I don't know. I'm hugely suspicious of this, for two reasons: Congress has a nasty habit of not understanding the technological ramifications of their legislation.
The former Senator and head of the committee in charge of regulating the Internet, Ted Stevens, made this abundantly and very publicly clear to us indeed.
Basically, it sounds like there's two things here. Blocking P2P software that interferes with other P2P software in a malware-esque fashion, and enforcing clear notifications that shared files are, well, shared. Seems dumb, but a lot of folks out there don't realize that if they share "My Documents," everything from their tax records to their secret porn stash is going to be on the web for all and sundry to download. This hits home particularly hard for gov't employees, considering some of the sensitive stuff that's leaked through LimeWire and the like over the years.
If this is spurred by information being unintentionally shared by organisations (gov't offices, companies), then I don't really see how a legislated solution is at all appropriate. Organisations deploy an IT infrastructure, directly or through a 3rd party outsourcing, and have, in the same manner, been in charge of it's operation and integrity.
Like any software a person installs with access to the Internet, one has to understand the software and, to some extent, trust it. If people are installing P2P software and letting it "Look for files to share" or just share "My Documents", then it's really the users' mistake. If corporate or gov't data is being leaked as a result, it's really the organisations' mistake, whether it be lack of IT training or security.
I'm automatically suspicious of legislation like this, since I know there's all too often that "not understanding what's being shared" didn't actually come as a result of "not being clearly told what's going to be shared". Many users leaking data through a P2P shared home directory most likely gave informed consent, but just clicked right past that screen as part of the install. Installer steps are important; they often help understand and customise how software is going to run. Not paying heed and regretting it after the fact is a mistake, not something that needs legal subsidy (i.e. protection against incompetence).
Take the Fallout 3 DLC, there is enough content there for maybe 2 expansion packs, it should not have been split into 5 for A$15 a piece? Compare this to the amount of new content I got in Civilisation Beyond the Sword, which was a scant A$40. I also like the idea of expandalones, it allows developers to reuse the games engine and much of the art assets with a new story line whilst selling for less then a full title (well most of them do). I like supporting developers and publishers who do the right thing by me, this means expansion packs and expandalones are OK, nickel and dime DLC is not..
There's always knowing that, after a year or so, there will be a Game of the Year Edition that includes all the expansion packs for less than the vanilla game's original price.
They probably want to pick the most qualified worker rather than the most politically correct one. If they end up with an entire workforce full of white employees, perhaps an investigation should be done as to why there are no other qualified candidates in the area.
If they end up with, say, a workforce that's almost entirely Indian, that may be viewed negatively by many as well (especially if a lot of employees are on work visas, while domestic unemployment is so high).
No. I think you are missing the point. You want to argue that more people than just Obama have responsibility. The point here is that in a subthread about Obama's responsibility, it is no surprise that Obama's responsibility is the topic of discussion.
It seems that a sub-thread about the Presidents' responsibilities (Bush and Obama) is an appropriate place to suggest that Congress has its share. It's not about Obama vs other people, it's about blaming the President as an easy target. You yourself pointed out Obama's role in the problems of today when he was a member of Congress. In those days, Bush was blamed for things like the prolonged war in Iraq, when obviously it couldn't have played out the way it did without the aid of Congress.
The point isn't Obama at all, or Bush, or either political party. The point is that purely using whomever is President as a scape goat falls far short of addressing any problems the country is facing, when so much of it is facilitated or enabled by Congress. It's arguably redundant here to point out the President's role at all in such things, when it's already such a strong and obvious focus for American political pundits and public advocacy groups.
In this sub-sub-thread, I asked about Congressional roles in whatever oversight or investigation needs to be done to address the unconstitutionality of warrant-less wiretapping, and your response was pointing out Obama's complicit actions when he was in Congress, which seems to support my supposition that Congress has direct responsibility in this matter. However, I don't care which politicians were involved, or if they are now President. The issue is that Congress didn't stop it then, and they aren't doing anything to stop it now.
As you say, I'm arguing that more people than Obama (or more accurately, the person holding office as President) have responsibility. So far your responses to this have been 1) Obama did indeed share responsibility when he was in Congress, implying that Congressional responsibility exists here, and then 2) Obama shouldn't "jump off a bridge" if everyone else does, also implying that other people are participating in the same negative actions.
I say you missed the point because I'm not denying Obama's role in any of this, I'm pointing out his role is only part of it, and primarily it's the part that is targeted for blame. As he has and is playing a role, he deserves his share of blame, but singling him out as a figure head for Congressional failings as as wrong with this President as it was with the last President. Congress should be blamed for its failings, the President for his failings. It seems like the American political/media system hasn't figured out how to effectively do the former.
The point isn't what role he's played, it's the responsibility others have (not in the role they played, but their present lack of action as a branch of the government) that are seemingly being ignored.
Just because the other kids are jumping off the bridge doesn't mean he should too.
