(2) Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty of
(a) an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or
(b) an offence punishable on summary conviction.
I actually logged in to post that, that's how completely stupid your post was. It was stupid enough for me to break a year of no slashdot commenting to prove to others you're just plain friggin' wrong. Your advice can lead people to spend time in jail, it is that wrong.
In Canada it is illegal to:
- Say "I hate all $GROUP" in public, for example, on a webforum that doesn't require a login to access, or a webforum that will give anyone a login. (s319)
- Say "I want to kill $GROUP" (s318)
In Canada it is NOT illegal to:
- Have a group of Nazis meet privately at their whites-only compound to discuss how the holocaust did not happen
- Have a pair of Nazis work out a scheme to convince new recruits how they are "correct"
So, of course, these laws work really well to prevent hate groups from expanding and hating. Really, really, really well! And they never, ever punish the people who want to publicize their views so that people can comment on them and perhaps even educate them and others on how stupid said people are! Never, ever, ever! Why would any of us ever want to know what racists are thinking? There's absolutely no benefit in being able to recognize a racist on a dime! We wouldn't ever need to know words like "A reserved hotel" are, in fact, pointing to a set of racist owners. Better to keep that crap where it belongs! DEEP DEEP DEEP underground. That way people who don't hate can keep patronizing his business and ensure he's not shunned and broke!
Yep. There's a long story about this buried in the learning to speak chinese book I bought a while ago (but couldn't learn chinese from). Black market money might be fake, and clearly it's not legal to buy.:-)
Yes. Us greenie scientists are all religious nuts...
Ummm, I am not accusing you of anything of the sort. I'm simply accusing greenies of presenting an agenda that is ridiculous (like what's written in Revelations).
Nowadays a lot of the organizations that presented the ridiculous statements, such as suggesting we were all going to freeze to death, or, on the political side, we'd all be dying of a nuclear winter, have realized that crying wolf only works for so long, so fortunately, I haven't been inundated with stupidity for quite a while.
I do trust the opinions of respected scientists and environmentalists on the subject, and I'm willing to accept opinions such as "climate change is inevitable", but that's more because they're stating the obvious (when *hasn't* the weather changed) rather than a statement of ridiculousness.
Are you saying that there are no cost due to the present levels of pollution?
All costs are always integrated into the price of products (*). I am stating that if there are costs they have not had a magnitude to which I can yet complain.
(*) - I have already covered "personal", rather than monetary costs. Right now I can comfortably go outside and enjoy myself without feeling sick, I have plenty to eat and drink, so I consider whatever the "personal" costs are right now, they are negligible.
As far as monetary costs go, as a business myself, I have *never* seen it separated out on a product yet. What I do find very odd is that most so-called "green" products tend to cost more than twice as much as a so-called "non-green" product, yet supposedly pollution has costs (which I quantify as personal and monetary). As far as costs to other people and their activities, well, I can't testify to that because I'm neither them nor do I do their activities.
Most people want alternatives not because they hate oil, like someone hates to eat brussel sprouts or their ex-spouse.
Sadly, this is false when it comes to the people I discuss.
Most of the same people you see in envrionmentalist marches are also marching at the same time against some or all of the following:
- "Big Government"
- "Big Corporations owning your soul"
- "Big Oil"
- "Governments blowing things up for more oil"
- "SUVs"
- "Bush"
- "Human Rights" (pro, of course)
- "Fat America"
When none of those things are directly related to the cause they pretend is at the root of their protest. I might give them the last one, but then again, modern SUVs just don't use an appreciable amount of oil in the world that banning then would make any difference.
It's a nickname I give to pseudo-environmentalists who are thinly covering what is really nothing more than an anti-world-government agenda (amongst other things). For example, I give this name to anyone who is still a member of greenpeace. Ex-members who are still environmentalists but left because they don't carry basically anarchist agendas don't get this label. Now, for example, Bjorn Lomberg and Patrick Moore wouldn't be labelled "greenies" by me.
It's also a name I give to alarmist environmentalists who want to tell me I'll die soon, but, invariably, are proven incorrect (I'm still typing this).
So, yeah, it's a bit childish. But I hope it's a name that sticks, because it just *works* on so many levels.
Where does the cost of pollution fit in your supply/demand curves?
You want my honest opinion on that?
