mmmm... twinkie....

They can cross that off the list and carry on with other solutions to the

problem...

This is so true that I'm willing to suffer with two really crappy old crt's that need focusing rather than return to just one monitor.

fingers crossed for a couple of new flatscreens for xmas!

Did u find ur bukkit?

No small part of the unsprung weight is the brake structure and at least part of the weight of the drive shaft. An in-wheel motor serves both as drive and brake. Putting 4 motors in means you get to make each motor smaller to provide the same power. Further, the transmission losses of a current drivetrain (both in the transmission itself and in the u-joints of the drive shaft) are greatly minimized if not eliminated altogether allowing a further reduction in motor size.

I have no idea how this all adds up in terms of unsprung weight, but I suspect it may be close to a wash. But that's only a guess and I'm too lazy to do the research on it.

for the cocktails required to survive that drivel.

Black Guy: "Can you believe Microsoft put the launch of windows 7 in our hands?!"
Group: *laughs*
Black Guy: "Are they nuts or what?!"
Group: *laughs*
White Guy: "(maybe|only)*** by letting you be involved!"
Group: "ooh harsh!"

If only they had followed up with

Black Guy: *pounds White Guy for being a jerk*
White Guy: *screams like a girl while blood gushes from his nose*
Women: *laughs*

it would have avoided

Me: *pukes*

***unintelligible

Will Telkom play fair? Or will they throw resources at the problem to ensure they win? I really don't know a thing about network transport, so what I suggest may not even be possible in the time alloted. The marketing aspects are interesting too. Does Telkom generate good will by taking its lumps good-naturedly and then make real efforts to fix its problems? I suspect that rigging the game could actually do more harm than good.

Of course copyright holders have rights. But those rights do not include the right to physically control what I do with my personal property. period.

If their business model does not work without physically controlling what I do with my hardware, then their business model is broken.

Kindle is a bad example as we've recently seen with their deletion of copies of 1984. Many more people are now aware of what exactly can be done with DRM type control of the user's machine.

Just because no one notices doesn't make it right. If you don't notice that someone has inserted a root-kit in your machine, but hasn't made use of it yet, is that okay? If you don't notice that someone has a backdoor in your OS that allows them to delete certain files from your machine without your knowledge or consent, is that okay? No.

Agreed. But I'm arguing that it is not right for DRM to prevent me from doing something legal with my hardware. It all gets convoluted below, but I think it comes out in the end...

maybe! I'm game ;)

This analogy doesn't fit because the car does not actively prevent you from taking a sawzall(sp?) to the dash and putting your own cd player in.

As I understand it (and I'm certainly no expert), the DRM actively tries to prevent the user from performing an action on the user's(!) machine that the user is legally allowed to do. This is a rather different concept from not providing the functionality in the first place as in your analogy above. In the case of DRM, a third party is actively preventing the user from doing something legal with their own property.

hmmm... I'll agree that it may not be my *right* to copy a cd, but since it is not illegal, it is therefore legal. Since it is legal for me to do something, then how can it be right for a third party to prevent me from doing it?

It is legal for me to install a radio in my car. I have no *right* to it, but it is legal for me to do so. It is almost certainly (IANAL) illegal for Toyota to prevent me from doing so. Or an even better analogy: it is almost certainly illegal for whatever entity is responsible for the fuel-injection controller to prevent me from doing so. Okay, that's a tortured analogy. Toyota is the hardware manufacturer, fuel-injection controller is the DRM-enabled operating system and installing a radio is copying a cd. phew. wow. sorry.

I think your understanding is correct. I just disagree with your reasoning :)

I'm trying to come up with another analogy...

It is legal for you to paint your house. It is not legal for the carpenter who built it to come to your house and prevent your from painting it (ignoring the whole trespassing issue here). In fact it's absurd.

It is likewise absurd and, in my non-legally-trained opinion, illegal to prevent me from doing something that is not illegal. In fact, it may even be illegal for an OS to prevent me from doing something illegal as the OS vendor is not an authorized law-enforcement officer and I'm not directly harming another, yadda yadda yadda.

There is a machine which has the capability to perform a legal action. There is a piece of software that facilitates that action. There is another piece of software that prevents that action. The software vendor is attempting to dictate what the user can or can't do with their legally owned hardware.

If the software vendor does not want the user to perform this action, then the vendor should not provide the first piece of software. That is the limit of the software vendor's rights in this case. If I choose to install software that allows me to legally perform this action, it is neither the vendor's right nor concern to prevent it.

It is not the software vendor's job to police my actions with my hardware. I think that last sentence is really the crux of the argument. Incorporating DRM into the operating system is just that: the vendor trying to dictate what I do with my hardware. The simple answer is to dump windows (which I've done). It is reasonable to attempt to educate others about how their hardware is being prevented from performing legal actions by a third party.

I know I'm veering into wacko territory now. Must be this retrofitted, but legal, steering system I've got ;)

DRM actively attempts to prevent a user from exercising their legal rights. It is this active prevention that is overruling the supremes. Granted, DRM appears to be a failure, but that's kind of beside the point.

This makes my day. Collecting for a cell phone bill by calling the cell phone number of the person who didn't pay their cell phone bill. Priceless. This stuff will only become more common as the need for an actual, up-to-date, physical address becomes less and less necessary. With online banking, cell phones, wireless networks, and the death of the landline, it going to become increasingly difficult to actually track down a debtor. I suppose they could hang out at the coffee shop whose wireless was last used to pay the bill in hopes the debtor shows up again. I know I see less and less real reason to update my address with various service providers. The only thing they use mail for is sending advertising junk. About the only thing that ties one to a location is a utility bill. If your apartment has utilities included, that goes away too.

Just to see if I understand, Main is IO(), and thus it proves an attempted interaction with the outside world?

Second that. at 18 years together, things just keep getting better. So I'm another "Other" -- *significant* "other". and in my case, that's a wife ;)

yeah. sorry. I completely failed to look properly.