Hell, can drop the "free software" part of that and just leave in the "healthy ecosystem" and it would still be just as true.
But thats the kicker isn't it. Everyone here on slashdot cares about tech issues, but the vast majority of us don't put that same level of expertise into environmental issues, so when it comes time to vote in our democracy of choice we'll make stupid decisions. Just like other vast majority that make dumb decisions about tech. (I seem to recall reading some old communist propaganda that basically described all democracy in these terms.)
I suck at math. I was never good at it in school. I fought viciously for every concept I grasped. Yet I loved every minute of it, and eventually got past two calc classes (Calc 1 and Descrete structures of Calc). I probably would've gotten farther if I didn't drop out of college to take a job in software dev.
I was always good at English and drawing. When I was a toddler my aunt (who teaches illustration at a pretty prestigious university) taught me the basics of how to look at things when I draw. From then on drawing came easy to me. For some reason English comes easy to me as well. I actually spent most of my time in English and writing classes doodling, working on math, and getting A's.
Drawing is easy, Math is hard. Guess which one I took farther? (Being on slashdot right now should give you a clue). You're not 'born' with a hard limit that says no matter how hard I try I can't ever learn calculus, or how to write a novel, or learn to draw. It's all about desire to learn, and from what I've seen that's a fully learned trait.
I spent a number of years looking for a tablet PC that would run Photoshop, even badly, for around $500-$700. The potential for drawing on the screen is huge, and yet the only viable options I've ever seen is Wacom stuff that you have to hook to a desktop, and mount somewhere. I just want to sit on the couch and draw, and maybe get a tiny usb keyboard (like the fold out ones that attach to palms) to sit next to me for when I need to use keyboard shortcuts. I'd like it to have a dual core processor and 2-3 gigs of ram (depending on what OS it's running). I've yet to see a tablet that does that at any weight or configuration for under $1500.
Also for the one that I saw that would meet these requirements was a HP listed at around $1,800, but right next to it there was a laptop with BETTER hardware specs listed for $450. Does a 13" touch screen really cost $1350?
The $30 bluetooth headset I have at work does everything you mentioned plus can transmit all that data to a computer up to about 75 meters away before it starts getting a bit funny sounding. I've also listened to the radio through it for over 8 hours at a time.
Once you cut the cost of bluetooth out of that $30 you really have to wonder how much the fitting, and doctors fee really is.
Also to the guy in the article: Have you thought about picking up a $30 bluetooth headset and trying your hand at some mod work? Sounds like there's a large untapped market out there waiting for a solution.
Wouldn't a simple portion of your address work well enough (e.g. 1xx Main St 90210) instead of the entire thing? Even if they were looking to aggregate the information by Zip+4 that should be enough, right? Who needs it any lower than that?
Except for in neighbourhoods like mine where I have the option for Charter Cable (@3m/768k) and AT&T DSL (@768k/128k), while two blocks south west has Comcast and AT&T Uverse, and about a mile north is Comcast and Verizon Fios. We all share the same zip+4 (or very close to it), but the neighbourhood has very solid boundaries for who competes with who. We have four companies competing in the same zip code, yet there's no place where Charter competes with Comcast, and there's no place where AT&T competes with Verizon.
I'm with parent on this one. I don't default to trusting anyone running code on my machine. I've got flash and javascript blocked by default (NoScript, FlashBlock).
If I trust your site (and I do trust Ars Technica), I'll white list them and only them for javascript. However I do not trust the half dozen shady ad and tracking services wanting to run scripts.
The thing about video game music is that it goes some where. Too much classical music sounds algorithmically generated to me, and from what I learned in my college music classes it's sometimes intentionally so. I like music that evokes feelings, and I've yet to be moved by any classical music to the extent that the score from Final Fantasy 3 has.
YMMV but not everyone likes the old classical music, but that doesn't prohibit them from liking instrumental or orchestral music.
