I just want to tack on because I didn't make it clear enough in previous comment. It was a RARE event locally for me to find the curbside PC to cull the DVD-R drive out of.
The DVD-R drive that I presently use is one I culled out of a curbside PC that I found locally. Most notably, it was not one that I located at a thrift store or any retail outlet in my local area. There are NO stores anymore that sell used PC hardware, aside from a few boutique places that dress them up at heavy mark-up prices.
I suspect my area is not alone in this. The thrifts don't sell used PCs, and it's specifically because Dell doesn't want them selling used PCs. Nor Microsoft. Ya know who I mean... that big company that gets NOTHING if a household re-uses a copy of Windows or (the horror!) puts Linux on a used box instead of buying a new PC with Windows on it.
If there are 'mountains of it' why do we have to 'be patient' to acquire what we want? No, there's an active campaign to remove used hardware by new hardware vendors.
The big manufacturers like Dell have been trumping up the 'eWaste' issue for years now. They do it to make sure they yank all the old hardware out of the secondary (used) market where it inteferes with new equipment sales.
My local situation is typical. We don't (yet) have to pay a 'disposal fee' to get rid of the 'untouchable' evil-awful old computer equipment, but the local Goodwill is the place-of-choice to donate them to. And Dell has a 'bounty' deal going with Goodwill, to pull all PeeCees out of the donation stream and never, EVER put them out for resale.
A lot of us got our start playing around with Linux on multiple PCs (networking) using castoff PCs that there are agents now actively making sure are not 'just lying around' for us to fool with. It's quite possible that a lot of that wouldn't happen in today's environment.
HP and Dell and 'whoever' are widely perceived as dull big companies with an essentially dark reputation. Nobody shills for them, nobody worships the ground their executives walk on. They don't have a rainbow-shine cult of customers.
It's the contradiction of Apple's *ahem* user base and their Apple-good dogma that people are trying to take down.
The cold-blooded theocracies that are taking hold after said 'Arab Spring' are not necessarily a better way of life. Just as the Revolution in Iran in 1979 did not turn out that good for a lot of the people who fought hard for it. I remember the broad progressive coalitions that were part of the Iranian revolution. Many of those people are dead now.
At the time, before 9/11, I had a prediction about how a Gore presidency would have gone.
If you remember, the first real 'foreign policy' crisis of the Bush administration was when the Chinese forced down a US Surveillance plane packed full of top secret instrumentation.
The Bush administration held strong and demanded the return of the plane.
If Gore had been President, he would have airlifted in the blueprints for the plane and the docs for all of the instruments, with a heartfelt apology letter to the Chinese for 'invading their air space.'
And Godwin's law applies to Usenet threads that run on and on and on for months. Whereas here on Slashdot we have a little discussion and in two days or so we move on to another little discussion.
No, Godwin's law is very very poorly applied in any instance it is attempted here on Slashdot. Threads don't need to be 'declared over' the way threads that have gone on for months on Usenet occasionally have had to be.
When money isn't moving, giving money to people who have enough to sit on already isn't going to do shit.
What in lord's name are you talking about? 'Giving' people money? The issue is the government taking it away from them. No matter how much you may think it is the case, the government produces NOTHING and anything it 'gives' it has taken away from somebody first.
The National Academy of Scientists is as 'objective' as any other political organization. No amount of hand waving changes the fact that they push a political agenda. Every organization does. That's what they band together to do. Even organizations that don't start out that way get 'stacked' over time and become political advocacy groups in the end.
Not that it matters. We're supposed to go all glassy-eyed because these are 'Scientists' we are talking about. The fact that almost none of them are Climate Scientists doesn't mean anything.
Star Wars was no more influential in it's era than the Hula Hoop. When Lucas dies, and they can finally screw down the lid over the film, it will be remembered as a phenomena. But so was Gilligans Island and the Dick Van Dyke show.
Obama is more of a corrupt crony capitalist than a 'leftist.' His roots are in the Chicago political scene, after all. He has many buddies and wealthy supporters in the corporate structure.
Sadly, too many people just want to lay back and be entertained.
What bugs me is that for the most part 'online piracy' amounts to people shuffling the same bit patterns back and fourth, round and round forever. Because of how things are now, the same collection of however- many-thousand sound and video files get shuffled around, like the Pokemon cards at a swap-meet. Every 'song' gets shuffled around thousands and thousands of times using lower than optimal means to do so. What a waste, even when torrent protocols are being used.
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I just want to tack on because I didn't make it clear enough in previous comment. It was a RARE event locally for me to find the curbside PC to cull the DVD-R drive out of.
The DVD-R drive that I presently use is one I culled out of a curbside PC that I found locally. Most notably, it was not one that I located at a thrift store or any retail outlet in my local area. There are NO stores anymore that sell used PC hardware, aside from a few boutique places that dress them up at heavy mark-up prices.
I suspect my area is not alone in this. The thrifts don't sell used PCs, and it's specifically because Dell doesn't want them selling used PCs. Nor Microsoft. Ya know who I mean... that big company that gets NOTHING if a household re-uses a copy of Windows or (the horror!) puts Linux on a used box instead of buying a new PC with Windows on it.