Presently, from my perspective, pollution isn't a problem. I'm saying *right now*. The only things I've ever been given by greenies are predictions of my death which read surprisingly similar to what's in Revelations. Well, I'm not only still alive, but I feel comfortable and things look bright and happy outside.
Now, if you want to predict I'm going to be choking to death, that's fine. However, greenies have predicted I'd be doing that in 30 years, 30 years ago. So I hope you'll forgive me if I refuse to trust your predictions for another 30.
I've lost count of how many greenies I've driven insane by telling them that letting people use all the oil they can get their hands on is a good thing, in that it will drive people to use alternatives sooner due to supply/demand curves.
And, as usual, sane people win out against the insane, again.
I've successfully fought against mandatory password changes at my company, but it rears its head again every few months, as some bright spark in management (usually in our parent company) thinks it would be a good idea, and it's "standard best practice" in the IT industry.
My college did this.
The solution all students, and all IT staff took was to add a number to the end of your password.
For example, password01 becomes password02.
Yes, this provided absolutely no security. Yes, I worked for this IT staff, so when I tell you they actually thought nobody else thought of this novel way of working around their stupidity (and that they thought they weren't stupid) you can be assured I'm correct.
They did attempt to fire me once. That didn't work out so well... well, not for me that is. I ended up with a *better* job in IT there as a result. Oh, so many stories, so little time.
It's nice but it still won't win on the hostile ATM. Most ATMs have a camera built in. I think you could be assured a hostile ATM taking cards like these would not have the camera focused in on the user instead of the pin pad...:-D
You seriously haven't a clue what a Neo-Conservative is at all.
Hint: You described old Conservatism.
Here's a primer on Neo-Conservatism. I think you'll find it an extremely secular group at its most basic.
Here's a few quotes that you really should study:...neoconservatives are characterized by an aggressive stance on foreign policy...
This political group supported......more social welfare spending...
But domestic policy does not define neoconservatism; it is a movement founded on, and perpetuated by an aggressive approach to foreign policy...
But hey, if you just want to vent against Bush, that's ok. You're still mistaken if you think Neo-Conservatives are bent on ignorance of other countries activities (as you can see, it's quite the opposite) and definately incorrect to suggest that Neo-Conservatives aren't interested in supporting the little guy.
That's not to say I support Bush, I definately don't. But you're lumping a group of people together here who don't belong in the same pickle barrel, when the fact is you're at odds with one man's poor interpretation of the ideals of Neo-Conservatism.
I'd say the same people who told us we'd all be completely frozen and be living in igloos about now, who then realized we'd all be burned to a crisp by now, and well, at this point, realize that if they keep changing from us freezing to burning to death that the idea isn't going to stick in the public's mind, never mind making themselves look like total asses. Instead they went with the one thing you really can prove:
The weather will be different tomorrow.
Then again, I bet good money Aristotle knew that, too.
It's really a lot like politics. You start out by promising the world to people, and when you finally get into office, now you promise that taxes won't go up for the next 6 months, instead.
There's the American one, where it's the right thing as long as the end result is what makes you happy (forget the means), and there's everybody else's, where the right thing is finding a solution that helps everybody, without bulldozing the middleman (or Iraqi civilians).
Considering I pay for my internet access, I'm trying to figure out who the "civilians" in this argument are.
Not me or my ISP, since I'm not stealing bandwidth.
Certainly not the spammer, who is ruining the internet.
Are you talking about the routers between me and them? I suppose they could be innocents, but up to now, nobody has extended the internet metaphor like that. It's not like these multi-gigabit routers are being crushed under the weight of this screensaver.
The only "innocent" party I can see here is the hosting company, and only if they didn't take the spammers money (ie: They were hacked). Of course, in that case, one can only hope they are smart enough to take the website down immediately.
>What about Philips Compact Disc Digital Audio, which Sony co-developed?
I know Sony helped out, but Philips tends to take most of the credit. Which is a good thing. When Sony has others backing them, sometimes the others can reverse the Sony curse (tm).:-)
All that being said, it took over a decade for the CD format to become popular with consumers...
>What about PlayStation and PlayStation 2?
A little bit different. While you could argue a PS/PS2 video game is a "format", I'm talking about something more general than that. A PS/PS2 game is never intended to work in anything but a PS/PS2. Memory sticks, MD, Beta, etc, these were intended to work in *any* audio/video/computer device (assuming the manufacturer paid some money to Sony).
