One thing that you are not taking into consideration is this:
Gamefly will sell you the game if you like it, then ship you the original box and manual.
When they have a new release, they buy dramatically more then they are going to need in the long run in order to meet short term demand. Then, you have the option while you have the game to "Keep it" for a discounted rate (usually less then buying it used at Gamestop/EBGames). If you managed to get ahold of the game in the first week or so of the release, you can also be reasonably sure that you are either the first, or at worst the second, person to use the media.
And again, since they are sending you the case and manual, they have to be obtaining the retail versions of the games (I have purchased a number of games from them over the last 3-4 years that I've been a subscriber, it has always been the same packaging/UPC that I found on Amazon, Best Buy, etc). So, while it's probably not costing them $50/game to buy, it's not going to be costing them $10-20 either.
I used to work for Best Buy for a while, it's highly unlikely that Gamefly is getting a better deal on the games then BBY is, and on a $49.99 game the cost to BBY was usually around $38-40. I would imagine that GF is picking up a new release for $43-45/copy on a $49.99 release.
Mr. Blunt is NOT ranting. He actually does put forth a good argument that authors should be paid for the audio rights for their books if an audio production is being sold by a third party.
Your argument falls apart however, when you examine the two separate issues:
1) A computer/communications device is sold with the OPTION to enable the ability to convert text on the screen to another format, namely spoken English.
and
2) Files containing text or existing audio are loaded to the device, either through purchase from Amazon, or other methods. Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (formats 4, Audible Enhanced (AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion (from amazon.com).
The vast majority of these formats come from locations other then Amazon. Only Kindle and Audible formats are sold by them, and the Audible format already has paid audio book royalties. In theory, the MP3 format has paid as well.
One of five things will have to happen here if the Author's guild wants to pursue this line of inquiry:
1) A separate license will have to be purchased to convert a file of any type to spoken English. The problem with this is that I can load a.doc or.txt file of my own creation and then request it be converted, but then have to pay to do so, as it does not have a license for that file.
2) Restrict the device to only convert text to spoken English on Kindle format text, and increase the price of the Kindle format purchases to cover the increased royalty.
3) Increase the cost of the Kindle to include the license. Of course, if you do this, you're going to have to go to Microsoft, HTC, Nokia, Apple, and every other company that has included text to speech software in their computers, phones, pdas, etc and enforce the same licensing rules.
4) Remove the TTS technology from the device altogether.
or 5) Ignore the Authors Guild, and let them sue. Once in front of a judge, they will have to prove that Kindle's text to speech technology constitutes a public performance or offers significant competition to professionally recorded audio books, and not a version of fair use. I personally think that all Amazon is going to need to do here is play a Kindle read version, a Professionally Recorded version of the same book, and then the statistics on how many books each year are published in audio book format vs. paper format. Worst case scenario, Amazon is forced to implement one of the three other options. Best case scenario, fair use lives to fight another day.
#1 gets to be really interesting, and not practical, as there is no way to tell the difference between something I wrote in.txt format, and something copyrighted by someone else.
Personally, I would hope that Amazon opts for number 5. They really have little to lose, and lots to gain, not to mention all the free publicity that they, and the Kindle, will get out of the fight.
I have actually been known to buy a book in both formats. I have a decent commute, and listen to books in the car. I have an Audible subscription for 2 books a month, and in some cases I've purchased an audiobook only to purchase the hard copy later because I enjoyed it so much listening to it that I wanted to better pick up some of the nuance by reading it.
Actually...come to think of it, I've done that with almost all the audiobooks I've purchased.
It's a matter of degrees and small steps. First it's people arrested. Filthy criminals, they deserve it, right? Just don't get arrested.
Then it's anyone who wants to buy legal narcotic pain killers. Well, there's serious chance of over use, not to mention a black market...so we take a DNA sample, codify it in some way, then somehow encode it into the drug. See, we're winning the drug war!
Then it's any prescription drug. Hey...these are all controlled substances too...
Then it's anyone who checks into a hospital (including those born there). This will expedite the issuance of prescription drugs!
