Oh please. Tell me, which one of these two plots applies to the movie Sideways? About Schmidt? Requiem for a Dream? Waking Life? Memento? Hedwig and the Angry Inch? Boys Don't Cry? The Motorcycle Diaries? Human Traffic? Roger Dodger? Don't project your own lack of imagination or taste onto everyone else.
Describe an artist, writer, composer, or book that would not only fullfill all your criteria for imaginative (ie, completely new idea, concept, etc) AND would have enough mainstream appeal to pay for its own production and distribution.
You (like the movie execs) would be surprised, but the fact is there ARE enough people who actually want and appreciate quality movies enough for it to be profitable... Sideways, for example, was an unexpected success and has grossed over $71,000,000 in less than year so far (production budget $16mil, hence they've already made over $55mil profit). OK, so it's not Star Wars, but it's still a lot of money, certainly you cannot complain that the market is 'too small to be able to make a profit'.
> I don't see a problem with it. Information on how to classify a computer is not classified.
That is true, but as is evident from many of the replies, many people don't understand this, so one should at least be careful -- you may be working with or for people (in either your own company or the client organistion) that don't understand this either.
Can I have some examples of increased civil liberties?
I don't know the details of all the laws etc, but don't forget that at the turn of the century women were not even allowed to vote in the USA. In the 1920's alcohol had been banned, but was later unbanned. There was institutionalized racism/segregation up until (I believe) +/- the 1940s (?), and in the previous century, outright slavery. Also, although being homosexual is still technically illegal in many states, this seems to be becoming legal in more and more places (along with a general culture of tolerance). Civil liberties that were curtailed during the McCarthy era also seem to have mostly found their way back (although its left its mark in the form of a distinctly knee-jerk anti-commy culture amongst the populace).
The USA has an uglier human rights history than most Americans care to remember it as being, but in general over the last two centuries, civil liberties have been on the up and up. There does appear to be a current slight down-swing (over the last five to ten years) (it would seem initially due to corporate lobbying, e.g. DMCA, but now due to Sep 11), but on the whole I think things are a lot better now in the US than they were 50, 100 and 150 years ago.
Damn, that above post made no sense, lost everything between < and >.. had <post that even vaguely sounds like USA is being criticised> <knee jerk> <moderate down>..
Yeah yeah I know.... so predictable.. ever stop to think that maybe theres some truth in it? I guess not, brainwashed-by-media opinions override thought.
the joke is, it dosen't uninstall even when you press uninstall, it still leaves its dlls active in the system
This sort of behaviour really annoys me. I suppose we're supposed to think "ah gee an honest mistake.. something went wrong". Yeah right. Its like that crap RealPlayer. When I installed it, it specifically had options for whether or not you want RealPlayer to run on startup and sit in the taskbar. I *made sure* that this option was not selected. It completely ignores the option, it runs on startup anyway and sits in the taskbar. Its entirely deliberate behaviour. I don't mean to generalise, but this sort of obnoxious pushiness seems to specifically be some thing with American (read "USA") companies. Companies elsewhere tend to prefer to try other tactics to try gain dominance, for example "trying to build a better product than your competitors". Sometimes I get the feeling that American companies try to do absolutely everything they possibly can to try gain dominance - except build a better product.
Gator does its best to make sure the user doesn't know it's working
There's an obvious reason for this type of behaviour. Consider: if users were informed of exactly what they are installing and exactly what it does, and then given a choice about whether to install it or not, how many users would willingly install it? My guess, none, whatsoever. Thats why they have to try hide their behaviour. If this alone doesn't make it glaringly obvious that such software should not exist (i.e. exactly 0% of users would ever willingly choose to use it), then nothing will.
Its sad how much the computer industry relies specifically on the lack of user education amongst its client base. Software companies and hardware companies thrive on it. The success of Microsofts business is built on it. "Keep the users in the dark..". All you see in the computer industry these days is companies attempting to trick their customers, lying to their customers, fooling their customers, suckering their customers, all relying on lack of user education. Its all around. I saw a banner ad today "if this ad is flickering, you've won! click here to claim your prize". Its an animated GIF, if its not flickering it means your browser doesn't support animated gifs.. but its just another case of relying on the cluelessness of your own client base. If a company NEEDS its users to be clueless in order to survive, it shouldn't be allowed to survive, period.
