The alternative is to stop alienating the customers who DO pay. All this rampant "piracy" is merely symptomatic of the fact that copyright as a social contract is FUBAR.
* No DRM that is incompatible with copyright. If you want both, the "patch" must be placed in escrow.
* No DRM that is incompatible with backups. If you want both, you must replace media at cost+postage.
This crap has spawned an entire "new" market - DVD copying software! Talk about broken windows...
* No artificial price-jacking (segmenting the market with region-locked devices).
* No unskippable anti-piracy videos (which are annoying and/. repeatedly tells me don't exist on the pirated videos, thus making the practice even stupider).
Even if you were telling the truth, you'd still be put in the real hurt locker by the legal costs. Innocence in a court of law isn't free.
Hell, I run a computer repair business. What's one of the first things these asshats would do? Confiscate every computer here, mine and my customers, to sit on a shelf somewhere until they get around to "examining" them. And in this rural area, my name would make the front page, "local business raided in connection with piracy!"
That's Windows 7 Starter edition, mind you. And I wasn't impressed by the factual differences between the Multimedia and Specs pages...
Big print on the Multimedia page: This device will play Full HD* Video (in 1080p resolution) on its magnificent touch screen. Thanks to the latest Intel ATOM Z series microprocessor and the built-in Intel® video chipset, all you have to do is hit “Play”, sit down, and enjoy the show on the beautiful 9" screen.
Small print on the Specs page: 8.9” LED backlight 1024x600 pixels
Seriously though, why would you do that? Fedora and Ubuntu (and I'm sure many others) both use Red Hat's Disk Utility which notifies you about failing disks and allows for very simple RAID and drive management, SMART information and surface scan tests, benchmarking, file system checks, and other things all right there.
Rock solid file server. Use it for a centralized torrent server, too, with web access.
Because for a little over $100 (your currency may vary), I got all the hard work done for me and wrapped in a KISS-design GUI layer, that automagically backs up my home network, extends my media center across said network, gives me remote access via https, allows me to choose what shares need redundancy, warns me if a disk is failing, etc. It's not perfect, but it's "good enough".
But hey, if you want to donate money to a monopolistic unethical megacompany, that's your choice.
Heh. It is. And they are. I think their CAL scheme sucks crap through a straw. I think their Office suites are ludicrously overpriced. And I could go on (at length). But - surprising as it may be - in WHS they offered a decent product at a decent price. I wanted it. I bought it. That's not a donation - that's quid pro quo.
or perhaps more importantly, concrete and real historical examples of why compulsory identification is bad or wrong.
Concrete and real historical examples of civilizations with panopticon-level surveillance and the ability to remotely help or hinder significant populations in real-time via computer command are not yet available. However, I expect such examples within my lifetime. All of the technologies are there. It's just a matter of combining them to taste as suits your ideology and those of your allies and enemies.
Emphasis intended. That is the "beef". The problem is not that these technologies will combine, the problem is (a) acknowledging that many want it and at least one will get it, (b) ensuring that combination occurs within a regulatory framework that resists tyranny. And history is littered with real and concrete examples of where humanity has done poorly in that regard.
Yeah, any ATOM or ION board that I've seen, has only had one PCI or Express slot. And while I do know there are RAID cards with 12 SATA ports, if memory serves they're hideously expensive - it'd be cheaper to buy three motherboards complete with processors and ram, and chain them, than buy one of those cards.:)
Agreed, I ran into that trouble with hardwired rack fans too.
The trayless Welland racks have no fans, they're little more than an open-air frame internally. You have to supply your own cooling/filters. http://www.welland.com.tw/html/mobile/751.html
I made the mistake of buying Seagate 1.5TB drives before they fixed the firmware... yeah. There's little to make a geek go pale (well, paler than usual:p) like seeing multiple drives failing during a rebuild...
I've looked at the "icage" style bays, they're certainly nice for squeezing extra drives into a chassis. I ended up going with hot-swappable racks instead, but it's a "YMMV" situation to be sure. Speaking of drive racks, Welland's trayless ME-751 are delightfully light, I've been using them in builds and wish they'd been around when I filled out my case. As is, the Stacker's all-steel construction plus the heavy racks I'd used plus ten 3.5" drives makes the thing really massive - I'm grateful that (a) it mostly just sits in the corner and (b) it came with a set of detachable wheels! After several years at the coast, it has only a little corrosion (mostly around the fans), which is impressive. Built like the proverbial brick outhouse.
