I would say that an analysis at nvidia and at ATI would also show a completely different corporate philosophy regarding driver development (I can't vouch for this, nor do I have any first hand knowledge : It's just a hunch). With nvidia hardware, the drivers (I'm normally a Windows guy, so we're talking Wintel here) install professionally, they work superbly, they continually support even ancient chipsets (TNT users are seeing performance improvements with each detonator release), and they are feature rich. With ATI, in every experience that I've had the installs have been horribly amateurish, the drivers have been GPFing nightmares, the documentation is horrible, and is usually accusatory of the customer (I recently came across one of these "All your problems are belong to you" sort of documents with a ATI TVWonder PCI). ATI also likes to orphan products, so even only slightly dated products often get relegated to the un-updated trash heap. I suspect, and again this is only a hunch, that ATI treats driver and application development as an nuisance, and only as something to be done when the product is on retail shelves and to entice customers (a very short term approach), whereas nvidia treats it as a scientific continual pursuit of perfection for all their customers.
If I sound down on ATI, I'm not really : They have proven themselves to have extraordinary hardware guys who make, literally, the best stuff in the business, however their ability to continually shoot themselves in the foot with a horrible software development record is hard to fathom : Talk to anyone about ATI, and 95% of the time they'll relate some driver nightmare they've had with an ATI card.
Kinda sad, but probably the biggest seller of all, back in the day, for hardware acceleration was the game "Tomb Raider" by EIDOS. I recall it coming out with 3dfx acceleration, and people crapping themselves in amazement about it.
That isn't the real song, though I've heard the same one. Indeed, there appears to be an ENORMOUS number of bogus tracks out there masquerading as Eminem tracks (either they snipped off beginning or ends, or the middle is all horrendous digital noise, etc) : It appears that either there are a lot of people with strange motivations who are bored, or alternately that the RIAA/Eminem's crew are polluting the sharing networks with bogus copies (seems very likely as few others would have the motivation that these people seem to have).
Oil is a self correcting supply as well : If the demand did outstrip supply and the price rose, consumers would find replacements (or more efficient uses) and demand would drop, leading ironically to a price drop, not to mention that any increase in price would make currently unsustainable sources usable. Economically most of the impact of a raised price of oil is psychological it seems : We accept inflation as a part of life anywhere but at the oil pumps, where a minor jump in price garners endless media coverage.
It is interesting to see that there are now opinions that oil doesn't originate from "dead dinosaurs", as conventional wisdom holds (it did always seem dubious : Did all plant life conveniently cluster in a pool to die, forming reservoirs of oil?). Alas.
The biggest oddity of all of this is that the biggest, most powerful tool the "Western" world holds in ensuring that it isn't held captive by anyone is conservation: The US could drop its oil usage by 50% with only a minor adjustment to quality of life (in actuality quality of life would increase).
Obviously any estimation of "undiscovered" reserves is completely speculative, and depends entirely upon the pessimism or optimism of the person putting in the numbers (garbage in->garbage out). However it should be noted that the oil industry WANTS you to believe that oil needs to be valued today, because it'll be gone tomorrow. The environmental movement also wants you to believe that oil will be gone tomorrow. Who has a vested interest in saying "Bah, there's a crapload...more than we'll ever need"? No one.
Again, I'm purely saying that that boy has cried wolf a few too many times, and for those who've paid attention to the "imminent collapse of oil supplies" argument over the years (I'm only 29 years old, yet I've been hearing the IMMINENT collapse argument for over 23 of those years. If there were a web in 1976, I guarantee you, without any doubt, that there would be countless archives of graphs showing the oil supply peaking in 1976, followed by a perilous decline)
In 1973, the OPEC nations account for almost 75% of the world's oil production. Today it accounts for less then 40%, with countries like Russia, Canada, Mexico, etc, becoming big producers. My point is moreso that the US administration still treats the Middle East like it's 1973, treating the situation as if they have nothing to lose by shutting off the tap when the current situation is that they have everything to lose by shutting off the tap (hence, they no longer are in the driver's seat)
I find it humorous that oil supply graphs always show the supply peaking at the present, so it's not surprizing to see the including graph showing oil supply peaking in 2002, when suddenly it'll perilously start dropping as the world's supply of oil disappears. As much as I advocate and hope for advances in alternatives (or even just greatly increased efficiency), I find these graphs all to be universally a bunch of BS : Hell we're just starting to process the tar sands in Alberta, tar sands which have more oil than all of Saudi Arabia (interesting fact: The US gets more oil from Alberta than it gets from Saudi Arabia, yet watch the fascinating ass kissing the US plants on the asses of the Saudis. Very odd, and unjustifiable). When I was in Grade 4, some 20 years ago, I remember them showing us a similar graph perilously showing the drop that was imminent as the Earth's supply of oil was forseen to be gone within 10 years (no kidding).
