[quote=The_Aquabat]

btw, as I said "Third World" is an outdated definition from the Cold War, per definition Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Yugoslavia, are "Third World". It's just as awkward as using "Axis" and "Allies" from the 2nd world war to categorise countries. The Berlin Wall has fallen it's ridiculous to still use that definition.

You have a point.

I remember reading an unrelated news article the other day, that was saying China is technically a "third-world" country, based on the outdated definitions of a "third-world" country... But we all know that in reality, this couldn't be further from the truth (which was part of what the article was talking about).

A better term would be "country with lower wages"... Some of the countries in which call centers operate actually have a lot of money (not as much as say, America; but a lot), so even if "third world" still was technically an accurate term, it wouldn't necessarily apply all cases where call centers operate.

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Why was this a thing? Thanks to regional pricing, countries that typically have lower incomes can enjoy the same games as others with lower prices to match.

What a crock of s#*t.

Australia pays anywhere up to quadruple what the USA pays for games / software (I'm talking across the board - not just for Steam)... But I'm pretty sure our incomes are not that much more than the USA!

Heck, if our incomes are so high that the game industry can justify up to quadruple the price for games / software, I must be getting the short end of the stick by a huge margin... Meanwhile, back on Earth, developers come up with a laundry list of "legitimate" reasons why they change so much - but 90% of those reasons actually can't be justified!

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Quoting: kadogoBut it's sure there are some stupid things like having S1 but not S2 but it's not available in the country at all...

Coming from an anti-piracy guy (yeah, there's a few of us left!), it's times like those when piracy is actually justified... If you're not going to make the content available for purchase or streaming, then I'm gonna have no sympathy for you when people steal your s#*t.

Me personally, I just don't bother - I generally don't watch television series until they're available on Blu-Ray Disc, because there's nothing worse than getting into a series and needing to wait 6-12+ months for the next part... If they make it at all.

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Quoting: LinasSomehow feels arbitrary and fake in the global economy.

This.

Here in Australia, we pay anywhere up to quadruple the price for digital goods (though it can be up to octuple the price, in rare cases)... And the Government conducts an investigation into why this is every few years.

As is to be expected, all of the big companies throw out their "legitimate" reasons why this is - unsurprisingly, none of them stand up.

The Government points out that we're effectively paying extravagant prices for illegitimate reasons, promises to do something about it and nothing happens... Rinse and repeat.

The point is, every time this happens, it is proven that prices are inflated without any actual reason to justify said price inflation.

It's all a big scam to convince "the little guy" who is either not smart enough to realize he's being duped, or too lazy to do anything about it... Unfortunately, that covers 99% of the population.

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Quoting: The_Aquabat

Quoting: LinasSomehow feels arbitrary and fake in the global economy.

well you could argue that world economy is rigged and this pandemia has shown the worst of it with oil prices falling down like never before, the price was really arbitrary all the way.

Of course it is... And it's rigged in the favor of the wealthy.

Same story as always - "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer!"

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Quoting: eldakingThis looks like you never had to deal with currency exchange. Exchange rates fluctuate wildly, and it is just not feasible to have prices jump around that much. Checking prices daily to see if something is cheaper, not being able to wait for a sale because who knows how much it will cost by then, speculating about the economy to know if it will go up or down in the next few months... nothing works like this.

Bulldust.

We buy a lot of stuff from overseas and when it comes to electronics, we buy approximately 85% of our stuff from overseas... Almost all of the companies we buy from - which are often major companies - have a fixed price and I just pay whatever it converts to in Australian Dollars + shipping (interestingly, it's often still cheaper to do this than to buy said product locally!).

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Quoting: KimyrielleI guess that's part of the "Globalization is for big business, not customers!" textbook. Apparently it's totally fine for a US company to ship your job to Vietnam because wages there are a fraction of what they are here, but if a customer goes "Ok, I can make that work for me too, and shop where it's cheaper!", the same companies go "Oh no, YOU can't do that. Only WE can!"

Too funny.

One rule for the wealthy, one rule for the regular folks... Besides, businesses often keep politicians in power, which has a lot to do with this.

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Quoting: eldakingThis "Americans lose jobs to people that receive lower wages" is a load of bull; the person receiving poverty wages is not "taking your job", they are being exploited by your country.

This is both wrong and right... Yes, people in these third-world countries are being exploited by Western Countries, but they're still taking jobs away from said Western Countries, too.

I just changed telecommunications service providers, primarily because all of their customer service is based in Australia, using Australian employees... That means I could get a job there, if I lived in Victoria (I live in a different state).

Had they opted to use foreign call centers in India or the Philippines - like pretty much everyone else - I would not be able to get said job without relocating to another country... Thus, taking my job.

