AMD IS building plants in the usa and Intel china?
AMD does not manufacture anything any more, they are entirely development. They do not have any fabs, it's all outsourced to Global Foundries (IIRC) and GF have fabs in Germany, Singapore and the US. Every AMD chip I've bought in the last 5 years has been fabbed in Germany and assembled in Malaysia. Note that AMD is not Global Foundries only customer.
Intel on the other hand has 6 foundries in the US, 2 in Israel (surely undeniable evidence of Intel's nefarious evil/sarcasm) and 1 in Ireland. They have manufacturing plants in China, Costa Rica, Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam. Chip fabrication is something that the third world really cannot do due to the requirement for highly skilled labour. So all the fabs are in the first world (yes, Singapore counts as the first world).
"A single unelected commercial entity has worldwide control over what gets published for" the PS3.
"A single unelected commercial entity has worldwide control over what gets published for" the Wii.
Let me know when Sony forces you to buy A Bravia TV to use a PS3. Also let me know when Nintendo forces all third party game developers to sell through the N store.
Such a terrible analogy, how did it ever get modded insightful. you're not comparing apples to apples, you're not even comparing apples to oranges, you're comparing apples to rocks as far as corporate policies go. Compared to Apple, Sony is the paragon of freedom (and I don't have kind words to say about Sony's policies either).
I'd like to posit that Apple doesn't have complete control over what content is available for the iPhone/iPad, because it has a web browser.
Just let me view site number 1. nope, flash.
Site number 2 is HTML 5, nope, they use Theora.
Site number 3 displays but doesn't work because I cant use the JavaScript controls.
I'd like to posit that just because it has a web browser does not make it free. I'd also like to posit that Apple maintains 100% control over what can and cannot run on that browser and seeing as you cant install an alternate browser effectively decide what you can and cannot view on the web.
Electronic readers are a distraction right now but I think it's clear that it won't be that way forever.
But they will be that way until I can buy a cheap no-name Chinese brand reader for A$40 and have it work with any e-book. Publishers more then the technology are shooting e-readers in the foot by attempting to maintain dictatorial control over content after it's been paid for. If we took the reins away from publishers and set an e-book standard (I dunno, like PDF or RTF) we'd have sub A$100 readers in no time.
It takes decades for technology to integrate itself into our lives, 30 years on and not everyone has a personal computer. This will take a while and the publishers aren't helping.
3 years from now? H.264 is on my computers, my blu ray player, my phone, my camera, my video camera, it's everywhere now. In order for any codec to replace H.264 it has to be technically superior, just not "free". And from what I've seen, VP8 is better than Theora, but still not H.264.
No, it has to be used more by providers. Why does everything have a H.264 codec, because Youtube and everyone else uses H.246. What Google needs to do is to get providers to switch to VP8 and make their intentions clear to swtich off H.264. HW manufacturers will follow the providers.
Google is the ONLY major player around HTML5 that is playing fair, and that is something we have to recognize. Maybe there's some hope for the future...
This is true, but it does not guarantee a victory for Google or for open standards.
We have entered the FUDwar, the FUD launching has begun in full and it does not matter that open standards and Google are slinging truth. With the patent case it does not matter what is true necessarily but what MPEG-LA and its backers, most notably Apple and Microsoft can get judges and lawyers to believe. Google also understands this.
Right now, Google and open standards are the Allies, Apple is Nazi Germany and Microsoft is Imperial Japan. I suppose IBM would be the Soviet Union but that's not withstanding, all sides are looking for the atomic bomb, and that bomb is a patent law which decimates the opposing side.
The war is far from over, in fact it has only just begun.
And the guy sitting beside you on the plane will have every book ever published, entire magazine collections, and the means to search them, clip them, and annotate them on his tablet. I hope you don't have far to travel, because 86 of those 128 pages you are lugging around are advertisements.
And the guy sitting beside him will actually be able to read because his dead tree isn't out of batteries.
