...Or it's one of the finest examples of our glorious American business model:
1. Patent something, no matter how vague or generalized it is. 2. Sit on said patent and do nothing with it. 3. Wait for someone else to invest all the R&D, production, and marketing resources on something that infringes on your patent. 4. Sue for said infringement. 5. Profit on your patent without making any investment in the product or service that the patent was granted for.
As one of the people who have chosen not to have my web browsing experience ruined with rampant, uncontrolled advertising, I can say that if a website tried to pop up an ad, mask the content behind some overlay ad with a quiz, or generally do anything that interferes with my activities, I will promptly close the offending site and add it to my blacklist of sites that utilize intrusive advertising. I'll hunt down and add blocking filters for ad content from other hosts to prevent it from being displayed on a site. And I always make sure similar measures are put in place on any computer I'm involved with, at work, at home, or when I'm fixing someone else's computer. I've got a perimeter appliance in place at work and at home that allows for URL blocking and filtering, extensions for Firefox (Adblock, etc..), and a massive HOSTS file I install on any computer of my choosing.
I have no problem doing this, either, because I don't believe in paying to be advertised to. I eschew all forms of television (cable/satellite/antenna), radio (satellite, HD, and regular), and any other form of content delivery that I do not have the ability to fend off the glut advertising on. When it comes to my Internet connection, which I do have control over, I am fully justified in blocking any and all ad content because nobody has the right to make a profit off my bandwidth, processing power, LAN network capacity, and the hardware I have control over without my consent. If a webmaster hosting a site with advertising on it wishes to make sure I see their ads, they can cut a usage check payable directly to me for the privileges of advertising on my infrastructure. It costs me money in monthly internet and power bills, upgrade costs, maintenance costs, etc. to keep my infrastructure going at work and at home. Why should a webmaster, who is using advertising on their site to pay for the same costs, be able to use my time, infrastructure, and network for their profit?
In short, pay me and I'll start letting you advertise to me. Otherwise, I'll filter your advertising. If you make it so that I can't do that through more intrusive advertising, or by preventing access to your content without dealing with your ads, I'll block your site entirely from my entire home network and my entire work network. If your site offers premium accounts with a guaranteed ad-free experience and your content is worth paying for, I'll throw down the money for an account without a problem.
If you are "top-flight" the market has no control over you. Your job security is your knowledge and skills, not the salary you get every month.
Here's a bit of helpful information for you:
Creditors who are expecting your monthly payments on time for credit cards, rent, house payments, car payments, and so forth don't take your knowledge and skills in lieu of payment. Only a fool walks away from his current employer without first securing a position at another, especially in this economy. There aren't enough employers out there begging for "top flight" talent to justify walking away from a job because management ran afoul of your opinion.
Furthermore, knowledge and skills are not job security. Rather, they play a significant role as one of the many facets of job security. Other factors, including attitude, ethics, productivity, and communication skills, play equally relevant roles in ensuring job security. You can have all the knowledge and skill in the world at IT, but if you possess only negligible amounts of any of the other aforementioned traits, then you're no better off than the kid flipping burgers for minimum wage.
Exactly. How is this "curriculum" relevant to producing functional citizens in our society in our schools? It doesn't teach them anything they can use in the real world. Is the RIAA expecting employers and higher education institutions to base acceptance on whether or not they received a passing grade in this?
Pretty sure that's Family Guy: Blue Harvest spoof on Star Wars that the whole "INTERGALACTIC PROTON POWERED ELECTRICAL TENTACLED ADVERTISING DROIDS" thing comes from...
I'm not sure what the purpose of these data mining contests are. However, as a member who prefers instant streaming over my XBox 360 over waiting for the mailman to drop off a DVD, I hope the contest yields a better selection of instant playback material. Instant playback on Netflix currently suffers from a mediocre selection of obsolete, boring, B-grade movies. One can only watch Dolph Lundgren's "Retrograde" so many times before questioning whether or not the Netflix membership is even worth it.
Agreed. The easiest solution to this problem is to simply run your own DNS server. I run both a Linux (bind9) and Windows DNS server on my own network and do not perform any lookups using my ISP's servers, OpenDNS, or Treewalk. Anyone with a spare junker PC kicking around the house and the ability to follow guides like those on HowToForge can circumvent this problem with minimal effort.
