I could claim my post is also based on solid psychological theory and experiment, but I'd be lying. Then again, your post lacks any citations, so we're even. In truth, we're both posting based on our life experiences and passing knowledge of the sciences -- the difference is, I'm admitting it.
There aren't many parts of the world that are unpopulated. And people do live in the bush in Australia. Just not many. That said, it'll take more than something falling from space to kill anyone who can rough it out there, since everything in the bush is deadly. Even the plants have it in for you.
Considering that the FAA's critical infrastructure still runs on technology that's 30 years old, old mainframes that don't have spare parts, and a lack of qualified workers to direct existing traffic, I don't think Skynet is happening anytime soon.
Maybe people are losing the ability to pick up some of the varied tones in these?
When you consider how much perfume is around; in laundry detergent, hand soap, deodorant, shampoo, household cleaning products, food, kitty litter, candles, etc., it's no surprise people have lost a sensitivity to smell. It's simply overwhelming to the point that the only option is to desensitize. In much the same way people lose the ability to hear over time due to over-stimulation, you can lose your sense of smell if you're constantly exposed to strong scents.
Think of how subtle a fern smells, or the smell that comes just before it rains, when the trees and plants release their pollen due to the low pressure. These are the average everyday smells of our pre-industrial society. They have been replaced with vanilla, artificial berry smells, and bath smells like "rain" or "tropical delight", and the scent of burning asbestos from brake pads, diesel, gasoline, and ozone from electrical equipment.
Is it any surprise people are losing the ability to smell subtle things? There's a smell competition going on amongst people -- especially women, but men too. "Get noticed! Wear Our Smelly Shit!" How many advertisements do you see in a given evening of TV that has a smell associated with it? Is it any surprise -- since smell is the sense most strongly tied to the emotion and memory centers of the brain?
The fact that we have an imprinted idea of "justice" and we are disturbed by acts of sociopathy shows how deeply imprinted is social behavior.
And a small minority has always existed that manipulates that sense of justice and cooperation for its own ends. A lot of us labor under the illusion that we're equal, but we aren't, we can't be. Humans organize into hierarchial models, with most working and some directing (and profiting?) off of that work. We are cooperative in that most of us are followers, but for that to work some of us must be leaders. This playing of roles is something any individual human being can do, but few actualize that potential. And there are some groups of people that have learned to not only actualize that potential, but train others in how to occupy the leadership positions. And they don't make many babies -- because there isn't much room for competition amongst that class.
I'm sorry to reduce human behavior to such a depressing and simple model, but you can't deny thousands of years of human evolution, which show that in almost every society wealth is concentrated amongst a small number of people.
No, the traits that allowed us to become the dominant life form are cooperation, reciprocity, a sense of fairness, and intelligence. The only thing we have going for us as predators is our stamina.
No, that's what allow us to survive as a species. A small minority of individuals hold most of the wealth in the world, and that wealth tends to transfer to direct relatives. This is not an accident.
And what about people who get sick at the smell or sight of meat? Not all of us get all wet at the thought of eating a giant piece of cow. How is this different than wearing thick cologne or perfume, or slathering on aftershave to the point that the hallway still reeks of it hours after your passage? You know what, I'd rather smell burnt gas and diesel than half the things the general public slathers all over their body in the name of attracting the opposite sex. People who wear Axe and Old Spice, I'm looking at you.
And now in addition to my daily routine of overly-scented people, they're adding overly-scented advertising?:( As if flashing, gyrating signs, sometimes moving and smoking, signs that are visible for miles wasn't enough. What next, shooting french fries at passing motorists?
When are we going to stop this sycophantic worship of sociopaths who happen to get rich by screwing over others?
They aren't sociopaths. That would be a medical condition beyond their control; They have a diminished sense of right and wrong. No, what they are is far worse: They deliberately ignore social values and mores for their own profit. And this shouldn't come as a surprise. Amongst the wealthy I have learned they have a common social trait that is decidedly uncommong amongst the working class: The ability to turn charm on and off at a whim. These are people who are nice to you, and mean to the waiter. They are not nice people, and it's something they're socialized to do.
