I definitely favour replacing all fossil and nuclear power generation with renewable energy sources including solar, wind, tidal and geothermal. However, in the case of solar energy, can anyone estimate the potential impact on the environment of fabricating a square mile of say lithium-ion batteries? how much lithium would that require? What amount of the earth's crust would we have to mine in order to get it?
Similarly, with a solar array of Musk's proposed 10,000 square miles, what would the rate of replacement for panels be? If a panel performed at optimum for say 10 years, it would mean that you might theoretically have to replace 1,000 square miles of panels each year... For panels with a 20 year operational life, that would drop to 500 square miles of panels a year.
Obviously efficiencies of mass production are going to bring the costs down, but this is going to take some serious capital investment to get going. Definitely worth it, but maybe the southernmost states could do a good job of generating electricity and then selling it to their northern neighbours...
Now all we've got to do is figure out room-temperature superconductivity, so that we can get all the power transmitted to where it's needed without the transmission loss...
I am sure that, averaged out, Windows 10 is more reliable than Windows 8.x. However, what continues to amaze me are the scatterings of regressions introduced in the code.
For example: I have several Windows 10 builds, including 2 on the same hardware [using swappable HDDs]. On one of these swappable drivers, the system boots with the "Menu Bar" appearing at the top of the centre of 3 monitors. When I go to the configuration settings, however, the system tells me that it thinks that the menu is supposed to appear at the bottom of the screen. If I then reposition the menu bar by hand, it sits happily at the bottom of the monitor. Until my next reboot, where the menu bar unilaterally repositions itself.
Or how about the fact that I configure my shared NTFS drives [I have an "Internal" drive, formatted to NTFS, that allows me to share files between my two swappable Windows builds] but each time I manually and forcibly configure the drive to not use drive caching, Windows 10 keeps turning it back on. Multiple times. These regressions seem to occur after updates.
Or the fact that now and then my audio reconfigures itself from optical out to using one of my HDMI monitors. Just because it feels like it...
I had *none* of these problems with Windows 7.
Please don't misunderstand me... I am not trying to bash Windows "because I can" - these are genuine, reproducible and repeating issues. I have raised bug reports with Microsoft for all of these - no responses, obviously - but they remain persistently un-fixed.
I would like to hope that Windows 10 will continue to evolve and "get better"... but from this user's perspective they need to be spending much more time on basics. And better regression testing.
In order to be able to determine an answer to this question, there are at least two or three factors we would have to consider - without which our answer should be that this is not OK (on the grounds that it is better to fail safe than fail dangerous).
1. Presumption of Innocence
This is the most important perspective for me. The moment we see blanket surveillance or blanket monitoring or blanket call screening or capturing license plates of all vehicles... we have moved into a scenario where the observers, through the act of capturing details of everyone, have effectively removed the presumption of innocence, *if* any related consequence emerges.
2. Rights of Access and Usage
We would need to understand all the uses to which the information captured is being put, and we would need to know the moment that those uses were changes in any way. Unless or until we know this, how can we possibly determine that this is a power or level of access that we are willing to delegate to those who have agreed to serve our administrative governments?
3. Accuracy
Obviously at the root of automated face recognition surveillance like this there is the presumption that an algorithm somewhere is going to be employed to identify 'persons of interest', with that interest being declared and defined up front... OK. But how accurate is that software? If an innocent citizen is 'detained' or 'interviewed' through this process (or worse), what protections does that person have? Could they sue the government for wrongful arrest? For a detention that caused them to miss a flight? For associated expenses? With power comes responsibility. A government requesting the authority to monitor citizens in this scenario must accept full responsibility for any negative consequences that occur as a result.
4. Privacy
Who would gather and have access to this information? Would the work be performed directly by the government for government use only, or would the work be performed by private contractors? If the latter, who would own the data being collected - and more importantly, what rights could a private contractor have to 'do other things' with the data, i.e. What if they wanted to try and 'monetize' it in some way. For that matter, what if the government wanted to do that?
5. What is the Risk/Threat?
OK, so we can infer from the OP that someone in government believes that this is a good idea. Why is that? What, specifically, is the threat? How was this analyzed? Once we take existing safeguards into consideration, what is the residual risk? Can the proposers identify any negative consequence that has happened in the last say 5 years that this solution would have irrefutably stopped?
6. What is the Cost?
So if we get to the point where we have answers to all of the above questions and they seem reasonable - and I am not for one moment suggesting that we are there already, then what is the cost of implementing this security? Obviously there will be the argument that it is cheaper than eyes-on-glass, built that would be a specious argument because we don't have that today (as far as we know). But we still need to perform a Cost-Benefit Analysis [and maybe factor loss of freedoms in to the cost] before we can determine that this is a good idea.
This is neither a simple nor a binary question. There are far too many variables, far to many potential up-sides and down-sides that simply have not been articulated. Most importantly, the potential for misuse and abuse is so high that nothing as powerful and far-reaching as this should be considered without some very careful controls.
Because you can bet that if this scheme goes ahead, it will be declared a success and followed with similar approaches at railway stations, bus depots, shopping malls, street corners. Then anyone running a private CCTV camera will be legally required to push copies of their image streams to central monitoring, until the only way to disappear from view will be to escape to the wilderness [and then hide in a cave to miss the passing satellites] or crawl under a duvet.
There are several reasons why this might be a good idea. But I'm not hearing any of them set out with anything like the right level of detail.
Can I provide a source? Well, sort of. I am not a lawyer. If you are contemplating accessing a computer system [for example performing a port scan] without prior permission, then I would encourage you to discuss your plans with a lawyer if it is reasonable to assume the owner of the computer might take issue with your actions.
If you read the provisions of the [UK] Computer Misuse Act (1990), see here:
you will note that both laws contain provisions which discuss whether or not your access to that computer system is authorised. The moment that your access is "not authorised" you become vulnerable to all the other provisions of those laws. Whilst these two laws are necessarily different, both of them include clear provision to show that unauthorised access to a computer system brings the actor in scope of the law.
Although I can't find it for you now, I do recall one particular case [and I might be going back 20 years or so] where a hacker was charged with "theft of electricity", because the prosecution in a case were unable to show that the individual had performed harm. Faced with the potential situation in which the accused would be released because the prosecution could not show harm, they evidenced from the transfer log that the individual had received a significant block of data, which had required electricity to transmit to the waiting computer. The Crown argued that because the access was not authorised, the owner of the resource had not given permission for the accused to receive this electrical output. The case then become one which hinged over theft. I appreciate that this is a bit of a journey from where we started, but I wanted to illustrate the ease with which a prosecutor can find *something* that was done that can be construed as a crime, then work from there.