I looked at a Drobo - but being on a budget, I kept on looking elsewhere. I don't doubt they deserve those reviews, but they are not cheap. And if the Drobo itself dies... good luck getting the data off those drives without another Drobo handy.
Another happy WHS owner here. I do recall reading that one of the service packs (there have been three) fixed the requirement for a big first drive - files now copy directly to the storage drives.
That said, I still use a fast system drive, and the rest are a mix of 7200 and 5400 rpm drives (depending on what was cheapest at the time).
Bought the original Coolermaster Stacker case. The front of the chassis is solely 5.25" drive bays - eleven of them - technically twelve if you mod the case to move the power+usb front panel elsewhere.:)
Oh, and despite being based on Server 2003, one of the nice things about WHS is that unlike the former it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
Uh, what? You appear to be pulling an imaginary example out of nowhere to somehow "prove" this bizarre idea that to be able to take photos of pedophilia a person MUST be in on it?
When a pedo rapes a child, he doesn't do it in public or where anyone can snap a picture of it.
a witness to child rape is at the very least an accessory.
It's that kind of short-circuit thinking which sends innocents to jail or worse. Since when did a witness have to be willing?
In countries where even being associated with the concept is ruinous, where the mere existence of a cartoon is treated as a terrible crime, where intent is deliberately ignored by the law, how many would actually dare take a photo to bear witness against a pedophile and risk being accused as an accessory?
For shame, indeed.
Society's irrational reactions to sexual abuse are terribly harmful, and are exploited by many who publicly exhort us to "think of the children".
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. It is my opinion. If you're really worried, seek out a lawyer.
First things first - if a border guard wants you to turn it on, do so. Generally, unless the guards find you interesting, all they want is to see is that it's harmless (i.e. that you're not nervous, that it turns on, and nothing blows up). They're just doing their job, just like you're doing yours.
What is your company's policy on border searches of company equipment? Oh, your company doesn't have a policy? Then let your boss know that until there is one, you'll obey any lawful orders the guards give you (which, you not knowing any better, will include "log in past the encryption").
That said, you could investigate whether unauthorised computer access is illegal (i.e. an actual crime) in your country / the countries you plan to visit. One of my past employers had a nice big login message warning that unauthorised access to their particular network was a federal offence punishable by up to ten years in prison. If your login comes with a valid legal warning of ten in the pen, and you're not authorised to log in for them, you simply say "sorry, I'm not authorised to log you in, I can't go any further". They can still confiscate it, but they can't order you to commit a felony (well, they could, but that's probably when you politely ask for their supervisor/commander).
Other things you can do:
First, on "play dumb", since that got suggested by another poster. While not bad advice in general when dealing with bored authorities, don't confuse "play dumb" with "play stupid". If your papers say you're a scientist/engineer/etc, acting like a clueless newb about the contents of your laptop is going to make any competent officer suspicious. Just be a polite, mild-mannered version of your normal self.
Dilbert Option: Call the embassies of whatever countries you're passing through (including your own) and ask them the rules on business laptops/drives with encrypted content (e.g. "Hi, I'm Bob from Acme Corp, can you send us a copy of your border regulations for travellers carrying encrypted business laptops? And an executive summary would be fantastic for my boss, too."). Compare with company policy for potential problems, just in case Legal screwed up or had out-of-date info. Whatever. Tell your boss/Legal about any of those. C.Y.A..
Kenobi Option: keep an unencrypted eye-candy partition on the drive as the default boot volume (e.g. Windows or OSX or Ubuntu or anything else that says "boring GUI-based OS here, these aren't the droids you're looking for"). Use it enough to look "lived in", but don't surf/keep anything NSFW on it. If the guard is alert enough to notice the encrypted partition, he's also smart enough to understand when you explain the encrypted partition is confidential company data that you can't log into without authorisation (if he disagrees, proceed as above, with offer to call his/your boss etcetera).
FedEx Option: normal boring drive in laptop, encrypted drives sent by courier/post to your destination. Let someone else worry about border searches (just check first that you're not breaking any crazy rules about "exporting munitions" or whatever).
Look Ma No Hands Option: nothing secret on the drives, use the company VPN over SSL or something. Pray they have decent bandwidth if you need to download anything big.
But it bears repeating that, yeah, border guards have a lot of power. Be polite, go with the flow, and remember that losing your laptop (or even your job) is usually preferable to some foreign prison hellhole.
