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Comment Re:Breaking News! (Score 1) 86

Sure you could but then you either need a prescription or a good street connection. Schedule 2 drugs aren't as easy as you might think to get a doctor to just glibly sign off on. If you go the street route, to get the same effect you get with a gram of meth from something like Adderal or Vivance will cost you several times the cash. Also, meth can be smoked, snorted, IV'd, shoved up your ass, or swallowed so it's a lot more flexible than the pharmaceuticals. It all adds up to meth if you're serious about amphetamine use.

Comment Re:Bitcoin (Score 1) 94

Hmm, your argument is convincing however I think I'm going to stick to stockpiling the one resource that will stand the test of time: gold.

Humor aside, I have yet to see one legitimate breakdown of civilization in the modern world -even a short-lived one like during hurricane Katrina- where the ersatz cash wielding citizenry start going around trading gold dubloons. There is of course always some nuance to satisfy any objection but I find the "gold is the answer" trope dubious in the extreme.

Comment Re:Bitcoin (Score 1) 94

Besides, is one party really any more cut off than the other? It's just two separate networks at that point. You can make arbitrary distinctions such as which network is bigger but it's really just two fragments of a former whole with neither side being a more valid network than the other

You really need to be more specific as any answer you get can be handwaved away by a simple moving of the goalpost. Is the country that cuts the internet off small? If so, it has already happened so just read the recent bitcoin history books. Is the country large? How large? Iran large? Japan large? USA large? China? Each one of those scenarios has the potential for a significantly different outcome. State your scenario in detail and you will probably get a better answer.

For a currency that is supposed to be immune to government intervention, it seems this is an area where it suffers significantly.

Don't look now but Bitcoins may be more useful than you realize in the face of government interference.

Comment Re:Irony or Dispair (Score 1) 215

I think Amazon can pull it off on the strength of their own ecosystem. Very few players that are both in the phone/tablet business can boast such. As soon as the HTC's and the LG's of the world broke bad they and their customers would get cut out of Google Play pretty much dooming their devices to rot on store shelves. Of course you can keep going with it and consider the small players cutting content deals with Amazon or even Microsoft but it gets so speculative that it's completely outside of the context of this thread.

Comment Re:Click to play plugins? (Score 2) 137

I wish that people knew where all of these fancy features are coming from, that way Opera would have more funding to innovate.

While the cynic may see it as chump change especially in multi-national mega-corp terms, in 2011, Opera Software's net income came in at a comfortable 24.6 million dollars on an operating income of 156.5 million, a substantial increase over the year before. Not quite as much as Mozilla who netted 43 million in 2009 but for a small company of 777 employees just doing their thing making their browser, it's not too bad. Bear in mind too that Mozilla resides in the US while Opera is in Norway so a direct 1:1 comparison of financials can be slightly misleading especially when you take into account social services especially health care the respective companys' employees have access to and the different tax structures they exist under. Financially, Opera Software looks healthy with very low debt, and I think 150 million in cash reserves which, again, for their size is not too shabby. Most of their revenue comes from two places, namely licensing and search deals with licensing bringing in a bit more. Search is huge for them accounting for about a third of their income so they're in pretty deep with Google and to a much lesser extent Yandex and Amazon. While being heavily dependent on one other company that barring contractual obligations could turn the money off at a whim isn't the greatest thing ever, it's obviously better to have it than not have it just bearing in mind that it might not always be there. The bright side is their licensing revenues are not only slightly larger than search but actually appear to be growing faster respectively as well. And since they do offer some unique technology enabling web browsing on very low-end feature phones that otherwise wouldn't have it at all (as far as I know), it's reasonable to think the licensing revenue is fairly stable. If you want the whole story, here's their (warning pdf)2011 annual report. Riveting.

Comment Re:GOOD!!!! :) (Score 1) 663

Well, isn't it obvious? 'Cuz it's shiny, man! Just take a whiff of that new bit smell? Can't get enough? Me neither! Don't worry your pretty little head about that old and busted OS you were using before. It's gone, over, kaput. Capiche? Any time during the "adjustment" period wasted musing that what you had before worked perfectly well and what you have now is some franken-kludge mix of "oh shit, the iPad" and "the desktop? There's an app for that" will be summarily placed on a roll in the bathroom. Didn't you get the verbatim memo that's been plastered on every message board internet wide for the last two years admonishing you that if you don't like Windows $NEXT it's only because you fear change^H^H^H^H progress? Well, we'll be happy to send copies in triplicate to whatever rock you've been hiding under since there is no way our relationship management partners^H^H^H^H^H^H^H happy grassroots community of erstwhile enthusiasts could possibly have missed you anywhere in the civilized world. I mean, God forbid a good law abiding PC such as yourself suffer the indignity of not sending us as much of your money as you can hold in both hands and stuff in an envelope. DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVE.......

Sorry, one of those mornings.

Comment Re:Banning self-signed software (Score 1) 530

What defaults would those be? The having to hold down one extra keyboard button to run unsigned code from a random unknown location on the Internet?

Do you really think thats a bad thing?

Yeah so the aunt Tillys of the world learn they have to hold an extra key down to install the dancing bunnies. What's the difference?

Comment Re:This is what Microsoft wants (Score 1) 244

Go buy an XBox if you want to play games. Microsoft doesn't really care if you can't play top-shelf titles on Windows 8, and would probably prefer the hassle of not supporting DirectX for the general PC class systems. They'd be much happier selling you an XBox. Not only does it lock you into their console, it helps lock game developers into their console too.

This is not remotely insightful. MS is positioning Windows 8 as a tablet OS to compete with the iPad and Android. Games are extremely important in that arena and the better the games the more likely people will buy your product. MS knows this so, yes, they most certainly do care about DX and the suitability of W8 for gaming.

Comment Re:Betteridge's Law of Headlines (Score 3, Insightful) 303

Nine times out of ten there has been scaremongering about EU regulations, the disastrous consequences haven't occurred. Maybe it's because the regulations weren't as bad in the first place, maybe it's because of the public outbreak, I really don't know... but these sort of issues tend to get fixed. Maybe certain sections are reworded, maybe technology companies are given a special permission to sell their latest models even if they break the limit, acknowledging that it's needed for the technologies to kick off so they can later be optimized (Latest Intel processors require a lot less energy than they used to).

What are the chances that flawed legislation would get these kinds of revisions if people didn't speak up? If the constituency hadn't voiced their concerns would SOPA have just died a quiet death too? Yes, crying wolf at every little thing loses its effectiveness after a while but when the criticism is justified you'd better speak loudly while you still can because when the law gets signed its over.

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