See, the problem goes deeper than you think: A minority of this society trains its children to prey on one another. And those who work their way up from working class to the upper class are shunned for this -- because they are "new money", as in new to the game, not new to wealth.
And you wonder why we worship these kinds of people? Easy: Because we only see what they have, not what they are. They're predators in the purest sense -- exemplifying the exact traits that allowed humans to become the dominant form of life on this planet.
...who has consistently avoided selling out because he sees Facebook as his way to change the world
Yeah, if you overlook Facebook Ads, the massive support framework for extracting personal data and giving it to third parties under the guise of 'gaming', the Beacon program, and extending the API so any website can add things to your profile through IFRAMES if you don't delete your cookies/logout. No, Mr. Zuckerberg has a very clear vision of how he intends to change the world: He recognizes the incredible value of having personal information on the majority of people connected to the internet, and he wants to capitalize on that.
He intends to sell the information to the highest bidder, while keeping the market where these exchanges take place to himself. That's his brave new world.
It seems to me there is an accountability gap for ISPs. Those providing network connections are not held accountable for machines on their network.
And the moment they do that, they'll be expected to police for other illegal or immoral activity, like video and music downloading, content monitoring, deep packet inspection, and more. The operating costs go up as well, making them less competitive compared to other ISPs that do not monitor their customer's habits.
No, security needs to be managed by the owner of the machine. The ISP only has the responsibility to ensure that the customer has reasonable access through its networks, and perhaps a measure of QoS filtering/rate limiting/etc., to manage a shared (and limited) resource. Unless the bot is commanding the machine to use lots of network resources, its impact to other users is negligible from the ISPs perspective.
Yes, because perfectly innocuous software needs a legal mandate requiring universal adoption.
Universal adoption? It applies to ISPs, not every computer in the country. It could be something to impliment a HIPPA-like data retention and protection plan, or to secure financial data, or provide more robust encryption between DNS servers to thwart hijacking attempts. Or it could be a complete spy package.
It's never good to make assumptions -- you have to work with what you know. The moment you step away from that, you're in the land of conspiracy theories and what-if logic.
Since nobody knows what the software does, and a copy hasn't been released yet to be installed, anything said about it is pure speculation. "Internet Service Retailers Management Software" could be just about anything.
WD-40, known as "Water Displacement 40"... took years of development before it was perfected. The lightbulb, which took over a hundred years of researching thousands of filament materials before finding a good one. Duct tape, which started out as a way to seal ammo boxes during WWII somehow wound up finding its way into just about every major engineering undertaking in modern history, fashion, and a lot more.
These are just one of the many technologies we now take for granted, and it was made possible by a combination of luck, research, and people finding applications for it that the designers hadn't intended. Google is an incubator of technologies -- they try a hundred different things to find one that works.
There will always be a need for people to know what's going on in the world... And someone needs to produce that information, and then it needs to be packaged in a way that can be easily and quickly understood. People who want reliable information in a easy to use format will pay for it -- like intelligence agencies. People who don't need reliable information (which is most of us, most of the time) probably won't pay. Google is for the latter group.
...involves the use of Washington political lobbyists, PR agencies writing fake blogs and Twitter accounts, and a newspaper advertising campaign in the US.
"Credibility is a condition of persuasion. Before you can make a man do as you say, you must make him believe what you say." ~ Daniel Lerner
You killed your credibility the moment you made it public, guys. Fail.
Stop "babysitting" and let students do whatever they please.
Yeah, and turn the other cheek when they do lines of coke off each other's asses! *cough* The university isn't there to babysit -- but they are there to make sure they aren't spending resources on frivolous activities not related to education, as well as to provide a safe environment conducive to learning. By hosting this non-entertainment project on university servers, not only does the university become liable should someone complain (read: lawsuit), but it has no educational value.
