So, if I acquire a piece of open source software, I should be able to use it however I want?
Yes, you should. Key word there being -use- and there is a difference between use and redistribute.
That would mean that any company could ignore the GPL.
The GPL gives you the complete freedom to use a program how you see fit.
The act of
running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program
is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the
Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
Heck, the GPL lets you modify source within a corporation
No, in that case the organization is just making the copies for itself. As a consequence, a company or other organization can develop a modified version and install that version through its own facilities, without giving the staff permission to release that modified version to outsiders.
from the GPL FAQs
The GPL only restricts what you can do with A) a modified program or B) when you redistribute the program. The Apple license restricts what you can do -with- the program which is a whole lot more than just saying what you can do to redistribute or modify the program.
Ok, then make it be only able to be tied to OS X. By this I mean, make it technically impossible to run it on standard PC hardware. They have tried to, but failed. It should -not- be illegal for someone to use legitimately purchased software on any computer. It should be illegal for Apple to tie things beyond "only one copy of this is allowed to be installed at one time". If Apple doesn't like people using OS X on ordinary PCs then make OS X impossible to run on those PCs either by switching to an obscure architecture or (attempting) to add in "protections" against it. Apple should be allowed to do that, and I should be allowed to run OS X on whatever so long as I purchased it.
Really what needs to happen is the courts need to say that is it legal to A) modify a legitimately purchased OS to run on whatever hardware B) Allow licenses to restrict what hardware you run things on only in number of quantity (for example, Apple could sell you one license for OS X to be installed on one machine, if you install it on 5 you are breaking it, but if you install it on one PC, it would still be legal. and C) allow for companies to sell machines with OS X on them so long as OS X was legitimately purchased by Apple and there is a license for that one machine.
Yes, but open standards mean that just about any open program can read them. For example, it doesn't matter if I choose to use the open WAV, FLAC or OGG Vorbis file format, the default media player in Ubuntu can play it. The more closed the file is, the fewer programs will open it.
I use one for work. If I want cpu power I ssh into a server no laptop comes close to a 4 quad Xeons.
And this server is going to help the average person play The Sims 3, how? Or make Photoshop render faster? Or help Windows Movie Maker make the movie faster?
The average person plays at least a few games or has a task that a netbook isn't going to do well. They just aren't made for those tasks.
99% of laptop purchasers should have bought a desktop and the cheapest netbook they could find
I thought the same thing, however I was proven "wrong". When my grandparents wanted a cheap computer (they basically live off of social security) I suggested the EEE 901 for $200, they already had a desktop and they really only used the computer for e-mail or internet. They said that the 9 inch screen wouldn't bother them. I loaded up Ubuntu and made the fonts -huge- for them. But for some odd reason they viewed it as "too slow" (don't know how, it was certainly faster than their low-end celeron running Windows 2K....) and the keyboard was "too small" (yet they still managed to text just fine on their phones...).
Also, laptops are cheap. my current laptop I got for $300, not on sale. Its not exactly outdated either, its got a Celeron 900 at 2.2 Ghz, a 15 inch screen, 2 gigs of RAM and a 160 gig HDD. Yeah, its got integrated graphics, yeah if I spent $150 extra I could have gotten a better machine, but as a student its a perfect laptop, Ubuntu runs flawlessly on it and everything works.
The cheapest netbook is $200, and the cheapest desktop is $200, which is $400, which doesn't save any money over my $300 laptop.
people taking up the generally limited space for longer than needed cost them money.
Actually, I don't think I've seen many McDonalds with limited space for eating. Yeah, there may be a line halfway out the door but there are usually still about 5 tables left.
What makes sense for these type of places is "free" WiFi with purchase. Every receipt has a code printed on it valid for that day at that location which allows one hour of access. Ran out of time? Go buy a drink or something.
Yeah, but what happens when it doesn't work? Good luck getting the high school drop-out a the cash register to do something more than power cycle the router.
There are also a lot of McDonalds and Starbucks locations within a short distance of residential areas. I could see the local McDonalds' front window from my back porch at my last apartment. If they had offered purely open free WiFi, I'd sure as hell have tossed one of my cantennas up and used it as an extra internet connection.