Then it's anyone who wants a drivers license or passport. We're protecting against identity theft and terrorism! Hurray!
And then it's just everyone. Well, everyone needs a drivers license, or will check into a hospital, or need prescription drugs at some point... Or what if they have a horrible accident and all we have is their left elbow?!? Now we can identify them!
Where do you draw the line? The most oppressive policies are the ones that start out "For the good of all..."
The problem is that by and large there's a difference between teaching reproduction, and the wide variety of sex enjoyed, and available on the Internet.
Do you really want to expose a person who is still in the "girls are icky" phase to an S&M site involving tying up and whipping someone, or how about the highly illegal sites involving bestiality? In particular without a parent there to explain that while there may not (depending on your personal world views) be anything wrong with someone enjoying a little pain with their pleasure, it's not something that everyone is into?
Do you really want more people to have the idea that it's okay to do harm to others, but only if you really love them? Because, tell me, have you ever seen, read, or heard an "accepted" explanation about reproduction that didn't start out "When two people really love each other and want to have a baby..."
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for teaching someone about the physical side of love when they express an interest in the topic. I also believe that they should be taught of three possible combination of sex as well - M/F, M/M, and F/F - but I grew up in a fairly progressive household. Many are going to feel differently, and I'm okay with that.
It's not so much about bringing their sex lives to the office, but how about bringing their partner to the office Christmas party?
When a man brings his female life partner to the Christmas party it's fine, when a man brings his male life partner to the Christmas party it's "Shoving your lifestyle choice in my face," as if they are going to strip and have sex on the buffet table.
Somewhere along the way the religious definition of marriage got merged into the legal definition. Marriage in this country is less about religion, and entirely about legal status. If you want to say "Okay, then there should be Civil Unions" then convert everyone's marriage to a Civil Union, and leave marriage up to the religious folk. You want to be married, fine, go see a priest. You want to have some say in how your life partner is treated in the hospital? Get a civil union.
I'm not sure how you can say "such a minority out there" as San Fransisco and LA are the 2nd and 3rd largest population of homosexuals in the country, and CA may actually have the largest overall population in total.
Overall, current estimates of the population that identify in some way as gay (Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Transgendered, etc) range up to 5%, that number actually increases if you ask people if they have felt attraction to a member of the same gender (link). According to demographics, black or hispanic people account for 13% and 14% of the population respectively (link), yet if this were a law revoking the right of black people to marry, there would be a revolt. Yet, that was what was just done to gay people in CA.
However, if you've turned off the cable box (I have Time Warner Cable, and use their DVR - the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. The box has both a power button and power light) it's not recording so it can rewind anyway. So why not spin down the hard drive, or enter into some kind of lower power mode?
Side note: the 8300HD box that TWC provides does spin down the hard drive on a regular basis. I can hear it spin up the drive when I either: A) Turn it on, or B) periodically as it performs self maintenance, records shows, or installs updates.
If we start agreeing that it's a license (I don't see licenses on my DVDs) we'll lose the battle over any consumer rights for purchased copyrighted material.
Really? You should look closer at the bottom of the back cover of your DVD cases. Virtually every DVD I own (over 300) has a little piece of text that says something to the effect of "Licensed for personal home use only. Public exhibition is prohibited."
Just because it has a license does not mean that it excludes it from fair use. Additionally, the fact is that even without that piece of text on the DVD/VHS/BluRay/CD/Audio Download/Book/Magazine/Newspaper under current US Copyright Law, you still would only be purchasing a license to the copyrighted work unless you had an explicit contract transferring ownership rights (in whole or in part) to you.
I am not a lawyer, but as I recall there must be proof that a company has performed an illegal action against another company forcing them out of the market or other such anti-competitive actions before anti-trust proceedings are considered.
In the case of Intel/AMD, there is ample evidence that the companies have been playing fairly nice. Patent trading and so forth.
Anti-Trust law generally does not kick in if a company fails through mis-management or market forces.
I have a SA 8300HD DVR from Time Warner and it most definitively has a Hard Drive in it. I can hear it spin up when I turn the box on, or intermittantly throughout the week as it checks for software updates and performs system maintenance.
