You're just deliberately not getting it to try to win an argument with someone who knows better.
There is a distinction between a "natural person" and a "corporate person". Those definitions of "people" do not mention any kind of person other than humans, though "person" does.
One distinction is the basis for a human's "word", and a corporate communication. Corporations are sued as legal persons, not as natural ones. Only natural ones have the honor on which the sense of a person's "word" depends. A corporation's communication is either PR without the compulsion of human honor, or a contract, which these pledges are not.
OK, now I've explained it in detail twice. I'm not sure why, because your last line claiming I'm changing the argument from "a corporation's word" to "a corporation's honor", when the meaning of a person's word is their honor, explains everything for me. You're a corporatist, badly defending a position that corporations are "people", not just legally created "persons". That all says a lot about your word, your honor. That yours means little, if you need that spelled out for you too.
The plural of any kind of person is "persons". "People" is the plural of the kind of "person" who is human.
Corporations don't actually conduct business. The people who own or work for corporations conduct business. The corporation is either an inaccurate collective term for those people, or a legal term for them and the property assigned to it. It doesn't have a "word". People issue statements in the name of the corporation, and the corporation is used to shield them from liability. Even if you take statements officially issued by the corporation, that's not its "word" the way a human has a "word", with any moral backing, conscience, heart, or actual thoughts. There's only the legal simulation of those actual human properties.
As a purely legal entity, as opposed to a "natural person" (as humans are known to the law), the only "word" that binds a corporation is one that is legally binding. These pledges are just PR, and not legally binding. They are not even a legal analogy to a human's "word". The closest is a "contract" (which this pledge isn't), and that's not like a human's word, either. A human's "word" is our "bond", more than just a legal bond. It is the incarnation of our honor. Corporations have nothing like honor, which is a purely human characteristic.
How long before Schwarznazi makes "asking related questions" a crime, like chopping off the more specific part of a URL? Especially if he automatically spits out answers that reveal he's a robot from the future who hates people sent here to destroy us?
More people are "independent" voters (no party registration) than ever before. Nearly as many as are Republican, and only about 6% fewer than Democrats. While there are two independents in Congress, another running for relection independent, and a handful of members of both parties known as ?INO (? In Name Only). By the time over 40% of voters are independents, there will be at least a handful of "independent" Senators and over a dozen Representatives shooting for that "demographic", even if the "caucus" with one party to form a majority which controls all committees under Congress rules. But they will be able to switch caucus each Congress, unless desperate parties change the rules to force them from "churning".
I think inevitably Congress will see at least a significant minority of independents who can make deals more freely with any faction. There very well might be a phase where a third party forms from some collusion-minded independents, which might even stabilize and/or splinter parties into several.
Personally, I want to see parties lose their exclusivity. It's already part of the system, where single candidates can run endorsed by several parties (eg Republican/Conservative, although NYC has seen Republican/Liberal candidates, including Giuliani who killed the centuries-old NYC Liberal Party). Today they all just revert to the majority for the caucus majority effect. But with a lot of independents, such caucusing rules will be removed for more negotiating. Once exclusivity is gone, monopoly effects over individuals will go, and the duopoly itself will follow. Not a moment too soon, after probably close to 300 years of turning freedom into conspiracies at the highest levels.
You didn't copy the book, so you didn't violate the copyright. The company you bought it from is guilty/liable, not you. Similarly, these grannies didn't copy the CDs they bought, so I don't see how they violated anyone's copyright.
This is a different situation than the familiar RIAA vs filesharers. The RIAA is suing the publishers of the files. And even downloaders can be argued to be "making a copy", of the data from their network connection eventually to their HD.
"You will need to have Java Web Start installed in order for the applications to launch. If it is not installed, you will be redirected to the Java Web Start setup page.".jnlp is not associated with any MIMEtype on my Ubuntu/Firefox system. I was not redirected, but just offered to download the file or open it with a selectable app from my filesystem. But I think I get it.
Microsoft is a corporation, it doesn't have a "word". I want a lawyer or qualified amateur to tell me that pledge is binding. And I want them to explain why MS (and the others) don't just release the patents into the public domain.
