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[itix]

@Kesa

He is a collector. And nothing new there... 20 years ago they were copying every single game they could find, tried 10 minutes, then another.

[Britelite]

Originally Posted by Kesa

I simply do not understand why someone needs so much storage space. The only thing i can think of is collecting movies or something. I have a 600GB HD in my laptop and an external HD 1.5 TB and i can't fill the thing up. I have like 100 movies on there and still have 1 + GB left over. I don't get it. Why do you need so much storage space?

Just because YOU don't need a lot of storage space doesn't mean someone else doesn't. Not everyone has the same needs as you do...

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by ChuckT

That is because companies have factored us out.

But, but Chuck! Don't you know that money is always right? So if you don't like what the rest of the industry is doing, and they're making lots of money, you must be wrong! You're just resisting Progress, you shameless old codger! We know it's progress because marketing and tech journalism told us so!

[ChuckT]

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

But, but Chuck! Don't you know that money is always right? So if you don't like what the rest of the industry is doing, and they're making lots of money, you must be wrong! You're just resisting Progress, you shameless old codger! We know it's progress because marketing and tech journalism told us so!

I remember the generation older than me who have different values. I asked a grown man about himself and he wouldn't answer me when I was a child. I asked another neighbor and her reply was that some people actually value their privacy which is why I chose to avoid Facebook. I see the news of people who were arrested and the news gets a hold of people's Facebook photos and publishes them on the internet so either the family is selling them to be able to afford a lawyer or their rights are being violated because we're innocent before proven guilty.

I remember when our phone didn't ring unless it was friends or family. Now I could answer the phone all day because a telemarket calls to sell me something and I'm on the do not call list. I called my state senator and she said it isn't illegal for telemarketers to call me.

Remember the Iraqi trading cards? A spammer has to send out one million spams a day just to make six thousand dollars. I bought a kindle, downloaded a weather app and there were three pages of boxes that I could click on to have my privacy protected and now when I visit certain news sites, the icons don't show up anymore because the news icons that you click on are the very cookies that track you.

I could answer the phone all day but I don't because no one is paying me to say "no".

The idea is that you can opt out of having your rights violated. Since I can opt out, I know all of it is infringement which is illegal on the part of companies because i've always had rights to my privacy that were ignored and if I didn't then I wouldn't have to opt out and the infringement on our rights are illegal.

I know farmers in remote regions that could make money and have cell phone towers put on their property to improve reception but they value their way of life and they value the landscape.

I am not Google's or anyone's property and I would have to say to them, "I'm disappointed that you would all use me like that."

These are companies without values, I'm not their property, I don't want to be hosed and I'm disappointed that other people would let them use them.

So if avoiding Google email makes my life more private, I'll do without it.

The Dixie Chicks sold a billion dollars worth of records and they didn't see any of it. Why do you think that is? We have a culture that lets others use us.

[runequester]

I think the commodification of every aspect of our society is incredibly toxic. The notion that there is no instance that should not be turned into a source of income, is very inhuman, even if you are otherwise pro-free trade.

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by runequester

I think the commodification of every aspect of our society is incredibly toxic. The notion that there is no instance that should not be turned into a source of income, is very inhuman, even if you are otherwise pro-free trade.

Quite so. That was the reason I never got onto Facebook (well, the initial reason - there's been no shortage of additional ones since then.)

[dammy]

Originally Posted by runequester

I think the commodification of every aspect of our society is incredibly toxic. The notion that there is no instance that should not be turned into a source of income, is very inhuman, even if you are otherwise pro-free trade.

Typically you will find that in areas lacking in wealth, or having existing wealth devalued by government policies which will force people into creative methods of wealth generation.

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by dammy

Typically you will find that in areas lacking in wealth, or having existing wealth devalued by government policies which will force people into creative methods of wealth generation.

Then what's it doing in Silicon Valley?

[runequester]

Dammy, I can assure you that we will find zero instances where you and I agree on economic policies

[dammy]

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

Then what's it doing in Silicon Valley?

Considering the devaluation of the USD (QE I,II, Twisting and soon to be III), inflation including food/energy, and decline in wealth in Silicon Valley via falling property values, I would say yes.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/...me-value-index

Things are not getting better for most people. A super cheap netbook for OS4 would be perfect, if it could do the job that the average person would expect it to do but from all that I've read, 400MHz ain't going to do it. Now if it's going to be priced near 10" tablet with quad core CPU, may as well forget all about it and save alot of people time and effort.