If the recordings were stored off-site then the service would be useless to me. VOD services at my location are spotty at best.
I wouldn't say that their current Enterprise line of products is for the weekend hobbyist or small business only. I would agree that their Fedora line is targeted at that market, but their Enterprise line is targeted at long, stable, high availability deployments.
Unlike with the Fedora line, the Enterprise line sets a baseline and through all the updates doesn't stray from it. Security updates are patched/backported into the baseline versions, and great detail is paid to not changing API calls or other things that might cause incompatibility problems with existing software built on the platform.
While the availability of T1 lines is pretty much universal, the cost will typically price that mode of connection out of the majority of dialup users ballpark.
Two reasons I'd tend to think toward a March release at this point:
1) The MSDN release will allow for developers and device manufacturers to test their software/drivers with the final RTM release before the general public gets their hands on it, thus allowing them to provide updated versions or warnings of incompatibility.
2) They have 2 more pre-patches (see my other post) to put out before any Vista machine is ready to install the full SP. Those pre-patches will probably appear once a week for the next few weeks, and then SP1 will roll out on the next patch Tuesday - March 11 - three weeks from now.
The patch that is rolling out via Windows Update is part of the Vista SP1 pre-patches.
This installed on my production machine Wednesday:
KB937287
Description from Microsoft's Support Site:
This article describes the prerequisite software updates that apply to versions of Windows Vista that are mentioned in the "Applies to" section. These software updates are a prerequisite for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). Additionally, these updates help improve reliability when you install or remove Windows Vista SP1.
Two or three additional software updates are required before you install Windows Vista SP1. The software updates that are required depend on the version of Windows Vista that you want to upgrade. Prerequisite update 935509 that is listed in this article only applies to Windows Vista Enterprise and to Windows Vista Ultimate. The other prerequisite updates that are listed in this article apply to all versions of Windows Vista.
Actually, according to the technical preview release information, the SP itself is not being delivered until mid-March, however, there are small updates that get downloaded to the computer to enable the download of the SP. When I installed the beta it worked that way, and then on my Vista production machine I noticed it downloaded the first of the 3 "foundation" updates on Tuesday after all the other updates.
"After you've installed these important updates, there are the "pre-requisite" updates required for SP1. You may have to repeat this step several times. If you have Windows Vista Ultimate or Enterprise, the pre-requisite update will be KB935509. For any other version, it should be KB938371. I have Windows Vista Ultimate but for some reason they asked me to install 938371 instead. Please let me know if this is the case for you as well. When the update is finished installing itself, a reboot is required.
After that, there is another update. Luckily there is no reboot required for this one. It's about 4MB.
When the update is finished installing, you'll have to give Windows Update "10-15 minutes" for the update to self-install according to Microsoft. However, it only took me 5 minutes, but the SP1 update does not show until after a few minutes wait. Click on Check for Updates in the Left Pane and you should be able to find the SP1 update. This one is 85MB."
Or just log into your account at http://wireless.att.com/ and switch to paperless billing. That's how I did it years ago when it was Cingular. I would expect the option is still there.
Tweaking? yes. Dramatic changes in the technology that might create NEW technology? no. I think 'our' level of understanding of that technology only goes so far as "we know that if we swap out this crystal for this crystal, the following happens, or it repairs it." But they couldn't build a new one without help.
I work for a major retail chain that sells HP/Compaq notebooks and desktops. HP/Compaq desktops have required you to create the recovery discs for at least 3 years now, however it was not until the August/September 2005 model refresh that they stopped shipping recovery discs with their notebooks.
It is true, there is no Federal law requiring that anyone recites the Pledge. However, many states have laws that require students to recite it every morning.
It's is also worth noting, that the federal government did enact some form of law declaring the Pledge, in it's current form, a national symbol of loyalty.
Also, the word "God," with a capitol "G" (as appears in the offical text of the Pledge), only has one modern meaning, and that is to refer to the Judeo-Christian diety. To the best of my knowledge, and I could be wrong, there is no other religion that calls their primary diety (or god, with a lower case "g" - Definition of god ) "God" in the American English Language.