I doubt Sony would allow, for example, Microsoft to license their PS/PS2 format and engine to play in the XBOX. I suppose it could happen, but it's REALLY doubtful. On the other hand, Sony definately would allow Microsoft to design a memory stick slot into their devices, assuming Microsoft paid a fee to Sony.
The best you can generally get out of a battery is 5x it's capacity in discharge rate (5C), so a 2000mAH battery could be discharged at 10A.
To be exact, the best you can get out of a battery, if you don't care about heat or explosions, is the battery's voltage divided by the battery's internal resistance.:-)
A typical NiMH internal resistance would be, say, 778 mOhms. That means, for an AA NiMH battery outputting 1.25 volts, we have a maximum short current draw of 1.6 A. That's a lot of batteries to get what you want!:-)
The battery in my laptop lasts a good 3 or 4 hours, and it costs $80 to replace. I can't see a properly designed battery/system designed to sumply dump the contents of the RAM to the hard drive costing any more that that - and probably significantly less.
A full-size computer takes 300 watts. Well, let's just pretend it does. There's plenty of other numbers to pick from, but from the blown up "300 watts" chinese power supplies I see day in and day out, it's a good number to assume.
Your laptop, on the other hand, uses about 40 watts (check your power adapter). We're talking almost a 10-fold increase in the amount of juice that has to be supplied here...
That and your laptop has the hard work done. The power supply "cube" being external from that battery offsets the cost quite a bit.
Consider that you don't have to power anything but the RAM, one HD, and minimal processor (if the processor supports stepping), and you only have to do it for a minute or so. How much do those components take? 100 watts?
Not all that much. Sure, it would be like a laptop.
The only problem is there's no *standard* for desktop PCs to do this, apart from APM/ACPI. And those standards absolutely suck, and rarely work well out in real life, except in controlled and tested circumstances like laptops.
That and the cost of implementation for this is going to drive prices up. Consumers don't want that. They'd rather have the choice of risking a brownout wrecking their data over a costly UPS than not.
Besides, batteries require maintenance. From the amount of maintenance I've seen users do on their PCs, I can just imagine the amount of battery acid corroded mainboards I'd have to deal with...
Er, you mean "that's assuming perfectly efficient use of the power supply, which is impossible"?
No, I mean perfect efficiency in converting either the batteries or mains supply into suitable voltages for the computer to run off... Most switching supplies have efficiencies in the 80% - 90% range (if you're lucky). So, 300 watts draw by the computer results in 360 watts draw from the mains/batteries.
Because Blu-Ray is made by Sony. Like all Sony formats they are almost 100% destined to be ignored and reviled by consumers. The only exception is MiniDisc, which I heard was slightly popular in Europe for a short while. In North America, MiniDisc was as popular as DC electricity to the home.
If there's one thing you can do and never go wrong on, it's "Don't buy the Sony media alternative".
You can get that from a lead acid battery, sure. You'll only quintuple the price of a power supply. Oh, and then there's the disposal issues and other environmental laws. Let's make that octuple.
Yeah, there's other batteries. No, almost none of them can be tossed, and they're all more expensive, too.
I've seen these supplies where the UPS is built in. They usually start at about $150 US...
VIA may have produced a lead-free motherboard, but VIA abuses its workers and integrates lead into other products.
So, rather than purchase products which would actually satisfy you when they are available, you will instead continue to shun the company and do without.
If I were the company, and I made an effort to make you happy and then, you, rather than take the opportunity to show me that you are willing to support me when I offer what you want, rather continue to tell me I'm horrible, well, I'd take the impression of:
(a) You're jerks. (b) There's no pleasing you. (c) May as well continue what we were doing because we won't be selling to anyone that cares about our increased "green" efforts, anyways. (d) Let's never try this waste of money again.
But your statement still seems to apply, since Japan is not a nation of pirates like the U.S. is.
There's no need to pirate games when they're all available for sale in your country.
The USA barely sees even a small amount of the games selection Japan has. Anything outside of that has to be imported and played illegally (against the DMCA) or pirated (against the DMCA and copyright law).
Considering the punishments of the DMCA, you may as well go all the way if you plan to break it.
You can definately play retail backups on a gamecube by streaming them from your PC and PSOload. I have done this and it works like a charm on many games (although the streaming is not fast enough to accomodate the bandwidth required for some games, so they tend to stutter and/or crash).
