Nobody DOES. And if .mac offered an ad laden but free system you STILL wouldn't use it as you'd still use gmail.
So my point: "that there is no point to .mac offering ad laden email service" still stands. :p .mac is a helluva lot more than an email address though, and THAT is where the value comes from. Its not for everyone, but solid web hosting, and an unparalleled level of application integration (calendering, syncing, web publishing, podcasting, etc...) that is easy enough for the average Joe-Sixpack to use -- there *IS* a lot of value there.
Its not $100 for an email address.
For the first year... then what?
Level 1 - there should be no level 1. If you want free ad laden email get a crappy MS hotmail account. The point of .mac is that its NOT crappy ad laden email.
.mac subscribers would a lower tier cannibalize vs how many new .mac subscribers they'd pick up with a lower tier. As always... that's a business call.
That said, I agree that there should be an intermediate tier below 100.00 for people who want the features but dont need the bandwidth or capacity -- I'd sign up myself then. But then, how many existing