Even more stupid is that the whole thing is 100% opt-in. If you don't want anyone knowing when you're playing a game then don't add them as a friend. Or if you just have to add friends to the service select the option to always appear offline and never log your stats.
I've got over 600 hours of time logged playing TF2. I've seen two cheaters in that whole time. Both times they didn't last more than a few minutes (server admin banned him).
The only place TF2 is overrun with cheaters is on the non-VAC secure servers. Chances are if you're playing there then you've already been caught cheating.
In every discussion where Steam is mentioned there's always that one guy that gets modded up really high talking about how you're just renting your games from Steam. Then this person goes on a tirade about how you shouldn't use steam and should just buy console games or PC games on discs, because those magically work forever and the disc never gets scratched and this crap can never happen. Also if Valve goes out of business then we have the legal right to open up their DRM (like they've publicly stated). So not only do we get to keep playing single player like we already can offline, but I'm betting that all the games that aren't Modern Warfare 2 would just keep right on chugging along.
I'd just like to say that I'm bookmarking this article to post in reply to that guy.
Then again Steam has been around since Sept 2003; the xbox has been around since November 2001. I guess that guy has till December 2011 for Valve to die a sudden and horrible death.
I'll second Parent here. I have a two and a half mile ride to work, but I'd have to cross two interstates and a 6 lane highway to get there. I can do it in the summer, but trying to get a bike through 6 inches of snow in the dark mornings while dodging traffic isn't fun or safe.
Down south this might be more viable as a car replacement, but up in Michigan I need a car 4 months out of the year. It sucks, and I end up paying more for PLPD than I do for gas, but it has to be done.
To be fair the first BioShock ran about the same kind of system. History showed us that they disabled the GFWL and SecurRom phone home if you bought it off Steam a few months after release. It's mostly just there to give headaches to the people that are cracking the game.
Also to that same tune you're renting those discs you buy. When, not if, those discs go bad you'll just have a glorified plastic coaster.
Now I know most discs have about a natural 7-14 year lifespan unless we're talking special storage. My personal experience tells me 7 years is lucky. So the real question is: Will Steam last longer than my discs?
For me it already has. Curse you NwN:Hoards of the Underdark disk:(
Opera is going to need to implement AdBlock, FlashBlock, and NoScript as well as Firefox before I'll admit that it's caught up in features that matter to me. I could care less about gestures, and I've got more than 256 megs of ram.
I always see people touting how Opera is so much better than Firefox, yet when ever I ask them about script blocking I get blank stares. This is my killer feature. I will not browse without being able to whitelist (and temp whitelist) who I want to run code on my machine from the browsers interface. Last time I downloaded Opera (admittedly over a year ago) it couldn't do that. I've read the articles here when Opera pushes out releases, and I've seen nothing that indicates that it's changed.
I'll admit comparing stock Opera vs stock FireFox, Opera wins hands down. But FireFox has this feature called Tools->Add Ons. I've seen no browser that even comes close to matching that feature set.
All I ever see out of these people is throttling speed based on how much you've downloaded, or how long you've been downloading for. I have never once seen a throttling plan based on current network congestion. Why is this? Can't we run a system where once the network reaches 100% capacity we start giving priority to the packets that need it? Say a switch that has a priority stack that runs like voip,http,https,ftp,sftp,encrypted,unknown,BitTorrent.
All I ever see are 'solutions' that allow the ISPs to run at well below their actual capacity.
I'd like to point out something in that review. The only benchmarks that this card ever goes below 30fps minimum are Crysis and Far Cry 2 at 1920x1200 running in DX9 mode (instead of DX10 where the card is more likely to shine). Also they list the GeForce 9600 as getting 40.7fps average while playing DIRT in DX11. The GeForce 9600 does not support DX11.
In DirectX 9 mode, the Radeon HD 5670 is once again keeping pace with the GeForce 9800 GT, delivering playable performance all the way to 1920x1200. However, once DirectX 11 features are enabled, the latest Radeon slows to a crawl. Even the powerful Radeon HD 5750 has difficulty keeping the minimum frame rate above 30 fps at 1680x1050.
