I agree . . . a little. Whole CDs generally suck. 10-20 bucks for a few songs you like and many more you don't give a crap about. Some music is worth getting lossless for that. A lot isn't.
And its max speed is quoted as >25Kmh/15mph. Still a good bit faster than walking, but take it out on anything but neighborhood back roads and expect to be flattened.
In reality, you have a fair chance of getting it within half the time, and it's still cost effective to go for a 33% chance.
So, only 500 years instead of 1500.
(Also, even if the NSA did have a quantum computer--as I understand it, it would need as many Qubits as the key it's trying to crack. We're not anywhere close to breaking strong encryption from any published experiments. There's little reason to believe the government could actually do it.
In other news: Who started this whole "Half-Life ends with Ep3" rumor anyway?
I suspect it's just an assumption--the whole "things tend to come in threes" rule of thumb. (Of course Half-Life 2 Episode 3 would actually be the 4th Half-Life 2 game . . . confusingly. Perhaps Valve goes by the Douglas Adams definition of "Trilogy")
^Minor nitpick--a lot of the "under the hood" modifications in Vista were done (at least with the intention) to reduce the ease with which malware could pwn the machine, which users did effectively ask for.
Both of your disease examples are caused by viruses. Since human DNA likely has more in common with that contained in an ear of corn than an alien from another planet (if they have DNA at all), that's very unlikely. They might have some sort of bacteria-esque microbes that just happen to thrive in the conditions inside a human body and be invulnerable to anything our immune systems can throw at them, but that's very unlikely too.
Space is very big and it takes lots and lots of energy and resources to build a craft--even just a weapons delivery system--to cross the vast distances between stars. It would have to actually be worth it to attack us. Our planet and Solar System contain no resources that aren't readily available and easier to obtain much closer to just about any other star system.
It's called investing. Microsoft has lots of cash. Stockholders don't like it sitting around earning nothing. MS got a good return on that particular investment. It's not certain Apple would've gone under if Microsoft hadn't invested, and being able to say "Look at them! They're a competitor! We're not really a monopoly!" at the anti-trust trial didn't really help.
Nice idea, unfortunately battery packs come in every shape and size imaginable so it'd be hard to design a charge station to accomodate many or even most of them . . .
The more the merrier, in my opinion. To survive, a platform must attract device manufacturers, software developers and end users (and keep them). I don't see the market getting crowded--the losers will fade away fairly quickly, especially with how fast end users go through phones. God forbid we wind up with another stagnant monoculture like we got with PCs.
Barring the obvious censorship issues, who's to prevent Rogers from replacing, say, Google Adsense scripts with their own ads?
Google. IANAL so I don't know what legal angles they can take, but pulling that sort of reverse proxy meddling is probably at least a copyright violation. The Rogers reverse proxy server would have to download the Google or other content provider's page, strip out the ads and drop in their own. In other words, they're creating cached copies and modifying them to deliberately deny the copyright holder revenue and replace it with their own unauthorized ads to derive additional revenue.
That's deliberate theft, imho. The fact that Rogers is doing something similar on digital cable is interesting. I suspect they have an agreement in place with the TV networks explicitly allowing them to do this, i.e. Bell doesn't pay rates including the Rogers viewers that don't see their ads, Rogers pays the Networks to compensate the lost ad revenue from Bell, and the books at least balance. If they just unilaterally chopped ads they didn't like out of broadcasts they don't have permission to modify . . . well . . . yeah . . . that'd be a lawsuit real quick.
I believe the term you're looking for is Bait & Switch. I don't know if it counts if the store lets the employees buy them before the general public tho since they sold actual items at the advertised price . . . just not to the right people.
In any case, it's still bad policy and a good way to p*ss off paying customers.
If Microsoft continues to stagnate for 20-30 years, they will no long be on top.
They can't sit still for that long. I think Linux and Apple will eat their lunch if they don't substantially improve Vista *and* launch the next version of Windows in the next 5 years.
If you really could, everybody would have done so already. If free operating systems really were "better" in every way, nobody would pay for a worse one if they can get something better for free.
Nah. Even if FOSS was better for every conceivable purpose, it still doesn't come standard on most commercially available PCs. To the end user, Windows is free because there are few options where it doesn't come included with the price of a new computer and it's preinstalled and ready to go out of the box. Except for the few preinstalled options available, Linux and other FOSS must be downloaded, usually burned to disc and then installed. It may not cost anything beyond the price of a blank CD if that, but the user still has to work for it.
Remember the real reason IE won the browser wars--it came standard. The user didn't have to download and install it.