It was in his roll as a congressman that he caved on wiretapping. He signed off on a bill that attempted to legalize what had been happening. He could, at the very least, have done nothing. But he actively supported the bill after earlier comments saying that the practice needed to be halted - not just given official blessing by congress.
The point isn't what role he's played, it's the responsibility others have (not in the role they played, but their present lack of action as a branch of the government) that are seemingly being ignored.
Obama's agenda is all about claiming high ideals while brokering backroom deals to do whatever the fuck he wants to anyway.
He certainly disappointed on the wiretapping issue - caving even before being elected. But from what I'm seeing its more of a case of being pushed back from his ideals.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't large portions of addressing the wiretapping issue take place in Congress, via mechanisms like Senate oversight committees, and so on? If the executive branch implemented a widespread and unconstitutional program that violates privacy rights of huge numbers of Americans, isn't this a matter of checks and balances? True, as the new President he could use the executive branch to work to undo what it is in the process of doing, but why does the expectation of change stop there?
Obama currently fights an entirely different battle, Bush gave to him a basically fucked up country, not close to bankrupcy but with a serious debt problem, an pushing everything through is a problem because the entire parliament is just whores on the payroll of lobbyists anymore. So to get your agendas even remotely through you have to do some rearrangements with the current political situation. The situation of Bush was much easier because he just reigned for the payroll of the lobbyists and did not care about anything else.
I think this is an interesting time for the American Executive branch, as Mr. Obama follows a President who consolidated a lot of power in the office. Illustrated especially with the Health Care Reform process, I am starting to see this time in American politics as the age of Congress (Legislative branch). Mr. Obama is getting a hard time from many for not getting enough done after promising so much, but I don't see much of it as his responsibility. The job has a lot that falls under his responsibility, and the broad term of "leader" is definitely a major component.
However, he is a President not a Prime Minister, and so has much looser ties to Congress than the latter does with Parliament. As much as the public expects him to lead Congress, even the best shepherd will have trouble if his flock is, say, suffering from physically or mentally degenerative diseases. If the same political party has a massive majority in both the upper and lower houses, and STILL can't send finished bills off to the President to be signed into law, I see that as a major failing of Congress above and beyond anyone else. Mr. Obama is an easy political target as a result, but for the time being I think it's hurting the US to single him out. Whether or not Mr. Obama could be doing better, Congress DEFINITELY should be doing better, and I think public opinion and pundits alike should start targeting them as primary offenders.
Perhaps, but I find that doubtful. The primary thing that struck me about Bush was how amazingly long he went without admitting anything went wrong, even when it was clear that it did. It wasn't that he'd defend a course of action against negative information and critics, but rather that he'd talk about things going well. If we take the major example of justification for Iraq, I can concede that Bush believed Iraq had WMD and was a direct threat to the US. However, when it was clear how enormously wrong the WMD line was, his speeches smoothly morphed into "spreading freedom and democracy" and "fighting Al-Queda" without addressing, either vocally or administratively, that huge error.
You have to be aware of that this treaty was a mutual spy upon you treaty. The US could not legally spy on the transactions of its own citizense but they could more or less spy upon the europeans, and vice versa, so what happens is that the data gets exchanged (all friend countries so why even doing some spying?) and then suddenly the US government has "YOUR" data (as well as all european governments and foreign agencies).
The USA doesn't have much call for "mutual spy upon" treaties anymore. The US gov't has been actively spying on it's own citizens for years now, and openly admitted to it, legal or not. They might not have the same access to ISPs and phone companies in the EU, but I'm sure active monitoring is fully implemented across Europe as well. I don't know what anyone can do about either situation. There's no real incentive for Americans not to spy. There's been enough put out in the open (like confirming warrant-less wiretapping in the US) without seeing the legal or political consequences that are meant to prevent such things.
The PRC could win militarily, but such a move would be extremely damaging politically. On the world stage, China can't afford to do more than rattle its sabers and hope Taiwan chooses to accept PRC control.
Even more importantly, it would be damaging economically. China might seem like a sabre-rattling threat from some angles, but their national prosperity is tied up in peace, and in their relations with western nations. If you want to worry about a rival super power, look back at Russia. A weakening economy, dubious domestic political authority, widespread corruption, and an established habit of invading bordering countries to occupy land they consider to be have "ethnically Russian" populations, regardless of those countries' alliances with the United States or other NATO nations.
Now, I don't consider Russia an enemy or a direct threat to the USA or other military powers, I'm just saying they seem to be on rather less stable footing at the moment than China.
Updates to IE6 can be had for absolutely no charge, have been for half a decade now. IE7 from Microsoft, Firefox from the Mozilla Foundation.
The software may be available at no cost, but upgrading to IE7 or Firefox could be an extremely expensive business. A lot of companies have web apps and intranet pages that do not render correctly in anything other than IE6. Who pays to update all of that?
