You are confusing the concept of owning and renting. When you watch a movie on Netflix, you don't get to keep it. Before netflix, movie rentals were a couple bucks tops, so the difference isn't nearly what you are making it out to be.
 
With Movie tickets right around $12 before popcorn or soda, I'd say the worth of watching a movie 1 time is still $12. I doubt the major movie studios would be pulling in record profits if a movie had a $0 value.
 

Do you know what pirates did before the invention of ebooks? They went to their local library, checked out the book they wanted to read, walked outside, and shouted "ARRRR!"
 
Using your logic, the value of a book is zero because anyone with a library card can check them out for free.

No, it hasn't. Intel heatsinks are attached by plastic clips that go through holes in the motherboard. AMD heat sinks are clipped to a bracket that is bolted through the motherboard to a backing plate behind the CPU socket. They use a cam-style locking mechanism to provide tension and keep the heatsink tight while eliminating the prying that was needed on socket 370 and socket A heatsinks.

The AMD buyout of ATI happened in 2006. Your 5850 was made by AMD.

I have seen plenty of cars where it could not. 4x4s and sports cars usually allow for this. Cheaper cars sometimes do not.

Care to back that up with a fact or two? With anti-lock brakes you are supposed to stomp on the pedal as well.

How fast is "So fast?" 20MPH, 50MPH or 100MPH all require the use of brakes. A panic stop to avoid a wild animal crossing the road will lock or engage the anti-lock brakes at any of those speeds. As far as bumfuck nowhere, pretty much. None the less I still have better internet speeds than half of the US so it's not that far out there.

Bullshit. It's 65%.

My defense of carburetors was factual and valid. I can sum it up for you in a nice list if you would like:

1. Carburetors are simpler. The simplicity makes troubleshooting easy. There are no sensors to diagnose. Fuel pumps are on the block and can normally be changed in minutes instead of hours like in-tank electric pumps used on EFI cars. Carbureted cars need one wire to run. If your entire electrical system dies on the side of the road you can run one wire to the hot side of the coil, jump the starter solenoid and drive home. This is a handy feature for Jaguar owners.
2. Carburetors are cheaper to fix. There are no sensors to buy. A rebuild kit probably won't ever cost more than $50. $20 is probably closer to the usual price. Fuel pumps generally cost less than $50 as well vs. the $150+ norm for EFI cars. Since everything is easily accessible labor is cheaper (assuming you don't just do it yourself.)

I am my own mechanic. I understand EFI systems and have done a lot of successful troubleshooting on EFI systems. My experience was very negative. Sensors fail for no apparent reason and often cost hundreds of dollars in parts alone to replace. When an EFI car runs like crap it is often difficult to determine what sensor is faulty without the aid of a diagnostic computer. Sadly, unless you take it back to the dealer, the diagnostic computers give a guess. Almost always you start with the 02 sensor. If it still runs crappy you replace the TPS or whatever sensor the computer finds next. Rinse and repeat until you have found the culprit. That is if you are lucky. The most fun is when the computer says everything is A-OK and the car dies every time you stop at a stop sign. The issue is not a lack of understanding, but a lack of wanting to deal with all of the bullshit involved.

I understand old and new "shit." As someone who works in IT, Prefer not to trust my life to a computer with little in regards to failsafes. I strongly disagree that "new shit" is superior. The emissions are better but that is the only way they are better for my use. I'm saving more in greenhouse gas emissions by driving the old cars and not melting them down repeatedly (how much greenhouse gas does that emit?) and replacing the steel with plastic made from non-recyclable, non-renewable resources.

Pro in what? I never said I was a better or more demanding driver. Stop putting words in my mouth please.

Both the cars I mentioned earler have neither power steering or power brakes. Both stop reasonably well (I wouldn't complain about the additional complexity of a brake booster though.) I can steer both cars with a single finger when they are rolling and really don't see the advantage of power steering. If the steering system is designed for manual steering, it works very well. Power steering is more unnecessary complication.
 
I have a protip for you: When arguing with someone, skip the ad hominem nonsense. It does nothing to strengthen your position and makes you sound like an ass.

I will concede that automatic transmissions are--within the last 5 years or so--finally approaching the fuel economy manual transmissions have give drivers for decades. However, until my car can read my mind, I prefer to control when my car shifts. Without traction control or the like, you can prevent a car with a manual from slipping on ice by putting it in a higher gear, etc... Traction control has it's uses but in certain situations--muddy, rutted roads for example--it's also a good way to get stuck. The road I live on is crap. It's a sloppy mess every time it rains and it takes the plow several hours to get there after a snow storm. Having the extra control is nice.

Anti-lock brakes are great on the highway or on a paved surface. Compare anti-lock to non-anti-lock on a gravel surface some time. On gravel, assuming it is not too loose, you can stop faster by intentionally locking the brakes.

I can replace the entire fuel system in any of my carbureted cars (including the fuel pump) for the price of the fuel pump alone on your fuel injected car. When you have to start diagnosing and replacing sensors on an EFI car using the guess and check method--the diagnostic computers don't work worth a shit. ever.--your repair bill can get out of control very quickly. I'll stick to the simple to troubleshoot and cheap to fix carbureted solution.

And don't tell me how bad my fuel milage is either. My '72 Volkswagen Type 3 automatic gets 35MPG and my full-sized '54 Plymouth with a 3spd manual gets 25.