They pretty much tell us that they're testing these cards using higher settings for the ATI parts. Also on the reviews front page it tells us that they've under-clocked all the cards before testing. Why would anyone take their reviews seriously after actually reading that?
Not like I'm an ATI fanboy here either, my current and last 3 video cards were all Nvidia (was close to getting a 4850 about a year ago, but newegg had a sweet sale on the GTX260). It's just that this level of sleaze really pisses me off.
False on the account that the mind doesn't process movement at ~15 fps.
There are an average of 120 million rods (light dark receptors) in a human eye, each individual rod can only send a signal ~15 times per second. Each rod fires data about it's changed state at a different psudo-random moment, so technically the eye could track a floor of 15 on up to a maximum of 1.8 billion changes per second. The actual answer to this question is 15 * rand(0 to 1) * 120,000,000. There aren't as many cones in your eyes (color receptors), only around 6 million, but even then that leads to being able to track color movement at 15 * rand(0 to 1) * 6,000,000.
Obviously the actual frame rate that our eyes can send to our brain vastly outstrips our ability to mentally process. Determining perceptible frame rate is more a function of how fast our brain can process. Trained fighter pilots have been recorded as being able to perceive images at over 1000 fps, while I'm lucky to get 10 before morning coffee.
It's all about your target audience. For competitive FPS players with years of gaming under their belt, the investment into a monitor that can display 300fps could see advantage (yes there are CRT monitors that do this). For your first standard deviation gamer though 60 might be a bit overkill.
I find it's second or third standard deviation gamers that actually sit down to write articles or do research on the subject though. Grain of salt indeed.
When I first started out I also pulled the 80 hour week to get my projects done on time. My boss who's been doing this for about 30 years sat me down one day and told me one thing that fixed me.
"I get more work done in the shower in the morning than I do all the rest of the day. The whole day I'm filling my head with problems, then I go home and go to bed, and when I wake up I get a clear perspective on the problem. Then I do the easy part and come to work and write it down. Then fill my head with problems again. There's no point to working a 16 hour shift banging your head against the wall. Just relax a bit and it'll come."
What paranoia? Where in my comment does it look like I think everyone is out to get me? We're talking about one company's plot to screw everyone, it's quite the opposite. Reading comprehension? YOU FAIL IT
Remember kiddies, it's the opposite of paranoia if their out to get everyone. Right?
Also what exactly is their "plot"? They give you video games and a service to keep them up to date. The only way the service is going away is if their secret plan is to go bankrupt and fold. Even then you'd still have a legal right (from the TOS) to crack their DRM if they somehow went broke. They've even promised to write the crack in the unlikley event that it happens.
That has nothing to do with anything. I am not required to trust them when I buy an installable software product, unlike a Steam-powered game, because I can simply install from the media and use the software. If I cannot do so, I am protected by California state law, and may return the product regardless of the store's policies on software returns; my state protects me from defective merchandise. In fact, by state law, I may return it under any warranty to any outlet which sells the same product. Since the original warranty covers the product's ability to work at all (though nothing else) I can take it back any ol' place.
Do you magically move out of California when you started using Steam? You can still send it back if it doesn't work. You just need to email support and they'll issue a refund. Oh wait, you want your constitutional right to be required to walk somewhere. That must be it.
My phone can operate in standalone mode. It's called airplane mode. Nice try though, son.
Your phone can make calls in stand alone mode? Holy crap son, where did you get this magic device.
Steam is spyware.
Not by any definition of spyware or wikipedia, or any other link on the front page of google. Provide your definition of spyware, bonus points if you can give a definition that doesn't also make slashdot.org spyware.
