Here's a point that is being missed with regards to UI design:
GUIs work to a user's advantage because it provides a consistent set of primitives which work the same among all applications including, and especially the "shell" application. I have not had my hands on Metro, but I have seen enough Youtube videos to see that the GUI is very unlike 99.99% of all the applications a user would be expected to want to use. This includes Microsoft's own applications like Word, Excel and Outlook. It is a disturbing trend, however, that developers of software (INCLUDING Microsoft) have been ignoring the point and purpose of a consistent GUI. GiMP has broken the "File -> Save/As..." convention recently with their behavior changes which still have users complaining since 2.8.0 was introduced long ago. GNOME 3.x and that Ubuntu abomination are other examples of this. Perhaps with these changes, Microsoft felt more comfortable trying to be more progressive with their UI design choices, but Microsoft's most important strength is their legacy and lock-in. The applications users and businesses depend on are typically written for a more classic GUI design approach.
This breaks the comfort of the user experience and if, heaven forbid, the applications did something non-standard in their GUI presentation which looks fine in Windows XP or Windows 7, it could break applications themselves from working properly.
I say "let's give it to them." It would be a warm-fuzzy for them. Meanwhile, people with source code or whatever will have access to the streams unencrypted through a modified browser or addon which will then enable them to save directly to their local storage. Their combination of greed and paranoia will be to the public's benefit eventually, but the sooner we move away from proprietary addons and the like, the better. It's a "net win" so to speak.
People like that forget the airplane and the automobile were both made by people who were handy with tools in a garage somewhere.
I even hold that concentration of wealth harms people's health more than these medical advancements help. All this highly processed corn and other grains have resulted in out of control diabetes and other health problems. The industrial farming and industrial cattle and dairy are seriously problematic to the environment and to humanity. And seriously, when you take away those problems from the healthcare industry? You've got a huge decrease in medical tech demand leaving only the worst problems such a cancer which is arguably ALSO related to the concentration of wealth we have.
And when I say concentration of wealth, I am talking about that 1% stuff, not pooling together of money to make bigger things happen.
There is no question that without large amounts of money and/or resources, some science simply couldn't get beyond the theoretical stages. But mostly, that's not the case.
I wear a Coleman watch with a flashlight on it. Damned thing is handy. It tells time, twice (alternate time), all the other things like timer, alarms, stopwatch... haven't used those things in a long time... but the flashlight? I use it constantly. It's $20 if you can find them at Target stores. Oh yeah, water resistant to 50 meters too. I don't want a little water getting in the way of it living or dying.
I am skeptical of smartwatches. Very skeptical. I can see a "smart watch" whose brains are actually your smartphone...you know, over a bluetooth or other wireless link. This would enable some level of power savings. I would think "bluetooth keyboard" in that it really doesn't communicate actively unless a key is being pressed so the batteries last forever. So while the watch is awake, it would talk/sync with the phone and be the phone's interface for things. Enhancements like pulse and even bloodpressure could be added to the watch. But when not in that level of active use, it could still be a perfectly good watch... waterproof even I would hope.
Motivation has never been necessary. It may only be necessary for investors to sink money into things, but people create and invent because it is in their nature to do so. Putting money behind it only gives cause for others to want to control and limit it.
Excellent point. And since these patents are used to concentrate wealth, something which has *ALWAYS* been bad for society as a whole, then we are in agreement.
Personally, I just want to make some cool videos with one. Reminds me of the time I put a wireless camera on an RC car and saw on a big screen how "I was attacked by a giant jack russell terrier!"
Perfectly said. The new law would be to reduce what people can do to business and government. We can't let "the people" know what we are doing now can we?
More than once, we saw stories right here on Slashdot about how a drone was used to observe businesses. In at least one case, it lead to the EPA taking action against one of the companies.
It's not hobbyists and bad neighbors they are seeking to protect, it's polluters and other criminals.
More and more the ability to record information is reserved only for government and the rich and powerful. Why is that? Why is it that the same people who are "anti-gun" walk around so often with guns themselves?
My mother, for example, was living outside of a city in Texas. The neighbor's goat kept getting out eating things. She shot it in the head from 50 yards with a 22 pistol dropping it with one shot. She was in a wheel chair by that time.
