the wiring of aircraft can't be gutted and replaced with proper shielded wiring... why it isn't all digital with checksums.. This is 1970's technology at the latest. Or wait maybe we could upgrade to 1980 tech such as fiber optics...
If it's important then people have to stand up to government and let them know. It's right there in the declaration of independence. Rights which are earned only by demanding them and willing to sacrifice for. The US Federal Government is mandated to create a national currency. It's about time we had an electronic version. The only way we are going to get an anonymous monetary system is by a national movement. All the credit card companies are making so much money they are and will continue to lobby against it.
And it is a very tough sell. How can you sell a system that makes black markets possible? How do you sell black markets? For anyone to be able to buy and sell weapons, drugs and other contraband, and to bribe, or hire another to kill? I doubt US citizens have any fight in them or the wisdom to protect the right to be corrupt. And credit companies will continue to make money while the US currency loses all credibility. I truly believe there will be a monetary coup where people will choose to bank in diversified international monetary funds, all very automatic. It is virtually impossible for the US government anymore to control money like they did way back in the day trying to outlaw gold and silver. In this day and age to do the equivalent would be to ban the stock market and or to require government approval of international stock and bond trades. Simply not possible.
For an international currency the world will demand privacy because countries will never trust one another and people of other countries know better than to trust their government or any other government.
Not that it really matters any more. I doubt even the supreme court bothers to read the constitution or declaration of independence anymore.
People have undeniable human rights/liberties. And it doesn't matter if you are a citizen or not most of the time. If you are here legally or not.
The fourth amendment is very simple. It provides simple oversight, a paper trail and accountability. What is so difficult with getting rubber stamps? A judge in this manor represents little better than a notary.
If your security is even modest as far as passwords there is no need to worry. More sophisticated attacks using coordinated bot nets are the really scary thing but can be countered by limiting the number of login attempts a second/minute. But it's all just extended dictionary attacks. Only someone really dedicated does brute force. This is the equivalent of someone going through a parking lot and checking to see if anyone left their door unlocked and or keys inside their car. If you can just change the port used for ftp, it cuts it down by 99 percent.
The problem is the bandwidth. You have to pay for it anyway. Even if your server doesn't acknowledge it. Someone really dedicated using a bot net can easily give you overage charges.
It is time to finally resolve the question of mail order businesses. It affects not only taxes but consumer rights. The most logical position is that the customer is going to the business, not the other way around. An online business just illustrates the absurdity of regulating from the point of a customers location. Simply put it's absurd that a business need to know and comply with the local laws of every location on the planet. Even with computers it's a monumental task and it only creates a huge barrier of entry for small businesses. It can easily be said that when we pay for shipping and handling we are paying for a proxy to purchase and ship an item on our behalf. And such a simple thing as buying a $10 ash trey should not require a full power of attorney.
I believe state sales tax laws were written in a broad way to imply that their citizens are responsible for paying sales tax even when they are out of state even though that is clearly interstate commerce and the province of the federal government. The question at hand is jurisdiction. You either decide that the transactions take place at the point of sale or find justification to promote them to international much like ships at sea and require them to register a regulatory location.
The states should lose no matter how it happens. But the states only care about getting money, not principles. So their best tactic is to generate more income though income taxes or persuade the federal government to allow interstate import taxes.
But transactions at stores should be rounded by law. The time it takes to count change is very relevant. Items should still be priced to the penny but it's only the final bill that should be rounded and only if your paying cash. Stores should be required to accept pennies, but stop giving them out.
First of all I have to admit up front I haven't fully studied it. But I think I get the idea. You create a virtual resource by computation and trade in it.
Slight problem is that it doesn't have a natural value/use unlike precious metals. Second there is the possibility of a mathematics breakthrough. A quantum computer would crash the economy only to have it restart with a different algorithm. So it only works best as an intermediate transactional denomination and the place to catch people is when they try to convert it which they will.
What about fractional coins? It doesn't seem like it would scale correctly if it actually caught on.