We should discard the Electoral College and impeach more often.
The Congress that impeached Clinton, who was way more popular than Bush in votes and polls (except for the artificial period immediately after 9/11/2001), has gained a controlling majority in both houses, as well as the presidency (twice) for their party. Impeachment is like negative campaigning: everyone says it just makes the people mad, but they reward it at the polls. Just like we should.
I think that Democrats holding the cards Republicans do today, say in 2008, will change the structure at least some. Like the EC, because it works against them and everyone (whose paying attention) hates it. As we should, because it cheated us of at least Gore in 2000.
America used to send Senators to the Congress by vote of their state assembly, up until a century ago when we amended the Constitution to do it directly. The EC is the last of those multitier republic structures left, except for Presidential appointments and Congressional committees. The EC is probably doomed, sooner than later. Presidential appointments will probably get tweaked to prohibit recess appointments that circumvent Senate confirmations. Committees are here to stay, because the members love them, the public mostly doesn't even know about them, and they've got more power than anyone, including a president (whose vetos can be overridden by Congress).
America's government incorporates essential change. That's why it's lasted longer than practically every other one existent in 1784, except maybe China's and Egypt's. The changes we're talking about are evolutionary, reflecting more a complex people with better communications. Just like it's supposed to be. Except for occasional holdups in the process, like artificial conservatism that exploits system holes to keep power and to abuse it by changing what the government does against the will of the people. Which in turn forces changes in the structure.
There's no real problem with direct election of US officials. The biggest problem is their indirect election, the Electoral College, which counts states as disproportionate values. A Wyoming voter (like Dick Cheney) has much more weighted ballots than a California voter (like a Gore voter). So Gore could win more voters in 2000, but lose the electoral vote, because president and vice president aren't elected direcly enough. Drop the EC and count votes nationwide.
There might be a single exception to successful direct election, which is judges. Campaigning for judges in crime ridden areas allows people to elect judges biased for or against them, when the judging law must be more impartial than writing or executing it. This is not so much a problem of direct election of judges as merely the entire problem of selecting judges in a democracy. Electing them is just a consequence of that defective system.
None of that requires separate ballots for each candidate. While long ballot sheets with many offices might be necessary, that doesn't make them much harder to count. And even if 195M voters turned out (110M is the current high turnout), it doesn't take longer to count more ballots. Because every district has its own counters, who all count in parallel. If each ballot is counted three times by different people, with nonunanimous ballots counted again, that's still probably only a 5 minute pipeline. That's filled with 1 minute per ballot. If each counter works for 6 hours plus breaks, that's 360 ballots per person. 110M people require 305K counters, in 3K counties means about 100 counters per county, or 50 if they take 2 days. Paper tools like stencils can increase productivity to probably 10-20s per ballot, which or a couple dozen counters per county. Immediate results should be reported solely from exit polls, which are more obviously unofficial. Official results today take weeks or months, so handcounting isn't any slower than machine counting. And if ballots are shuffled among counties for counting for added security, we're talking about a few days for extremely reliable results, which also takes the pressure off any a single day in which to "pull a fast one" in a fraud conspiracy.
Canada's parliamentary system is different from the US system in essential ways as you mention, so we shouldn't change to it. The system is most importantly reflective of how voters expect to be represented. Our system is already too dependent on parties, and Canada's parliamentary system is even worse: the chief executive is chosen not by the people, but by the most popular party. That's an artifact of the British system that the USA rejected to create our country, and indeed constitutional republican democracy.
The bottom line is that Canada demonstrates fast, reliable, cheap voting with 10% of America's population. More counting can be done in parallel, so there's no extra delay from the larger population. And we can keep the representation system, even simplify it for better representation, that Americans believe represents us in our republic. Especially compared with the complicated, deeply broken mess that produced the current US government, we certainly need to change to something proven to work among people much like us, in our own way.
