Can you copyright an ABI? They're not claiming the source code itself is copied from the original sources, but that those files implement a copyrighted ABI. Which is odd.
Especially if the parent post is correct and the ABI is part of the POSIX standard. I mean, this should've come up years ago. And Microsoft would've been exposed because they have implemented the POSIX standard.
I don't know... I'm with everyone else... just ignore em until a court actually does something.
What's amusing is that someone from Microsoft wrote back and said that they believed that a full-time employee would've just got a warning... That's the point I'm trying to make. Most of you are either speculating that Microsoft has a no-camera policy (which is odd considering other employees have blogs and pictures of their cubes...) or saying that they can fire him for whatever reason they want.
I don't know if they have a policy, and barring any confirmation I can't comment on that... As for being able to fire him... well, sure they can, but the question is should they? Especially if they don't have a "camera policy?"
I think it's worthy of a slap on the wrist. some of you don't. I feel like this is subjective and unlikely to get resolved in a discussion room;)
the picture wasn't of any "facility" but of a truck, 2 palettes of G5's, and some trees. Not a buidling (save the loading dock at the bottom edge) in sight.
Look, you can say that they have a right to protect whatever, but the photographs have no discerning characteristics. He even took care to make sure of that. More importantly, the photo is of just macs... which we all know they get because they have a Mac unit.
So... your theories are great but ultimately not relevant. If they truly cared about future incidents they could've asked him to take the photo down, reprimanded him, and then sent email to the company asking that people don't do that.
But, instead they just fired the guy. Your theories don't mesh with the other facts.
Sure, you could argue that... the effect would still be the same in the majority of cases... most people drive SUV's with a single person in the car. The issue is commuters, not church vans. You're just tweaking the law, not changing it drastically.
Let me put this another way. Should the Chileans who had family members die at the hands of Pinochet be able to demand extradition of the CIA agents that helped put Pinochet in power (and supported him after)?
Do a search for Pinochet and Chile on Google. Read the declassified documents that are now available as well as the research papers others have written. The CIA (or its operatives) are accused of terrorist acts in Chile to prompt the coup there. Innocent people died there, too.
My point isn't about the "righteousness of the war" but about the fact that your (and other posts) perspectives are strictly American and hypocritical. It also indicates your own biases. You, like many of my fellow Americans, are willing to put a lot of faith in statements by the CIA and White House. Others around the world, especially those like the Taliban, that have dealt with the CIA start with a different opinion of their credibility.
To deny that reality is ignorant. To make no effort to understand that underscores why so many people around the world think we are arrogant. More importantly, our "righteousness" isn't an absolute no matter how much you want it to be.
those that don't agree that your "police" are, in fact, the police and not an angry vigilante mob.
Last time I checked, the U.S. isn't the police of the world. In fact, I seem to remember a certain presidential candidate in 2000 campaigning against having the U.S. police the world.
I have to point out another option. While the NFL seems to have a service, other sports don't. I've written a couple of plugins for Watson on the mac to deal with baseball and football scores. I essentially scrape the data from ESPN.com and display them. There is nothing stopping you from doing the same thing for "real-time" stats from a game.
Also on the Mac, I've reversed the gamecast applet protocol that ESPN.com uses and created a Konfabulator widget that does the gamecast. There is NOTHING stopping you from doing the same thing (and it's much easier, assuming you're comfortable around packet sniffers and writting HTTP clients) for yahoo or gamecast.
Your entire post can be summarized by the following:
Apple == BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc.
Sony == Toyota/Honda
Dell == GM
Clearly, I'm oversimplifying and also imposing my own view of car manufacturers on this, but you get my point... Apple isn't selling to people who don't want the features. They're selling to people that buy solutions to tasks... i.e. if you're doing a lot of home video editing (there are many of us amateurs out there), the Macs represent a complete solution, including the DVD burner.
Besides, the PowerMac is their pro line, which is why I think comparisons to home machines are pretty silly. Their iMac and eMac lines are more in line with the single proc you're talking about. When I'm compiling software, I want the extra processor.:)
They keep a large portion of it... you don't get $50 billion cash reserves by spending the money... and if you don't spend the money, only a fractional amount makes it into the larger economy, and some variable percentage of that is going to be invested by the bank in US ventures.
Look at the their cash balances. They spend a lot of it, no doubt, but software, especially the business Microsoft is in, is a high margin business... they do pretty well on each copy of Office and Windows they sell.