[humor]With a crank a dead battery or starter will never leave you stranded.[/humor] Seriously though, sometimes a simple solution--while a little bit more work--is more reliable in the long run.

Wrong. Many newer cars use a drive-by-wire system to shift the transmission. I stopped to help a lady whose Prius got stranded a couple of months back. She was having some sort of electrical trouble and it took 20 minutes of fooling around turning the key on and off and pressing buttons to get the damn thing in neutral so we could push it off the road. The owner knew what buttons to press, but the computer refused to shift the transmission.

Wrong. Manual transmissions do not need coolers in the radiator or coolant lines. Loss of coolant from a ruptured line or a damaged radiator can quickly kill any automatic transmission if it is not noticed right away. Automatics are a lot more complicated both electronically and mechanically and simply have more parts to fail. A manual transmission won't stop working because of a broken wire but a modern automatic (made in the last 25 years) will.

Or they have the extra gear because it is not as costly to install as it would be in an automatic and it results in better fuel economy.

Check out Greyhole. It is storage pooling on a group of drives only if you loose one of the drives in the pool the data on the others is intact. It uses Samba as the back end so it allows for interesting configurations such as per-share redundancy. That way you could have your star trek share's data reside on one drive but really important stuff be duplicated to 2 or more drives. It's a little annoying to get set up but works great once it is up and running.

I *Really* wanted a webos tablet for the reasons outlined above. I didn't think it was worth $500 for the touchpad. I would have paid $250 for it. Maybe even $300 if the hardware was a little better.

It was within their right to fork KHTML to create Webkit. They have followed the license and have been a good open-source citizen about using it. Te hey also follow other licenses for open source software that they use (BSD, etc...) This isn't a problem. What is a problem is when Apple fanboys point to Webkit and say "Look, Apple is an open company. They created WebKit and generously gave it back to the community." They tend to forget they a) didn't create WebKit from scratch, b) are bound by KHTML's license so they could not close it if they wanted to, and c) Everybody who uses WebKit now could have easily used KHTML instead had Apple not started the WebKit fork.

I never said I was annoyed with Apple's open source projects. If you read a little closer I said I was annoyed with people (apple fanboys) who point at webkit and try to say "Look at that, Apple is really an open company. They contributed this giant rendering engine for everyone to use. Where would Chrome be without Apple?"

I'm an equal opportunity hater. This article happens to be about Apple :-p

I antagonize supporters of Apple who pretend Apple created Webkit from scratch and released it to the open source community. I'm willing to bet if they had written Webkit from scratch there's no way it would be under an open source license.

WRONG. Your analogy doesn't make any sense. Apple didn't start the project that became Webkit so I can't see how you could compare Apple to Linus or the Linux kernel to KHTML/Webkit.
 

Wrong again. If Apple hadn't forked KHTML and called it Webkit, chrome would have been based on KHTML instead. My annoyance with the whole webkit thing is that Apple fans forget that it is just a KHTML fork that got merged back in to the main tree and the name stuck.

Frankly, I don't give a crap how much code Apple contributes back to the community. They are within their rights to follow the licenses of the projects they use or contribute to. This isn't in question. What bothers me is when people point to Webkit and say "Apple created that. Look at what Apple has done for open source." It's a load of crap.

No, but they don't make it difficult either. I can open it up with a phillips screwdriver. It's not like it's welded shut.

I'm fairly certain you are the one with a screwed-up definition of "appliance." From the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

Definition 2b is closest to what we are describing here. The critical part is "designed for a particular use or function." By this definition, every smartphone, tablet, MID, whatever is really a general purpose computer with a different interface (touchscreen, accelerometer, etc...) Since this puts most locked-down gadgets into the "general purpose computer" category, how would you react if Dell would only allow you to run the Dell OEM version of Windows on your laptop and wouldn't allow you to uninstall all the bundled crapware without voiding your warranty and jumping through a bunch of hoops. This is the state of the smartphone/tablet/mid market today. It sucks. The closest thing I can think of that comes close to actual "appliance computing" is the chromebook--which is more like a refrigerator with everything welded shut but the ice machine. E-ink e-readers would fit the definition as well. The iPod nano and shuffle are the only apple products that I would classify as an "appliance."

I don't mind appliance computing, but if I pay good money for something, I better be able to use it as I see fit. Having a company or government or anybody else dictate to me what I can or cannot do to or with my property (within reason of course) is unacceptable.

I love it when Apple fanboys bring up Webkit. KHTML had much of the heavy lifting done before apple re-branded--err I mean forked--it. Yes, they have contributed but they have taken way more than they have ever given back.

Anybody know if "they" still limit how many computers, cds and ipods you can play your music on?

Just because one of the most popular options is a DRM-infested POS doesn't mean you can't buy drm-free products. I personally have been reading DRM-free ebooks in the epub format from Scifi-az.com.

Actually it is possible. Mt. Gox keeps the amount of bitcoin in a member's database--much like a bank where your account balance is nothing more than a number in a database. If someone compromised Mt. Gox's database they could potentially increase the amount of bitcoin the database says their account contains. Then the malicious user could transfer the bitcoins to their own wallet essentially stealing the the bitcoin from Mt. Gox.

Not really. It's analogous to a drawing. You can put your name in the hat as many times as you want, but the person who put their name in once could get lucky and have their name drawn over the person who has their name in 1000 times.