When I go on a flight, I'll pick a book or two to read like most people. I don't want 200,000 choices all indexed, I want one story beginning to end. If I need information indexed I'll use my laptop which is faster and better suited to the function. BTW, if 86 glossy A4 pages makes a difference to you, get to the gym as they will weigh less then 100 grams.
The Ipad wont make one iota of difference to print media, much in the same way as the Kindle didn't or the Nook didn't. Why? Well that's simple, the people who are willing to give up on dead tree have done that already and get their information from the web. I don't get my industry information in print any more, I've completely switched to web (same with news) but my boss sits in his office reading his freshly delivered copy of BRW (Business Review Weekly) even though he knows the information is available for the same price minus delivery fee online. The accountant still walks in with a copy of the West Australian 3 days a week despite more up to date news being available on www.abc.net.au/news.
Books are a different story, when the online version costs as much as the dead tree version I see no disadvantages, it's not like I'm going to dispose of a good book and a bad one goes to the 2nd hand bookstore (cant do that one with e-books).
As time progresses how are Apple and Microsoft going to compete - even it they join forces...
And people look at me strange when I say...
Merger of this decade, Microsoft and Apple. Neither company has had to compete in over 20 years and I seriously doubt either could handle it. Eventually both will get into enough trouble that a merger will be the only way forward for both companies, especially when Jobs leaves. Microsoft will merge with Apple, MS maintains the office and business line whilst Apple maintains the consumer lines. Fanboys will turn up their nose at the idea of the Microsoft Iphone and businesses will turn up their nose at Apples enterprise support.
So can a car, most cleaners that you use in your household, various drugs you buy at the pharmacy (over the counter), a baseball bat, a golf club, a nail gun, a car battery, anti-freeze, a kitchen knife set, and so on and so on and so on. Just because something can be used to kill a person doesn't mean it will be used to kill a person. Just sayin'
A gun had practically no other use but to kill something. Unlike all those other things you mentioned.
There's a big difference between x can kill and x was made to kill. Is there no difference between drain cleaner and VX, after all both are just chemicals and both are capable of killing. Should we sell VX unrestricted or is it easier just to keep the restrictions on firearm sales and admit that they are there for a good reason. After all I can use VX more effectively to defend my home the I could with a gun.
I know I'm not alone in feeling uncomfortable about Western society's view of sex and nudity as something dangerous, mysterious, and generally negative.
Ahem...
The US is not the Western World.
In Australia sexual education began in primary school with the simplified explanation of reproduction (where to babies come from). The majority of sex ed is in highschool, this focuses on both the scientific (explanation of ovulation, gametes, cell division) and the social aspects (contraception, peer pressure, STI's) of sex. Much like with drug education it's written and conducted in a way that it does not promote the sex rather it accepts that teenagers are going to have sex so you may as well know how to do it safely. Socially, sex is not viewed as evil and dangerous in Australia, which is one of the many reasons Senator Conroy seems like such a nut case (well, he is) and has essentially gotten nowhere with his plans.
Then again here it's not unusual to see a naked breast or simulated sex (I.E. grinding under the covers) on the telly here and we are a lot less liberal about these things then many mainland European nations.
Jewish boys and girls become men and women at 13, not 18? In Iran its 15, In Scotland its 16. Who decided you weren't being taken advantage of at 18? does something magical happen on the last night of your 17th year that renders you mature?
You cant even drink a beer in the US until you are 21. There is no international standard on this one.
In my reckoning, you should be able to star in an adult film when your nation of residence deems you old enough to take part in your governance, sacrifice your life for your nation and purchase an alcoholic beverage. For the vast majority of the western world this is 18, that being said I haven't seen any Israeli porn, let alone ones under the age of 18, the Persian pronography industry is also relatively quiet and as for Scotland, it wouldn't be the first porno where both parties wore a skirt (I think I've just earned the ire of 90% of the worlds ginger population).