True, true, but my webshop company picked technologies that avoid that, both in the internal sense as well as the sense that those companies who have screwed themselves with IE6 lock-in don't come to us (or at least, they look at webshops that work with Microsoft's technologies first).
Our customers are happy with a website that renders / works properly in all the major, modern browsers. They don't see the sense in spending their money to subsidize a demographic of users who choose to continue to use an old browser.
This was always the key question when it came to supporting browsers we considered either peripheral or a pain in the arse, but in a slightly different way. As developers we didn't want to deal with IE specific quirks, and our bosses would always prefer that time/money not be spent, as it always cost extra in one way or another.
So the answer is, does the client want the browser supported? If you ask a client, he or she will say yes (why wouldn't they want ALL browsers supported, after all). Many could be talked out of it though, for reasons like time and cost (and security). The only clients that really insisted on IE6 were the ones running it, and more often then not we helped them upgrade to IE7/8 and then they weren't so concerned.
I remember when I recommended we drop Safari support from our largest project, due to it's AJAX quirks being so extremely unpredictable. The client was a Windows sort of businessman, and agreed without resistance (I suspect Safari support may have been more my company's idea, since we all worked on Macs). The problems we were having couldn't be predicted in coding, as it was early in Safari's time, and before our development was finished, the Safari bugs were corrected through Apple's refinement of Safari (and our project worked perfectly in Safari).
That's a bit of a tangent, to get more to the point, as soon as IE7 was out of beta and was being pushed through Windows update, we switched from IE6 to IE7 on our generic browser support list. There were/are still lots of people using IE6, but as a LAMP webshop, that wasn't really relevant to us. Our clients didn't come to us for work that might require IE6. They understood that 6 is less than 7, and 1 less than 8, and made the connection when we used terms like "out of date" or phrases like "Microsoft expects people to upgrade, why shouldn't we?". Moreover, when presented with the choice of paying for more project hours versus not supporting an "ancient" browser, they chose the latter. We didn't hide that people use IE6, but they don't NEED to accommodate them, when upgrading to a modern browser is so easy. They each had their target audiences, and were confident enough that they would manage with the chunk of Internet users that are able to use browsers other than the one that came pre-installed years ago.
More to the point, who exactly believes that the ability to freely express our own ideas how we see fit and without any danger of being attacked and punished by it is somehow bad or even dangerous to anyone? Who exactly is so afraid of free communication of ideas and the freedom to share information in order to be so desperate to beg any country's government to quench their citizen's ability to do that sort of thing? To put it in other words, who is so desperately afraid of not only their own countrymen but also every country's populace?
Even if we assume that anonymity is an inherent part of freedom of expression, with the technology easily there, why would we be required to use the Internet in it's current form as the forum for that expression? The Internet certainly isn't designed for anonymity, and neither governments nor corporations would want it to change to such a state. Why not just let it go as corporate as it likes, and turn to an alternate system for anonymity that's been designed for open, anonymous public discourse? It's not like we need all these Javascript and CSS heavy websites to communicate ideas anyway.
More importantly, this measure is not targeted at "bad guys". When some idiot such as this Craig Mundie speaks about this concept of the "internet driver's license", what he is campaigning for is the ability to not only identify everyone who uses the internet but also the convenience of having any state's repressive power to ban anyone from the internet who disrespected any arbitrary rule these fools are trying to impose on the rest of the world. And the thing is, we aren't talking about criminal acts, as these are already punished by imprisonment. This sort of measure is intended to open the door for the ability to inflict arbitrary punishment on those who do not follow rules set forth by righteous idiots who believe they know better than the stupid masses.
But hey, let's call it "driver's license", as it's a very convenient term to associate with this oppressive measure as it's widely regarded by society as banal government grant. This sort of totalitarian measure desperately needs a cuddly face to be able to fly. Let's not mention what it really is: a corporate-tailored totalitarian attack on individual freedom intended to punish non-criminal acts which are frowned upon corporate execs such as mr Craig Mundie.
Since this isn't the first use of the "driver's license" analogy, it seems worth pointing out that if you don't get a driver's license (or it's revoked), a car will still start, the roads will still be there, stop lights will still work, and people will try just as hard not to crash into you. Even if you don't follow every traffic law, it's still only chance that you'll get pulled over and be penalised (and after you sort even that out, cars will still start, stop lights will still work, etc). The license to drive doesn't actually grant or deny access to driving around, and rarely authenticates you as a legal driver.
"If you own the previous consoles, why does every new iteration have to have backward compatability with everything that was ever released for the whole line?"
It's nice to think you'll play your old console when you get a new one but it's my experience that it just doesn't happen. My NES and SNES were given away to relatives with younger kids long ago. The rest of my previous consoles are sitting in boxes in my basement. But I still have a stack of Gamecube games upstairs sitting with my Wii games and the Gamecube games actually get played. And I've even picked up a Gamecube game or two since I bought my Wii. I barely touched my Saturn once I bought my Dreamcast even though I consider the games I own on the Saturn superior to the games I own and still occasionally play on the Gamecube. Backwards compatibility didn't factor in to my decision to buy a Wii, but it's really nice to have.