If the games are encrypted against that barcode, that encryption is definately broken. I have backed up games from the GC before and the data is *definately* not encrypted when it is saved on my system. This can be shown by decoding sound, video, etc files from the GC iso and noticing that they are valid and work work...
Also the "junk" padding was quickly noticed and stripped. I think that took a couple of weeks for a utility to come out.
Nintendo's saving grace for the GC to stop piracy has always been the pain in the ass media format, along with the heavy encryption and non-standard hardware approaches they took. But, when people are determined, someone will always find a way to break your system.
What I do find odd is that all this anti-piracy measures Nintendo took with the GC didn't help sales at all. Oh well...
Since, according to your site, you have experience in such matters, which of the flashable chips would you recommend for a v9/v10?
Well, while people "in the scene" don't like the people devolping the chip too much, I still have to say I like the DMS chips quite a lot. I have installed quite a few of these and they are a nice chip.
However, I have heard so many good things about the Matrix chips, I'd have to say they're not a bad choice either.
The crystal chip is a new player on the market -- I'd give them a bit of time to work out bugs, etc, before I bought their chip.
If you want more detailed opinions, try either of these sites.
I wish I could tell you more about those chips, but honestly, 99% of the chips I end up installing are for people too cheap to spend the extra $50 to get a "high end" chip. Nowadays the cheap chips work well enough people don't see the reason to spend $50 for the ability to flash upgrade their chips.
If you like the idea of playing about with the code yourself, there is one other thing I would suggest. If you check ps2newz you'll find the "ICE" team. They develop a homebrew modchip code that works on very cheap "Magic 3" chips (or, simply, SX28 chips). Not only does it keep the parts and price really low, but also you can depend on updates. It's not for the faint of heart, though, since the code is usually beta...:-) But it's the closest to an "open source" fully functional PS2 modchip code you can get.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually logged in to post that, that's how completely stupid your post was. It was stupid enough for me to break a year of no slashdot commenting to prove to others you're just plain friggin' wrong. Your advice can lead people to spend time in jail, it is that wrong.
In Canada it is illegal to:
- Say "I hate all $GROUP" in public, for example, on a webforum that doesn't require a login to access, or a webforum that will give anyone a login. (s319)
- Say "I want to kill $GROUP" (s318)
In Canada it is NOT illegal to:
- Have a group of Nazis meet privately at their whites-only compound to discuss how the holocaust did not happen
- Have a pair of Nazis work out a scheme to convince new recruits how they are "correct"
So, of course, these laws work really well to prevent hate groups from expanding and hating. Really, really, really well! And they never, ever punish the people who want to publicize their views so that people can comment on them and perhaps even educate them and others on how stupid said people are! Never, ever, ever! Why would any of us ever want to know what racists are thinking? There's absolutely no benefit in being able to recognize a racist on a dime! We wouldn't ever need to know words like "A reserved hotel" are, in fact, pointing to a set of racist owners. Better to keep that crap where it belongs! DEEP DEEP DEEP underground. That way people who don't hate can keep patronizing his business and ensure he's not shunned and broke!
ARGH!
I don't know about you, but I definately do find the irony in this funny.
Perhaps there is a similar situation in China.
:-)
Yep. There's a long story about this buried in the learning to speak chinese book I bought a while ago (but couldn't learn chinese from). Black market money might be fake, and clearly it's not legal to buy.
Yes. Us greenie scientists are all religious nuts...
Ummm, I am not accusing you of anything of the sort. I'm simply accusing greenies of presenting an agenda that is ridiculous (like what's written in Revelations).
Nowadays a lot of the organizations that presented the ridiculous statements, such as suggesting we were all going to freeze to death, or, on the political side, we'd all be dying of a nuclear winter, have realized that crying wolf only works for so long, so fortunately, I haven't been inundated with stupidity for quite a while.
I do trust the opinions of respected scientists and environmentalists on the subject, and I'm willing to accept opinions such as "climate change is inevitable", but that's more because they're stating the obvious (when *hasn't* the weather changed) rather than a statement of ridiculousness.
Are you saying that there are no cost due to the present levels of pollution?
All costs are always integrated into the price of products (*). I am stating that if there are costs they have not had a magnitude to which I can yet complain.
(*) - I have already covered "personal", rather than monetary costs. Right now I can comfortably go outside and enjoy myself without feeling sick, I have plenty to eat and drink, so I consider whatever the "personal" costs are right now, they are negligible.