Re:Reconnaissance can go horribly wrong
on
The Laidoff Ninja
·
· Score: 1
Interesting re the blacklisting... especially since I've read of recruiters sending out resumes of people who never even knew it was being done. "Hey, just wondering why I didn't get a response to the application I sent your company last month." "You were blacklisted for sending your resume to our engineer last year." "Uh, I didn't even know you guys existed then..."
Two things: First, it wouldn't be a dot "on the planet" because the other poster's numbers were for producing power in space, where night and weather aren't issues.
True; on the surface efficiency would be less and we would need to do night-time storage.
Second, even if it were built on the surface, we're talking about 50 power plants about the size of Connecticut, or about 750 things the size of the City of New York.
Hmm. 572,450 km^2 vs total land area (roughly) 148,300,000 km^2. That's 0.3%... okay, bigger than a dot. And I would hope that at least some of our power generation requirements could be met by roof-mounted equipment.
Yes, except we wouldn't just be doing some minor upgrades, we'd have to up it's capacity by an order of magnitude to charge our cars, power the replacements for natural gas appliances, etc.
I presume the various fossil resources require distribution infrastructures, which could be replaced over time with additional electrical distribution infrastructure. I'm also not suggesting we try to replace it all overnight.
Then there's the issue that we wouldn't be pulling power from some neighboring towns while our power plant gets replaced, with some load balancing over a couple hundred miles - every once in a while we're going to have to ship the equivalent of all of the power for the entire Midwest a couple of thousand miles.
As much as building a power plant the size of Connecticut has a vicarious appeal, I'd be hoping we'd distribute the load across many smaller plants rather than a few big ones.:)
Ultimately, though? We need to do something other than digging up crap and burning it.:/
You've been modded funny, but sooner or later I think someone, somewhere, will skip blowing up innocent civilians and plow their bullet/bomb/truck/plane into a boardroom where it might actually make a difference.
I'm not advocating it, it's just simple math that there's enough big corporations out there ruining livelihoods that the possibility is non-zero.
Now there's an interesting thought - use dynamically tunable radio lasers in gyroscopic mounts tied to GPS/INS, for communications direct to recipient, forwarded via plane/satellite or bouncing the signal off a known reflective-to-your-frequencies surface (moon? ionosphere?) so that it comes back to the battlefield area; while in the last case everyone can receive your encrypted radio, only your team has the keys and enemy attempts to fire on your transmission will go nowhere near you?
Oh, stumbled onto 2008 data. Cabbies are down to 10th position. Don't know if it mean it's now safer to be a cabbie or if other jobs are now more dangerous.:/
Okay, I asked Peter. The discrepancy is because (a) he used a 1997 study, actually from the same journal you cited the 2000 study; (b) the 1997 paper studied job fatalities in general, while the later one was exclusively about job homicides.
Thus while police had the second-highest homicide rate, overall they didn't make the top ten most dangerous occupations for getting killed (while cabbies did).
I think there's a great difference between worthless and priceless. And as for opaque and secretive medieval guilds, times have changed. Technology is no longer an arcane art known only to a few; the sciences both theoretical and practical are taught in universities and colleges the world over, the internet allows any piece of reverse-engineered information to be widely spread across the planet in moments, and even merely knowing something could be done would allow the creative output of millions of scientists, unfettered by patent monopolies and fears of lawsuits and bankruptcy, to focus upon it.
Remember, some of the most massive technological advancements came about during wartime, when patents were suddenly far less important than gaining a technological edge. Imagine if we could apply that creative drive in peacetime, for peaceful goals.
Thankyou for the links. I have some reading to do...
I note that by "don't know" I meant they've never been the ruling party, so we can't use any such history to form expectations about how good a job they'd do. Sorry that wasn't clear.
Thankyou for providing the link. I don't think one can "correct" for the fraction of time spent in the field, as that would no longer be apples to apples, but while his first point (cabbies at more risk than officers) still stands I'll ask Peter for his source given the discrepancy you note re the second and third.
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The alternative is to stop alienating the customers who DO pay. All this rampant "piracy" is merely symptomatic of the fact that copyright as a social contract is FUBAR.
* No lobbying/bribing to perpetually extend copyright terms. Take it back to 28 years (at most).
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyright_term.svg for a nice graph that makes the evil obvious.
* No DRM that is incompatible with copyright. If you want both, the "patch" must be placed in escrow.