Host the damn thing on a proper server, and you'll probably hear a collective yawn from the administration. It's not their problem anymore, then.
If there ever was a call to separate Business and State, this is it.
I'm undoing a lot of mod points to say this, but separation caused this mess: A lack of regulatory oversight and trusting that the private industry was putting in adequate safeguards. Business and State need to be working in a partnership -- it's a necessity. There was a disconnect; The people making the laws and doing the regulatory oversight didn't have the training or knowledge to know what measures would be effective (and what was just window-dressing). What we need to look at right now is how that relationship can be structured to best serve the public interest, rather than private interests as it has until now.
I would start by putting people who design and work with these systems in front of Congress and coming up with effective measures the government can take to prevent private interests from causing this amount of damage again.
1. Install/purchase it. 2. Patch it. 3. Connect it to internet (carefully). 4. Download antivirus, antimalware, antispyware, a better firewall. 5. Spend an hour turning off all the resident scanners so you can use it again. 6. Install all your applications. 7. Defrag. Scandisk. Coffee. 8. Click on an icon and try to do some real work. 9. Reboot, because it crashed. Admire the new bootup screen and chrome.
Yup... Now you know everything there is to know about Windows 3 to 7.
So what is your suggestion? Fold over and let them pass another unenforceable law? Because it is already unenforceable,
All systems, organic or electronic, should be built with error tolerance in mind. The system will make mistakes -- that can't be helped. The system has some safeguards in place to prevent errors from occurring; Both internally and externally. Examples of error prevention; trial by jury, the right to an attorney, the fifth amendment, etc. Examples of error correction: De novo review, appeals courts, and public examination of judgements (and the evidence). External examples of error correction and prevention: the governor's right to commute sentences, the press, and voting for judges, or offering ride-alongs to private citizens interested in what police work is like.
To hone in on the main example of this article; Dashboard cameras have radically changed how police behave. They have also given the public insight into what everyday life looks like for a police officer -- albeit dramatized in the form of Cops and similar TV. But here, the chain of custody is maintained, and the evidence is reviewed by assumedly competent experts, and footage is used to train officers and systemically refine practices across the country. The problem isn't recording of police -- the problem is that the camera doesn't tell the whole story, and when footage is taken out of context and placed in the court of public opinion, the damage to the reptutation of law enforcement can be severe. Witness the Rodney King beatings; By taking the issue public, a massive riot ensued. This damage to public property and trust far outweighed what happened between those five men. It was later determined by a court long after the public controversy had moved off the radar that training practices needed adjustment, which is exactly the kind of self-correcting behavior that is supposed to (and usually does) happen when mistakes are made. But these processes are slow and people want immediate emotional gratification -- and it's that need for gratification that's the greatest threat to justice and security, not the occasional police fuckup.
Record anyways. Even if it gets to the point where video evidence a flagrant abuse of power becomes inadmissible, it's potential value in stirring public outcry far outstrips any consequences associated with the establishment seeking to restrict the publics use of video recording and their public servants.
Once again, target fixation prevents you guys from seeing what's really going on: It doesn't matter whether the police abuse their power.
That's a bold statement to make, so let me explain it; Legally, there's almost no recourse. But why? For the system to function, it has to place trust in a group of people at some point. Every method of governance reduces to this basic truth if you dig at it long enough: It becomes a question of who to trust. If the police can't be trusted, then they can't do their job. So even if they do their job poorly, and with frequent abuses, the system will tolerate this because the system depends on the assumption that they can be trusted (regardless of whether they can or not). By arguing about whether or not there are safeguards against police brutality, or legal recourses, or any of that, you're sidestepping the critical issue: At some point, you have to trust them. Cameras expose these breaches of trust, but they also fundamentally undermine the system by doing so.
The system is happy to hide the occasional act of injustice (and punish those who expose them) because the public's trust in the institution is vital to its continued functioning. It's paradoxical, unfair, illogical... and true.