County police were called, they had a good laugh, offered to dispose of the dead goat and drove away.
it's all about priorities isn't it? Money is far more important than humanity's future. Sure there will be lives lost. But it won't be mine and I don't love my children. So who cares?!
There's truth to that but also that their old PCs are "good enough."
The thing is, the output of PCs hasn't really improved much in the last few years. We used to see jumps in performance between 50% and 100% more. The best we've seen is the slow adoption of 64 bit-windows-ness where people hope to improve things by having more than 3.5GB RAM. (And for most it wasn't much benefit)
There was nothing in terns of software that required an upgrade from XP to 7. That XP magically got slower than 7 with every update and patch remains "a mystery" but people got the idea. That WinME and Vista were such crap that people wouldn't buy it broke the public of its notion that "upgrade means it's better!" long ago. 7 had been more or less forced on people. They didn't care for it but before long when they wanted a new PC, they had no choice. And it least it wasn't too dissimilar from XP and so adjustments could be made.
But now with 8 it's even worse. Microsoft had convinced the PC industry that they needed to lock the hardware to the software so that downgrades or running other OSes would be more difficult. Combined with the previous public experience, it means "holy hell no we don't want to change now!!"
So yeah... PCs haven't improved much. It's basically true. But they break and stuff. But I almost always want to keep a laptop under some kind of warranty. I didn't this go around. If there was a contributing reason, it would have to be because I would rather wait to see how bad this hardware locking thing gets. So yeah... it's Microsoft's fault even though I don't run Microsoft.
The thing is this: The OS/Kernel is not as important as the things you do with it. For Linux to be a "brand" is to overstate what it actually is.
It has been pointed out numerous times that a Linux kernel is useless without an bunch of other sofware surrounding it. Sometimes it's a "Linux Distro" and sometimes it's something else like a firmware load which isn't quite a distro is it?
It's not exactly a secret that Linux is at the core of a very large portion of today's consumer and professional hardware. Multifunction copiers, TVs, DVD/Bluray players, Virtual machine hosts, Phones and Tablets and lots, lots more. It's not the suppression of something you think we should all be proud of. It's more like presenting something which might well confuse the consumer.
Considere this: "Intel Inside" essentially means it is running on an x86 type of processor. It implies a bit more, however, such as running Windows and other things which users believe to be the case but isn't necessarily true. (Think MacOSX, for example.)
The problem of attempting to put "Linux Inside" would be even MORE confusing because people would tend to think and expect things about Linux powered devices may have a lot more in common with one another than they do. This is simply inappropriate for the general consumer public. It take a real geek to understand the differences of applications everywhere.
Over time, of course, we can (and should) personally remind the public that Linux is at the core of all of these devices they enjoy so much and at the core of many extremely large operations which they know well or have heard of. Linux is not "a toy" or "for hobbyists only" because it is presently deeply entrenched into just about everything from the smallest to the largest of applications. It helps our pride to remember that and to remind others.
But still, we hear IT leaders in business cite how important brand names are and they talk about Cisco and VMWare and all those. But my Cisco phone system is all Linux inside... and VMWare is too. These are not toys and so neither is the core technology these major brands rely on.
No one is "keeping is secret." But it is good to be able to surprise nay-sayers with a rather long list of things they already use and depend on which are Linux powered. And for the vast majority of it all, there is no substitute.
Recall long ago when the US State Department cables thing was going on that Wikileaks said they had something MUCH MUCH bigger. I wonder if this is what they had to offer. They said it would embarass and damage a lot of people and it kind of sounds like this. It would seem like enough to keep honest law enforcement and tax offices business for a decade. (Note that I said "honest" because we generally know how it will play out in the U.S. We'll hear things like "too big to prosecute" and massive offers like 10 cents to the dollar or less.)
That was my first thought. It was also to update it and to add more to the stories. Speaking of which, I hope there will be some volunteerism from celebrity actors who would voice famous star wars characters for us.
Gameplay and art and all that are parts of the whole. I also liked playing the stories. And having a small team get involved with writing some story line, getting voice actors to perform it and the game designers to create the stages of the new 3D worlds would be awesome to watch.
