You're right. But you're also missing that Amazon, being the biggest player in the industry, has near-monopoly power. And if they are abusing that power to censor material, then they are abusing that monopoly power, which is also illegal (or at least was once illegal in the USA... who knows anymore, since Congress is up to the highest bidder?)
Really? And do I have to develop my own e-book reader so that Amazon isn't quietly deleting anything that might be on the kindle?
I suppose you're all for Sony removing the "Other OS" feature THAT THEY SOLD AS A FEATURE on the Playstation 3? After all, if you don't like it, develop your own gaming box. Huh, nice solution that.
You don't seem to understand. When our liberties are threatened, we're all damaged. It always starts with the weakest links in society, the ones that are "OK" to oppress, like the Jews were. Then once you've taken care of that issue, you move on to bigger and bigger targets. And then pretty soon, you've sent civilization backwards 100 years.
I suppose next they are going to remove any book with the word "shit" in the title, which of course means banning all books about cooking with Shiitake Mushrooms. If you're all for removing information from the people, then you have no one to blame but yourself when you wonder why America is the most ignorant and stupid nation on the planet.
I wonder if the Romans truly understood that the Empire was doomed when the Visigoths came over the wall. Chances are that some of them were as dumb as you are, and believed that Rome would continue for eternity. America doesn't have long left.
China, India, and even some African nations are coming up fast, pretty soon we're going to have to compete on a level playing field. And the American people aren't up to the task because they think "god" is going to bail them out because they are the chosen people (and they think that because they are a bunch of ignorant twits), then I'm afraid they will be just another page in the history books, assuming those too aren't banned.
Tell you what. I'll fight for my rights. If *you* don't like it, start your own damn country where you can oppress people and deny them liberty. Good luck with that.
Particularly "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" and has confused them with the corporate policy manual.
It's only a matter of time before "Catcher in the Rye" is banned from Kindles -- after all, only serial killers/terrorists read that.
I can't wait until they expand the ban to "anything" the Christian Taliban finds objectionable.... which is pretty much everything. I predict mass kindle burnings as people rebel against it all. Which is bad news for Apple as well, as their closed system pretty much is following Amazon's model of banning anything they don't like.
Ironically, this will be good news for open-source-based tablets with real usb ports and no "app store" that limits what you can and can't load into your tablet.
Either that, or America isn't what it claims to be, and everyone is perfectly happy being oppressed. Hurrah for Big Brother, we love you! I'm moving elsewhere where there really *is* freedom, like, Chad.
If this guy is talking about the coming revolution of sex-bots, count me in! I for one, would be happy to roll over in bed to find a robot. As long as she's cute and does what she's told.
I'm not sure what surprises me more... That companies produce crap like this, or that they expect there's enough of a market for people to buy crap like this.
I mean, the number of people to whom money is no object is a countable number. Furthermore, the larger percentage of people who's wealth is publicly tracked (such as Warren Buffet or Bill Gates) do not invest in expensive throw-away baubles.
Therefore have to assume that items such as these are purchased by people who's wealth is NOT tracked, such as Saudi Princes. And those guys have things that can't be talked about on web pages, such as Slave Girls, Private Armies, and Former Soviet Nuclear Weapons. After all, if you're rich enough, international law doesn't apply to you.
So do these companies make this crap because the profit margin is so obscene that they are willing to cater to these pricks, or is it just big scam, for show, so we *aren't* looking for the Slave Girls, Private Armies and Nuclear Weapons? Or just how much wealth they have that we don't know about?
So, let me get this straight... Mastercard won't let you buy a T-Shirt from Pirate Bay because they are evil haxors, but, I can still use my card to donate hundreds to the Klu Klux Klan? What does that say about Mastercard, or the rest of America for that matter?
How is it that the KKK didn't get branded a terrorist organization right after 9/11 anyhow? Why is it that we support/tolerate homegrown terrorism, such as white supremacy, as long as those guys aren't muslim?
Looks like they are shutting down *anything* that isn't "yahoo" branded. In other words, they are out of Money. Yahoo will be aquired or dead within a year.
Here comes the great purging of the internet. It's like car companies all over again. In 10 years, there will only be the big-three websites left on the internet.