As for the money Microsoft spends, they do lobby in other countries, offer discounts to foreign governments considering open source legislation. I wouldn't be surprised to see that they do redirect some of the cash they make out of the country.
I thought the.NET framework allowed compiling down to native code?
The bigger issue for game development is that memory management is turned over to the system, which takes a lot of control away from game developers... these are people that put inline assembly code to speed up certain sections...
I'd be interested in the.NET experts out there to comment on the parent post. AFAIR,.NET's main disadvantage is the defering of resource management to runtime. Since you can compile it down, that part of the performance equation isn't so bad. that's IIRC.:)
I don't think that you're right about this. Well, you might be right about this for your particular situation. Definitely not right for my situation.
The ideal user for Netflix is someone who, like me, would rent more if I didn't have to worry about late fees. In fact, when I factor in my typical late fee rate, I only need to rent 3 movies from Netflix to break even on my $20 monthly membership fee.
You can call me lazy or whatever about not getting the movies back on time, and you might have a point;). But, in the end, Netflix offers me a value in that I get flexibility in my life. For example, I can decide to watch a movie for 30 minutes each night before I go to bed (e.g. HBO TV series). I can just hang on to a DVD for a week until I get a chance to see it.
In other words, I use Netflix for the same reason I own a Tivo. It's about my time and my schedule, not about due dates and penalties. I have enough of that at work... why bring it home.
Also, there are NO late fees. none. ever. That means that as long as I get around 3-5 rentals a month, I'm happy. It's cheaper than the premium cable channel package, and it's more flexible. This is an understated benefit.
The final point I'm making is that people complaining here seem out to super-maximize their value from Netflix. Which is great, go for it. But it reminds me of the people who go to buffets and pig out because they are paying for an unlimited meal. You can pig out, as I said above, go for it. My point is just that you don't HAVE to pig out. Same with Netflix... the service is set up so that you can get better value compared to my local blockbuster or hollywood video and they can make a profit... that's what business is about.
As to the question of how many subscribe, Netflix now has over 1 million subscribers. I believe that the service is good enough that I recently dropped a little bit of money into their stock (check out their chart: NFLX). It's a risky business, especially with Blockbuster entering the same market (further validating that there is a market, btw), so it's not like I invested my life savings.;)
Anyway, if it doesn't make sense for you, don't get it. I think it does make sense for many people, though. And, based on the article, if you stay within the 5 rental neighborhood, none of this long wait stuff happens to you.
light bulb: Maybe the people that run into delays are families? I could see a family running through 20 rentals a month. Or, at least more than 5. If you keep movies in the queue for the kids, especially during the summer....
In general I would be very distrustful of any candidate who absolutely demanded that we know who won the election RIGHT NOW!
Honestly, though, I doubt that the candidates are driving the push toward exit-poll predictions. I hope someone with more relevant expertise is reading this thread and can comment. I think television is more to blame on this, trying to scoop election results and keep viewers interested in their "election day coverage." Each November I see commercials for various news programs bragging that they called X election first (in Boston, for example, one network is running ads that they called the Mass. governor's election first).
I agree with most of your points. I do have to point out that many of your audit steps do cancel out your supposed benefits of electronic voting machines (i.e. paper transport and storage). The real benefit is that computers are binary... your point about ambiguity is really the main benefit IMHO. Of course, it makes me wonder what happens if the software gets confused... will it have it's own "invalid vote" weakness like pregnant chads or improperly filled in circles or whatever.
because everyone in America needs things NOW NOW NOW. Seriously... I mean, networks use exit polling to try to call the elections in a particular district before the polls even close. Everyone looks at electronic voting because it seems faster and seems to eliminate human tampering and error (it's a computer, right?).
I'm not saying I agree... just that I can see the appeal.
Wow, you have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
The problem with your examples (all of them) is that you assume that what is obscure remains obscure forever.
The problem with obscurity as a primary means of security is that too many people know things, and the odds on one person speaking out of turn or being duped into revealing a secret is non-trivial. Take, for example, the cases of Kevin Mitnick. He got a lot of his information about unlocked PSTN switches by calling up the maintenance centers for Sprint or whatever and impersonating a repair person in the field.
I'm sure the security at Fort Knox is well understood ("simple" circuits, cameras, and locks). If you ask me, the fact that it's a real fort with lots of troops around making it kind of hard to, for example, sneak in a truck or dozen that you'd need to cart of gold (it's kinda heavy:) ) has more to do with the fact that there hasn't been a break in.