It's a saddening example to quote, but look at what happened to Aaron Swartz: he downloaded public documents from a public university, but the DA wanted to throw the book at him - and did so. In Aaron's case, Federal prosecutors charged him with 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act... for accessing public materials...
You likely can't; you have that the wrong way round.
As a matter of fact, the US sets a precedent by heavily fining non-US companies at every opportunity. For example, when the LIBOR rate-rigging story broke, the New York AG fined British banks. Did any country in the EU fine JPMorgan over the insane dealings of the London Whale?
If you step back and look at this, what you find is that US multinational companies play one EU state off against the rest so that they are able to off-shore their profits without paying tax.
Or maybe you'd like this story, http://uk.reuters.com/article/..., about Starbucks, the US Coffee Shop chain, that paid no Corporation Tax on UK. From the article: "Accounts filed by its UK subsidiary show that since it opened in the UK in 1998 the company has racked up over 3 billion pounds ($4.8 billion) in coffee sales, and opened 735 outlets but paid only 8.6 million pounds in income taxes..."
What is likely to have happened in the background is that Apple and the US Government have discussed a way that the US Government would intervene on Apple's behalf in the EU. In return, Apple would then repatriate some of their vast off-shore, un-taxed profits so that in return the US government could tax it. Win-win. Apple don't have to pay the full amount; the US government gets some tax revenue.
There's a simple solution to this - tax profits in the country where they originate. If a multinational wants to trade in a country, they pay her taxes. End of.
First and most obvious point... there is no legal distinction between "an anonymous scan" and a "hack". If the Online Trust Alliance scanned the cyber defenses of any other institution without knowledge or permission, then they broke the law.
Secondly, as I'm regularly told by a friend of mine who works for a Wall Street bank, there has recently been a pattern of "shake down" attempts on major institutions for which on-line security is a matter of reputational importance. What happens is that a company or organisation produces a "report" which shows the company in a poor light, then provides the company or organisation with a high level summary of said report, showing some pretty critical/damning language. The company or organisation is invited to purchase a full copy of the report, ahead of publication, so that they have time to "fix the vulnerabilities" identified.
The thing is, there is every chance that the OTA actually means well and/or has done useful work.
But the bottom line is that if the OTA acted without the knowledge *and* permission of those they "scanned", then they broke the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
This is dystopia dressed up as a means to catch insurance-dodging crooks.
In order for the proposal to work, it will of course be necessary for the camera network to be backed by computer systems that have the ability to recognise a license plate on a passing vehicle. The location of the camera and the time of the capture event will be recorded, along with the details of the plate.
But already we hit our first problem. I'm guessing, but let's say that 99.9% of road users have insurance. Only 0.1% do not. Except to catch the 0.1%, the authorities want to subject all 100% of road users to an examination, "on suspicion of driving without insurance". Now, if the police were to pull over *every single vehicle on the road* and check insurance, it wouldn't take long for either the road blocks to bring the nation to a halt, or the uproar to force the police to stop the practice. Yet with cameras this is exactly what will happen.
100% of road users will be deemed "guilty until proven innocent" - on the basis that their vehicle details will be scanned and checked, even if they have done nothing to arouse suspicion. Unless of course you believe that driving down the road whilst conducting your lawful business is a suspicious act.
Don't get me wrong. Today, law enforcement has a very tough time of things, trying to respond to ever-greater demands from political masters, all the while having budgets and manpower cut. We all have a civic duty to support our law enforcement officers when they are trying their best to keep us safe.
It's just that indiscriminate surveillance of innocent people is not what our forebears had in mind when they introduced policing.
OK, someone is going to be reading this and thinking, "OK, genius: if you don't want them to use roadside cameras, what do you propose?" My answer is actually not that expensive and not that complicated:-
Keep a computer database of every single vehicle on the road that has it's current insurance and vehicle safety paperwork up to date. Then, each time either the insurance or the safety paperwork expires, have a small but focused unit of law enforcement follow up: check the vehicle at the last registered address and determine why the paperwork has lapsed. This approach is much more efficient because it targets vehicles that fit a high risk profile. It is also an approach that *doesn't* treat every road user as a potential criminal.
Getting uninsured vehicles and uninsured drivers off our roads is a worthy goal - and we should be supportive of valid attempts to do so. However, blanket surveillance is not appropriate - not when there are other ways.
I hope this doesn't come across as either critical or flaime-bait.
Having always been fascinated by space, I'm always keenly interested in any launches. The SpaceX approach to media, with live-streamed launches, has been mesmerising. But it occurs to me that, as a planet/species, we're now putting more and more into space than at any time since the launch of Sputnik. Of course, different countries have different governmental controls put in place to license companies for aerospace operations. This is entirely sensible, since a mis-fired rocket could easily cause an incident with an aircraft, or land near a populated area, or worse.
But at what point do we realise that we can't simply have endless, uncontrolled launches into space; that perhaps we need to have some form of [perhaps UN-backed] international framework to ensure that there is full coordination and collaboration on our use of local space, orbits and launch windows.
Or did that happen and I just didn't get the memo?
Take a look at the YouTube video and skip to 34:08 - the angle of the 1st stage main fuselage is not perpendicular to the deck of "Of Course I Still Love You"...
... how the landed first stage looked as though one of the legs [the one nearest the camera, left hand side of the image] looked to be a little "collapsed" in comparison with the other three?
I am wondering if it was just a trick of a slightly wide-angle lens... but then again... this is still so far ahead of anything that anyone else is doing, it seems churlish to quibble...
If these actions were perpetrated by multiple individuals in Comcast's employ... well that, right there, is a conspiracy. And its a conspiracy to cause criminal damage and defraud.
Not quite racketeering, but I'm sure that a creative States AG could find more.
Just reading the various reports - from multiple witnesses or directly impacted residents - there appears to be more than enough evidence to suggest that Comcast have been engaging in systematic and wilful criminal behaviour. Deliberately cutting cables belonging to a commercial rival is at minimum criminal damage. Doing so to such a degree and over such an extended period starts to look like a conspiracy to commit a criminal act.
I would like to see a District Attorney offer immunity from prosecution to any Comcast employee willing to come forward with evidence that this practice was being unofficially promoted or condoned by Comcast Management. I am sure that there is at least one employee or former employee who would be willing to talk.
This kind of wholesale sabotage isn't just about the defrauded companies who were injured by Comcast's actions, or the subscribers to those other companies who were disenfranchised and similarly defrauded [companies forced into liquidation aren't going to be able to offer refunds]. This is a test of the entire criminal justice system. This is a bell-weather indicator of whether or not there actually *is* justice today.