So the applet publisher generates their applet files and a JNLP file, marks up an HTML page embedding the applet by URL and linking to the JNLP file by URL, and puts all those files on a webserver. The user sees the page, likes the applet, clicks the link to the JNLP file and it installs to their local client machine. Does the user have to have any other software other than a standard Firefox (or other browser like IE, Mozilla, Safari) installed, like some kind of WebStart app installed (other than the JVM in their browser)? And is there any way for the user to validate that the installed applet is identical to the applet they tried in the page?
Canada, including Toronto (2.5 million people, 5th largest in N America including Mexico City), counts millions of paper ballots without our computerized problems. Our computers have repeatedly proven bad at this job.
Canada has several official languages and handicapped people.
Their paper doesn't seem to have "interpretation" problems.
Everyone I know who makes computers do things knows that computers are the wrong tool for voting. Their flexibility makes it easir to commit fraud, and much more easy to leave no evidence, especially coordinated in complex ways over distant areas - perfect for voting fraud.
Computers aren't just overkill. Their risks so outweigh their benefits in voting that they are the wrong tool. As has now been proven over and over for years. Including today in Maryland. How much more demonstration do you need that just paper ballots are better?
Huh? I just want to install their applet instead of caching it. I'm not talking about a local copy of their data, just a local copy of my data, that I use their applet to modify. Nor am I talking about going offline. I just want to be able to use their applets the same way I use my local applications. That doesn't exclude them embedding their own advertising, either.
"All 75 movies initially available are from Disney-related studios."
When can I upload my own terrorism fan fiction, say a version of the story of 9/11/2001 that blames Al Gore, to iTunes, and become a Disney-related studio?
I wish Webpage applets, whether Java, Flash, Javascript or other AJAX or just clientside execution objects, would all let me install them, rather than being bound to their page. Not just for easy access, rather than bookmarking their host page (which too often requires surfing several pages to build state). Also so I can combine them into single collected UIs. I want my own page with my banking client and a few shopping clients. And I want to be able to grant local access to a sandbox DB of my own data, like history and account info, that doesn't allow access to my other data, like other accounts.
If we could drag applets to our toolbars for local installation, rather than trapping them in their website context, they'd be a lot more useable. Hopefully this early stage of their development will incorporate that now/soon, rather than later when retrofitting and incompatibility will make problems last forever.
I'm not surprised. The sense about terror and war we share is hardly "common" these days. Those who "get it" who speak in public are usually boring academics or other passionless apparatchiks. I have no problem finding myself in "violent agreement" with other people:). It's a prerequisite for enjoying living in NYC, and especially on this topic.
I believe that the response to 9/11/2001 has been exactly what the terrorists in Bush's government, and his corporate warmonger allies around the world, was exactly what they hoped to achieve. I'm not sure only whether they knew about it, or even planned/executed it, in advance, rather then "Let It Happen On Purpose", or just switched gears when someone handed them a "slam dunk" they could hijack.
More constructively, have you read McLuhan's War and Peace in the Global Village? It's a typically illuminating McLuhan dissertation of "media war", the kind of infowar terrorism fights in the global media. The Wired edition, with marginalia from Joyce, is most entertaining while educating in a fairly short book. I give it to media execs whenever I think they'll read it.
Just being American doesn't make 6/20, seeing from only 6 feet what average humans see clearly from 20 feet away, anything but myopic. No wonder you keep confusing what you're seeing on these pages.
That's why I prioritize a simple UI. A new UI that includes trust web security among the integrated apps like email/voicemail/IM/blogging/eCommerce would appear even simpler than the insecure array of independent services we currently use. Simplifying the simultaneous multitasking along with the sequential insecurity/breach/recovery cycles into automated privacy scopes will win the whole game.
Microsoft spends most of its time producing new OS features in collaboration with other vendors. DRM, drivers, APIs all designed to make MS OSes work better with the rest of the products people will buy. That takes much longer, and more code, than the rest of the OS does.
But its "security" features are MS only. Of course that must be to protect the MS "near monopoly", always its #1 priority. Since the security market is neither very profitable nor already dominated by MS, I expect that their "security" also protects revealing other serious defects of the OS. Whether more monopoly protection, unnecessary security problems, or just bad coding. Therefore I don't see Microsoft opening those facilities for the EU before Vista is released, if ever.