Listen, I could understand if Edison was man of the year for inventing the light-bulb... But, if twenty years later, everyone had forgotten about it, and then suddenly, some other dude re-invents the lgihtbulb, and is made "man of the year", then TIME clearly has no actual journalists left and their ability to do in-depth analysis is out the window.
And this is the case with Zuckerberg. All he has done is re-package the BBS into a web-based app. The back-end to Facebook could be Citadel, for all we know. Hell, Softarc's "First-Class" BBS/groupware product had a web-based front end before there was a Facebook. It's all been done before, it's just that this time around, this particular idiot was in the right place at the right time. He got rich, and thousands of other Sysops didn't.
Heck, for a while it appeared that Myspace was going to trounce Facebook. I'd say, rather than make Zuckerberg "man of the year" make Zuckerberg's PR Agent "Man of the Year" -- *That's* the guy that worked harder than anyone.
Really? Someone found insightful, his review of a film he never saw?
Really? Someone found insightful, his interpretation of 9/11 events that the president didn't need to be involved?
Really? Someone found insightful, that the 7 minutes he spent reading "my pet goat" he could have been giving executive decisions (assuming he had the cognitive capability of doing so), getting military aircraft airborne, and basically *actually running things* instead of looking like a deer caught in headlights?
Really? Someone found insightful that the poster hasn't offered a single fact, nor any material to back up *any* of his claims?
I had a friend that died from AIDS. Several friends, in fact. The fact that the money that could be going into research for a cure or treatment is instead going into this useless security theater that isn't going to stop anyone, and instead will just get more of us killed on the highways as we opt to travel by car instead, sickens me.
Yes, that was Bin Laden's plan all along. Right now, in a cave someplace is a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished". He might even be wearing Bush's flight suit too.
And, how many people are the TSA murdering each year by essentially forcing them to go by car and be killed on the highways, where you have a much higher chance of dying? (Over 40,000 people per year die on the highways, that's the equivalent of having 9/11 happen 13 times per year).
It's worse than that because it's non-consenual. Secondly, as has become with case with minors, *any* nude image has been deemed porno. Heck, wasn't there a story here on Slashdot about a guy convicted of child porn and the images were cartoons?
Here in Puritan American where violence is glorified and sex is shunned, yes, naked==porn.
I doubt the framers of the Constitution could have forseen travel by air -- however, they do indicate that travel between states of the union *is* a right, and at this point, there are states in the union you can't get to in a car -- so travel by air could be argued as a right.
Furthermore, the Constitution doesn't provide you the right to a cell phone either. And more people get killed on our nations highways by people talking on the cell-phones while driving than were killed by any terrorist plot. So, maybe we should ban cell-phones too!
After all, as you said "Rights such as travel all depend upon us staying alive to enjoy those rights."
I'm astounded that these two issues are seperated, and yet, no one looks beyond the surface to see what it's REALLY about... Privacy.
I'm sure the same people calling for Assange to be hanged are the same people that also say "if you've got nothing to hide..." about going through an airport scanner. They want to have that nice cozy feeling that the nanny state is protecting *them*.
So, they don't want to hear about Wikileaks, and they want to be seen naked at the airport *if* they think that'll make them sleep soundly at night.
This is about privacy. And if the average citizen can't expect any at the airport, why the hell should the government think it deserves *any* privacy? When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you.
So Wikileaks and Airport scanners. Two great tastes that taste great together! Too bad the government doesn't get the irony of being so upset about Assange while they strip away our rights. Too bad the media doesn't get it either. These two events are happening at the same time and both are about an expectation of privacy.
Maybe if the government got rid of the scanners, Wikileaks would calm down.
Really? How is it that we are more interested in taking down Wikileaks founder Assange than say... Osama Bin Laden, who *actually* is a terrorist?
Why is it that anyone the USA doesn't like gets branded as a terrorist? Doesn't that worry you? How far away is the day that free speach is labeled a terrorist act?
I mean, seriously -- right now in China, you go to jail for speaking out against the government and we then proclaim that China isn't "free".
