Amigas, Macs and STs predate the advent of cheap PC clones by a number of years. It wasn't until the end of the 80s that sub $1000 pc clones hit the market and dominated it.

For some subjects, absolutely. I'm still wishing, however, that our local schools' science departments would emphasize the observation/experience connection to wonderment and hypotheses. Instead, we have a (very well ranked) system that focuses heavily on standardized tests (which is probably why they are ranked so high).

Indeed. Consider how fans of certain other OSs show off and brag about their computer platform all for free, anyway.

If Apple were doing this, there'd be nothing but praise.

Cable company DVRs come with an exrta rental charge. Also they dont skip adverts. That functionality is explicitly disabled. Also my mythbox is the core of a whole home entertainment system that has way more features than any cable company dvr.

The funny thing is...

Same here. Every few months I download a few of the latest free AVs and ASWs, run them and then wipe them. In over five years the only thing any of them has found is suspicious cookies.

A dangerous thing to say, as that not every child will necessarily have the ability to learn the subject matter in a reasonable period of time no matter how you present it. You may not mean it in that way, but easy phrases like that are easy to take out of context or misinterpret.

Are software patents suddenly OK when MS gets stuck? I wouldn't use their 'copy-ware' myself but still aren't /. readers against this abuse
of the patent system? There is a bigger story, but the press just haven't seen it yet. I think some of us know where the prior art is anyway for this idea that isn't patentable. Will Apple bring back 'look and feel' suits? Very bad idea, even if its just Microsoft.

Good point. There is a difference between how much data is contained in this file and needs to be transmitted if I mail/ftp/whatever it and if I store it on a flashdrive/tape/hdd. I would like to be able to access both values.

install hardware x, watch the kernel do a panic dance, ask the kernel people, they say its a issue inside a black box binary blob, ask the hardware people, they cant reproduce it on their setup, and the hardware is heading for extended "support" anyways so they dont care, but can sell you another product...

see how many people microsoft pissed off when they changed the driver system between xp and vista, and then try and tell me that it cant happen with linux after employing a stable ABI.

i am willing to bet that there is hardware out there that current linux kernels support, but that you cant find a windows driver for past win95/98, and said hardware may well be sitting in some corner doing something productive.

If people are using a free service and not your paid service, then a the least you can determine they don't see enough value in paying to receive your service than usign the free service. If you are lucky, that's because your prices are simply too high for your content, or your payment mechanism is too difficult, or something like that. If you are unlucky it's because your actual content is bad, in which case you have nothing worth charing for to begin with. I don't read much foreign or English news outside of Slashdot, but I get news on my phone in real time. There is the free Yahoo news service but I also subscribe to the Yomiuri which if I remember correctly is 63 Yen (like 65 cents US) per month and has a lot of good content. If your content is good enough and your price is cheap enough people will willingly pay for it, it's as simple as that.

The BBC is regarded as pro-Castro and pro-Chavez in Venezuela. And always keeps silent when the opposition is repressed or a local radio station is closed by the state. Private media is always biased, Berlusconi being the most notorious example of media abuse for political porpouses. I don't believe any media anyway, so I read as many different versions as possible and then guess and interpolate.

It's doubtful that Dell has a pre-bought stock of CDs to sell for the preloaded software that is the subject of of their brief. They probably pay MS quarterly or monthly on the number of copies they make. That would make any copies Dell preloads onto their machines new copies sold by Microsoft.

In 2008 the BBC's non-commercial (i.e. in Britain) operations revived 4 million GBP in government grants. Granted, that is well less than 1% of it's income, but it does invalidate the claim of receiving no government funds.

Further the BBC World Service is funded exclusively (or very nearly so) by government grants from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The BBC Monitoring service receives money from all sorts of source, including some funding by foreign governments.

That said, much of the rest of your message is valid.

Do take note that the PBS in the US receives only 15%-20% of its funding from the federal government, and 25-29% from the smaller government. That means only 40%-50% of its operations is government funded.
Such small amounts greatly limit the influence the government can exert on the the system. For most intents and purposes, the PBS system is independent.

Further, even if there was a USBC, I can guarantee it would waste money like crazy, having only a small fraction of the efficiency of the BBC, likely having about 4 channels, and 2 radio stations.

But those same binary measurements will be required for stuff like RAM, and working with binary numbers. I'd just like to see them removed from our storage subsystems.

How is that going to work? I've got a 1.5TB disk to install in my PC and it has a 32MB cache. Should both the disk and the cache use units of 1000 or should 1000 used for the disk and 1024 for the cache? If that's done wouldn't it confuse people? And if 1000 is used for the cache then won't that confuse people because RAM installed on the mobo still uses 1024?

Falcon

It doesn't as others have pointed out. AdBlock+ just happens to have been advertised well. (How ironic!) Ad blockers usually are on a proxy (junkbuster, privoxy, etc.) which can be integrated into caching proxy which is often integrated into a router. This type of set-up works best but keep in mind some people actually want to see the ads, at least some of them. Like a spam blocker, the user must have the final say. Its a good idea to play the ads into '/dev/null'. If everyone did that, this whole "controversy" is moot.

This whole topic is a bit troll, IMO. Beating ad blockers is a matter of running ads locally, on the site itself. "Targeted advertising" is a bad idea in all respects. 'Malware' often comes from going to rogue sites. Using an easily hacked targeting service is risking much ill-will from your users.

At the user end, its probably best to keep this material away from your system. While 99% of all problems of this sort stem from using a certain operating environment, being 100% safe is a false idea. Running a browser in a virtual
environment is 'virtually' 100% safe. That isn't exactly 'home technology' yet, but a number of /. readers probably use it.

Most users should block ads. True, its nice to know what pressures the site is under and many people let the ads through only for that reason. Ads from the site itself are generally of a higher quality, though stopping animations is essential for me to read the text. (Not sure how common that is.) Since when has Youtube put ads in the videos? Sure, "half of the videos" are ads of one sort or another but I choose to see them.