The point of the anti-obscurity argument is that relying on obscurity as the main means of security a system is almost never effective against a determined attacker, because obscurity can be eliminated. Systems designed in the light of day, or at least with collaboration outside of a single interested entity, tend to be more secure because it eliminates those "in the know" short cuts.
I'm beginning with the assumption that there will be a war. So, assuming that happens, rebuilding is the only way I can see of salvaging any long term peace. You're right, revenge is a strong motivator. But so are suffering and monetary rewards for martyrdom.
All I'm saying is that all of this rhetoric about saving the peopel of Iraq and freeing them will be just BS if we don't show any real committment about rebuilding their society.
Where, in the month of March, nearly 300 men have been put to death in Texas alone.
is misleading no matter how I read it. Also, you're omitting certain facts about the three men who were arrested... for example facts about the charitable group they were donating to and the specific donations they had.
Your most cogent point is the last one you made... a war will simply continue the cycle of hate that has prospered in these times. In fact, my main concern is that no comprehensive plan and, more importantly in today's world, no long-term money has been committed to the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan. If we drop that ball, so to speak, we're going to just create more hate and more terrorists.
They're a little nuts... They suggest that IBM should buy SCO, release SCO's IP into the public domain, and then fire all the SCO employees... that seems a bit harsh to employees that probably had about 0 part in the decision to pursue this IP strategy.
I live in Boston where the job market is tough even with a zillion computer-related companies around. I can't imagine how rough finding a job must be in Utah. It seems unfair to fault people for keeping a job in these tough times.
Well, you're right about some things. To bring this back a bit more on topic, if you choose XP Media Center, then you may be wrong. This is from the article:
There are a lot of improvements that must be made in order for MCE to really take off however; first and foremost, the performance issues we encountered are unacceptable. Unfortunately, it may take mainstream Hyper-Threading enabled Pentium 4s with an 800MHz FSB in order to mask the stuttering issues that occur during normal use of MCE as a PVR. As far as stability goes, we'd expect the limited number of hardware vendors to more thoroughly stress test and ensure their machines won't be crashing in a media center environment; like we've mentioned before, who wants to explain why their TV just blue screened?
You may really need a big ass expensive machine to do this right. Also, one other concern that they didn't address is sound. When my Tivo is recording and the room is silent, I can barely pick up the hard drive writing sounds. No fan, no other hum, nothing. Would you really expect that from a PC? I used to have a server in the room with dual CPUs and 3 hard drive (one SCSI monster) which made my room sound like you were in a car on the highway. Even after removing SCSI drive and one IDE drive, and otherwise altering the fans, it's still too loud for the living room.
My point is just that having a PC vs. having an appliance involves more than just upgradeability. One of the reasons that modifying an appliance should void a warranty is that Tivo or ReplayTV can make assumptions about cooling, noise, and ventilation based on their tests on fixed hardware. You throw those out the window if you decide to put a 10000 RPM drive into your Tivo.
Also, aesthetically, the HP they used didn't really look like it belongs in my entertainment center... it's vertically oriented, has a keyboard (!!!), and it otherwise annoying.
Anyway, I guess if you have a spare PC or lots of money and want to get upgradeability in a familiar setup, go for it. I'd rather stick with my Tivo, with it's known privacy issues and have a quiet living room with low power consumption. I can see a place for both, and I'm sure people will buy the one that makes the most sense for them.
you're right that gamers do pay a lot. But, there are fewer systems sold to gamers at $4000 a system than there are systems sold to corporations spending $1200 per employee (except for the cleaning people). I would bet that there is a difference of several orders of magnitude.
In fact, and I'm just completely guessing here, I bet there are as many C-level and executive level employees out there as there are super-gaming rig purchasers. These corporate "employees" make companies pay for the coolest laptop or desktop just because they want the best. For example, I know lawyers that routinely shell out $6K+ for multimonitor desktop systems (including paying for the silly Apple Cinema Displays), execs (friends and or family) that pay $3-4K for laptops and desktops with insane specs (and these people that frigging just check email and watch movies on their damn machines).
And, those execs and C-level officers probably purchase new systems as upgrades more often than some college kid buys a completely new gaming rig.
And, it's a tax writeoff for them.:)
Regedit is justifiably obscure. ReaderRabbit isn't. Who do you think is buying the computer systems and software that are driving the tech economy? Unix admins? Heck no, it's my wife grabbing cheap edutainment software for our kids at the discount warehouse.