Re:Looks like a very uninformd piece
on
Taming the Web
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· Score: 2
For example, in the long run for every "shield" there will be a "sword" that will be effective against it
While empirically this has generally been the case in the past, I fail to really see any absolute "law" of the universe that says it will necessarily always be this way. I don't
personally believe that it is always going to be that way, unless you can show me the proof of the reasoning that says it will. I think that at some stage within the next 100 years, technological capability is going to overtake our ability to directly use it. (Some people would call this the "singularity", but I don't completely believe in that as it is usually described). For thousands of years, it was just "conventional wisdom" or "general knowledge" (or whatever you want to call it) that man could not fly. Then, suddenly, it was no longer true, and after a brief period of mental adjustment, it is now completely normal and natural that man regularly flies. Its just an example, but I think this is the same.. many people just accept as "general knowledge" that "for every 'shield' there will be a 'sword' that will be effective against it".. I fully expect that sooner or later, that is suddenly going to change. Another example of this type of thing, over a shorter time span, it used to be the case that the very idea of an email client automatically executing binary code "hidden" within an email was an insanely stupid idea, and nobody in their right minds would even have thought to suggest that email clients *should* be this way. Suddenly, that changed, and now everyone has gotten used to the idea.
Generally I see it as not only possibly, but likely, that sooner or later technology will bring us *effectively* unlimited bandwidth and processing power (if its possible under the laws of physics, man will get round to figuring it out, and I suspect that it is possible under the laws of physics), and at that stage it would become quite possible that large volumes of traffic could be analysed and possibly blocked with at most one or two milliseconds delay. (Its just an example.. but extremely few people would find their work obstructed by 2 ms delay).
Re:Sharing user's home directories
on
KDE 2.2 Released
·
· Score: 2
Thanks! Thats useful to know.
Re:Sharing user's home directories
on
KDE 2.2 Released
·
· Score: 2
You have a good point.. I installed a dual-boot Mandrake/RedHat recently (I like RH but have been trying out Mandrake), and I tried to share my home directory between them. Had the same problem, the info in the two.kde directories were not compatible (Mandrake paths rather prolificly seem to have "mdk" everywhere in filenames).. many icons were screwed up etc.
It should really be possible to share this home directory not just between Mandrake/RH but older versions and other different versions too. I mean, how difficult could it be to just make the config directories configurable? (e.g..kde-redhat,.kde-mdk etc).
The problem is this applies to many programs.. I have dozens of ".*" config files in my home directory. Perhaps there should be some "profile" mechanism? e.g. have a single subfolder for each "profile", e.g. ".profile-redhat", ".profile-mdk".. then all the ".*" files could be dumped into the specific profile directories.
I ended up doing some really hacky stuff with a number of symbolic links into a "shared" spare partition. OK, I could never do that with Windows at all, but its still far from ideal.
Re:Looks like a very uninformd piece
on
Taming the Web
·
· Score: 2
Maybe not now, but your viewpoint has an astounding lack of forward thinking. Try to imagine for a moment what sort of technologies might become available in the next 20 to 50 years. Yes I know most people consider 20+ years in the future to be "forever" (hence, y2k), but its really just around the corner.
Re:As long as I can connect...
on
Taming the Web
·
· Score: 2
Simple. Use an anonymous remailer that breaks and encrypts the email
Using an anonymous remailer is NOT simple by any means, not for 99% of the population. Not only do they tend to move about, but you also normally have to chain several remailers if you want any hope of anonymity. That is NOT what I would tell my grandmother is a "simple way to obtain freedom on the Internet". Freedom should be something 100% of people have automatically and conveniently, not something that a highly skilled 1% of people can get at a sacrifice of convenience. It should be *simple* for *everyone*, which means I shouldn't have to try teach my grandmother what an "anonymous remailer" is in the first place. This isn't about the "right to trade illegal files", its about simple freedoms. Computer illiterates also have a right to it.
Maybe there "will always be a way", but those ways are going to get more and more inconvenient, and an ever smaller percentage of people will be able to use/understand them. I don't want to live in a world where I, as a technical person, will be able to obtain and compile DeCSS (while running the risk of being thrown in jail for five years or a $500000 fine) while NONE of my mother, grandmother, brothers, sisters etc (who know little about computers) will be able to. I would rather live in a world where not only would obtaining DeCSS be legal, but I wouldn't need to, nor would my brothers, sisters, parents etc.