I guess part of a problem of a public/community game development of this type would be the value of the story. I don't want to know what's going to happen or what happens when I make different choices. That's something private activities are good at. How we could get that from a community driven and community sourced game project? I fear the best we can hope for is "Urban Terror" with lightsabers.
But I think the WAY prosecutors do their business is the issue I have here.
Violations of a Terms of Service, technically an agreement without signature or have any tangible record tying the agreement with a flesh and blood person, should never and can never practially be anything but a civil offense... at best. I wish Swartz didn't kill himself so this kind of nonsense would have some air. But then again, that he killed himself has probably done more to bring this problem to the public's attention and the next time, if there ever will be a next time, the public will be quick to support the defendant and to demand better law.
But back to HOW prosecutors behave. There should be limits and there should be dignity. Real criminals are "unlimited" but the law and those who represent the law need to be as the law intended. Fair and impartial. Threats and intimidation is not the way.
Government, specifically law enforcement, tend to threaten people with all sorts of scary crap in order to get people to do things they don't want to do. In Swartz's case, he wasn't doing anything strictly illegal but they wanted to believe he did so badly and the JSTOR people want to believe he did so badly that they were willing to harrass and frighten this guy to the point of suicide. After all, they were threatening his life in the sense that he would no longer have a good one.
So now, there is turn-about and they cry foul.
Why is it acceptable for law enforcement to use threats and fear as a means of getting their jobs done. Isn't it they that went too far? Shouldn't it be "okay, we have evidence of X, let's charge him with X" and be done with it? Why is it "we think he has done Y, but we only have evidence of X which is not specifically illegal. So let's threaten him with Z until he pleas to Y."
Harrassment and intimidation by government should not be allowed. Just do straight business.
You want to compete in the tablet market? GREAT! I say WELCOME even. There is/was room for Microsoft in the market. Create your own snazzy tablet interface? Well, what I saw of it was kinda cool but I'm already used to small icons and stuff but the dynamic favorites looking main screen thing seems fine with me too. And I loved that you started out by getting Angry Birds ported over to your new platform. But here's where you screwed up.
You decided that everything should use the same UI. Sorry, but no. That's just wrong. A business machine is not a tablet. When putting together documents and presentations and exchanging massive amounts of emails, people need keyboards and mice -- touch screens get in the way. Surely you realize different UIs are suited to different purposes right?
What's more, people were comfortable (finally) with Windows 7. Business had been moving over to it and all that. But you turned around to threaten that comfort with Windows 8?! Sorry, but what were you thinking?! You're scaring the crap out of IT and consumers everywhere! First there's all this talk of "the new machines you buy will only ever run Windows 8 and if you run anyrhing else, it will brick the device" called secure boot or something like that. Then there's this impending end of Window 7 being announced and all that. Convenience stores exist for a reason -- humans love convenience and comfort. And when you threaten that comfort, you threaten the humans. We thought you were humans too so we were hoping you would sort of get that.
Look, I think we would have been more than okay with you entering the phone and tablet market with your unique take on UI design for touch screen devices. You could have put all sorts of money into it, pushing it and it would have been everywhere. And if you just could have left desktop computers ALONE, you would have actually created a much better buzz. "What's this? Microsoft trying something new? Sure, I'll give that a go..." But no. Instead of making people curious and interested, you want to change your whole ecosystem from developers to business to consumers.
Your first clue to back off was heavy developer resistance. There have been times when I doubted developers of Microsoft tech were all that smart. They all just seemed to fall in line with every new language and library and everything. Silverlight? Sure, let's do that..NET? Let's do it! Seems like a great idea that doesn't solve anything since it's all just WinTel anyway. But with Windows 8, developers are saying "uh... no... this sucks" you should have paused for a moment to rethink things. Instead, your "Type A" personality pushed you into believing the rest of the world is not type A. Really? You think you are more "A" than everyone else? How very "type A" of you to think so. How's that working out for you?
Business is desperately clinging to their EA agreements to keep what they have. Change is pain in business. They are extending warranties and keeping their old hardware too. Does this mean nothing to you Microsoft? Not a hint? Not a clue?