Bluntly put Steam is what it is. It's not deceptive about anything, and their is no diabolical plot involved. You trade the ability of selling the game when you're done, for the ability to keep it up to date and re-download it whenever you want without digging through boxes looking for your old CD's. For some games buying it in a store is better because it's crap it will probably get sold back two weeks later (why people don't just rent in these situations is beyond me). Or maybe you really like a game then loose it to the bottom of a box somewhere 3 moves ago. I like using steam because I've gotten a lot of games on the cheap there. Also I'm less likely to get secuROM'ed, or loose/scratch the disc.
And lets face it hating Steam because it's DRM is stupid in this day and age. Every game will come with DRM that will make the game unusable sometime in the future. Steam, secuROM, and even consoles. Give it about 2 years after MS stops producing Xbox 360's and all your games will be unplayable when it RROD's. Probably about 7-10 after if you have a PS3. My NES failed a while back so all those carts I spent so much on are now unplayable to me. Sure I can just go out and download a rom, but hows that different than cracking secuROM or Steam in the event that they go belly up?
Or are you going to declare that hardware not lasting forever is some big corporate plot to impregnate your cat, or whatever it is you seem so scared of?
Do you not understand the basics of how this works? We would setup restrictions on imports. Not exports. 90% of your argument falls apart at that little fact.
The automotive competition part is the only part of your argument that still kinda makes sense, but in the real world it's Mexican labor putting together the Big 3 automobiles vs Americans putting together Toyotas. I live in Michigan and there's a huge Toyota plant 15 minutes away from me. 95% of the GM work force (on the west side of the state at least) is white collar managment or d. So technically if we put up restrictions on imports GM would be the ones paying all the tariffs, while Toyota would get a tax break because they're actually employing American labor to build their cars.
In other words, to compete they'd be forced to bring the jobs back to the US. Sure there are other reasons why putting back up restrictions on imports could hurt the economy in the short term, but you've presented none of them.
Not to point out flaws in your plan, but most banks have disaster recovery center. Actually iirc it's a requirement for PCI compliance.
If you're responsible to have a separate HQ building ready to roll over to in the event of a disaster why are you not using that as a test bed. Added bonus, your disaster recovery center will almost always be more up to date than your main.
The problem is that check processing isn't free now. In the US, it's done by the Fed with taxpayer money. The cost is merely hidden by the fact that individual businesses aren't hit with a bill by the Fed.
Really? Because I'm working on a billing system right now for businesses that process large quantities of checks. Granted small business doesn't see a bill because the actual banks cover it, but if you're doing in the range of 5,000+ checks a day most the time the bank is going to ask you to help foot their bill to the fed.
Slashdot Mirror
But thats the kicker isn't it. Everyone here on slashdot cares about tech issues, but the vast majority of us don't put that same level of expertise into environmental issues, so when it comes time to vote in our democracy of choice we'll make stupid decisions. Just like other vast majority that make dumb decisions about tech. (I seem to recall reading some old communist propaganda that basically described all democracy in these terms.)
Here's an interesting concept.
I suck at math. I was never good at it in school. I fought viciously for every concept I grasped. Yet I loved every minute of it, and eventually got past two calc classes (Calc 1 and Descrete structures of Calc). I probably would've gotten farther if I didn't drop out of college to take a job in software dev.
I was always good at English and drawing. When I was a toddler my aunt (who teaches illustration at a pretty prestigious university) taught me the basics of how to look at things when I draw. From then on drawing came easy to me. For some reason English comes easy to me as well. I actually spent most of my time in English and writing classes doodling, working on math, and getting A's.
Drawing is easy, Math is hard. Guess which one I took farther? (Being on slashdot right now should give you a clue). You're not 'born' with a hard limit that says no matter how hard I try I can't ever learn calculus, or how to write a novel, or learn to draw. It's all about desire to learn, and from what I've seen that's a fully learned trait.