From the sounds of your argument, it seems you would prefer the former of these two situations. Moreover, your argument has the an underlying implication that its OK for DeCSS to be illegal, while sending the source is something illegal and nasty which should be hidden. Is that the argument you want to send the world? That its OK to allow DeCSS to be illegal in the first place, and that sending DeCSS code is a criminal activity to be hidden? I don't know about you, but I would rather be arguing that DeCSS shouldn't be illegal in the first place, and that copying it shouldn't be something you have to hide at all. Thats the message we should rather be spreading.
Re:As long as I can connect...
on
Taming the Web
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Here's a "simple" challenge for you. Send a single email to someone outside the USA, say for example in Europe, *knowing* that that email is NOT going through an FBI Carnivore box along its way.
Good luck. *That* is how easy the Internet is to regulate and control.
The issue is not whether or not the Internet exists, but whether or not there is real freedom on the Internet. Therein lies the problem.
And you can yell all you want about using strong encryption on your emails - wait until they throw the first few people in jail for using "technologies that prevent law enforcers from doing their job" (or something like that), and see how many people still have the balls to use strong encryption.
It seems you would rather sit around until they make things illegal and then try to find *technical* workarounds. Don't you think a better solution would be to work to develop a legal/government system that wouldn't be able to take away freedoms in the first place? The people need to have some control over lawmaking and regulation, otherwise it *will* end up being done in the interests of big corps and government.
Re:Looks like a very uninformd piece
on
Taming the Web
·
· Score: 2
FBI's carnivore can pretty much already sniff 99.99% of Internet traffic in the USA, which should alone be proof of how incredibly easy it would be to impose other limitations on freedom on the internet backbone. The vast majority of traffic goes through a few very fat pipes owned by a tiny handful of providers, all of which are quite happy to agree to whatever agencies like the FBI ask them to do. Carnivore was so damn easy to implement, thats proof, ITS BEEN DONE ALREADY. So how hard would it be to just add some extra features? Its peanuts. Some people argue "the internet is too big to regulate". Thats BS. The internet is not only WAAAY smaller than "the real world", its a helluva lot easier to police, as everything flows through a few limited pipes. Consider this: (a) Internet: 99.99% of communciation can be wiretapped, and damn easily at that, all the infrastructure is already in place, and there is pretty much only one way to communicate: the IP protocol. (b) Real world: I doubt that even 50% of communications can be tapped, there are not only many different methods of communication that you'd have to check up on, each presenting its own unique challenges (e.g. reading each letter in the post??). Additionally there is a lot of space to cover.. you can just talk to someone out in the park, the desert, or on a lake or ocean, and wham, no wiretapping possibilities. Try that on the Internet. Good luck.
Because unlimited free time will always beat limited paid time
And a bit of jail time beats both. They'll only need to throw two or three people in jail (or give them massive fines, or even just send around lots of scary sounding threats) before 99.9% of people succumb.
Why fix problems with "hacks", "modchips", "workarounds" etc, when the problems SHOULD be fixed right at their source - the faulty laws that generate the need for hacks. Finding a technical workaround to some hardware lock is doing nothing but treating the SYMPTOMS of the problem, not the problem itself. By and large, hardware locks, copyright protection devices etc will win out over 95% of the population. Why settle for problems that only 5% of people have the technical know-how and the will to work around ILLEGALLY, when 100% of people should really be doing those same things LEGALLY. Fix the laws and the culture, not the symptoms thereof. Hardware locks are just a symptom.
