If the probes are too simple, though, they won't survive long enough to actually send back any data at all. 3000 explorers mapping the Amazon aren't going to get much benefit out of 3000 analog cell phones that don't work in humidity over 75% -- and that's the basic equivalent to the kinds of probes described.
Yes, if your one big probe dies, you're toast. However, it's got the almost the same amount of redundancy as those little probes you're so fond of, without the bugginess and quirks that come from making something out of cheap, compact parts when you really need industrial-strength tools.
There are some basic subsystems of any space-worthy equipment that just don't scale down to the levels you're talking about. Most probes or staellites are actually a very compact bundle of electronics, with a much more elaborate network of mechanical supports, power supplies, and propulsion units. You can't strip all that gear off them and have it work -- there are no conveniently located power outlets on Mars to keep you LiIon batteries charged, and solar cells can't supply nearly enough power to keep that complex a device running for more than a few minutes a day.
Redundancy is a great idea, but in this case, you're taking it too far. In safer environments, you can get away with cutting corners on durability and qulity, but if you want to get anything useful out of an interplanetary probe, you had damn well better spend the time, effort, and money on some reliable systems. Otherwise, you're just oging to end up with a shitload of dead rover carcasses being shot into the surface of Mars.
Here's what really irks me: If databases become "protected intellectual property," then the creators of these aggregate monsters won't have to reveal their sources for information. I don't neccesarily think that any database should be in the public domain, but I do feel that allowing companies who create them to hide any content that isn't paid for sets the stage for outright theft of information from individuals by any means possible.
It's similar to the arguments for open source software's security: if you think there might be something sketchy inside, open it up and take a look. You don't neccesarily even have to have the right to change or copy it, but you should be given the opportunity to see exactly what's in there, if only to check for security risks, illegaly copied code, etc. With big, aggregated databases protected, we will lose the ability to know exactly what kind of data is being collected about and from us, and from where.
The sad thing is, this company will probably do quite well. They're using the most realistic model for online publishing that I've seen in a long time, and I don't see Congress going against the combined will of just about every major media company, advertiser, and retail company in the nation just to protect trifles like consumer rights or privacy.
uClinux isn't, AFAIK, a true real-time OS, so it's applicability for critical embedded systems is somewhat limited. However, a uCsimm could be a cheap, flexible means of giving TCP/IP and Ethernet support to devices that can only handle serial communications. Hell, toss some basic IP masquerading and filtering code in there, and you've got a great, low-cost firewall for all those cable and DSL-wired households who don't know the first thing about security.
You can get a job without a license? That's great; can you get one without a Social Security card? No, I didn't think so. You know, originally, SS#'s were only supposed to be used by Social Security...then lots of businesses and other government agencies realized how convenient it would be to have a single number that could be used to aggregate data on a person.
I don't think that there's any sinister plans made for this technology; nor do I think that Social Security numbers are sinister. However, I think that the eventual abuse of biometric and positional tracking devices would be inevitable, even if the abusers had the best intentions.
As for the use of technology to destroy privacy...I submit to you wiretaps, corporate email monitoring, libel suits for messages intended to be private, and web sites set up to track the names and addresses of doctors who perform abortions. All of these, and many other applications of modern technology, have destroyed many lives, invaded the privacy of countless others, and generally reduced us to a state of either perpetual low-level paranoia or dumb acceptance.
It may be true that there is not a single piece of privacy-invading technology that we cannot live without. However, in this day and age, you leave a fingerprint of data in every action you take that utilizes anything more high-tech than a quarter.
Read the AUP linked from the original article -- they do indeed reserve the right to enter your home, with prior notice, to check, modify, or remove the equipment. It's not illegal if you sign a contract (or agree to an AUP) giving them that right.
So, should we go back to the ideals of the founding fathers that state that all citizens can adn should vote, but only male, white landowners are true citizens? Or better yet, to noble Rome, where all citizens can vote, but only male, native, landowning soldiers can vote? Or would you propose something more modern, like a psychiatric evaluation, IQ test, and willingness to accept demographic surveys from corporate sponsors?
There is no fair way to distinguish between those who have a right to vote and those who don't, if you want any claim towards being a democracy. The desire to do so is a remenant of ancient, pack animal, tribal leadership, where the guy who could beat up all the other guys was chief. The only way to improve the quality of any nation is to educate its population as well as possible, so they will more effectively govern themselves.