I spent a number of years looking for a tablet PC that would run Photoshop, even badly, for around $500-$700. The potential for drawing on the screen is huge, and yet the only viable options I've ever seen is Wacom stuff that you have to hook to a desktop, and mount somewhere. I just want to sit on the couch and draw, and maybe get a tiny usb keyboard (like the fold out ones that attach to palms) to sit next to me for when I need to use keyboard shortcuts. I'd like it to have a dual core processor and 2-3 gigs of ram (depending on what OS it's running). I've yet to see a tablet that does that at any weight or configuration for under $1500.
Also for the one that I saw that would meet these requirements was a HP listed at around $1,800, but right next to it there was a laptop with BETTER hardware specs listed for $450. Does a 13" touch screen really cost $1350?
And people wonder why tablets haven't taken off.
The $30 bluetooth headset I have at work does everything you mentioned plus can transmit all that data to a computer up to about 75 meters away before it starts getting a bit funny sounding. I've also listened to the radio through it for over 8 hours at a time.
Once you cut the cost of bluetooth out of that $30 you really have to wonder how much the fitting, and doctors fee really is.
Also to the guy in the article: Have you thought about picking up a $30 bluetooth headset and trying your hand at some mod work? Sounds like there's a large untapped market out there waiting for a solution.
Except for in neighbourhoods like mine where I have the option for Charter Cable (@3m/768k) and AT&T DSL (@768k/128k), while two blocks south west has Comcast and AT&T Uverse, and about a mile north is Comcast and Verizon Fios. We all share the same zip+4 (or very close to it), but the neighbourhood has very solid boundaries for who competes with who. We have four companies competing in the same zip code, yet there's no place where Charter competes with Comcast, and there's no place where AT&T competes with Verizon.
I'm with parent on this one. I don't default to trusting anyone running code on my machine. I've got flash and javascript blocked by default (NoScript, FlashBlock).
If I trust your site (and I do trust Ars Technica), I'll white list them and only them for javascript. However I do not trust the half dozen shady ad and tracking services wanting to run scripts.
If you want my ad views, host it yourself.
The thing about video game music is that it goes some where. Too much classical music sounds algorithmically generated to me, and from what I learned in my college music classes it's sometimes intentionally so. I like music that evokes feelings, and I've yet to be moved by any classical music to the extent that the score from Final Fantasy 3 has.
YMMV but not everyone likes the old classical music, but that doesn't prohibit them from liking instrumental or orchestral music.
The improperly capitalized letters in parent spell:
HELPGLADOSLIVES
Hey this is fun.
Even more stupid is that the whole thing is 100% opt-in. If you don't want anyone knowing when you're playing a game then don't add them as a friend. Or if you just have to add friends to the service select the option to always appear offline and never log your stats.
I've got over 600 hours of time logged playing TF2. I've seen two cheaters in that whole time. Both times they didn't last more than a few minutes (server admin banned him).
The only place TF2 is overrun with cheaters is on the non-VAC secure servers. Chances are if you're playing there then you've already been caught cheating.
In every discussion where Steam is mentioned there's always that one guy that gets modded up really high talking about how you're just renting your games from Steam. Then this person goes on a tirade about how you shouldn't use steam and should just buy console games or PC games on discs, because those magically work forever and the disc never gets scratched and this crap can never happen. Also if Valve goes out of business then we have the legal right to open up their DRM (like they've publicly stated). So not only do we get to keep playing single player like we already can offline, but I'm betting that all the games that aren't Modern Warfare 2 would just keep right on chugging along.
I'd just like to say that I'm bookmarking this article to post in reply to that guy.
Then again Steam has been around since Sept 2003; the xbox has been around since November 2001. I guess that guy has till December 2011 for Valve to die a sudden and horrible death.
I'll second Parent here. I have a two and a half mile ride to work, but I'd have to cross two interstates and a 6 lane highway to get there. I can do it in the summer, but trying to get a bike through 6 inches of snow in the dark mornings while dodging traffic isn't fun or safe.
Down south this might be more viable as a car replacement, but up in Michigan I need a car 4 months out of the year. It sucks, and I end up paying more for PLPD than I do for gas, but it has to be done.