I agree, so it's easy to take your comments as constructive;). FWIW, even if I didn't, they were perfectly reasonable:).
Security is certainly an investment. And along the way there's not just the investment cost, but also decreased access (the essential tradeoff for security). Access is equated to simplicity, which is by far the main selling point of any technology (except for geeks;). But the infosystems we're currently using are far from simple already, even before insecurity breaches make things extremely complicated. Separated email/voicemail/IM/blogs and other transactions are extremely complex, while also being (separately) insecure. Making a trust web UI to a trust web infrastructure is a chance to unify those apps that appear to deliver mainly simplicity to people, but also include the extra security. So they get it all up front, instead of waiting to retrofit (which makes securing separate systems even more complex).
So there's a huge opportunity for software developers. But since that existing opportunity hasn't driven people to do it already, we need a stick to go with the carrot. That's what the privacy requirements are for. Making corporations pay for their insecurity will monetize the opportunities. There's enough simmering resentment at corporate/government privacy invasion in the US to make campaigning for personal copyright laws and Privacy Amendments a source of political "capital". The vested interests in avoiding security liability are so entrenched, and now so aware of their investment in insecurity, that they're actively resisting, instead of passively ignoring, such reforms. But Europe has already goned most of the way down the road, in their own scope of protections. The US will have to reach a breaking point, and then react to rebuild, which is how our boom/bust culture works. I expect it will.
I hope developers have already delivered working trust solutions by then. Because otherwise the reforms will "fix things" the wrong way. If there's already a right way waiting to receive the effort to fix things, then natural political laziness will just use the existing solution. Even more reason to get started now, to surf the coming wave.
Slashdot Mirror
You're just deliberately not getting it to try to win an argument with someone who knows better.
There is a distinction between a "natural person" and a "corporate person". Those definitions of "people" do not mention any kind of person other than humans, though "person" does.
One distinction is the basis for a human's "word", and a corporate communication. Corporations are sued as legal persons, not as natural ones. Only natural ones have the honor on which the sense of a person's "word" depends. A corporation's communication is either PR without the compulsion of human honor, or a contract, which these pledges are not.
OK, now I've explained it in detail twice. I'm not sure why, because your last line claiming I'm changing the argument from "a corporation's word" to "a corporation's honor", when the meaning of a person's word is their honor, explains everything for me. You're a corporatist, badly defending a position that corporations are "people", not just legally created "persons". That all says a lot about your word, your honor. That yours means little, if you need that spelled out for you too.
The plural of any kind of person is "persons". "People" is the plural of the kind of "person" who is human.
Corporations don't actually conduct business. The people who own or work for corporations conduct business. The corporation is either an inaccurate collective term for those people, or a legal term for them and the property assigned to it. It doesn't have a "word". People issue statements in the name of the corporation, and the corporation is used to shield them from liability. Even if you take statements officially issued by the corporation, that's not its "word" the way a human has a "word", with any moral backing, conscience, heart, or actual thoughts. There's only the legal simulation of those actual human properties.
As a purely legal entity, as opposed to a "natural person" (as humans are known to the law), the only "word" that binds a corporation is one that is legally binding. These pledges are just PR, and not legally binding. They are not even a legal analogy to a human's "word". The closest is a "contract" (which this pledge isn't), and that's not like a human's word, either. A human's "word" is our "bond", more than just a legal bond. It is the incarnation of our honor. Corporations have nothing like honor, which is a purely human characteristic.
How long before Schwarznazi makes "asking related questions" a crime, like chopping off the more specific part of a URL? Especially if he automatically spits out answers that reveal he's a robot from the future who hates people sent here to destroy us?
Defensive use of patents merely protects your use of an invention. Releasing the patents into the public domain would have the same effect.
They're legally "persons", but that doesn't give them a "word".
