There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet
'There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one...'
Re:I've got no problem with this except...
on
Skin Sensing Table Saw
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'd say, let the market sort this one out
This seems to be the new religion - at least in the US. 'The market' isn't some magical cure-all that is going to sort everything out and make the world a better place. Experience shows that free-market capitalism doesn't exist, among other things because every time restrictions are removed from businesses, we get monopolies, kartels and all the other diseases of extreme capitalism; thus, even if there are no restrictions imposed by the state, the free market will quickly be killed off by predatorial companies.
Instead of this pipe-dream about the holy and divine 'free market' there should be simple and clear restrictions in place that would favour the small to medium sized businesses; the bigger companies are simply extremely inefficient in a number of areas; in a small company each employee often has a big stake in the success of the company and will work harder and not waste resources. A big company will tend to extract money from society into some form af passive storage, possibly overseas, whereas in small companies the money tends to get spent in the local area to the benefit of everybody.
So let's put this silly, religious free-market mantra to one side; it won't benefit you or me (unless you happen to be a multibillionaire).
Unfortunately 'beginner friendly' normally also means 'hostile to non-beginners'. I don't this has to be the case always, but that is one of the BIG problems with Windows and GNOME: they try to be 'beginner friendly' or just 'user friendly' and end up being dumbed down (or even infantile like the 'Fisher-Price Interface' in XP).
What I would like to see - though perhaps it is too much to hope for - is an interface where you could 'change gears', so to speak, from 'beginner' to 'experienced' to 'advanced' to 'bloody-know-it-all'; the beginner mode should have wizards, few options, easy, catoon-style documentation and bright, but calming colours, whereas the most advanced level would have none of the dumbing-down and would have complete, technical documentation of absolutely all features, options and parameters - no wizards, just vi and text-based parameter files.
Yes, I know, Linux is not too far from this by now, but technical documentation is still severely lacking in some areas, most notoriously when it comes to the GNOME desktop. In fact, it is so bad that I think the GNOME developers should freeze their development until they have produced proper, technical documentation of their SW.
Sigh - yet another socalled 'war'. It always makes me shake my head in disbelief when I see it - I mean, how can one fight a war against drugs? It's not as if there is an army on the other side. Plus, a lot of these things are easily found in nature; just think of magic mushrooms - you can probably find them within walking distance from your home if you live outside a big city. Or take cannabis - you can the seeds as bird seeds or in health shops, at least in UK.
Or how about opium poppies: I see them growing in a lot of people's gardens. You can buy the seeds in garden centres or even in supermarkets (for baking bread etc). You can buy morning glory (contains LSA, similar to LSD) legally to grow in your garden. So how can one 'fight a war' against drugs? It's nonsense, simple and pure.
No, legalise it, educate people, tax it. That way we would get rid of two whole classes of crime that only exist because of reactionary legislation: drugs trafficking and drug use.
Computer games are by and large targeted on the same crowd that are interested in pornography: teenagers (and adults who didn't grow up). Please note: this is not intended as a criticism of gamers (or pornography, for that matter), it's simply my opinion. And just like pornography generally has no credible storyline, because it is irrelevant and the audience would object to it, most games too can't have any real depth - after all when you buy a FPS game, what you want to see is cool weapons, scary monsters and lots of blood; having to think and figure it out would ruin the adrenalin rush, just like an intellectual drama would make a pornographical movie less wankable.
There *are* games that require a bit more in terms of mental activity - eg Crossfire - but they don't really seem to draw huge crowds. On top of that I suspect that the people who enjoy a bit mental exercise are more likely to prefer a printed book that they can read anywhere. Perhaps it is down to the way one generally uses one's brain: some people tend to be more visually oriented, while others think more in words.
I suppose it is - at least in the US. But should it be? This kind of thing is very close to such things as fraud and slander. I don't have a problem with people making parody and satire, but if you make fun of other people, you should have the guts to stand up for what you say. This is not often a problem in Europe, but I really think it should be law that everything that has been sponsored by political, religious or commercial interests should be clearly and fully declared as such. And I think faling to do so should be under the same penalties as fraud.