To be fair the first BioShock ran about the same kind of system. History showed us that they disabled the GFWL and SecurRom phone home if you bought it off Steam a few months after release. It's mostly just there to give headaches to the people that are cracking the game.
That was my solution, but for the sake of the argument you probably shouldn't phrase it like that.
Also to that same tune you're renting those discs you buy. When, not if, those discs go bad you'll just have a glorified plastic coaster.
Now I know most discs have about a natural 7-14 year lifespan unless we're talking special storage. My personal experience tells me 7 years is lucky. So the real question is: Will Steam last longer than my discs?
For me it already has. Curse you NwN:Hoards of the Underdark disk :(
Opera is going to need to implement AdBlock, FlashBlock, and NoScript as well as Firefox before I'll admit that it's caught up in features that matter to me. I could care less about gestures, and I've got more than 256 megs of ram.
I always see people touting how Opera is so much better than Firefox, yet when ever I ask them about script blocking I get blank stares. This is my killer feature. I will not browse without being able to whitelist (and temp whitelist) who I want to run code on my machine from the browsers interface. Last time I downloaded Opera (admittedly over a year ago) it couldn't do that. I've read the articles here when Opera pushes out releases, and I've seen nothing that indicates that it's changed.
I'll admit comparing stock Opera vs stock FireFox, Opera wins hands down. But FireFox has this feature called Tools->Add Ons. I've seen no browser that even comes close to matching that feature set.
Can I pay my taxes with it?
All I ever see out of these people is throttling speed based on how much you've downloaded, or how long you've been downloading for. I have never once seen a throttling plan based on current network congestion. Why is this? Can't we run a system where once the network reaches 100% capacity we start giving priority to the packets that need it? Say a switch that has a priority stack that runs like voip,http,https,ftp,sftp,encrypted,unknown,BitTorrent.
All I ever see are 'solutions' that allow the ISPs to run at well below their actual capacity.
In DirectX 9 mode, the Radeon HD 5670 is once again keeping pace with the GeForce 9800 GT, delivering playable performance all the way to 1920x1200. However, once DirectX 11 features are enabled, the latest Radeon slows to a crawl. Even the powerful Radeon HD 5750 has difficulty keeping the minimum frame rate above 30 fps at 1680x1050.
They pretty much tell us that they're testing these cards using higher settings for the ATI parts. Also on the reviews front page it tells us that they've under-clocked all the cards before testing. Why would anyone take their reviews seriously after actually reading that?
Not like I'm an ATI fanboy here either, my current and last 3 video cards were all Nvidia (was close to getting a 4850 about a year ago, but newegg had a sweet sale on the GTX260). It's just that this level of sleaze really pisses me off.
False on the account that the mind doesn't process movement at ~15 fps.
There are an average of 120 million rods (light dark receptors) in a human eye, each individual rod can only send a signal ~15 times per second. Each rod fires data about it's changed state at a different psudo-random moment, so technically the eye could track a floor of 15 on up to a maximum of 1.8 billion changes per second. The actual answer to this question is 15 * rand(0 to 1) * 120,000,000. There aren't as many cones in your eyes (color receptors), only around 6 million, but even then that leads to being able to track color movement at 15 * rand(0 to 1) * 6,000,000.
Obviously the actual frame rate that our eyes can send to our brain vastly outstrips our ability to mentally process. Determining perceptible frame rate is more a function of how fast our brain can process. Trained fighter pilots have been recorded as being able to perceive images at over 1000 fps, while I'm lucky to get 10 before morning coffee.
It's all about your target audience. For competitive FPS players with years of gaming under their belt, the investment into a monitor that can display 300fps could see advantage (yes there are CRT monitors that do this). For your first standard deviation gamer though 60 might be a bit overkill.
I find it's second or third standard deviation gamers that actually sit down to write articles or do research on the subject though. Grain of salt indeed.