We hear a lot of talk about how governments "get business" and how they want to support the "little guy" and "promote growth". Well, here's a golden opportunity for someone to put their grandiose words into action.
If a grocery store advertised 1kg of apples for say $2, but then when you bought some you discovered that you'd only been given 900g of apples, you would be within your rights to claim false advertising. If you could show that the same store consistently under-filled their bags of apples such that not one bag contained the advertised 1kg of fruit, that would be (close to) racketeering.
Yet telcos seem to think that because "complex stuff" [which isn't remotely complex, by the way], that this somehow exempts them from the obligation to advertise and charge fairly for their services.
It doesn't. They are crooks. They already use contention ratios of anything up to 50:1 to squeeze more revenue out of their existing cable infrastructure and now they want to hide what they are doing by being legally allowed to throttle bandwidth.
A part of me would like to dig deeper into the pro's and con's of being able to examine a laptop and determine whether or not it is possible for us to come up with a reliable test to determine if the device is a legitimate one or not.
Ultimately, however, I think that we'd both be wasting our time - and for one very simple reason. Simply, it is because the US Administration, which made such a point about banning laptops on international flights, makes no such recommendation about laptops on internal, domestic flights. Lest we all forget, the aircraft which struck on 9/11 were all flights that originated in the US. In other words, if this is a legitimate security concern, then it makes sense for the restriction to be made with respect to ALL aircraft that overfly the United States. On the other hand, if this is either 1) mindless administration rhetoric; or 2) an attempt to wrangle concessions out of non-US carriers that want to continue to support their Business Class passengers... then it likely has nothing to do with passenger safety and everything to do with economic sanctions.
Obviously I have no evidence to support that assertion, but I am entirely happy to point out that the proposal as reported makes absolutely no sense whatsoever if the objective is to ensure passenger safety.
I think we draw closer to a Sherlock Holmes quotation: "Once you eliminate the impossible, then whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth" (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).
If this was a serious concern, then there are means by which it is possible to require passengers to demonstrate the working functionality of their laptop/netbook equipment before the flight.
So, this is either an ill-thought-through remark that has either been mis-represented by the press [or will be withdrawn by the spokesperson]; or in the alternate, it is a legitimate statement of intent for which the underlying desire is to squeeze competing airlines out of the routes that fly to and/or from the United States.
One thing we can be pretty sure of: this has nothing to do with flight safety.
I understand where you are coming from, but in this case you could not be more wrong.
For a start, I live and work in one of the countries most heavily disenfranchsed (defrauded by any other name) by large American Corporatations (Facebook, Starbucks, McDonalds, Apple et al) - the UK. So the entire set of arguments you make about taking advantage of economic development zones is unavailable to me.
Secondly, because I am a salaried employee, my income taxes are deducted at source (we know it as PAYE, or Pay As You Earn). The UK has very different tax laws from the US, so whilst I understand the point that you're trying to make, your observations simply aren't widely applicable. As a result of PAYE, a lot of the tax options are not available to me. Nor does my contract of employment allow me to become a director of another company - even one set up for tax purposes).
So is it possible that I could do something about UK tax laws, maybe to redress the balance? Well, I can write to my representative (MP) and ask them to petition government for this. However, when just a small handful of multinational companies have lobbying budgets for the UK which are several orders of magnitude greater than my salary, the reality is that large economic corporations are always going to "get there way".
In fact - and this is a UK-specific observation, if you look at the % of total tax revenue paid by corporations and the % paid by private individuals in the UK, for the last 20 years the amount paid by corporations has been in steady decline, whilst the amount paid by individuals has to rise to fill in the shortfall.
This isn't sour grapes: I accept the tax structures of the country in which I choose to live and work. I could [just about, in theory] afford to move to another country to live and work - assuming I could get permission to work there. It's actually a lot harder for me to get permission to work in another country than it is for a multinational to take their business there. But the point I was trying to make with my previous post was that companies like Facebook collectively spend billions lobbying governments for favourable tax laws. The direct result of corporations paying less tax is that private individuals have to pay more. The direct result of this is that more and more people are forced into poverty. Add in the fact that companies like Amazon in the UK offer the vast majority of their workers "zero hours contracts" (translation: absolutely no rights, no support, no paid vacation, no paid health cover) and it quickly becomes apparent that if we really wanted to make substantial change, then we would tackle the gross imbalance between the way that governments treat corporations and the way that they treat private individuals.
I think it is only right and fair that I and everyone else in the UK should pay our fair share of taxes. That isn't sour grapes. But that share has to be *fair*, and *NOT* whatever is left to pay once the big multinationals have sequestered the bulk of their earnings to zero-tax jurisdictions.
And if I was making all this up and it *was* sour grapes, then ask yourself this: why is it that Apple, Facebook and others have so many billions in financial assets held overseas - in these zero-tax jurisdictions - that they refuse to repatriate into the US? Answer: because they would have to pay corporation tax on it. Which means that the corporations would have to pay their fair share.
If you could get US corporations to actually pay all corporation tax in the jurisdiction where the income was earned [and don't give me weasel words about the location for income on the internet being arbitrary] then the chances are that the tax burden for low- and middle-income Americans would drop significantly, to the point where "universal basic income" would become un-necessary.
Facebook are one of a number of companies that have a habit of using exotic international tax vehicles to move profits from countries where corporation taxes are reasonable to countries where they are super-low. As a result of this, personal taxation in the countries where Facebook export their profits have to be higher. Which pushes down the standard of living for citizens in those countries.
I get that this speech was more about marketing and PR than actually intending to do anything useful, but in the event that Mr Zuckerberg would like to make a positive start to inequality, can I respectfully suggest that he pays taxes where they are due, and makes a declaration that Facebook will no longer use "international tax vehicles" to move profits around and thereby avoid paying taxes.
If Mr Zuckerberg and/or Facebook aren't willing to do that, then can I respectfully suggest that he is full of ####.
Sorry to be cynical, but reading news on contracts like this it seems that the one group getting the worst deal are the American Tax-Payers.
The article doesn't say, but does anyone know if this is a fixed-price-bid or a "Cost-Plus" contract?
The differences could be absolutely huge. You only need to compare the cost-per-kilo-to-orbit of the various solutions being developed today (Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, SLS) to see how hugely expensive the government-funded solutions are in comparison with commercial enterprises.
I'm not for one moment suggesting that the new platform is a waste of money, just that it's value for money may have a huge dependency on the way that the contract is written.
Oh yes - and especially when the software wants to get you to agree to an update, and cheerfully interrupts a full-screen gaming session to agree to an update.