I'm not surprised this happened and, as much as I'll probably be modded "Troll" for this, I'm not really outraged by it. Everyone responding to this article is fixated on the fact that he got arrested because he was modifying consoles. What I think most people are missing is that he modified them for personal profit, charging people money to have their consoles hacked. IANAL, but it seems to me that had Mr. Crippen provided his hacking services at no charge, he would have probably received (at worst) a simple cease and desist letter or a minor slap on the wrist.
For the record, I'm not against modifying devices to allow them to do things that would fall outside manufacturer specifications. In fact, there's some pretty neat stuff that can be accomplished by using consoles as something other than a video game system.
In short, I don't see anything wrong with Mr. Crippen hacking the XBox, Wii, PS3, or any other console. However, charging money for the "service", knowing full well that content developers would wind up losing out on profits from the sale of games, probably wasn't a smart choice.
I know I'll probably get modded as a troll for this, but the article doesn't offer any actual evidence that Microsoft is changing search engine preferences without users knowing it. Even the author himself doesn't say that there's conclusive evidence. He writes in his article:
"Vista's Event Viewer identified the Windows Search Service as the likely source of the attempt to change my search default."
and
"Well, I can't prove it based solely on the Event Viewer logs, but it's safe to say the search service is the prime suspect."
The author of the article doesn't bother to conduct any meaningful research into the purpose of the Windows Search service or what it actually does. Now I'm all for throwing the punches at Microsoft for the stupid crap they pull and I wouldn't put it past them to do something shady and underhanded like this. However, this article is little more than the rambling conjecture of a computer illiterate who can't tell the difference between a system service and an online search engine. If you're going to post articles about the devious, dirty deeds of Microsoft at least have the common sense to post articles with at least some level of truth behind them.
I'm not seeing how this story or any other story about GM and their "Volt" is noteworthy. The Volt is not a marvel of engineering. It's not innovative. It's the same crappy "hybrid" concept that every other auto maker has tried to push. The Volt only goes 40 miles on a charge before rolling over to the gas engine. And at the nearly $40,000 price point, why bother buying it? If you spent a bit more money, you can buy a Tesla Model S, priced at about $50,000 (assuming you can get the rebate). The Model S doesn't even have a gasoline engine, goes over 7 times farther than the Volt on a single charge, can go from 0 to 60 in under 6 seconds, and looks a hell of a lot better than the Volt IMO.
If GM uses this new laboratory to produce cars with no gasoline engine (all electric), I'm on board. But if they use it to push this ridiculous Volt and other similar hybrids onto the market, it'll be just another waste of our taxpayer dollars.
So the answer is no, I did not try purchasing an incompatible MXM video card to put in a laptop that it wouldn't fit in. I also said I didn't buy the laptop, nor would I ever buy Alienware. Please read the post and know your hardware before responding.
It's not really a huge feat to break the 1Ghz "barrier" for a GPU anyway. And since it's AMD product, it'll run hot as hell and require a massive heatsink. You'll be able to barbecue a steak on your CrossFire enabled rig with two of these installed. Since it's also ATi, the card itself will be really awesome but the drivers released will be buggy and unstable, turning the card into little more than a giant red paperweight.
Couldn't agree more with this assessment. Alienware is hideously overpriced and their systems aren't really that good. I have an Alienware D900T that a friend of mine owns sitting in my closet. The video card stopped working and it's going to cost $500 for the replacement for a wimpy GeForce 6800. He doesn't want to spend the money so I've disassembled it for the good parts and junked the rest. In disassembling the machine, it's obvious that Alienware doesn't back up their bloated prices with anything resembling quality, too.
Nobody in their right mind should be buying Alienware. There's nothing about their machines that you can't get from regular branded PCs and custom built PCs, except for a huge price hike on the Alienware.
Oh you didn't get the memo? The Obama Administration is all about changing names! If you change the name of "War on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operations", it makes it sound SO much better! And those toxic mortgage assets the banks have on their books? Those are now "Legacy Assets". See, by changing the names from the old Bush-era ones to new, trendy Obama names they can just keep Bush policies like Warentless Wiretapping. Speaking of which, I wonder what new, confusing name the Obama Administration is going to come up with for "Warentless Wiretapping". Suggestions?