More people are "independent" voters (no party registration) than ever before. Nearly as many as are Republican, and only about 6% fewer than Democrats. While there are two independents in Congress, another running for relection independent, and a handful of members of both parties known as ?INO (? In Name Only). By the time over 40% of voters are independents, there will be at least a handful of "independent" Senators and over a dozen Representatives shooting for that "demographic", even if the "caucus" with one party to form a majority which controls all committees under Congress rules. But they will be able to switch caucus each Congress, unless desperate parties change the rules to force them from "churning".
I think inevitably Congress will see at least a significant minority of independents who can make deals more freely with any faction. There very well might be a phase where a third party forms from some collusion-minded independents, which might even stabilize and/or splinter parties into several.
Personally, I want to see parties lose their exclusivity. It's already part of the system, where single candidates can run endorsed by several parties (eg Republican/Conservative, although NYC has seen Republican/Liberal candidates, including Giuliani who killed the centuries-old NYC Liberal Party). Today they all just revert to the majority for the caucus majority effect. But with a lot of independents, such caucusing rules will be removed for more negotiating. Once exclusivity is gone, monopoly effects over individuals will go, and the duopoly itself will follow. Not a moment too soon, after probably close to 300 years of turning freedom into conspiracies at the highest levels.
You didn't copy the book, so you didn't violate the copyright. The company you bought it from is guilty/liable, not you. Similarly, these grannies didn't copy the CDs they bought, so I don't see how they violated anyone's copyright.
This is a different situation than the familiar RIAA vs filesharers. The RIAA is suing the publishers of the files. And even downloaders can be argued to be "making a copy", of the data from their network connection eventually to their HD.
That's the Republican corporate government: when a corporation breaks a law, like GM contamination or AT&T/NSA spying, just change the law.
Moderation 0
50% Interesting
50% Overrated
TrollMods get spooked when I point out that Dick Cheney votes in Wyoming (though he's from Texas), so his votes count several times more than yours.
"You will need to have Java Web Start installed in order for the applications to launch. If it is not installed, you will be redirected to the Java Web Start setup page." .jnlp is not associated with any MIMEtype on my Ubuntu/Firefox system. I was not redirected, but just offered to download the file or open it with a selectable app from my filesystem. But I think I get it.
Microsoft is a corporation, it doesn't have a "word". I want a lawyer or qualified amateur to tell me that pledge is binding. And I want them to explain why MS (and the others) don't just release the patents into the public domain.
We should discard the Electoral College and impeach more often.
The Congress that impeached Clinton, who was way more popular than Bush in votes and polls (except for the artificial period immediately after 9/11/2001), has gained a controlling majority in both houses, as well as the presidency (twice) for their party. Impeachment is like negative campaigning: everyone says it just makes the people mad, but they reward it at the polls. Just like we should.
I think that Democrats holding the cards Republicans do today, say in 2008, will change the structure at least some. Like the EC, because it works against them and everyone (whose paying attention) hates it. As we should, because it cheated us of at least Gore in 2000.
America used to send Senators to the Congress by vote of their state assembly, up until a century ago when we amended the Constitution to do it directly. The EC is the last of those multitier republic structures left, except for Presidential appointments and Congressional committees. The EC is probably doomed, sooner than later. Presidential appointments will probably get tweaked to prohibit recess appointments that circumvent Senate confirmations. Committees are here to stay, because the members love them, the public mostly doesn't even know about them, and they've got more power than anyone, including a president (whose vetos can be overridden by Congress).
America's government incorporates essential change. That's why it's lasted longer than practically every other one existent in 1784, except maybe China's and Egypt's. The changes we're talking about are evolutionary, reflecting more a complex people with better communications. Just like it's supposed to be. Except for occasional holdups in the process, like artificial conservatism that exploits system holes to keep power and to abuse it by changing what the government does against the will of the people. Which in turn forces changes in the structure.
What legal binding do these "pledges" have? Why not back up the pledges by just releasing the patent into the public domain?
There's no real problem with direct election of US officials. The biggest problem is their indirect election, the Electoral College, which counts states as disproportionate values. A Wyoming voter (like Dick Cheney) has much more weighted ballots than a California voter (like a Gore voter). So Gore could win more voters in 2000, but lose the electoral vote, because president and vice president aren't elected direcly enough. Drop the EC and count votes nationwide.