What's even scarier is that you, and many pro-censorship fanatics, presume that Eminem must be "taken seriously" to be enjoyed as an artist (I personal think he's brilliant. I'm a married professional adult, yet I have his CDs so far, and will buy the new one when I can. Perhaps I'm a "wigger", but instead I appreciate his art). Does this mean that acts of serial killers (and self-driving clown trucks) will break out across the land because Stephen King books are on the best seller list? Is the movie AOTCs an indiciation that we're headed for war with the empire (or whoever)? No, it's all just fantasy art, and the only scary ones are those that fail to see that.
I never once stated that AOTC is for mindless fanatics, but rather that they could rely on the hardcore fans regardless (I mean, seriously, after episode 1 you would think that the fans wouldn't be there to stand in line to watch it at the 12:01 opening : Shouldn't they have to be re-earned? Nope, they were there as early as possible buying tickets, and then standing in line). I haven't even seen AOTCs, and though people seem to be coming out with differing takes on it, it sounds like it's a credible movie.
Personally I think the entire Star Wars franchise is embarrasingly bad (somehow I missed out on the hype machine for the original trio, so to me rather than fond memories of my childhood, they're just B grade sci-fi movies), and Lucas forsook his option to make the new series geared towards adults because of the ever important lucrative merchandising potential of continuing it more as a childrens movie (Come on: He seriously was going to put n'sync in it). Having said that, I thought Spider-Man was an enjoyable, but forgettable, standard CGI-enhanced action flick. Nothing tremendous, and it doesn't make me a better person or revolutionize life : It's just another movie that was ok, but it doesn't entertain beyond the 2 hours of watching it.
In any case, I find your portrayal of poor underdog Star Wars versus big bad Spiderman absurd. Firstly theaters, where there was demand, played it 24/7, starting right at 12:01 on the opening day: They knew that the hoardes of loyal Star Wars fanatics would be there to fill the coffers, probably many times over. The number of opening theaters between Spiderman and AOTC is largely comparable, with only a minor deviance, however the most telling number of all: Per screen revenue, has spiderman ahead on the opening weekend, with $31,769 versus AOTCs $25,317/screen (or are you going to claim that somehow AOTC demanded better, further separated seats for its superior audience?). As far as hype: Personally I thought that Spider-man had a lot less hype, and most certainly a lot less "We'll love it regardless" fanatics than AOTCs.
It's not abuse if they're following the terms and conditions advertised. The fact that a company was stupid enough to offer unmetered/unlimited access at an unrealistic price point, and that a consumer was smart enough to take them up on it when it was in his/her best interests to do so, is not that consumer's fault.
But, you see they aren't stupid. Apart from the fact that most high speed providers have had throughput limits since day one (I believe that @Home was 2GB/month), the company's are now changing their contracts, and the customer has every right, and a duty if they're so upset, to cancel the service and go with competitors.
Advertising terms are vague, and I've never seen a company say "We're selling cable access at $40/month for 24/7 2.5Mbps downloading". Instead they say "always on", and that is completely true. They say "always fast", again, completely true. For 99% of people these two promises work out great and they can hop on their PC and grab email, access web pages, etc, with no problems.
Actually, @Home as an example _always_ had a maximum throughput limit in their contract (I believe it is 2GB) : Since day one. Of course the "self righteous" justifiers pretend that this isn't the case in their quest to justify their actions. Most other high speed services have always had such limits, though they usually didn't enforce it for technical reasons or quite simply because they were being lenient.
I have _never_ seen an ad for any of the high speed services as being "unlimited" either. I've heard "always on", and that is true. I've heard "always fast", and that is true. But I've never heard "always on with you consuming 100%".
Rogers followed suit, imposing the same sorts of limits as Bell. I believe Rogers' high speed plan is 5Mbps with a 10GB cap (the speed and the cap don't really mesh well).