As far as monetary costs go, as a business myself, I have *never* seen it separated out on a product yet. What I do find very odd is that most so-called "green" products tend to cost more than twice as much as a so-called "non-green" product, yet supposedly pollution has costs (which I quantify as personal and monetary). As far as costs to other people and their activities, well, I can't testify to that because I'm neither them nor do I do their activities.
HTH.
Most people want alternatives not because they hate oil, like someone hates to eat brussel sprouts or their ex-spouse.
Sadly, this is false when it comes to the people I discuss.
Most of the same people you see in envrionmentalist marches are also marching at the same time against some or all of the following:
- "Big Government"
- "Big Corporations owning your soul"
- "Big Oil"
- "Governments blowing things up for more oil"
- "SUVs"
- "Bush"
- "Human Rights" (pro, of course)
- "Fat America"
When none of those things are directly related to the cause they pretend is at the root of their protest. I might give them the last one, but then again, modern SUVs just don't use an appreciable amount of oil in the world that banning then would make any difference.
"greenies"? That's sounds rather childish.
It's a nickname I give to pseudo-environmentalists who are thinly covering what is really nothing more than an anti-world-government agenda (amongst other things). For example, I give this name to anyone who is still a member of greenpeace. Ex-members who are still environmentalists but left because they don't carry basically anarchist agendas don't get this label. Now, for example, Bjorn Lomberg and Patrick Moore wouldn't be labelled "greenies" by me.
It's also a name I give to alarmist environmentalists who want to tell me I'll die soon, but, invariably, are proven incorrect (I'm still typing this).
So, yeah, it's a bit childish. But I hope it's a name that sticks, because it just *works* on so many levels.
Where does the cost of pollution fit in your supply/demand curves?
You want my honest opinion on that?
Presently, from my perspective, pollution isn't a problem. I'm saying *right now*. The only things I've ever been given by greenies are predictions of my death which read surprisingly similar to what's in Revelations. Well, I'm not only still alive, but I feel comfortable and things look bright and happy outside.
Now, if you want to predict I'm going to be choking to death, that's fine. However, greenies have predicted I'd be doing that in 30 years, 30 years ago. So I hope you'll forgive me if I refuse to trust your predictions for another 30.
I've lost count of how many greenies I've driven insane by telling them that letting people use all the oil they can get their hands on is a good thing, in that it will drive people to use alternatives sooner due to supply/demand curves.
And, as usual, sane people win out against the insane, again.
I've successfully fought against mandatory password changes at my company, but it rears its head again every few months, as some bright spark in management (usually in our parent company) thinks it would be a good idea, and it's "standard best practice" in the IT industry.
My college did this.
The solution all students, and all IT staff took was to add a number to the end of your password.
For example, password01 becomes password02.
Yes, this provided absolutely no security. Yes, I worked for this IT staff, so when I tell you they actually thought nobody else thought of this novel way of working around their stupidity (and that they thought they weren't stupid) you can be assured I'm correct.
They did attempt to fire me once. That didn't work out so well... well, not for me that is. I ended up with a *better* job in IT there as a result. Oh, so many stories, so little time.
It's nice but it still won't win on the hostile ATM. Most ATMs have a camera built in. I think you could be assured a hostile ATM taking cards like these would not have the camera focused in on the user instead of the pin pad... :-D
You seriously haven't a clue what a Neo-Conservative is at all.
...neoconservatives are characterized by an aggressive stance on foreign policy...
...more social welfare spending...
Hint: You described old Conservatism.
Here's a primer on Neo-Conservatism. I think you'll find it an extremely secular group at its most basic.
Here's a few quotes that you really should study:
This political group supported...
But domestic policy does not define neoconservatism; it is a movement founded on, and perpetuated by an aggressive approach to foreign policy...
But hey, if you just want to vent against Bush, that's ok. You're still mistaken if you think Neo-Conservatives are bent on ignorance of other countries activities (as you can see, it's quite the opposite) and definately incorrect to suggest that Neo-Conservatives aren't interested in supporting the little guy.
That's not to say I support Bush, I definately don't. But you're lumping a group of people together here who don't belong in the same pickle barrel, when the fact is you're at odds with one man's poor interpretation of the ideals of Neo-Conservatism.
>I wonder who started that trend?
I'd say the same people who told us we'd all be completely frozen and be living in igloos about now, who then realized we'd all be burned to a crisp by now, and well, at this point, realize that if they keep changing from us freezing to burning to death that the idea isn't going to stick in the public's mind, never mind making themselves look like total asses. Instead they went with the one thing you really can prove:
The weather will be different tomorrow.