The point is one should be able to make the decision when one is old enough to accept responsibility. Generally a 16 yr old girl is not considered to have this but at 18 will have at least two years experience at making decisions on an adult level.
Whilst I agree with your first two points your second two are horribly, horribly flawed.
* Shes a drawing
* Shes a computer generated image/video
Pornography describes the content, not the medium. Anime and Hentai should be governed under the same ratings system as live action and the same as live action, the vast majority of Hentai is not CP. Saying cartoon porn is not porn is like telling me a cartoon comedy is not a comedy because it is a cartoon. So, should I go in to the lounge room and tell everyone to stop laughing because it's a cartoon and not real comedy.
What we have here is that a cartoon comedy garners the same reaction as a live action comedy. Why is this different for pornography. The idea of a ratings system is to help people make informed decisions about media, I would not think that Hentai and many Anime videos are in the same league as Toy Story or Wall-E. With cartoons and live action, the human reaction is the same and here in lies the problem, people who like CP are sick (mentally) regardless of whether it is live action or animated so this should not be hidden simply because the medium is animation.
I'm sorry if this doesn't jive with the groupthink(TM) but I cannot fathom the logic that just because the medium is a animation that the content is irrelevant. One of the last questions I ever want to be confronted with is "uncle mike, what is that man doing to that lady" after she has been watching cartoons and to give some context to the rabid civil libertarians who will not bother reading my post and respond with frothing at the mouth projections about my puritanism, I'm a person who has absolutely no problems with people who go to places and pay 18 yr old Thai girls for consensual sex (non consensual sex ends in someone learning Muay Thai from a 5 ft 40 KG girl the hard way so it's really a moot point) but in no way would I talk about it with my sisters 7 yr old.
If CP was just 17 year olds that you had no reason to believe they where below legal age
The law should never be black and white. I think we can all agree that child pornography is bad Mkay but what is the difference between a 17 yr old topless girl and a 12 yr old having sex with a 30 yr old? Black and white laws make no distinction.
Obviously the latter is bad but can the vast majority of people tell the difference between a 17 yr old girl and a 18 yr old girl? Ergo judges should be able to make judgement calls based on the evidence. Someone possessing pornography should not be put on sex offender lists, if such lists it should be reserved for actual sex offences (rape, makers of under-age pornography). This also extends to levels of pornography, a topless picture should garner less of a penalty then penetration.
For the most part, the people who actively look for and download CP are not well (mentally). Normal people like you and I would have adverse reactions if we accidentally saw this material, some more then others. Those who are looking for the less serious types can be helped with counselling, those who are looking for the more extreme forms should be put where they can do no harm.
I think technology ought to enable a more direct digital democracy, rather than the representative democracy we now have.
I agree, more involvement with reps and the governmental system is a good thing but this needs to be given in equal measure to all people (regardless of whether they use it). Giving people direct control over where their tax money is spent is not this however, it will only result in too many uninformed and manipulated choices being made and no way to stop it.
Apple's stock value is based on the perception of a phenomenal rate of growth. Microsofts stock value is based on steady sales.
MSFT maintains its value by doing the same amount of business each year, if APPL does not maintain its phenomenal rate of growth its stock will drop. MS survived it's worst news in it's entire history, vista was a massive failure and businesses have been cutting back on Windows licenses like mad yet MSFT stocks are in a slow decline. If Apple posts just one quarter of loss, or one serious Mac/Iphone virus outbreak then stockholders will jump ship, when this happens the stock price will plummet. The GP said this but you got stuck on the details of an analogy, not the point.
In case you haven't been paying attention for the last few years, this is exactly what happened to the economy in most of the western world. US and European governments gambled on an unrealistic rate of economic growth, when this reached a tipping point (the rate of growth slowed) economies collapsed. Now Apple is gambling on an unrealistic growth rate in sales, it's stock price is the wager as Apple has no real assets to back it up unlike MS (who went through a similar decline when Vista was rejected by business). We call it a bubble because when it bursts, there will be little of it left, it wont reduce by 10%, it will reduce by 50-90% like the.com bust. In the GFC, safe things like oil, iron and the USD lost 50% of their value overnight.