Last I can see market fragmentation of Bitcoin though clones with slightly different rules and methodologies.
I don't want to think about the electrical energy being burned in computation to generate these virtual coins...
It just depends on if they are effectively using it or it's just sitting there. Two is a minimum for me. I stipulate in my contract my exact system requirements and hardware update schedule. Everyone loves my hand me downs. If they balk without batting an eye I tell them I will provide my own hardware and my salary gets padded but it remains my own property and isn't subject to their jurisdiction so I can bring in stuff and take it away as I feel fit (you don't abuse the privilege.) I'm not a rookie, I know what it takes for me to be productive and I will name name brand stuff (such as a Thinkpad for a laptop, triple or quadruple the price of a cheapie) when I feel justified. If a company's steeling a second generic monitor from a developer and your wondering if he's just being whinny then I will definitely never work for you. Just the time it takes to discuss it pays for an el cheapo LCD.
On the specific subject, just being able to bring up a browser on another monitor and type an exact error message when you can't copy and paste; I use it a dozen times a day at minimum and it saves 2 minutes each time, so that's 24 minutes out of a work day. To look at code on one screen and the results on another... priceless. To look at your code and have code manuals on another, priceless again.
No alien life would intentionally broadcast it's planets location. They and we will send unmanned probes to interesting places for research. And then we would find a way to leverage the nature of the natural phenomenon to embed a signal. It's not inconceivable that someday we might be able to modulate a sun to transmit a signal on it's light. The place to look for signals is where you would be interested in looking anyway.
Modern nuclear engineering is modern. You guys keep throwing first generation failures at us. Maybe if we actually could build modern plants we could persuade the owners to shut down or replace the old ones.
I did play City of Heroes for life half a year. But the realization is that no matter how much you like a game it's going to die and you won't be able to play it anymore unlike traditional lan games. I will not invest any of my money or invest my time in anything so ephemeral. I do consider games art and like a good book I want to be able to come back to it again 20 years later.
The facts of the raid possibly are relevant but that could easily be a "national security matter" although I would call it a trade secret.
You have to prove to me the relevancy of releasing this dead mans photo. I think it would be bad taste no matter who he was. Photos of the dead have long been thought to be desecration.
What I think the AP could pursue is getting interviews of people involved and facts reveled in private under confidentiality for historical release later. Something like this should remain private no more than ten years.
In the least I'm sure they communicate through caressing each other with sonar but that is a very subtle and private communication. You have to actually be being caressed with the sonar to get the full meaning of it; it might not lend well to listening in. For instance I'm sure they would have a way to do the equivalent of tapping each other on the shoulder and pointing in a direction to look. It would lend itself more readily to a communication of emotion.
It will be interesting if they can learn a human language and grammar adapted to their vocal abilities. It would be the equivalent of teaching great apes sign language but much more natural.
Perhaps oaths of office should be expanded to include morality that might extend into situations like this. It's one thing to be fired in a changing of the guard and go back to work in industry but this sounds too much like an overt payoff. There should be changes to the law that allow business deals like this to be reevaluated.
Epiphany moment. Forget the boxed sets. Let's set it up so that people are permanently buying the content and can burn or record their own on their hard drives and are fully licensed to transfer ownership. That last part is important because it's the difference between illegal downloading and supporting a show. You buy into a show you can watch all the episodes at low quality live on the net. And depending on how much in total you have bought into the show you can download so many full resolution episodes. People casually downloading don't watch full resolution most of the time. Make episodes outrageously cheap like a $10 buy in and $3 a show. That's 10+22*3=$76 dollars an episode. And $15 more for the extras that would be on a boxed set. So call it $90 for a show I actively watch. I call that a deal and being a fan of the show I feel like I'm contributing to it's continuation and I essentially own the boxed set. And if you follow this model you don't necessarily have to conform to TV formats of so many episodes. Also if money falls short you can slow down the release of new content or even speed it up. Slowing it down potentially increases it quality which will bring in more subscription money.