Second, AT&T cannot do whatever they want, even if they were a private company. There are laws in place that govern everything from employment to the actual business of communications that prevent "private companies" from running afoul of the consumer's rights.
Consider Comcast and their throttling of BitTorrent traffic. If we consider your theory of private companies being able to do whatever they want under the guise of it being a "business decision" to be correct, Comcast should be able to get away with bandwidth throttling of BitTorrent, right? Wrong.
Companies, whether they are privately owned or publicly traded, have laws and regulations that they are supposed to abide by. AT&T can't make a decision, no matter how good it is for the business, if it violates the law. While the system of laws and regulations doesn't always work, it does provide some measure of defense against companies trampling all over the consumer.
I think it would behoove you to check into tax laws, specifically those laws that govern what kind of tax breaks a company gets for charitable donations. Every decision in a company is made with money in mind. If Apple donates any money to a charitable cause, it's because the folks in Accounting determined they'd get a hefty tax break for doing it.
No corporation, including Apple, is in the business of giving money away in exchange for nothing more than the warm, fuzzy feeling they get when donating to charities. It's always about the money and shareholders ALWAYS trump special interests.
I thought I'd throw a post up suggesting Untangle as an open source alternative for network traffic management.
It has quite a few neat features that would otherwise cost you thousands of dollars for an enterprise level appliance from SonicWall, BlueCoat, Coyote Networks, etc. After installing it on a dedicated server in my rack here, I've noticed an almost 50% reduction in our spam intake at the gateway, as Untangle blocks incoming SMTP, POP, and IMAP connections from blacklisted sources. Web traffic on our T1 has improved as well, with Untangle preventing a vast majority of advertisements and other junk found on many websites from being passed back onto our internal network.
Or you could just buy the newest iteration of the game, Gears of War 2: Balls of War Edition, made specifically for the castrated husband who foolishly gave his wife his testicles mounted on a 24 karat gold wedding ring.
Seriously, man. She's your wife. Not your boss or your mom. Grow a pair and tell her where to stick it if she doesn't like it. If she can't live with it, then it's time to trade her in for a different model.
They keep beating the dead horse because the vast majority of parents believe that it's not their responsibility to educate their children on the differences between what is right and what is wrong.
I grew up playing PC games like Duke Nuke 'Em, Doom, Quake, Unreal, Crusader, and many other titles that are considered violent. I own a handgun, and I'm an avid collector of fantasy swords, knives, etc. I still play violent video games, including Call of Duty 4 on my PC and Gears of War on my XBox 360. I also work full time, drive a nice car, pay my taxes, own my own home, and generally lead what most would call a productive life. Despite my exposure to violent games, TV shows, and movies I do not have violent tendencies and I'm perfectly capable of recognizing the differences between right and wrong. I have no desire to go on a killing spree, vandalize property, rob a 7-11, or mug some little old lady for her purse.
It's all "cause and effect", in my opinion. Violent video games, music, TV shows, and movies are not the cause of violence and aggression in children but rather the effect. The real cause behind it is irresponsible parents who assume it's society's job to raise their children. When parents learn that it's their own sole responsibility to raise their children and teach them the differences between right and wrong, we'll see and end to these ridiculous assumptions that violence in video games, music, and the media are the cause behind violence in children.
I actually replaced Windows Vista with Windows Server 2008 Standard x64, which thus far has played every game I've thrown at it. It's about 10GB smaller than Vista and, with a few tweaks, performs VERY well.
Check out http://www.win2008workstation.com./
If Windows 7 shows the same patented buggy, bloatware approach Microsoft took with Vista, I won't be touching it or any future desktop operating system from Microsoft in the future.
"Because of the more robust antipiracy and security features in Vista, most sophisticated piracy rings still continue to focus on XP. But that's changing over time."
The correct statement should have been:
"Because of the unnecessarily huge installation size, multitudes of performance and stability sapping bugs, and Microsoft's patented "Disclaimer Security" features present in Vista, most sophisticated piracy rings have determined that Vista isn't worth pirating at all."