Software vendors: there are plenty of opportunities and ways that you can let me know that I need to give your software product my attention - for example causing the menu bar icon to flash. Taking control of my PC and switching to your product is NOT an acceptable mechanism. I will replace and remove software that does this. Which is why 95% of my PC time is spent on a Linux image...
... then it is with the Film Studios being obsessed over returning obscene profits from each and every film.
This is driving the push towards re-hashing "proven" formats, plots and approaches. This is reducing the willingness of studios to be a little bit more edgy, or take a chance with some slightly different material. In fact, here's a little test for you... Think back to your favourite (and original) movies from, say, the 1990s, i.e. say roughly 15-25 years ago. Now ask yourself how many of these would actually be green-lit and made today, given what has happened with film studios.
If, miraculously, there is anyone out there willing to actually try this, then IMDB have, very helpfully, a list of the top movies from the 1990s, which you can find here:-
Just perusing the top 50, there are plenty of examples of films that would be highly unlikely to be made today. The single biggest issue with modern cinema is that, for quite some time now, maximising profit has come before the provision of satisfying content. Modern cinema has become the equivalent of junk food. Forget any idea of fine dining - the concepts of subtlety or art have been conveniently swept away in favour of the all-conquering bottom line.
I'm not sure about other readers, but one of the things I've noticed is that as time passes, so more and more potentially useful software becomes "chatty" - in other words software that we'd normally trust to do "what it says on the tin" and nothing else has suddenly sprouted a great deal of extra activity.
This makes it much harder to spot suspicious activity on "ordinary" machines.
Now, we have to accept that there is a great deal of "free" software available today (firewall software like ZoneAlarm, anti-virus software like AVG) which offer both free and paid-for versions, but for which the free-to-use editions "phone home" an extraordinary amount of data about your PC. You get what you pay for.
But when your OS is the worst offender, (W10), when your video driver maintains a running commentary (nVidia), when almost any piece of software on your computer believes that it has the need or right to "phone home", it becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to understand when something suspicious might be happening with your computer. I recently had to re-install a Windows 10 machine for a friend of mine; after applying a 3rd-party firewall utility and configuring it to block all outbound traffic until it had been positively vetted, I was absolutely stunned by the number of different packages that claimed the need to "phone home".
I am sure there are many legitimate reasons for this to happen [such as checking for updates]. However, the current state of affairs seems to be stacking the odds against the average user. It's a bit like the tic-tac-toe ending to Wargames: the only way to avoid losing is to not play the game... and the only way to avoid having your PC pwned is to not have a PC in the first place.
OK, that's a [small] exaggeration. But it illustrates the point. #Depressing.
This specific case, i.e. "Waymo vs. Uber", is a Civil Case, being tried under Civil Law. That is to say, it is a legal dispute between two entities.
What the Judge has done in this case is to take some of the evidence collected during the Civil Case and sent it for consideration as evidence of Criminal wrong-doing.
This does not in any way imply that criminal activities have, in fact, taken place, only that this Judge believes that may possibly be the case.
Now, if you think about the specifics of this case so far, what we have here is Waymo accusing Uber, which is relevant to this development because at no point has Uber actually filed a counter-claim against Waymo - they are merely "defending". What this means is one of two things: either the Judge believes that Waymo's actions whilst acting as plaintiffs includes criminal wrong-doing, or that the Judge has seen enough evidence provided by Uber to suggest that *they* may have been guilty of criminal wrong-doing.
Whilst the US and many other countries have a single Justice System, the US essentially has two different Standards under which that Justice is judge: Criminal and Civil. Typically Criminal Law requires a "higher bar" - that is that a criminal case has to be proven "beyond reasonable doubt", whilst with a Civil case, a judgement can be made based on "the preponderance of the evidence" [the balance of the evidence].
I am not a lawyer, but I've followed court cases with keen interest ever since Pamela Jones launched Groklaw. Based on my extremely limited and entirely non-professional opinion [translation: I do not know what I am talking about] I'd infer that this doesn't bode well for Uber. However, given that the Judge filed under seal, we are unlikely to understand the true ramifications of this unless the AG decides to pick up this case and prosecute.
I just hope that if the human race survives another couple of thousand years - and if we're able to move past the current control structures in our society - that dictionaries may well have entries such as:-
Democracy - n. A form of government popular up until the mid-21st century, in which groups of populations known as nations were governed by a tiny minority of representatives. Although the selection of the minority was originally intended to be fair, open, transparent and above-board, the mechanisms of democracy proved to be ideal for corruption, the formation of monopolies, indentured servitude and dictatorships - the very things that the democracies were formed to defeat. Eventually, democracy fell out of favour after a steady succession of corruption scandals showed how large multi-national corporations were colluding with governments to keep populations in poverty and indentured. Overthrown by the AI-led coups of 2066 through 2068 and the subsequent introduction of Egalitocracy, in which, by law, every government decision is undertaken transparently and through the use of one-citizen-one-vote digital voting systems.
Whilst the Digital Industries (currently predominantly music, film, television and software) pile on ever more restrictive rights, both they and the law seem to be overlooking the need for the reciprocal terms in this arrangement.
If a company (say a game studio, for example) wants to enforce an always-on internet connection as part of their DRM control over their software, then at the same time it is only fair that the same studio commit to hosting the on-line services required to play that game for a minimum period, even after sales of the game stop. Either that or the studio must issue a "final update" patch to allow players to continue to play the game in solo mode.
Our society is well aware what happened to the ill-fated Zune music player, developed by Microsoft as an iPod competitor - but which failed to gain the market share it needed to survive and so was cancelled. Shortly after that, when Zune players were unable to connect to the Mothership, their integrated DRM simply bricked the devices. Owners of Zune players lost not just their investment in the devices themselves, but all the music they had purchased with it, too.
There are other complexities. We've seen news stories of people who have left [sometimes huge] iTunes music collections to their children as part of their estate, only to have Apple attempt to tell those children that they could not inherit the assets purchased by their deceased parent because the children were not party to the original agreement and therefore had no legal right to access the content... it is only a matter of time before 8K TVs and media players are released - I am waiting for the announcement that the media players will all be internet-only devices.
I share the anger and frustration of other slashdotters with respect to this one-sided and corrupt state of affairs, but fear that for as long as the majority of people continue to purchase DRM-protected content, those of us who understand how are rights and freedoms are being eroded will remain out of luck. The vast corporations we are dealing with care about one thing and one thing only: profit. The only thing that will persuade them to change their minds and step back from DRM will be a direct challenge to that profit.
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I definitely favour replacing all fossil and nuclear power generation with renewable energy sources including solar, wind, tidal and geothermal. However, in the case of solar energy, can anyone estimate the potential impact on the environment of fabricating a square mile of say lithium-ion batteries? how much lithium would that require? What amount of the earth's crust would we have to mine in order to get it?