* No DRM that is incompatible with backups. If you want both, you must replace media at cost+postage.
This crap has spawned an entire "new" market - DVD copying software! Talk about broken windows...
* No artificial price-jacking (segmenting the market with region-locked devices).
* No unskippable anti-piracy videos (which are annoying and /. repeatedly tells me don't exist on the pirated videos, thus making the practice even stupider).
Even if you were telling the truth, you'd still be put in the real hurt locker by the legal costs. Innocence in a court of law isn't free.
Hell, I run a computer repair business. What's one of the first things these asshats would do? Confiscate every computer here, mine and my customers, to sit on a shelf somewhere until they get around to "examining" them. And in this rural area, my name would make the front page, "local business raided in connection with piracy!"
Hello bankruptcy.
You'd need the mesh to self-manage some sort of pseudo-hierarchy.
That's Windows 7 Starter edition, mind you. And I wasn't impressed by the factual differences between the Multimedia and Specs pages...
Big print on the Multimedia page: This device will play Full HD* Video (in 1080p resolution) on its magnificent touch screen. Thanks to the latest Intel ATOM Z series microprocessor and the built-in Intel® video chipset, all you have to do is hit “Play”, sit down, and enjoy the show on the beautiful 9" screen.
Small print on the Specs page: 8.9” LED backlight 1024x600 pixels
Dear Archos, x600 != 1080p...
doesn't cost an arm and a leg
Neither does Linux.
You're on /., deal with it.
Heh, but of course!
Seriously though, why would you do that? Fedora and Ubuntu (and I'm sure many others) both use Red Hat's Disk Utility which notifies you about failing disks and allows for very simple RAID and drive management, SMART information and surface scan tests, benchmarking, file system checks, and other things all right there.
Rock solid file server. Use it for a centralized torrent server, too, with web access.
Because for a little over $100 (your currency may vary), I got all the hard work done for me and wrapped in a KISS-design GUI layer, that automagically backs up my home network, extends my media center across said network, gives me remote access via https, allows me to choose what shares need redundancy, warns me if a disk is failing, etc. It's not perfect, but it's "good enough".
But hey, if you want to donate money to a monopolistic unethical megacompany, that's your choice.
Heh. It is. And they are. I think their CAL scheme sucks crap through a straw. I think their Office suites are ludicrously overpriced. And I could go on (at length). But - surprising as it may be - in WHS they offered a decent product at a decent price. I wanted it. I bought it. That's not a donation - that's quid pro quo.
Concrete and real historical examples of civilizations with panopticon-level surveillance and the ability to remotely help or hinder significant populations in real-time via computer command are not yet available. However, I expect such examples within my lifetime. All of the technologies are there. It's just a matter of combining them to taste as suits your ideology and those of your allies and enemies .
Emphasis intended. That is the "beef". The problem is not that these technologies will combine, the problem is (a) acknowledging that many want it and at least one will get it, (b) ensuring that combination occurs within a regulatory framework that resists tyranny. And history is littered with real and concrete examples of where humanity has done poorly in that regard.
Yeah, any ATOM or ION board that I've seen, has only had one PCI or Express slot. And while I do know there are RAID cards with 12 SATA ports, if memory serves they're hideously expensive - it'd be cheaper to buy three motherboards complete with processors and ram, and chain them, than buy one of those cards. :)
Agreed, I ran into that trouble with hardwired rack fans too.
The trayless Welland racks have no fans, they're little more than an open-air frame internally. You have to supply your own cooling/filters.
http://www.welland.com.tw/html/mobile/751.html
Alternately there's these Zalman 3-bay racks, they're much heavier, use (tool-less) trays, but have a replaceable 92mm fan. No filters.
http://www.zalman.com/ENG/product/Product_Read.asp?idx=383
Of course what I'd really like, is to have one of the big case manufacturers decide I should design their next model. :)
I made the mistake of buying Seagate 1.5TB drives before they fixed the firmware... yeah. There's little to make a geek go pale (well, paler than usual :p) like seeing multiple drives failing during a rebuild...
I've looked at the "icage" style bays, they're certainly nice for squeezing extra drives into a chassis. I ended up going with hot-swappable racks instead, but it's a "YMMV" situation to be sure. Speaking of drive racks, Welland's trayless ME-751 are delightfully light, I've been using them in builds and wish they'd been around when I filled out my case. As is, the Stacker's all-steel construction plus the heavy racks I'd used plus ten 3.5" drives makes the thing really massive - I'm grateful that (a) it mostly just sits in the corner and (b) it came with a set of detachable wheels! After several years at the coast, it has only a little corrosion (mostly around the fans), which is impressive. Built like the proverbial brick outhouse.