That's a common myth. Check a bag of Olestra-using chips (if you can find one); you'll see no such warning.
They existed when it first came out. It wasn't removed for over a year, and by that time, the public opinion had all but killed the product. It is still banned in the UK and Canada.
clearly another case of someone not wanting anyone to manufacture a competing model that could shake the current makers out of their lowest common denominator complacency.
Not necessarily. It could be that the materials are too expensive to mass-production. Or the economics of the day (cheaper gas, lower average travel speeds, etc.) that put it's price-point too high. But as a rule of thumb even schematics that don't work are kept for future analysis and possible use... I can understand discontinuing development, but destroying the documents suggests another motive. It doesn't prove it -- but it definately suggests it.
What pisses me off isn't that new technologies are being incorporated, but the lack of labelling and identification.
* Olestra, remember that one? Eat a bag of chips, get "anal leakage". * Or when McDonald's was ordered to strip transfats out of its foods, and the fries suddenly became a sea of suck. * And then there was Foi Gras, which several jurisdictions outlawed because PETA said so.
Guys, it would be way cheaper to spend the money on education than by re-engineering our food into suckitude or to enforce some political ideology on all of us. There are some days when I just want a fucking cheeseburger, with fat oozing out of the sides, a thick slice of cheese, and smothered in a heart attack. Other days, I'll happily eat trail mix or a salad. It's my choice, not yours.
RIAA: Ignorance is no excuse from the law. Respect ma authoria'! Defense: How can anyone reasonably know what is and isn't copyrighted or what the terms are if it's not included with the work?
And by a 5-3 margin, they'll say mp3s have a 'copyright bit' embedded in the ID3 tag and bypassing it is a violation of the DMCA. Common sense surrenders.
Slashdot Mirror
What is your opinion based on?
I could claim my post is also based on solid psychological theory and experiment, but I'd be lying. Then again, your post lacks any citations, so we're even. In truth, we're both posting based on our life experiences and passing knowledge of the sciences -- the difference is, I'm admitting it.
There aren't many parts of the world that are unpopulated. And people do live in the bush in Australia. Just not many. That said, it'll take more than something falling from space to kill anyone who can rough it out there, since everything in the bush is deadly. Even the plants have it in for you.
Only now they're not quite so goddamn funny.
Considering that the FAA's critical infrastructure still runs on technology that's 30 years old, old mainframes that don't have spare parts, and a lack of qualified workers to direct existing traffic, I don't think Skynet is happening anytime soon.
Maybe people are losing the ability to pick up some of the varied tones in these?
When you consider how much perfume is around; in laundry detergent, hand soap, deodorant, shampoo, household cleaning products, food, kitty litter, candles, etc., it's no surprise people have lost a sensitivity to smell. It's simply overwhelming to the point that the only option is to desensitize. In much the same way people lose the ability to hear over time due to over-stimulation, you can lose your sense of smell if you're constantly exposed to strong scents.
Think of how subtle a fern smells, or the smell that comes just before it rains, when the trees and plants release their pollen due to the low pressure. These are the average everyday smells of our pre-industrial society. They have been replaced with vanilla, artificial berry smells, and bath smells like "rain" or "tropical delight", and the scent of burning asbestos from brake pads, diesel, gasoline, and ozone from electrical equipment.
Is it any surprise people are losing the ability to smell subtle things? There's a smell competition going on amongst people -- especially women, but men too. "Get noticed! Wear Our Smelly Shit!" How many advertisements do you see in a given evening of TV that has a smell associated with it? Is it any surprise -- since smell is the sense most strongly tied to the emotion and memory centers of the brain?
The fact that we have an imprinted idea of "justice" and we are disturbed by acts of sociopathy shows how deeply imprinted is social behavior.