Just require people to identify themselves when they purchase gas and track it nationally. Probably though your national id/drivers license though you probably won't have to actually show it unless your paying cash because you'll just link it to your credit card. No need to track miles and people are rewarded for efficient vehicles. It still only amounts to a gas tax but you'll then be able to tier the tax.
I'm guessing that the real reason for the study is that the writing is on the wall and electric cars are the future so they can't continue to collect highway taxes through gas anymore.
I think a better and simpler system would be requiring employers to pay every for commute time for which the government gets a cut. You are paid a percentage of what you would have been paid for the same amount of time at work. It would motivate businesses to move to areas with closer affordable housing, usable mass transit, and better highways.
Tablets are the convenience platform for reference material. They are the replacements for books. And notice I used the plural because everyone will have more than one. Mobile screens with information that we don't change that often, just keep looking at. I never liked pdf files but finally we have a platform to view them on.
I don't know if including the cellular chips will hold out, More than likely they will become an addon feature since the device is more of a load and go thing and using it around your house or the coffee shop. It's the new form for books! With a gps reciever the devices should have more than enough storage for maps.
With tablets I think it's more than likely we will start seeing airlines having special check ins for large laptops and people using tablets on planes instead. Maybe even having laptop rental at cars rental shops for basic business laptops. I mean do you really need YOUR particular laptop to do word processing or spreadsheets?
Just like the smartphone the tablet is a niche device. It doesn't replace anything, it just fits a particular need. And I think we all will have multiple tablet devices. With wireless charging desktop mats these things are a killer app.
Just maintain the company as small groups of 10-30 people whose customer is Google. Give them regulated autonomy. Give them intensive like monetizing what they produce (a vested interest) backed by contracts so that they willingly give Google their pipe dreams. So what you get is small businesses within Google without quite so much stress concerning financial matters or marketing or patents. It also means if someone thinks up the next killer app they will be proportionately rewarded unlike the guy from apple that convinced apple to market a brand name music player and create the iTunes store. Oh also have a guarantee if Google decides to pass on a groups work they can opt to leave Google and pursue it on their own with Google maintaining a certain stock option if later they pass a revenue mile stone.
It's only logical that in a technological economy that they might be looking for people with a clue. And academia isn't the real world. Just because you get an engineering degree doesn't mean that's where your talent is. For instance chemistry and physics graduates sometimes find out they have a talent for computer programming and for some reason psychology graduates gravitate to business management.
Now if only law schools recruited engineers there might actually be hope for the future.
Seriously all it would an proxy program that reroutes all the XXX domains to a public DNS XXX cache. You really think the online porn industry doesn't have the incentive to get around stuff like this? They could also just make a plugin for browsers that changed all XXX domain to a sub domain of something else that resolves to the same addresses. Wouldn't cost much bandwidth at all.
In all truthfulness it did have some ideas going for it but it should have stayed a pet project. An R&D project but produce enough that the market could play with it in self built systems. In my opinion they should have basically given the processors away to inspire developers for hobby and niche products. They wouldn't have lost as much money and would have had more realistic ambitions for it. They had the fabs and the prototyping equipment already...
The Itanium, a processor designed for programming languages that could provide optimization hints... that could have a concept of L1 cache and manipulate it and be able to provide feedback to the processor when it could do better branch prediction than the processor. Radical concept, only problem was you HAVE TO code to each processor model specifically. Caches changed and the processor logic changed with each revision. That's why they would have made better embedded processors. The generic systems that would benefit the most would be systems with source code you could compile right for the machine, and dynamically compiled code, and code that could self compile and optimize itself.
They should have been much more radical instead and designed for massively parallel systems based on a RISC design with minimal branch prediction. So even if the processors weren't running the more efficient code a developer could at least attack a problem with the brute force of hundreds of threads at the same time. More or less they should have aimed for something along the lines of the cell processor. Another current story here on Slashdot is how how the US Air Force took 1700 PS3's and turned them into a computer that qualifies in the top 40 for supercomputers.