I have to agree, I definitely wouldn't say no to money. Although I must say I also like the pizza idea from the Samba people. Not much beats money though. Never gotten any though of course.
the so-called retaliation (it's called 'terrorism' when perpetrated by the other side)
Funny, I don't see the Israeli's DELIBERATELY setting out to blow up young children, babies, teenagers and other civilians. Seems to me they at least attempt to attack military targets. When last did you hear an Israeli saying on television that they would deliberately keep blowing up Palestinian children and babies? Answer: its never happened. Yet it seems every time we hear about the latest suicide bombing, there is another Palestinian terrorist on the screen saying "its not enough, we will keep sending more". The father of a suicide bomber was interviewed and he was saying how proud he was of his son, that he wished it had been him that did it. How do you fight that peacefully? How do you get rid of such zealotry by peaceful means? I don't see how myself. I hate the idea of war and violence, but as far as I can tell, the only way to get rid of a zealot like that is to drop a rocket on his head. Only problem is, there is no shortage of new recruits being brainwashed - you need to destroy the leaders of the organizations. Anyway, this is quite off-topic.
So are you refering to ww2, when america ignored the hell everyone else was in untill it landed on their doorstep (perl harbour) and they had to defend themselves
I don't see why the USA should feel any obligation to help other countries. The only exception to this might be if they have may have caused harm to countries in the past. I sure as hell don't feel that South Africa should go running to get involved with the problems in Zimbabwe or Congo or anywhere else for that matter, quite the opposite.
What I do have a problem with is them refusing to clean up problems it causes that directly harm other countries (for example 'worlds biggest producer of greenhouse gasses'..).
Sure as hell it does. Millions of people trying to get in direct contradiction to your bullcrap
They're trying to get in because America has jobs, not because they fantasize daily about the ideals of freedom. In American TV shows they always depict foreigners dying to get into America spouting some crap about wanting to be in "the land of the free", "american dream", blah blah blah. The truth is more like, "our country is poor, we have no jobs and no money, in America there is only 4% unemployment, they have jobs and money, lets go". We also have many people trying to get in here in South Africa, but nobody here is making bogus claims that those people long for the ideals of freedom and liberty - these people want one thing - JOBS. (South Africa is not a rich country by any means, but its a lot wealthier than most of the surrounding countries.)
Does that make it right though to lie about the very existence of the satellites?
What would be so bad about just "yes we launched some spy satellites but their location is secret"?
Even if the presence and location of the satellites could be detected, it doesn't matter - other countries who know they will be spied on, e.g. Iraq, will look for them anyway (assuming that someone there also reads Yahoo news).
Why does the government seem to think it should keep everything they do secret from the people they "serve"?
Slashdot Mirror
Introduce hero, Kill hero (or hero's dreams)
or
Introduce hero, hero succeeds.
Oh please. Tell me, which one of these two plots applies to the movie Sideways? About Schmidt? Requiem for a Dream? Waking Life? Memento? Hedwig and the Angry Inch? Boys Don't Cry? The Motorcycle Diaries? Human Traffic? Roger Dodger? Don't project your own lack of imagination or taste onto everyone else.
Describe an artist, writer, composer, or book that would not only fullfill all your criteria for imaginative (ie, completely new idea, concept, etc) AND would have enough mainstream appeal to pay for its own production and distribution.
You (like the movie execs) would be surprised, but the fact is there ARE enough people who actually want and appreciate quality movies enough for it to be profitable ... Sideways, for example, was an unexpected success and has grossed over $71,000,000 in less than year so far (production budget $16mil, hence they've already made over $55mil profit). OK, so it's not Star Wars, but it's still a lot of money, certainly you cannot complain that the market is 'too small to be able to make a profit'.
> I don't see a problem with it. Information on how to classify a computer is not classified.
That is true, but as is evident from many of the replies, many people don't understand this, so one should at least be careful -- you may be working with or for people (in either your own company or the client organistion) that don't understand this either.
So what constitutes a "low slashdot ID"?
at the turn of the century
Hehe .. what I meant was, the previous century that turned, not the most recent one, of course :)
Can I have some examples of increased civil liberties?
I don't know the details of all the laws etc, but don't forget that at the turn of the century women were not even allowed to vote in the USA. In the 1920's alcohol had been banned, but was later unbanned. There was institutionalized racism/segregation up until (I believe) +/- the 1940s (?), and in the previous century, outright slavery. Also, although being homosexual is still technically illegal in many states, this seems to be becoming legal in more and more places (along with a general culture of tolerance). Civil liberties that were curtailed during the McCarthy era also seem to have mostly found their way back (although its left its mark in the form of a distinctly knee-jerk anti-commy culture amongst the populace).