But in the "free" USA, if you speak out against the government, Amazon disowns you, the government *wants* to arrest you and your website is taken down. hrrmmmm. While China may be more extreme, the basic policies between the USA and China are not all that different. Which is to say, if you're a rabble-rouser, or you in any way embarass us, we'll take you down.
I am concered that I see posts on slashdot saying that Assange needs to be treated as a traitor. Go after Robert Novack first. If the media were doing its job, we wouldn't need Wikileaks.
Furthermore, this is what Obama PROMISED : "a more transparent government". Instead what we got was a more secretive government. So someone has to do the job if they are not going to.
But yeah, "the media" are a bunch of spineless corporate mouthpieces. Every "anchor" is a former MTV V-Jay, with only entertainment experience and no journalism credentials. And no one is left to do actual, hard-hitting reporting. Walter Cronkite must be so ashamed of what has happened to "the news".
All I can say it "It's about F'ing time." Go Wikileaks Go!
For years, we have had to put up with our privacy and our rights being stolen. Now we even have to appear naked to fly. Our privacy is always under attack, and yet we are told "it's for our own good" either by the governments that assault us, or the corporations that rip us off and sell our personal data to each other.
FINALLY the time has come that governments and corporations are under the same microscope as the average joe. The internet has become the great equalizer. And notice how governments and corporations bristle at the mere thought that *their* privacy is being invaded, while they continue to casually rape us.
Yes, when it's the governments/corporations that have their privacy assailed, "ohhh the guy is a terrorist" "Assage must be imprisoned" "DDoS isn't good enough for him, hanging's too good for him!", etc..., meanwhile, few are DDoS'ing the RIAA, TransUnion, Equifax, et al.
THIS IS OUR REVOLUTION. And it's about time. Grab your pitchforks. Heads must roll.
Seriously; We can avoid scanners and gropers, and America gets the security it wants if we knock out everyone on the plane. The Pilot/Copilot have a seperate O2 supply, but the main cabin is gassed as the plane taxis onto the runway.
Think of the cost savings for airlines: no in-flight movie, no cell phone interference, no TV sets in the backs of headrests, no having to serve Pepsi and Peanuts, no Stewardesses required.
And advantages for you: No screaming babies, no people climbing over you to get to the rest-room, no trouble sleeping during the flight. You arrive rested. When the plane lands, fresh air is pumped in and everyone wakes up.
So the terrorist has no opportunity to light up his underwear, or take over the plane armed with a sharp piece of paper. Air Marshalls no longer required. TSA no longer required.
This plan is even better than the TSAs because the airlines might be able to make money with all the cost-savings. It's just that the Military Industrial Complex doesn't make money, and neither do the well-connected people in D.C. -- which is why this plan will never be implemented.
If the Chinese had waited a few more years, Ford would have *given* them the documents anyhow as part of an offshoring initiative. And what does China hope to gain from these documents? They are going to ignore them anyhow, as each subcontractor cuts a corner or two to maximize profit.
So you wind up with a car with paper-mache quality steel, that folds the passenger compartment upon impact, with airbags that don't work, and the door handle falls off while still at the dealership.
Seriously, have you *seen* those Wildfire or Chery cars? Deathtrap wouldn't even begin the describe them, but the problem is: That's the Chinese way. They do not care about quality or adherence to standards.
While the Japanese followed the American model of the 50's, and built up quality over time, the Chinese are following the American model of the 80's, where everything was crap, and continues to get crappier. Their "innovations" are about how to put cheaper and cheaper substitutes in for what's supposed to be there. I mean, we're talking about a culture that feeds its own people a diet of cardboard and lead if they think they can make a few bucks more from it.
GEOS was a brilliant hack and probably one of the tightest pieces of code ever created. The fact that it provided a true GUI on a "toy" computer was jaw-dropping. The fact that it could do that AND even run applications (Word processing, spreadsheets, Desktop Publishing) gave it Macintosh-like functionality at 1/10th the price -- well, that was simply beyond astounding.
What a lot of people don't know is that the folks that created GEOS, Berkely Softworks, went on to recreate GEOS for the APPLE II, and then later for the PC. Retitled "Geoworks Ensemble", it gave the GUI and related apps to "low end" PC that had been abandoned by Microsoft in their bid to make Windows rule the world.