Last year, Exxon made about 2.5 times the profit of Apple, and had about 8 times the revenue. They also pay a nice dividend on their stock. How Apple is valued so close to Exxon really is a mystery. You need energy to live; mp3 players and iPhones? Not so much.
Perception.
Exxon, MS, IBM et al. all have real products with real continuous revenue streams. Apple has a very carefully crafted image, Apple's perceived value is around Apples potential for growth, Exxon's perceived value is around Exxon having an asset and a market. So in order for Exxon to maintain it's position it simply needs to keep doing what it's doing, if Apple's insane level of growth does not continue the bottom will fall right out, this is why people think its a bubble. People forget when Steve bandies about the x hundred percent growth over Q1 2009 is that Q1 2009 was in the middle of the worst economic times in living memory, not even WWII saw this level of economic damage.
I should be fair, it's not just Jobs touting this, HTC, Dell, HP are all reporting a bumper Q1 for 2010, all using the same flawed statistic I mentioned above but by far Apple has been the loudest.
I'd love to be able to control where my tax dollars go... so I'd be able to say, "30% to education, 10% to research, 20% to paying off national debt, 0% to the DoD". Congress can still fight over what's left.
The problem we have here is that everyone will assign money to their pet projects. It would be worse then pork for the pollies, it would be pork for the masses. I think political advertising in the US is bad enough as it is (you'll never get away with it in Australia) but this would make it even worse. False prophets on the TV every 10 minutes telling you to take money out of issue Y and put it into issue X, trying to guilt or goad you into moving funds towards their interests. After that you'll have recommendations from political parties, workplaces and religious groups to place your funds where it does the party, company or god the most good. After this you'll have the die hard militarists who will put 100% into the military and attack anyone who doesnt. Meanwhile things you dont ever think about like sanitation, gas/water utilities and so forth get little in actual funding.
From all I gather, that is hardly the case in most districts, and even where it appears to be, you can't be certain. I know over here in Germany it took the founding of a new party (the pirate party) before I considered voting to be a possibility to express my preferences properly at all. All the others are either bought scumbags (major parties) or lunatics (minor parties) or both or somewhere in between.
Things in Germany are very different from the electoral systems in the western world. In Australia, Canada and the UK who use the preferential voting systems minor parties find it very hard to get in, so most politicians align themselves with one of the two major parties. The biggest problem with this is that I vote on a local level for federal elections, If I vote for the Greens and the Greens do not win the seat in my electorate my vote automatically goes to whomever the Greens gave preference to, so I really have to choose which of the two major parties I want in. This works well for the House as that has to be done on a seat by seat basis but for the senate it does not. In the last UK elections, the Liberal Democrats received a bit under a third of the votes yet do not have a third of the seats in the UK senate (or what it's equivalent is called) because in many cases the vote passed to the parties preference.
Well the fifth cat got run over but we didnt want to disappoint the kids so we got an identical cat. Then that one ran away. Did the same thing and that one drowned. the next cat ran away to join the second cat, now we are effectively on the fifth version of the fifth cat, We call him cat 5e.
It's called "an external hard drive". Plug it in via USB. One terabyte of space for a hundred bucks (probably less, now.)
If I have 4 GB to back up, in a proper manner I'd need to buy an A$100 disk each month, as well as at least four disks to cycle and hope that they don't fail whilst sitting around in a cupboard. Because I need several different backup devices to avoid a single point of failure and to provide several historical restore points in case the backup media failed or the file itself was corrupted (I.E. I can go back to before that occurred). Using removable HDD's for backup is not a good option.