"...those people..."? How in the hell do you think you can say what's true of millions of people? Let me guess: you did a creaful interview of every poor person, evaluated their willingness to work, their opportunities to improve their economic situation, and the barriers they might have faced in that attempt. Based on that data, you came to a careful scientific conclusion that poor people are lazy, and therefore should not be helped or pitied.
Or, did you simply not notice the ones who were working two jobs and trying to support a family, because they were never lounging around the neighborhood in the middle of the day. Because of your personal observations in one town, you can safely generalize that all poor people are lazy? No, I don't think so; just because you have an MIT email address does not mean you are omniscient.
Re:Libertarians are for freedom of everything.
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BSD And Politics
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· Score: 2
And, there are a few other perks:
The freedom to not pay taxes at all.
The freedom to decide that you're #1, and everyone else can just go to hell.
The freedom to run a predatory, monopolistic company with no fear of government intervention.
The freedom to not send your children to school, because you don't want to pay for it
The freedom to send your kids to school, and still not pay for it
Basically, if everyone in the world were a generally nice, well-balanced, logical person, then Libertarianism could do fine. For that matter, if everyone met those criteria, Communism, a benevolent dictatorship, or anarchy would all work just fine.
I think we've all seen pretty convincingly that it's not going to happen, though. Dreams of a utopia wrought by logic and empathy are far, far older than any Western political movement currently in existence, and I for one am tired of hearing Libertarians go on and on about the perfection of their social ideals.
There are no perfect Republics in the real world, and people, as a group, are still violent pack animals, driven as much by hormones and greed as by intellect and compassion.
Claiming unlawful search and seizure might work, except for the clauses higher-up in the agreement, which gives Comcast the right to enter your home to check, change, or shut down the service. Like most ISPs, they've covered their asses, and probably wouldn't have to explain jack if they wanted to cut you off -- they'd just pull the plug at their end, and send you a letter a week later.
ISPs can get away with outrageous bullshit if they like...most usage agreements, no matter how innocuous, contain a clause allowing them to modify the terms of service at any time, for any reason. Business users get a bit more slack, but they pay through the nose for it. Personally, I'm sick of it, but there's no public, open alternative to the ISP oligopolies.
GNOME on Solaris gives Sun an immediate boost in the number of capable users and admins for their high-end systems -- I'd bet good money that the number of competent Linux-heads is rapidly outpacing new Solaris users, and unifying the GUI could help make many of those skills portable. No, it won't turn every Linux hacker into a gifted Solaris admin overnight, but it will give those who like to work in eye-candyland the same basic starting level of comfort as the classic UNIX CLI has given users for years.
Look at Windows NT and 98 -- they start off with the easier, consumer-grade stuff, and move on to NT relatively painlessly. Yes, the underlying system is completely different, (and no, I'm not really trying to compare Linux to Windows 98 -- it's just for the purpose of illustrating this admittedly limited point) but because the widgets and desktop layout are similar, you could sit any relatively competent Windows user in front of any Windows machine, and they could run Office, surf the web, or copy some files.
IBM, HP, and Compaq get similar benefits -- their in-house UNIXes can have a familiar interface, and they can train an entire generation of UNIX users by cloning a dominant Linux UI. Personally, I think it could be great to be able to sit down at basically any decent UNIX box running a current OS, log in, and have the option of dropping into a familiar, high-quality GUI. No one will be locked into it -- hell, even if you're stuck with GNOME, you still have a lot of options for window managers, desktop customization, application choice, etc.
If the Linux/open source community can't come up with a real contender to MS Office, then it matters a lot less that people might switch to a Linux or *BSD operating system, because Microsoft will still have a stranglehold on the market. Look at what happened with Apple and MS -- Apple had to buddy up to them, just to keep Office support on the Mac. If Linux users everywhere are running MS Office, then marketshare for the OS will be largely dependent on maintaining compatibility with every new version of Word, and as soon as MS adds a few new undocumented calls to the Windows API, we're sunk. Not to mention the fact that under the DMCA, they could probably start making a case for Wine being illegal reverse engineering of a protected product. I'd love to see the DOJ's response to that one...