I agree that 5GB is far too low, especially given the applications that they suggest in their advertisements (multichannel stereo quality audio and video teleconferencing among multiple parties), going so far as giving out webcams to new sign ups. Hell, 5GB is so low that listening to a 128Kbps internet radio station would fill the quota in 86 hours (2 weeks of workday radio listening).
These companies all have clauses in their contracts that they can change the conditions any time they feel like, in any way, and your power as a consumer is to either choose to cancel the service, or accept the changes.
As far as the "pipes are already there", that is ridiculous. Comcast and friends have been busy upgrading bandwidth in a perpetual cycle as a new flurry of "my connection is so slow! [because my neighbour is a pr0n hound]" complaints arise. Companies have to pay for peering as well which costs an arm and a leg. If you think this is so easy and so cheap, please tell me when you've set up your unmetered access connection for cheaper than them. Until then I'm pretty grateful that I have a faster than T1 connection for 1/30th the price.
-If there is significant overhead to individually billing. For instance for water some municipalities flat charge because the cost of installing water meters at every house is prohibitive. Alternately there can be a significant overhead administratively for some systems (for instance for gas and electricity a guy has to come around reading meters). None of these apply to internet connections where it's trivial to meter usage, and electronic billing has made exceptional billing very cheap.
-When you convince people that they will use far more than they actually will, when in reality you know by experience that they won't. I got a "flat fee" membership for the year to Canada's Wonderland (only the cost of going twice!), yet in reality I know that I'll probably go maybe twice all year. Tonnes of memberships rely on this. Gym memberships force you into the "flat fee" because they know that most people will come for two weeks, and then never come again, yet they're tied in for a year.
-When you're a heavy user and you know that everyone else is subsidizing you. This is the case with (former) @Home's where the bandwidth requirements are overwhelmingly to support a few people, and everyone is ranting and raving about how slow the connection is because Jimmy has a 24/7 gnutella serving running.
The only ones who'll be frothing about how outrageous this is are the people who are abusing the system (the 1%).
XP lets you re-activate if you format and reinstall on the same machine, does it not? I thought it only caused trouble (which merely required a call to Microsoft, though if you're in the midst of battling a hardware problem or something that could really piss one off) if the hardware profile of the machine significantly chaged (more than three items or something of that sort).
I completely agree that alternatives are good, and until we have a transit system that lets you punch in your destination and your own modular section switches tracks to bring you exactly where you want to go, mass transit doesn't work for everyone. However, it is telling that over 50% of New York citizens do not own cars: Most people get by either living near where they work (not to mention living near everything else too), or taking public transit.
I went on a tour of Italy and it is a remarkable, beautiful, gorgeous, tremendous, stunningly amazing country. The history that the people of Italy live alongside astounds me, as I'm a Canadian and an "old" building here is 80 years old. My only complaint about Italy would be that I was constantly referred to as "Americano" (for instance once I went to the front desk because my room vault didn't work, to have them mutter in Italian something about the bloody Americano. I got a glimpse then that the oft stated claims that Americans are these horrendous travellers is in the eye of the beholder, and could often be the result of jealousy, or simple stereotyping: Here I was making a normal comment about the fact that my only form of hotel security didn't work, and I was a dastardly Americano, there to ruin it for everyone. Well, that was a bit of a segue now wasn't it...).
In any case, Venice probably isn't the best example as that city's economy is almost entirely tourism now: Very little happens there nowadays that isn't directly related to tourism. In other areas of Italy the roads were very narrow, and primarily occupied by nice BMWs, or mopeds by the dozens. Rather than ars, Italy seems more like a moped type of country. I'd love that, except winter puts a wrench in that for my area of the world.
It sounds like they don't know all the stolen keys, but rather that a large percentage of people installed a warez copy using one particular large customer serial number (for those who don't know: Microsoft made the normal versions of XP that require activation [and only one computer can activate with one key so that's intrinsically secure], but they also made a large customer copy that does not require activation, and allows an enterprise customer to install company wide with one key. It is those copies that made their way into the warez channels), so it sounds like the update will check if your system has that one serial number.
Microsoft will probably learn from the large vendor experience, and likely in the next iteration of product activation, non-activation enabled copies will have a key that is keyed against a certain domain tree, allowing only computers under the domain *.ibm.com for instance to install the enterprise copies with the IBM specific key, with reduced functionality until the computer joins the domain.