Yeah, but you might be one of the few. For one, putting up a cantenna isn't something most people are going to do. Most will simply look at the 3% internet connection, see that they are only getting 2 KB/sec and just give up.
Because you have to realize McDonalds is -everywhere- while you might be lucky to live in a city of 200K people and have lots of options, but living in a town about 7K, McDonalds is one of the few places with Wi-Fi for customer usage, out of the 10 restaraunts (including fast food) I think only about 5 have Wi-Fi avaliable, 2 are paywalls, 1 is secured (presumably for employee usage), and 2 are open (with the SSID of Linksys....).
You have to realize though, even if you might not use your -laptop- there, many other devices use Wi-Fi. For example, people with iPod touches could go on Facebook or surf the web, same with people with a DSi, PSP, etc. And yes, there are many people out there without a smartphone or who want slightly faster internet.
Most tech-literate businesses will get software-free PCs and load up whatever OS they have a support contract for be it Windows XP, Red Hat or Ubuntu. So, no, not a tiny minority.
The vast majority of people don't think of the operating system as different from the hardware.
And I'm sure most people think of the components of a car as the same thing as the car itself. Yet that isn't an excuse to not sell car parts.
Very few people selling to consumers is realistically going to see a benefit to offering a softwareless computer.
Its a lot easier to test. Rather than making sure that all the components of Windows are installed, that all the crapware is installed, dealing with disks, etc. That means less labor and more savings for the computer maker.
Microsoft made the PC affordable and easy enough for anyone to use, which made it possible for the PC market to flourish.
You are kidding right? IBM (who had a near total monopoly on computer systems at the time) needed an OS, so MS basically bought DOS from a couple of guys who made it and licensed it to IBM. DOS was -terrible- but due to IBM's monopoly its what people used, when people realized they could build an IBM-compatible machine the clones started coming out and they wanted software compatibility so they licensed DOS too. When Microsoft realized that GUI-based systems were the future, they basically made a workalike clone of the Mac's GUI and stuck it on top of DOS.
Microsoft was in no way a major player, the events that happened would have happened without Microsoft's assistance. It was inevitable that the IBM PC would be reverse engineered (thankfully there was no DMCA or other restrictive laws back then) and cheaper clones could be produced.
Given that every game a Japanese Teenager would want to play (Meaning Anime style Haircuits and/or cool swords and guns) came out exclusively for the PS3.
Actually, though, lots of J-RPGs are out for the 360 first. For example, Tales of Vesperia, Star Ocean: The Last Hope and other RPGs were released on the 360 then given an enhanced remake for the PS3.
Yeah, but the difference is in the US, the ESRB has no legal authority to ban games, neither does our film ratings association.
The rating system is strictly voluntary, however nearly all video games are submitted for rating due to the fact that many retail stores prohibit the sale of unrated video games and the major console manufacturers will not license games for their systems unless they carry ESRB ratings.
Theres a bit of a difference between Wal-Mart saying they won't sell your game if it doesn't have a rating and the government saying the game cannot be sold.
The Office of Film and Literature Classification is a statutory censorship and classification body overseen by the Australian Government which included: the Classification Board which classified films, video games and publications for exhibition, sale or hire in Australia; the Classification Review Board which reviewed previously classified films, computer games and publications on appeal; and administrative staff who provided day to day support for the two Boards under the control of the Director of the Classification Board.
In Australia though if the government doesn't like your game its banned for sale in Australia.
While the US does have some strange and stupid restrictions on what you can put on on-air TV or radio, so long as its on a disk or downloadable it really doesn't get censored. (Unless its ZOMG CP!!!111!11!11!1). Plus, in the US books are uncensored too and the only way it is ever "censored" is if a store refuses to stock it or a publisher rejects it.
Well, Firefox doesn't have that much to compete with on the mobile front. Lets see, Mobile Safari is decent, but its a bit behind the times and of course will be slow to move to new technologies without a major update by Apple. Android's Browser is pretty decent, and is perhaps one of the best ones, but fragmentation may eventually make it unusable due to older versions of Android. Mobile IE is a joke, Opera Mobile is decent but doesn't really excel in any are (well, aside from making Windows Mobile handsets able to surf the web decently...) and Blackberry browser has come a long way but still lacks a few features.