Actually, it's the corporate desktop that's driving the tech economy. It's that group of clients that pay top dollar for machines, keep upgrading, and generally keep Microsoft, Dell, and Compaq in the black. It also funds all of the systems integration and custom application consultants, like IBM global services, et al.
Don't get me wrong, the consumer side is important, and huge, but in terms of yearly revenue, I think the corporate desktop has much more of an impact on the tech economy. As a consultant in a previous semi-career, I looked towards big business to figure out which way the wind was blowing.
are you kidding? All CDs would become crap if they found this out!!! You're willing to pay ~$15 for both a CD with many hits or ~$15 for one hit. So, logically they can stretch out those hits over many purchases instead of just one. If you were a record company, which would you choose?
Which is why, as someone interested in this as a policy question (not as a moral crusade), I advocate simple but meaningful regulation. I see nothing wrong with gun fingerprinting, having a license for every gun owner, and having classes of licenses for different types of firearms. A license should be required for purchase (try buying a car without a drivers license... in most cases, you can't).
I am also interested in finding out what civil methods we can use to encourage responsible gun ownership... for example, strict liability when your gun is involved in an accident. Would that work? or would it be its own nightmare?
It's easy to sit back and say nothing happens because of the NRA or because of Sara Brady... the real problem is that no one is proposing reasonable compromises that the rest of us non-NRA members or gun-abolitionists can go, "Hey, that makes sense to me."
BTW, you can see my thoughts on Bowling For Columbine at my blog.
we regulate the shit out of cars. You're right that we don't get rid of automobiles. Most gun control legislation isn't trying to outlaw guns, but tries to regulate them. The NRA is extreme because they won't consider regulation on a case-by-case basis... their typical MO is "All regulation is bad, let's find out why we don't like this one"
On the other hand, it's very obvious to the vast majority of people that cars have benefits. There are large swaths of people in this country who don't own a gun and don't use a gun and don't see the value of a gun. Furthermore, opinions tend follow some pretty basic demographic lines... whether you live in an urban area or a rural/less urban area, certain income lines, and even racial backgrounds. That's what makes this even more complicated... the gun control advocates don't know many gun control opponents personally or socially....
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Especially if the parent post is correct and the ABI is part of the POSIX standard. I mean, this should've come up years ago. And Microsoft would've been exposed because they have implemented the POSIX standard.
I don't know... I'm with everyone else... just ignore em until a court actually does something.
Sujal
I don't know if they have a policy, and barring any confirmation I can't comment on that... As for being able to fire him... well, sure they can, but the question is should they? Especially if they don't have a "camera policy?"
I think it's worthy of a slap on the wrist. some of you don't. I feel like this is subjective and unlikely to get resolved in a discussion room ;)
Sujal
Look, you can say that they have a right to protect whatever, but the photographs have no discerning characteristics. He even took care to make sure of that. More importantly, the photo is of just macs... which we all know they get because they have a Mac unit.
So... your theories are great but ultimately not relevant. If they truly cared about future incidents they could've asked him to take the photo down, reprimanded him, and then sent email to the company asking that people don't do that.
But, instead they just fired the guy. Your theories don't mesh with the other facts.
Sure, you could argue that... the effect would still be the same in the majority of cases... most people drive SUV's with a single person in the car. The issue is commuters, not church vans. You're just tweaking the law, not changing it drastically.
You're forgetting the great tax benefits you get with owning a hybrid.
Let me put this another way. Should the Chileans who had family members die at the hands of Pinochet be able to demand extradition of the CIA agents that helped put Pinochet in power (and supported him after)?
Do a search for Pinochet and Chile on Google. Read the declassified documents that are now available as well as the research papers others have written. The CIA (or its operatives) are accused of terrorist acts in Chile to prompt the coup there. Innocent people died there, too.
My point isn't about the "righteousness of the war" but about the fact that your (and other posts) perspectives are strictly American and hypocritical. It also indicates your own biases. You, like many of my fellow Americans, are willing to put a lot of faith in statements by the CIA and White House. Others around the world, especially those like the Taliban, that have dealt with the CIA start with a different opinion of their credibility.
To deny that reality is ignorant. To make no effort to understand that underscores why so many people around the world think we are arrogant. More importantly, our "righteousness" isn't an absolute no matter how much you want it to be.
Sujal
Last time I checked, the U.S. isn't the police of the world. In fact, I seem to remember a certain presidential candidate in 2000 campaigning against having the U.S. police the world.