It's the soap dilemma. i.e. It's astonishingly difficult to find plain soap. Manufacturers want to differentiate their products to justify above-commodity prices so they add all kinds of antibaterial agents, detergents, plant extracts, magical micro-scrubby bits, apple stems, etc. To the point that simple plain soap is almost nowhere to be found. (Typically I can only ever find Ivory)
Tacking on much beyond the ever-popular "Popcorn" preset button is just the manufacturers adding more bells and whistles to make their microwave look less like a commodity.
A laptop and internet access provides students with the means to learn foreign languages and work on translating wikipedia articles to the local language, among other things.
I'd like to add that the sheer number of junk patents out there in the wild also plays a role. It's often only worthwhile when you're on the receiving end of patent litigation or a troll is trying to extort money.
Fortunately for Netflix, they have no intention of infringing on Blockbuster's patents on an envelope that doesn't jam DVDs. Unless of course Blockbuster also has a patent for "A Non-Postal Sorting Machine-Jamming DVD Envelope."
That makes more sense than having the file on the DVD itself. A full movie compressed for an iPod is gonna run 500megs-1gig. That's a bit big to put on a disc that has to share the space with the DVD-player MPEG2.
I'll admit I was surprised by the printer feature. I know Sony's been "everything but the kitchen sink-ifying" the PS3, but until now had no idea it had printer support.
For everything under the hood and everything it can be used for--yes, the PS3 is a great deal for its price.
The problem is, most people who want a device to print digital camera pics, surf the net, etc and can afford a $400-$600 purchase already have a computer so these features of the PS3 aren't really adding value to them. BluRay's nice, but that's not a big selling point in the middle of a format war since by the time it's over the winning format players will have come down in price considerably and there's no longer the risk of picking the wrong one after investing hundreds if not thousands in the player and video library.
That really only leaves the games and a lot of people just can't bring themselves to slap down that much for a video game system.
I mean, two years to decide that developing for the 360 is a good idea?
Around 120 million PS2s have been shipped to date. That's ~80 million more PS2s than all three next gen consoles combined. Granted many will have broken/been discarded/packed away/etc, but that still leaves a helluvalot of working PS2s out there. EA's mission is to sell games and customers don't typically buy games for systems they don't have.
What they're saying is that the new consoles finally have reached a total installed base large enough for EA to be comfortable devoting more resources to those platforms and moving away from the PS2.
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You don't have to open the packaging of computer software either to determine what system it's designed for. You just have to know to look.
I agree . . . a little. Whole CDs generally suck. 10-20 bucks for a few songs you like and many more you don't give a crap about. Some music is worth getting lossless for that. A lot isn't.
And its max speed is quoted as >25Kmh/15mph. Still a good bit faster than walking, but take it out on anything but neighborhood back roads and expect to be flattened.
A helicopter flying at 500 feet is quite noticable from the ground.
So, only 500 years instead of 1500.
(Also, even if the NSA did have a quantum computer--as I understand it, it would need as many Qubits as the key it's trying to crack. We're not anywhere close to breaking strong encryption from any published experiments. There's little reason to believe the government could actually do it.
I suspect it's just an assumption--the whole "things tend to come in threes" rule of thumb. (Of course Half-Life 2 Episode 3 would actually be the 4th Half-Life 2 game . . . confusingly. Perhaps Valve goes by the Douglas Adams definition of "Trilogy")
^Minor nitpick--a lot of the "under the hood" modifications in Vista were done (at least with the intention) to reduce the ease with which malware could pwn the machine, which users did effectively ask for.
Both of your disease examples are caused by viruses. Since human DNA likely has more in common with that contained in an ear of corn than an alien from another planet (if they have DNA at all), that's very unlikely. They might have some sort of bacteria-esque microbes that just happen to thrive in the conditions inside a human body and be invulnerable to anything our immune systems can throw at them, but that's very unlikely too.
Space is very big and it takes lots and lots of energy and resources to build a craft--even just a weapons delivery system--to cross the vast distances between stars. It would have to actually be worth it to attack us. Our planet and Solar System contain no resources that aren't readily available and easier to obtain much closer to just about any other star system.
It's called investing. Microsoft has lots of cash. Stockholders don't like it sitting around earning nothing. MS got a good return on that particular investment. It's not certain Apple would've gone under if Microsoft hadn't invested, and being able to say "Look at them! They're a competitor! We're not really a monopoly!" at the anti-trust trial didn't really help.
Nice idea, unfortunately battery packs come in every shape and size imaginable so it'd be hard to design a charge station to accomodate many or even most of them . . .