Microsoft definitely has my absolutely honest, most sincere promise to NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER pirate Windows Vista. Or buy it. Or accept it as a gift.
1: how much extra will a roadable airplane cost compared to a normal one?
2: how much will this cost to insure (i'm betting a lot, particularlly for fully comprehensive cover)
3: how long will it take to convert between airplane and car modes?
In summary will it really be cheaper and/or more conviniant than hiring a car at your destination airport?
You didn't ask the most pertinent question:
4. How stupid is the whole idea of a "roadable aircraft"?
The answer? Immensely stupid.
A select few people might want one just for the sake of saying they own one, but in reality the whole idea of a "carplane" just isn't practical. TFA? You can buy a used aircraft for around 1/4 of that price and used the remaining money to either buy cars to be kept at your frequent destinations you fly to or just simply rent the cars when you get there.
Secondly, the safety regulations this thing would have to pass for both ground and air safety will probably "shoot it down" (pun intended) before it even "takes off" (pun intended). And what happens when your carplane get's backed into in a parking lot or some joker swings their door open and dents your wing? If I'm not mistaken, the FAA requires that you ground your aircraft pending a full inspection to determine it's airworthiness if your plane has been even slightly damaged.
The whole idea of a winged car is just not practical. The cost is prohibitively high and there just isn't a necessity for it right now.
I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why 98% of gamers out there are playing pirated versions of their games. EA Games is the gaming industry equivalent of the "Dollar Store". Sure there's a few (and I mean FEW) EA titles that are decent but they're lost amidst a sea of mediocre games that EA pushes out regularly. EA Games putting DRM onto any of their titles is like adding Lo-Jack to your grandma's Chevy Chevette. You may feel good knowing that someone won't get away with stealing it, but at some point you'd have to ask yourself who would want to steal it in the first place.
Slashdot Mirror
...Or it's one of the finest examples of our glorious American business model:
1. Patent something, no matter how vague or generalized it is.
2. Sit on said patent and do nothing with it.
3. Wait for someone else to invest all the R&D, production, and marketing resources on something that infringes on your patent.
4. Sue for said infringement.
5. Profit on your patent without making any investment in the product or service that the patent was granted for.
As one of the people who have chosen not to have my web browsing experience ruined with rampant, uncontrolled advertising, I can say that if a website tried to pop up an ad, mask the content behind some overlay ad with a quiz, or generally do anything that interferes with my activities, I will promptly close the offending site and add it to my blacklist of sites that utilize intrusive advertising. I'll hunt down and add blocking filters for ad content from other hosts to prevent it from being displayed on a site. And I always make sure similar measures are put in place on any computer I'm involved with, at work, at home, or when I'm fixing someone else's computer. I've got a perimeter appliance in place at work and at home that allows for URL blocking and filtering, extensions for Firefox (Adblock, etc..), and a massive HOSTS file I install on any computer of my choosing.
I have no problem doing this, either, because I don't believe in paying to be advertised to. I eschew all forms of television (cable/satellite/antenna), radio (satellite, HD, and regular), and any other form of content delivery that I do not have the ability to fend off the glut advertising on. When it comes to my Internet connection, which I do have control over, I am fully justified in blocking any and all ad content because nobody has the right to make a profit off my bandwidth, processing power, LAN network capacity, and the hardware I have control over without my consent. If a webmaster hosting a site with advertising on it wishes to make sure I see their ads, they can cut a usage check payable directly to me for the privileges of advertising on my infrastructure. It costs me money in monthly internet and power bills, upgrade costs, maintenance costs, etc. to keep my infrastructure going at work and at home. Why should a webmaster, who is using advertising on their site to pay for the same costs, be able to use my time, infrastructure, and network for their profit?
In short, pay me and I'll start letting you advertise to me. Otherwise, I'll filter your advertising. If you make it so that I can't do that through more intrusive advertising, or by preventing access to your content without dealing with your ads, I'll block your site entirely from my entire home network and my entire work network. If your site offers premium accounts with a guaranteed ad-free experience and your content is worth paying for, I'll throw down the money for an account without a problem.
If you are "top-flight" the market has no control over you. Your job security is your knowledge and skills, not the salary you get every month.