Similarly, with a solar array of Musk's proposed 10,000 square miles, what would the rate of replacement for panels be? If a panel performed at optimum for say 10 years, it would mean that you might theoretically have to replace 1,000 square miles of panels each year... For panels with a 20 year operational life, that would drop to 500 square miles of panels a year.
Obviously efficiencies of mass production are going to bring the costs down, but this is going to take some serious capital investment to get going. Definitely worth it, but maybe the southernmost states could do a good job of generating electricity and then selling it to their northern neighbours...
Now all we've got to do is figure out room-temperature superconductivity, so that we can get all the power transmitted to where it's needed without the transmission loss...
I am sure that, averaged out, Windows 10 is more reliable than Windows 8.x. However, what continues to amaze me are the scatterings of regressions introduced in the code.
For example: I have several Windows 10 builds, including 2 on the same hardware [using swappable HDDs]. On one of these swappable drivers, the system boots with the "Menu Bar" appearing at the top of the centre of 3 monitors. When I go to the configuration settings, however, the system tells me that it thinks that the menu is supposed to appear at the bottom of the screen. If I then reposition the menu bar by hand, it sits happily at the bottom of the monitor. Until my next reboot, where the menu bar unilaterally repositions itself.
Or how about the fact that I configure my shared NTFS drives [I have an "Internal" drive, formatted to NTFS, that allows me to share files between my two swappable Windows builds] but each time I manually and forcibly configure the drive to not use drive caching, Windows 10 keeps turning it back on. Multiple times. These regressions seem to occur after updates.
Or the fact that now and then my audio reconfigures itself from optical out to using one of my HDMI monitors. Just because it feels like it...
I had *none* of these problems with Windows 7.
Please don't misunderstand me... I am not trying to bash Windows "because I can" - these are genuine, reproducible and repeating issues. I have raised bug reports with Microsoft for all of these - no responses, obviously - but they remain persistently un-fixed.
I would like to hope that Windows 10 will continue to evolve and "get better"... but from this user's perspective they need to be spending much more time on basics. And better regression testing.
In order to be able to determine an answer to this question, there are at least two or three factors we would have to consider - without which our answer should be that this is not OK (on the grounds that it is better to fail safe than fail dangerous). 1. Presumption of Innocence
This is the most important perspective for me. The moment we see blanket surveillance or blanket monitoring or blanket call screening or capturing license plates of all vehicles... we have moved into a scenario where the observers, through the act of capturing details of everyone, have effectively removed the presumption of innocence, *if* any related consequence emerges.
2. Rights of Access and Usage
We would need to understand all the uses to which the information captured is being put, and we would need to know the moment that those uses were changes in any way. Unless or until we know this, how can we possibly determine that this is a power or level of access that we are willing to delegate to those who have agreed to serve our administrative governments?
3. Accuracy
Obviously at the root of automated face recognition surveillance like this there is the presumption that an algorithm somewhere is going to be employed to identify 'persons of interest', with that interest being declared and defined up front... OK. But how accurate is that software? If an innocent citizen is 'detained' or 'interviewed' through this process (or worse), what protections does that person have? Could they sue the government for wrongful arrest? For a detention that caused them to miss a flight? For associated expenses? With power comes responsibility. A government requesting the authority to monitor citizens in this scenario must accept full responsibility for any negative consequences that occur as a result.
4. Privacy
Who would gather and have access to this information? Would the work be performed directly by the government for government use only, or would the work be performed by private contractors? If the latter, who would own the data being collected - and more importantly, what rights could a private contractor have to 'do other things' with the data, i.e. What if they wanted to try and 'monetize' it in some way. For that matter, what if the government wanted to do that?
5. What is the Risk/Threat?
OK, so we can infer from the OP that someone in government believes that this is a good idea. Why is that? What, specifically, is the threat? How was this analyzed? Once we take existing safeguards into consideration, what is the residual risk? Can the proposers identify any negative consequence that has happened in the last say 5 years that this solution would have irrefutably stopped?
6. What is the Cost?
So if we get to the point where we have answers to all of the above questions and they seem reasonable - and I am not for one moment suggesting that we are there already, then what is the cost of implementing this security? Obviously there will be the argument that it is cheaper than eyes-on-glass, built that would be a specious argument because we don't have that today (as far as we know). But we still need to perform a Cost-Benefit Analysis [and maybe factor loss of freedoms in to the cost] before we can determine that this is a good idea.
This is neither a simple nor a binary question. There are far too many variables, far to many potential up-sides and down-sides that simply have not been articulated. Most importantly, the potential for misuse and abuse is so high that nothing as powerful and far-reaching as this should be considered without some very careful controls.
Because you can bet that if this scheme goes ahead, it will be declared a success and followed with similar approaches at railway stations, bus depots, shopping malls, street corners. Then anyone running a private CCTV camera will be legally required to push copies of their image streams to central monitoring, until the only way to disappear from view will be to escape to the wilderness [and then hide in a cave to miss the passing satellites] or crawl under a duvet.
There are several reasons why this might be a good idea. But I'm not hearing any of them set out with anything like the right level of detail.
Can I provide a source? Well, sort of. I am not a lawyer. If you are contemplating accessing a computer system [for example performing a port scan] without prior permission, then I would encourage you to discuss your plans with a lawyer if it is reasonable to assume the owner of the computer might take issue with your actions.
If you read the provisions of the [UK] Computer Misuse Act (1990), see here:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/...
or the [US] Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, here:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
you will note that both laws contain provisions which discuss whether or not your access to that computer system is authorised. The moment that your access is "not authorised" you become vulnerable to all the other provisions of those laws. Whilst these two laws are necessarily different, both of them include clear provision to show that unauthorised access to a computer system brings the actor in scope of the law.
Although I can't find it for you now, I do recall one particular case [and I might be going back 20 years or so] where a hacker was charged with "theft of electricity", because the prosecution in a case were unable to show that the individual had performed harm. Faced with the potential situation in which the accused would be released because the prosecution could not show harm, they evidenced from the transfer log that the individual had received a significant block of data, which had required electricity to transmit to the waiting computer. The Crown argued that because the access was not authorised, the owner of the resource had not given permission for the accused to receive this electrical output. The case then become one which hinged over theft. I appreciate that this is a bit of a journey from where we started, but I wanted to illustrate the ease with which a prosecutor can find *something* that was done that can be construed as a crime, then work from there.
It's a saddening example to quote, but look at what happened to Aaron Swartz: he downloaded public documents from a public university, but the DA wanted to throw the book at him - and did so. In Aaron's case, Federal prosecutors charged him with 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act... for accessing public materials...