Consumers love their gadgets. But change from iThings and Androids means there is a pre-existing set of expectations. Cater to them. It almost seemed like you were getting it when you started having popular apps and games ported to your phones and tablets. But then you started muddying things up by trying to unify everything.
Microsoft isn't listening and they aren't reading this either.
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt has a broad meaning. And there are legal precedents, both civil and criminal, where people effectively "clean-room"ed themselves or others.
A person might suspect something and could be completely wrong. Suspicion is not proof of wrong doing. The burden of proof is on the prosecution and proving that someone knew something when they deny it? Well, that's a tough thing...especially if the defendant is a woman who perjurs herself numerous times and somehow never gets prosecuted. (I say it like that to prove how broken our justice system really is.)
There's idealism and the letter of law and then there's what the system actually does and gets away with.
Sure wish I could get retroactive immunity for things I may or may not have done...
Well, I am not so sure the future is quite the same.
I think that, first of all, Chromebooks should be running or have available to them, Android apps. A quick google search shows this is presently not the case. (I did not look any deeper than the first few responses) And, of course, they should have touch screens to support Android better.
This makes it a tablet with a keyboard... which is not a tablet but still, you get the idea. Then the low specs won't mean as much and people will want them more.
Yes, PC makers at the request (requirement) of Microsoft will not want to allow competing anything. But that's okay. The public is more willing to use internet appliance devices now. I don't know about anyone else, but I still have my two Dell Mini 9s... my wife has been using hers for years. Netbooks are useful too.
Anyway, I think the public is more willing than they were before, but putting Android on them will be a big help.
1. The "war on drugs" has had a certain preventative effect on my life. I knew it was wrong. It was harder to get. I still had tried MJ but I was a teenager -- it's what we do. Didn't do much for me other than make me cough and smell bad. My hate/fear of needles prevented me from trying anything more serious... and I probably would have tried acid if the opportunity ever came about, but it didn't.
But I am an individual and I am not all that "typical" in the way I think, reason or behave.
2. The "war on drugs" has created additional organized crime and created additional demand for weapons and is the cause of loss of life not only for those directly involved in the trade, but for many, many innocents as well. It has undoubtedly derailed the lives of many who feel the mainstream life style of working for a living and being a good consumer is not good enough for them.
3. I hold the food industry responsible for their selection of ingredients which has led to epidemic rates of diabetes and obesity in the USA. People are not given options or opportunity to buy healthy foods at competitive prices while the most commonly (ab)used ingredients are subsidized by the government. The selection of these diabetes/obesity causing ingredients should be regulated and restricted as they are in other nations because restricting them show positive results in health which lowers healthcare costs and all of that. So making bad ingredients harder to get would likely result in many positive changes.
4. But if you transfer that line of thinking to drugs, we now have a kind of argument in favor of the war on drugs. There are some differences, of course. No one is likely to take up arms in order to trade in HFCS drinks or foods laced with high carbohydrate cereal fillers. But perhaps it just says the war on drugs, (the prohibition) simply goes too far while regulation would be good enough.
5. People have a problem with not knowing the difference between "legal" and "good." For some reason, people tend to believe if it's allowed, it's good. "Legal == right." So by making something "legal" it is naturally feared that the use and abuse of drugs would go up. It wouldn't affect me, but I am not typical. But on the other hand, what will the math say? More people getting high and dying from overdoses -- will it be higher or lower than the death tolls now. And if drugs are legalized and regulated, the associated "support" criminal activity will unquestionably lose support so there will be less gun violence, less gang activity and all of that. There will still be junkies burglarizing and robbing people but that's usually not an organized criminal effort.
We don't know (okay, *I* don't know) all the specifics of this compartment maker's case. Did he admit to knowing the purpose? I don't know. If he claimed not to know and the buyer claimed not to have told the craftsman the intent and purpose, then I agree, the case should not have been pursued.