Here's a bit of helpful information for you:
Creditors who are expecting your monthly payments on time for credit cards, rent, house payments, car payments, and so forth don't take your knowledge and skills in lieu of payment. Only a fool walks away from his current employer without first securing a position at another, especially in this economy. There aren't enough employers out there begging for "top flight" talent to justify walking away from a job because management ran afoul of your opinion.
Furthermore, knowledge and skills are not job security. Rather, they play a significant role as one of the many facets of job security. Other factors, including attitude, ethics, productivity, and communication skills, play equally relevant roles in ensuring job security. You can have all the knowledge and skill in the world at IT, but if you possess only negligible amounts of any of the other aforementioned traits, then you're no better off than the kid flipping burgers for minimum wage.
I preferred Lewis Black's 3-level system he talked about in one of his comedy shows:
Level 1: "Jesus Christ!"
Level 2: "God dammit!"
Level 3: "Fuck me!"
Exactly. How is this "curriculum" relevant to producing functional citizens in our society in our schools? It doesn't teach them anything they can use in the real world. Is the RIAA expecting employers and higher education institutions to base acceptance on whether or not they received a passing grade in this?
Pretty sure that's Family Guy: Blue Harvest spoof on Star Wars that the whole "INTERGALACTIC PROTON POWERED ELECTRICAL TENTACLED ADVERTISING DROIDS" thing comes from...
I'm not sure what the purpose of these data mining contests are. However, as a member who prefers instant streaming over my XBox 360 over waiting for the mailman to drop off a DVD, I hope the contest yields a better selection of instant playback material. Instant playback on Netflix currently suffers from a mediocre selection of obsolete, boring, B-grade movies. One can only watch Dolph Lundgren's "Retrograde" so many times before questioning whether or not the Netflix membership is even worth it.
Agreed. The easiest solution to this problem is to simply run your own DNS server. I run both a Linux (bind9) and Windows DNS server on my own network and do not perform any lookups using my ISP's servers, OpenDNS, or Treewalk. Anyone with a spare junker PC kicking around the house and the ability to follow guides like those on HowToForge can circumvent this problem with minimal effort.
I'm not surprised this happened and, as much as I'll probably be modded "Troll" for this, I'm not really outraged by it. Everyone responding to this article is fixated on the fact that he got arrested because he was modifying consoles. What I think most people are missing is that he modified them for personal profit, charging people money to have their consoles hacked. IANAL, but it seems to me that had Mr. Crippen provided his hacking services at no charge, he would have probably received (at worst) a simple cease and desist letter or a minor slap on the wrist.
For the record, I'm not against modifying devices to allow them to do things that would fall outside manufacturer specifications. In fact, there's some pretty neat stuff that can be accomplished by using consoles as something other than a video game system.
In short, I don't see anything wrong with Mr. Crippen hacking the XBox, Wii, PS3, or any other console. However, charging money for the "service", knowing full well that content developers would wind up losing out on profits from the sale of games, probably wasn't a smart choice.
I demand a re-release of Full Throttle to be included in this.
I know I'll probably get modded as a troll for this, but the article doesn't offer any actual evidence that Microsoft is changing search engine preferences without users knowing it. Even the author himself doesn't say that there's conclusive evidence. He writes in his article:
"Vista's Event Viewer identified the Windows Search Service as the likely source of the attempt to change my search default."
and
"Well, I can't prove it based solely on the Event Viewer logs, but it's safe to say the search service is the prime suspect."
The author of the article doesn't bother to conduct any meaningful research into the purpose of the Windows Search service or what it actually does. Now I'm all for throwing the punches at Microsoft for the stupid crap they pull and I wouldn't put it past them to do something shady and underhanded like this. However, this article is little more than the rambling conjecture of a computer illiterate who can't tell the difference between a system service and an online search engine. If you're going to post articles about the devious, dirty deeds of Microsoft at least have the common sense to post articles with at least some level of truth behind them.
