So go work in retail and mail-order. What am I missing here? If all of these Amazon workers could go get these other jobs that supposedly pay more, why are they still working for Amazon? A company can only get away with what people are willing to work for. If nobody was willing to work for what they're paying then nobody would. The whole point of unions is to try and artificially force companies to pay more than what the market dictates.

Great, that's basically what I thought. That's why I would never trust bluray (or any other type of DRM'ed media) to house content that's important to me.

My bluray player is a "gen 1", i.e. purchased when bluray first came out 5 years ago or whenever it was. Perhaps that's why mine needed an update to play newer titles and yours haven't.

Your point about "always connected" defeating the point of physical media is apparently lost on many industries, for instance the "ultra violet" digital movies that you get on physical media but can't play without an Internet connection. An Internet connection doesn't defeat the point of physical media, it just makes it a lot easier for companies to retain control over content. It would be unacceptably slow to download the content of a Xbox or Playstation game but put that content on a disc and then require online validation in order to access it and problem solved. At least that's how the other side sees it.

The answer, then, is somewhere in between my assumption and your response because I've definitely had to connect my blu-ray player to the Internet for a firmware update in order to play a movie I rented from red box. So it would appear that the answer is they don't need to be connected to the Internet to function, but they do need to be connected periodically in order to receive updates that allow newer movies to be played. In that case the end result is nearly the same, if you have to allow the player to receive updates for continued functionality then one of those updates could just as easily remove functionality as well.

Compute isn't even really slang, it has a well established meaning related to cloud. Just like storage, network, cache, db are defined, compute is just another category of services.

Doesn't blu-ray require Internet access to "authenticate" newer discs? If so, it seems reasonable to assume the manufacturers could just as easily push out an update that makes discs no longer playable. I dislike any type of media which cannot be played in an airgapped medium, it gives everyone else too much control.

Personally, I think the newer Dell Latitudes look pretty nice. They work well too. I have an E6520 that is going to get upgraded to a Precision next year. I like the Latitude but I can't get the memory I want in it (maxes out at 16gb). Battery life, keyboard, etc aren't hugely important to me because mine spends 95% of its time in a dock so take that for what you will. Hardware wise, I don't have any complaints. Where Dell really shines is their warranty service, usually next business day onsite to fix any problems and you talk to someone in the USA when you call for help (assuming you pay for it, of course). My company did a brief stint with Lenovo and we couldn't get rid of them fast enough. We had T400s and of the 20 or so we bought I think we had about a 20% rate of them needing system boards replaced over the 2 years we used them. They also had a problem where the USB ports would break if you weren't careful when inserting/removing devices, and when you call Lenovo support all they want to do is argue with you about sending someone out to fix your system, even when you paid extra for accidental damage protection and onsite service. Plus there's always the benefit for some people of supporting an American company.

No, but what would you have them do instead? Do you think the passage of this law hasn't stopped at least a few folks from texting while driving? If so, then hasn't the law done at least some good?

Seriously, Slashdot? A 2+ minute IBM commercial that can't be skipped to watch this video?

That argument works fine until you consider this scenario:

Someone wants BF4 and can afford to buy it.

They see that they can download it illegally for free.

They download it illegally and use the money they would have spent on it for something else, or just save the money.

In this scenario, the availability of BF4 via illegal means has deprived its publisher of a sale. A lot of people that have disposable income and can afford to buy things are in that position because they're at least moderately intelligent. When you ask a moderately intelligent person if they'd rather pay for something or get it for free with virtually no chance of consequences, I'd be willing to bet a fair portion will choose the latter option.

It's not fair to say that lawmakers are making things worse. The people who are trying to get away with breaking the law are causing the problems. I can see your point, but when there is a problem such as this, it's the government's function to pass laws that deal with it...that's one of the reasons why we have governments.

Around here the law is written something like "a screen cannot be visible by the driver while the vehicle is in motion" and execptions are made for GPS and the screens built-in to cars (which won't allow you to do certain things when the car is moving / not in park). The fact that Google Glass didn't exist when that law was written does not exempt it from being covered by that law. I think you would have a hard time convincing a group of reasonable people that it's a good idea to let a driver interact with a computer while they're supposed to be concentrating on piloting the vehicle.

That was probably supposed to be funny, but in reality a LARGE portion of folks can't even function at a 6th grade level and I'm speaking from experience at my current job where I work with professionals. People skim what you write and make it mean what they think it means and ask questions that were answered in the message.

I've found that to have any chance at effectively communicating to a large group of people you really do have to dumb it down to a point bordering on ridiculous.

The problem there is profits never go up for the ISP and that doesn't look good to investors/owners. They want to constantly see more and more profit. My ISP offers a 90 Mbps speed tier and I signed up when it came out but I couldn't actually get anywhere close to the advertised speed so I went back to the previous plan. I download large files so infrequently a usage based billing model could work well for me. Heck, if there was even an easier way to switch speed tiers quickly it would be a step in the right direction. I can switch tiers whenever I want and get billed on a prorated basis but I have to call to do it so it makes it less appealing to spend the time on the phone to make a 20 minute download a 10 minute download.