I backup 6 TB at work, using LTO-4 tapes I get between 800 and 1200 GB per tape. A LTO-4 is about A$60-80, A 1 TB hard drive is, if you're lucky A$110. In addition to this a hard drive is a lot easier to render completely inoperable then a tape (hammer some nails into both, you can spool the tape onto another container, what can I do with the HDD)
Until that thing comes out, USB sticks are going to be 25 TB too. And much smaller. And not prone to scratching, sunlight, bending, dust, etc. And for everything else there is HDDs/SSDs.
Until you can produce them for under $0.2 a piece forget about it.
If I have to distribute 1,000,000 20 MB files to someone else's retail chain (read: physical stores), what media would you choose knowing the consumer already doesn't want to pay what I am charging.
For the last several releases, Ubuntu has dealt very poorly with Intel video cards. Now to be fair, this isn't entirely their fault; they were impacted by the switch to DRI2, GEM, Modesetting, etc. However they haven't handled it gracefully. I have three systems -- HTPC (Dell Studio Hybrid), laptop (Lenovo SL400), and a netbook (Acer Aspire One) -- that use the i915 driver, and both 9.04 and 9.10 were horrible (no 3D acceleration, poor 2D performance, etc.). In fact 9.10 (and possibly 9.04) required me to pass a kernel parameter to disable modesetting (i915.modeset=0) to even get to a GUI to install.
9.04 and 9.10 ran fine on my Lenovo R400 (Intel IGM 4500HD, C2D 2.1 GHz, 2 GB RAM) better then Windows Vista and even XP for most web browsing. I did not encounter this problem, not saying you didn't have it but there may be a bigger problem at work (specific HW or FW revision perhaps).
Slashdot Mirror
AMD does not manufacture anything any more, they are entirely development. They do not have any fabs, it's all outsourced to Global Foundries (IIRC) and GF have fabs in Germany, Singapore and the US. Every AMD chip I've bought in the last 5 years has been fabbed in Germany and assembled in Malaysia. Note that AMD is not Global Foundries only customer.
/sarcasm) and 1 in Ireland. They have manufacturing plants in China, Costa Rica, Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam. Chip fabrication is something that the third world really cannot do due to the requirement for highly skilled labour. So all the fabs are in the first world (yes, Singapore counts as the first world).
Intel on the other hand has 6 foundries in the US, 2 in Israel (surely undeniable evidence of Intel's nefarious evil
I live in Perth, Western Australia. I can assure you that this has been happening for some time.
Let me know when Sony forces you to buy A Bravia TV to use a PS3. Also let me know when Nintendo forces all third party game developers to sell through the N store.
Such a terrible analogy, how did it ever get modded insightful. you're not comparing apples to apples, you're not even comparing apples to oranges, you're comparing apples to rocks as far as corporate policies go. Compared to Apple, Sony is the paragon of freedom (and I don't have kind words to say about Sony's policies either).
Just let me view site number 1. nope, flash.
Site number 2 is HTML 5, nope, they use Theora.
Site number 3 displays but doesn't work because I cant use the JavaScript controls.
I'd like to posit that just because it has a web browser does not make it free. I'd also like to posit that Apple maintains 100% control over what can and cannot run on that browser and seeing as you cant install an alternate browser effectively decide what you can and cannot view on the web.
But they will be that way until I can buy a cheap no-name Chinese brand reader for A$40 and have it work with any e-book. Publishers more then the technology are shooting e-readers in the foot by attempting to maintain dictatorial control over content after it's been paid for. If we took the reins away from publishers and set an e-book standard (I dunno, like PDF or RTF) we'd have sub A$100 readers in no time.
It takes decades for technology to integrate itself into our lives, 30 years on and not everyone has a personal computer. This will take a while and the publishers aren't helping.
No, it has to be used more by providers. Why does everything have a H.264 codec, because Youtube and everyone else uses H.246. What Google needs to do is to get providers to switch to VP8 and make their intentions clear to swtich off H.264. HW manufacturers will follow the providers.