And a small minority has always existed that manipulates that sense of justice and cooperation for its own ends. A lot of us labor under the illusion that we're equal, but we aren't, we can't be. Humans organize into hierarchial models, with most working and some directing (and profiting?) off of that work. We are cooperative in that most of us are followers, but for that to work some of us must be leaders. This playing of roles is something any individual human being can do, but few actualize that potential. And there are some groups of people that have learned to not only actualize that potential, but train others in how to occupy the leadership positions. And they don't make many babies -- because there isn't much room for competition amongst that class.
I'm sorry to reduce human behavior to such a depressing and simple model, but you can't deny thousands of years of human evolution, which show that in almost every society wealth is concentrated amongst a small number of people.
No, the traits that allowed us to become the dominant life form are cooperation, reciprocity, a sense of fairness, and intelligence. The only thing we have going for us as predators is our stamina.
No, that's what allow us to survive as a species. A small minority of individuals hold most of the wealth in the world, and that wealth tends to transfer to direct relatives. This is not an accident.
And what about people who get sick at the smell or sight of meat? Not all of us get all wet at the thought of eating a giant piece of cow. How is this different than wearing thick cologne or perfume, or slathering on aftershave to the point that the hallway still reeks of it hours after your passage? You know what, I'd rather smell burnt gas and diesel than half the things the general public slathers all over their body in the name of attracting the opposite sex. People who wear Axe and Old Spice, I'm looking at you.
And now in addition to my daily routine of overly-scented people, they're adding overly-scented advertising? :( As if flashing, gyrating signs, sometimes moving and smoking, signs that are visible for miles wasn't enough. What next, shooting french fries at passing motorists?
When are we going to stop this sycophantic worship of sociopaths who happen to get rich by screwing over others?
They aren't sociopaths. That would be a medical condition beyond their control; They have a diminished sense of right and wrong. No, what they are is far worse: They deliberately ignore social values and mores for their own profit. And this shouldn't come as a surprise. Amongst the wealthy I have learned they have a common social trait that is decidedly uncommong amongst the working class: The ability to turn charm on and off at a whim. These are people who are nice to you, and mean to the waiter. They are not nice people, and it's something they're socialized to do.
See, the problem goes deeper than you think: A minority of this society trains its children to prey on one another. And those who work their way up from working class to the upper class are shunned for this -- because they are "new money", as in new to the game, not new to wealth.
And you wonder why we worship these kinds of people? Easy: Because we only see what they have, not what they are. They're predators in the purest sense -- exemplifying the exact traits that allowed humans to become the dominant form of life on this planet.
...who has consistently avoided selling out because he sees Facebook as his way to change the world
Yeah, if you overlook Facebook Ads, the massive support framework for extracting personal data and giving it to third parties under the guise of 'gaming', the Beacon program, and extending the API so any website can add things to your profile through IFRAMES if you don't delete your cookies/logout. No, Mr. Zuckerberg has a very clear vision of how he intends to change the world: He recognizes the incredible value of having personal information on the majority of people connected to the internet, and he wants to capitalize on that.
He intends to sell the information to the highest bidder, while keeping the market where these exchanges take place to himself. That's his brave new world.
It seems to me there is an accountability gap for ISPs. Those providing network connections are not held accountable for machines on their network.
And the moment they do that, they'll be expected to police for other illegal or immoral activity, like video and music downloading, content monitoring, deep packet inspection, and more. The operating costs go up as well, making them less competitive compared to other ISPs that do not monitor their customer's habits.
No, security needs to be managed by the owner of the machine. The ISP only has the responsibility to ensure that the customer has reasonable access through its networks, and perhaps a measure of QoS filtering/rate limiting/etc., to manage a shared (and limited) resource. Unless the bot is commanding the machine to use lots of network resources, its impact to other users is negligible from the ISPs perspective.
Yes, because perfectly innocuous software needs a legal mandate requiring universal adoption.
Universal adoption? It applies to ISPs, not every computer in the country. It could be something to impliment a HIPPA-like data retention and protection plan, or to secure financial data, or provide more robust encryption between DNS servers to thwart hijacking attempts. Or it could be a complete spy package.
