It wasn't the re-broadcasting. It was the non-profit status they tried to do it under. They essentially forced people to pay but were classified as non-profit even though they were generating significant profit.

Honestly, I think they should just declare themselves as for-profit, charge people a fee (I think it is like $2 extra per month for the FCC fees or something close to that) and do things legit. Give up on the fake donation stuff.

Because most stations refuse to actually stream it without having a paid for service. So for example, you can't actually stream Fox or NBC unless you have Comcast/ATT cable subscriptions you pay for.

Locast was excellent because it allowed me to get all of the local channels for very cheap (yeah nagware if you don't donate, fantastic cable cutting service if you do donate)

Did you not watch the Wizard of Oz? Isn't (randomly injected ad requesting donation) that how it works ... you question (randomly injected ad requesting donation) baffles me.

Actually that isn't a true statement (unless something massively changed in the past 10 years around this). I worked in this space for 15+ years and we absolutely were allowed to randomly add in extra ads. However, it was very very rarely done because we had more then enough backlog of paid ad space and because charges were based on eyeballs and seconds we tended to not change things up much. But there have been cases like with live sports or breaking news where the schedules changed and it became more important to put up different ads and/or change the scheduled ads entirely.

Legit cable companies are however (or were up until 10 years ago at least and I can't imagine there have been any legal changes to this) allowed to randomly insert extra ads either as an overlay to existing content or as a complete replacement of existing content if they so desire.

Same thing that happens to paper money.

If you lose it, it is gone (consider it destroyed essentially as the likelyhood of somebody else "finding" it is an astronomically impossibility short of quantum tech)

If it is stolen, then the person who stole it has it. But unlike with paper money, there is a public audit of all transactions so the person who stole it has a wallet that can be seen by the entire world. So if those funds move out of the wallet to another wallet or is consumed at some place physical that can be tracked, the entire history of the payments, what all wallets it travelled through, etc can be figured out (the money laundering thing requires that money never touch legitimate consumables but other coins such as dash support a way of spreading out the transfers to make it super difficult but not impossible to track back to the source, however bitcoin last I checked didn't have that capability).

Thus while you cannot get your stolen money back (unless the thief gives it back when caught), you can track the thief failry easily and discourage the overall behavior more easily as it won't be the middle man in thieving operations that bear the brunt of the risk anymore (at least not with the current means by which they work).

I'm pretty sure that is the entire reasoning behind why there is such a thing as investments, market potential, evaluations, venture capitalists, stocks, etc. Pretty much all of capitalism is built around earnings potential. At least in the corporate world (unsure about the mom and pop style businesses).

While I haven't touched DeFi with a 10ft pole, I have no clue why there is so much hate and distrust for it (bitcoin I can understand due to the energy problem but most crypto don't have that issue). Seems like people generally are associating blockchain with scam/ponzi etc. But it's nothing more then how business stocks are done in real life at the end of the day except with a public ledger that shows the entire world what happened instead of trusting some centralized institution to be open and honest about their ledger transactions.

That being said, I still don't see what the rage is about around crypto either, seems like investing in the stock market especially this year is far more profitable outside of a handful of unicorns. For every overnight bitcoin/etherium/defi popper turned millionaire, there are a hundred times more of those who have invested in penny stocks or the recent reddit gamestop thing or tesla investments or whatever that have done the same thing without the risk of being scammed or having their investments stolen or losing the password to their wallets and stuff.

Just different ways to invest into a business, but without the red tape that ensures the business actually exists. So people invest into crypto blindly and then complain they were scammed, sorry but that does happen in regular businesses as well sometimes too. And people goto jail regardless of how it happens but the victims never get their money back. It's all the same in the end.

I'd venture to guess that as soon as crypto has a way to pay an automatic tax (kinda like how crypto's fee system works), governments are going to be promoting crypto as the way to do things and using anything else will soon become criminal tax evasion :)

I think the actual real world analogy would be Cydia sueing you because you aren't allowing the vendors who rent from you to also rent from Cydia nor will you allow any vendors within your city area to rent from Cydia either even though they too have setup their own market place with a building and wires and parking lot.

But to be fare the real world analogy was off to start with because in this case Apple owns the consumption product in additon to the demand supply. A flea market only provides the demand but doesn't account for the ownership of the product.

Wow. I find this very interesting since I *DID* actually use Vavle to install some native linux titles through their beta linux program. And not the server stuff either. Full fledged client. But well I must be jumping to conclusions here. I do like flapping those wings of mine like a silly parrot.

I don't hate windows but I do use linux and have told average users to not switch to linux or to switch depending on what was appropriate.

That is just a load of crap. Installation of XP and Vista are both a bigger pain the arse then linux is. In fact, I have 2 friends who convert over to linux BECAUSE they could not get XP to install on their computer and use their hardware. And it "just works" under linux. And I've seen far too many people who have actually tried both admit that linux is easier to install and it just work. Almost never have I seen the opposite to be true.

Coming pre-installed from manufacturer is not the same as installing from scratch.

Yes. For printers and network cards you can actually use the windows drivers and they work perfectly. For everything else, if it doesn't come out of the box with linux, well that sucks big time. Sound drivers are the biggest problems I have found with linux. The cheaper sound hardware "mostly" works but constantly crashes, locks up, or other crap. Only thing I have found to be as good or better then the windows version is the soundblaster live drivers.

This is a true statement. Though I personally would argue that MS keeps pushing people out of their software selection as well. But that is a b*tch session really and not appropriate here.

Yup the lack of linux adoption has caused the lack of game titles to appear on linux.

A lot of the popular titles do have native linux versions and some games run better on linux then on windows. Not all but most of them (making statement using nvidia drivers, milage may vary with other drivers)

Sure anything can be secure. The real question is how much intelligence does it require. Your average joe *cannot* make it more secure the linux. The average joe never has to think and linux is 99% more secure for them then windows.

Nobody. And why were you even wrambling about all that I don't understand. Nobody compiles the kernel anymore these days. Most your linux users use what is out of the box and it just works.

No you wouldn't. Your attitude is clear enough that you really have no intention of giving linux a shot. I didn't reply to a number of statements you made but you do make a lot of 5 year old claims as well which simply are not true. It is like saying windows sucks because you have to remove stuff from the himem area to get your games to work. That was true once upon a time. Not anymore.

Or if you look at the current poll numbers and not what it was when the article was first written

I like it 28.2% (26 Votes)
I think the main spec is missing important JSRs 6.5% (6 Votes)
I think the web profile spec is missing important JSRs 4.3% (4 Votes)
I don't like it for some other reason 4.3% (4 Votes)
I haven't read it, but plan to 14.1% (13 Votes)
I haven't read it, and don't plan to 42.3% (39 Votes)
Something else (please comment) (0 Votes)
Total Votes: 92

See some things take time. There might be many who don't plan to read it but there are also those who are actually reading it before putting in a vote. Those numbers come in a bit slower then the ones who don't plan to do anything at all.

I do understand what it is you were trying to say but you managed to pick the *only* two scenarios where linux actually *uses* the windows drivers and install cd's as is without any problems (or at least in ubuntu you can) :)

Try using things like ipod photos and movies, bluetooth, dual screen, as seen on tv software, those IE only websites, etc ...