I thought the same thing, then I saw Quake live, which, though it does have its own plugin/extension it is very much a "real game" done in a browser. While the iPhone might not have the horsepower to do it yet, technology moves quickly.
It sounds like there might be easy money to be made buying these components, putting them in a computer case and then reselling them for profit at various universities. Just wait for the "Dell" of supercomputers.
Look at the mess copyright is in. The government created strong fair use and a short copyright to get works into the public domain as soon as possible. Look at where we are now with eternal copyright and the DMCA. Look at the various government-sponsored initiatives to "help" get homeowners into homes that ended up in the recession because the people weren't smart enough to take out a loan they could afford. Look at all the environmental "protection" that has gone on that results in increased costs for consumers and negligible benefits. Look at California's new regulations (http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/05/new-california-energy-regulations-would-remove-certain-plasmas-lcds-from-store-shelves/) that attempt to "save" consumers money but reduce their choice in the marketplace. And there are many, many, many more. These are just recent developments, I'm sure if I had the time to do the digging I could find many, many, many more examples like this.
The Chinese though have a much higher standard of living than Cuba. China also is pretty self-sufficient for all intents and purposes. Cuba though is very close to the US and is a tiny island where people are dirt poor. Because of this people are more apt to flee Cuba for a different country, than flee China for a different country. Plus, China is very spread out population-wise making organized demonstrations hard. Cuba is a tiny island where even on foot it wouldn't take too long to get many places.
This highlights exactly why the US embargo fails. Had it been lifted many years ago, perhaps Cubans would have already overthrown their dictatorship and established a free way of life. But instead the US insists on keeping a broken embargo in place that, if removed long ago, could have paved the way for Cubans to own cell phones and laptops long before this.
Yes, but the media will eventually lobby congress for things allowing for greater "protections" on copyright, commercial, and time shifting perhaps forbidding the sale of things that let you skip commercials. Every, single, time that the government does one thing right for its people, five more laws will be passed reducing that victory because of laws to "help" the people "wronged" by that law. Its the way it always happens, and by that time, technology will not have caught up to it because there was no need to develop the technology further.
Has government regulation ever really worked? Lets see here, fair use was meant to allow for the public to use copyrighted material in some situations. It was a good law, but then the DMCA basically threw fair use into the trash. The public might have the momentum to get one law passed, but five more will rise up in its place. If the government stays out of this, the free market will eventually come up with a solution that won't have the regressions/loopholes that legislation always has. Without government interference in things like broadcasting, better time-shifting, commercial eliminating, and TV streaming technology can be invented without threat of legislation making it illegal.
The fact that a fair government may allow the customer to get screwed, but the power in the end will rest with the consumer to avoid being screwed.
If government can interfere in this wait for the EU-style Nanny-State laws limiting volume on MP3 players, more DMCA-style legislation, and perhaps even legislation forbidding the skipping of commercials.
Whenever one good law that helps consumers comes out, five more that are anti-consumer will be legalized. A government that stays out of stuff will be more free for much longer than one that interferes in every little thing.
Exactly. Plus things like "turn here" aren't that accurate on a GPS. Yeah, you might accurate within 300 feet, but if there are 2 roads you can turn in that distance, you might go down the wrong one.
Also, this "study" fails to see that some people have passengers that can read/edit info on the GPS.
I really don't see the point in "cyber warfare" other than small-scale attacks on a certain site or ISP, a large scale plan could never fully work because any country could simply switch to basically a huge local network. Would it be hard? Yes. Is it able to be done? Yes.