How many people in New York City own cars? The reality is that the majority (in one of the most impressive cities in the world) do not own or operate a car, and rely on public transit to get around, and the road grid is largely to support emergency services and cabs.
Not sure if that was tongue in cheek (I suspect it was), however of course SimCity doesn't render every car, but rather just enough to give flow impressions (i.e. 1 car could be equal to 1000 cars).
In any case, your claim that it's easier to render a 5 person carpool car is hilarious : People don't carpool. Despite overwhelming benefits, not to mention the unbelievable cost a car puts on a person per year, the overwhelming number of cars on the highways during commute times have precisely one person in them.
But of course most music retailers bleed money, and at best make tiny profits in the end. Retailing is a very expensive game, and for Joe to be able to walk in and pick up a copy of Depeche Mode Speak and Spell means that the store has to stock thousands of dollars in merchandise that doesn't move. That's why a place like Walmart, that stocks only the sure hits, can sell at lower prices.
Of course this could just be a lesson that the traditional retail market just doesn't work for something like CDs. It would be rather neat if you could go into a store and go to a machine and punch in the CD you want and it spits out the insert, a CD, etc from a giant database.
Yeah, well it's a lot better than advertising a price after "mail in rebates" when you don't actually send out most of the rebates. I'm still waiting for $150 rebate from Visiontek. Personally I think the massive fraud called "mail-in rebates" will become a hot topic when people clue in.
There's a company in Canada with HORRENDOUS advertisements (The Buck a Day Company) and they sell a $1000 IBM. Well if read the micro print, there's $200 shipping.
Well it depends on whether they cannibalize each other's market, or if they actually appeal outside of the current player-base and bring new players in. The facts are that there are hundreds of millions of potential players, and the potential for an entertainment shift (away from pre-fab TV to an immersive, interactive environment).
I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. While Slashdot is a bastion of "big company=evil", advertising is a so fundamentally basic (going to a dinner party and introducing myself to potential clients is absolutely no different), and has existed for so long, that any domain analysis (domain analysis always appears appalling and dehumanizing. One could reduce romance, family, and friendship to a dehumanized set of personal benefits, but that doesn't mean that I'll suddenly view my wife as different) is informational, not defining.
Slashdot Mirror
I would say that an analysis at nvidia and at ATI would also show a completely different corporate philosophy regarding driver development (I can't vouch for this, nor do I have any first hand knowledge : It's just a hunch). With nvidia hardware, the drivers (I'm normally a Windows guy, so we're talking Wintel here) install professionally, they work superbly, they continually support even ancient chipsets (TNT users are seeing performance improvements with each detonator release), and they are feature rich. With ATI, in every experience that I've had the installs have been horribly amateurish, the drivers have been GPFing nightmares, the documentation is horrible, and is usually accusatory of the customer (I recently came across one of these "All your problems are belong to you" sort of documents with a ATI TVWonder PCI). ATI also likes to orphan products, so even only slightly dated products often get relegated to the un-updated trash heap. I suspect, and again this is only a hunch, that ATI treats driver and application development as an nuisance, and only as something to be done when the product is on retail shelves and to entice customers (a very short term approach), whereas nvidia treats it as a scientific continual pursuit of perfection for all their customers.
If I sound down on ATI, I'm not really : They have proven themselves to have extraordinary hardware guys who make, literally, the best stuff in the business, however their ability to continually shoot themselves in the foot with a horrible software development record is hard to fathom : Talk to anyone about ATI, and 95% of the time they'll relate some driver nightmare they've had with an ATI card.
Kinda sad, but probably the biggest seller of all, back in the day, for hardware acceleration was the game "Tomb Raider" by EIDOS. I recall it coming out with 3dfx acceleration, and people crapping themselves in amazement about it.
That isn't the real song, though I've heard the same one. Indeed, there appears to be an ENORMOUS number of bogus tracks out there masquerading as Eminem tracks (either they snipped off beginning or ends, or the middle is all horrendous digital noise, etc) : It appears that either there are a lot of people with strange motivations who are bored, or alternately that the RIAA/Eminem's crew are polluting the sharing networks with bogus copies (seems very likely as few others would have the motivation that these people seem to have).
Oil is a self correcting supply as well : If the demand did outstrip supply and the price rose, consumers would find replacements (or more efficient uses) and demand would drop, leading ironically to a price drop, not to mention that any increase in price would make currently unsustainable sources usable. Economically most of the impact of a raised price of oil is psychological it seems : We accept inflation as a part of life anywhere but at the oil pumps, where a minor jump in price garners endless media coverage.