Cite your sources.
You likely can't; you have that the wrong way round.
As a matter of fact, the US sets a precedent by heavily fining non-US companies at every opportunity. For example, when the LIBOR rate-rigging story broke, the New York AG fined British banks. Did any country in the EU fine JPMorgan over the insane dealings of the London Whale?
If you step back and look at this, what you find is that US multinational companies play one EU state off against the rest so that they are able to off-shore their profits without paying tax.
Or maybe you'd like this story, http://uk.reuters.com/article/..., about Starbucks, the US Coffee Shop chain, that paid no Corporation Tax on UK. From the article: "Accounts filed by its UK subsidiary show that since it opened in the UK in 1998 the company has racked up over 3 billion pounds ($4.8 billion) in coffee sales, and opened 735 outlets but paid only 8.6 million pounds in income taxes..."
What is likely to have happened in the background is that Apple and the US Government have discussed a way that the US Government would intervene on Apple's behalf in the EU. In return, Apple would then repatriate some of their vast off-shore, un-taxed profits so that in return the US government could tax it. Win-win. Apple don't have to pay the full amount; the US government gets some tax revenue.
There's a simple solution to this - tax profits in the country where they originate. If a multinational wants to trade in a country, they pay her taxes. End of.
First and most obvious point... there is no legal distinction between "an anonymous scan" and a "hack". If the Online Trust Alliance scanned the cyber defenses of any other institution without knowledge or permission, then they broke the law.
Secondly, as I'm regularly told by a friend of mine who works for a Wall Street bank, there has recently been a pattern of "shake down" attempts on major institutions for which on-line security is a matter of reputational importance. What happens is that a company or organisation produces a "report" which shows the company in a poor light, then provides the company or organisation with a high level summary of said report, showing some pretty critical/damning language. The company or organisation is invited to purchase a full copy of the report, ahead of publication, so that they have time to "fix the vulnerabilities" identified.
The thing is, there is every chance that the OTA actually means well and/or has done useful work.
But the bottom line is that if the OTA acted without the knowledge *and* permission of those they "scanned", then they broke the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
This is dystopia dressed up as a means to catch insurance-dodging crooks.
In order for the proposal to work, it will of course be necessary for the camera network to be backed by computer systems that have the ability to recognise a license plate on a passing vehicle. The location of the camera and the time of the capture event will be recorded, along with the details of the plate.
But already we hit our first problem. I'm guessing, but let's say that 99.9% of road users have insurance. Only 0.1% do not. Except to catch the 0.1%, the authorities want to subject all 100% of road users to an examination, "on suspicion of driving without insurance". Now, if the police were to pull over *every single vehicle on the road* and check insurance, it wouldn't take long for either the road blocks to bring the nation to a halt, or the uproar to force the police to stop the practice. Yet with cameras this is exactly what will happen.
100% of road users will be deemed "guilty until proven innocent" - on the basis that their vehicle details will be scanned and checked, even if they have done nothing to arouse suspicion. Unless of course you believe that driving down the road whilst conducting your lawful business is a suspicious act.
Don't get me wrong. Today, law enforcement has a very tough time of things, trying to respond to ever-greater demands from political masters, all the while having budgets and manpower cut. We all have a civic duty to support our law enforcement officers when they are trying their best to keep us safe.
It's just that indiscriminate surveillance of innocent people is not what our forebears had in mind when they introduced policing.
OK, someone is going to be reading this and thinking, "OK, genius: if you don't want them to use roadside cameras, what do you propose?" My answer is actually not that expensive and not that complicated:-
Keep a computer database of every single vehicle on the road that has it's current insurance and vehicle safety paperwork up to date. Then, each time either the insurance or the safety paperwork expires, have a small but focused unit of law enforcement follow up: check the vehicle at the last registered address and determine why the paperwork has lapsed. This approach is much more efficient because it targets vehicles that fit a high risk profile. It is also an approach that *doesn't* treat every road user as a potential criminal.
Getting uninsured vehicles and uninsured drivers off our roads is a worthy goal - and we should be supportive of valid attempts to do so. However, blanket surveillance is not appropriate - not when there are other ways.
I hope this doesn't come across as either critical or flaime-bait.
Having always been fascinated by space, I'm always keenly interested in any launches. The SpaceX approach to media, with live-streamed launches, has been mesmerising. But it occurs to me that, as a planet/species, we're now putting more and more into space than at any time since the launch of Sputnik. Of course, different countries have different governmental controls put in place to license companies for aerospace operations. This is entirely sensible, since a mis-fired rocket could easily cause an incident with an aircraft, or land near a populated area, or worse.
But at what point do we realise that we can't simply have endless, uncontrolled launches into space; that perhaps we need to have some form of [perhaps UN-backed] international framework to ensure that there is full coordination and collaboration on our use of local space, orbits and launch windows.
Or did that happen and I just didn't get the memo?
Take a look at the YouTube video and skip to 34:08 - the angle of the 1st stage main fuselage is not perpendicular to the deck of "Of Course I Still Love You"...
... how the landed first stage looked as though one of the legs [the one nearest the camera, left hand side of the image] looked to be a little "collapsed" in comparison with the other three?
I am wondering if it was just a trick of a slightly wide-angle lens... but then again... this is still so far ahead of anything that anyone else is doing, it seems churlish to quibble...
If these actions were perpetrated by multiple individuals in Comcast's employ... well that, right there, is a conspiracy. And its a conspiracy to cause criminal damage and defraud.
Not quite racketeering, but I'm sure that a creative States AG could find more.
Still waiting.
Just reading the various reports - from multiple witnesses or directly impacted residents - there appears to be more than enough evidence to suggest that Comcast have been engaging in systematic and wilful criminal behaviour. Deliberately cutting cables belonging to a commercial rival is at minimum criminal damage. Doing so to such a degree and over such an extended period starts to look like a conspiracy to commit a criminal act.
I would like to see a District Attorney offer immunity from prosecution to any Comcast employee willing to come forward with evidence that this practice was being unofficially promoted or condoned by Comcast Management. I am sure that there is at least one employee or former employee who would be willing to talk.
This kind of wholesale sabotage isn't just about the defrauded companies who were injured by Comcast's actions, or the subscribers to those other companies who were disenfranchised and similarly defrauded [companies forced into liquidation aren't going to be able to offer refunds]. This is a test of the entire criminal justice system. This is a bell-weather indicator of whether or not there actually *is* justice today.
We hear a lot of talk about how governments "get business" and how they want to support the "little guy" and "promote growth". Well, here's a golden opportunity for someone to put their grandiose words into action.