[zylesea]

Originally Posted by amigadave

If they don't provide at least some new information at, or before the 2012 AmiWest Show, something is really wrong, considering the initial statement from last year's AmiWest Show was that the Hyperion OS4.x NetBook would be released some time around June or July of 2012.

I follow Hyperion's OS4 since the beginning. And if I found any consitency over the years it is that they announce and promise a lot and fullfill only a pretty small farction. Hence, I don't believe any announcement w/o evidence.

This netbook thing was a marketing stunt and not a sophisticated one. That was easy to see from the beginning and I said so when it was announced. they found this stupid Limebook, looked briefly to the specs and decides to call that the OS4 netbook. Unfortunately this netbook is a f*cked up one. The supply (at least) outside China is de facto not existant, a driver for the PowerVR gfx engine is not easy to make (no open documentation) and additionally the 512x chip family comes w/o a hardware warranted cache coherence. The limebook itself, looks rather like a toy computer. It's old and outdated now.

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by dammy

Considering the devaluation of the USD (QE I,II, Twisting and soon to be III), inflation including food/energy, and decline in wealth in Silicon Valley via falling property values, I would say yes.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/...me-value-index

Except that, as the article notes, in the areas with the big companies (and these being some of the biggest companies in world history,) they're actually rising. (I'd be interested in seeing some more recent data, though, now that Facebook's "looming IPO" has suffered hilarious performance issues.)

You say that the commoditization of humanity is tied to poor economic health and impeded growth, but I'm just not seeing that. US-based companies have led the way in this for years, and we're certainly not among the poorest nations, flagging though we are. And for two examples, Google's creeping dominance of the information-trafficking business and Facebook's out-and-out commoditization of human relationships both started long before the 2008 crash (I don't know exactly when you could point to for Google, but the launch of GMail could be seen as a starting point, and that and Facebook both launched in 2004.)

In any case, your premise (if I'm reading it correctly) basically boils down to the idea that greed is a function of lack, which I think is essentially contrary to all observed behavior in all of human history. If people and companies only sought to acquire more than they have because they don't have enough, then we should see people and companies above a certain level of wealth (not necessarily subsistence-level, maybe more like what you could call "luxury-level") being by and large content with what they have, while anybody below that line would be, as a rule, striving to reach that point.

That's not what we see. That's not what we've ever seen. What we see is that a lot of the people who have well more than enough strive to acquire even more, and a lot of the people who are below "luxury-level" (but above subsistence-level) are more or less content to remain where they are, even if they might theoretically like to have more. It's the exact opposite of that premise.

Now, I'm not the kind of person who's going to say that trying to get more than you need is necessarily a bad thing. I think it can be pathological and unhealthy, but maybe not always. What I do think is that it's not inherently good, either* - which means we must judge a person so doing individually, on the basis of what they do in pursuit of that. Throwing venture capital at a company because you have cash to spare and think their product is going to pay off? Nothing wrong with that (assuming it's not a company manufacturing baby-chippers or something.) Building a company designed to commoditize human friendship, so that you can sell relationships to advertisers? No. No, that's some supervillain-level crap, and we just plain don't need that.

* (this is where I differ from modern-day Republicans, who seem to be caught up in a blind, Randian worship of success irrespective of its motive or means)

[Kremlar]

Not sure iTunes content is "backed up" in iCloud. You can redownload all of your purchases through iTunes anytime on any device you use your account on. This was a change from earlier days of iTunes where you lost it all and could not redownload if you didn't back it up and started after Amazon started sellign MP3s and like with their books kept track of what you bought so you could get it again anytime and they also dont count purchases toward your cloud storage.

Not sure what happens on the back end, but Apple says "You get unlimited free storage for purchased music, movies, TV shows, apps and books". Of course they may simply be linking to the store copy of the purchase - would make sense. Why store the same movie over and over again for thousands or millions of users? That would be awfully innefficient.

Ultimatly we all know, Apple (and Amazon and the rest) want you to pay monthly for more storage as a continuous income stream.

Absolutely! They are in business to make a profit.

[persia]

For USD 25 they qive you access to high quality versions of your 10s of thousands of pirated mp3s. Not a bad deal.

[commodorejohn]

If you're into piracy, high-quality music rips are not that difficult to come by, and they're free, to boot! Even better deal!