MS started to make Windows "real" by Version 3 -- but, in order to run it, you needed a 386 or better. GEOWORKS could operate on much lower-end equipment (I believe all you needed was a hard-drive, so even the 8088 CPU was possible). So, you could have the equivalent of Windows without having to buy new hardware.
And remember that a lot of people have already invested $2000 in a 286 and didn't want to give it up right away -- so GEOS got more traction than you'd think. There was also a large contingent of people with early laptops that found GEOS to be just the ticket for a black-and-white only screen and a 20mb HD with maybe 1 MB of RAM (much too small for Windows).
While aiming for the low-end gets you initial sales, aiming for the high-end turned out to be MS's path to the future, and it's been that way ever since. What MS guessed right was that the hardware would catch up with the software, and get cheap enough that you could afford to upgrade every few years.
The Rav4EV's were all crushed by Toyota during the filming of "Who Killed the Electric Car"?
My biggest question is: Who trusts ANY of these car companies who, should the wind blow in a different direction tomorrow, will decide to say "FU" over electric vehicles? A lot of people were burned by GM and Toyota, and they wasted a lot of money to make sure nobody got to even see these cars after the "recall".
If Toyota wants to make good, put the original recipients of the RAV4EV on the fast-track to a new Rav4EV.
EXACTLY!!! How is that American citizens can be treated with less regard than a captured member of the Taliban? How is it that a sexual assault is now necessary and endorsed in order to board a plane? And just try boarding a plane without the sexual assault and you're likely to be shot at, imprisoned, put on a no-fly list, and your life will be essentially ruined by the government, forever, all because you're trying to retain your rights and dignity.
And people want to talk about how bad China is because it makes them feel superior and that they somehow have it better here. Well, in many cases you do not. Elsewhere, you're likely to recieve better healthcare, you're likely to recieve a better education and you're likely to live in country with more equal footing between you and your boss.
And the country won't be entirely run by corporations focused only on greed. Please, tell me how much better off you are here in the Paranoid USA.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. But you're also missing that Amazon, being the biggest player in the industry, has near-monopoly power. And if they are abusing that power to censor material, then they are abusing that monopoly power, which is also illegal (or at least was once illegal in the USA... who knows anymore, since Congress is up to the highest bidder?)
Really? And do I have to develop my own e-book reader so that Amazon isn't quietly deleting anything that might be on the kindle?
I suppose you're all for Sony removing the "Other OS" feature THAT THEY SOLD AS A FEATURE on the Playstation 3? After all, if you don't like it, develop your own gaming box. Huh, nice solution that.
You don't seem to understand. When our liberties are threatened, we're all damaged. It always starts with the weakest links in society, the ones that are "OK" to oppress, like the Jews were. Then once you've taken care of that issue, you move on to bigger and bigger targets. And then pretty soon, you've sent civilization backwards 100 years.
I suppose next they are going to remove any book with the word "shit" in the title, which of course means banning all books about cooking with Shiitake Mushrooms. If you're all for removing information from the people, then you have no one to blame but yourself when you wonder why America is the most ignorant and stupid nation on the planet.
I wonder if the Romans truly understood that the Empire was doomed when the Visigoths came over the wall. Chances are that some of them were as dumb as you are, and believed that Rome would continue for eternity. America doesn't have long left.
China, India, and even some African nations are coming up fast, pretty soon we're going to have to compete on a level playing field. And the American people aren't up to the task because they think "god" is going to bail them out because they are the chosen people (and they think that because they are a bunch of ignorant twits), then I'm afraid they will be just another page in the history books, assuming those too aren't banned.
Tell you what. I'll fight for my rights. If *you* don't like it, start your own damn country where you can oppress people and deny them liberty. Good luck with that.
Particularly "1984" and "Fahrenheit 451" and has confused them with the corporate policy manual.
It's only a matter of time before "Catcher in the Rye" is banned from Kindles -- after all, only serial killers/terrorists read that.
I can't wait until they expand the ban to "anything" the Christian Taliban finds objectionable.... which is pretty much everything. I predict mass kindle burnings as people rebel against it all. Which is bad news for Apple as well, as their closed system pretty much is following Amazon's model of banning anything they don't like.