Taking the above, and adding in "In God We Trust" from the dollar bill and quarter, it could be seen as the establishment of a religion.
All that being said, with the exception of a few religions with a relitively small following, most of the religions in this country are monotheistic. Therefore, how about we change the case on the "g" so that it reads "under god" instead. Or, if you really want to be able to cover all your bases, "under gods," thus recognizing the fact that there are multiple gods being worshiped in this country.
However, I think we'd be at least 5-7 years, and more likely 10 years, from that happening. It certianly won't be part of the Longhorn release. Here's my reasoning:
1) The Longhorn release is nearly to the Beta stage, and we are likely more then a year off from seeing the first motherboards with this particular type of BIOS.
2) Even if they wanted to try and lock people down into "You can only use Windows if you use MS-BIOS," there's still going to be the problem of backwards compatibility. Historically, Microsoft has wanted to push out OS upgrades to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. This means that it needs to be able to run on hardware manufactured during the lifetime of the previous incarnation of windows, if not the last two incarnations. For example, you can run Windows XP on hardware that ran Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, and Windows 2000...You may not be terribly happy with it, but you can do it.
Yeah, there are ways around both of those, and they aren't the only reasons why I don't think we'll see that tight of required integration anytime soon.
However, I do think now is the time to start looking at alternitives. LinuxBIOS is an option, however, it has quite a bit of work to go, and it doesn't have the corporate backing to make it happen that Phoenix and Microsoft can lever behind this.
Much like with DRM, I am interested to see where this will go, and am avidly watching for more news, but until there are some more definate answers, that's all I'm going to do. I'm a network engineer. I don't have the technical skills to design an alternate technology, nor am I in a position where I can affect things politically (other then writing to my representives). I will continue to watch, learn, and comment where appropriate.:)
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One thing that you are not taking into consideration is this:
Gamefly will sell you the game if you like it, then ship you the original box and manual.
When they have a new release, they buy dramatically more then they are going to need in the long run in order to meet short term demand. Then, you have the option while you have the game to "Keep it" for a discounted rate (usually less then buying it used at Gamestop/EBGames). If you managed to get ahold of the game in the first week or so of the release, you can also be reasonably sure that you are either the first, or at worst the second, person to use the media.
And again, since they are sending you the case and manual, they have to be obtaining the retail versions of the games (I have purchased a number of games from them over the last 3-4 years that I've been a subscriber, it has always been the same packaging/UPC that I found on Amazon, Best Buy, etc). So, while it's probably not costing them $50/game to buy, it's not going to be costing them $10-20 either.
I used to work for Best Buy for a while, it's highly unlikely that Gamefly is getting a better deal on the games then BBY is, and on a $49.99 game the cost to BBY was usually around $38-40. I would imagine that GF is picking up a new release for $43-45/copy on a $49.99 release.
Mr. Blunt is NOT ranting. He actually does put forth a good argument that authors should be paid for the audio rights for their books if an audio production is being sold by a third party.
Your argument falls apart however, when you examine the two separate issues:
1) A computer/communications device is sold with the OPTION to enable the ability to convert text on the screen to another format, namely spoken English.
and
2) Files containing text or existing audio are loaded to the device, either through purchase from Amazon, or other methods. Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (formats 4, Audible Enhanced (AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion (from amazon.com).
The vast majority of these formats come from locations other then Amazon. Only Kindle and Audible formats are sold by them, and the Audible format already has paid audio book royalties. In theory, the MP3 format has paid as well.
One of five things will have to happen here if the Author's guild wants to pursue this line of inquiry:
1) A separate license will have to be purchased to convert a file of any type to spoken English. The problem with this is that I can load a .doc or .txt file of my own creation and then request it be converted, but then have to pay to do so, as it does not have a license for that file.
2) Restrict the device to only convert text to spoken English on Kindle format text, and increase the price of the Kindle format purchases to cover the increased royalty.
3) Increase the cost of the Kindle to include the license. Of course, if you do this, you're going to have to go to Microsoft, HTC, Nokia, Apple, and every other company that has included text to speech software in their computers, phones, pdas, etc and enforce the same licensing rules.
