Hard to believe that way back when the shuttles were designed, they were expected to each be launched 100 times.
At that point (1970?) some complacency was setting in, around the generally successful Moon flights. The military also added fuel to the fire by asking for some configurations that are almost impossible. This resulted in a very complex machine, and one flight can bankrupt a medium-sized nation. Nobody knew how much has to be rebuilt after each flight until they got a vehicle back and looked at it.
As an added annoyance, most of the options requested by the military were never used, and options requested by sane people (a launch abort that does not kill everyone, for example) were never implemented.
Today everyone agrees that with technology and science that we have we can not build an economically feasible reusable craft of this size. Smaller ones are possible, and many are on drawing boards. But this space truck, with such an array of engines... no way. An anti-gravity engine would fix all the troubles; but all the pyrotechnics that the Shuttle has demands respect, and costs a lot.
With regard to launch costs, Wikipedia offers the calculation:
Per-launch costs can be measured by dividing the total cost over the life of the program (including buildings, facilities, training, salaries, etc) by the number of launches. With 115 missions (as of 6 August 2006), and a total cost of $150 billion ($145 billion as of early 2005 + $5 billion for 2005,[7] this gives approximately $1.3 billion per launch. Another method is to calculate the incremental (or marginal) cost differential to add or subtract one flight -- just the immediate resources expended/saved/involved in that one flight. This is about $60 million.
There is no conflict in his words because he chose them carefully. It is true that *most* of the people are basically honest. Out of the remaining part of the society *a lot* are totally devoid of ethics. If we go down to numbers, I'd say 80% are basically honest, 5% are ready to steal, and the remaining 15% are driven by the circumstances.
From this we can conclude that his main concern is with those 5% (or however many) that don't see anything wrong in stealing a child's lunch money or setting a puppy on fire (or blowing up frogs - reportedly a favorite pastime of a well known strongman.)
But I would not be too fast in following his call to educate those 5% better. I saw my share of people like that (and who hasn't?) and I believe any lessons would just bounce off of them. Is it a genetic setting somewhere in their brains? Maybe. I do not know. But I do know that even jail does not always manage to teach those people to stay honest. Besides, he himself started his criminal life as a child, when he had very limited opportunity to try other ways, and when he had virtually no knowledge of the world (the theft of cash from his father's credit card proves that.) Many criminals start this way, they are just not wise enough to understand what they are doing, and their ideas about "trusted authority" is somewhat inverted. They'd ignore a teacher but listen to a gang leader. It could be because teacher talks about matters (ethics, morality) that are far more complex than the subject of gang leader's talk (as in "go there, beat them up, steal, drink, repeat.") To make matters worse, a decent civilization requires an exchange of favors between an individual and the society; however children are genetically programmed to take everything from everyone and give nothing to nobody. In a caveman's world that would be beneficial to their survival, but in a modern human society this is bad.
Then by your logic nobody would be working as a spy, or even as an undercover police officer. What do you think a mob will do to you, an undercover cop, if they learn who you really are? And their revenge on you would be not "just business, sir" but deeply personal, if you helped to arrest any of the family. They'd skin you alive, and then they start torturing for real.
But as matter of fact, police and CIA and every other secret service recruit agents all the time. Even the army. So your reasoning is flawed. What really happens is that agents are not preparing for a failure and gory death. They are preparing for success and survival. When we start our cars every morning we do not see lawsuits and jail cells in our mind's eye in case we do something wrong; no, we focus on positive - that we will be careful and won't cause an accident; and psychology works great here.
But even if a secret agent 007 is sent to an almost impossible mission into the worst den of worst torturers in the world, he simply has a poison pill on him. When you are talking about suicide bombers who already said their last words to the world the threat of a quick death is not that effective.
You are also right about losing your moral high ground if you, as a state, torture enemy's fighters. You quickly then become worse then them. This is exactly why Abu Ghraib scandals were so harmful to the US's image. Now whenever Ms. Rice opens her mouth to teach some foreign dignitary a lesson in civility he replies "yes, madam, could you please write your fine advice on the back of this photo..." and you know what photo that would be.
Historically speaking, humans usually murder everything and everyone if that is in any way beneficial or entertaining.
But really the question is not that simple. Would you savagely murder one fluffy dog to save 100M people from a deadly virus? Would you savagely murder one human to save 100M people from a deadly virus? Would you savagely murder 1M humans to save 100M people from a deadly virus? Where is your threshold? I believe this is what Protectors of the Ringworld couldn't wrap their mind about.