The USA has an uglier human rights history than most Americans care to remember it as being, but in general over the last two centuries, civil liberties have been on the up and up. There does appear to be a current slight down-swing (over the last five to ten years) (it would seem initially due to corporate lobbying, e.g. DMCA, but now due to Sep 11), but on the whole I think things are a lot better now in the US than they were 50, 100 and 150 years ago.
Color = American spelling Colour = UK spelling
That was the point you moron. Aluminum = American spelling, Aluminium = UK spelling.
Damn, that above post made no sense, lost everything between < and > .. had <post that even vaguely sounds like USA is being criticised> <knee jerk> <moderate down> ..
Yeah yeah I know .. .. so predictable .. ever stop to think that maybe theres some truth in it? I guess not, brainwashed-by-media opinions override thought.
the joke is, it dosen't uninstall even when you press uninstall, it still leaves its dlls active in the system
This sort of behaviour really annoys me. I suppose we're supposed to think "ah gee an honest mistake .. something went wrong". Yeah right. Its like that crap RealPlayer. When I installed it, it specifically had options for whether or not you want RealPlayer to run on startup and sit in the taskbar. I *made sure* that this option was not selected. It completely ignores the option, it runs on startup anyway and sits in the taskbar. Its entirely deliberate behaviour. I don't mean to generalise, but this sort of obnoxious pushiness seems to specifically be some thing with American (read "USA") companies. Companies elsewhere tend to prefer to try other tactics to try gain dominance, for example "trying to build a better product than your competitors". Sometimes I get the feeling that American companies try to do absolutely everything they possibly can to try gain dominance - except build a better product.
Gator does its best to make sure the user doesn't know it's working
There's an obvious reason for this type of behaviour. Consider: if users were informed of exactly what they are installing and exactly what it does, and then given a choice about whether to install it or not, how many users would willingly install it? My guess, none, whatsoever. Thats why they have to try hide their behaviour. If this alone doesn't make it glaringly obvious that such software should not exist (i.e. exactly 0% of users would ever willingly choose to use it), then nothing will.
Its sad how much the computer industry relies specifically on the lack of user education amongst its client base. Software companies and hardware companies thrive on it. The success of Microsofts business is built on it. "Keep the users in the dark ..". All you see in the computer industry these days is companies attempting to trick their customers, lying to their customers, fooling their customers, suckering their customers, all relying on lack of user education. Its all around. I saw a banner ad today "if this ad is flickering, you've won! click here to claim your prize". Its an animated GIF, if its not flickering it means your browser doesn't support animated gifs .. but its just another case of relying on the cluelessness of your own client base. If a company NEEDS its users to be clueless in order to survive, it shouldn't be allowed to survive, period.
For example, in the long run for every "shield" there will be a "sword" that will be effective against it
While empirically this has generally been the case in the past, I fail to really see any absolute "law" of the universe that says it will necessarily always be this way. I don't personally believe that it is always going to be that way, unless you can show me the proof of the reasoning that says it will. I think that at some stage within the next 100 years, technological capability is going to overtake our ability to directly use it. (Some people would call this the "singularity", but I don't completely believe in that as it is usually described). For thousands of years, it was just "conventional wisdom" or "general knowledge" (or whatever you want to call it) that man could not fly. Then, suddenly, it was no longer true, and after a brief period of mental adjustment, it is now completely normal and natural that man regularly flies. Its just an example, but I think this is the same .. many people just accept as "general knowledge" that "for every 'shield' there will be a 'sword' that will be effective against it" .. I fully expect that sooner or later, that is suddenly going to change. Another example of this type of thing, over a shorter time span, it used to be the case that the very idea of an email client automatically executing binary code "hidden" within an email was an insanely stupid idea, and nobody in their right minds would even have thought to suggest that email clients *should* be this way. Suddenly, that changed, and now everyone has gotten used to the idea.
Generally I see it as not only possibly, but likely, that sooner or later technology will bring us *effectively* unlimited bandwidth and processing power (if its possible under the laws of physics, man will get round to figuring it out, and I suspect that it is possible under the laws of physics), and at that stage it would become quite possible that large volumes of traffic could be analysed and possibly blocked with at most one or two milliseconds delay. (Its just an example .. but extremely few people would find their work obstructed by 2 ms delay).
Thanks! Thats useful to know.