The halflife of radioactive materials arises from the fatct that one can calculate the propability per time unit of a decay occurring in a given nucleus. One can of course make that propability higher in a number of ways, but as far as I know they all involve exciting the quantum state of the nucleus, eg. by whacking a neutron into it (happens in a nuclear reactor). I can't imagine how encasing things in metal would have that effect, even at low temperatures.
The mechanisms speculated in the article - I simply can't see them work. How would the free electrons in a metal attract positively charged particles in a radioactive nucleus? Because of the electromagnetic force, right? But since the metal casing is electrically neutral as a whole, the electric field of the electrons, free or not, is cancelled out by the field from the positive metal nuclei. Which is why we don't have sparks flying off pieces of metal just like that.
They'll have to come up with very convincing arguments, either rock solid experiments that others can reproduce or quantum mechanical calculations.
I agree - they went too far. And perhaps you are right that 'Cops are dicks' in the US, but in my experience they aren't in most places. I have so far lived in Denmark, UK and China for extended periods, and I have always found that police are mostly able to judge a situation and act with restraint. Hell, once I drove home in UK feeling stressed out and got pissed off by a driver in front who insisted on driving at half the speed limit; and there was no place where I could overtake safely, so in the end I just overtook. And of course it turned out that the car right behind me was a police car - I didn't realise at first, I just found that they kept flashing their headlight, blinding me. Angry, I stuck up my middlefinger to which they turned on their blue lights and all; but still when I stopped the car they were polite (slightly frosty, I must say, but polite) and told me that sticking up my finger like might not have been such a good idea if I'd had a car full of thughs behind me. And they gave me a ticket, of course. But this is what police are like in a civilised country, I would have thought.
I think problems like this arise because police in the US are much too often simply incompetent persons, what the Chinese traditionally call 'insignificant persons'. This kind of overreaction and bullying is the natural behaviour for a person who is ignorant, narrowminded and petty. It's like that other case where a policeofficer used a tazer-gun on a 5 year old child who had a tantrum.
I don't know this might change - perhaps schools of all kinds (especially police academies) should put particular emphasis on teaching openmindedness, tolerance and mature problemsolving skills. Ah well, this probably makes me a 'communist'.
If you feel the need to control what your kid eats in high school through a system like this, you've allready failed as a parent.
Nonsense - if anything it is the 'system', capitalism, the 'free' market if you like, that is not only failing, but betraying us, especially the young, who are not only the most vulnerable. but also our future.
So how is it the fault of 'the system', you may ask. Simple: the system allows ruthless, predatory companies to market junk food and other unhealthy 'lifestyle items', and they go directly after the children and young, who are most inexperienced and therefore easiest to subvert with lies that an adult would look right through. And by doing so, they seduce the new generations into a lifestyle that threathens the health of the entire population - one just has to look around on the swollen, misshaped bodies of the larger part of the American population nowadays to see what I mean. And how can anybody call that anything else but betrayal?
America is on high alert for 'terrorists', 'threats' and 'traitors', but the real traitors are the ones that are willing to slowly steal away the health of the common people; it doesn't make it any better that they are traitors simply out of greed - not because they believe intensely in some idea or religion, but because they are greedy after money they don't even need. I mean, if you already own millions or billions, do you actually need more?
Is this really what people in general think of as 'great' and desirable? A house where you hardly have to move to achieve anything, with loads of electric and electronic gadgets that can do it all for you? To me it seems like what I call stupid luxury: luxurious things that you don't need, which will in the end make you less able to function on your own.
Take a thing like the microwave oven and the ready-made meals: A great thing because now you can try out a huge range of dishes that you would never ever be able to cook yourself. But the price is that you forget how to actually cook a decent meal; or if you are young, you never even learn it in the first place. And meanwhile the food companies do their utmost to find cheaper ways of producing things, mostly by replacing good ingredients with crap and additives - this is called product development and advertised as 'new, improved recipe'.