We need a real alternative. There are countless areas in which Office could be improved upon -- speed, stability, portability, etc. The heavy-hitters (IBM, Sun, et. al.) can provide the core codebase, and we open-sourcers can provide the trimming and debugging. The only thing I fear is a repeat of the Communicator 5 -> Mozilla process, where the maintainers and contributors realize a few months into the project that the old code is basically junk, and have to scrap it and start over. I have no idea what the internals of StarOffice look like now, but I'm afraid they may be less than pretty.
CFOs are not supposed to be tech people. They are Chief Financial Officers, which means they know finance like the backs of their hands, and little else. That kind of narrow-minded focus brings a certain cost with it, and that cost often includes being up-to-date on technology. However, if they were to get distracted by all the toys and tech, they would probably have a hard time staying current on tax codes and business law, and the whole company could get nailed.
While it would be nice for every executive at every tech company to know at least enough about their own technological infrastructure and products to be able to pay attention at meetings with the production and IT departments, it's not realistic. What bugs me about the statements made in the article is the gall of the CFO quoted to even attempt to make technology-related advice. That's why there are CIOs, or even just plain low-level managers. Unless they're really just a bunch of geeks in suits, the executive-level management of a company shouldn't try to concern itself with decisions like what server OS to run, because it usually indicates they aren't paying enough attention to their own job.
Congratulations, you've just invented the filtering proxy. Come to think of it, maybe you should patent that...you just might get approved.
But really, you should look at the comments throughout this thread on the option of using a remote CGI script to alter the HTML before it even hits a local proxy server, removing suggestive keywords while leaving images intact. Simple keyword searches are just not going to do it.
Yes, I did read the article...and it described making an analog cassette tape copy of a CD or track from the radio as "exactly the same as what My.MP3.com is doing". My only point was to say that they are not, by any stretch of the imagination, identical.
I was not trying to piss people off by suggesting that I don't think the RIAA and MPAA are a bunch of assholes. They are. All I was attempting to do was prompt a little discussion on how digital duplication is different, and maybe soapbox a bit about how much I dislike oversimplifactions of the issue from either side.
I am less than pleased with having the post labelled 'Flamebait', but I can appreciate the irony of being accused of not reading the article by people who failed to read my post.
You wouldn't try to use a 3000-node Beowulf of Palm Pilots to replace an Sun Enterprise server, would you? No, I didn't think so. It just wouldn't work -- each node faces too much overhead to contribute much if anything to the rest of the network. Similarly, you're suggesting that by simply spreading the burden of an interplanetary space mission out over a lot of independent, simple hardware, you could get impressive redundancy, and therefore, success? Sorry, I think not.
Let me guess: it would work, so long as they all ran Linux on Crusoe chips, with Peltier junctions for temperature control once under the Mars heat?
Space is a very hostile environment for electronics of any kind. Even in low Earth orbit, satellites can be (and are) rendered inoperable by cosmic rays, micrometeorites, solar flares, etc., etc. All it takes is hosing a single essential circuit board, or an attitude control jet, and a multi-million dollar piece of equipment instantly becomes floating junk -- and there's no real possibility of just swapping out parts, without a human being doing a spacewalk to make the repairs.
When that happens to relatively close-in satellites, we can repair them, or quickly send up a replacement. Missions to Mars take months, and are really only feasible if unmanned. Trying to reliably launch and maintain a completely automated, complex communications system in Mars orbit would be a monumental undertaking, and given the current cost and sophistication of even "local" satellites, I don't think there would be much a sivngs to be had over sending the same gear in every satellite.
I agree with you that there has been very little strong innovation in the commercial software industry in the last few years. However, Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM are not the be-all, end-all of software development. They all offer safe, predictable products that can be easily categorized and used by businesses and individuals who may not be at all computer-focused.
Software research, though, is far from dead. Pick a topic -- AI, speech recognition, security, interfaces, whatever -- and I'll bet you can find a grad student somewhere who has the complete source code to something truly interesting and new just sitting there, being ignored. The academic research community still pushes the envelope of software design and implementation on a regular basis, and there are tools in use today that bear little resemblence to their watered down, commercial counterparts. However, you have to remember that just because the result of a period or research is expressed as software, that doesn't mean that the research itself is going to progress as quickly as copycat commercial version updates. Good, solid research takes time, almost anal attention to detail, and a mindset that few people can muster. There's a reason that work with computers in universities is focused around Computer Science, rather than Computer Arts.