4) Remove the TTS technology from the device altogether.
or 5) Ignore the Authors Guild, and let them sue. Once in front of a judge, they will have to prove that Kindle's text to speech technology constitutes a public performance or offers significant competition to professionally recorded audio books, and not a version of fair use. I personally think that all Amazon is going to need to do here is play a Kindle read version, a Professionally Recorded version of the same book, and then the statistics on how many books each year are published in audio book format vs. paper format. Worst case scenario, Amazon is forced to implement one of the three other options. Best case scenario, fair use lives to fight another day.
#1 gets to be really interesting, and not practical, as there is no way to tell the difference between something I wrote in .txt format, and something copyrighted by someone else.
Personally, I would hope that Amazon opts for number 5. They really have little to lose, and lots to gain, not to mention all the free publicity that they, and the Kindle, will get out of the fight.
I have actually been known to buy a book in both formats. I have a decent commute, and listen to books in the car. I have an Audible subscription for 2 books a month, and in some cases I've purchased an audiobook only to purchase the hard copy later because I enjoyed it so much listening to it that I wanted to better pick up some of the nuance by reading it.
Actually...come to think of it, I've done that with almost all the audiobooks I've purchased.
It's a matter of degrees and small steps. First it's people arrested. Filthy criminals, they deserve it, right? Just don't get arrested.
Then it's anyone who wants to buy legal narcotic pain killers. Well, there's serious chance of over use, not to mention a black market...so we take a DNA sample, codify it in some way, then somehow encode it into the drug. See, we're winning the drug war!
Then it's any prescription drug. Hey...these are all controlled substances too...
Then it's anyone who checks into a hospital (including those born there). This will expedite the issuance of prescription drugs!
Then it's anyone who wants a drivers license or passport. We're protecting against identity theft and terrorism! Hurray!
And then it's just everyone. Well, everyone needs a drivers license, or will check into a hospital, or need prescription drugs at some point... Or what if they have a horrible accident and all we have is their left elbow?!? Now we can identify them!
Where do you draw the line? The most oppressive policies are the ones that start out "For the good of all..."
The problem is that by and large there's a difference between teaching reproduction, and the wide variety of sex enjoyed, and available on the Internet.
Do you really want to expose a person who is still in the "girls are icky" phase to an S&M site involving tying up and whipping someone, or how about the highly illegal sites involving bestiality? In particular without a parent there to explain that while there may not (depending on your personal world views) be anything wrong with someone enjoying a little pain with their pleasure, it's not something that everyone is into?
Do you really want more people to have the idea that it's okay to do harm to others, but only if you really love them? Because, tell me, have you ever seen, read, or heard an "accepted" explanation about reproduction that didn't start out "When two people really love each other and want to have a baby..."
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for teaching someone about the physical side of love when they express an interest in the topic. I also believe that they should be taught of three possible combination of sex as well - M/F, M/M, and F/F - but I grew up in a fairly progressive household. Many are going to feel differently, and I'm okay with that.
It's not so much about bringing their sex lives to the office, but how about bringing their partner to the office Christmas party?
When a man brings his female life partner to the Christmas party it's fine, when a man brings his male life partner to the Christmas party it's "Shoving your lifestyle choice in my face," as if they are going to strip and have sex on the buffet table.
Somewhere along the way the religious definition of marriage got merged into the legal definition. Marriage in this country is less about religion, and entirely about legal status. If you want to say "Okay, then there should be Civil Unions" then convert everyone's marriage to a Civil Union, and leave marriage up to the religious folk. You want to be married, fine, go see a priest. You want to have some say in how your life partner is treated in the hospital? Get a civil union.
I'm not sure how you can say "such a minority out there" as San Fransisco and LA are the 2nd and 3rd largest population of homosexuals in the country, and CA may actually have the largest overall population in total.
Overall, current estimates of the population that identify in some way as gay (Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Transgendered, etc) range up to 5%, that number actually increases if you ask people if they have felt attraction to a member of the same gender (link). According to demographics, black or hispanic people account for 13% and 14% of the population respectively (link), yet if this were a law revoking the right of black people to marry, there would be a revolt. Yet, that was what was just done to gay people in CA.