It's never good to make assumptions -- you have to work with what you know. The moment you step away from that, you're in the land of conspiracy theories and what-if logic.
Since nobody knows what the software does, and a copy hasn't been released yet to be installed, anything said about it is pure speculation. "Internet Service Retailers Management Software" could be just about anything.
WD-40, known as "Water Displacement 40"... took years of development before it was perfected. The lightbulb, which took over a hundred years of researching thousands of filament materials before finding a good one. Duct tape, which started out as a way to seal ammo boxes during WWII somehow wound up finding its way into just about every major engineering undertaking in modern history, fashion, and a lot more.
These are just one of the many technologies we now take for granted, and it was made possible by a combination of luck, research, and people finding applications for it that the designers hadn't intended. Google is an incubator of technologies -- they try a hundred different things to find one that works.
There will always be a need for people to know what's going on in the world... And someone needs to produce that information, and then it needs to be packaged in a way that can be easily and quickly understood. People who want reliable information in a easy to use format will pay for it -- like intelligence agencies. People who don't need reliable information (which is most of us, most of the time) probably won't pay. Google is for the latter group.
...involves the use of Washington political lobbyists, PR agencies writing fake blogs and Twitter accounts, and a newspaper advertising campaign in the US.
"Credibility is a condition of persuasion. Before you can make a man do as you say, you must make him believe what you say." ~ Daniel Lerner
You killed your credibility the moment you made it public, guys. Fail.
Stop "babysitting" and let students do whatever they please.
Yeah, and turn the other cheek when they do lines of coke off each other's asses! *cough* The university isn't there to babysit -- but they are there to make sure they aren't spending resources on frivolous activities not related to education, as well as to provide a safe environment conducive to learning. By hosting this non-entertainment project on university servers, not only does the university become liable should someone complain (read: lawsuit), but it has no educational value.
Host the damn thing on a proper server, and you'll probably hear a collective yawn from the administration. It's not their problem anymore, then.
If there ever was a call to separate Business and State, this is it.
I'm undoing a lot of mod points to say this, but separation caused this mess: A lack of regulatory oversight and trusting that the private industry was putting in adequate safeguards. Business and State need to be working in a partnership -- it's a necessity. There was a disconnect; The people making the laws and doing the regulatory oversight didn't have the training or knowledge to know what measures would be effective (and what was just window-dressing). What we need to look at right now is how that relationship can be structured to best serve the public interest, rather than private interests as it has until now.
I would start by putting people who design and work with these systems in front of Congress and coming up with effective measures the government can take to prevent private interests from causing this amount of damage again.
It's a conspiracy! Damn them! This means something, but WHAT COULD IT MEAN?
"Maintenance"
It's just like all other flavors of windows:
1. Install/purchase it.
2. Patch it.
3. Connect it to internet (carefully).
4. Download antivirus, antimalware, antispyware, a better firewall.
5. Spend an hour turning off all the resident scanners so you can use it again.
6. Install all your applications.
7. Defrag. Scandisk. Coffee.
8. Click on an icon and try to do some real work.
9. Reboot, because it crashed. Admire the new bootup screen and chrome.
Yup... Now you know everything there is to know about Windows 3 to 7.
So what is your suggestion? Fold over and let them pass another unenforceable law? Because it is already unenforceable,
All systems, organic or electronic, should be built with error tolerance in mind. The system will make mistakes -- that can't be helped. The system has some safeguards in place to prevent errors from occurring; Both internally and externally. Examples of error prevention; trial by jury, the right to an attorney, the fifth amendment, etc. Examples of error correction: De novo review, appeals courts, and public examination of judgements (and the evidence). External examples of error correction and prevention: the governor's right to commute sentences, the press, and voting for judges, or offering ride-alongs to private citizens interested in what police work is like.