There might be a single exception to successful direct election, which is judges. Campaigning for judges in crime ridden areas allows people to elect judges biased for or against them, when the judging law must be more impartial than writing or executing it. This is not so much a problem of direct election of judges as merely the entire problem of selecting judges in a democracy. Electing them is just a consequence of that defective system.
None of that requires separate ballots for each candidate. While long ballot sheets with many offices might be necessary, that doesn't make them much harder to count. And even if 195M voters turned out (110M is the current high turnout), it doesn't take longer to count more ballots. Because every district has its own counters, who all count in parallel. If each ballot is counted three times by different people, with nonunanimous ballots counted again, that's still probably only a 5 minute pipeline. That's filled with 1 minute per ballot. If each counter works for 6 hours plus breaks, that's 360 ballots per person. 110M people require 305K counters, in 3K counties means about 100 counters per county, or 50 if they take 2 days. Paper tools like stencils can increase productivity to probably 10-20s per ballot, which or a couple dozen counters per county. Immediate results should be reported solely from exit polls, which are more obviously unofficial. Official results today take weeks or months, so handcounting isn't any slower than machine counting. And if ballots are shuffled among counties for counting for added security, we're talking about a few days for extremely reliable results, which also takes the pressure off any a single day in which to "pull a fast one" in a fraud conspiracy.
Canada's parliamentary system is different from the US system in essential ways as you mention, so we shouldn't change to it. The system is most importantly reflective of how voters expect to be represented. Our system is already too dependent on parties, and Canada's parliamentary system is even worse: the chief executive is chosen not by the people, but by the most popular party. That's an artifact of the British system that the USA rejected to create our country, and indeed constitutional republican democracy.
The bottom line is that Canada demonstrates fast, reliable, cheap voting with 10% of America's population. More counting can be done in parallel, so there's no extra delay from the larger population. And we can keep the representation system, even simplify it for better representation, that Americans believe represents us in our republic. Especially compared with the complicated, deeply broken mess that produced the current US government, we certainly need to change to something proven to work among people much like us, in our own way.
So the applet publisher generates their applet files and a JNLP file, marks up an HTML page embedding the applet by URL and linking to the JNLP file by URL, and puts all those files on a webserver. The user sees the page, likes the applet, clicks the link to the JNLP file and it installs to their local client machine. Does the user have to have any other software other than a standard Firefox (or other browser like IE, Mozilla, Safari) installed, like some kind of WebStart app installed (other than the JVM in their browser)? And is there any way for the user to validate that the installed applet is identical to the applet they tried in the page?
Canada, including Toronto (2.5 million people, 5th largest in N America including Mexico City), counts millions of paper ballots without our computerized problems. Our computers have repeatedly proven bad at this job.
Canada has several official languages and handicapped people.
Their paper doesn't seem to have "interpretation" problems.
Everyone I know who makes computers do things knows that computers are the wrong tool for voting. Their flexibility makes it easir to commit fraud, and much more easy to leave no evidence, especially coordinated in complex ways over distant areas - perfect for voting fraud.
Computers aren't just overkill. Their risks so outweigh their benefits in voting that they are the wrong tool. As has now been proven over and over for years. Including today in Maryland. How much more demonstration do you need that just paper ballots are better?
So how do I use WebStart in Firefox?
Huh? I just want to install their applet instead of caching it. I'm not talking about a local copy of their data, just a local copy of my data, that I use their applet to modify. Nor am I talking about going offline. I just want to be able to use their applets the same way I use my local applications. That doesn't exclude them embedding their own advertising, either.
"All 75 movies initially available are from Disney-related studios."
When can I upload my own terrorism fan fiction, say a version of the story of 9/11/2001 that blames Al Gore, to iTunes, and become a Disney-related studio?
I wish Webpage applets, whether Java, Flash, Javascript or other AJAX or just clientside execution objects, would all let me install them, rather than being bound to their page. Not just for easy access, rather than bookmarking their host page (which too often requires surfing several pages to build state). Also so I can combine them into single collected UIs. I want my own page with my banking client and a few shopping clients. And I want to be able to grant local access to a sandbox DB of my own data, like history and account info, that doesn't allow access to my other data, like other accounts.