It is interesting to see that there are now opinions that oil doesn't originate from "dead dinosaurs", as conventional wisdom holds (it did always seem dubious : Did all plant life conveniently cluster in a pool to die, forming reservoirs of oil?). Alas.
The biggest oddity of all of this is that the biggest, most powerful tool the "Western" world holds in ensuring that it isn't held captive by anyone is conservation: The US could drop its oil usage by 50% with only a minor adjustment to quality of life (in actuality quality of life would increase).
Obviously any estimation of "undiscovered" reserves is completely speculative, and depends entirely upon the pessimism or optimism of the person putting in the numbers (garbage in->garbage out). However it should be noted that the oil industry WANTS you to believe that oil needs to be valued today, because it'll be gone tomorrow. The environmental movement also wants you to believe that oil will be gone tomorrow. Who has a vested interest in saying "Bah, there's a crapload...more than we'll ever need"? No one.
Again, I'm purely saying that that boy has cried wolf a few too many times, and for those who've paid attention to the "imminent collapse of oil supplies" argument over the years (I'm only 29 years old, yet I've been hearing the IMMINENT collapse argument for over 23 of those years. If there were a web in 1976, I guarantee you, without any doubt, that there would be countless archives of graphs showing the oil supply peaking in 1976, followed by a perilous decline)
In 1973, the OPEC nations account for almost 75% of the world's oil production. Today it accounts for less then 40%, with countries like Russia, Canada, Mexico, etc, becoming big producers. My point is moreso that the US administration still treats the Middle East like it's 1973, treating the situation as if they have nothing to lose by shutting off the tap when the current situation is that they have everything to lose by shutting off the tap (hence, they no longer are in the driver's seat)
I find it humorous that oil supply graphs always show the supply peaking at the present, so it's not surprizing to see the including graph showing oil supply peaking in 2002, when suddenly it'll perilously start dropping as the world's supply of oil disappears. As much as I advocate and hope for advances in alternatives (or even just greatly increased efficiency), I find these graphs all to be universally a bunch of BS : Hell we're just starting to process the tar sands in Alberta, tar sands which have more oil than all of Saudi Arabia (interesting fact: The US gets more oil from Alberta than it gets from Saudi Arabia, yet watch the fascinating ass kissing the US plants on the asses of the Saudis. Very odd, and unjustifiable). When I was in Grade 4, some 20 years ago, I remember them showing us a similar graph perilously showing the drop that was imminent as the Earth's supply of oil was forseen to be gone within 10 years (no kidding).
Just a bit of pessimism about, well, pessimism.
What's even scarier is that you, and many pro-censorship fanatics, presume that Eminem must be "taken seriously" to be enjoyed as an artist (I personal think he's brilliant. I'm a married professional adult, yet I have his CDs so far, and will buy the new one when I can. Perhaps I'm a "wigger", but instead I appreciate his art). Does this mean that acts of serial killers (and self-driving clown trucks) will break out across the land because Stephen King books are on the best seller list? Is the movie AOTCs an indiciation that we're headed for war with the empire (or whoever)? No, it's all just fantasy art, and the only scary ones are those that fail to see that.
I never once stated that AOTC is for mindless fanatics, but rather that they could rely on the hardcore fans regardless (I mean, seriously, after episode 1 you would think that the fans wouldn't be there to stand in line to watch it at the 12:01 opening : Shouldn't they have to be re-earned? Nope, they were there as early as possible buying tickets, and then standing in line). I haven't even seen AOTCs, and though people seem to be coming out with differing takes on it, it sounds like it's a credible movie.
Personally I think the entire Star Wars franchise is embarrasingly bad (somehow I missed out on the hype machine for the original trio, so to me rather than fond memories of my childhood, they're just B grade sci-fi movies), and Lucas forsook his option to make the new series geared towards adults because of the ever important lucrative merchandising potential of continuing it more as a childrens movie (Come on: He seriously was going to put n'sync in it). Having said that, I thought Spider-Man was an enjoyable, but forgettable, standard CGI-enhanced action flick. Nothing tremendous, and it doesn't make me a better person or revolutionize life : It's just another movie that was ok, but it doesn't entertain beyond the 2 hours of watching it.