You have a good point .. I installed a dual-boot Mandrake/RedHat recently (I like RH but have been trying out Mandrake), and I tried to share my home directory between them. Had the same problem, the info in the two .kde directories were not compatible (Mandrake paths rather prolificly seem to have "mdk" everywhere in filenames) .. many icons were screwed up etc.
.kde-redhat, .kde-mdk etc).
.. I have dozens of ".*" config files in my home directory. Perhaps there should be some "profile" mechanism? e.g. have a single subfolder for each "profile", e.g. ".profile-redhat", ".profile-mdk" .. then all the ".*" files could be dumped into the specific profile directories.
It should really be possible to share this home directory not just between Mandrake/RH but older versions and other different versions too. I mean, how difficult could it be to just make the config directories configurable? (e.g.
The problem is this applies to many programs
I ended up doing some really hacky stuff with a number of symbolic links into a "shared" spare partition. OK, I could never do that with Windows at all, but its still far from ideal.
Maybe not now, but your viewpoint has an astounding lack of forward thinking. Try to imagine for a moment what sort of technologies might become available in the next 20 to 50 years. Yes I know most people consider 20+ years in the future to be "forever" (hence, y2k), but its really just around the corner.
Simple. Use an anonymous remailer that breaks and encrypts the email
Using an anonymous remailer is NOT simple by any means, not for 99% of the population. Not only do they tend to move about, but you also normally have to chain several remailers if you want any hope of anonymity. That is NOT what I would tell my grandmother is a "simple way to obtain freedom on the Internet". Freedom should be something 100% of people have automatically and conveniently, not something that a highly skilled 1% of people can get at a sacrifice of convenience. It should be *simple* for *everyone*, which means I shouldn't have to try teach my grandmother what an "anonymous remailer" is in the first place. This isn't about the "right to trade illegal files", its about simple freedoms. Computer illiterates also have a right to it.
Hint: Its called "reading the article before posting".
The guy travels to the USA "regularly for both personal and professional reasons".
There will always be a way
Maybe there "will always be a way", but those ways are going to get more and more inconvenient, and an ever smaller percentage of people will be able to use/understand them. I don't want to live in a world where I, as a technical person, will be able to obtain and compile DeCSS (while running the risk of being thrown in jail for five years or a $500000 fine) while NONE of my mother, grandmother, brothers, sisters etc (who know little about computers) will be able to. I would rather live in a world where not only would obtaining DeCSS be legal, but I wouldn't need to, nor would my brothers, sisters, parents etc.
From the sounds of your argument, it seems you would prefer the former of these two situations. Moreover, your argument has the an underlying implication that its OK for DeCSS to be illegal, while sending the source is something illegal and nasty which should be hidden. Is that the argument you want to send the world? That its OK to allow DeCSS to be illegal in the first place, and that sending DeCSS code is a criminal activity to be hidden? I don't know about you, but I would rather be arguing that DeCSS shouldn't be illegal in the first place, and that copying it shouldn't be something you have to hide at all. Thats the message we should rather be spreading.
Here's a "simple" challenge for you. Send a single email to someone outside the USA, say for example in Europe, *knowing* that that email is NOT going through an FBI Carnivore box along its way.
Good luck. *That* is how easy the Internet is to regulate and control.
The issue is not whether or not the Internet exists, but whether or not there is real freedom on the Internet. Therein lies the problem.
And you can yell all you want about using strong encryption on your emails - wait until they throw the first few people in jail for using "technologies that prevent law enforcers from doing their job" (or something like that), and see how many people still have the balls to use strong encryption.
It seems you would rather sit around until they make things illegal and then try to find *technical* workarounds. Don't you think a better solution would be to work to develop a legal/government system that wouldn't be able to take away freedoms in the first place? The people need to have some control over lawmaking and regulation, otherwise it *will* end up being done in the interests of big corps and government.