It's also an unfortunate fact that not all consoles will last as long as one would like. Everytime a friend loses a Dreamcast to time it's like Tinkerbell dying.
Backwards compatability is a nice to have, if you're really serious about this stuff you probably already have the consoles or you can pick them up used for next to nothing, it's definitely not a good enough reason to increase the cost to the customer or to put constraints on what developers can do with the technology, look at the mess MS got themselves into with the WIndows mantra that everything ever written for it had to be supported on the newer OS, while Apple took the approach of dropping a lot of support for old software so that they could make significant gains in the OS within a smaller time frame.
As dedicated gaming platforms, consoles aren't quite the same as computers. When Apple released OSX, they included a "Classic mode" to let Mac users run their old software. This emulator, however, had to replicate as much of the old operating system as running the full gambit of applications would allow. A game emulator, on a gaming system, won't have the same requirements. Even Windows dropped "real" DOS support, and this broke compatibility with a lot of games. Emulators like DosBox let you play these old games.
While I don't actually have specifics on what it might take for a current gen console to automatically read and play previous gen discs, but I will speculate that it's quite possible that there is enough extra power and a narrow enough scope (gaming) that it wouldn't cost very much and definitely wouldn't put constraints on new technology (it would be a software solution, the only hardware requirement being the ability to read the media). It's true that one can buy the older consoles, but if there's only one or two games I want to play from that generation (e.g. Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo and Wipeout 3) then hooking up different consoles becomes increasingly inconvenient.
I'm talking of the PS3 and XBox 360, of course, as it's my understanding that the Wii is backwards compatible already.
Personally, I feel that if we're going to colonize the moon (or Mars), that responsibility should not be put in the hands of NASA, the USA, or any other hypercapitalist nation for that matter. What these bean counters love to ignore is that, once we hit space, money/wealth will quickly become irrelevant. I don't know about you, but I can't picture debt collectors chasing me through the galaxy so some dirty banker can buy a diamond-encrusted iPad.
That's funny, when I was younger I often pictured myself as a sort of debt collector chasing some lowlife through the galaxy, bankrolled by some dirty banker.
The manned spaceflight program has always been the most popular element of NASA, both to the general public and to Congress. If the planned cuts to the manned program are successfully enacted, I'm not sure the how long the rest of this stuff will survive in the current bugetary climate. Note that I'm not necessarily saying the Constellation program is on the right track, but there is an element of the old proverb about a rising tide lifting all the boats that I think applies here.
The budget cut was going to happen, period. It's my impression that the new priorities that came with the budget cuts weren't meant to make NASA seem more interesting, but rather for NASA to focus on developing new technologies that are thought to be most helpful to creating jobs and inspiring development of related technologies in the private sector. This plan is designed specifically to survive in the current budgetary climate, as one defends against it's detractors not by pointing to symbolic and inspirational goals, but by pointing to fiscal ones. It's the "boots on the ground" concept that's more vulnerable with this level of deficit. That doesn't mean the end to manned space flight, of course, more like it's being shelved in favour of less expensive projects that are still valuable to developing the space program.
Now as to the point about explosives. I doubt this can be done. Adding weight to reinforce the plane will also help contain anything like an explosion. A good old fashioned firebomb should still do a pretty good job. I have seen pictures of IRA firebombs (so thats going back a few years) that ran off 2 AAA batteries, and the whole device was little more than 1 AAA battery square in flat area. It would be trivial to hide any number of ways... and thats hardly state of the art. (when was the last IRA firebombing?)
You don't actually have to stop or contain the explosion, though, you just have to keep it from breaking the plane apart. A firebomb might kill a lot of passengers, but so might someone on a crowded bus with a gun. The question is, can planes be designed to suffer an explosion inside the cabin, limited by what can be reasonably smuggled aboard, and still leave the pilots with reasonable control (enough say, to avoid crashing in a population centre, or even land).
But why? They don't have much to gain from it. The companies producing these scanners aren't the giants like Lockheed Martin that could actually influence the decision. Their motivation must be less sinister than you think: they're afraid of their jobs. If something happens, it'll be blamed on them, especially if there was an option and other countries were using it. It's still msguided, but it's understandable. Responsibility makes it hard to resist the "safe" choice.
I remember reading that there are ties between at least one relevant American politician and a company that makes the scanners. Over here, though, bringing business into politics isn't really a sinister motive, it's pretty much normal politics.
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I don't know. I'm hugely suspicious of this, for two reasons: Congress has a nasty habit of not understanding the technological ramifications of their legislation.
The former Senator and head of the committee in charge of regulating the Internet, Ted Stevens, made this abundantly and very publicly clear to us indeed.