In any case, I find your portrayal of poor underdog Star Wars versus big bad Spiderman absurd. Firstly theaters, where there was demand, played it 24/7, starting right at 12:01 on the opening day: They knew that the hoardes of loyal Star Wars fanatics would be there to fill the coffers, probably many times over. The number of opening theaters between Spiderman and AOTC is largely comparable, with only a minor deviance, however the most telling number of all: Per screen revenue, has spiderman ahead on the opening weekend, with $31,769 versus AOTCs $25,317/screen (or are you going to claim that somehow AOTC demanded better, further separated seats for its superior audience?). As far as hype: Personally I thought that Spider-man had a lot less hype, and most certainly a lot less "We'll love it regardless" fanatics than AOTCs.
It's not abuse if they're following the terms and conditions advertised. The fact that a company was stupid enough to offer unmetered/unlimited access at an unrealistic price point, and that a consumer was smart enough to take them up on it when it was in his/her best interests to do so, is not that consumer's fault.
But, you see they aren't stupid. Apart from the fact that most high speed providers have had throughput limits since day one (I believe that @Home was 2GB/month), the company's are now changing their contracts, and the customer has every right, and a duty if they're so upset, to cancel the service and go with competitors.
Advertising terms are vague, and I've never seen a company say "We're selling cable access at $40/month for 24/7 2.5Mbps downloading". Instead they say "always on", and that is completely true. They say "always fast", again, completely true. For 99% of people these two promises work out great and they can hop on their PC and grab email, access web pages, etc, with no problems.
Actually, @Home as an example _always_ had a maximum throughput limit in their contract (I believe it is 2GB) : Since day one. Of course the "self righteous" justifiers pretend that this isn't the case in their quest to justify their actions. Most other high speed services have always had such limits, though they usually didn't enforce it for technical reasons or quite simply because they were being lenient.
I have _never_ seen an ad for any of the high speed services as being "unlimited" either. I've heard "always on", and that is true. I've heard "always fast", and that is true. But I've never heard "always on with you consuming 100%".
Rogers followed suit, imposing the same sorts of limits as Bell. I believe Rogers' high speed plan is 5Mbps with a 10GB cap (the speed and the cap don't really mesh well).
I agree that 5GB is far too low, especially given the applications that they suggest in their advertisements (multichannel stereo quality audio and video teleconferencing among multiple parties), going so far as giving out webcams to new sign ups. Hell, 5GB is so low that listening to a 128Kbps internet radio station would fill the quota in 86 hours (2 weeks of workday radio listening).
These companies all have clauses in their contracts that they can change the conditions any time they feel like, in any way, and your power as a consumer is to either choose to cancel the service, or accept the changes.
As far as the "pipes are already there", that is ridiculous. Comcast and friends have been busy upgrading bandwidth in a perpetual cycle as a new flurry of "my connection is so slow! [because my neighbour is a pr0n hound]" complaints arise. Companies have to pay for peering as well which costs an arm and a leg. If you think this is so easy and so cheap, please tell me when you've set up your unmetered access connection for cheaper than them. Until then I'm pretty grateful that I have a faster than T1 connection for 1/30th the price.
Flat pricing only works in some situations:
-If there is significant overhead to individually billing. For instance for water some municipalities flat charge because the cost of installing water meters at every house is prohibitive. Alternately there can be a significant overhead administratively for some systems (for instance for gas and electricity a guy has to come around reading meters). None of these apply to internet connections where it's trivial to meter usage, and electronic billing has made exceptional billing very cheap.
-When you convince people that they will use far more than they actually will, when in reality you know by experience that they won't. I got a "flat fee" membership for the year to Canada's Wonderland (only the cost of going twice!), yet in reality I know that I'll probably go maybe twice all year. Tonnes of memberships rely on this. Gym memberships force you into the "flat fee" because they know that most people will come for two weeks, and then never come again, yet they're tied in for a year.
-When you're a heavy user and you know that everyone else is subsidizing you. This is the case with (former) @Home's where the bandwidth requirements are overwhelmingly to support a few people, and everyone is ranting and raving about how slow the connection is because Jimmy has a 24/7 gnutella serving running.
The only ones who'll be frothing about how outrageous this is are the people who are abusing the system (the 1%).
XP lets you re-activate if you format and reinstall on the same machine, does it not? I thought it only caused trouble (which merely required a call to Microsoft, though if you're in the midst of battling a hardware problem or something that could really piss one off) if the hardware profile of the machine significantly chaged (more than three items or something of that sort).