I'm not seeing how this story or any other story about GM and their "Volt" is noteworthy. The Volt is not a marvel of engineering. It's not innovative. It's the same crappy "hybrid" concept that every other auto maker has tried to push. The Volt only goes 40 miles on a charge before rolling over to the gas engine. And at the nearly $40,000 price point, why bother buying it? If you spent a bit more money, you can buy a Tesla Model S, priced at about $50,000 (assuming you can get the rebate). The Model S doesn't even have a gasoline engine, goes over 7 times farther than the Volt on a single charge, can go from 0 to 60 in under 6 seconds, and looks a hell of a lot better than the Volt IMO.
If GM uses this new laboratory to produce cars with no gasoline engine (all electric), I'm on board. But if they use it to push this ridiculous Volt and other similar hybrids onto the market, it'll be just another waste of our taxpayer dollars.
Did you realize that you are completely wrong about this? The D900T is not MXM.
So the answer is no, I did not try purchasing an incompatible MXM video card to put in a laptop that it wouldn't fit in. I also said I didn't buy the laptop, nor would I ever buy Alienware. Please read the post and know your hardware before responding.
I think it was IBM that broke the 1Ghz CPU barrier.
It's not really a huge feat to break the 1Ghz "barrier" for a GPU anyway. And since it's AMD product, it'll run hot as hell and require a massive heatsink. You'll be able to barbecue a steak on your CrossFire enabled rig with two of these installed. Since it's also ATi, the card itself will be really awesome but the drivers released will be buggy and unstable, turning the card into little more than a giant red paperweight.
The monster cable of pre-built PCs
Couldn't agree more with this assessment. Alienware is hideously overpriced and their systems aren't really that good. I have an Alienware D900T that a friend of mine owns sitting in my closet. The video card stopped working and it's going to cost $500 for the replacement for a wimpy GeForce 6800. He doesn't want to spend the money so I've disassembled it for the good parts and junked the rest. In disassembling the machine, it's obvious that Alienware doesn't back up their bloated prices with anything resembling quality, too.
Nobody in their right mind should be buying Alienware. There's nothing about their machines that you can't get from regular branded PCs and custom built PCs, except for a huge price hike on the Alienware.
Oh you didn't get the memo? The Obama Administration is all about changing names! If you change the name of "War on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operations", it makes it sound SO much better! And those toxic mortgage assets the banks have on their books? Those are now "Legacy Assets". See, by changing the names from the old Bush-era ones to new, trendy Obama names they can just keep Bush policies like Warentless Wiretapping. Speaking of which, I wonder what new, confusing name the Obama Administration is going to come up with for "Warentless Wiretapping". Suggestions?
First off, AT&T is not a private company. It's a publicly traded company.
http://www.nyse.com/about/listed/lcddata.html?ticker=ATT
Second, AT&T cannot do whatever they want, even if they were a private company. There are laws in place that govern everything from employment to the actual business of communications that prevent "private companies" from running afoul of the consumer's rights.
Consider Comcast and their throttling of BitTorrent traffic. If we consider your theory of private companies being able to do whatever they want under the guise of it being a "business decision" to be correct, Comcast should be able to get away with bandwidth throttling of BitTorrent, right? Wrong.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/fcc-rules-against-comcast-bit-torrent-blocking
Companies, whether they are privately owned or publicly traded, have laws and regulations that they are supposed to abide by. AT&T can't make a decision, no matter how good it is for the business, if it violates the law. While the system of laws and regulations doesn't always work, it does provide some measure of defense against companies trampling all over the consumer.
I think it would behoove you to check into tax laws, specifically those laws that govern what kind of tax breaks a company gets for charitable donations. Every decision in a company is made with money in mind. If Apple donates any money to a charitable cause, it's because the folks in Accounting determined they'd get a hefty tax break for doing it. No corporation, including Apple, is in the business of giving money away in exchange for nothing more than the warm, fuzzy feeling they get when donating to charities. It's always about the money and shareholders ALWAYS trump special interests.
I thought I'd throw a post up suggesting Untangle as an open source alternative for network traffic management. It has quite a few neat features that would otherwise cost you thousands of dollars for an enterprise level appliance from SonicWall, BlueCoat, Coyote Networks, etc. After installing it on a dedicated server in my rack here, I've noticed an almost 50% reduction in our spam intake at the gateway, as Untangle blocks incoming SMTP, POP, and IMAP connections from blacklisted sources. Web traffic on our T1 has improved as well, with Untangle preventing a vast majority of advertisements and other junk found on many websites from being passed back onto our internal network.