Seriously, revolts starting in one nation after the other... China has a modern military and nuclear weapons. If an armed revolt started in that country right now it would be wholesale slaughter. They wouldn't hesitate to use nuclear weapons and sacrifice a billion people. A dozen neutron bombs and thirty years later the government would have a population small enough to manage. So let them censor. If china started a civil war the world economy would tank. Food and fuel prices would soar as people started hording worldwide. The poorer nations would experience mass starvation and malnutrition. And hungry people are angry people and that would only mean more violence, so more civil wars between the haves and the have nots. The world would fall apart. So for the time being I say let china have it's censorship. China is doomsday bomb you don't want to kick until you've defused it.
Apple is now the publisher du jour. The old publishing industry being taken over by the new. Can't say we didn't tell them... The old publishers wanted to keep their paradigm... and now they will go out of business. But I think this will go beyond apple. I don't like apple, never have, never will but I have always recommend their products for those that are looking for a more consumer experience rather than a do for yourself one...
I think in the end the writers that do well will get together and form a publishing co-op. No reason they couldn't for an online business model. They will continue to sell content to apple and other locked markets but apple won't keep a monopoly.
Apple has done what Microsoft tried to do for years. Window CE was on the first smart phone I ever saw, long before I ever heard of the iPhone. Microsoft was playing with tablets back in the days of windows 95. Creative Labs came out with the first digital music players (no real OS involved so MS didn't care.) What Steve Jobs and his team did was package a complete experience just like game console systems. So no chicken and egg dilemma. They were one of the few companies that was large enough and had the capital connections to create and market a complete experience and have brand recognition to be able to sell it.
Apple won't be able to hold onto the market with their system lock ins but so far they have a track record of selling gadgets to the public that the rest of the industry has failed at. Apple keeps inventing new markets. So what will their next killer product be? Maybe VR headsets?
Slashdot Mirror
the wiring of aircraft can't be gutted and replaced with proper shielded wiring... why it isn't all digital with checksums.. This is 1970's technology at the latest. Or wait maybe we could upgrade to 1980 tech such as fiber optics...
Thank you very much.
If it's important then people have to stand up to government and let them know. It's right there in the declaration of independence. Rights which are earned only by demanding them and willing to sacrifice for. The US Federal Government is mandated to create a national currency. It's about time we had an electronic version. The only way we are going to get an anonymous monetary system is by a national movement. All the credit card companies are making so much money they are and will continue to lobby against it.
And it is a very tough sell. How can you sell a system that makes black markets possible? How do you sell black markets? For anyone to be able to buy and sell weapons, drugs and other contraband, and to bribe, or hire another to kill? I doubt US citizens have any fight in them or the wisdom to protect the right to be corrupt. And credit companies will continue to make money while the US currency loses all credibility. I truly believe there will be a monetary coup where people will choose to bank in diversified international monetary funds, all very automatic. It is virtually impossible for the US government anymore to control money like they did way back in the day trying to outlaw gold and silver. In this day and age to do the equivalent would be to ban the stock market and or to require government approval of international stock and bond trades. Simply not possible.
For an international currency the world will demand privacy because countries will never trust one another and people of other countries know better than to trust their government or any other government.
Not that it really matters any more. I doubt even the supreme court bothers to read the constitution or declaration of independence anymore.
People have undeniable human rights/liberties. And it doesn't matter if you are a citizen or not most of the time. If you are here legally or not.
The fourth amendment is very simple. It provides simple oversight, a paper trail and accountability. What is so difficult with getting rubber stamps? A judge in this manor represents little better than a notary.
If your security is even modest as far as passwords there is no need to worry. More sophisticated attacks using coordinated bot nets are the really scary thing but can be countered by limiting the number of login attempts a second/minute. But it's all just extended dictionary attacks. Only someone really dedicated does brute force. This is the equivalent of someone going through a parking lot and checking to see if anyone left their door unlocked and or keys inside their car. If you can just change the port used for ftp, it cuts it down by 99 percent.
The problem is the bandwidth. You have to pay for it anyway. Even if your server doesn't acknowledge it. Someone really dedicated using a bot net can easily give you overage charges.
(whispers... police here....)
Ok boys, break the door down....
It is time to finally resolve the question of mail order businesses. It affects not only taxes but consumer rights. The most logical position is that the customer is going to the business, not the other way around. An online business just illustrates the absurdity of regulating from the point of a customers location. Simply put it's absurd that a business need to know and comply with the local laws of every location on the planet. Even with computers it's a monumental task and it only creates a huge barrier of entry for small businesses. It can easily be said that when we pay for shipping and handling we are paying for a proxy to purchase and ship an item on our behalf. And such a simple thing as buying a $10 ash trey should not require a full power of attorney.
I believe state sales tax laws were written in a broad way to imply that their citizens are responsible for paying sales tax even when they are out of state even though that is clearly interstate commerce and the province of the federal government. The question at hand is jurisdiction. You either decide that the transactions take place at the point of sale or find justification to promote them to international much like ships at sea and require them to register a regulatory location.
The states should lose no matter how it happens. But the states only care about getting money, not principles. So their best tactic is to generate more income though income taxes or persuade the federal government to allow interstate import taxes.
But transactions at stores should be rounded by law. The time it takes to count change is very relevant. Items should still be priced to the penny but it's only the final bill that should be rounded and only if your paying cash. Stores should be required to accept pennies, but stop giving them out.
First of all I have to admit up front I haven't fully studied it. But I think I get the idea. You create a virtual resource by computation and trade in it.
Slight problem is that it doesn't have a natural value/use unlike precious metals. Second there is the possibility of a mathematics breakthrough. A quantum computer would crash the economy only to have it restart with a different algorithm. So it only works best as an intermediate transactional denomination and the place to catch people is when they try to convert it which they will.
What about fractional coins? It doesn't seem like it would scale correctly if it actually caught on.
Last I can see market fragmentation of Bitcoin though clones with slightly different rules and methodologies.
I don't want to think about the electrical energy being burned in computation to generate these virtual coins...
Good enough for gambling though.
It just depends on if they are effectively using it or it's just sitting there. Two is a minimum for me. I stipulate in my contract my exact system requirements and hardware update schedule. Everyone loves my hand me downs. If they balk without batting an eye I tell them I will provide my own hardware and my salary gets padded but it remains my own property and isn't subject to their jurisdiction so I can bring in stuff and take it away as I feel fit (you don't abuse the privilege.) I'm not a rookie, I know what it takes for me to be productive and I will name name brand stuff (such as a Thinkpad for a laptop, triple or quadruple the price of a cheapie) when I feel justified. If a company's steeling a second generic monitor from a developer and your wondering if he's just being whinny then I will definitely never work for you. Just the time it takes to discuss it pays for an el cheapo LCD.
On the specific subject, just being able to bring up a browser on another monitor and type an exact error message when you can't copy and paste; I use it a dozen times a day at minimum and it saves 2 minutes each time, so that's 24 minutes out of a work day. To look at code on one screen and the results on another... priceless. To look at your code and have code manuals on another, priceless again.
No alien life would intentionally broadcast it's planets location. They and we will send unmanned probes to interesting places for research. And then we would find a way to leverage the nature of the natural phenomenon to embed a signal. It's not inconceivable that someday we might be able to modulate a sun to transmit a signal on it's light. The place to look for signals is where you would be interested in looking anyway.
Modern nuclear engineering is modern. You guys keep throwing first generation failures at us. Maybe if we actually could build modern plants we could persuade the owners to shut down or replace the old ones.
I did play City of Heroes for life half a year. But the realization is that no matter how much you like a game it's going to die and you won't be able to play it anymore unlike traditional lan games. I will not invest any of my money or invest my time in anything so ephemeral. I do consider games art and like a good book I want to be able to come back to it again 20 years later.
The facts of the raid possibly are relevant but that could easily be a "national security matter" although I would call it a trade secret.
You have to prove to me the relevancy of releasing this dead mans photo. I think it would be bad taste no matter who he was. Photos of the dead have long been thought to be desecration.
What I think the AP could pursue is getting interviews of people involved and facts reveled in private under confidentiality for historical release later. Something like this should remain private no more than ten years.
In the least I'm sure they communicate through caressing each other with sonar but that is a very subtle and private communication. You have to actually be being caressed with the sonar to get the full meaning of it; it might not lend well to listening in. For instance I'm sure they would have a way to do the equivalent of tapping each other on the shoulder and pointing in a direction to look. It would lend itself more readily to a communication of emotion.
It will be interesting if they can learn a human language and grammar adapted to their vocal abilities. It would be the equivalent of teaching great apes sign language but much more natural.
Perhaps oaths of office should be expanded to include morality that might extend into situations like this. It's one thing to be fired in a changing of the guard and go back to work in industry but this sounds too much like an overt payoff. There should be changes to the law that allow business deals like this to be reevaluated.
Epiphany moment. Forget the boxed sets. Let's set it up so that people are permanently buying the content and can burn or record their own on their hard drives and are fully licensed to transfer ownership. That last part is important because it's the difference between illegal downloading and supporting a show. You buy into a show you can watch all the episodes at low quality live on the net. And depending on how much in total you have bought into the show you can download so many full resolution episodes. People casually downloading don't watch full resolution most of the time. Make episodes outrageously cheap like a $10 buy in and $3 a show. That's 10+22*3=$76 dollars an episode. And $15 more for the extras that would be on a boxed set. So call it $90 for a show I actively watch. I call that a deal and being a fan of the show I feel like I'm contributing to it's continuation and I essentially own the boxed set. And if you follow this model you don't necessarily have to conform to TV formats of so many episodes. Also if money falls short you can slow down the release of new content or even speed it up. Slowing it down potentially increases it quality which will bring in more subscription money.
Just require people to identify themselves when they purchase gas and track it nationally. Probably though your national id/drivers license though you probably won't have to actually show it unless your paying cash because you'll just link it to your credit card. No need to track miles and people are rewarded for efficient vehicles. It still only amounts to a gas tax but you'll then be able to tier the tax.
I'm guessing that the real reason for the study is that the writing is on the wall and electric cars are the future so they can't continue to collect highway taxes through gas anymore.
I think a better and simpler system would be requiring employers to pay every for commute time for which the government gets a cut. You are paid a percentage of what you would have been paid for the same amount of time at work. It would motivate businesses to move to areas with closer affordable housing, usable mass transit, and better highways.
Tablets are the convenience platform for reference material. They are the replacements for books. And notice I used the plural because everyone will have more than one. Mobile screens with information that we don't change that often, just keep looking at. I never liked pdf files but finally we have a platform to view them on.
I don't know if including the cellular chips will hold out, More than likely they will become an addon feature since the device is more of a load and go thing and using it around your house or the coffee shop. It's the new form for books! With a gps reciever the devices should have more than enough storage for maps.
With tablets I think it's more than likely we will start seeing airlines having special check ins for large laptops and people using tablets on planes instead. Maybe even having laptop rental at cars rental shops for basic business laptops. I mean do you really need YOUR particular laptop to do word processing or spreadsheets?
Just like the smartphone the tablet is a niche device. It doesn't replace anything, it just fits a particular need. And I think we all will have multiple tablet devices. With wireless charging desktop mats these things are a killer app.
Just maintain the company as small groups of 10-30 people whose customer is Google. Give them regulated autonomy. Give them intensive like monetizing what they produce (a vested interest) backed by contracts so that they willingly give Google their pipe dreams. So what you get is small businesses within Google without quite so much stress concerning financial matters or marketing or patents. It also means if someone thinks up the next killer app they will be proportionately rewarded unlike the guy from apple that convinced apple to market a brand name music player and create the iTunes store. Oh also have a guarantee if Google decides to pass on a groups work they can opt to leave Google and pursue it on their own with Google maintaining a certain stock option if later they pass a revenue mile stone.
It's only logical that in a technological economy that they might be looking for people with a clue. And academia isn't the real world. Just because you get an engineering degree doesn't mean that's where your talent is. For instance chemistry and physics graduates sometimes find out they have a talent for computer programming and for some reason psychology graduates gravitate to business management.
Now if only law schools recruited engineers there might actually be hope for the future.
Seriously all it would an proxy program that reroutes all the XXX domains to a public DNS XXX cache. You really think the online porn industry doesn't have the incentive to get around stuff like this? They could also just make a plugin for browsers that changed all XXX domain to a sub domain of something else that resolves to the same addresses. Wouldn't cost much bandwidth at all.
In all truthfulness it did have some ideas going for it but it should have stayed a pet project. An R&D project but produce enough that the market could play with it in self built systems. In my opinion they should have basically given the processors away to inspire developers for hobby and niche products. They wouldn't have lost as much money and would have had more realistic ambitions for it. They had the fabs and the prototyping equipment already...
The Itanium, a processor designed for programming languages that could provide optimization hints... that could have a concept of L1 cache and manipulate it and be able to provide feedback to the processor when it could do better branch prediction than the processor. Radical concept, only problem was you HAVE TO code to each processor model specifically. Caches changed and the processor logic changed with each revision. That's why they would have made better embedded processors. The generic systems that would benefit the most would be systems with source code you could compile right for the machine, and dynamically compiled code, and code that could self compile and optimize itself.
They should have been much more radical instead and designed for massively parallel systems based on a RISC design with minimal branch prediction. So even if the processors weren't running the more efficient code a developer could at least attack a problem with the brute force of hundreds of threads at the same time. More or less they should have aimed for something along the lines of the cell processor. Another current story here on Slashdot is how how the US Air Force took 1700 PS3's and turned them into a computer that qualifies in the top 40 for supercomputers.
Seriously, revolts starting in one nation after the other... China has a modern military and nuclear weapons. If an armed revolt started in that country right now it would be wholesale slaughter. They wouldn't hesitate to use nuclear weapons and sacrifice a billion people. A dozen neutron bombs and thirty years later the government would have a population small enough to manage. So let them censor. If china started a civil war the world economy would tank. Food and fuel prices would soar as people started hording worldwide. The poorer nations would experience mass starvation and malnutrition. And hungry people are angry people and that would only mean more violence, so more civil wars between the haves and the have nots. The world would fall apart. So for the time being I say let china have it's censorship. China is doomsday bomb you don't want to kick until you've defused it.
Apple is now the publisher du jour. The old publishing industry being taken over by the new. Can't say we didn't tell them... The old publishers wanted to keep their paradigm... and now they will go out of business. But I think this will go beyond apple. I don't like apple, never have, never will but I have always recommend their products for those that are looking for a more consumer experience rather than a do for yourself one...
I think in the end the writers that do well will get together and form a publishing co-op. No reason they couldn't for an online business model. They will continue to sell content to apple and other locked markets but apple won't keep a monopoly.
Apple has done what Microsoft tried to do for years. Window CE was on the first smart phone I ever saw, long before I ever heard of the iPhone. Microsoft was playing with tablets back in the days of windows 95. Creative Labs came out with the first digital music players (no real OS involved so MS didn't care.) What Steve Jobs and his team did was package a complete experience just like game console systems. So no chicken and egg dilemma. They were one of the few companies that was large enough and had the capital connections to create and market a complete experience and have brand recognition to be able to sell it.
Apple won't be able to hold onto the market with their system lock ins but so far they have a track record of selling gadgets to the public that the rest of the industry has failed at. Apple keeps inventing new markets. So what will their next killer product be? Maybe VR headsets?