Then again, I bet good money Aristotle knew that, too.
It's really a lot like politics. You start out by promising the world to people, and when you finally get into office, now you promise that taxes won't go up for the next 6 months, instead.
There's the American one, where it's the right thing as long as the end result is what makes you happy (forget the means), and there's everybody else's, where the right thing is finding a solution that helps everybody, without bulldozing the middleman (or Iraqi civilians).
Considering I pay for my internet access, I'm trying to figure out who the "civilians" in this argument are.
Not me or my ISP, since I'm not stealing bandwidth.
Certainly not the spammer, who is ruining the internet.
Are you talking about the routers between me and them? I suppose they could be innocents, but up to now, nobody has extended the internet metaphor like that. It's not like these multi-gigabit routers are being crushed under the weight of this screensaver.
The only "innocent" party I can see here is the hosting company, and only if they didn't take the spammers money (ie: They were hacked). Of course, in that case, one can only hope they are smart enough to take the website down immediately.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Yes, but three rights make a left.
>What about Philips Compact Disc Digital Audio, which Sony co-developed?
:-)
I know Sony helped out, but Philips tends to take most of the credit. Which is a good thing. When Sony has others backing them, sometimes the others can reverse the Sony curse (tm).
All that being said, it took over a decade for the CD format to become popular with consumers...
>What about PlayStation and PlayStation 2?
A little bit different. While you could argue a PS/PS2 video game is a "format", I'm talking about something more general than that. A PS/PS2 game is never intended to work in anything but a PS/PS2. Memory sticks, MD, Beta, etc, these were intended to work in *any* audio/video/computer device (assuming the manufacturer paid some money to Sony).
I doubt Sony would allow, for example, Microsoft to license their PS/PS2 format and engine to play in the XBOX. I suppose it could happen, but it's REALLY doubtful. On the other hand, Sony definately would allow Microsoft to design a memory stick slot into their devices, assuming Microsoft paid a fee to Sony.
The best you can generally get out of a battery is 5x it's capacity in discharge rate (5C), so a 2000mAH battery could be discharged at 10A.
:-)
:-)
To be exact, the best you can get out of a battery, if you don't care about heat or explosions, is the battery's voltage divided by the battery's internal resistance.
A typical NiMH internal resistance would be, say, 778 mOhms. That means, for an AA NiMH battery outputting 1.25 volts, we have a maximum short current draw of 1.6 A. That's a lot of batteries to get what you want!
The battery in my laptop lasts a good 3 or 4 hours, and it costs $80 to replace. I can't see a properly designed battery/system designed to sumply dump the contents of the RAM to the hard drive costing any more that that - and probably significantly less.
A full-size computer takes 300 watts. Well, let's just pretend it does. There's plenty of other numbers to pick from, but from the blown up "300 watts" chinese power supplies I see day in and day out, it's a good number to assume.
Your laptop, on the other hand, uses about 40 watts (check your power adapter). We're talking almost a 10-fold increase in the amount of juice that has to be supplied here...
That and your laptop has the hard work done. The power supply "cube" being external from that battery offsets the cost quite a bit.
Consider that you don't have to power anything but the RAM, one HD, and minimal processor (if the processor supports stepping), and you only have to do it for a minute or so. How much do those components take? 100 watts?
Not all that much. Sure, it would be like a laptop.
The only problem is there's no *standard* for desktop PCs to do this, apart from APM/ACPI. And those standards absolutely suck, and rarely work well out in real life, except in controlled and tested circumstances like laptops.
That and the cost of implementation for this is going to drive prices up. Consumers don't want that. They'd rather have the choice of risking a brownout wrecking their data over a costly UPS than not.
Besides, batteries require maintenance. From the amount of maintenance I've seen users do on their PCs, I can just imagine the amount of battery acid corroded mainboards I'd have to deal with...
Er, you mean "that's assuming perfectly efficient use of the power supply, which is impossible"?
No, I mean perfect efficiency in converting either the batteries or mains supply into suitable voltages for the computer to run off... Most switching supplies have efficiencies in the 80% - 90% range (if you're lucky). So, 300 watts draw by the computer results in 360 watts draw from the mains/batteries.
Why?