However, if you've turned off the cable box (I have Time Warner Cable, and use their DVR - the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD. The box has both a power button and power light) it's not recording so it can rewind anyway. So why not spin down the hard drive, or enter into some kind of lower power mode?
Side note: the 8300HD box that TWC provides does spin down the hard drive on a regular basis. I can hear it spin up the drive when I either: A) Turn it on, or B) periodically as it performs self maintenance, records shows, or installs updates.
You must register for an account.
If we start agreeing that it's a license (I don't see licenses on my DVDs) we'll lose the battle over any consumer rights for purchased copyrighted material.
Really? You should look closer at the bottom of the back cover of your DVD cases. Virtually every DVD I own (over 300) has a little piece of text that says something to the effect of "Licensed for personal home use only. Public exhibition is prohibited."
Just because it has a license does not mean that it excludes it from fair use. Additionally, the fact is that even without that piece of text on the DVD/VHS/BluRay/CD/Audio Download/Book/Magazine/Newspaper under current US Copyright Law, you still would only be purchasing a license to the copyrighted work unless you had an explicit contract transferring ownership rights (in whole or in part) to you.
It has nothing to do with software. It is, however, a pretty standard requirement for application to most jobs these days.
The last two jobs I have accepted a position with (both with large corporations) required this kind of testing.
I am not a lawyer, but as I recall there must be proof that a company has performed an illegal action against another company forcing them out of the market or other such anti-competitive actions before anti-trust proceedings are considered.
In the case of Intel/AMD, there is ample evidence that the companies have been playing fairly nice. Patent trading and so forth.
Anti-Trust law generally does not kick in if a company fails through mis-management or market forces.
I have a SA 8300HD DVR from Time Warner and it most definitively has a Hard Drive in it. I can hear it spin up when I turn the box on, or intermittantly throughout the week as it checks for software updates and performs system maintenance.
If the recordings were stored off-site then the service would be useless to me. VOD services at my location are spotty at best.
I wouldn't say that their current Enterprise line of products is for the weekend hobbyist or small business only. I would agree that their Fedora line is targeted at that market, but their Enterprise line is targeted at long, stable, high availability deployments.
Unlike with the Fedora line, the Enterprise line sets a baseline and through all the updates doesn't stray from it. Security updates are patched/backported into the baseline versions, and great detail is paid to not changing API calls or other things that might cause incompatibility problems with existing software built on the platform.
While the availability of T1 lines is pretty much universal, the cost will typically price that mode of connection out of the majority of dialup users ballpark.
Two reasons I'd tend to think toward a March release at this point:
1) The MSDN release will allow for developers and device manufacturers to test their software/drivers with the final RTM release before the general public gets their hands on it, thus allowing them to provide updated versions or warnings of incompatibility.
2) They have 2 more pre-patches (see my other post) to put out before any Vista machine is ready to install the full SP. Those pre-patches will probably appear once a week for the next few weeks, and then SP1 will roll out on the next patch Tuesday - March 11 - three weeks from now.
This installed on my production machine Wednesday:
KB937287
Description from Microsoft's Support Site: This article describes the prerequisite software updates that apply to versions of Windows Vista that are mentioned in the "Applies to" section. These software updates are a prerequisite for Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). Additionally, these updates help improve reliability when you install or remove Windows Vista SP1.
Two or three additional software updates are required before you install Windows Vista SP1. The software updates that are required depend on the version of Windows Vista that you want to upgrade. Prerequisite update 935509 that is listed in this article only applies to Windows Vista Enterprise and to Windows Vista Ultimate. The other prerequisite updates that are listed in this article apply to all versions of Windows Vista.
Actually, according to the technical preview release information, the SP itself is not being delivered until mid-March, however, there are small updates that get downloaded to the computer to enable the download of the SP. When I installed the beta it worked that way, and then on my Vista production machine I noticed it downloaded the first of the 3 "foundation" updates on Tuesday after all the other updates.