How would your tablet do on a day where you're traveling for 12+ hours, without access to an AC outlet?
I don't know how the tablet would do, but I would be really wasted after traveling for 12+ hours regardless of access to an AC or DC outlet. I definitely would not want to read for all this time. On a few occasions when I had to cross the Atlantic I read for a while, then slept as much as I could, then it was dinner time, then some work (on a laptop) then some more slumber, then landing. You'd be hit with so much jet lag that it pays to sleep while you can.
Of course if you travel on a steamboat or a sailing ship (no AC power!) from Anchorage to San Diego, then your options may be different (depends on your resistance to sea sickness, for example:-)
I am not so sure of ecological savings unless one reads (and then destroys!) tons of paper books. I do read a lot, but most people don't, they may need a month or two to go through a medium-sized book just because they have only 15-20 minutes every night available for reading. Let's assume they read 10 books per year. A eBook reader would last for 5 years (until it fails, gets dropped and broken, or lost on travel, or just obsolete.) So an electronic gadget - which is not recyclable and not biodegradable - is equivalent to 50 books (which in fact won't be destroyed after 5 years, they'd merrily keep existing, if not in my home then in the nearest library.)
When we compare 50 books (borrowed from a library or bought) to a small computer we can easily see that all that electronics inside is quite poisonous and requires lots of energy to manufacture. Lithium batteries alone require special handling, since Li is too much biodegradable. Books, on the other hand, are almost clean (paper manufacturing can produce some waste.)
But of course I can only express my personal opinion on advantages that a modern small tablet might have over a modern small eBook reader. eInk is not there yet, in my opinion - it is a nice prototype but to my perception the slow refresh rate is too painful. It practically eliminates on-screen menus, or half-page scrolling, or smooth scrolling (which I don't like) or anything else that would require dynamic content, or even color. Quite a few.lit ebooks have images, and some HTML ebooks (such as what you can find in the URL that is specified in my/. account) also have and use color (and images.) But if you, and others, prefer an offline monochrome device with low screen contrast but very eyes-friendly texture, by all means go for it, and argue for it as much as you wish (as you do already:-) I understand that there can not be a single opinion on such a personal matter.
I am the target audience. I read many books, I read every day. Many books are available on the Internet, so a browser is not a caprice, it is a necessity. Besides, right now I am reading a book on my Samsung tablet and also replying to you - so it is practical as well.
If you believe there is some other interest group that would favor e-books over paper, I can't find one. Every "normal" book reader would pick a paper book without thinking. That's what libraries have, right? Only a geek would choose an obscure electronic device for such a mundane use.
Sony's e-paper reader is a disaster, I looked at it at Fry's and couldn't force myself to like it. Ghosting, low contrast, and most unpleasant is the low speed of updates (about 1 second to flip the page, with awful flickering all the way.) It is also a single purpose reader, nothing more. I ended up buying a Sansung Q1 Ultra, it is not perfect but at least it is a usable tablet with a Windows OS so you can load stuff onto it, run Mozilla, do things (802.11 + Bluetooth) and in general I like it. The handwriting recognition is excellent, though it has a keyboard as well. Some say it's slow, but as long as it's not your primary gaming box you would be OK:-) A tablet has many uses, and speed is not needed for any of them (as long as it's fast enough to decode MP3s.)
Everyone makes it sound like Echange and AD are these magic thingies that no one will ever plug into. While I'll never claim it to be perfectly easy (and MSFT does their damndest to insure that), it certainly isn't impossible.
The problem is that in the business world possible (or impossible) does not matter. Available vs. unavailable is what matters. If you release a product called "A Complete OpenOffice Solution In a Box" (or something) then businesses may try it out. But development, coding... forget it, IT departments have troubles with configuring even simple things. A coder would be better used to develop new products for the company, and not reinventing that same old wheel all over again.