No, to me a really nice, luxurious and cool home would be something entirely different. It would a have nice, but not overworked garden, there would be floors and walls of natural stone or wood, the kitchen would be simple, with just the things you actually need. There would be no TV; there would be a good computer and good network connection. And that's it, no stupid automation, no stupid crap that tries to think and live for you so you don't have to yourself.
No, the good idea for Microsoft is to publicly bluster and privately strike a deal with the EU to come into compliance and pay a reduced fine. Microsoft essentially made a gamble and lost and will now minimize its losses.
I don't think so - they are long past negotiating a reduced fine. They have idiotically assumed that they could piss on the European legislation like they do on the American, but they were wrong, as it turned out. The EU are so horribly oppressive that they will actually enforce the law, EVEN IF YOU ARE LOADED WITH CASH
The best Microsoft could do, really, both to themselves and everybody else, would be to change their course altogether, publicly say 'Yes, we have been bastards for far too long, now we want to change' and then pay the fine, open their protocols, follow the rules and BE A NICE COMPANY. Much as it may surprise those who believe in The American Way, it is actually possible to do business and do well while being responsible, law-abiding and taking care of their employees, their customers and the society in which they operate. This is something that not a few companies in Europe actually do.
'Long the domain of transhumanist nut-jobs, cryogenic suspension may be just two years away from clinical trials on humans (presuming someone can solve the sticky ethical problems).'
That is easily resolved - just use it on terror-suspects. They are outside the law and mostly subhuman, like muslems and people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when American (business-) interests were enacted.
I wonder - will the entertainment industry ever learn that what they get out of this kind of things is simply that people in general find it more and more acceptable to use cracked SW and pirated films and CDs? When you assume that your customers are criminals and treat them accordingly, they will be alienated, what a surprise!
It should have been 'How Washington want to shape the Internet'. Fortunately the Internet is so much more than an internal US affair - even if the US government could succeed in raising an iron curtain around all of you guys, we in the free world will still be out here. And as the goings on in China show, one can always find a way around that kind of nonsense.
... but sadly 18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version;) Go do that now.
I think not - for several reasons:
1. Some of the best extensions don't work in the newest version. Last time I tried (long ago, admittedly) things like Noscript, AniDisable, FlashBlock and Tab Mix Plus didn't work; I consider them absolutely essential for any sensible use of the net.
2. I'm just plain weird; I hate some of the 'cool' features in the later versions. In fact I hate anything that is only meant to be cool, but turns out to be counterproductive. Eg. the incremental search that is now mandatory (or was when I last looked)
3. I also hate not being able to completely remove what used to be the nullplugin, which tends to keep nagging about installing plugins that don't exist.
- CPUs that can run several microcode architectures, either in parallel or by timesharing between them. Just imagine a CPU with both Intel, SPARC and POWER instruction sets. Yes, yes, there's a lot more to it than just swapping between different instruction sets, but it can be done, and since there has for long been a trend towards making peripherals that can be used in several architectures it shouldn't be too difficult.
Yes, its smut, but if you don't like it, don't watch it
True, up to a point. However, the sad fact is (at least in UK, I imagine it is the same everywhere) that all you are given to watch on tv is crap like 'reality' TV, sports events, celebrity chefs and makeover programs; so it becomes a question of not having a tv or enjoying this brainless shite by the cubic meter. How I miss the days when tv was at times well made and intelligent.
I don't think so. The EU have in the past doled out some very hefty fines and made sure they got the money. They will do the same to Microsoft. And if MS don't want to pay, the EU can always start seizing their assets.
the UN is essentially beholden to the dictatorships that make up its majority
Blah blah blah. Did you think long about that one? The UN is meant as forum where the nations of the world can meet and discuss the issues that arise because it better to communicate than start yet another stupid war. The US was one of the founding members of that institution and it was founded on the background of two catastrophic world wars. But in recent years neoconservatives like you have poisoned the minds of the American public against the UN because you think the 'right' of the strong looks more attractive - I guess you fancy yourself so strong and mighty that nobody can challenge your might. Korea, Vietnam and Iraq should have taught you a lesson about the limits to your strength and military power.