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Here's a point that is being missed with regards to UI design:
GUIs work to a user's advantage because it provides a consistent set of primitives which work the same among all applications including, and especially the "shell" application. I have not had my hands on Metro, but I have seen enough Youtube videos to see that the GUI is very unlike 99.99% of all the applications a user would be expected to want to use. This includes Microsoft's own applications like Word, Excel and Outlook. It is a disturbing trend, however, that developers of software (INCLUDING Microsoft) have been ignoring the point and purpose of a consistent GUI. GiMP has broken the "File -> Save/As..." convention recently with their behavior changes which still have users complaining since 2.8.0 was introduced long ago. GNOME 3.x and that Ubuntu abomination are other examples of this. Perhaps with these changes, Microsoft felt more comfortable trying to be more progressive with their UI design choices, but Microsoft's most important strength is their legacy and lock-in. The applications users and businesses depend on are typically written for a more classic GUI design approach.
This breaks the comfort of the user experience and if, heaven forbid, the applications did something non-standard in their GUI presentation which looks fine in Windows XP or Windows 7, it could break applications themselves from working properly.
Oh come on!
I say "let's give it to them." It would be a warm-fuzzy for them. Meanwhile, people with source code or whatever will have access to the streams unencrypted through a modified browser or addon which will then enable them to save directly to their local storage. Their combination of greed and paranoia will be to the public's benefit eventually, but the sooner we move away from proprietary addons and the like, the better. It's a "net win" so to speak.
INB4 "Without massive farming, how can we feed all the people?!"
Answer: The same way we always have -- with individual farmers doing what they have always done.
People like that forget the airplane and the automobile were both made by people who were handy with tools in a garage somewhere.
I even hold that concentration of wealth harms people's health more than these medical advancements help. All this highly processed corn and other grains have resulted in out of control diabetes and other health problems. The industrial farming and industrial cattle and dairy are seriously problematic to the environment and to humanity. And seriously, when you take away those problems from the healthcare industry? You've got a huge decrease in medical tech demand leaving only the worst problems such a cancer which is arguably ALSO related to the concentration of wealth we have.
And when I say concentration of wealth, I am talking about that 1% stuff, not pooling together of money to make bigger things happen.
There is no question that without large amounts of money and/or resources, some science simply couldn't get beyond the theoretical stages. But mostly, that's not the case.
I wear a Coleman watch with a flashlight on it. Damned thing is handy. It tells time, twice (alternate time), all the other things like timer, alarms, stopwatch... haven't used those things in a long time... but the flashlight? I use it constantly. It's $20 if you can find them at Target stores. Oh yeah, water resistant to 50 meters too. I don't want a little water getting in the way of it living or dying.
I am skeptical of smartwatches. Very skeptical. I can see a "smart watch" whose brains are actually your smartphone...you know, over a bluetooth or other wireless link. This would enable some level of power savings. I would think "bluetooth keyboard" in that it really doesn't communicate actively unless a key is being pressed so the batteries last forever. So while the watch is awake, it would talk/sync with the phone and be the phone's interface for things. Enhancements like pulse and even bloodpressure could be added to the watch. But when not in that level of active use, it could still be a perfectly good watch... waterproof even I would hope.
Motivation has never been necessary. It may only be necessary for investors to sink money into things, but people create and invent because it is in their nature to do so. Putting money behind it only gives cause for others to want to control and limit it.
Excellent point. And since these patents are used to concentrate wealth, something which has *ALWAYS* been bad for society as a whole, then we are in agreement.
Personally, I just want to make some cool videos with one. Reminds me of the time I put a wireless camera on an RC car and saw on a big screen how "I was attacked by a giant jack russell terrier!"
Perfectly said. The new law would be to reduce what people can do to business and government. We can't let "the people" know what we are doing now can we?
More than once, we saw stories right here on Slashdot about how a drone was used to observe businesses. In at least one case, it lead to the EPA taking action against one of the companies.
It's not hobbyists and bad neighbors they are seeking to protect, it's polluters and other criminals.
More and more the ability to record information is reserved only for government and the rich and powerful. Why is that? Why is it that the same people who are "anti-gun" walk around so often with guns themselves?
Actually you can.
My mother, for example, was living outside of a city in Texas. The neighbor's goat kept getting out eating things. She shot it in the head from 50 yards with a 22 pistol dropping it with one shot. She was in a wheel chair by that time.