Basically, it sounds like there's two things here. Blocking P2P software that interferes with other P2P software in a malware-esque fashion, and enforcing clear notifications that shared files are, well, shared. Seems dumb, but a lot of folks out there don't realize that if they share "My Documents," everything from their tax records to their secret porn stash is going to be on the web for all and sundry to download. This hits home particularly hard for gov't employees, considering some of the sensitive stuff that's leaked through LimeWire and the like over the years.
If this is spurred by information being unintentionally shared by organisations (gov't offices, companies), then I don't really see how a legislated solution is at all appropriate. Organisations deploy an IT infrastructure, directly or through a 3rd party outsourcing, and have, in the same manner, been in charge of it's operation and integrity.
Like any software a person installs with access to the Internet, one has to understand the software and, to some extent, trust it. If people are installing P2P software and letting it "Look for files to share" or just share "My Documents", then it's really the users' mistake. If corporate or gov't data is being leaked as a result, it's really the organisations' mistake, whether it be lack of IT training or security.
I'm automatically suspicious of legislation like this, since I know there's all too often that "not understanding what's being shared" didn't actually come as a result of "not being clearly told what's going to be shared". Many users leaking data through a P2P shared home directory most likely gave informed consent, but just clicked right past that screen as part of the install. Installer steps are important; they often help understand and customise how software is going to run. Not paying heed and regretting it after the fact is a mistake, not something that needs legal subsidy (i.e. protection against incompetence).
Take the Fallout 3 DLC, there is enough content there for maybe 2 expansion packs, it should not have been split into 5 for A$15 a piece? Compare this to the amount of new content I got in Civilisation Beyond the Sword, which was a scant A$40. I also like the idea of expandalones, it allows developers to reuse the games engine and much of the art assets with a new story line whilst selling for less then a full title (well most of them do). I like supporting developers and publishers who do the right thing by me, this means expansion packs and expandalones are OK, nickel and dime DLC is not..
There's always knowing that, after a year or so, there will be a Game of the Year Edition that includes all the expansion packs for less than the vanilla game's original price.
They probably want to pick the most qualified worker rather than the most politically correct one. If they end up with an entire workforce full of white employees, perhaps an investigation should be done as to why there are no other qualified candidates in the area.
If they end up with, say, a workforce that's almost entirely Indian, that may be viewed negatively by many as well (especially if a lot of employees are on work visas, while domestic unemployment is so high).
Stuff you can't reprocess put at bottom of an oceanic trench. Subduction zones are MomNature's ultimate recycle bin.
We all know this leads to Godzilla problems.
Everyone sure is missing the point.
No. I think you are missing the point. You want to argue that more people than just Obama have responsibility.
The point here is that in a subthread about Obama's responsibility, it is no surprise that Obama's responsibility is the topic of discussion.
It seems that a sub-thread about the Presidents' responsibilities (Bush and Obama) is an appropriate place to suggest that Congress has its share. It's not about Obama vs other people, it's about blaming the President as an easy target. You yourself pointed out Obama's role in the problems of today when he was a member of Congress. In those days, Bush was blamed for things like the prolonged war in Iraq, when obviously it couldn't have played out the way it did without the aid of Congress.
The point isn't Obama at all, or Bush, or either political party. The point is that purely using whomever is President as a scape goat falls far short of addressing any problems the country is facing, when so much of it is facilitated or enabled by Congress. It's arguably redundant here to point out the President's role at all in such things, when it's already such a strong and obvious focus for American political pundits and public advocacy groups.
In this sub-sub-thread, I asked about Congressional roles in whatever oversight or investigation needs to be done to address the unconstitutionality of warrant-less wiretapping, and your response was pointing out Obama's complicit actions when he was in Congress, which seems to support my supposition that Congress has direct responsibility in this matter. However, I don't care which politicians were involved, or if they are now President. The issue is that Congress didn't stop it then, and they aren't doing anything to stop it now.
As you say, I'm arguing that more people than Obama (or more accurately, the person holding office as President) have responsibility. So far your responses to this have been 1) Obama did indeed share responsibility when he was in Congress, implying that Congressional responsibility exists here, and then 2) Obama shouldn't "jump off a bridge" if everyone else does, also implying that other people are participating in the same negative actions.
I say you missed the point because I'm not denying Obama's role in any of this, I'm pointing out his role is only part of it, and primarily it's the part that is targeted for blame. As he has and is playing a role, he deserves his share of blame, but singling him out as a figure head for Congressional failings as as wrong with this President as it was with the last President. Congress should be blamed for its failings, the President for his failings. It seems like the American political/media system hasn't figured out how to effectively do the former.
The point isn't what role he's played, it's the responsibility others have (not in the role they played, but their present lack of action as a branch of the government) that are seemingly being ignored.
Just because the other kids are jumping off the bridge doesn't mean he should too.
Everyone sure is missing the point.
It was in his roll as a congressman that he caved on wiretapping. He signed off on a bill that attempted to legalize what had been happening.