Ironically, this will be good news for open-source-based tablets with real usb ports and no "app store" that limits what you can and can't load into your tablet.
Either that, or America isn't what it claims to be, and everyone is perfectly happy being oppressed. Hurrah for Big Brother, we love you! I'm moving elsewhere where there really *is* freedom, like, Chad.
In even smaller words: Nothing you said addresses the parent posts questions.
We are the United States Government. We don't *do* that sort of thing!
If this guy is talking about the coming revolution of sex-bots, count me in! I for one, would be happy to roll over in bed to find a robot. As long as she's cute and does what she's told.
I'm not sure what surprises me more... That companies produce crap like this, or that they expect there's enough of a market for people to buy crap like this.
I mean, the number of people to whom money is no object is a countable number. Furthermore, the larger percentage of people who's wealth is publicly tracked (such as Warren Buffet or Bill Gates) do not invest in expensive throw-away baubles.
Therefore have to assume that items such as these are purchased by people who's wealth is NOT tracked, such as Saudi Princes. And those guys have things that can't be talked about on web pages, such as Slave Girls, Private Armies, and Former Soviet Nuclear Weapons. After all, if you're rich enough, international law doesn't apply to you.
So do these companies make this crap because the profit margin is so obscene that they are willing to cater to these pricks, or is it just big scam, for show, so we *aren't* looking for the Slave Girls, Private Armies and Nuclear Weapons? Or just how much wealth they have that we don't know about?
So, let me get this straight... Mastercard won't let you buy a T-Shirt from Pirate Bay because they are evil haxors, but, I can still use my card to donate hundreds to the Klu Klux Klan? What does that say about Mastercard, or the rest of America for that matter?
How is it that the KKK didn't get branded a terrorist organization right after 9/11 anyhow? Why is it that we support/tolerate homegrown terrorism, such as white supremacy, as long as those guys aren't muslim?
What a fucked up country the USA is.
Looks like they are shutting down *anything* that isn't "yahoo" branded.
In other words, they are out of Money. Yahoo will be aquired or dead within a year.
Here comes the great purging of the internet. It's like car companies all over again. In 10 years, there will only be the big-three websites left on the internet.
Listen, I could understand if Edison was man of the year for inventing the light-bulb... But, if twenty years later, everyone had forgotten about it, and then suddenly, some other dude re-invents the lgihtbulb, and is made "man of the year", then TIME clearly has no actual journalists left and their ability to do in-depth analysis is out the window.
And this is the case with Zuckerberg. All he has done is re-package the BBS into a web-based app. The back-end to Facebook could be Citadel, for all we know. Hell, Softarc's "First-Class" BBS/groupware product had a web-based front end before there was a Facebook. It's all been done before, it's just that this time around, this particular idiot was in the right place at the right time. He got rich, and thousands of other Sysops didn't.
Heck, for a while it appeared that Myspace was going to trounce Facebook. I'd say, rather than make Zuckerberg "man of the year" make Zuckerberg's PR Agent "Man of the Year" -- *That's* the guy that worked harder than anyone.
Really? Someone found insightful, his review of a film he never saw?
Really? Someone found insightful, his interpretation of 9/11 events that the president didn't need to be involved?
Really? Someone found insightful, that the 7 minutes he spent reading "my pet goat" he could have been giving executive decisions (assuming he had the cognitive capability of doing so), getting military aircraft airborne, and basically *actually running things* instead of looking like a deer caught in headlights?
Really? Someone found insightful that the poster hasn't offered a single fact, nor any material to back up *any* of his claims?
Moderators, please get your act together.
I had a friend that died from AIDS. Several friends, in fact. The fact that the money that could be going into research for a cure or treatment is instead going into this useless security theater that isn't going to stop anyone, and instead will just get more of us killed on the highways as we opt to travel by car instead, sickens me.
Yes, that was Bin Laden's plan all along. Right now, in a cave someplace is a banner that reads "Mission Accomplished". He might even be wearing Bush's flight suit too.
And, how many people are the TSA murdering each year by essentially forcing them to go by car and be killed on the highways, where you have a much higher chance of dying? (Over 40,000 people per year die on the highways, that's the equivalent of having 9/11 happen 13 times per year).