I looked at a Drobo - but being on a budget, I kept on looking elsewhere. I don't doubt they deserve those reviews, but they are not cheap. And if the Drobo itself dies... good luck getting the data off those drives without another Drobo handy.
Another happy WHS owner here. I do recall reading that one of the service packs (there have been three) fixed the requirement for a big first drive - files now copy directly to the storage drives.
That said, I still use a fast system drive, and the rest are a mix of 7200 and 5400 rpm drives (depending on what was cheapest at the time).
Bought the original Coolermaster Stacker case. The front of the chassis is solely 5.25" drive bays - eleven of them - technically twelve if you mod the case to move the power+usb front panel elsewhere. :)
Oh, and despite being based on Server 2003, one of the nice things about WHS is that unlike the former it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
Uh, what? You appear to be pulling an imaginary example out of nowhere to somehow "prove" this bizarre idea that to be able to take photos of pedophilia a person MUST be in on it?
Kindly google "child sex abuse caught tape".
Care to jump off to any more conclusions?
It's that kind of short-circuit thinking which sends innocents to jail or worse. Since when did a witness have to be willing?
In countries where even being associated with the concept is ruinous, where the mere existence of a cartoon is treated as a terrible crime, where intent is deliberately ignored by the law, how many would actually dare take a photo to bear witness against a pedophile and risk being accused as an accessory?
For shame, indeed.
Society's irrational reactions to sexual abuse are terribly harmful, and are exploited by many who publicly exhort us to "think of the children".
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice. It is my opinion. If you're really worried, seek out a lawyer.
First things first - if a border guard wants you to turn it on, do so. Generally, unless the guards find you interesting, all they want is to see is that it's harmless (i.e. that you're not nervous, that it turns on, and nothing blows up). They're just doing their job, just like you're doing yours.
What is your company's policy on border searches of company equipment? Oh, your company doesn't have a policy? Then let your boss know that until there is one, you'll obey any lawful orders the guards give you (which, you not knowing any better, will include "log in past the encryption").
That said, you could investigate whether unauthorised computer access is illegal (i.e. an actual crime) in your country / the countries you plan to visit. One of my past employers had a nice big login message warning that unauthorised access to their particular network was a federal offence punishable by up to ten years in prison. If your login comes with a valid legal warning of ten in the pen, and you're not authorised to log in for them, you simply say "sorry, I'm not authorised to log you in, I can't go any further". They can still confiscate it, but they can't order you to commit a felony (well, they could, but that's probably when you politely ask for their supervisor/commander).
Other things you can do:
First, on "play dumb", since that got suggested by another poster. While not bad advice in general when dealing with bored authorities, don't confuse "play dumb" with "play stupid". If your papers say you're a scientist/engineer/etc, acting like a clueless newb about the contents of your laptop is going to make any competent officer suspicious. Just be a polite, mild-mannered version of your normal self.
Dilbert Option: Call the embassies of whatever countries you're passing through (including your own) and ask them the rules on business laptops/drives with encrypted content (e.g. "Hi, I'm Bob from Acme Corp, can you send us a copy of your border regulations for travellers carrying encrypted business laptops? And an executive summary would be fantastic for my boss, too."). Compare with company policy for potential problems, just in case Legal screwed up or had out-of-date info. Whatever. Tell your boss/Legal about any of those. C.Y.A..
Kenobi Option: keep an unencrypted eye-candy partition on the drive as the default boot volume (e.g. Windows or OSX or Ubuntu or anything else that says "boring GUI-based OS here, these aren't the droids you're looking for"). Use it enough to look "lived in", but don't surf/keep anything NSFW on it. If the guard is alert enough to notice the encrypted partition, he's also smart enough to understand when you explain the encrypted partition is confidential company data that you can't log into without authorisation (if he disagrees, proceed as above, with offer to call his/your boss etcetera).
FedEx Option: normal boring drive in laptop, encrypted drives sent by courier/post to your destination. Let someone else worry about border searches (just check first that you're not breaking any crazy rules about "exporting munitions" or whatever).
Look Ma No Hands Option: nothing secret on the drives, use the company VPN over SSL or something. Pray they have decent bandwidth if you need to download anything big.