Plus, other than attacks on military infrastructure, the coming diversity of OSes, CPU platforms, and networks would make attacks on civilian devices nearly impossible. You might be able to write an iPhone worm, but you wouldn't be able to write an iPhone/Android/Java/BREW worm that attacks anyone on any cell network. That worm would also not work on a PC running Windows/OS X/Linux/BSD. And the diversity in browsers make exploit-based attacks even harder. It used to be you could attack the weak IE browser and get 90% of web surfers, now you would only get slightly more than half, and you would need to attack Firefox (both 3.0 and 3.5 along with perhaps older versions), Safari, Chrome, Opera and many smaller browsers.
In short, cyber warfare is a possibility on infrastructure and is quickly approaching impossible on large amounts of devices.
However, while terrible, giant powerful dictatorships are useful in the keeping of stability in the middle east. Look at what happened when we took down a powerful dictator (Saddam Hussein) and the chaos that was then released. Even the most powerful middle east countries such as Iran, pose little threat to the US as a whole. In the absolute worst case scenario, they can nuke perhaps one or two US cities with ICBMs, but if it comes to a cold-war era standoff, Iran is so tiny that a near total destruction of their military can be accomplished with a quick military strike. Until technology improves to allow reliable cultivation of crops in desert conditions, the middle east will never be stable and will instead rely on super-powerful dictatorships or foreign occupation to be peaceful.
Peer-reviewed articles have several problems. One is that by the time the journal is released, it is outdated. The other is it is prone to censorship of the masses. For example, if an article showed that smoking was harmful when smoking was seen both as beneficial to health, both smokers and those with much to lose if smoking was proven harmful.
Yeah, but a food recipe can easily be reverse engineered and used for profit or given away. If I magically figured out KFC's recipe without having prior knowledge of it and I made my own fried chicken stand that drove KFC out of business there wouldn't be a thing KFC could do. Similarly, I could reverse engineer coke and make my own soda. About the only thing that you -can't- do with a trade secret is if you know it most agreements forbid you from disclosing it or competing using it.
As for copyright, yeah, you can copyright anything, but I can still use your work, just not publish the recipe.
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So, if I acquire a piece of open source software, I should be able to use it however I want?
Yes, you should. Key word there being -use- and there is a difference between use and redistribute.
That would mean that any company could ignore the GPL.
The GPL gives you the complete freedom to use a program how you see fit.
The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
Heck, the GPL lets you modify source within a corporation
No, in that case the organization is just making the copies for itself. As a consequence, a company or other organization can develop a modified version and install that version through its own facilities, without giving the staff permission to release that modified version to outsiders.
from the GPL FAQs
The GPL only restricts what you can do with A) a modified program or B) when you redistribute the program. The Apple license restricts what you can do -with- the program which is a whole lot more than just saying what you can do to redistribute or modify the program.
Ok, then make it be only able to be tied to OS X. By this I mean, make it technically impossible to run it on standard PC hardware. They have tried to, but failed. It should -not- be illegal for someone to use legitimately purchased software on any computer. It should be illegal for Apple to tie things beyond "only one copy of this is allowed to be installed at one time". If Apple doesn't like people using OS X on ordinary PCs then make OS X impossible to run on those PCs either by switching to an obscure architecture or (attempting) to add in "protections" against it. Apple should be allowed to do that, and I should be allowed to run OS X on whatever so long as I purchased it.
Really what needs to happen is the courts need to say that is it legal to A) modify a legitimately purchased OS to run on whatever hardware B) Allow licenses to restrict what hardware you run things on only in number of quantity (for example, Apple could sell you one license for OS X to be installed on one machine, if you install it on 5 you are breaking it, but if you install it on one PC, it would still be legal. and C) allow for companies to sell machines with OS X on them so long as OS X was legitimately purchased by Apple and there is a license for that one machine.
Yes, but open standards mean that just about any open program can read them. For example, it doesn't matter if I choose to use the open WAV, FLAC or OGG Vorbis file format, the default media player in Ubuntu can play it. The more closed the file is, the fewer programs will open it.
I use one for work. If I want cpu power I ssh into a server no laptop comes close to a 4 quad Xeons.
And this server is going to help the average person play The Sims 3, how? Or make Photoshop render faster? Or help Windows Movie Maker make the movie faster?
The average person plays at least a few games or has a task that a netbook isn't going to do well. They just aren't made for those tasks.