He could, at the very least, have done nothing. But he actively supported the bill after earlier comments saying that the practice needed to be halted - not just given official blessing by congress.
The point isn't what role he's played, it's the responsibility others have (not in the role they played, but their present lack of action as a branch of the government) that are seemingly being ignored.
Obama's agenda is all about claiming high ideals while brokering backroom deals to do whatever the fuck he wants to anyway.
He certainly disappointed on the wiretapping issue - caving even before being elected.
But from what I'm seeing its more of a case of being pushed back from his ideals.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't large portions of addressing the wiretapping issue take place in Congress, via mechanisms like Senate oversight committees, and so on? If the executive branch implemented a widespread and unconstitutional program that violates privacy rights of huge numbers of Americans, isn't this a matter of checks and balances? True, as the new President he could use the executive branch to work to undo what it is in the process of doing, but why does the expectation of change stop there?
Obama currently fights an entirely different battle, Bush gave to him a basically fucked up country, not close to bankrupcy but with a serious debt problem, an pushing everything through is a problem because the entire parliament is just whores on the payroll of lobbyists anymore. So to get your agendas even remotely through you have to do some rearrangements with the current political situation. The situation of Bush was much easier because he just reigned for the payroll of the lobbyists and did not care about anything else.
I think this is an interesting time for the American Executive branch, as Mr. Obama follows a President who consolidated a lot of power in the office. Illustrated especially with the Health Care Reform process, I am starting to see this time in American politics as the age of Congress (Legislative branch). Mr. Obama is getting a hard time from many for not getting enough done after promising so much, but I don't see much of it as his responsibility. The job has a lot that falls under his responsibility, and the broad term of "leader" is definitely a major component.
However, he is a President not a Prime Minister, and so has much looser ties to Congress than the latter does with Parliament. As much as the public expects him to lead Congress, even the best shepherd will have trouble if his flock is, say, suffering from physically or mentally degenerative diseases. If the same political party has a massive majority in both the upper and lower houses, and STILL can't send finished bills off to the President to be signed into law, I see that as a major failing of Congress above and beyond anyone else. Mr. Obama is an easy political target as a result, but for the time being I think it's hurting the US to single him out. Whether or not Mr. Obama could be doing better, Congress DEFINITELY should be doing better, and I think public opinion and pundits alike should start targeting them as primary offenders.
How's Obama any different than Bush?
Bush was honest about what he believes.
Perhaps, but I find that doubtful. The primary thing that struck me about Bush was how amazingly long he went without admitting anything went wrong, even when it was clear that it did. It wasn't that he'd defend a course of action against negative information and critics, but rather that he'd talk about things going well. If we take the major example of justification for Iraq, I can concede that Bush believed Iraq had WMD and was a direct threat to the US. However, when it was clear how enormously wrong the WMD line was, his speeches smoothly morphed into "spreading freedom and democracy" and "fighting Al-Queda" without addressing, either vocally or administratively, that huge error.
Since when is the US high tax or high unemployment?
Ever since it was turned into a socialist regime sometime around 2008 or 2009, I think. Or so I've heard, anyway.
You have to be aware of that this treaty was a mutual spy upon you treaty. The US could not legally spy on the transactions of its own citizense but they could more or less spy upon the europeans, and vice versa, so what happens is that the data gets exchanged (all friend countries so why even doing some spying?) and then suddenly the US government has "YOUR" data (as well as all european governments and foreign agencies).
The USA doesn't have much call for "mutual spy upon" treaties anymore. The US gov't has been actively spying on it's own citizens for years now, and openly admitted to it, legal or not. They might not have the same access to ISPs and phone companies in the EU, but I'm sure active monitoring is fully implemented across Europe as well. I don't know what anyone can do about either situation. There's no real incentive for Americans not to spy.
There's been enough put out in the open (like confirming warrant-less wiretapping in the US) without seeing the legal or political consequences that are meant to prevent such things.
The PRC could win militarily, but such a move would be extremely damaging politically. On the world stage, China can't afford to do more than rattle its sabers and hope Taiwan chooses to accept PRC control.
Even more importantly, it would be damaging economically. China might seem like a sabre-rattling threat from some angles, but their national prosperity is tied up in peace, and in their relations with western nations. If you want to worry about a rival super power, look back at Russia. A weakening economy, dubious domestic political authority, widespread corruption, and an established habit of invading bordering countries to occupy land they consider to be have "ethnically Russian" populations, regardless of those countries' alliances with the United States or other NATO nations.
Now, I don't consider Russia an enemy or a direct threat to the USA or other military powers, I'm just saying they seem to be on rather less stable footing at the moment than China.
Updates to IE6 can be had for absolutely no charge, have been for half a decade now. IE7 from Microsoft, Firefox from the Mozilla Foundation.
The software may be available at no cost, but upgrading to IE7 or Firefox could be an extremely expensive business. A lot of companies have web apps and intranet pages that do not render correctly in anything other than IE6. Who pays to update all of that?