We're waiting.
If a grocery store advertised 1kg of apples for say $2, but then when you bought some you discovered that you'd only been given 900g of apples, you would be within your rights to claim false advertising. If you could show that the same store consistently under-filled their bags of apples such that not one bag contained the advertised 1kg of fruit, that would be (close to) racketeering.
Yet telcos seem to think that because "complex stuff" [which isn't remotely complex, by the way], that this somehow exempts them from the obligation to advertise and charge fairly for their services.
It doesn't. They are crooks. They already use contention ratios of anything up to 50:1 to squeeze more revenue out of their existing cable infrastructure and now they want to hide what they are doing by being legally allowed to throttle bandwidth.
Crooks
You mean, in addition to the $680 Million that Uber payed for Otto?
Where do I get redundancy terms like that?
A part of me would like to dig deeper into the pro's and con's of being able to examine a laptop and determine whether or not it is possible for us to come up with a reliable test to determine if the device is a legitimate one or not.
Ultimately, however, I think that we'd both be wasting our time - and for one very simple reason. Simply, it is because the US Administration, which made such a point about banning laptops on international flights, makes no such recommendation about laptops on internal, domestic flights. Lest we all forget, the aircraft which struck on 9/11 were all flights that originated in the US. In other words, if this is a legitimate security concern, then it makes sense for the restriction to be made with respect to ALL aircraft that overfly the United States. On the other hand, if this is either 1) mindless administration rhetoric; or 2) an attempt to wrangle concessions out of non-US carriers that want to continue to support their Business Class passengers... then it likely has nothing to do with passenger safety and everything to do with economic sanctions.
Obviously I have no evidence to support that assertion, but I am entirely happy to point out that the proposal as reported makes absolutely no sense whatsoever if the objective is to ensure passenger safety.
I think we draw closer to a Sherlock Holmes quotation: "Once you eliminate the impossible, then whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth" (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).
If this was a serious concern, then there are means by which it is possible to require passengers to demonstrate the working functionality of their laptop/netbook equipment before the flight.
So, this is either an ill-thought-through remark that has either been mis-represented by the press [or will be withdrawn by the spokesperson]; or in the alternate, it is a legitimate statement of intent for which the underlying desire is to squeeze competing airlines out of the routes that fly to and/or from the United States.
One thing we can be pretty sure of: this has nothing to do with flight safety.
I understand where you are coming from, but in this case you could not be more wrong.
For a start, I live and work in one of the countries most heavily disenfranchsed (defrauded by any other name) by large American Corporatations (Facebook, Starbucks, McDonalds, Apple et al) - the UK. So the entire set of arguments you make about taking advantage of economic development zones is unavailable to me.
Secondly, because I am a salaried employee, my income taxes are deducted at source (we know it as PAYE, or Pay As You Earn). The UK has very different tax laws from the US, so whilst I understand the point that you're trying to make, your observations simply aren't widely applicable. As a result of PAYE, a lot of the tax options are not available to me. Nor does my contract of employment allow me to become a director of another company - even one set up for tax purposes).
So is it possible that I could do something about UK tax laws, maybe to redress the balance? Well, I can write to my representative (MP) and ask them to petition government for this. However, when just a small handful of multinational companies have lobbying budgets for the UK which are several orders of magnitude greater than my salary, the reality is that large economic corporations are always going to "get there way".
In fact - and this is a UK-specific observation, if you look at the % of total tax revenue paid by corporations and the % paid by private individuals in the UK, for the last 20 years the amount paid by corporations has been in steady decline, whilst the amount paid by individuals has to rise to fill in the shortfall.
This isn't sour grapes: I accept the tax structures of the country in which I choose to live and work. I could [just about, in theory] afford to move to another country to live and work - assuming I could get permission to work there. It's actually a lot harder for me to get permission to work in another country than it is for a multinational to take their business there. But the point I was trying to make with my previous post was that companies like Facebook collectively spend billions lobbying governments for favourable tax laws. The direct result of corporations paying less tax is that private individuals have to pay more. The direct result of this is that more and more people are forced into poverty. Add in the fact that companies like Amazon in the UK offer the vast majority of their workers "zero hours contracts" (translation: absolutely no rights, no support, no paid vacation, no paid health cover) and it quickly becomes apparent that if we really wanted to make substantial change, then we would tackle the gross imbalance between the way that governments treat corporations and the way that they treat private individuals.
I think it is only right and fair that I and everyone else in the UK should pay our fair share of taxes. That isn't sour grapes. But that share has to be *fair*, and *NOT* whatever is left to pay once the big multinationals have sequestered the bulk of their earnings to zero-tax jurisdictions.
And if I was making all this up and it *was* sour grapes, then ask yourself this: why is it that Apple, Facebook and others have so many billions in financial assets held overseas - in these zero-tax jurisdictions - that they refuse to repatriate into the US? Answer: because they would have to pay corporation tax on it. Which means that the corporations would have to pay their fair share.
If you could get US corporations to actually pay all corporation tax in the jurisdiction where the income was earned [and don't give me weasel words about the location for income on the internet being arbitrary] then the chances are that the tax burden for low- and middle-income Americans would drop significantly, to the point where "universal basic income" would become un-necessary.
Facebook are one of a number of companies that have a habit of using exotic international tax vehicles to move profits from countries where corporation taxes are reasonable to countries where they are super-low. As a result of this, personal taxation in the countries where Facebook export their profits have to be higher. Which pushes down the standard of living for citizens in those countries.
I get that this speech was more about marketing and PR than actually intending to do anything useful, but in the event that Mr Zuckerberg would like to make a positive start to inequality, can I respectfully suggest that he pays taxes where they are due, and makes a declaration that Facebook will no longer use "international tax vehicles" to move profits around and thereby avoid paying taxes.
If Mr Zuckerberg and/or Facebook aren't willing to do that, then can I respectfully suggest that he is full of ####.
Sorry to be cynical, but reading news on contracts like this it seems that the one group getting the worst deal are the American Tax-Payers.
The article doesn't say, but does anyone know if this is a fixed-price-bid or a "Cost-Plus" contract?
The differences could be absolutely huge. You only need to compare the cost-per-kilo-to-orbit of the various solutions being developed today (Falcon Heavy, New Glenn, SLS) to see how hugely expensive the government-funded solutions are in comparison with commercial enterprises.
I'm not for one moment suggesting that the new platform is a waste of money, just that it's value for money may have a huge dependency on the way that the contract is written.
Oh yes - and especially when the software wants to get you to agree to an update, and cheerfully interrupts a full-screen gaming session to agree to an update.