99% of laptop purchasers should have bought a desktop and the cheapest netbook they could find
I thought the same thing, however I was proven "wrong". When my grandparents wanted a cheap computer (they basically live off of social security) I suggested the EEE 901 for $200, they already had a desktop and they really only used the computer for e-mail or internet. They said that the 9 inch screen wouldn't bother them. I loaded up Ubuntu and made the fonts -huge- for them. But for some odd reason they viewed it as "too slow" (don't know how, it was certainly faster than their low-end celeron running Windows 2K....) and the keyboard was "too small" (yet they still managed to text just fine on their phones...).
Also, laptops are cheap. my current laptop I got for $300, not on sale. Its not exactly outdated either, its got a Celeron 900 at 2.2 Ghz, a 15 inch screen, 2 gigs of RAM and a 160 gig HDD. Yeah, its got integrated graphics, yeah if I spent $150 extra I could have gotten a better machine, but as a student its a perfect laptop, Ubuntu runs flawlessly on it and everything works.
The cheapest netbook is $200, and the cheapest desktop is $200, which is $400, which doesn't save any money over my $300 laptop.
Sounds like you want an Aspire Revo. ( see http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Acer+-+AspireRevo+Nettop+with+Intel%26%23174%3B+Atom%26%23153%3B+Processor/9535434.p?id=1218120545008&skuId=9535434 ) costs $200, ION graphics, 1 gig of RAM, HDMI support, and a 160 gig HDD. I also think its got an E-SATA port on the front of it which is a nice addition. According to reviews its easy to crack open and upgrade the RAM. While the Atom CPU might be on a bit of the sluggish side, I think this might be what you are looking for if you don't want a laptop.
people taking up the generally limited space for longer than needed cost them money.
Actually, I don't think I've seen many McDonalds with limited space for eating. Yeah, there may be a line halfway out the door but there are usually still about 5 tables left.
What makes sense for these type of places is "free" WiFi with purchase. Every receipt has a code printed on it valid for that day at that location which allows one hour of access. Ran out of time? Go buy a drink or something.
Yeah, but what happens when it doesn't work? Good luck getting the high school drop-out a the cash register to do something more than power cycle the router.
There are also a lot of McDonalds and Starbucks locations within a short distance of residential areas. I could see the local McDonalds' front window from my back porch at my last apartment. If they had offered purely open free WiFi, I'd sure as hell have tossed one of my cantennas up and used it as an extra internet connection.
Yeah, but you might be one of the few. For one, putting up a cantenna isn't something most people are going to do. Most will simply look at the 3% internet connection, see that they are only getting 2 KB/sec and just give up.
Because you have to realize McDonalds is -everywhere- while you might be lucky to live in a city of 200K people and have lots of options, but living in a town about 7K, McDonalds is one of the few places with Wi-Fi for customer usage, out of the 10 restaraunts (including fast food) I think only about 5 have Wi-Fi avaliable, 2 are paywalls, 1 is secured (presumably for employee usage), and 2 are open (with the SSID of Linksys....).
You have to realize though, even if you might not use your -laptop- there, many other devices use Wi-Fi. For example, people with iPod touches could go on Facebook or surf the web, same with people with a DSi, PSP, etc. And yes, there are many people out there without a smartphone or who want slightly faster internet.
And you're part of a tiny, tiny minority.
Most tech-literate businesses will get software-free PCs and load up whatever OS they have a support contract for be it Windows XP, Red Hat or Ubuntu. So, no, not a tiny minority.
The vast majority of people don't think of the operating system as different from the hardware.
And I'm sure most people think of the components of a car as the same thing as the car itself. Yet that isn't an excuse to not sell car parts.
Very few people selling to consumers is realistically going to see a benefit to offering a softwareless computer.
Its a lot easier to test. Rather than making sure that all the components of Windows are installed, that all the crapware is installed, dealing with disks, etc. That means less labor and more savings for the computer maker.
Microsoft made the PC affordable and easy enough for anyone to use, which made it possible for the PC market to flourish.