If we could drag applets to our toolbars for local installation, rather than trapping them in their website context, they'd be a lot more useable. Hopefully this early stage of their development will incorporate that now/soon, rather than later when retrofitting and incompatibility will make problems last forever.
I'm not surprised. The sense about terror and war we share is hardly "common" these days. Those who "get it" who speak in public are usually boring academics or other passionless apparatchiks. I have no problem finding myself in "violent agreement" with other people :). It's a prerequisite for enjoying living in NYC, and especially on this topic.
I believe that the response to 9/11/2001 has been exactly what the terrorists in Bush's government, and his corporate warmonger allies around the world, was exactly what they hoped to achieve. I'm not sure only whether they knew about it, or even planned/executed it, in advance, rather then "Let It Happen On Purpose", or just switched gears when someone handed them a "slam dunk" they could hijack.
More constructively, have you read McLuhan's War and Peace in the Global Village? It's a typically illuminating McLuhan dissertation of "media war", the kind of infowar terrorism fights in the global media. The Wired edition, with marginalia from Joyce, is most entertaining while educating in a fairly short book. I give it to media execs whenever I think they'll read it.
Just being American doesn't make 6/20, seeing from only 6 feet what average humans see clearly from 20 feet away, anything but myopic. No wonder you keep confusing what you're seeing on these pages.
That's why I prioritize a simple UI. A new UI that includes trust web security among the integrated apps like email/voicemail/IM/blogging/eCommerce would appear even simpler than the insecure array of independent services we currently use. Simplifying the simultaneous multitasking along with the sequential insecurity/breach/recovery cycles into automated privacy scopes will win the whole game.
Microsoft spends most of its time producing new OS features in collaboration with other vendors. DRM, drivers, APIs all designed to make MS OSes work better with the rest of the products people will buy. That takes much longer, and more code, than the rest of the OS does.
But its "security" features are MS only. Of course that must be to protect the MS "near monopoly", always its #1 priority. Since the security market is neither very profitable nor already dominated by MS, I expect that their "security" also protects revealing other serious defects of the OS. Whether more monopoly protection, unnecessary security problems, or just bad coding. Therefore I don't see Microsoft opening those facilities for the EU before Vista is released, if ever.
I agree, so it's easy to take your comments as constructive ;). FWIW, even if I didn't, they were perfectly reasonable :).
;). But the infosystems we're currently using are far from simple already, even before insecurity breaches make things extremely complicated. Separated email/voicemail/IM/blogs and other transactions are extremely complex, while also being (separately) insecure. Making a trust web UI to a trust web infrastructure is a chance to unify those apps that appear to deliver mainly simplicity to people, but also include the extra security. So they get it all up front, instead of waiting to retrofit (which makes securing separate systems even more complex).
Security is certainly an investment. And along the way there's not just the investment cost, but also decreased access (the essential tradeoff for security). Access is equated to simplicity, which is by far the main selling point of any technology (except for geeks
So there's a huge opportunity for software developers. But since that existing opportunity hasn't driven people to do it already, we need a stick to go with the carrot. That's what the privacy requirements are for. Making corporations pay for their insecurity will monetize the opportunities. There's enough simmering resentment at corporate/government privacy invasion in the US to make campaigning for personal copyright laws and Privacy Amendments a source of political "capital". The vested interests in avoiding security liability are so entrenched, and now so aware of their investment in insecurity, that they're actively resisting, instead of passively ignoring, such reforms. But Europe has already goned most of the way down the road, in their own scope of protections. The US will have to reach a breaking point, and then react to rebuild, which is how our boom/bust culture works. I expect it will.
I hope developers have already delivered working trust solutions by then. Because otherwise the reforms will "fix things" the wrong way. If there's already a right way waiting to receive the effort to fix things, then natural political laziness will just use the existing solution. Even more reason to get started now, to surf the coming wave.