FBI's carnivore can pretty much already sniff 99.99% of Internet traffic in the USA, which should alone be proof of how incredibly easy it would be to impose other limitations on freedom on the internet backbone. The vast majority of traffic goes through a few very fat pipes owned by a tiny handful of providers, all of which are quite happy to agree to whatever agencies like the FBI ask them to do. Carnivore was so damn easy to implement, thats proof, ITS BEEN DONE ALREADY. So how hard would it be to just add some extra features? Its peanuts. Some people argue "the internet is too big to regulate". Thats BS. The internet is not only WAAAY smaller than "the real world", its a helluva lot easier to police, as everything flows through a few limited pipes. Consider this: (a) Internet: 99.99% of communciation can be wiretapped, and damn easily at that, all the infrastructure is already in place, and there is pretty much only one way to communicate: the IP protocol. (b) Real world: I doubt that even 50% of communications can be tapped, there are not only many different methods of communication that you'd have to check up on, each presenting its own unique challenges (e.g. reading each letter in the post??). Additionally there is a lot of space to cover .. you can just talk to someone out in the park, the desert, or on a lake or ocean, and wham, no wiretapping possibilities. Try that on the Internet. Good luck.
Because unlimited free time will always beat limited paid time
And a bit of jail time beats both. They'll only need to throw two or three people in jail (or give them massive fines, or even just send around lots of scary sounding threats) before 99.9% of people succumb.
Why fix problems with "hacks", "modchips", "workarounds" etc, when the problems SHOULD be fixed right at their source - the faulty laws that generate the need for hacks. Finding a technical workaround to some hardware lock is doing nothing but treating the SYMPTOMS of the problem, not the problem itself. By and large, hardware locks, copyright protection devices etc will win out over 95% of the population. Why settle for problems that only 5% of people have the technical know-how and the will to work around ILLEGALLY, when 100% of people should really be doing those same things LEGALLY. Fix the laws and the culture, not the symptoms thereof. Hardware locks are just a symptom.
I have to agree, I definitely wouldn't say no to money. Although I must say I also like the pizza idea from the Samba people. Not much beats money though. Never gotten any though of course.
the so-called retaliation (it's called 'terrorism' when perpetrated by the other side)
Funny, I don't see the Israeli's DELIBERATELY setting out to blow up young children, babies, teenagers and other civilians. Seems to me they at least attempt to attack military targets. When last did you hear an Israeli saying on television that they would deliberately keep blowing up Palestinian children and babies? Answer: its never happened. Yet it seems every time we hear about the latest suicide bombing, there is another Palestinian terrorist on the screen saying "its not enough, we will keep sending more". The father of a suicide bomber was interviewed and he was saying how proud he was of his son, that he wished it had been him that did it. How do you fight that peacefully? How do you get rid of such zealotry by peaceful means? I don't see how myself. I hate the idea of war and violence, but as far as I can tell, the only way to get rid of a zealot like that is to drop a rocket on his head. Only problem is, there is no shortage of new recruits being brainwashed - you need to destroy the leaders of the organizations. Anyway, this is quite off-topic.
So are you refering to ww2, when america ignored the hell everyone else was in untill it landed on their doorstep (perl harbour) and they had to defend themselves
I don't see why the USA should feel any obligation to help other countries. The only exception to this might be if they have may have caused harm to countries in the past. I sure as hell don't feel that South Africa should go running to get involved with the problems in Zimbabwe or Congo or anywhere else for that matter, quite the opposite.
What I do have a problem with is them refusing to clean up problems it causes that directly harm other countries (for example 'worlds biggest producer of greenhouse gasses' ..).
Sure as hell it does. Millions of people trying to get in direct contradiction to your bullcrap
They're trying to get in because America has jobs, not because they fantasize daily about the ideals of freedom. In American TV shows they always depict foreigners dying to get into America spouting some crap about wanting to be in "the land of the free", "american dream", blah blah blah. The truth is more like, "our country is poor, we have no jobs and no money, in America there is only 4% unemployment, they have jobs and money, lets go". We also have many people trying to get in here in South Africa, but nobody here is making bogus claims that those people long for the ideals of freedom and liberty - these people want one thing - JOBS. (South Africa is not a rich country by any means, but its a lot wealthier than most of the surrounding countries.)
Does that make it right though to lie about the very existence of the satellites?
What would be so bad about just "yes we launched some spy satellites but their location is secret"?
Even if the presence and location of the satellites could be detected, it doesn't matter - other countries who know they will be spied on, e.g. Iraq, will look for them anyway (assuming that someone there also reads Yahoo news).
Why does the government seem to think it should keep everything they do secret from the people they "serve"?