You are kidding right? IBM (who had a near total monopoly on computer systems at the time) needed an OS, so MS basically bought DOS from a couple of guys who made it and licensed it to IBM. DOS was -terrible- but due to IBM's monopoly its what people used, when people realized they could build an IBM-compatible machine the clones started coming out and they wanted software compatibility so they licensed DOS too. When Microsoft realized that GUI-based systems were the future, they basically made a workalike clone of the Mac's GUI and stuck it on top of DOS.
Microsoft was in no way a major player, the events that happened would have happened without Microsoft's assistance. It was inevitable that the IBM PC would be reverse engineered (thankfully there was no DMCA or other restrictive laws back then) and cheaper clones could be produced.
Given that every game a Japanese Teenager would want to play (Meaning Anime style Haircuits and/or cool swords and guns) came out exclusively for the PS3.
Actually, though, lots of J-RPGs are out for the 360 first. For example, Tales of Vesperia, Star Ocean: The Last Hope and other RPGs were released on the 360 then given an enhanced remake for the PS3.
The rating system is strictly voluntary, however nearly all video games are submitted for rating due to the fact that many retail stores prohibit the sale of unrated video games and the major console manufacturers will not license games for their systems unless they carry ESRB ratings.
Theres a bit of a difference between Wal-Mart saying they won't sell your game if it doesn't have a rating and the government saying the game cannot be sold.
The Office of Film and Literature Classification is a statutory censorship and classification body overseen by the Australian Government which included: the Classification Board which classified films, video games and publications for exhibition, sale or hire in Australia; the Classification Review Board which reviewed previously classified films, computer games and publications on appeal; and administrative staff who provided day to day support for the two Boards under the control of the Director of the Classification Board.
In Australia though if the government doesn't like your game its banned for sale in Australia.
While the US does have some strange and stupid restrictions on what you can put on on-air TV or radio, so long as its on a disk or downloadable it really doesn't get censored. (Unless its ZOMG CP!!!111!11!11!1). Plus, in the US books are uncensored too and the only way it is ever "censored" is if a store refuses to stock it or a publisher rejects it.
Well, Firefox doesn't have that much to compete with on the mobile front. Lets see, Mobile Safari is decent, but its a bit behind the times and of course will be slow to move to new technologies without a major update by Apple. Android's Browser is pretty decent, and is perhaps one of the best ones, but fragmentation may eventually make it unusable due to older versions of Android. Mobile IE is a joke, Opera Mobile is decent but doesn't really excel in any are (well, aside from making Windows Mobile handsets able to surf the web decently...) and Blackberry browser has come a long way but still lacks a few features.
I thought the same thing, then I saw Quake live, which, though it does have its own plugin/extension it is very much a "real game" done in a browser. While the iPhone might not have the horsepower to do it yet, technology moves quickly.
It sounds like there might be easy money to be made buying these components, putting them in a computer case and then reselling them for profit at various universities. Just wait for the "Dell" of supercomputers.
Look at the mess copyright is in. The government created strong fair use and a short copyright to get works into the public domain as soon as possible. Look at where we are now with eternal copyright and the DMCA. Look at the various government-sponsored initiatives to "help" get homeowners into homes that ended up in the recession because the people weren't smart enough to take out a loan they could afford. Look at all the environmental "protection" that has gone on that results in increased costs for consumers and negligible benefits. Look at California's new regulations (http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/05/new-california-energy-regulations-would-remove-certain-plasmas-lcds-from-store-shelves/) that attempt to "save" consumers money but reduce their choice in the marketplace. And there are many, many, many more. These are just recent developments, I'm sure if I had the time to do the digging I could find many, many, many more examples like this.
The Chinese though have a much higher standard of living than Cuba. China also is pretty self-sufficient for all intents and purposes. Cuba though is very close to the US and is a tiny island where people are dirt poor. Because of this people are more apt to flee Cuba for a different country, than flee China for a different country. Plus, China is very spread out population-wise making organized demonstrations hard. Cuba is a tiny island where even on foot it wouldn't take too long to get many places.