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Quoting: SolarwingAnd I vote for AMD.Their price - quality ratio is good. I like it. But now what I want from Intel that they should lower their CPU's prices.They are unreasonable expensive. But I suspect it will avail not cause AMD have too much of a head start.

I've always preferred "the underdog" because like you, I think they're price versus quality versus performance ratio is much better than what Intel have ever offered... But I mostly stick with Intel, because I prefer NVIDIA GPUs and all the laptops I've ever bought with NVIDIA GPUs have only used Intel CPUs.

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Quoting: Luke_NukemInteresting laptop for sure! How are you finding it for use?

Great [External Link].

I originally bought it because I was curious how well a Linux-based operating system would run on it and I happened to need a new laptop anyway... But I have found it super productive and not gimmicky at all, plus it mostly works with Ubuntu "out of the box" (still can't seem to get the stylus working with the touchscreen, and the brightness can only be adjusted when using a custom kernel).

When I replace the wife's laptop - my old laptop - it will definitely be the same model or another ASUS / ROG laptop with the dual built-in displays... Honestly, I don't know how I could go back to a single-display laptop.

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Quoting: Luke_Nukem

Quoting: Cyba.Cowboy

Quoting: Luke_NukemIf lsusb shows `0b05:1866 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. N-KEY Device` then you can use rog-core.

No such luck for me, but thanks anyway for all your work.

What devices *did* it show?

Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0bda:8153 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8153 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0bc2:3322 Seagate RSS LLC SRD0NF2 [Expansion Desktop Drive]
Bus 002 Device 006: ID 0781:5595 SanDisk Corp. Expansion
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 050d:092c Belkin Components USB3.0 Hub             
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bc2:2321 Seagate RSS LLC Expansion Portable
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 050d:092a Belkin Components 
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 05e3:0751 Genesys Logic, Inc. microSD Card Reader
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1a40:0801 Terminus Technology Inc. 
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 050d:092b Belkin Components USB2.0 Hub             
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 13d3:56cb IMC Networks USB2.0 HD IR UVC WebCam
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 8087:0026 Intel Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Yeah, I have a few storage drives connected... lol

It's not an ROG laptop - but it is an ASUS laptop that shares some of the same hardware characteristics as some of the more "unique" ROG laptops (such as the dual built-in displays).

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Quoting: Luke_NukemIf lsusb shows `0b05:1866 ASUSTek Computer, Inc. N-KEY Device` then you can use rog-core.

No such luck for me, but thanks anyway for all your work.

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Quoting: DevastatoriusGood news.
Hard to find good gaming laptop with good linux support.

System76 have a good gaming laptop with (native) Linux support [External Link]... But it's expensive, especially if you don't live in America.

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Any idea if the changes in these projects are being pushed upstream (i.e. to the Linux Kernel Team), or if they intend to do so in the future?

I have an ASUS ZenBook Duo UX481FL dual-display/screen laptop, which shares some of the "unique" functionality of the 'ROG' range, and it would be nice to see these changes trickle down to me eventually... Right now, certain things either don't work, or require me to build custom kernels from source (in saying that, approximately 90-95% of the stuff "just works").

And I'm lazy, so the things that don't work or don't work properly just sit there doing nothing... :tongue:

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Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see what the problem is with the first link and although I only skimmed the rest of the links, the general argument seems to be a disagreement with the direction and / or priorities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation... That's not really doing anything sinister, disturbing or immoral.

What direction should the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation be moving in, and what should their priorities be?

Well if I asked that here, I'd probably get a dozen or more different answers... Each answer would be based exclusively on what that individual Community Member thinks is the right direction to move in or are priorities in the world.

What I think is important is almost certainly going to be different to what you think is important.

This is hardly proof that the the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is actually doing something wrong or malicious - just evidence that you and / or the author of those articles don't share the same vision as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Cyba.CowboyJust like John Cena the person, Bill Gates the person is one of the best things in this world...

Really? How so? Because if it's about all the charity, IMO if you look a bit under the surface of that charity it, too, is somewhat disturbing.

In what way? Both John Cena devotes much of his spare time to charity (especially for the Starlight Foundation), and Bill Gates has given away a significant portion of his wealth in the name of charity... I've not heard anything to suggest this is not the case, with either of them.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: jarhead_hHonestly, I think that a good number of people are starting to think that Bill Gates really is evil afterall,

Mostly tinfoil heads, lately.

Just like John Cena the person, Bill Gates the person is one of the best things in this world... His company, not so much.

And it's not a case of "tinfoil hats" - Microsoft makes no secret about just how much of your personal information it tracks intimately within its software, almost all of which cannot be deactivated unless you have a "volume" license.

I don't know what other people have against Microsoft, but for me, it's their insistence that its users should have absolutely no privacy whatsoever, unless they purchase a "volume" license... That's simply unforgivable.

After nearly ten years of being Microsoft free, I don't miss it one bit...

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