True, true, but my webshop company picked technologies that avoid that, both in the internal sense as well as the sense that those companies who have screwed themselves with IE6 lock-in don't come to us (or at least, they look at webshops that work with Microsoft's technologies first).
Our customers are happy with a website that renders / works properly in all the major, modern browsers. They don't see the sense in spending their money to subsidize a demographic of users who choose to continue to use an old browser.
Depends on the audience.
This was always the key question when it came to supporting browsers we considered either peripheral or a pain in the arse, but in a slightly different way. As developers we didn't want to deal with IE specific quirks, and our bosses would always prefer that time/money not be spent, as it always cost extra in one way or another.
So the answer is, does the client want the browser supported? If you ask a client, he or she will say yes (why wouldn't they want ALL browsers supported, after all). Many could be talked out of it though, for reasons like time and cost (and security). The only clients that really insisted on IE6 were the ones running it, and more often then not we helped them upgrade to IE7/8 and then they weren't so concerned.
I remember when I recommended we drop Safari support from our largest project, due to it's AJAX quirks being so extremely unpredictable. The client was a Windows sort of businessman, and agreed without resistance (I suspect Safari support may have been more my company's idea, since we all worked on Macs). The problems we were having couldn't be predicted in coding, as it was early in Safari's time, and before our development was finished, the Safari bugs were corrected through Apple's refinement of Safari (and our project worked perfectly in Safari).
That's a bit of a tangent, to get more to the point, as soon as IE7 was out of beta and was being pushed through Windows update, we switched from IE6 to IE7 on our generic browser support list. There were/are still lots of people using IE6, but as a LAMP webshop, that wasn't really relevant to us. Our clients didn't come to us for work that might require IE6. They understood that 6 is less than 7, and 1 less than 8, and made the connection when we used terms like "out of date" or phrases like "Microsoft expects people to upgrade, why shouldn't we?". Moreover, when presented with the choice of paying for more project hours versus not supporting an "ancient" browser, they chose the latter. We didn't hide that people use IE6, but they don't NEED to accommodate them, when upgrading to a modern browser is so easy. They each had their target audiences, and were confident enough that they would manage with the chunk of Internet users that are able to use browsers other than the one that came pre-installed years ago.
More to the point, who exactly believes that the ability to freely express our own ideas how we see fit and without any danger of being attacked and punished by it is somehow bad or even dangerous to anyone? Who exactly is so afraid of free communication of ideas and the freedom to share information in order to be so desperate to beg any country's government to quench their citizen's ability to do that sort of thing? To put it in other words, who is so desperately afraid of not only their own countrymen but also every country's populace?
Even if we assume that anonymity is an inherent part of freedom of expression, with the technology easily there, why would we be required to use the Internet in it's current form as the forum for that expression? The Internet certainly isn't designed for anonymity, and neither governments nor corporations would want it to change to such a state. Why not just let it go as corporate as it likes, and turn to an alternate system for anonymity that's been designed for open, anonymous public discourse? It's not like we need all these Javascript and CSS heavy websites to communicate ideas anyway.
More importantly, this measure is not targeted at "bad guys". When some idiot such as this Craig Mundie speaks about this concept of the "internet driver's license", what he is campaigning for is the ability to not only identify everyone who uses the internet but also the convenience of having any state's repressive power to ban anyone from the internet who disrespected any arbitrary rule these fools are trying to impose on the rest of the world. And the thing is, we aren't talking about criminal acts, as these are already punished by imprisonment. This sort of measure is intended to open the door for the ability to inflict arbitrary punishment on those who do not follow rules set forth by righteous idiots who believe they know better than the stupid masses.
But hey, let's call it "driver's license", as it's a very convenient term to associate with this oppressive measure as it's widely regarded by society as banal government grant. This sort of totalitarian measure desperately needs a cuddly face to be able to fly. Let's not mention what it really is: a corporate-tailored totalitarian attack on individual freedom intended to punish non-criminal acts which are frowned upon corporate execs such as mr Craig Mundie.
Since this isn't the first use of the "driver's license" analogy, it seems worth pointing out that if you don't get a driver's license (or it's revoked), a car will still start, the roads will still be there, stop lights will still work, and people will try just as hard not to crash into you. Even if you don't follow every traffic law, it's still only chance that you'll get pulled over and be penalised (and after you sort even that out, cars will still start, stop lights will still work, etc). The license to drive doesn't actually grant or deny access to driving around, and rarely authenticates you as a legal driver.
It's a bad analogy, period.
"If you own the previous consoles, why does every new iteration have to have backward compatability with everything that was ever released for the whole line?"
It's nice to think you'll play your old console when you get a new one but it's my experience that it just doesn't happen. My NES and SNES were given away to relatives with younger kids long ago. The rest of my previous consoles are sitting in boxes in my basement. But I still have a stack of Gamecube games upstairs sitting with my Wii games and the Gamecube games actually get played. And I've even picked up a Gamecube game or two since I bought my Wii. I barely touched my Saturn once I bought my Dreamcast even though I consider the games I own on the Saturn superior to the games I own and still occasionally play on the Gamecube. Backwards compatibility didn't factor in to my decision to buy a Wii, but it's really nice to have.