If there are 'mountains of it' why do we have to 'be patient' to acquire what we want? No, there's an active campaign to remove used hardware by new hardware vendors.
So are you the local Dell sales rep in one of these countries 'halfway around the world'?
The big manufacturers like Dell have been trumping up the 'eWaste' issue for years now. They do it to make sure they yank all the old hardware out of the secondary (used) market where it inteferes with new equipment sales.
My local situation is typical. We don't (yet) have to pay a 'disposal fee' to get rid of the 'untouchable' evil-awful old computer equipment, but the local Goodwill is the place-of-choice to donate them to. And Dell has a 'bounty' deal going with Goodwill, to pull all PeeCees out of the donation stream and never, EVER put them out for resale.
A lot of us got our start playing around with Linux on multiple PCs (networking) using castoff PCs that there are agents now actively making sure are not 'just lying around' for us to fool with. It's quite possible that a lot of that wouldn't happen in today's environment.
HP and Dell and 'whoever' are widely perceived as dull big companies with an essentially dark reputation. Nobody shills for them, nobody worships the ground their executives walk on. They don't have a rainbow-shine cult of customers.
It's the contradiction of Apple's *ahem* user base and their Apple-good dogma that people are trying to take down.
And folks like you will jump in and lick-spittle defend the repression of the Chinese regime.
Did Apple give you a whole fucking envelope full of stickers to put on your windshield??
Does it give your life meaning to be one of the most outspoken shills for Apple Corporation here on Slashdot?
'Hater' is a code-word indicating the one using it is a cult member.
If you asked a Scientologist who the foes of his religion are, he would call them 'haters.'
In an abstract sense you are correct. But Access to Tools is more important than raw book knowledge. I would have been raiding machine shops, etc.
The cold-blooded theocracies that are taking hold after said 'Arab Spring' are not necessarily a better way of life. Just as the Revolution in Iran in 1979 did not turn out that good for a lot of the people who fought hard for it. I remember the broad progressive coalitions that were part of the Iranian revolution. Many of those people are dead now.
At the time, before 9/11, I had a prediction about how a Gore presidency would have gone.
If you remember, the first real 'foreign policy' crisis of the Bush administration was when the Chinese forced down a US Surveillance plane packed full of top secret instrumentation.
The Bush administration held strong and demanded the return of the plane.
If Gore had been President, he would have airlifted in the blueprints for the plane and the docs for all of the instruments, with a heartfelt apology letter to the Chinese for 'invading their air space.'
And Godwin's law applies to Usenet threads that run on and on and on for months. Whereas here on Slashdot we have a little discussion and in two days or so we move on to another little discussion.
No, Godwin's law is very very poorly applied in any instance it is attempted here on Slashdot. Threads don't need to be 'declared over' the way threads that have gone on for months on Usenet occasionally have had to be.
When money isn't moving, giving money to people who have enough to sit on already isn't going to do shit.
What in lord's name are you talking about? 'Giving' people money? The issue is the government taking it away from them. No matter how much you may think it is the case, the government produces NOTHING and anything it 'gives' it has taken away from somebody first.
Supporting consumers and advocating a government nanny organization to 'look over them' are two different things.
The pity appears to be that when you were an infant your parents did not keep a sufficiently ferocious dog in the house.
The Bible also says 'thou shalt not kill' if I am not mistaken. Now, we can quibble about when life begins.
Obama most assuredly did NOT inherit a war in Libya. He went in freely like any other warmonger would have.
Okay. Granted. Americans also buy more expensive overpriced crap.
Those predictive figures fail to account for the looming disintegration of the EU.
You knew it was coming, I hope.
The National Academy of Scientists is as 'objective' as any other political organization. No amount of hand waving changes the fact that they push a political agenda. Every organization does. That's what they band together to do. Even organizations that don't start out that way get 'stacked' over time and become political advocacy groups in the end.
Not that it matters. We're supposed to go all glassy-eyed because these are 'Scientists' we are talking about. The fact that almost none of them are Climate Scientists doesn't mean anything.
Star Wars was no more influential in it's era than the Hula Hoop. When Lucas dies, and they can finally screw down the lid over the film, it will be remembered as a phenomena. But so was Gilligans Island and the Dick Van Dyke show.
I went to see Star Wars in 1977 at the movie theater, and haven't wanted to spoil the experience by going to any of the sequels.
Quitting his professorship at Stanford to try to monetize the concept seems like an awful big risk to me.
Was he a tenure-track full professor, or just someone hired as a lecturer? I couldn't find any details about that.
Obama is more of a corrupt crony capitalist than a 'leftist.' His roots are in the Chicago political scene, after all. He has many buddies and wealthy supporters in the corporate structure.
That depends. Which child does the toy belong to? And many computer files are completely legally shared.
Your clever example isn't very good, actually.
Sadly, too many people just want to lay back and be entertained.
What bugs me is that for the most part 'online piracy' amounts to people shuffling the same bit patterns back and fourth, round and round forever. Because of how things are now, the same collection of however- many-thousand sound and video files get shuffled around, like the Pokemon cards at a swap-meet. Every 'song' gets shuffled around thousands and thousands of times using lower than optimal means to do so. What a waste, even when torrent protocols are being used.