On the other side of the coin, there are freely available tools that are rock-solid and consistent; they, too simply do not often reach the feature and merketing-driven world of commercial products. Try setting up a FreeBSD box with some basic services and reliable GNU tools, and tell me how often it has a kernel panic -- or even a core dump. Mostly, it's going to hum away in the corner until someone tries to screw with it, and breaks something.
I think of it more as a type of tradiitonal warfare: they have a large army, comprised almost entirely of mercenaries and peons, all of whom are well-equipped and well copensated. However, no individual soldier can attack without consulting a huge network of lieutenants and commanders, who spend the entire battle in their tents. These "leaders" are all obsessed with making sure they will be personally recognized for their fighters' sucesses, and want to have a new, bigger, and better-paid army at the end of the battle.
We, the open-sourcers, may be a ragtag bunch, but we can each make our own strategy, forming temporary alliances, and even sometimes gaining support from another "businessman's army". We have at our disposal an array of powerful armaments, but usually settle on a few favorites. Our "commanders" have their position only because of the respect and experience they have earned in prior battles, and must be among the best fighters we have. We don't ask for the army to feed or house us, and may even leave the battles with some regularity; the ranks are usually swelling, though, and make up for their lack of central organization with cunning and dedication.
(Okay, okay, so it's beyond cheesy. But hey, everybody like a little cheese now and then, right? Plus, I haven't had my coffee yet...)
So, is Adobe going to go after Microsoft, as well? There are tons of "tabs" in Windows and Office, and even though the patent "doesn't require them," it certainly does seem to cover them. (Just look at the multiple worksheet view in Excel, or a Control Panel window, etc.)
Personally, I applaud this lawsuit for one simple reason -- it will give Macromedia a chance to set a precedent for actually debunking bunk patents in court! I think more or less any one of us could make a strong case for prior art, so I'm sure Macromedia's lawyers are already drafting an intimidating list of evidence and witnesses.
There is actually a significant difference between the potential for copyright violation between analog and digital duplication methods: digital doesn't degrade from generation to generation. If I send a friend an mp3, and he sends a copy of it to another friend, and so on, and so forth, version number 1,000 should be more or less identical to the first one. The best analog recording gear in the world will start to show pretty significant signal degredation after the first dozen or so copies.
Plus, we have the whole "new ecomony of scale" coming into play: It doesn't cost any significant amount to make anything past the first copy, and if someone else provides the orignial content, software, etc., the first copy is also effectively free. With a physical distribution unit required for each copy, your costs go up as you make more; with an electronic distribution method, you can copy the file once, and suddenly make it freely available to an effectively limitless number of people.
Does this mean that digital distribution is bad? No, of course not. It means that the rules are in the course of being rewritten, and if the RIAA, MPAA, Metallica, et. al., don't want to be useful contributors to that process, there interests may be made secondary to those of the most vocal participants. I don't know if computers tend to instill freedom-loving ethics in most people who use them, or if those who use them the most are the ones who seek the freedom they provide, but the end result is the same.
And going to jail for opposing the American government is very real, and very, very, common. However, it is very seldom for reasons at all related to capitalist policies. Why? Becuase while capitalism is not inherently immoral, it is most decidedly amoral. It does not consider what is right or wrong, only what is profitable. Therefore, saying that a government is capitalist in structure is like saying that its citizens often have homes; it indicates little or nothing about the actualy policy put into place.
The illusion of capitalism's suitability as a general framework for social policies then creates a danger the equal of any Communist regime: the complete obfuscation of the workings a government. We are no longer a Democratic society, we are a capitalst one; since capitalism has no meaning outside the context of economic transactions, then anything falling outside those boundries is suddenly exempt from any overriding philosophy.
"Intellectual property" is the term for a creator's rights to a valuable idea, right? Show me a single company that is capable of thought, and therefore entitled to protection of its "intellectual property", and I will show you an employee who actually did the work, and no longer has the right to use their own ideas.
No, my definition was indeed the same that was being used in the Freenet interview, and architectural whitepapers, and other discussion and arguments I have seen. I have just as much of a problem with destroying a document because no one has read it as I do with destroying it because people don't like it. I forsee the most "popular" works, be they controvercial novels or Top-40 singles, proliferating, at the expense of the obscure, unheard-of, and unknown gems that not enough people have stumbled across.