County police were called, they had a good laugh, offered to dispose of the dead goat and drove away.
it's all about priorities isn't it? Money is far more important than humanity's future. Sure there will be lives lost. But it won't be mine and I don't love my children. So who cares?!
--the people who keep it going.
There's truth to that but also that their old PCs are "good enough."
The thing is, the output of PCs hasn't really improved much in the last few years. We used to see jumps in performance between 50% and 100% more. The best we've seen is the slow adoption of 64 bit-windows-ness where people hope to improve things by having more than 3.5GB RAM. (And for most it wasn't much benefit)
There was nothing in terns of software that required an upgrade from XP to 7. That XP magically got slower than 7 with every update and patch remains "a mystery" but people got the idea. That WinME and Vista were such crap that people wouldn't buy it broke the public of its notion that "upgrade means it's better!" long ago. 7 had been more or less forced on people. They didn't care for it but before long when they wanted a new PC, they had no choice. And it least it wasn't too dissimilar from XP and so adjustments could be made.
But now with 8 it's even worse. Microsoft had convinced the PC industry that they needed to lock the hardware to the software so that downgrades or running other OSes would be more difficult. Combined with the previous public experience, it means "holy hell no we don't want to change now!!"
So yeah... PCs haven't improved much. It's basically true. But they break and stuff. But I almost always want to keep a laptop under some kind of warranty. I didn't this go around. If there was a contributing reason, it would have to be because I would rather wait to see how bad this hardware locking thing gets. So yeah... it's Microsoft's fault even though I don't run Microsoft.
I was going to go with something "flat earth" but this is much better. Well done.
The thing is this: The OS/Kernel is not as important as the things you do with it. For Linux to be a "brand" is to overstate what it actually is.
It has been pointed out numerous times that a Linux kernel is useless without an bunch of other sofware surrounding it. Sometimes it's a "Linux Distro" and sometimes it's something else like a firmware load which isn't quite a distro is it?
It's not exactly a secret that Linux is at the core of a very large portion of today's consumer and professional hardware. Multifunction copiers, TVs, DVD/Bluray players, Virtual machine hosts, Phones and Tablets and lots, lots more. It's not the suppression of something you think we should all be proud of. It's more like presenting something which might well confuse the consumer.
Considere this: "Intel Inside" essentially means it is running on an x86 type of processor. It implies a bit more, however, such as running Windows and other things which users believe to be the case but isn't necessarily true. (Think MacOSX, for example.)
The problem of attempting to put "Linux Inside" would be even MORE confusing because people would tend to think and expect things about Linux powered devices may have a lot more in common with one another than they do. This is simply inappropriate for the general consumer public. It take a real geek to understand the differences of applications everywhere.
Over time, of course, we can (and should) personally remind the public that Linux is at the core of all of these devices they enjoy so much and at the core of many extremely large operations which they know well or have heard of. Linux is not "a toy" or "for hobbyists only" because it is presently deeply entrenched into just about everything from the smallest to the largest of applications. It helps our pride to remember that and to remind others.
But still, we hear IT leaders in business cite how important brand names are and they talk about Cisco and VMWare and all those. But my Cisco phone system is all Linux inside... and VMWare is too. These are not toys and so neither is the core technology these major brands rely on.
No one is "keeping is secret." But it is good to be able to surprise nay-sayers with a rather long list of things they already use and depend on which are Linux powered. And for the vast majority of it all, there is no substitute.
It's not a creative work. It's something they wish to censor. That should be another law or something.
But that's what they believe the DMCA is for. After all, that's how they USE it right? Censoring other peoples' content and the like?
Recall long ago when the US State Department cables thing was going on that Wikileaks said they had something MUCH MUCH bigger. I wonder if this is what they had to offer. They said it would embarass and damage a lot of people and it kind of sounds like this. It would seem like enough to keep honest law enforcement and tax offices business for a decade. (Note that I said "honest" because we generally know how it will play out in the U.S. We'll hear things like "too big to prosecute" and massive offers like 10 cents to the dollar or less.)
That was my first thought. It was also to update it and to add more to the stories. Speaking of which, I hope there will be some volunteerism from celebrity actors who would voice famous star wars characters for us.