Sujal
Also on the Mac, I've reversed the gamecast applet protocol that ESPN.com uses and created a Konfabulator widget that does the gamecast. There is NOTHING stopping you from doing the same thing (and it's much easier, assuming you're comfortable around packet sniffers and writting HTTP clients) for yahoo or gamecast.
Sujal
Your entire post can be summarized by the following:
Apple == BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, etc. Sony == Toyota/Honda Dell == GM
Clearly, I'm oversimplifying and also imposing my own view of car manufacturers on this, but you get my point... Apple isn't selling to people who don't want the features. They're selling to people that buy solutions to tasks... i.e. if you're doing a lot of home video editing (there are many of us amateurs out there), the Macs represent a complete solution, including the DVD burner.
Besides, the PowerMac is their pro line, which is why I think comparisons to home machines are pretty silly. Their iMac and eMac lines are more in line with the single proc you're talking about. When I'm compiling software, I want the extra processor. :)
Sujal
Look at the their cash balances. They spend a lot of it, no doubt, but software, especially the business Microsoft is in, is a high margin business... they do pretty well on each copy of Office and Windows they sell.
As for the money Microsoft spends, they do lobby in other countries, offer discounts to foreign governments considering open source legislation. I wouldn't be surprised to see that they do redirect some of the cash they make out of the country.
The bigger issue for game development is that memory management is turned over to the system, which takes a lot of control away from game developers... these are people that put inline assembly code to speed up certain sections...
I'd be interested in the .NET experts out there to comment on the parent post. AFAIR, .NET's main disadvantage is the defering of resource management to runtime. Since you can compile it down, that part of the performance equation isn't so bad. that's IIRC. :)
Sujal
The ideal user for Netflix is someone who, like me, would rent more if I didn't have to worry about late fees. In fact, when I factor in my typical late fee rate, I only need to rent 3 movies from Netflix to break even on my $20 monthly membership fee.
You can call me lazy or whatever about not getting the movies back on time, and you might have a point ;). But, in the end, Netflix offers me a value in that I get flexibility in my life. For example, I can decide to watch a movie for 30 minutes each night before I go to bed (e.g. HBO TV series). I can just hang on to a DVD for a week until I get a chance to see it.
In other words, I use Netflix for the same reason I own a Tivo. It's about my time and my schedule, not about due dates and penalties. I have enough of that at work... why bring it home.
Also, there are NO late fees. none. ever. That means that as long as I get around 3-5 rentals a month, I'm happy. It's cheaper than the premium cable channel package, and it's more flexible. This is an understated benefit.
The final point I'm making is that people complaining here seem out to super-maximize their value from Netflix. Which is great, go for it. But it reminds me of the people who go to buffets and pig out because they are paying for an unlimited meal. You can pig out, as I said above, go for it. My point is just that you don't HAVE to pig out. Same with Netflix... the service is set up so that you can get better value compared to my local blockbuster or hollywood video and they can make a profit... that's what business is about.
As to the question of how many subscribe, Netflix now has over 1 million subscribers. I believe that the service is good enough that I recently dropped a little bit of money into their stock (check out their chart: NFLX). It's a risky business, especially with Blockbuster entering the same market (further validating that there is a market, btw), so it's not like I invested my life savings. ;)
Anyway, if it doesn't make sense for you, don't get it. I think it does make sense for many people, though. And, based on the article, if you stay within the 5 rental neighborhood, none of this long wait stuff happens to you.
light bulb: Maybe the people that run into delays are families? I could see a family running through 20 rentals a month. Or, at least more than 5. If you keep movies in the queue for the kids, especially during the summer....
Sujal
I agree with most of your points. I do have to point out that many of your audit steps do cancel out your supposed benefits of electronic voting machines (i.e. paper transport and storage). The real benefit is that computers are binary... your point about ambiguity is really the main benefit IMHO. Of course, it makes me wonder what happens if the software gets confused... will it have it's own "invalid vote" weakness like pregnant chads or improperly filled in circles or whatever.
I'm not saying I agree... just that I can see the appeal.
Wow, you have no idea what you're talking about, do you?
The problem with your examples (all of them) is that you assume that what is obscure remains obscure forever.
The problem with obscurity as a primary means of security is that too many people know things, and the odds on one person speaking out of turn or being duped into revealing a secret is non-trivial. Take, for example, the cases of Kevin Mitnick. He got a lot of his information about unlocked PSTN switches by calling up the maintenance centers for Sprint or whatever and impersonating a repair person in the field.