The more the merrier, in my opinion. To survive, a platform must attract device manufacturers, software developers and end users (and keep them). I don't see the market getting crowded--the losers will fade away fairly quickly, especially with how fast end users go through phones. God forbid we wind up with another stagnant monoculture like we got with PCs.
Google. IANAL so I don't know what legal angles they can take, but pulling that sort of reverse proxy meddling is probably at least a copyright violation. The Rogers reverse proxy server would have to download the Google or other content provider's page, strip out the ads and drop in their own. In other words, they're creating cached copies and modifying them to deliberately deny the copyright holder revenue and replace it with their own unauthorized ads to derive additional revenue.
That's deliberate theft, imho. The fact that Rogers is doing something similar on digital cable is interesting. I suspect they have an agreement in place with the TV networks explicitly allowing them to do this, i.e. Bell doesn't pay rates including the Rogers viewers that don't see their ads, Rogers pays the Networks to compensate the lost ad revenue from Bell, and the books at least balance. If they just unilaterally chopped ads they didn't like out of broadcasts they don't have permission to modify . . . well . . . yeah . . . that'd be a lawsuit real quick.
I believe the term you're looking for is Bait & Switch. I don't know if it counts if the store lets the employees buy them before the general public tho since they sold actual items at the advertised price . . . just not to the right people.
In any case, it's still bad policy and a good way to p*ss off paying customers.
They can't sit still for that long. I think Linux and Apple will eat their lunch if they don't substantially improve Vista *and* launch the next version of Windows in the next 5 years.
Nah. Even if FOSS was better for every conceivable purpose, it still doesn't come standard on most commercially available PCs. To the end user, Windows is free because there are few options where it doesn't come included with the price of a new computer and it's preinstalled and ready to go out of the box. Except for the few preinstalled options available, Linux and other FOSS must be downloaded, usually burned to disc and then installed. It may not cost anything beyond the price of a blank CD if that, but the user still has to work for it.
Remember the real reason IE won the browser wars--it came standard. The user didn't have to download and install it.
It's the soap dilemma. i.e. It's astonishingly difficult to find plain soap. Manufacturers want to differentiate their products to justify above-commodity prices so they add all kinds of antibaterial agents, detergents, plant extracts, magical micro-scrubby bits, apple stems, etc. To the point that simple plain soap is almost nowhere to be found. (Typically I can only ever find Ivory)
Tacking on much beyond the ever-popular "Popcorn" preset button is just the manufacturers adding more bells and whistles to make their microwave look less like a commodity.
A laptop and internet access provides students with the means to learn foreign languages and work on translating wikipedia articles to the local language, among other things.
I'd like to add that the sheer number of junk patents out there in the wild also plays a role. It's often only worthwhile when you're on the receiving end of patent litigation or a troll is trying to extort money.
State and local statutory regulations prohibit your robotic companion pet from simply remaining here, alone and companionless. You must euthanize it.
Fortunately for Netflix, they have no intention of infringing on Blockbuster's patents on an envelope that doesn't jam DVDs. Unless of course Blockbuster also has a patent for "A Non-Postal Sorting Machine-Jamming DVD Envelope."
That makes more sense than having the file on the DVD itself. A full movie compressed for an iPod is gonna run 500megs-1gig. That's a bit big to put on a disc that has to share the space with the DVD-player MPEG2.
Or get sued personally when the prosecutor succesfully argues your corporation is a sham and pierces the veil.
I'll admit I was surprised by the printer feature. I know Sony's been "everything but the kitchen sink-ifying" the PS3, but until now had no idea it had printer support.
For everything under the hood and everything it can be used for--yes, the PS3 is a great deal for its price.
The problem is, most people who want a device to print digital camera pics, surf the net, etc and can afford a $400-$600 purchase already have a computer so these features of the PS3 aren't really adding value to them. BluRay's nice, but that's not a big selling point in the middle of a format war since by the time it's over the winning format players will have come down in price considerably and there's no longer the risk of picking the wrong one after investing hundreds if not thousands in the player and video library.
That really only leaves the games and a lot of people just can't bring themselves to slap down that much for a video game system.
Around 120 million PS2s have been shipped to date. That's ~80 million more PS2s than all three next gen consoles combined. Granted many will have broken/been discarded/packed away/etc, but that still leaves a helluvalot of working PS2s out there. EA's mission is to sell games and customers don't typically buy games for systems they don't have.
What they're saying is that the new consoles finally have reached a total installed base large enough for EA to be comfortable devoting more resources to those platforms and moving away from the PS2.