It's worse than that because it's non-consenual. Secondly, as has become with case with minors, *any* nude image has been deemed porno. Heck, wasn't there a story here on Slashdot about a guy convicted of child porn and the images were cartoons?
Here in Puritan American where violence is glorified and sex is shunned, yes, naked==porn.
I doubt the framers of the Constitution could have forseen travel by air -- however, they do indicate that travel between states of the union *is* a right, and at this point, there are states in the union you can't get to in a car -- so travel by air could be argued as a right.
Furthermore, the Constitution doesn't provide you the right to a cell phone either. And more people get killed on our nations highways by people talking on the cell-phones while driving than were killed by any terrorist plot. So, maybe we should ban cell-phones too!
After all, as you said "Rights such as travel all depend upon us staying alive to enjoy those rights."
I'm astounded that these two issues are seperated, and yet, no one looks beyond the surface to see what it's REALLY about... Privacy.
I'm sure the same people calling for Assange to be hanged are the same people that also say "if you've got nothing to hide..." about going through an airport scanner. They want to have that nice cozy feeling that the nanny state is protecting *them*.
So, they don't want to hear about Wikileaks, and they want to be seen naked at the airport *if* they think that'll make them sleep soundly at night.
This is about privacy. And if the average citizen can't expect any at the airport, why the hell should the government think it deserves *any* privacy? When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you.
So Wikileaks and Airport scanners. Two great tastes that taste great together! Too bad the government doesn't get the irony of being so upset about Assange while they strip away our rights. Too bad the media doesn't get it either. These two events are happening at the same time and both are about an expectation of privacy.
Maybe if the government got rid of the scanners, Wikileaks would calm down.
Really? How is it that we are more interested in taking down Wikileaks founder Assange than say... Osama Bin Laden, who *actually* is a terrorist?
Why is it that anyone the USA doesn't like gets branded as a terrorist? Doesn't that worry you? How far away is the day that free speach is labeled a terrorist act?
I mean, seriously -- right now in China, you go to jail for speaking out against the government and we then proclaim that China isn't "free".
But in the "free" USA, if you speak out against the government, Amazon disowns you, the government *wants* to arrest you and your website is taken down. hrrmmmm. While China may be more extreme, the basic policies between the USA and China are not all that different. Which is to say, if you're a rabble-rouser, or you in any way embarass us, we'll take you down.
I am concered that I see posts on slashdot saying that Assange needs to be treated as a traitor. Go after Robert Novack first. If the media were doing its job, we wouldn't need Wikileaks.
Amen brother!
Furthermore, this is what Obama PROMISED : "a more transparent government".
Instead what we got was a more secretive government. So someone has to do the job if they are not going to.
But yeah, "the media" are a bunch of spineless corporate mouthpieces. Every "anchor" is a former MTV V-Jay, with only entertainment experience and no journalism credentials. And no one is left to do actual, hard-hitting reporting. Walter Cronkite must be so ashamed of what has happened to "the news".
All I can say it "It's about F'ing time." Go Wikileaks Go!
For years, we have had to put up with our privacy and our rights being stolen. Now we even have to appear naked to fly. Our privacy is always under attack, and yet we are told "it's for our own good" either by the governments that assault us, or the corporations that rip us off and sell our personal data to each other.
FINALLY the time has come that governments and corporations are under the same microscope as the average joe. The internet has become the great equalizer. And notice how governments and corporations bristle at the mere thought that *their* privacy is being invaded, while they continue to casually rape us.
Yes, when it's the governments/corporations that have their privacy assailed, "ohhh the guy is a terrorist" "Assage must be imprisoned" "DDoS isn't good enough for him, hanging's too good for him!", etc..., meanwhile, few are DDoS'ing the RIAA, TransUnion, Equifax, et al.
THIS IS OUR REVOLUTION. And it's about time. Grab your pitchforks. Heads must roll.
Seriously; We can avoid scanners and gropers, and America gets the security it wants if we knock out everyone on the plane. The Pilot/Copilot have a seperate O2 supply, but the main cabin is gassed as the plane taxis onto the runway.
Think of the cost savings for airlines: no in-flight movie, no cell phone interference, no TV sets in the backs of headrests, no having to serve Pepsi and Peanuts, no Stewardesses required.