Humanity is fickle and emotional, and as a group, we have very short attention spans and poor memories. The same tragedies occur time after time, and no one ever knows about it, because it's just one voice lost in the noise. Free speech won't do you a damn bit of good if no one can hear you over all the people shouting, and it will do you even less good if you only have a relatively short time to make your message heard, after which it might as well have never existed.
The nature of physical archives has indeed meant that the owner or creator of that record becomes inherently vulnerable to persecution in any number of forms for its contents. However, what people are beginning to realize is that digital technology gives us the potential to change that irrevocably. However, Freenet, as much as it may hint at this possibility, does not make it a reality. In order to make an archive truly serve its purpose, its contents must be protected beyond the moment of their peak popularity, without sacrificing the anonymity of their holders and viewers.
No one is forcing anyone else to install a Freenet node on their computer. In this case, an individual has simply shown people one possible option, and is letting them choose whether to join it or not. If Freenet never reaches critical mass, than those who run it are at risk of being branded and tracked down; if it does reach sufficient popularity to make its use safe, then "Humanity" must have spoken on the subject.
If you don't want to accept the new "rules", then don't. If you don't ever log on to Freenet, then you've cast your vote against it. At least give others the freedom to cast their vote as they see fit.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, if your one big probe dies, you're toast. However, it's got the almost the same amount of redundancy as those little probes you're so fond of, without the bugginess and quirks that come from making something out of cheap, compact parts when you really need industrial-strength tools.
There are some basic subsystems of any space-worthy equipment that just don't scale down to the levels you're talking about. Most probes or staellites are actually a very compact bundle of electronics, with a much more elaborate network of mechanical supports, power supplies, and propulsion units. You can't strip all that gear off them and have it work -- there are no conveniently located power outlets on Mars to keep you LiIon batteries charged, and solar cells can't supply nearly enough power to keep that complex a device running for more than a few minutes a day.
Redundancy is a great idea, but in this case, you're taking it too far. In safer environments, you can get away with cutting corners on durability and qulity, but if you want to get anything useful out of an interplanetary probe, you had damn well better spend the time, effort, and money on some reliable systems. Otherwise, you're just oging to end up with a shitload of dead rover carcasses being shot into the surface of Mars.
It's similar to the arguments for open source software's security: if you think there might be something sketchy inside, open it up and take a look. You don't neccesarily even have to have the right to change or copy it, but you should be given the opportunity to see exactly what's in there, if only to check for security risks, illegaly copied code, etc. With big, aggregated databases protected, we will lose the ability to know exactly what kind of data is being collected about and from us, and from where.
The sad thing is, this company will probably do quite well. They're using the most realistic model for online publishing that I've seen in a long time, and I don't see Congress going against the combined will of just about every major media company, advertiser, and retail company in the nation just to protect trifles like consumer rights or privacy.
uClinux isn't, AFAIK, a true real-time OS, so it's applicability for critical embedded systems is somewhat limited. However, a uCsimm could be a cheap, flexible means of giving TCP/IP and Ethernet support to devices that can only handle serial communications. Hell, toss some basic IP masquerading and filtering code in there, and you've got a great, low-cost firewall for all those cable and DSL-wired households who don't know the first thing about security.
I don't think that there's any sinister plans made for this technology; nor do I think that Social Security numbers are sinister. However, I think that the eventual abuse of biometric and positional tracking devices would be inevitable, even if the abusers had the best intentions.
As for the use of technology to destroy privacy...I submit to you wiretaps, corporate email monitoring, libel suits for messages intended to be private, and web sites set up to track the names and addresses of doctors who perform abortions. All of these, and many other applications of modern technology, have destroyed many lives, invaded the privacy of countless others, and generally reduced us to a state of either perpetual low-level paranoia or dumb acceptance.
It may be true that there is not a single piece of privacy-invading technology that we cannot live without. However, in this day and age, you leave a fingerprint of data in every action you take that utilizes anything more high-tech than a quarter.
Read the AUP linked from the original article -- they do indeed reserve the right to enter your home, with prior notice, to check, modify, or remove the equipment. It's not illegal if you sign a contract (or agree to an AUP) giving them that right.
There is no fair way to distinguish between those who have a right to vote and those who don't, if you want any claim towards being a democracy. The desire to do so is a remenant of ancient, pack animal, tribal leadership, where the guy who could beat up all the other guys was chief. The only way to improve the quality of any nation is to educate its population as well as possible, so they will more effectively govern themselves.