Gameplay and art and all that are parts of the whole. I also liked playing the stories. And having a small team get involved with writing some story line, getting voice actors to perform it and the game designers to create the stages of the new 3D worlds would be awesome to watch.
I guess part of a problem of a public/community game development of this type would be the value of the story. I don't want to know what's going to happen or what happens when I make different choices. That's something private activities are good at. How we could get that from a community driven and community sourced game project? I fear the best we can hope for is "Urban Terror" with lightsabers.
Prosecutors already feel that freedom.
But I think the WAY prosecutors do their business is the issue I have here.
Violations of a Terms of Service, technically an agreement without signature or have any tangible record tying the agreement with a flesh and blood person, should never and can never practially be anything but a civil offense... at best. I wish Swartz didn't kill himself so this kind of nonsense would have some air. But then again, that he killed himself has probably done more to bring this problem to the public's attention and the next time, if there ever will be a next time, the public will be quick to support the defendant and to demand better law.
But back to HOW prosecutors behave. There should be limits and there should be dignity. Real criminals are "unlimited" but the law and those who represent the law need to be as the law intended. Fair and impartial. Threats and intimidation is not the way.
Government, specifically law enforcement, tend to threaten people with all sorts of scary crap in order to get people to do things they don't want to do. In Swartz's case, he wasn't doing anything strictly illegal but they wanted to believe he did so badly and the JSTOR people want to believe he did so badly that they were willing to harrass and frighten this guy to the point of suicide. After all, they were threatening his life in the sense that he would no longer have a good one.
So now, there is turn-about and they cry foul.
Why is it acceptable for law enforcement to use threats and fear as a means of getting their jobs done. Isn't it they that went too far? Shouldn't it be "okay, we have evidence of X, let's charge him with X" and be done with it? Why is it "we think he has done Y, but we only have evidence of X which is not specifically illegal. So let's threaten him with Z until he pleas to Y."
Harrassment and intimidation by government should not be allowed. Just do straight business.
Microsoft: You keep doing it wrong.
You want to compete in the tablet market? GREAT! I say WELCOME even. There is/was room for Microsoft in the market. Create your own snazzy tablet interface? Well, what I saw of it was kinda cool but I'm already used to small icons and stuff but the dynamic favorites looking main screen thing seems fine with me too. And I loved that you started out by getting Angry Birds ported over to your new platform. But here's where you screwed up.
You decided that everything should use the same UI. Sorry, but no. That's just wrong. A business machine is not a tablet. When putting together documents and presentations and exchanging massive amounts of emails, people need keyboards and mice -- touch screens get in the way. Surely you realize different UIs are suited to different purposes right?
What's more, people were comfortable (finally) with Windows 7. Business had been moving over to it and all that. But you turned around to threaten that comfort with Windows 8?! Sorry, but what were you thinking?! You're scaring the crap out of IT and consumers everywhere! First there's all this talk of "the new machines you buy will only ever run Windows 8 and if you run anyrhing else, it will brick the device" called secure boot or something like that. Then there's this impending end of Window 7 being announced and all that. Convenience stores exist for a reason -- humans love convenience and comfort. And when you threaten that comfort, you threaten the humans. We thought you were humans too so we were hoping you would sort of get that.
Look, I think we would have been more than okay with you entering the phone and tablet market with your unique take on UI design for touch screen devices. You could have put all sorts of money into it, pushing it and it would have been everywhere. And if you just could have left desktop computers ALONE, you would have actually created a much better buzz. "What's this? Microsoft trying something new? Sure, I'll give that a go..." But no. Instead of making people curious and interested, you want to change your whole ecosystem from developers to business to consumers.
Your first clue to back off was heavy developer resistance. There have been times when I doubted developers of Microsoft tech were all that smart. They all just seemed to fall in line with every new language and library and everything. Silverlight? Sure, let's do that. .NET? Let's do it! Seems like a great idea that doesn't solve anything since it's all just WinTel anyway. But with Windows 8, developers are saying "uh... no... this sucks" you should have paused for a moment to rethink things. Instead, your "Type A" personality pushed you into believing the rest of the world is not type A. Really? You think you are more "A" than everyone else? How very "type A" of you to think so. How's that working out for you?