Or you could just buy the newest iteration of the game, Gears of War 2: Balls of War Edition, made specifically for the castrated husband who foolishly gave his wife his testicles mounted on a 24 karat gold wedding ring. Seriously, man. She's your wife. Not your boss or your mom. Grow a pair and tell her where to stick it if she doesn't like it. If she can't live with it, then it's time to trade her in for a different model.
I grew up playing PC games like Duke Nuke 'Em, Doom, Quake, Unreal, Crusader, and many other titles that are considered violent. I own a handgun, and I'm an avid collector of fantasy swords, knives, etc. I still play violent video games, including Call of Duty 4 on my PC and Gears of War on my XBox 360. I also work full time, drive a nice car, pay my taxes, own my own home, and generally lead what most would call a productive life. Despite my exposure to violent games, TV shows, and movies I do not have violent tendencies and I'm perfectly capable of recognizing the differences between right and wrong. I have no desire to go on a killing spree, vandalize property, rob a 7-11, or mug some little old lady for her purse.
It's all "cause and effect", in my opinion. Violent video games, music, TV shows, and movies are not the cause of violence and aggression in children but rather the effect. The real cause behind it is irresponsible parents who assume it's society's job to raise their children. When parents learn that it's their own sole responsibility to raise their children and teach them the differences between right and wrong, we'll see and end to these ridiculous assumptions that violence in video games, music, and the media are the cause behind violence in children.
I actually replaced Windows Vista with Windows Server 2008 Standard x64, which thus far has played every game I've thrown at it. It's about 10GB smaller than Vista and, with a few tweaks, performs VERY well. Check out http://www.win2008workstation.com./ If Windows 7 shows the same patented buggy, bloatware approach Microsoft took with Vista, I won't be touching it or any future desktop operating system from Microsoft in the future.
"Because of the more robust antipiracy and security features in Vista, most sophisticated piracy rings still continue to focus on XP. But that's changing over time."
The correct statement should have been:
"Because of the unnecessarily huge installation size, multitudes of performance and stability sapping bugs, and Microsoft's patented "Disclaimer Security" features present in Vista, most sophisticated piracy rings have determined that Vista isn't worth pirating at all."
Microsoft definitely has my absolutely honest, most sincere promise to NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER pirate Windows Vista. Or buy it. Or accept it as a gift.
The big questions are
1: how much extra will a roadable airplane cost compared to a normal one? 2: how much will this cost to insure (i'm betting a lot, particularlly for fully comprehensive cover) 3: how long will it take to convert between airplane and car modes?
In summary will it really be cheaper and/or more conviniant than hiring a car at your destination airport?
You didn't ask the most pertinent question: 4. How stupid is the whole idea of a "roadable aircraft"? The answer? Immensely stupid. A select few people might want one just for the sake of saying they own one, but in reality the whole idea of a "carplane" just isn't practical. TFA? You can buy a used aircraft for around 1/4 of that price and used the remaining money to either buy cars to be kept at your frequent destinations you fly to or just simply rent the cars when you get there. Secondly, the safety regulations this thing would have to pass for both ground and air safety will probably "shoot it down" (pun intended) before it even "takes off" (pun intended). And what happens when your carplane get's backed into in a parking lot or some joker swings their door open and dents your wing? If I'm not mistaken, the FAA requires that you ground your aircraft pending a full inspection to determine it's airworthiness if your plane has been even slightly damaged. The whole idea of a winged car is just not practical. The cost is prohibitively high and there just isn't a necessity for it right now.
I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out why 98% of gamers out there are playing pirated versions of their games. EA Games is the gaming industry equivalent of the "Dollar Store". Sure there's a few (and I mean FEW) EA titles that are decent but they're lost amidst a sea of mediocre games that EA pushes out regularly. EA Games putting DRM onto any of their titles is like adding Lo-Jack to your grandma's Chevy Chevette. You may feel good knowing that someone won't get away with stealing it, but at some point you'd have to ask yourself who would want to steal it in the first place.