At this point it seems like a complete OpenOffice server + client solution is on the threshold of possible, assuming that the developers will actually get a leader, sit together and figure out what it is exactly that they are trying to develop. Just like Microsoft did, and like every other professional team does. Answers to that are plentiful in this thread because the posters are users, and they tell what they want. A wordprocessor would be nice that loads within user's lifetime and doesn't screw up tables, for example. Or a spreadsheet that can't be crashed by whatever you throw at it. A word count that groks UNICODE as it is meant to be grokked. An API that builds on existing technologies because people are reluctant to ditch what they paid big bucks for. A GUI that is identical to what the users are familiar with. And so on - there are many *obvious* issues, and it won't even be impossible to solve all this. But as I said, it may be that the Bazaar model just hit the wall here - there may be not enough unifying, leading forces that are required for a cohesive product and for adherence to the design requirements. Developers must be controlled and shoehorned into the Grand Vision of the Boss, and that is contrary to F/OSS model - a heresy even. But that's what it takes to design a product.
I always wondered what the incantation was for "summon Redmond lawsuit".
None of the stuff on this list would warrant a lawsuit; at least I don't see any sensible grounds for one. MS could, of course, sue if its trademarks are infringed, but OO has its own names for the components, and MS is silent so far. An "OpenOffice Server" would seem to be perfectly legitimate.
Soon you will have a chance to vote for those right hands - provided that you can find them on the political landscape. When you do find them, please let everyone else know who that person is.
The problem is that ambiguous ballots will still exist. And some percentage will be ambiguous to a court as well.
Throw them out. If the voter doesn't have enough brains to fill a circle in front of a name then chances are he is too stupid to vote. Besides, ambiguous votes always existed, and should exist, since any voter has the right to not vote on some specific issue. To that effect he is entitled to spoiling this section of the ballot (if not the entire ballot, which is also his right.)
A computer should be used to prepare all ballots so that they are ALWAYS both valid and unambiguous.
Again, this is not even wanted. I don't need an overlord who forces me to vote for a local dog catcher. I don't care, and I want to abstain, it's my right. I don't want to vote randomly. People who care will decide instead.
It is possible to make millions machines that work without defects - you just need to care enough to do it, and of course maintain them properly.
I'd like to see an example of "millions of machines that work without defects". Something tells me you are joking. Humans are the most reliable [biological] machines known to us, and even human bodies are not that reliable. Anything made by hands is far worse in terms of reliability. 30% of all X-Boxes 360 fail; an industry norm is 3%, and you posit the 0.0001% figure?
Also, as a reminder, we are talking about government workers here. They are paid 25% of what a minimum salary in private sector would be.
If you can keep planes in the air...
No, the government can't do that either. Just count how many aircraft were destroyed in last years due to mechanical (or stupid) reasons. Osprey can't even fly.
It is much easier and cheaper to just print a stack of paper ballots at your local printer shop. These guys have fast, high speed machines, designed for printing in large volume, and the cost of each copy is tiny. But this touch screen machine would have to use some HP or Brother laser printer, and they cost real money per page printed, and your control over blank ballots is very loose (anyone with a laser printer can make his own; professionally printed ballots can't be easily forged at least because most of voters don't have commercial printing presses in their homes.)
Besides, many people are still uncomfortable with computers - and I would be also uncomfortable if once in a year (or less often) asked to operate an unknown computer that is all flashy and touch-sensitive and you have zero training on it, and the results affect the fate of the nation. I would rather ask for a paper form, a pen, and some time alone to read what the form wants from me and what do I want to mark. All government forms come with instructions on how to fill them, and I usually read the instructions.
So in my opinion a computer here is an unnecessary middleman who costs money to buy and to operate, and adds to the confusion of voters who never saw the thing before and will thoroughly forget the experience by the next time they vote. If you want to vote, take a paper form, mark the candidates, and drop it into the box - that simple. After the station closes the scanner can read the forms at amazing speed, which allows you to run the same batch on two different scanners, and if the results differ then you recheck. Modern OCR is very, very good, and you can always tell the scanner to set aside all ballots that the machine is "unsure" about. Those can be counted manually, and there won't be too many of those.
If you want to reuse old voting machines, donate them to libraries and turn them into thin terminals for Internet access. Or something similar - not related to voting at all. We neither need nor want computers to be used for voting by voters; it's just too large a can of worms. After the paper ballots are collected, then feel free to count and recount them in any approved way, with or without machines.
Well, inflex was asking about "using solar power to manage devices and want a WWW frontend or such" and VGA is totally and absolutely counter-indicated if you do this. In practice you need only/dev/ttyS0 and eth0, and most boards have at least that (usually more.) I never had any of their boards with VGA (I use TS7250) and I never even considered asking for VGA. I use the boards for some fast processes (real time, actually, using PC/104 to talk to custom hardware) and I don't want to spend any CPU cycles on GUI. Especially when you are running on solar power.