Or, did you simply not notice the ones who were working two jobs and trying to support a family, because they were never lounging around the neighborhood in the middle of the day. Because of your personal observations in one town, you can safely generalize that all poor people are lazy? No, I don't think so; just because you have an MIT email address does not mean you are omniscient.
- The freedom to not pay taxes at all.
- The freedom to decide that you're #1, and everyone else can just go to hell.
- The freedom to run a predatory, monopolistic company with no fear of government intervention.
- The freedom to not send your children to school, because you don't want to pay for it
- The freedom to send your kids to school, and still not pay for it
Basically, if everyone in the world were a generally nice, well-balanced, logical person, then Libertarianism could do fine. For that matter, if everyone met those criteria, Communism, a benevolent dictatorship, or anarchy would all work just fine.I think we've all seen pretty convincingly that it's not going to happen, though. Dreams of a utopia wrought by logic and empathy are far, far older than any Western political movement currently in existence, and I for one am tired of hearing Libertarians go on and on about the perfection of their social ideals.
There are no perfect Republics in the real world, and people, as a group, are still violent pack animals, driven as much by hormones and greed as by intellect and compassion.
ISPs can get away with outrageous bullshit if they like...most usage agreements, no matter how innocuous, contain a clause allowing them to modify the terms of service at any time, for any reason. Business users get a bit more slack, but they pay through the nose for it. Personally, I'm sick of it, but there's no public, open alternative to the ISP oligopolies.
Look at Windows NT and 98 -- they start off with the easier, consumer-grade stuff, and move on to NT relatively painlessly. Yes, the underlying system is completely different, (and no, I'm not really trying to compare Linux to Windows 98 -- it's just for the purpose of illustrating this admittedly limited point) but because the widgets and desktop layout are similar, you could sit any relatively competent Windows user in front of any Windows machine, and they could run Office, surf the web, or copy some files.
IBM, HP, and Compaq get similar benefits -- their in-house UNIXes can have a familiar interface, and they can train an entire generation of UNIX users by cloning a dominant Linux UI. Personally, I think it could be great to be able to sit down at basically any decent UNIX box running a current OS, log in, and have the option of dropping into a familiar, high-quality GUI. No one will be locked into it -- hell, even if you're stuck with GNOME, you still have a lot of options for window managers, desktop customization, application choice, etc.
We need a real alternative. There are countless areas in which Office could be improved upon -- speed, stability, portability, etc. The heavy-hitters (IBM, Sun, et. al.) can provide the core codebase, and we open-sourcers can provide the trimming and debugging. The only thing I fear is a repeat of the Communicator 5 -> Mozilla process, where the maintainers and contributors realize a few months into the project that the old code is basically junk, and have to scrap it and start over. I have no idea what the internals of StarOffice look like now, but I'm afraid they may be less than pretty.
While it would be nice for every executive at every tech company to know at least enough about their own technological infrastructure and products to be able to pay attention at meetings with the production and IT departments, it's not realistic. What bugs me about the statements made in the article is the gall of the CFO quoted to even attempt to make technology-related advice. That's why there are CIOs, or even just plain low-level managers. Unless they're really just a bunch of geeks in suits, the executive-level management of a company shouldn't try to concern itself with decisions like what server OS to run, because it usually indicates they aren't paying enough attention to their own job.
But really, you should look at the comments throughout this thread on the option of using a remote CGI script to alter the HTML before it even hits a local proxy server, removing suggestive keywords while leaving images intact. Simple keyword searches are just not going to do it.
I was not trying to piss people off by suggesting that I don't think the RIAA and MPAA are a bunch of assholes. They are. All I was attempting to do was prompt a little discussion on how digital duplication is different, and maybe soapbox a bit about how much I dislike oversimplifactions of the issue from either side.
I am less than pleased with having the post labelled 'Flamebait', but I can appreciate the irony of being accused of not reading the article by people who failed to read my post.
Let me guess: it would work, so long as they all ran Linux on Crusoe chips, with Peltier junctions for temperature control once under the Mars heat?
When that happens to relatively close-in satellites, we can repair them, or quickly send up a replacement. Missions to Mars take months, and are really only feasible if unmanned. Trying to reliably launch and maintain a completely automated, complex communications system in Mars orbit would be a monumental undertaking, and given the current cost and sophistication of even "local" satellites, I don't think there would be much a sivngs to be had over sending the same gear in every satellite.