When I first started out I also pulled the 80 hour week to get my projects done on time. My boss who's been doing this for about 30 years sat me down one day and told me one thing that fixed me.
"I get more work done in the shower in the morning than I do all the rest of the day. The whole day I'm filling my head with problems, then I go home and go to bed, and when I wake up I get a clear perspective on the problem. Then I do the easy part and come to work and write it down. Then fill my head with problems again. There's no point to working a 16 hour shift banging your head against the wall. Just relax a bit and it'll come."
It's words of wisdom.
Remember kiddies, it's the opposite of paranoia if their out to get everyone. Right?
Also what exactly is their "plot"? They give you video games and a service to keep them up to date. The only way the service is going away is if their secret plan is to go bankrupt and fold. Even then you'd still have a legal right (from the TOS) to crack their DRM if they somehow went broke. They've even promised to write the crack in the unlikley event that it happens.
Do you magically move out of California when you started using Steam? You can still send it back if it doesn't work. You just need to email support and they'll issue a refund. Oh wait, you want your constitutional right to be required to walk somewhere. That must be it.
Your phone can make calls in stand alone mode? Holy crap son, where did you get this magic device.
Not by any definition of spyware or wikipedia, or any other link on the front page of google. Provide your definition of spyware, bonus points if you can give a definition that doesn't also make slashdot.org spyware.
Bluntly put Steam is what it is. It's not deceptive about anything, and their is no diabolical plot involved. You trade the ability of selling the game when you're done, for the ability to keep it up to date and re-download it whenever you want without digging through boxes looking for your old CD's.
For some games buying it in a store is better because it's crap it will probably get sold back two weeks later (why people don't just rent in these situations is beyond me). Or maybe you really like a game then loose it to the bottom of a box somewhere 3 moves ago. I like using steam because I've gotten a lot of games on the cheap there. Also I'm less likely to get secuROM'ed, or loose/scratch the disc.
And lets face it hating Steam because it's DRM is stupid in this day and age. Every game will come with DRM that will make the game unusable sometime in the future. Steam, secuROM, and even consoles. Give it about 2 years after MS stops producing Xbox 360's and all your games will be unplayable when it RROD's. Probably about 7-10 after if you have a PS3. My NES failed a while back so all those carts I spent so much on are now unplayable to me. Sure I can just go out and download a rom, but hows that different than cracking secuROM or Steam in the event that they go belly up?
Or are you going to declare that hardware not lasting forever is some big corporate plot to impregnate your cat, or whatever it is you seem so scared of?
Do you not understand the basics of how this works? We would setup restrictions on imports. Not exports. 90% of your argument falls apart at that little fact.
The automotive competition part is the only part of your argument that still kinda makes sense, but in the real world it's Mexican labor putting together the Big 3 automobiles vs Americans putting together Toyotas. I live in Michigan and there's a huge Toyota plant 15 minutes away from me. 95% of the GM work force (on the west side of the state at least) is white collar managment or d. So technically if we put up restrictions on imports GM would be the ones paying all the tariffs, while Toyota would get a tax break because they're actually employing American labor to build their cars.
In other words, to compete they'd be forced to bring the jobs back to the US. Sure there are other reasons why putting back up restrictions on imports could hurt the economy in the short term, but you've presented none of them.
Not to point out flaws in your plan, but most banks have disaster recovery center. Actually iirc it's a requirement for PCI compliance.
If you're responsible to have a separate HQ building ready to roll over to in the event of a disaster why are you not using that as a test bed. Added bonus, your disaster recovery center will almost always be more up to date than your main.
The problem is that check processing isn't free now. In the US, it's done by the Fed with taxpayer money. The cost is merely hidden by the fact that individual businesses aren't hit with a bill by the Fed.
Really? Because I'm working on a billing system right now for businesses that process large quantities of checks. Granted small business doesn't see a bill because the actual banks cover it, but if you're doing in the range of 5,000+ checks a day most the time the bank is going to ask you to help foot their bill to the fed.