Long distance communication over radio (or any other light-speed limited carrier) is not useful, and I would be surprised if any star system wants to wait 300 years before they know what's today's price on some ore. It would be of interest to historians, maybe, but not to any customer.
Such forces do exist in the observable Universe, that's why all these dark matter hypotheses exist. The nearest to us example is the V-ger probe that does not currently follow the expected path as it leaves the Solar system.
But it is definitely weird to read about Heechee and then to discover that we are them...
In other words, you do not worry if someone technically illiterate gets infected with a kazaa trojan? You are a Linux user yourself, and not illiterate, but there are many who don't even ask why their pc runs so slowly lately... I'm not aware of such a Trojan, but considering how many people own legitimate digital audio it's something very obvious, and probably easy to do thanks to catalogs that WMP and Winamp create. It the defendant in this case was able to demonstrate such a virus or trojan she'd have far less trouble.
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At that point (1970?) some complacency was setting in, around the generally successful Moon flights. The military also added fuel to the fire by asking for some configurations that are almost impossible. This resulted in a very complex machine, and one flight can bankrupt a medium-sized nation. Nobody knew how much has to be rebuilt after each flight until they got a vehicle back and looked at it.
As an added annoyance, most of the options requested by the military were never used, and options requested by sane people (a launch abort that does not kill everyone, for example) were never implemented.
Today everyone agrees that with technology and science that we have we can not build an economically feasible reusable craft of this size. Smaller ones are possible, and many are on drawing boards. But this space truck, with such an array of engines ... no way. An anti-gravity engine would fix all the troubles; but all the pyrotechnics that the Shuttle has demands respect, and costs a lot.
With regard to launch costs, Wikipedia offers the calculation:
Per-launch costs can be measured by dividing the total cost over the life of the program (including buildings, facilities, training, salaries, etc) by the number of launches. With 115 missions (as of 6 August 2006), and a total cost of $150 billion ($145 billion as of early 2005 + $5 billion for 2005,[7] this gives approximately $1.3 billion per launch. Another method is to calculate the incremental (or marginal) cost differential to add or subtract one flight -- just the immediate resources expended/saved/involved in that one flight. This is about $60 million.
From this we can conclude that his main concern is with those 5% (or however many) that don't see anything wrong in stealing a child's lunch money or setting a puppy on fire (or blowing up frogs - reportedly a favorite pastime of a well known strongman.)
But I would not be too fast in following his call to educate those 5% better. I saw my share of people like that (and who hasn't?) and I believe any lessons would just bounce off of them. Is it a genetic setting somewhere in their brains? Maybe. I do not know. But I do know that even jail does not always manage to teach those people to stay honest. Besides, he himself started his criminal life as a child, when he had very limited opportunity to try other ways, and when he had virtually no knowledge of the world (the theft of cash from his father's credit card proves that.) Many criminals start this way, they are just not wise enough to understand what they are doing, and their ideas about "trusted authority" is somewhat inverted. They'd ignore a teacher but listen to a gang leader. It could be because teacher talks about matters (ethics, morality) that are far more complex than the subject of gang leader's talk (as in "go there, beat them up, steal, drink, repeat.") To make matters worse, a decent civilization requires an exchange of favors between an individual and the society; however children are genetically programmed to take everything from everyone and give nothing to nobody. In a caveman's world that would be beneficial to their survival, but in a modern human society this is bad.
... and there is another theory which claims that this already happened ...
But as matter of fact, police and CIA and every other secret service recruit agents all the time. Even the army. So your reasoning is flawed. What really happens is that agents are not preparing for a failure and gory death. They are preparing for success and survival. When we start our cars every morning we do not see lawsuits and jail cells in our mind's eye in case we do something wrong; no, we focus on positive - that we will be careful and won't cause an accident; and psychology works great here.
But even if a secret agent 007 is sent to an almost impossible mission into the worst den of worst torturers in the world, he simply has a poison pill on him. When you are talking about suicide bombers who already said their last words to the world the threat of a quick death is not that effective.
You are also right about losing your moral high ground if you, as a state, torture enemy's fighters. You quickly then become worse then them. This is exactly why Abu Ghraib scandals were so harmful to the US's image. Now whenever Ms. Rice opens her mouth to teach some foreign dignitary a lesson in civility he replies "yes, madam, could you please write your fine advice on the back of this photo..." and you know what photo that would be.