Business is desperately clinging to their EA agreements to keep what they have. Change is pain in business. They are extending warranties and keeping their old hardware too. Does this mean nothing to you Microsoft? Not a hint? Not a clue?
Consumers love their gadgets. But change from iThings and Androids means there is a pre-existing set of expectations. Cater to them. It almost seemed like you were getting it when you started having popular apps and games ported to your phones and tablets. But then you started muddying things up by trying to unify everything.
Microsoft isn't listening and they aren't reading this either.
Advice:
LEAD, FOLLOW or GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!
Proof beyond a reasonable doubt has a broad meaning. And there are legal precedents, both civil and criminal, where people effectively "clean-room"ed themselves or others.
A person might suspect something and could be completely wrong. Suspicion is not proof of wrong doing. The burden of proof is on the prosecution and proving that someone knew something when they deny it? Well, that's a tough thing...especially if the defendant is a woman who perjurs herself numerous times and somehow never gets prosecuted. (I say it like that to prove how broken our justice system really is.)
There's idealism and the letter of law and then there's what the system actually does and gets away with.
Sure wish I could get retroactive immunity for things I may or may not have done...
Well, I am not so sure the future is quite the same.
I think that, first of all, Chromebooks should be running or have available to them, Android apps. A quick google search shows this is presently not the case. (I did not look any deeper than the first few responses) And, of course, they should have touch screens to support Android better.
This makes it a tablet with a keyboard... which is not a tablet but still, you get the idea. Then the low specs won't mean as much and people will want them more.
Yes, PC makers at the request (requirement) of Microsoft will not want to allow competing anything. But that's okay. The public is more willing to use internet appliance devices now. I don't know about anyone else, but I still have my two Dell Mini 9s... my wife has been using hers for years. Netbooks are useful too.
Anyway, I think the public is more willing than they were before, but putting Android on them will be a big help.
I tend to have mixed feelings on the topic.
1. The "war on drugs" has had a certain preventative effect on my life. I knew it was wrong. It was harder to get. I still had tried MJ but I was a teenager -- it's what we do. Didn't do much for me other than make me cough and smell bad. My hate/fear of needles prevented me from trying anything more serious... and I probably would have tried acid if the opportunity ever came about, but it didn't.
But I am an individual and I am not all that "typical" in the way I think, reason or behave.
2. The "war on drugs" has created additional organized crime and created additional demand for weapons and is the cause of loss of life not only for those directly involved in the trade, but for many, many innocents as well. It has undoubtedly derailed the lives of many who feel the mainstream life style of working for a living and being a good consumer is not good enough for them.
3. I hold the food industry responsible for their selection of ingredients which has led to epidemic rates of diabetes and obesity in the USA. People are not given options or opportunity to buy healthy foods at competitive prices while the most commonly (ab)used ingredients are subsidized by the government. The selection of these diabetes/obesity causing ingredients should be regulated and restricted as they are in other nations because restricting them show positive results in health which lowers healthcare costs and all of that. So making bad ingredients harder to get would likely result in many positive changes.
4. But if you transfer that line of thinking to drugs, we now have a kind of argument in favor of the war on drugs. There are some differences, of course. No one is likely to take up arms in order to trade in HFCS drinks or foods laced with high carbohydrate cereal fillers. But perhaps it just says the war on drugs, (the prohibition) simply goes too far while regulation would be good enough.
5. People have a problem with not knowing the difference between "legal" and "good." For some reason, people tend to believe if it's allowed, it's good. "Legal == right." So by making something "legal" it is naturally feared that the use and abuse of drugs would go up. It wouldn't affect me, but I am not typical. But on the other hand, what will the math say? More people getting high and dying from overdoses -- will it be higher or lower than the death tolls now. And if drugs are legalized and regulated, the associated "support" criminal activity will unquestionably lose support so there will be less gun violence, less gang activity and all of that. There will still be junkies burglarizing and robbing people but that's usually not an organized criminal effort.
We don't know (okay, *I* don't know) all the specifics of this compartment maker's case. Did he admit to knowing the purpose? I don't know. If he claimed not to know and the buyer claimed not to have told the craftsman the intent and purpose, then I agree, the case should not have been pursued.