This is true, but it does not guarantee a victory for Google or for open standards.
We have entered the FUDwar, the FUD launching has begun in full and it does not matter that open standards and Google are slinging truth. With the patent case it does not matter what is true necessarily but what MPEG-LA and its backers, most notably Apple and Microsoft can get judges and lawyers to believe. Google also understands this.
Right now, Google and open standards are the Allies, Apple is Nazi Germany and Microsoft is Imperial Japan. I suppose IBM would be the Soviet Union but that's not withstanding, all sides are looking for the atomic bomb, and that bomb is a patent law which decimates the opposing side.
The war is far from over, in fact it has only just begun.
And the guy sitting beside him will actually be able to read because his dead tree isn't out of batteries.
When I go on a flight, I'll pick a book or two to read like most people. I don't want 200,000 choices all indexed, I want one story beginning to end. If I need information indexed I'll use my laptop which is faster and better suited to the function. BTW, if 86 glossy A4 pages makes a difference to you, get to the gym as they will weigh less then 100 grams.
The Ipad wont make one iota of difference to print media, much in the same way as the Kindle didn't or the Nook didn't. Why? Well that's simple, the people who are willing to give up on dead tree have done that already and get their information from the web. I don't get my industry information in print any more, I've completely switched to web (same with news) but my boss sits in his office reading his freshly delivered copy of BRW (Business Review Weekly) even though he knows the information is available for the same price minus delivery fee online. The accountant still walks in with a copy of the West Australian 3 days a week despite more up to date news being available on www.abc.net.au/news.
Books are a different story, when the online version costs as much as the dead tree version I see no disadvantages, it's not like I'm going to dispose of a good book and a bad one goes to the 2nd hand bookstore (cant do that one with e-books).
Precisely because it's a serious concern. Apple fanboys need to censor the problems with the Iphone in order to pretend they don't exist.
And people look at me strange when I say...
Merger of this decade, Microsoft and Apple. Neither company has had to compete in over 20 years and I seriously doubt either could handle it. Eventually both will get into enough trouble that a merger will be the only way forward for both companies, especially when Jobs leaves. Microsoft will merge with Apple, MS maintains the office and business line whilst Apple maintains the consumer lines. Fanboys will turn up their nose at the idea of the Microsoft Iphone and businesses will turn up their nose at Apples enterprise support.
A gun had practically no other use but to kill something. Unlike all those other things you mentioned.
There's a big difference between x can kill and x was made to kill. Is there no difference between drain cleaner and VX, after all both are just chemicals and both are capable of killing. Should we sell VX unrestricted or is it easier just to keep the restrictions on firearm sales and admit that they are there for a good reason. After all I can use VX more effectively to defend my home the I could with a gun.
"Just saying" is a weak excuse.
Ahem...
The US is not the Western World.
In Australia sexual education began in primary school with the simplified explanation of reproduction (where to babies come from). The majority of sex ed is in highschool, this focuses on both the scientific (explanation of ovulation, gametes, cell division) and the social aspects (contraception, peer pressure, STI's) of sex. Much like with drug education it's written and conducted in a way that it does not promote the sex rather it accepts that teenagers are going to have sex so you may as well know how to do it safely. Socially, sex is not viewed as evil and dangerous in Australia, which is one of the many reasons Senator Conroy seems like such a nut case (well, he is) and has essentially gotten nowhere with his plans.
Then again here it's not unusual to see a naked breast or simulated sex (I.E. grinding under the covers) on the telly here and we are a lot less liberal about these things then many mainland European nations.
You cant even drink a beer in the US until you are 21. There is no international standard on this one.
In my reckoning, you should be able to star in an adult film when your nation of residence deems you old enough to take part in your governance, sacrifice your life for your nation and purchase an alcoholic beverage. For the vast majority of the western world this is 18, that being said I haven't seen any Israeli porn, let alone ones under the age of 18, the Persian pronography industry is also relatively quiet and as for Scotland, it wouldn't be the first porno where both parties wore a skirt (I think I've just earned the ire of 90% of the worlds ginger population).