But really the question is not that simple. Would you savagely murder one fluffy dog to save 100M people from a deadly virus? Would you savagely murder one human to save 100M people from a deadly virus? Would you savagely murder 1M humans to save 100M people from a deadly virus? Where is your threshold? I believe this is what Protectors of the Ringworld couldn't wrap their mind about.
But what if I use telnet to port 80 and then manually render the page on a big sheet of paper?
I don't know how the tablet would do, but I would be really wasted after traveling for 12+ hours regardless of access to an AC or DC outlet. I definitely would not want to read for all this time. On a few occasions when I had to cross the Atlantic I read for a while, then slept as much as I could, then it was dinner time, then some work (on a laptop) then some more slumber, then landing. You'd be hit with so much jet lag that it pays to sleep while you can.
Of course if you travel on a steamboat or a sailing ship (no AC power!) from Anchorage to San Diego, then your options may be different (depends on your resistance to sea sickness, for example :-)
When we compare 50 books (borrowed from a library or bought) to a small computer we can easily see that all that electronics inside is quite poisonous and requires lots of energy to manufacture. Lithium batteries alone require special handling, since Li is too much biodegradable. Books, on the other hand, are almost clean (paper manufacturing can produce some waste.)
But of course I can only express my personal opinion on advantages that a modern small tablet might have over a modern small eBook reader. eInk is not there yet, in my opinion - it is a nice prototype but to my perception the slow refresh rate is too painful. It practically eliminates on-screen menus, or half-page scrolling, or smooth scrolling (which I don't like) or anything else that would require dynamic content, or even color. Quite a few .lit ebooks have images, and some HTML ebooks (such as what you can find in the URL that is specified in my /. account) also have and use color (and images.) But if you, and others, prefer an offline monochrome device with low screen contrast but very eyes-friendly texture, by all means go for it, and argue for it as much as you wish (as you do already :-) I understand that there can not be a single opinion on such a personal matter.
If you believe there is some other interest group that would favor e-books over paper, I can't find one. Every "normal" book reader would pick a paper book without thinking. That's what libraries have, right? Only a geek would choose an obscure electronic device for such a mundane use.
Sony's e-paper reader is a disaster, I looked at it at Fry's and couldn't force myself to like it. Ghosting, low contrast, and most unpleasant is the low speed of updates (about 1 second to flip the page, with awful flickering all the way.) It is also a single purpose reader, nothing more. I ended up buying a Sansung Q1 Ultra, it is not perfect but at least it is a usable tablet with a Windows OS so you can load stuff onto it, run Mozilla, do things (802.11 + Bluetooth) and in general I like it. The handwriting recognition is excellent, though it has a keyboard as well. Some say it's slow, but as long as it's not your primary gaming box you would be OK :-) A tablet has many uses, and speed is not needed for any of them (as long as it's fast enough to decode MP3s.)
The problem is that in the business world possible (or impossible) does not matter. Available vs. unavailable is what matters. If you release a product called "A Complete OpenOffice Solution In a Box" (or something) then businesses may try it out. But development, coding ... forget it, IT departments have troubles with configuring even simple things. A coder would be better used to develop new products for the company, and not reinventing that same old wheel all over again.
At this point it seems like a complete OpenOffice server + client solution is on the threshold of possible, assuming that the developers will actually get a leader, sit together and figure out what it is exactly that they are trying to develop. Just like Microsoft did, and like every other professional team does. Answers to that are plentiful in this thread because the posters are users, and they tell what they want. A wordprocessor would be nice that loads within user's lifetime and doesn't screw up tables, for example. Or a spreadsheet that can't be crashed by whatever you throw at it. A word count that groks UNICODE as it is meant to be grokked. An API that builds on existing technologies because people are reluctant to ditch what they paid big bucks for. A GUI that is identical to what the users are familiar with. And so on - there are many *obvious* issues, and it won't even be impossible to solve all this. But as I said, it may be that the Bazaar model just hit the wall here - there may be not enough unifying, leading forces that are required for a cohesive product and for adherence to the design requirements. Developers must be controlled and shoehorned into the Grand Vision of the Boss, and that is contrary to F/OSS model - a heresy even. But that's what it takes to design a product.
None of the stuff on this list would warrant a lawsuit; at least I don't see any sensible grounds for one. MS could, of course, sue if its trademarks are infringed, but OO has its own names for the components, and MS is silent so far. An "OpenOffice Server" would seem to be perfectly legitimate.