I'm sure the security at Fort Knox is well understood ("simple" circuits, cameras, and locks). If you ask me, the fact that it's a real fort with lots of troops around making it kind of hard to, for example, sneak in a truck or dozen that you'd need to cart of gold (it's kinda heavy :) ) has more to do with the fact that there hasn't been a break in.
The point of the anti-obscurity argument is that relying on obscurity as the main means of security a system is almost never effective against a determined attacker, because obscurity can be eliminated. Systems designed in the light of day, or at least with collaboration outside of a single interested entity, tend to be more secure because it eliminates those "in the know" short cuts.
Sujal
All I'm saying is that all of this rhetoric about saving the peopel of Iraq and freeing them will be just BS if we don't show any real committment about rebuilding their society.
Sujal
Your most cogent point is the last one you made... a war will simply continue the cycle of hate that has prospered in these times. In fact, my main concern is that no comprehensive plan and, more importantly in today's world, no long-term money has been committed to the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan. If we drop that ball, so to speak, we're going to just create more hate and more terrorists.
Sujal
I live in Boston where the job market is tough even with a zillion computer-related companies around. I can't imagine how rough finding a job must be in Utah. It seems unfair to fault people for keeping a job in these tough times.
sujal
You may really need a big ass expensive machine to do this right. Also, one other concern that they didn't address is sound. When my Tivo is recording and the room is silent, I can barely pick up the hard drive writing sounds. No fan, no other hum, nothing. Would you really expect that from a PC? I used to have a server in the room with dual CPUs and 3 hard drive (one SCSI monster) which made my room sound like you were in a car on the highway. Even after removing SCSI drive and one IDE drive, and otherwise altering the fans, it's still too loud for the living room.
My point is just that having a PC vs. having an appliance involves more than just upgradeability. One of the reasons that modifying an appliance should void a warranty is that Tivo or ReplayTV can make assumptions about cooling, noise, and ventilation based on their tests on fixed hardware. You throw those out the window if you decide to put a 10000 RPM drive into your Tivo.
Also, aesthetically, the HP they used didn't really look like it belongs in my entertainment center... it's vertically oriented, has a keyboard (!!!), and it otherwise annoying.
Anyway, I guess if you have a spare PC or lots of money and want to get upgradeability in a familiar setup, go for it. I'd rather stick with my Tivo, with it's known privacy issues and have a quiet living room with low power consumption. I can see a place for both, and I'm sure people will buy the one that makes the most sense for them.
Sujal
In fact, and I'm just completely guessing here, I bet there are as many C-level and executive level employees out there as there are super-gaming rig purchasers. These corporate "employees" make companies pay for the coolest laptop or desktop just because they want the best. For example, I know lawyers that routinely shell out $6K+ for multimonitor desktop systems (including paying for the silly Apple Cinema Displays), execs (friends and or family) that pay $3-4K for laptops and desktops with insane specs (and these people that frigging just check email and watch movies on their damn machines).
And, those execs and C-level officers probably purchase new systems as upgrades more often than some college kid buys a completely new gaming rig. And, it's a tax writeoff for them. :)
Sujal
porn is big business. :)
Actually, it's the corporate desktop that's driving the tech economy. It's that group of clients that pay top dollar for machines, keep upgrading, and generally keep Microsoft, Dell, and Compaq in the black. It also funds all of the systems integration and custom application consultants, like IBM global services, et al.
Don't get me wrong, the consumer side is important, and huge, but in terms of yearly revenue, I think the corporate desktop has much more of an impact on the tech economy. As a consultant in a previous semi-career, I looked towards big business to figure out which way the wind was blowing.
Sujal
I am also interested in finding out what civil methods we can use to encourage responsible gun ownership... for example, strict liability when your gun is involved in an accident. Would that work? or would it be its own nightmare?
It's easy to sit back and say nothing happens because of the NRA or because of Sara Brady... the real problem is that no one is proposing reasonable compromises that the rest of us non-NRA members or gun-abolitionists can go, "Hey, that makes sense to me."
BTW, you can see my thoughts on Bowling For Columbine at my blog.
Sujal
On the other hand, it's very obvious to the vast majority of people that cars have benefits. There are large swaths of people in this country who don't own a gun and don't use a gun and don't see the value of a gun. Furthermore, opinions tend follow some pretty basic demographic lines... whether you live in an urban area or a rural/less urban area, certain income lines, and even racial backgrounds. That's what makes this even more complicated... the gun control advocates don't know many gun control opponents personally or socially....
Sujal