This stuff all just works unless you have really strange hardware.
Realistically, a Ubuntu install is far smoother than a Windows XP install where you need to screw around with stacks of driver disks before anything works right.
The United States, on the whole, is doing pretty good when it comes to basic freedoms, but we're not the best. For example, in various rankings of freedom of the press the United States doesn't manage to rank in the top 10 (1)(2).
Actually, there are a couple of reasonable ways to get the US political system to act like the democratic republic it claims to be. It'd only take a reasonably small number of people putting in a bit of well directed effort.
Ahh... you miss one of the key points in the IBM/SCO case: It's IBM we're talking about. Even if they were in the wrong, they would manage to drag things out for five years and then end up with a cross licensing agreement where they get mad loot in exchange for the patent on electricity or "using matter and/or energy in a buisness endeavour" or something.
With something like the SCO case it was over before it started, and IBM has no reason not to just crush them with the legal costs of a drawn out case. It's not like it costs IBM anything - they have extra lawyers on staff anyway.
Actually, it's entirely possible to build an encryption based DRM system that has the expected security properties. The CSS copy protection system was designed very poorly.
The problem is, even if the cryptographic design of the copy protection system is perfect, that still doesn't result in a secure copy protection system. A key recovery attack on the ciphertext may be impossible, but that doesn't change the fact that the key needs to be distributed to the player device - which means that the problem reduces to the much more difficult "make 100% tamperproof hardware".
The real problem is that even if all the copy protection and DRM works perfectly, with 100% tamper resistant hardware from the media to the speakers/display, that still isn't good enough. It's always possible for a user to re-record digital content at the exact quality that they're seeing and hearing it.
I'm not so sure you're right. You point out the disasters of the 2000 presidential election but don't point out that the 2004 election may have been worse. We don't know just how big a disaster it was, and most of "the people" don't even know there was anything wrong.
Here's another interesting point:
Imagine the following: The Democrats and Republicans aren't really opposing political parties.
After that, ask yourself the following: When was the last time the president or the majority in congress wasn't Democrat or Republican?
Here's the thing: Stealing millions of dollars from Casinos *is* cool.
The problem is that the chance of failure is so high that it's not really worth trying, and that even if you succeed it's still illegal so you can't brag about it.
Expose them to real technology as fast as you think they can understand it.
You're trying to stimulate a self-wiring neural net. Any form of interactive technology will tend to supply that stimulation automatically as the child plays with it.
I'd stay away from children targeted stuff like "My First Whatever". There's no real advantage to it over a real item, and it's not likely to provide them any signficant amount of learning opportunity - unless you're trying to teach them the user interface patterns of children's toys.
Remember to differentiate between contexts that cleanly fit into the traditional writing category (email, blogs) and those that replace spoken communication (IMs, text messages). Usage of spoken english is different than written english, and we don't know what apropriate general usage for realtime textual communication looks like yet.
So what you're saying is they'll need to remove the casing and shrink the electronics by like 15% to fit it in a cellphone. I'd guess they employ at least one engineer...
Laws against assault (in various forms) don't need to have anything to do with morality, good versus evil or fantasy versus reality. In thousands of years of civilization it has become generally accepted that any system of laws should probably include something to discourage assault. We may have those laws simply because it's difficult to have a functional society when people can easily gang up and beat the crap out of people they disagree with.
Because the currently appointed government officials are exactly the people to be defining right and wrong. Good idea. Oh, wait, no. That's what parents are for.
The big difference is that a system like that would be much more predictable than a true mult-core setup because you never have two threads running at once. You wouldn't have any of the race condtions of a true multi-core setup - in fact it would be just like a current single core machine if each process was throttled to no more than 1/4th of the time slices.
Also, even if it doesn't, couldn't one write code that uses the 3D accelerator to render...
Yes. That's exactly what these next generation graphics systems are doing. They're also taking advantage of some of the eye candy you get effectively for free when you do that.
Here's the thing: If computers still came with decent 2d-only graphics cards, you'd be right. Realistically, all computers are sold with video cards that offer some level of 3d acceleration. The next-generation 3d interfaces are just taking advantage of that fact (and likely speeding things up in the process).
Even the lowest end new desktop computer today comes with Intel GMA900 or ATI Radeon 9100 graphics. Windows Vista may be shooting slightly higher than that, but It's not out yet and it makes a lot of sense to be using the 3d graphics capacity that the computer has anyway even if it's mostly for eye candy.
The reason the "the source will never die" thing is brought up is because it *proves* that in the *worst case*, the software can still be supported. This is something that is only possible with a source license.