The point is one should be able to make the decision when one is old enough to accept responsibility. Generally a 16 yr old girl is not considered to have this but at 18 will have at least two years experience at making decisions on an adult level.
Pornography describes the content, not the medium. Anime and Hentai should be governed under the same ratings system as live action and the same as live action, the vast majority of Hentai is not CP. Saying cartoon porn is not porn is like telling me a cartoon comedy is not a comedy because it is a cartoon. So, should I go in to the lounge room and tell everyone to stop laughing because it's a cartoon and not real comedy.
What we have here is that a cartoon comedy garners the same reaction as a live action comedy. Why is this different for pornography. The idea of a ratings system is to help people make informed decisions about media, I would not think that Hentai and many Anime videos are in the same league as Toy Story or Wall-E. With cartoons and live action, the human reaction is the same and here in lies the problem, people who like CP are sick (mentally) regardless of whether it is live action or animated so this should not be hidden simply because the medium is animation.
I'm sorry if this doesn't jive with the groupthink(TM) but I cannot fathom the logic that just because the medium is a animation that the content is irrelevant. One of the last questions I ever want to be confronted with is "uncle mike, what is that man doing to that lady" after she has been watching cartoons and to give some context to the rabid civil libertarians who will not bother reading my post and respond with frothing at the mouth projections about my puritanism, I'm a person who has absolutely no problems with people who go to places and pay 18 yr old Thai girls for consensual sex (non consensual sex ends in someone learning Muay Thai from a 5 ft 40 KG girl the hard way so it's really a moot point) but in no way would I talk about it with my sisters 7 yr old.
The law should never be black and white. I think we can all agree that child pornography is bad Mkay but what is the difference between a 17 yr old topless girl and a 12 yr old having sex with a 30 yr old? Black and white laws make no distinction.
Obviously the latter is bad but can the vast majority of people tell the difference between a 17 yr old girl and a 18 yr old girl? Ergo judges should be able to make judgement calls based on the evidence. Someone possessing pornography should not be put on sex offender lists, if such lists it should be reserved for actual sex offences (rape, makers of under-age pornography). This also extends to levels of pornography, a topless picture should garner less of a penalty then penetration.
For the most part, the people who actively look for and download CP are not well (mentally). Normal people like you and I would have adverse reactions if we accidentally saw this material, some more then others. Those who are looking for the less serious types can be helped with counselling, those who are looking for the more extreme forms should be put where they can do no harm.
We shall,
sudo configure that.2.4.5443.4 --with-fun
sudo make
sudo make install
I agree, more involvement with reps and the governmental system is a good thing but this needs to be given in equal measure to all people (regardless of whether they use it). Giving people direct control over where their tax money is spent is not this however, it will only result in too many uninformed and manipulated choices being made and no way to stop it.
Apple's stock value is based on the perception of a phenomenal rate of growth. Microsofts stock value is based on steady sales.
.com bust. In the GFC, safe things like oil, iron and the USD lost 50% of their value overnight.
MSFT maintains its value by doing the same amount of business each year, if APPL does not maintain its phenomenal rate of growth its stock will drop. MS survived it's worst news in it's entire history, vista was a massive failure and businesses have been cutting back on Windows licenses like mad yet MSFT stocks are in a slow decline. If Apple posts just one quarter of loss, or one serious Mac/Iphone virus outbreak then stockholders will jump ship, when this happens the stock price will plummet. The GP said this but you got stuck on the details of an analogy, not the point.