To hone in on the main example of this article; Dashboard cameras have radically changed how police behave. They have also given the public insight into what everyday life looks like for a police officer -- albeit dramatized in the form of Cops and similar TV. But here, the chain of custody is maintained, and the evidence is reviewed by assumedly competent experts, and footage is used to train officers and systemically refine practices across the country. The problem isn't recording of police -- the problem is that the camera doesn't tell the whole story, and when footage is taken out of context and placed in the court of public opinion, the damage to the reptutation of law enforcement can be severe. Witness the Rodney King beatings; By taking the issue public, a massive riot ensued. This damage to public property and trust far outweighed what happened between those five men. It was later determined by a court long after the public controversy had moved off the radar that training practices needed adjustment, which is exactly the kind of self-correcting behavior that is supposed to (and usually does) happen when mistakes are made. But these processes are slow and people want immediate emotional gratification -- and it's that need for gratification that's the greatest threat to justice and security, not the occasional police fuckup.
Hey, it worked for the Cold War, so how about using it here?
Because a policy of mutually assured destruction doesn't work when the enemy is the citizens you're charged with protecting.
Record anyways. Even if it gets to the point where video evidence a flagrant abuse of power becomes inadmissible, it's potential value in stirring public outcry far outstrips any consequences associated with the establishment seeking to restrict the publics use of video recording and their public servants.
Once again, target fixation prevents you guys from seeing what's really going on: It doesn't matter whether the police abuse their power.
That's a bold statement to make, so let me explain it; Legally, there's almost no recourse. But why? For the system to function, it has to place trust in a group of people at some point. Every method of governance reduces to this basic truth if you dig at it long enough: It becomes a question of who to trust. If the police can't be trusted, then they can't do their job. So even if they do their job poorly, and with frequent abuses, the system will tolerate this because the system depends on the assumption that they can be trusted (regardless of whether they can or not). By arguing about whether or not there are safeguards against police brutality, or legal recourses, or any of that, you're sidestepping the critical issue: At some point, you have to trust them. Cameras expose these breaches of trust, but they also fundamentally undermine the system by doing so.
The system is happy to hide the occasional act of injustice (and punish those who expose them) because the public's trust in the institution is vital to its continued functioning. It's paradoxical, unfair, illogical... and true.
That's a common myth. Check a bag of Olestra-using chips (if you can find one); you'll see no such warning.
They existed when it first came out. It wasn't removed for over a year, and by that time, the public opinion had all but killed the product. It is still banned in the UK and Canada.
clearly another case of someone not wanting anyone to manufacture a competing model that could shake the current makers out of their lowest common denominator complacency.
Not necessarily. It could be that the materials are too expensive to mass-production. Or the economics of the day (cheaper gas, lower average travel speeds, etc.) that put it's price-point too high. But as a rule of thumb even schematics that don't work are kept for future analysis and possible use... I can understand discontinuing development, but destroying the documents suggests another motive. It doesn't prove it -- but it definately suggests it.
What pisses me off isn't that new technologies are being incorporated, but the lack of labelling and identification.
* Olestra, remember that one? Eat a bag of chips, get "anal leakage".
* Or when McDonald's was ordered to strip transfats out of its foods, and the fries suddenly became a sea of suck.
* And then there was Foi Gras, which several jurisdictions outlawed because PETA said so.
Guys, it would be way cheaper to spend the money on education than by re-engineering our food into suckitude or to enforce some political ideology on all of us. There are some days when I just want a fucking cheeseburger, with fat oozing out of the sides, a thick slice of cheese, and smothered in a heart attack. Other days, I'll happily eat trail mix or a salad. It's my choice, not yours.
The arguments will go like this:
RIAA: Ignorance is no excuse from the law. Respect ma authoria'!
Defense: How can anyone reasonably know what is and isn't copyrighted or what the terms are if it's not included with the work?
And by a 5-3 margin, they'll say mp3s have a 'copyright bit' embedded in the ID3 tag and bypassing it is a violation of the DMCA. Common sense surrenders.