Due to the possibility for misunderstanding, that probably shouldn't be the first point mentioned to non-technical types. The following points are probably more relevent for them:
Novell was founded in 1983. They are one of only two major commerical Linux vendors.
You may have heard of IBM or HP. They support Linux on their hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
So... just grab one of the functional releases of the content then.
There's a lot of evidence that the system in the United States is exactly like that. What makes you think it isn't?
Realistically, a Ubuntu install is far smoother than a Windows XP install where you need to screw around with stacks of driver disks before anything works right.
(1) http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=554& year=2005
(2) http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=204
WTF? In what alternate reality does that even start to make any sense?
Actually, there are a couple of reasonable ways to get the US political system to act like the democratic republic it claims to be. It'd only take a reasonably small number of people putting in a bit of well directed effort.
With something like the SCO case it was over before it started, and IBM has no reason not to just crush them with the legal costs of a drawn out case. It's not like it costs IBM anything - they have extra lawyers on staff anyway.
Actually, it's entirely possible to build an encryption based DRM system that has the expected security properties. The CSS copy protection system was designed very poorly.
The problem is, even if the cryptographic design of the copy protection system is perfect, that still doesn't result in a secure copy protection system. A key recovery attack on the ciphertext may be impossible, but that doesn't change the fact that the key needs to be distributed to the player device - which means that the problem reduces to the much more difficult "make 100% tamperproof hardware".
The real problem is that even if all the copy protection and DRM works perfectly, with 100% tamper resistant hardware from the media to the speakers/display, that still isn't good enough. It's always possible for a user to re-record digital content at the exact quality that they're seeing and hearing it.
I'm not so sure you're right. You point out the disasters of the 2000 presidential election but don't point out that the 2004 election may have been worse. We don't know just how big a disaster it was, and most of "the people" don't even know there was anything wrong.
Here's another interesting point:
Imagine the following: The Democrats and Republicans aren't really opposing political parties.
After that, ask yourself the following: When was the last time the president or the majority in congress wasn't Democrat or Republican?
The question is "Web statistics from where?" There's no web site that won't have biased information.
Is there actually a mechanism for self-correction, or is that just wishful thinking?
The problem is that the chance of failure is so high that it's not really worth trying, and that even if you succeed it's still illegal so you can't brag about it.
You're trying to stimulate a self-wiring neural net. Any form of interactive technology will tend to supply that stimulation automatically as the child plays with it.
I'd stay away from children targeted stuff like "My First Whatever". There's no real advantage to it over a real item, and it's not likely to provide them any signficant amount of learning opportunity - unless you're trying to teach them the user interface patterns of children's toys.
Remember to differentiate between contexts that cleanly fit into the traditional writing category (email, blogs) and those that replace spoken communication (IMs, text messages). Usage of spoken english is different than written english, and we don't know what apropriate general usage for realtime textual communication looks like yet.
So what you're saying is they'll need to remove the casing and shrink the electronics by like 15% to fit it in a cellphone. I'd guess they employ at least one engineer...
Laws against assault (in various forms) don't need to have anything to do with morality, good versus evil or fantasy versus reality. In thousands of years of civilization it has become generally accepted that any system of laws should probably include something to discourage assault. We may have those laws simply because it's difficult to have a functional society when people can easily gang up and beat the crap out of people they disagree with.
Because the currently appointed government officials are exactly the people to be defining right and wrong. Good idea. Oh, wait, no. That's what parents are for.
They should be owned by the city or town, just like water and sewer lines.
The big difference is that a system like that would be much more predictable than a true mult-core setup because you never have two threads running at once. You wouldn't have any of the race condtions of a true multi-core setup - in fact it would be just like a current single core machine if each process was throttled to no more than 1/4th of the time slices.
It's not about horsepower, it's about supporting modern shader technology - sort of like how apps required MMX instructions back in 1996.
Even the lowest end new desktop computer today comes with Intel GMA900 or ATI Radeon 9100 graphics. Windows Vista may be shooting slightly higher than that, but It's not out yet and it makes a lot of sense to be using the 3d graphics capacity that the computer has anyway even if it's mostly for eye candy.
A good 3d interface actually consumes *less* processor and memory resources than a traditional interface, because it can use the 3D card instead.
Due to the possibility for misunderstanding, that probably shouldn't be the first point mentioned to non-technical types. The following points are probably more relevent for them:
Training is a small short term cost with huge long term benifits. There's no good reason not to do it.