> So far the only reliable way to stop piracy has
> been to make a product that is better and have
> consumers that can actually afford to consume.

Isn't is amazing that the record labels continuously fail to understand this? For my part, even as far back is the original launch of the ITMS, my Limewire usage dropped dramatically because I could just buy the one good song on an album and not waste money on the filler. Convenience. At this point, I don't even know HOW long it's been now since I've fired up Limewire... not since Spotify and Apple Music became things, that's for sure... or if it's even still around. Convenience.

And it is well past time for the TV/Movie studios/networks to knock off the nickel-and-dime crap with a different streaming service per channel. Id Tim Cook wants to secure an actual legacy at Apple after his shameful kowtowing to mega; what he should do is channel Steve Jobs, get the studio heads together, and lay down the law like Jobs did with the record labels so that EVERYTHING is wrapped up in AppleTV's flat rate. There does need to be competition, so Netflix should probably become the Spotify for video. Do that, and movie/tv piracy will collapse too. Like I said... I can't even remember the last time I pirated a song. But I have actually hopped over to TPB and torrented movies that I actually OWN before, because they weren't available on Netflix, the DVDs were buried in a box in the basement somewhere, and it was much faster... AND MORE CONVENIENT... than going down there and digging through boxes to find the actual physical media for the movies I was in the mood to watch at the times.

You fail to realize that different people have different needs and priorities... and that is 100% A-OK. This whole "If this product is not the perfect product for me, Me, ME; than it is crap and should not be sold to anyone." business was tedious from the start and has gone on far too long.

My own laptop needs and priorities are light weight and long battery life. For my use case, those two stand above all other considerations by a fair margin. And if repairability suffers in order to shave off a half-pound or to gain another hour of battery life, so be it. So obviously, I'm on a MacBook Air. It is the right laptop for ME.

It sounds like you have different needs and priorities than I do. So that MacBook Air is probably NOT the right laptop for you. But you know what? That is ALSO 100% A-OK.

I can see it now. Instead of "Houston, we've had a problem." and Omega being awarded another Silver Snoopy; with the beast of redmond on board the ship, the mission transcript will read:

"This ship will self-destruct in 20 seconds. This is your last chance to push the cancellation button."
"Cancellation button? Hurry!"
"Where is it?! Where is it?!"
"It's gotta be here!"
"Out of order"?! Fuck! Even in the FUTURE, nothing works!"

Seriously. I mean... $500, or *maybe* $600 for the Pro; that'd be fine. More than that, and I may as well just get back up to speed on PC gaming gear and build another PC of Theseus. Then... congrats Sony, that's better than a decade of buying NO consoles.

Then again, maybe it's just time for the gaming pendulum to swing hard back towards real computers anyway. It's been stuck on firmly on the console side for quite a while, and certian genres have definitely suffered for it.

> Trump's tariff war

Don't forget trump's ACTUAL war. I've had six figures scooped out of my retirement accounts and burned to ash since he decided to do at least ONE traditionally republican thing and launch us into yet another middle-eastern quagmire. The rest of the country is seeing the gas prices they used to attack California for. And it seems that the media is just now finally waking up to the fact that there's a shit ton of OTHER things that we make out of petroleum that are about to start to skyrocket.

Well, this WAS the Apple of: "1984 won't be like 1984" and earlier refusals to bend over and backdoor the iPhone so that the FBI could snoop at will.

So, for the fact that they've dona a 180 to whore themselves out to MAGA and become big brother and do the bidding of dear leader and his henchmen... yes, they absolutely should be scorned and condemned.

No. Actually he wasn't political from day one on the Late Show. At first he shed his Colbert Report persona and tried to do the typical "make nice with everyone" late night host a la Carson, Leno, and Letterman. Thing is, times were changing, audiences were expecting and demanding sharper wit, speaking truth to power, and takedowns of the high and mighty. And ratings started to slide. So Colbert adapted, brought elements of the Report back, but more overt and open than the playing th coy in-character persona from the old days. And ratings recovered. That worked swimmingly until COVID and malevolent mega media manipulation blew ups the entire television landscape and installed their minion to purge CBS of anyone who's not a true believer.

In his personal life, he's catholic and raising his kids as such, conservatively but not to be bigots. He's also a HUGE nerd and MASSIVE Tolkien and LOTR fan. He'll do fine as a writer on a LOTR movie. He havs the chops for it, and he "gets" the material. I knew the MAGAts were delusional from the outset for thinking they could silence him and that he'd bounce back. Though I must admit it's kind of a bummer he'll be holed up in a writers' room instead of back on air immediately on another platform.

Well then, I guess it's a good thing that the sort of big brother wannabe thugs who would demand your passwords under the guise of law would absolutely respect actual correctness and are not in any way the sort who would just toss you in the gulag for your stunt or just beat you with a pipe until you talk in the first place.

OTOH, who the hell responds to, or even reads or engages with in any way, random unsolicited emails from total strangers? If it were me, I'd never have even known anyone had their panties in a bunch in the first place, partly because my email is spam-filtered to hell and back, and I usually don't even bother checking the accounts that aren't my fiends&family, job-hunting, or banking & buying stuff ones in the first place.

Same for WhatsApp and any of its other contemporaries. I don't even answer real phone calls if the caller is not in my contacts.

When did spam filtering and call screen stop being... well... pretty much universal?

Yes. Absolutely. Let's look at that. So... copyright 2002? Then it should have become public domain, 17 years after publication, seven years ago. And no, the term length for patents should NOT have been extended either.

Any other questions?

> Kars for Kids

The weird thing is that they ARE somehow successful. Because for me, that godawful racket may have made me plenty aware of the brand; but every time I hear that noise it fills me with a burning hatred that, every time, reinforces my conviction that they will never, under any circumstances, get one red cent from me, regardless of...

... by the way it's not even a children's charity. It's actually some religious organization masquerading as a children's charity to scam people into giving money to their church. That makes them extra-double-super loathsome.

Well, in all fairness though, the airport securitygoons, of all persuasions and sub-categories, have been little more than a value-less pack of tin-plated wannabe dictators with delusions of godhood since well before trump. Mostly trump merely unfettered them to be the massively gaping dickholes they've always aspired to be. But make no mistake; they were scum and guttertrash before trump, just like they are scum and guttertrash now, just lke they will always be scum and guttertrash even after trump and all of the rest of his magatrash are consigned to the ash heap of history where they have always belonged.

'Not the point. They're citizens, full stop. No ICE thug has ANY business detaining, arresting, interrogating, quesitoning, laying hands on, speking to, or in any other way darkening the day of ANY citizen fir any reason for any length of time. They made themselves irredeemable the day of that very first "immigration" raid in Newark, not even a day after the inaugeration, when they... YES... attacked and held US citizens who were working in that plant 100% legally. And then there was when they started ordering US citizens... in at least two cases, immigration lawywer for a double-dose of scumbaggery... to "self deport." Oh, and what about all the people with green cards and education visas they have attacked and kidnapped? Or how about the people they've straight-up murdered whilst they've been rampaging around?

So yeh... Fuck all the ICE thugs and fuck you for simping for the scum.

Was Claude, or any other Anthropic product, developed and paid for under a "work for hire" contract? If not, then you have no point here.

They're not. The word you're looking for is microcomputers.

The PC, short for Personal Computer, was IBM's entry into the microcomputer market. And, as you might expect from Big Blue, the terms were trademarked to hell and back. I don't know if IBM let them lapse since they existed the market. But PC has, from the very beginning, meant a microsoft OS running on intel or intel-compatible CPUs.