Giving all groups equal say in the future of the internet would be a disaster for free expression
What? Limiting which opinions are permissible and who is allowed to express their opinion is supposed to protect free expression? All you are saying here is that you don't want anybody else to have a say because you want to have your way always. This is the perennial problem with the US; you say you believe in freedom and tolerance, but in fact you are just narrowminded, intolerant and blind to reality. What a beacon for democracy you are...
I think you're quite right; except I can't see why China would want a fragmented internet. China's influence in culture, finance and politics is growing ever stronger. Just as an example: in little, insignificant Denmark, where a few years ago, the only foreign languages anyone could imagine learning would be either English, German or French, public schools are now increasingly offering Chinese courses. English as a second language is slowly becoming less important, simply, and in the future speaking Chinese will be an ever bigger advantage. Seen in this light China has no reason at all to keep the world out.
It's funny how all discussions about global issues always degenerate into a fight over whether China is an evil, communist dictatorship or whether USA is a fascist, imperialist pseudo-democracy. Why not try to look for the parallels instead and try to understand what concerns they are trying to address; perhaps what they are doing in both countries is not necessarily all intended as a means of repression of free thought.
Slashdot Mirror
There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet
'There must be a thousand reasons why you might want to be completely anonymous, but right now I can't think of one...'
I'd say, let the market sort this one out
This seems to be the new religion - at least in the US. 'The market' isn't some magical cure-all that is going to sort everything out and make the world a better place. Experience shows that free-market capitalism doesn't exist, among other things because every time restrictions are removed from businesses, we get monopolies, kartels and all the other diseases of extreme capitalism; thus, even if there are no restrictions imposed by the state, the free market will quickly be killed off by predatorial companies.
Instead of this pipe-dream about the holy and divine 'free market' there should be simple and clear restrictions in place that would favour the small to medium sized businesses; the bigger companies are simply extremely inefficient in a number of areas; in a small company each employee often has a big stake in the success of the company and will work harder and not waste resources. A big company will tend to extract money from society into some form af passive storage, possibly overseas, whereas in small companies the money tends to get spent in the local area to the benefit of everybody.
So let's put this silly, religious free-market mantra to one side; it won't benefit you or me (unless you happen to be a multibillionaire).
Unfortunately 'beginner friendly' normally also means 'hostile to non-beginners'. I don't this has to be the case always, but that is one of the BIG problems with Windows and GNOME: they try to be 'beginner friendly' or just 'user friendly' and end up being dumbed down (or even infantile like the 'Fisher-Price Interface' in XP).
What I would like to see - though perhaps it is too much to hope for - is an interface where you could 'change gears', so to speak, from 'beginner' to 'experienced' to 'advanced' to 'bloody-know-it-all'; the beginner mode should have wizards, few options, easy, catoon-style documentation and bright, but calming colours, whereas the most advanced level would have none of the dumbing-down and would have complete, technical documentation of absolutely all features, options and parameters - no wizards, just vi and text-based parameter files.
Yes, I know, Linux is not too far from this by now, but technical documentation is still severely lacking in some areas, most notoriously when it comes to the GNOME desktop. In fact, it is so bad that I think the GNOME developers should freeze their development until they have produced proper, technical documentation of their SW.
Sigh - yet another socalled 'war'. It always makes me shake my head in disbelief when I see it - I mean, how can one fight a war against drugs? It's not as if there is an army on the other side. Plus, a lot of these things are easily found in nature; just think of magic mushrooms - you can probably find them within walking distance from your home if you live outside a big city. Or take cannabis - you can the seeds as bird seeds or in health shops, at least in UK.