Because Blu-Ray is made by Sony. Like all Sony formats they are almost 100% destined to be ignored and reviled by consumers. The only exception is MiniDisc, which I heard was slightly popular in Europe for a short while. In North America, MiniDisc was as popular as DC electricity to the home.
If there's one thing you can do and never go wrong on, it's "Don't buy the Sony media alternative".
It would be trivial to have a small battery, on the DC side of the power supply instead of trying to hook up a UPS.
Trivial? Not really. Your power supply is probably at least 300 watts maximum output, right?
300 watts @ 12 volts = 25 amps. And that's assuming perfect efficiency (impossible).
You can get that from a lead acid battery, sure. You'll only quintuple the price of a power supply. Oh, and then there's the disposal issues and other environmental laws. Let's make that octuple.
Yeah, there's other batteries. No, almost none of them can be tossed, and they're all more expensive, too.
I've seen these supplies where the UPS is built in. They usually start at about $150 US...
ntpasswd.
What if a user has an open file, and yanks the drive? How does Windows "gracefully" deal with that? Answer: it can't.
I'm trying to remember the error I got last time my cheap-ass switch crashed while windows was writing data to an SMB volume...
Something along the lines of:
"Windows failed to write files to a volume. These files may have been lost."
No applications crashed, no nothing but that error.
That's about as gracefully as is necessary when it comes to the user purposely (or accidentally) abusing the computer.
VIA may have produced a lead-free motherboard, but VIA abuses its workers and integrates lead into other products.
So, rather than purchase products which would actually satisfy you when they are available, you will instead continue to shun the company and do without.
If I were the company, and I made an effort to make you happy and then, you, rather than take the opportunity to show me that you are willing to support me when I offer what you want, rather continue to tell me I'm horrible, well, I'd take the impression of:
(a) You're jerks.
(b) There's no pleasing you.
(c) May as well continue what we were doing because we won't be selling to anyone that cares about our increased "green" efforts, anyways.
(d) Let's never try this waste of money again.
But your statement still seems to apply, since Japan is not a nation of pirates like the U.S. is.
There's no need to pirate games when they're all available for sale in your country.
The USA barely sees even a small amount of the games selection Japan has. Anything outside of that has to be imported and played illegally (against the DMCA) or pirated (against the DMCA and copyright law).
Considering the punishments of the DMCA, you may as well go all the way if you plan to break it.
Think about that for a moment.
You can definately play retail backups on a gamecube by streaming them from your PC and PSOload. I have done this and it works like a charm on many games (although the streaming is not fast enough to accomodate the bandwidth required for some games, so they tend to stutter and/or crash).
If the games are encrypted against that barcode, that encryption is definately broken. I have backed up games from the GC before and the data is *definately* not encrypted when it is saved on my system. This can be shown by decoding sound, video, etc files from the GC iso and noticing that they are valid and work work...
Also the "junk" padding was quickly noticed and stripped. I think that took a couple of weeks for a utility to come out.
Nintendo's saving grace for the GC to stop piracy has always been the pain in the ass media format, along with the heavy encryption and non-standard hardware approaches they took. But, when people are determined, someone will always find a way to break your system.
What I do find odd is that all this anti-piracy measures Nintendo took with the GC didn't help sales at all. Oh well...
Since, according to your site, you have experience in such matters, which of the flashable chips would you recommend for a v9/v10?
:-) But it's the closest to an "open source" fully functional PS2 modchip code you can get.
Well, while people "in the scene" don't like the people devolping the chip too much, I still have to say I like the DMS chips quite a lot. I have installed quite a few of these and they are a nice chip.
However, I have heard so many good things about the Matrix chips, I'd have to say they're not a bad choice either.
The crystal chip is a new player on the market -- I'd give them a bit of time to work out bugs, etc, before I bought their chip.
If you want more detailed opinions, try either of these sites.
I wish I could tell you more about those chips, but honestly, 99% of the chips I end up installing are for people too cheap to spend the extra $50 to get a "high end" chip. Nowadays the cheap chips work well enough people don't see the reason to spend $50 for the ability to flash upgrade their chips.
If you like the idea of playing about with the code yourself, there is one other thing I would suggest. If you check ps2newz you'll find the "ICE" team. They develop a homebrew modchip code that works on very cheap "Magic 3" chips (or, simply, SX28 chips). Not only does it keep the parts and price really low, but also you can depend on updates. It's not for the faint of heart, though, since the code is usually beta...