From http://vistarewired.com/2008/01/15/windows-vista-sp1-rc-refresh-beta-download-open-to-the-public/ (The original Microsoft Vista Beta Page is no longer available)
"After you've installed these important updates, there are the "pre-requisite" updates required for SP1. You may have to repeat this step several times. If you have Windows Vista Ultimate or Enterprise, the pre-requisite update will be KB935509. For any other version, it should be KB938371. I have Windows Vista Ultimate but for some reason they asked me to install 938371 instead. Please let me know if this is the case for you as well. When the update is finished installing itself, a reboot is required.
After that, there is another update. Luckily there is no reboot required for this one. It's about 4MB.
When the update is finished installing, you'll have to give Windows Update "10-15 minutes" for the update to self-install
according to Microsoft. However, it only took me 5 minutes, but the SP1 update does not show until after a few minutes wait. Click on Check for Updates in the Left Pane and you should be able to find the SP1 update. This one is 85MB."
I would not be surprised if it was for XBox overhead and copy protection...
Or just log into your account at http://wireless.att.com/ and switch to paperless billing. That's how I did it years ago when it was Cingular. I would expect the option is still there.
Tweaking? yes. Dramatic changes in the technology that might create NEW technology? no. I think 'our' level of understanding of that technology only goes so far as "we know that if we swap out this crystal for this crystal, the following happens, or it repairs it." But they couldn't build a new one without help.
I work for a major retail chain that sells HP/Compaq notebooks and desktops. HP/Compaq desktops have required you to create the recovery discs for at least 3 years now, however it was not until the August/September 2005 model refresh that they stopped shipping recovery discs with their notebooks.
It might be worth noting that Paramount has absolutely nothing to do with the movie being made, for the rights were picked up by Universal...
It is true, there is no Federal law requiring that anyone recites the Pledge. However, many states have laws that require students to recite it every morning.
It's is also worth noting, that the federal government did enact some form of law declaring the Pledge, in it's current form, a national symbol of loyalty.
Also, the word "God," with a capitol "G" (as appears in the offical text of the Pledge), only has one modern meaning, and that is to refer to the Judeo-Christian diety. To the best of my knowledge, and I could be wrong, there is no other religion that calls their primary diety (or god, with a lower case "g" - Definition of god ) "God" in the American English Language.
Taking the above, and adding in "In God We Trust" from the dollar bill and quarter, it could be seen as the establishment of a religion.
All that being said, with the exception of a few religions with a relitively small following, most of the religions in this country are monotheistic. Therefore, how about we change the case on the "g" so that it reads "under god" instead. Or, if you really want to be able to cover all your bases, "under gods," thus recognizing the fact that there are multiple gods being worshiped in this country.
Ah, I may have misread.
:)
However, I think we'd be at least 5-7 years, and more likely 10 years, from that happening. It certianly won't be part of the Longhorn release. Here's my reasoning:
1) The Longhorn release is nearly to the Beta stage, and we are likely more then a year off from seeing the first motherboards with this particular type of BIOS.
2) Even if they wanted to try and lock people down into "You can only use Windows if you use MS-BIOS," there's still going to be the problem of backwards compatibility. Historically, Microsoft has wanted to push out OS upgrades to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. This means that it needs to be able to run on hardware manufactured during the lifetime of the previous incarnation of windows, if not the last two incarnations. For example, you can run Windows XP on hardware that ran Windows 98 SE, Windows ME, and Windows 2000...You may not be terribly happy with it, but you can do it.
Yeah, there are ways around both of those, and they aren't the only reasons why I don't think we'll see that tight of required integration anytime soon.
However, I do think now is the time to start looking at alternitives. LinuxBIOS is an option, however, it has quite a bit of work to go, and it doesn't have the corporate backing to make it happen that Phoenix and Microsoft can lever behind this.
Much like with DRM, I am interested to see where this will go, and am avidly watching for more news, but until there are some more definate answers, that's all I'm going to do. I'm a network engineer. I don't have the technical skills to design an alternate technology, nor am I in a position where I can affect things politically (other then writing to my representives). I will continue to watch, learn, and comment where appropriate.