I completely agree that alternatives are good, and until we have a transit system that lets you punch in your destination and your own modular section switches tracks to bring you exactly where you want to go, mass transit doesn't work for everyone. However, it is telling that over 50% of New York citizens do not own cars: Most people get by either living near where they work (not to mention living near everything else too), or taking public transit.
I went on a tour of Italy and it is a remarkable, beautiful, gorgeous, tremendous, stunningly amazing country. The history that the people of Italy live alongside astounds me, as I'm a Canadian and an "old" building here is 80 years old. My only complaint about Italy would be that I was constantly referred to as "Americano" (for instance once I went to the front desk because my room vault didn't work, to have them mutter in Italian something about the bloody Americano. I got a glimpse then that the oft stated claims that Americans are these horrendous travellers is in the eye of the beholder, and could often be the result of jealousy, or simple stereotyping: Here I was making a normal comment about the fact that my only form of hotel security didn't work, and I was a dastardly Americano, there to ruin it for everyone. Well, that was a bit of a segue now wasn't it...).
In any case, Venice probably isn't the best example as that city's economy is almost entirely tourism now: Very little happens there nowadays that isn't directly related to tourism. In other areas of Italy the roads were very narrow, and primarily occupied by nice BMWs, or mopeds by the dozens. Rather than ars, Italy seems more like a moped type of country. I'd love that, except winter puts a wrench in that for my area of the world.
It sounds like they don't know all the stolen keys, but rather that a large percentage of people installed a warez copy using one particular large customer serial number (for those who don't know: Microsoft made the normal versions of XP that require activation [and only one computer can activate with one key so that's intrinsically secure], but they also made a large customer copy that does not require activation, and allows an enterprise customer to install company wide with one key. It is those copies that made their way into the warez channels), so it sounds like the update will check if your system has that one serial number.
Microsoft will probably learn from the large vendor experience, and likely in the next iteration of product activation, non-activation enabled copies will have a key that is keyed against a certain domain tree, allowing only computers under the domain *.ibm.com for instance to install the enterprise copies with the IBM specific key, with reduced functionality until the computer joins the domain.
How many people in New York City own cars? The reality is that the majority (in one of the most impressive cities in the world) do not own or operate a car, and rely on public transit to get around, and the road grid is largely to support emergency services and cabs.
Not sure if that was tongue in cheek (I suspect it was), however of course SimCity doesn't render every car, but rather just enough to give flow impressions (i.e. 1 car could be equal to 1000 cars).
In any case, your claim that it's easier to render a 5 person carpool car is hilarious : People don't carpool. Despite overwhelming benefits, not to mention the unbelievable cost a car puts on a person per year, the overwhelming number of cars on the highways during commute times have precisely one person in them.
But of course most music retailers bleed money, and at best make tiny profits in the end. Retailing is a very expensive game, and for Joe to be able to walk in and pick up a copy of Depeche Mode Speak and Spell means that the store has to stock thousands of dollars in merchandise that doesn't move. That's why a place like Walmart, that stocks only the sure hits, can sell at lower prices.
Of course this could just be a lesson that the traditional retail market just doesn't work for something like CDs. It would be rather neat if you could go into a store and go to a machine and punch in the CD you want and it spits out the insert, a CD, etc from a giant database.
Yeah, well it's a lot better than advertising a price after "mail in rebates" when you don't actually send out most of the rebates. I'm still waiting for $150 rebate from Visiontek. Personally I think the massive fraud called "mail-in rebates" will become a hot topic when people clue in.
There's a company in Canada with HORRENDOUS advertisements (The Buck a Day Company) and they sell a $1000 IBM. Well if read the micro print, there's $200 shipping.
Well it depends on whether they cannibalize each other's market, or if they actually appeal outside of the current player-base and bring new players in. The facts are that there are hundreds of millions of potential players, and the potential for an entertainment shift (away from pre-fab TV to an immersive, interactive environment).
I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. While Slashdot is a bastion of "big company=evil", advertising is a so fundamentally basic (going to a dinner party and introducing myself to potential clients is absolutely no different), and has existed for so long, that any domain analysis (domain analysis always appears appalling and dehumanizing. One could reduce romance, family, and friendship to a dehumanized set of personal benefits, but that doesn't mean that I'll suddenly view my wife as different) is informational, not defining.