Software research, though, is far from dead. Pick a topic -- AI, speech recognition, security, interfaces, whatever -- and I'll bet you can find a grad student somewhere who has the complete source code to something truly interesting and new just sitting there, being ignored. The academic research community still pushes the envelope of software design and implementation on a regular basis, and there are tools in use today that bear little resemblence to their watered down, commercial counterparts. However, you have to remember that just because the result of a period or research is expressed as software, that doesn't mean that the research itself is going to progress as quickly as copycat commercial version updates. Good, solid research takes time, almost anal attention to detail, and a mindset that few people can muster. There's a reason that work with computers in universities is focused around Computer Science, rather than Computer Arts.
On the other side of the coin, there are freely available tools that are rock-solid and consistent; they, too simply do not often reach the feature and merketing-driven world of commercial products. Try setting up a FreeBSD box with some basic services and reliable GNU tools, and tell me how often it has a kernel panic -- or even a core dump. Mostly, it's going to hum away in the corner until someone tries to screw with it, and breaks something.
We, the open-sourcers, may be a ragtag bunch, but we can each make our own strategy, forming temporary alliances, and even sometimes gaining support from another "businessman's army". We have at our disposal an array of powerful armaments, but usually settle on a few favorites. Our "commanders" have their position only because of the respect and experience they have earned in prior battles, and must be among the best fighters we have. We don't ask for the army to feed or house us, and may even leave the battles with some regularity; the ranks are usually swelling, though, and make up for their lack of central organization with cunning and dedication.
(Okay, okay, so it's beyond cheesy. But hey, everybody like a little cheese now and then, right? Plus, I haven't had my coffee yet...)
Personally, I applaud this lawsuit for one simple reason -- it will give Macromedia a chance to set a precedent for actually debunking bunk patents in court! I think more or less any one of us could make a strong case for prior art, so I'm sure Macromedia's lawyers are already drafting an intimidating list of evidence and witnesses.
Plus, we have the whole "new ecomony of scale" coming into play: It doesn't cost any significant amount to make anything past the first copy, and if someone else provides the orignial content, software, etc., the first copy is also effectively free. With a physical distribution unit required for each copy, your costs go up as you make more; with an electronic distribution method, you can copy the file once, and suddenly make it freely available to an effectively limitless number of people.
Does this mean that digital distribution is bad? No, of course not. It means that the rules are in the course of being rewritten, and if the RIAA, MPAA, Metallica, et. al., don't want to be useful contributors to that process, there interests may be made secondary to those of the most vocal participants. I don't know if computers tend to instill freedom-loving ethics in most people who use them, or if those who use them the most are the ones who seek the freedom they provide, but the end result is the same.
The illusion of capitalism's suitability as a general framework for social policies then creates a danger the equal of any Communist regime: the complete obfuscation of the workings a government. We are no longer a Democratic society, we are a capitalst one; since capitalism has no meaning outside the context of economic transactions, then anything falling outside those boundries is suddenly exempt from any overriding philosophy.
"Intellectual property" is the term for a creator's rights to a valuable idea, right? Show me a single company that is capable of thought, and therefore entitled to protection of its "intellectual property", and I will show you an employee who actually did the work, and no longer has the right to use their own ideas.
Humanity is fickle and emotional, and as a group, we have very short attention spans and poor memories. The same tragedies occur time after time, and no one ever knows about it, because it's just one voice lost in the noise. Free speech won't do you a damn bit of good if no one can hear you over all the people shouting, and it will do you even less good if you only have a relatively short time to make your message heard, after which it might as well have never existed.
The nature of physical archives has indeed meant that the owner or creator of that record becomes inherently vulnerable to persecution in any number of forms for its contents. However, what people are beginning to realize is that digital technology gives us the potential to change that irrevocably. However, Freenet, as much as it may hint at this possibility, does not make it a reality. In order to make an archive truly serve its purpose, its contents must be protected beyond the moment of their peak popularity, without sacrificing the anonymity of their holders and viewers.
If you don't want to accept the new "rules", then don't. If you don't ever log on to Freenet, then you've cast your vote against it. At least give others the freedom to cast their vote as they see fit.