This highlights exactly why the US embargo fails. Had it been lifted many years ago, perhaps Cubans would have already overthrown their dictatorship and established a free way of life. But instead the US insists on keeping a broken embargo in place that, if removed long ago, could have paved the way for Cubans to own cell phones and laptops long before this.
Yes, but the media will eventually lobby congress for things allowing for greater "protections" on copyright, commercial, and time shifting perhaps forbidding the sale of things that let you skip commercials. Every, single, time that the government does one thing right for its people, five more laws will be passed reducing that victory because of laws to "help" the people "wronged" by that law. Its the way it always happens, and by that time, technology will not have caught up to it because there was no need to develop the technology further.
Has government regulation ever really worked? Lets see here, fair use was meant to allow for the public to use copyrighted material in some situations. It was a good law, but then the DMCA basically threw fair use into the trash. The public might have the momentum to get one law passed, but five more will rise up in its place. If the government stays out of this, the free market will eventually come up with a solution that won't have the regressions/loopholes that legislation always has. Without government interference in things like broadcasting, better time-shifting, commercial eliminating, and TV streaming technology can be invented without threat of legislation making it illegal.
The fact that a fair government may allow the customer to get screwed, but the power in the end will rest with the consumer to avoid being screwed.
If government can interfere in this wait for the EU-style Nanny-State laws limiting volume on MP3 players, more DMCA-style legislation, and perhaps even legislation forbidding the skipping of commercials.
Whenever one good law that helps consumers comes out, five more that are anti-consumer will be legalized. A government that stays out of stuff will be more free for much longer than one that interferes in every little thing.
Exactly. Plus things like "turn here" aren't that accurate on a GPS. Yeah, you might accurate within 300 feet, but if there are 2 roads you can turn in that distance, you might go down the wrong one.
Also, this "study" fails to see that some people have passengers that can read/edit info on the GPS.
I really don't see the point in "cyber warfare" other than small-scale attacks on a certain site or ISP, a large scale plan could never fully work because any country could simply switch to basically a huge local network. Would it be hard? Yes. Is it able to be done? Yes.
Plus, other than attacks on military infrastructure, the coming diversity of OSes, CPU platforms, and networks would make attacks on civilian devices nearly impossible. You might be able to write an iPhone worm, but you wouldn't be able to write an iPhone/Android/Java/BREW worm that attacks anyone on any cell network. That worm would also not work on a PC running Windows/OS X/Linux/BSD. And the diversity in browsers make exploit-based attacks even harder. It used to be you could attack the weak IE browser and get 90% of web surfers, now you would only get slightly more than half, and you would need to attack Firefox (both 3.0 and 3.5 along with perhaps older versions), Safari, Chrome, Opera and many smaller browsers.
In short, cyber warfare is a possibility on infrastructure and is quickly approaching impossible on large amounts of devices.
However, while terrible, giant powerful dictatorships are useful in the keeping of stability in the middle east. Look at what happened when we took down a powerful dictator (Saddam Hussein) and the chaos that was then released. Even the most powerful middle east countries such as Iran, pose little threat to the US as a whole. In the absolute worst case scenario, they can nuke perhaps one or two US cities with ICBMs, but if it comes to a cold-war era standoff, Iran is so tiny that a near total destruction of their military can be accomplished with a quick military strike. Until technology improves to allow reliable cultivation of crops in desert conditions, the middle east will never be stable and will instead rely on super-powerful dictatorships or foreign occupation to be peaceful.
Peer-reviewed articles have several problems. One is that by the time the journal is released, it is outdated. The other is it is prone to censorship of the masses. For example, if an article showed that smoking was harmful when smoking was seen both as beneficial to health, both smokers and those with much to lose if smoking was proven harmful.
Yeah, but a food recipe can easily be reverse engineered and used for profit or given away. If I magically figured out KFC's recipe without having prior knowledge of it and I made my own fried chicken stand that drove KFC out of business there wouldn't be a thing KFC could do. Similarly, I could reverse engineer coke and make my own soda. About the only thing that you -can't- do with a trade secret is if you know it most agreements forbid you from disclosing it or competing using it.
As for copyright, yeah, you can copyright anything, but I can still use your work, just not publish the recipe.