Software vendors: there are plenty of opportunities and ways that you can let me know that I need to give your software product my attention - for example causing the menu bar icon to flash. Taking control of my PC and switching to your product is NOT an acceptable mechanism. I will replace and remove software that does this. Which is why 95% of my PC time is spent on a Linux image...
... then it is with the Film Studios being obsessed over returning obscene profits from each and every film.
This is driving the push towards re-hashing "proven" formats, plots and approaches. This is reducing the willingness of studios to be a little bit more edgy, or take a chance with some slightly different material. In fact, here's a little test for you... Think back to your favourite (and original) movies from, say, the 1990s, i.e. say roughly 15-25 years ago. Now ask yourself how many of these would actually be green-lit and made today, given what has happened with film studios.
If, miraculously, there is anyone out there willing to actually try this, then IMDB have, very helpfully, a list of the top movies from the 1990s, which you can find here:-
http://www.imdb.com/search/tit...
Just perusing the top 50, there are plenty of examples of films that would be highly unlikely to be made today. The single biggest issue with modern cinema is that, for quite some time now, maximising profit has come before the provision of satisfying content. Modern cinema has become the equivalent of junk food. Forget any idea of fine dining - the concepts of subtlety or art have been conveniently swept away in favour of the all-conquering bottom line.
I'm not sure about other readers, but one of the things I've noticed is that as time passes, so more and more potentially useful software becomes "chatty" - in other words software that we'd normally trust to do "what it says on the tin" and nothing else has suddenly sprouted a great deal of extra activity.
This makes it much harder to spot suspicious activity on "ordinary" machines.
Now, we have to accept that there is a great deal of "free" software available today (firewall software like ZoneAlarm, anti-virus software like AVG) which offer both free and paid-for versions, but for which the free-to-use editions "phone home" an extraordinary amount of data about your PC. You get what you pay for.
But when your OS is the worst offender, (W10), when your video driver maintains a running commentary (nVidia), when almost any piece of software on your computer believes that it has the need or right to "phone home", it becomes orders of magnitude more difficult to understand when something suspicious might be happening with your computer. I recently had to re-install a Windows 10 machine for a friend of mine; after applying a 3rd-party firewall utility and configuring it to block all outbound traffic until it had been positively vetted, I was absolutely stunned by the number of different packages that claimed the need to "phone home".
I am sure there are many legitimate reasons for this to happen [such as checking for updates]. However, the current state of affairs seems to be stacking the odds against the average user. It's a bit like the tic-tac-toe ending to Wargames: the only way to avoid losing is to not play the game... and the only way to avoid having your PC pwned is to not have a PC in the first place.
OK, that's a [small] exaggeration. But it illustrates the point. #Depressing.
This specific case, i.e. "Waymo vs. Uber", is a Civil Case, being tried under Civil Law. That is to say, it is a legal dispute between two entities.
What the Judge has done in this case is to take some of the evidence collected during the Civil Case and sent it for consideration as evidence of Criminal wrong-doing.
This does not in any way imply that criminal activities have, in fact, taken place, only that this Judge believes that may possibly be the case.
Now, if you think about the specifics of this case so far, what we have here is Waymo accusing Uber, which is relevant to this development because at no point has Uber actually filed a counter-claim against Waymo - they are merely "defending". What this means is one of two things: either the Judge believes that Waymo's actions whilst acting as plaintiffs includes criminal wrong-doing, or that the Judge has seen enough evidence provided by Uber to suggest that *they* may have been guilty of criminal wrong-doing.
Whilst the US and many other countries have a single Justice System, the US essentially has two different Standards under which that Justice is judge: Criminal and Civil. Typically Criminal Law requires a "higher bar" - that is that a criminal case has to be proven "beyond reasonable doubt", whilst with a Civil case, a judgement can be made based on "the preponderance of the evidence" [the balance of the evidence].
I am not a lawyer, but I've followed court cases with keen interest ever since Pamela Jones launched Groklaw. Based on my extremely limited and entirely non-professional opinion [translation: I do not know what I am talking about] I'd infer that this doesn't bode well for Uber. However, given that the Judge filed under seal, we are unlikely to understand the true ramifications of this unless the AG decides to pick up this case and prosecute.
Fascinating all the same...
I just hope that if the human race survives another couple of thousand years - and if we're able to move past the current control structures in our society - that dictionaries may well have entries such as:-
Democracy - n. A form of government popular up until the mid-21st century, in which groups of populations known as nations were governed by a tiny minority of representatives. Although the selection of the minority was originally intended to be fair, open, transparent and above-board, the mechanisms of democracy proved to be ideal for corruption, the formation of monopolies, indentured servitude and dictatorships - the very things that the democracies were formed to defeat. Eventually, democracy fell out of favour after a steady succession of corruption scandals showed how large multi-national corporations were colluding with governments to keep populations in poverty and indentured. Overthrown by the AI-led coups of 2066 through 2068 and the subsequent introduction of Egalitocracy, in which, by law, every government decision is undertaken transparently and through the use of one-citizen-one-vote digital voting systems.
Whilst the Digital Industries (currently predominantly music, film, television and software) pile on ever more restrictive rights, both they and the law seem to be overlooking the need for the reciprocal terms in this arrangement.
If a company (say a game studio, for example) wants to enforce an always-on internet connection as part of their DRM control over their software, then at the same time it is only fair that the same studio commit to hosting the on-line services required to play that game for a minimum period, even after sales of the game stop. Either that or the studio must issue a "final update" patch to allow players to continue to play the game in solo mode.
Our society is well aware what happened to the ill-fated Zune music player, developed by Microsoft as an iPod competitor - but which failed to gain the market share it needed to survive and so was cancelled. Shortly after that, when Zune players were unable to connect to the Mothership, their integrated DRM simply bricked the devices. Owners of Zune players lost not just their investment in the devices themselves, but all the music they had purchased with it, too.
There are other complexities. We've seen news stories of people who have left [sometimes huge] iTunes music collections to their children as part of their estate, only to have Apple attempt to tell those children that they could not inherit the assets purchased by their deceased parent because the children were not party to the original agreement and therefore had no legal right to access the content... it is only a matter of time before 8K TVs and media players are released - I am waiting for the announcement that the media players will all be internet-only devices.
I share the anger and frustration of other slashdotters with respect to this one-sided and corrupt state of affairs, but fear that for as long as the majority of people continue to purchase DRM-protected content, those of us who understand how are rights and freedoms are being eroded will remain out of luck. The vast corporations we are dealing with care about one thing and one thing only: profit. The only thing that will persuade them to change their minds and step back from DRM will be a direct challenge to that profit.
Nothing else will make a difference.