In case you haven't been paying attention for the last few years, this is exactly what happened to the economy in most of the western world. US and European governments gambled on an unrealistic rate of economic growth, when this reached a tipping point (the rate of growth slowed) economies collapsed. Now Apple is gambling on an unrealistic growth rate in sales, it's stock price is the wager as Apple has no real assets to back it up unlike MS (who went through a similar decline when Vista was rejected by business). We call it a bubble because when it bursts, there will be little of it left, it wont reduce by 10%, it will reduce by 50-90% like the
Perception.
Exxon, MS, IBM et al. all have real products with real continuous revenue streams. Apple has a very carefully crafted image, Apple's perceived value is around Apples potential for growth, Exxon's perceived value is around Exxon having an asset and a market. So in order for Exxon to maintain it's position it simply needs to keep doing what it's doing, if Apple's insane level of growth does not continue the bottom will fall right out, this is why people think its a bubble. People forget when Steve bandies about the x hundred percent growth over Q1 2009 is that Q1 2009 was in the middle of the worst economic times in living memory, not even WWII saw this level of economic damage.
I should be fair, it's not just Jobs touting this, HTC, Dell, HP are all reporting a bumper Q1 for 2010, all using the same flawed statistic I mentioned above but by far Apple has been the loudest.
The problem we have here is that everyone will assign money to their pet projects. It would be worse then pork for the pollies, it would be pork for the masses. I think political advertising in the US is bad enough as it is (you'll never get away with it in Australia) but this would make it even worse. False prophets on the TV every 10 minutes telling you to take money out of issue Y and put it into issue X, trying to guilt or goad you into moving funds towards their interests. After that you'll have recommendations from political parties, workplaces and religious groups to place your funds where it does the party, company or god the most good. After this you'll have the die hard militarists who will put 100% into the military and attack anyone who doesnt. Meanwhile things you dont ever think about like sanitation, gas/water utilities and so forth get little in actual funding.
Things in Germany are very different from the electoral systems in the western world. In Australia, Canada and the UK who use the preferential voting systems minor parties find it very hard to get in, so most politicians align themselves with one of the two major parties. The biggest problem with this is that I vote on a local level for federal elections, If I vote for the Greens and the Greens do not win the seat in my electorate my vote automatically goes to whomever the Greens gave preference to, so I really have to choose which of the two major parties I want in. This works well for the House as that has to be done on a seat by seat basis but for the senate it does not. In the last UK elections, the Liberal Democrats received a bit under a third of the votes yet do not have a third of the seats in the UK senate (or what it's equivalent is called) because in many cases the vote passed to the parties preference.
Well the fifth cat got run over but we didnt want to disappoint the kids so we got an identical cat. Then that one ran away. Did the same thing and that one drowned. the next cat ran away to join the second cat, now we are effectively on the fifth version of the fifth cat, We call him cat 5e.
If I have 4 GB to back up, in a proper manner I'd need to buy an A$100 disk each month, as well as at least four disks to cycle and hope that they don't fail whilst sitting around in a cupboard. Because I need several different backup devices to avoid a single point of failure and to provide several historical restore points in case the backup media failed or the file itself was corrupted (I.E. I can go back to before that occurred). Using removable HDD's for backup is not a good option.
I backup 6 TB at work, using LTO-4 tapes I get between 800 and 1200 GB per tape. A LTO-4 is about A$60-80, A 1 TB hard drive is, if you're lucky A$110. In addition to this a hard drive is a lot easier to render completely inoperable then a tape (hammer some nails into both, you can spool the tape onto another container, what can I do with the HDD)
Until you can produce them for under $0.2 a piece forget about it.
If I have to distribute 1,000,000 20 MB files to someone else's retail chain (read: physical stores), what media would you choose knowing the consumer already doesn't want to pay what I am charging.
9.04 and 9.10 ran fine on my Lenovo R400 (Intel IGM 4500HD, C2D 2.1 GHz, 2 GB RAM) better then Windows Vista and even XP for most web browsing. I did not encounter this problem, not saying you didn't have it but there may be a bigger problem at work (specific HW or FW revision perhaps).