But it bears repeating that, yeah, border guards have a lot of power. Be polite, go with the flow, and remember that losing your laptop (or even your job) is usually preferable to some foreign prison hellhole.
Interesting re the blacklisting... especially since I've read of recruiters sending out resumes of people who never even knew it was being done. "Hey, just wondering why I didn't get a response to the application I sent your company last month." "You were blacklisted for sending your resume to our engineer last year." "Uh, I didn't even know you guys existed then..."
Two things: First, it wouldn't be a dot "on the planet" because the other poster's numbers were for producing power in space, where night and weather aren't issues.
True; on the surface efficiency would be less and we would need to do night-time storage.
Second, even if it were built on the surface, we're talking about 50 power plants about the size of Connecticut, or about 750 things the size of the City of New York.
Hmm. 572,450 km^2 vs total land area (roughly) 148,300,000 km^2. That's 0.3% ... okay, bigger than a dot. And I would hope that at least some of our power generation requirements could be met by roof-mounted equipment.
Yes, except we wouldn't just be doing some minor upgrades, we'd have to up it's capacity by an order of magnitude to charge our cars, power the replacements for natural gas appliances, etc.
I presume the various fossil resources require distribution infrastructures, which could be replaced over time with additional electrical distribution infrastructure. I'm also not suggesting we try to replace it all overnight.
Then there's the issue that we wouldn't be pulling power from some neighboring towns while our power plant gets replaced, with some load balancing over a couple hundred miles - every once in a while we're going to have to ship the equivalent of all of the power for the entire Midwest a couple of thousand miles.
As much as building a power plant the size of Connecticut has a vicarious appeal, I'd be hoping we'd distribute the load across many smaller plants rather than a few big ones. :)
Ultimately, though? We need to do something other than digging up crap and burning it. :/
Thankyou. That's the guy. Driver's not quite as vitriolic as I remembered, but that cop's still cool. :)
You've been modded funny, but sooner or later I think someone, somewhere, will skip blowing up innocent civilians and plow their bullet/bomb/truck/plane into a boardroom where it might actually make a difference.
I'm not advocating it, it's just simple math that there's enough big corporations out there ruining livelihoods that the possibility is non-zero.
Now there's an interesting thought - use dynamically tunable radio lasers in gyroscopic mounts tied to GPS/INS, for communications direct to recipient, forwarded via plane/satellite or bouncing the signal off a known reflective-to-your-frequencies surface (moon? ionosphere?) so that it comes back to the battlefield area; while in the last case everyone can receive your encrypted radio, only your team has the keys and enemy attempts to fire on your transmission will go nowhere near you?
Oh, stumbled onto 2008 data. Cabbies are down to 10th position. Don't know if it mean it's now safer to be a cabbie or if other jobs are now more dangerous. :/
Okay, I asked Peter. The discrepancy is because (a) he used a 1997 study, actually from the same journal you cited the 2000 study; (b) the 1997 paper studied job fatalities in general, while the later one was exclusively about job homicides.
Thus while police had the second-highest homicide rate, overall they didn't make the top ten most dangerous occupations for getting killed (while cabbies did).
I think there's a great difference between worthless and priceless. And as for opaque and secretive medieval guilds, times have changed. Technology is no longer an arcane art known only to a few; the sciences both theoretical and practical are taught in universities and colleges the world over, the internet allows any piece of reverse-engineered information to be widely spread across the planet in moments, and even merely knowing something could be done would allow the creative output of millions of scientists, unfettered by patent monopolies and fears of lawsuits and bankruptcy, to focus upon it.
Remember, some of the most massive technological advancements came about during wartime, when patents were suddenly far less important than gaining a technological edge. Imagine if we could apply that creative drive in peacetime, for peaceful goals.
Some "environmental causes" believe "Mother Earth" would be better off if we went back to a stone age lifestyle or knocked ourselves off.
I am not suggesting the Greens are into either, mind you, just that the religious and the greedy don't have a monopoly on stupid ideas.
Thankyou for the links. I have some reading to do...
I note that by "don't know" I meant they've never been the ruling party, so we can't use any such history to form expectations about how good a job they'd do. Sorry that wasn't clear.
Thankyou for providing the link. I don't think one can "correct" for the fraction of time spent in the field, as that would no longer be apples to apples, but while his first point (cabbies at more risk than officers) still stands I'll ask Peter for his source given the discrepancy you note re the second and third.