And advantages for you: No screaming babies, no people climbing over you to get to the rest-room, no trouble sleeping during the flight. You arrive rested. When the plane lands, fresh air is pumped in and everyone wakes up.
So the terrorist has no opportunity to light up his underwear, or take over the plane armed with a sharp piece of paper. Air Marshalls no longer required. TSA no longer required.
This plan is even better than the TSAs because the airlines might be able to make money with all the cost-savings. It's just that the Military Industrial Complex doesn't make money, and neither do the well-connected people in D.C. -- which is why this plan will never be implemented.
If the Chinese had waited a few more years, Ford would have *given* them the documents anyhow as part of an offshoring initiative. And what does China hope to gain from these documents? They are going to ignore them anyhow, as each subcontractor cuts a corner or two to maximize profit.
So you wind up with a car with paper-mache quality steel, that folds the passenger compartment upon impact, with airbags that don't work, and the door handle falls off while still at the dealership.
Seriously, have you *seen* those Wildfire or Chery cars? Deathtrap wouldn't even begin the describe them, but the problem is: That's the Chinese way. They do not care about quality or adherence to standards.
While the Japanese followed the American model of the 50's, and built up quality over time, the Chinese are following the American model of the 80's, where everything was crap, and continues to get crappier. Their "innovations" are about how to put cheaper and cheaper substitutes in for what's supposed to be there. I mean, we're talking about a culture that feeds its own people a diet of cardboard and lead if they think they can make a few bucks more from it.
GEOS was a brilliant hack and probably one of the tightest pieces of code ever created. The fact that it provided a true GUI on a "toy" computer was jaw-dropping. The fact that it could do that AND even run applications (Word processing, spreadsheets, Desktop Publishing) gave it Macintosh-like functionality at 1/10th the price -- well, that was simply beyond astounding.
What a lot of people don't know is that the folks that created GEOS, Berkely Softworks, went on to recreate GEOS for the APPLE II, and then later for the PC. Retitled "Geoworks Ensemble", it gave the GUI and related apps to "low end" PC that had been abandoned by Microsoft in their bid to make Windows rule the world.
MS started to make Windows "real" by Version 3 -- but, in order to run it, you needed a 386 or better. GEOWORKS could operate on much lower-end equipment (I believe all you needed was a hard-drive, so even the 8088 CPU was possible). So, you could have the equivalent of Windows without having to buy new hardware.
And remember that a lot of people have already invested $2000 in a 286 and didn't want to give it up right away -- so GEOS got more traction than you'd think. There was also a large contingent of people with early laptops that found GEOS to be just the ticket for a black-and-white only screen and a 20mb HD with maybe 1 MB of RAM (much too small for Windows).
While aiming for the low-end gets you initial sales, aiming for the high-end turned out to be MS's path to the future, and it's been that way ever since. What MS guessed right was that the hardware would catch up with the software, and get cheap enough that you could afford to upgrade every few years.
The Rav4EV's were all crushed by Toyota during the filming of "Who Killed the Electric Car"?
My biggest question is: Who trusts ANY of these car companies who, should the wind blow in a different direction tomorrow, will decide to say "FU" over electric vehicles? A lot of people were burned by GM and Toyota, and they wasted a lot of money to make sure nobody got to even see these cars after the "recall".
If Toyota wants to make good, put the original recipients of the RAV4EV on the fast-track to a new Rav4EV.
EXACTLY!!! How is that American citizens can be treated with less regard than a captured member of the Taliban? How is it that a sexual assault is now necessary and endorsed in order to board a plane? And just try boarding a plane without the sexual assault and you're likely to be shot at, imprisoned, put on a no-fly list, and your life will be essentially ruined by the government, forever, all because you're trying to retain your rights and dignity.
And people want to talk about how bad China is because it makes them feel superior and that they somehow have it better here. Well, in many cases you do not. Elsewhere, you're likely to recieve better healthcare, you're likely to recieve a better education and you're likely to live in country with more equal footing between you and your boss.
And the country won't be entirely run by corporations focused only on greed. Please, tell me how much better off you are here in the Paranoid USA.