It's also an unfortunate fact that not all consoles will last as long as one would like. Everytime a friend loses a Dreamcast to time it's like Tinkerbell dying.
Backwards compatability is a nice to have, if you're really serious about this stuff you probably already have the consoles or you can pick them up used for next to nothing, it's definitely not a good enough reason to increase the cost to the customer or to put constraints on what developers can do with the technology, look at the mess MS got themselves into with the WIndows mantra that everything ever written for it had to be supported on the newer OS, while Apple took the approach of dropping a lot of support for old software so that they could make significant gains in the OS within a smaller time frame.
As dedicated gaming platforms, consoles aren't quite the same as computers. When Apple released OSX, they included a "Classic mode" to let Mac users run their old software. This emulator, however, had to replicate as much of the old operating system as running the full gambit of applications would allow. A game emulator, on a gaming system, won't have the same requirements. Even Windows dropped "real" DOS support, and this broke compatibility with a lot of games. Emulators like DosBox let you play these old games.
While I don't actually have specifics on what it might take for a current gen console to automatically read and play previous gen discs, but I will speculate that it's quite possible that there is enough extra power and a narrow enough scope (gaming) that it wouldn't cost very much and definitely wouldn't put constraints on new technology (it would be a software solution, the only hardware requirement being the ability to read the media). It's true that one can buy the older consoles, but if there's only one or two games I want to play from that generation (e.g. Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo and Wipeout 3) then hooking up different consoles becomes increasingly inconvenient.
I'm talking of the PS3 and XBox 360, of course, as it's my understanding that the Wii is backwards compatible already.
Personally, I feel that if we're going to colonize the moon (or Mars), that responsibility should not be put in the hands of NASA, the USA, or any other hypercapitalist nation for that matter. What these bean counters love to ignore is that, once we hit space, money/wealth will quickly become irrelevant. I don't know about you, but I can't picture debt collectors chasing me through the galaxy so some dirty banker can buy a diamond-encrusted iPad.
That's funny, when I was younger I often pictured myself as a sort of debt collector chasing some lowlife through the galaxy, bankrolled by some dirty banker.
See you Space Cowboy...
The manned spaceflight program has always been the most popular element of NASA, both to the general public and to Congress. If the planned cuts to the manned program are successfully enacted, I'm not sure the how long the rest of this stuff will survive in the current bugetary climate. Note that I'm not necessarily saying the Constellation program is on the right track, but there is an element of the old proverb about a rising tide lifting all the boats that I think applies here.
The budget cut was going to happen, period. It's my impression that the new priorities that came with the budget cuts weren't meant to make NASA seem more interesting, but rather for NASA to focus on developing new technologies that are thought to be most helpful to creating jobs and inspiring development of related technologies in the private sector. This plan is designed specifically to survive in the current budgetary climate, as one defends against it's detractors not by pointing to symbolic and inspirational goals, but by pointing to fiscal ones. It's the "boots on the ground" concept that's more vulnerable with this level of deficit. That doesn't mean the end to manned space flight, of course, more like it's being shelved in favour of less expensive projects that are still valuable to developing the space program.
Now as to the point about explosives. I doubt this can be done. Adding weight to reinforce the plane will also help contain anything like an explosion. A good old fashioned firebomb should still do a pretty good job. I have seen pictures of IRA firebombs (so thats going back a few years) that ran off 2 AAA batteries, and the whole device was little more than 1 AAA battery square in flat area. It would be trivial to hide any number of ways... and thats hardly state of the art. (when was the last IRA firebombing?)
You don't actually have to stop or contain the explosion, though, you just have to keep it from breaking the plane apart. A firebomb might kill a lot of passengers, but so might someone on a crowded bus with a gun. The question is, can planes be designed to suffer an explosion inside the cabin, limited by what can be reasonably smuggled aboard, and still leave the pilots with reasonable control (enough say, to avoid crashing in a population centre, or even land).
Perhaps its going straight into their proposed centralised database along with your other biometrics.
Crikey! with RFID passports that's actually within the realms of possibility now. I hadn't considered that. Now these things seem even more sinister.
Don't you already have your RFID Blocking Passport Billfold?
But why? They don't have much to gain from it. The companies producing these scanners aren't the giants like Lockheed Martin that could actually influence the decision. Their motivation must be less sinister than you think: they're afraid of their jobs. If something happens, it'll be blamed on them, especially if there was an option and other countries were using it. It's still msguided, but it's understandable. Responsibility makes it hard to resist the "safe" choice.
I remember reading that there are ties between at least one relevant American politician and a company that makes the scanners. Over here, though, bringing business into politics isn't really a sinister motive, it's pretty much normal politics.