Soon you will have a chance to vote for those right hands - provided that you can find them on the political landscape. When you do find them, please let everyone else know who that person is.
Throw them out. If the voter doesn't have enough brains to fill a circle in front of a name then chances are he is too stupid to vote. Besides, ambiguous votes always existed, and should exist, since any voter has the right to not vote on some specific issue. To that effect he is entitled to spoiling this section of the ballot (if not the entire ballot, which is also his right.)
A computer should be used to prepare all ballots so that they are ALWAYS both valid and unambiguous.
Again, this is not even wanted. I don't need an overlord who forces me to vote for a local dog catcher. I don't care, and I want to abstain, it's my right. I don't want to vote randomly. People who care will decide instead.
It is possible to make millions machines that work without defects - you just need to care enough to do it, and of course maintain them properly.
I'd like to see an example of "millions of machines that work without defects". Something tells me you are joking. Humans are the most reliable [biological] machines known to us, and even human bodies are not that reliable. Anything made by hands is far worse in terms of reliability. 30% of all X-Boxes 360 fail; an industry norm is 3%, and you posit the 0.0001% figure?
Also, as a reminder, we are talking about government workers here. They are paid 25% of what a minimum salary in private sector would be.
If you can keep planes in the air...
No, the government can't do that either. Just count how many aircraft were destroyed in last years due to mechanical (or stupid) reasons. Osprey can't even fly.
There must be a subtle problem with your quote but the nature of the flaw eludes me...
Besides, many people are still uncomfortable with computers - and I would be also uncomfortable if once in a year (or less often) asked to operate an unknown computer that is all flashy and touch-sensitive and you have zero training on it, and the results affect the fate of the nation. I would rather ask for a paper form, a pen, and some time alone to read what the form wants from me and what do I want to mark. All government forms come with instructions on how to fill them, and I usually read the instructions.
So in my opinion a computer here is an unnecessary middleman who costs money to buy and to operate, and adds to the confusion of voters who never saw the thing before and will thoroughly forget the experience by the next time they vote. If you want to vote, take a paper form, mark the candidates, and drop it into the box - that simple. After the station closes the scanner can read the forms at amazing speed, which allows you to run the same batch on two different scanners, and if the results differ then you recheck. Modern OCR is very, very good, and you can always tell the scanner to set aside all ballots that the machine is "unsure" about. Those can be counted manually, and there won't be too many of those.
If you want to reuse old voting machines, donate them to libraries and turn them into thin terminals for Internet access. Or something similar - not related to voting at all. We neither need nor want computers to be used for voting by voters; it's just too large a can of worms. After the paper ballots are collected, then feel free to count and recount them in any approved way, with or without machines.
Well, inflex was asking about "using solar power to manage devices and want a WWW frontend or such" and VGA is totally and absolutely counter-indicated if you do this. In practice you need only /dev/ttyS0 and eth0, and most boards have at least that (usually more.) I never had any of their boards with VGA (I use TS7250) and I never even considered asking for VGA. I use the boards for some fast processes (real time, actually, using PC/104 to talk to custom hardware) and I don't want to spend any CPU cycles on GUI. Especially when you are running on solar power.
http://www.embeddedarm.com/ is far cooler and cheaper for such use.
Long distance communication over radio (or any other light-speed limited carrier) is not useful, and I would be surprised if any star system wants to wait 300 years before they know what's today's price on some ore. It would be of interest to historians, maybe, but not to any customer.
But it is definitely weird to read about Heechee and then to discover that we are them...
In other words, you do not worry if someone technically illiterate gets infected with a kazaa trojan? You are a Linux user yourself, and not illiterate, but there are many who don't even ask why their pc runs so slowly lately... I'm not aware of such a Trojan, but considering how many people own legitimate digital audio it's something very obvious, and probably easy to do thanks to catalogs that WMP and Winamp create. It the defendant in this case was able to demonstrate such a virus or trojan she'd have far less trouble.
And why would a whiteboard be better than a blackboard? Chalk is harmless, unlike the solvent based pens, and it is far more environmentally friendly.
Unfortunately, they can be incompetent and dangerous at the same time, like a drunk driver.
When soldiers see an angry mob they shoot. If the mob isn't aggressive the commanders make it aggressive. Perceptions can be managed.
"I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse." - Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor