You know what's even scarier? Some day, some company might start issuing little plastic cards that could be used instead of money. It would be like buying things on credit. And if you lost the card, it would just be "your word against the computer's"...
Oh, wait...
Well, ok, here's another scary utopia scenario: customers deposit their money in some large institution, where it is stored electronically. Individuals could have huge fortunes, but no cash to speak of...
Oh, wait...
Hmm... these computer things could have more uses than I thought!
according to this article, IBM made 7.71 billion off of computers, version 7.55 billion off of services. It's worth noting that the current economic slump has drastically shaped these numbers... last year computers was 8.75 billion. Software was around 3 billion or so.
So the point still stands. IBM is not a software company in the same sense that Microsoft and Blizzard are software companies. IBM is a "solution provider" (yes, I know some people from IBM.) The bottom line is that they sell big iron to big organizations. Service comes as part of the package... at least theoretically. IBM would probably be just as well off without their software divisions, or even better.
Services and software are not the same thing. Get it? I know the party line is to hate the software companies, but I actually pity them. What tangible assets do the smaller ones have to fall back on in the current economic climate?
...it should (*not*)^2 corrupt any firmware or do anything that can't be cured by a cold reboot... Not^2.... Not not? So it *should* corrupt the firmware? Seriously, though, you're right... this is just crappy firmware. Either that or somebody is deliberately leaving security holes. I don't know which is worse. Btw... to all the idiots who compare physical failures to firmware failures... grow a brain. It is completely possible to make firmware immune to unintentional rewriting. It is not possible to make the drive proof against all physical attacks. So next time I buy a drive, I'll think twice about Pioneer!
First of all, these black boxes would only be examined after the accident. They are not "tools of the police state" transmitting your position, or anything like that. And even if they were, what government agency has the ability to monitor the hundreds of millions of cars in the world? If you think that the FBI knows, or cares, about how often you whack off every day, you should have your head examined.
We know why crashes happen, two cars hit each other. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! That's funny, I thought crashes happened because idiots like you were on the road.
Why don't you A) learn something about physics, mathematics, mechanical engineering, statistics, and materials science or B) Shut the HELL up!
Seriously, though, more accurate data about car crashes helps everyone. It helps companies design safer cars. It helps consumers find out more about safe driving.
You should expect to see overall insurance rates go down if cars become safer, simply because the insurance companies will have fewer "payouts." Of course, if you enjoy driving dangerously unsafe cars, you may be disappointed to see your rates go up relative to people driving safe cars.
P.S. Yes, I know human errors cause many crashes, and sometimes you can't do anything about them. The point still stands: having more information about how crashes happen can only lead to safer driving.
Gaming sucks, slower on 3D than 98, when real distance is involved. When keyboard and mouse is used for movements, movements lock by 80% of the games I played. XP is slower than 98, and it's no surprise that you feel this when running speed-critical apps (games?). But it's also a lot more stable. As for "keyboard and mouse movements locking," I have no idea what you're talking about. My brothers use XP for gaming all the time, and never had any problems. Maybe you need to turn off "Easy Access," the control panel that pops up when you press the shift key too many times. (It's meant to help disabled people... a market linux developers have never cared about.)
Don't play no more. Killed my will to play. Killed your will to spell, as well. Or did that go out the window when personal hygene croaked?
Printing sucks. Kerning of fonts is not right. Font weight is not symetric to screen, L has thiner lines than M and so on and on. I've never had this problem. I suspect you configured your printer or fonts incorrectly.
Desktop is slow and ughly. It was already, but XP done really succesful job to slow down to level when you need new faster computer. (I would bought it but that was one of the fastest notebooks on the market) You can change the desktop to look like the 98 desktop, if it bothers you. Or you can change it to look like X... oh wait, there's no way to keep applications from redrawing the screen correctly, so it still won't look like X. (If you've used X, you will know what I mean.) Next time, you can avoid writing paragraphs like this by just saying "XP is slow." We'll know what you mean.
Documents made on 98 or 2000 opened in XP just aren't the same on XP. Font kerning trouble. I just moved my documents to linux and open office. even though I've been unfortunatelly bought a licence for Office 2000, after that I found out Open Office is working well. I think I can decode this, despite your inability to match tenses or spell. You never got around to fixing the font/printer problem which you mentioned earlier. You opened Office documents ("Documents made on 98), and they displayed incorrectly/printed incorrectly (Your "writing" isn't very clear on this point.)
Explorer is freezing while loading pages (can moe other windows, not the one that loads). I'm not too sure what you're referring to here. Maybe you should throw out the 486 and buy a Real Computer.
System not usable without other software. You're really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel here, I see. Try downloading some shareware/open source software. Or did you forget that most of the software available for linux is available for XP? Overall, there's just something very funny about arguing that they're aren't enough applications for windows. LOL!
Outlook is a virus nest. Good thing I don't use outlook. Neither should you.
Networking is bad, also lack of protocols. Thanks for the in-depth analysis. I'm sure you'll be able to add more once you get into high school. Overall, XP and win2k networking is a lot easier to configure than 98 networking. You might have to learn some new ways to get r00t, though.
No real support from Microsoft side. Knowledge base sucks. Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Or have you forgotten just how many poorly documented linux projects are floating around? Sorry kiddo, open source has some major advantages, but customer support is not one of them.
System still freezes too much. XP has never frozen on me, except when I did things like remove a CD while it was being read.
Too expensive. Too fucked up license. Too closed. Now we're actually come to the end of your "objective" reasons. The only reasons left are reasons you'd be ashamed to confess, like "linux makes me feel smart" (except you'd probably misspell it.)
Must admit though, MICROSOFT SOLITAIRE RULES Had enough?? I can add some more Please keep it coming. I could use a few more laughs.
Why is tipical linux user hippy? There's no need to pull hair when system freezes. This just doesn't happen' Maybe El Tipico linux user would be "hippier" if idiots like you didn't give them a bad name.
Let me be honest as well, then. It is human nature for government bureaucracies to be sluggish, inhumane, and extremely corruptible. Why should the government of the good old US of A be any different? Your assumption that money would be better off in the hands of the government than in the hands of the people who made it is ridiculous.
A lot of government money ends up spent on socially destructive programs like welfare, or given out in "pork-barrel" contracts in order to strengthen some politico's bargaining position. And a lot of the government programs that are worthwhile, like NASA, get almost nothing.
So think before you call for bigger government. Most of the "big" governments of the twentieth century have not been nice places to live... or die, as the case may be.
Wash the foam out of your mouth, and get something done about that bad case of rabies. The vast majority of businesses are decent and law-abiding. There's simply no incentive for them to hurt you. Most of them are staffed with people very like yourself... well, at least physically, if not mentally.
The worst crimes of this century have all been committed by governments. And the worst crimes of all were committed by leaders who seized absolute power, in the name of the people. The world of business may seem petty and cheap to a would-be intellectual like you, but it should be run by businessmen, not by insane politicos. When government takes over businesses "in the name of the people," that distinction breaks down. When the distinction between business and government breaks down, that is corruption.
You can complain all you want about inequality of wealth, but it's not the fault of capitalism. It's inherent in the human species. Didn't we go over all this in the 20th century? Experience is a harsh teacher, but fools will have no other.
That's not entirely true. The soviets had numerous mainframes in the 60s and onward. They missed out on the silicon revolution, primarily due to the senility of the Russian economy.
That being said, computer-aided design of weapons, aircraft, etc. was a major advantage that the west had in the late 70s and 80s.
No. I'm sorry. Nukes are still the ultimate weapon. Let's review.
Mind Control: A fantasy pure and simple. Maybe we have new interrogation drugs, but that's hardly the same thing.
Weapons which destroy all the buildings in an area: I'm not sure what you're talking about here (guided missiles?) but you should understand that when a building comes down, the people inside tend to die.
Weapons to destroy electronics: This is something which actually exists. However, it still isn't as useful as you might think. Most of the countries that have electronics also have nuclear weapons. So, using this weapon is similar to firing a spitball at someone who is holding a gun to your head. Not a smart move. NOTE: The EMF from a nuclear bomb would burn out most electronics.
Germ warfare: Yes, biological weapons were researched during the cold war. Many of them are extremely deadly. But biological weapons are still unreliable and hard to distribute. The only real use of these weapons would seem to be a stealth attack. But nukes can also be used stealthily... and that's the scariest part. NOTE: Keep in mind that there will always be a few people who survive any biological attack, either because they are immune, or because they are not exposed to the biological agent.
Nuclear weapons can do alot of damage but most of the damage is done to the enviornment and to the innocent people, not so much damage is done to the actual military enemy we'd be fighting if they have bunkers and caves and tunnels and bomb shelters. First of all, in case you haven't noticed, armies tend to need things like food, water, and weaponry, none of which can be produced in large quantities if the CITY GOT NUKED. Secondly, you vastly overestimate the efficacity of bomb shelters. No bomb shelter, cave, or tunnel we have can survive a direct hit by a modern nuclear bomb. Period. We also don't have bomb shelters large enough to contain the entire military.
Are you starting to see? Has the light come on yet? The sun could dawn tomorrow on a world with no afghanistan at all. Or no Russia, or no north america. We have enough nukes to sterilize the earth. You don't need to fantasize about viruses, or bacteria, or smart bombs. The ultimate weapon is already here.
By the way, your writing style reminds me of Gene Ray. Conjugate verbs bad. TIME CUBE good. Ook!
When the first atomic bomb was used, few people had any idea of how destructive it would be. The full potential of nuclear weapons only became evident after WWII. When the Allies told Stalin about the bomb, he responded with indifference, at least initially. President Truman authorized its use without much debate. He believed, and probably rightly so, that it would save lives by shortening the war.
It's easy to see how they could have underestimated "The Bomb." The first atomic bomb wasn't an H-Bomb, or a cluster bomb. It wasn't even housed in a missile. More people died in the firebombing of Dresden than at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The significance of nuclear weapons only became clear during the cold war, when both sides created massive stockpiles of bombs. The world could have ended then, at least for the U.S. and Russia. Whether or not humanity would have survived in some form is an open question.
So think before you condemn the U.S. for inventing the atomic bomb. Almost every country involved in WWII had a nuclear weapons program. America just happened to get there first. Unfortunately, we cannot unilaterally disarm now, although we should probably reduce the size of our stockpile.
In fact, from what I can tell, America is not "trigger-happy" at all. The last war, against Afghanistan, was fought with almost no loss of life on either side.
Re:Sorta Phil's fault
on
How to Save PGP
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Grow up.
The PGP algorithm was not Phil Zimmerman's to sell. He basically made a freeware version of a popular commercial program, using their proprietary algorithm, and spread it all over the internet. He did this because believed that people should be able to avoid government surveillance on the internet. Whether or not you agree with him (I do), "encryption for the masses" is now a reality.
I would be willing to guess that Phil was more afraid of government agencies like the CIA, KGB, and FBI, than of Microsoft and Cisco. It is only slashdot readers who can't understand the difference between a corporation, which can take away your money or your job, and a government, which can take away your life or your freedom. Having to pay $1 extra on a DVD is not oppression. It may be unfair. It may be something you should write to your congressman about. But it is not opression. Oppresssion is being shot because you supported the wrong political candidate, like in the U.S.S.R. under Stalin.
Hmm... you mean there are independent entities, like corporations, that operate outside of the state? Destroy them! Stalin's Russia must be our model in our march towards "freedom."
What's wrong with the electoral college? The current system allows many regions of the U.S. to be represented, instead of just the big cities.
People usually vote based on how their parents or friends vote. The system will never be, "One person, one vote," but always "One subcommunity of people, one block of votes." Why should we give the urban communities, which tend to be larger, an exclusive monopoly on the vote? Before you start earnestly explaining to me why the current system won't work, take into account the fact that the US's democracy has proven itself much more stable than many other republics.
The point that I was trying to make is that the United States is not that bad compared to other countries. We have freedom of speech, assembly, and the press (not to mention adequate food and water.)
If you think that the United States could be better, you're probably right. If you think that the DMCA is the worst law in the world, you're definitely wrong. And if you think, as the parent of the thread seemed to suggest, that Russia or China are better places to live than here, you're wrong again.
8 bits is more than enough for standard english text. Last time I checked, the english alphabet didn't have tens of thousands of characters. You are thinking of something else.
Slashdot Mirror
You know what's even scarier? Some day, some company might start issuing little plastic cards that could be used instead of money. It would be like buying things on credit. And if you lost the card, it would just be "your word against the computer's"...
Oh, wait...
Well, ok, here's another scary utopia scenario: customers deposit their money in some large institution, where it is stored electronically. Individuals could have huge fortunes, but no cash to speak of...
Oh, wait...
Hmm... these computer things could have more uses than I thought!
So the point still stands. IBM is not a software company in the same sense that Microsoft and Blizzard are software companies. IBM is a "solution provider" (yes, I know some people from IBM.) The bottom line is that they sell big iron to big organizations. Service comes as part of the package... at least theoretically. IBM would probably be just as well off without their software divisions, or even better.
Services and software are not the same thing. Get it? I know the party line is to hate the software companies, but I actually pity them. What tangible assets do the smaller ones have to fall back on in the current economic climate?
I was talking about the signalling.
...it should (*not*)^2 corrupt any firmware or do anything that can't be cured by a cold reboot...
Not^2.... Not not? So it *should* corrupt the firmware?
Seriously, though, you're right... this is just crappy firmware. Either that or somebody is deliberately leaving security holes. I don't know which is worse.
Btw... to all the idiots who compare physical failures to firmware failures... grow a brain. It is completely possible to make firmware immune to unintentional rewriting. It is not possible to make the drive proof against all physical attacks. So next time I buy a drive, I'll think twice about Pioneer!
You can buy a z80 for around a dollar.
(yes, I'm serious...)
It was this very disdain for programming that led them to employ microsoft to write DOS.
The speed of the user's modem is not necessarily the same as the physical speed of a POTS line.
A DSL line is not set up the same way as a POTS line.
No. You are an idiot.
First of all, these black boxes would only be examined after the accident. They are not "tools of the police state" transmitting your position, or anything like that. And even if they were, what government agency has the ability to monitor the hundreds of millions of cars in the world? If you think that the FBI knows, or cares, about how often you whack off every day, you should have your head examined.
We know why crashes happen, two cars hit each other.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! That's funny, I thought crashes happened because idiots like you were on the road.
Why don't you
A) learn something about physics, mathematics, mechanical engineering, statistics, and materials science
or
B) Shut the HELL up!
Seriously, though, more accurate data about car crashes helps everyone. It helps companies design safer cars. It helps consumers find out more about safe driving.
You should expect to see overall insurance rates go down if cars become safer, simply because the insurance companies will have fewer "payouts." Of course, if you enjoy driving dangerously unsafe cars, you may be disappointed to see your rates go up relative to people driving safe cars.
P.S. Yes, I know human errors cause many crashes, and sometimes you can't do anything about them. The point still stands: having more information about how crashes happen can only lead to safer driving.
Gaming sucks, slower on 3D than 98, when real distance is involved. When keyboard and mouse is used for movements, movements lock by 80% of the games I played.
XP is slower than 98, and it's no surprise that you feel this when running speed-critical apps (games?). But it's also a lot more stable. As for "keyboard and mouse movements locking," I have no idea what you're talking about. My brothers use XP for gaming all the time, and never had any problems. Maybe you need to turn off "Easy Access," the control panel that pops up when you press the shift key too many times. (It's meant to help disabled people... a market linux developers have never cared about.)
Don't play no more. Killed my will to play.
Killed your will to spell, as well. Or did that go out the window when personal hygene croaked?
Printing sucks. Kerning of fonts is not right. Font weight is not symetric to screen, L has thiner lines than M and so on and on.
I've never had this problem. I suspect you configured your printer or fonts incorrectly.
Desktop is slow and ughly. It was already, but XP done really succesful job to slow down to level when you need new faster computer. (I would bought it but that was one of the fastest notebooks on the market)
You can change the desktop to look like the 98 desktop, if it bothers you. Or you can change it to look like X... oh wait, there's no way to keep applications from redrawing the screen correctly, so it still won't look like X. (If you've used X, you will know what I mean.) Next time, you can avoid writing paragraphs like this by just saying "XP is slow." We'll know what you mean.
Documents made on 98 or 2000 opened in XP just aren't the same on XP. Font kerning trouble. I just moved my documents to linux and open office. even though I've been unfortunatelly bought a licence for Office 2000, after that I found out Open Office is working well.
I think I can decode this, despite your inability to match tenses or spell. You never got around to fixing the font/printer problem which you mentioned earlier. You opened Office documents ("Documents made on 98), and they displayed incorrectly/printed incorrectly (Your "writing" isn't very clear on this point.)
Explorer is freezing while loading pages (can moe other windows, not the one that loads).
I'm not too sure what you're referring to here. Maybe you should throw out the 486 and buy a Real Computer.
System not usable without other software.
You're really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel here, I see. Try downloading some shareware/open source software. Or did you forget that most of the software available for linux is available for XP? Overall, there's just something very funny about arguing that they're aren't enough applications for windows. LOL!
Outlook is a virus nest.
Good thing I don't use outlook. Neither should you.
Networking is bad, also lack of protocols.
Thanks for the in-depth analysis. I'm sure you'll be able to add more once you get into high school. Overall, XP and win2k networking is a lot easier to configure than 98 networking. You might have to learn some new ways to get r00t, though.
No real support from Microsoft side. Knowledge base sucks.
Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Or have you forgotten just how many poorly documented linux projects are floating around? Sorry kiddo, open source has some major advantages, but customer support is not one of them.
System still freezes too much.
XP has never frozen on me, except when I did things like remove a CD while it was being read.
Too expensive.
Too fucked up license.
Too closed.
Now we're actually come to the end of your "objective" reasons. The only reasons left are reasons you'd be ashamed to confess, like "linux makes me feel smart" (except you'd probably misspell it.)
Must admit though, MICROSOFT SOLITAIRE RULES
Had enough?? I can add some more
Please keep it coming. I could use a few more laughs.
Why is tipical linux user hippy? There's no need to pull hair when system freezes. This just doesn't happen'
Maybe El Tipico linux user would be "hippier" if idiots like you didn't give them a bad name.
understand you not speech mine? Electron probability mass function finding quantum receive construct indicates packet dependency allows.
Let me be honest as well, then. It is human nature for government bureaucracies to be sluggish, inhumane, and extremely corruptible. Why should the government of the good old US of A be any different? Your assumption that money would be better off in the hands of the government than in the hands of the people who made it is ridiculous.
A lot of government money ends up spent on socially destructive programs like welfare, or given out in "pork-barrel" contracts in order to strengthen some politico's bargaining position. And a lot of the government programs that are worthwhile, like NASA, get almost nothing.
So think before you call for bigger government. Most of the "big" governments of the twentieth century have not been nice places to live... or die, as the case may be.
Apple was not trying to rewrite the entire BSD/Mach kernel.
um... you can disable "boot from floppy."
Unless you have a mac.
hahahaha.... where did you do "a lot of programming in machine language?"
Assembler and machine languages are the same, except for some "prettification" by the assembler. Get with the program, kiddo.
Wash the foam out of your mouth, and get something done about that bad case of rabies. The vast majority of businesses are decent and law-abiding. There's simply no incentive for them to hurt you. Most of them are staffed with people very like yourself... well, at least physically, if not mentally.
The worst crimes of this century have all been committed by governments. And the worst crimes of all were committed by leaders who seized absolute power, in the name of the people. The world of business may seem petty and cheap to a would-be intellectual like you, but it should be run by businessmen, not by insane politicos. When government takes over businesses "in the name of the people," that distinction breaks down. When the distinction between business and government breaks down, that is corruption.
You can complain all you want about inequality of wealth, but it's not the fault of capitalism. It's inherent in the human species. Didn't we go over all this in the 20th century? Experience is a harsh teacher, but fools will have no other.
What "you all know" is wrong. Gates coded the original basic Microsoft sold for the Altair 8080, and possibly some things after that.
That's not entirely true. The soviets had numerous mainframes in the 60s and onward. They missed out on the silicon revolution, primarily due to the senility of the Russian economy.
That being said, computer-aided design of weapons, aircraft, etc. was a major advantage that the west had in the late 70s and 80s.
No. I'm sorry. Nukes are still the ultimate weapon. Let's review.
Mind Control: A fantasy pure and simple. Maybe we have new interrogation drugs, but that's hardly the same thing.
Weapons which destroy all the buildings in an area: I'm not sure what you're talking about here (guided missiles?) but you should understand that when a building comes down, the people inside tend to die.
Weapons to destroy electronics: This is something which actually exists. However, it still isn't as useful as you might think. Most of the countries that have electronics also have nuclear weapons. So, using this weapon is similar to firing a spitball at someone who is holding a gun to your head. Not a smart move. NOTE: The EMF from a nuclear bomb would burn out most electronics.
Germ warfare: Yes, biological weapons were researched during the cold war. Many of them are extremely deadly. But biological weapons are still unreliable and hard to distribute. The only real use of these weapons would seem to be a stealth attack. But nukes can also be used stealthily... and that's the scariest part. NOTE: Keep in mind that there will always be a few people who survive any biological attack, either because they are immune, or because they are not exposed to the biological agent.
Nuclear weapons can do alot of damage but most of the damage is done to the enviornment and to the innocent people, not so much damage is done to the actual military enemy we'd be fighting if they have bunkers and caves and tunnels and bomb shelters.
First of all, in case you haven't noticed, armies tend to need things like food, water, and weaponry, none of which can be produced in large quantities if the CITY GOT NUKED. Secondly, you vastly overestimate the efficacity of bomb shelters. No bomb shelter, cave, or tunnel we have can survive a direct hit by a modern nuclear bomb. Period. We also don't have bomb shelters large enough to contain the entire military.
Are you starting to see? Has the light come on yet? The sun could dawn tomorrow on a world with no afghanistan at all. Or no Russia, or no north america. We have enough nukes to sterilize the earth. You don't need to fantasize about viruses, or bacteria, or smart bombs. The ultimate weapon is already here.
By the way, your writing style reminds me of Gene Ray. Conjugate verbs bad. TIME CUBE good. Ook!
No, the point doesn't stand.
When the first atomic bomb was used, few people had any idea of how destructive it would be. The full potential of nuclear weapons only became evident after WWII. When the Allies told Stalin about the bomb, he responded with indifference, at least initially. President Truman authorized its use without much debate. He believed, and probably rightly so, that it would save lives by shortening the war.
It's easy to see how they could have underestimated "The Bomb." The first atomic bomb wasn't an H-Bomb, or a cluster bomb. It wasn't even housed in a missile. More people died in the firebombing of Dresden than at Hiroshima or Nagasaki. The significance of nuclear weapons only became clear during the cold war, when both sides created massive stockpiles of bombs. The world could have ended then, at least for the U.S. and Russia. Whether or not humanity would have survived in some form is an open question.
So think before you condemn the U.S. for inventing the atomic bomb. Almost every country involved in WWII had a nuclear weapons program. America just happened to get there first. Unfortunately, we cannot unilaterally disarm now, although we should probably reduce the size of our stockpile.
In fact, from what I can tell, America is not "trigger-happy" at all. The last war, against Afghanistan, was fought with almost no loss of life on either side.
Grow up.
The PGP algorithm was not Phil Zimmerman's to sell. He basically made a freeware version of a popular commercial program, using their proprietary algorithm, and spread it all over the internet. He did this because believed that people should be able to avoid government surveillance on the internet. Whether or not you agree with him (I do), "encryption for the masses" is now a reality.
I would be willing to guess that Phil was more afraid of government agencies like the CIA, KGB, and FBI, than of Microsoft and Cisco. It is only slashdot readers who can't understand the difference between a corporation, which can take away your money or your job, and a government, which can take away your life or your freedom. Having to pay $1 extra on a DVD is not oppression. It may be unfair. It may be something you should write to your congressman about. But it is not opression. Oppresssion is being shot because you supported the wrong political candidate, like in the U.S.S.R. under Stalin.
Hmm... you mean there are independent entities, like corporations, that operate outside of the state? Destroy them! Stalin's Russia must be our model in our march towards "freedom."
What's wrong with the electoral college? The current system allows many regions of the U.S. to be represented, instead of just the big cities.
People usually vote based on how their parents or friends vote. The system will never be, "One person, one vote," but always "One subcommunity of people, one block of votes." Why should we give the urban communities, which tend to be larger, an exclusive monopoly on the vote? Before you start earnestly explaining to me why the current system won't work, take into account the fact that the US's democracy has proven itself much more stable than many other republics.
A double integral defines that area. So you can either memorize the formula (a * b) or rederive it every time.
The point that I was trying to make is that the United States is not that bad compared to other countries. We have freedom of speech, assembly, and the press (not to mention adequate food and water.)
If you think that the United States could be better, you're probably right. If you think that the DMCA is the worst law in the world, you're definitely wrong. And if you think, as the parent of the thread seemed to suggest, that Russia or China are better places to live than here, you're wrong again.
8 bits is more than enough for standard english text.
Last time I checked, the english alphabet didn't have tens of thousands of characters. You are thinking of something else.
Read first, flame later.