Or how about opium poppies: I see them growing in a lot of people's gardens. You can buy the seeds in garden centres or even in supermarkets (for baking bread etc). You can buy morning glory (contains LSA, similar to LSD) legally to grow in your garden. So how can one 'fight a war' against drugs? It's nonsense, simple and pure.
No, legalise it, educate people, tax it. That way we would get rid of two whole classes of crime that only exist because of reactionary legislation: drugs trafficking and drug use.
Computer games are by and large targeted on the same crowd that are interested in pornography: teenagers (and adults who didn't grow up). Please note: this is not intended as a criticism of gamers (or pornography, for that matter), it's simply my opinion. And just like pornography generally has no credible storyline, because it is irrelevant and the audience would object to it, most games too can't have any real depth - after all when you buy a FPS game, what you want to see is cool weapons, scary monsters and lots of blood; having to think and figure it out would ruin the adrenalin rush, just like an intellectual drama would make a pornographical movie less wankable.
There *are* games that require a bit more in terms of mental activity - eg Crossfire - but they don't really seem to draw huge crowds. On top of that I suspect that the people who enjoy a bit mental exercise are more likely to prefer a printed book that they can read anywhere. Perhaps it is down to the way one generally uses one's brain: some people tend to be more visually oriented, while others think more in words.
I suppose it is - at least in the US. But should it be? This kind of thing is very close to such things as fraud and slander. I don't have a problem with people making parody and satire, but if you make fun of other people, you should have the guts to stand up for what you say. This is not often a problem in Europe, but I really think it should be law that everything that has been sponsored by political, religious or commercial interests should be clearly and fully declared as such. And I think faling to do so should be under the same penalties as fraud.
$ ls -l
...
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am the wife of Dr. Mabunga, the former minister for internal affairs in Nigeria,
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3409 2005-12-13 14:35 cpuload.c
-rw------- 1 root root 614363 2005-08-17 19:16 culturalgrammar.pdf
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 456 2006-03-23 17:17 cv
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27136 2006-02-03 12:08 cv+cover.doc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 48 2006-08-01 15:56 Desktop
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 33995 2006-03-30 10:26 dilbert2006610630330.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 49672 2006-03-30 10:35 dilbert.gif
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 245760 2006-03-16 15:57 djpenguin.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2005-11-16 17:44 dlmgr_.pro
drwxr-xr-- 2 root root 336 2005-08-19 15:55 download
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 223 2006-07-13 15:23 DVconfig.ini
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6461758 2006-06-13 15:07 E1.wma
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10583 2005-07-19 10:49 endian
It is also, incidentally, the system they use in China, which means it must be evil...
The halflife of radioactive materials arises from the fatct that one can calculate the propability per time unit of a decay occurring in a given nucleus. One can of course make that propability higher in a number of ways, but as far as I know they all involve exciting the quantum state of the nucleus, eg. by whacking a neutron into it (happens in a nuclear reactor). I can't imagine how encasing things in metal would have that effect, even at low temperatures.
The mechanisms speculated in the article - I simply can't see them work. How would the free electrons in a metal attract positively charged particles in a radioactive nucleus? Because of the electromagnetic force, right? But since the metal casing is electrically neutral as a whole, the electric field of the electrons, free or not, is cancelled out by the field from the positive metal nuclei. Which is why we don't have sparks flying off pieces of metal just like that.
They'll have to come up with very convincing arguments, either rock solid experiments that others can reproduce or quantum mechanical calculations.
I agree - they went too far. And perhaps you are right that 'Cops are dicks' in the US, but in my experience they aren't in most places. I have so far lived in Denmark, UK and China for extended periods, and I have always found that police are mostly able to judge a situation and act with restraint. Hell, once I drove home in UK feeling stressed out and got pissed off by a driver in front who insisted on driving at half the speed limit; and there was no place where I could overtake safely, so in the end I just overtook. And of course it turned out that the car right behind me was a police car - I didn't realise at first, I just found that they kept flashing their headlight, blinding me. Angry, I stuck up my middlefinger to which they turned on their blue lights and all; but still when I stopped the car they were polite (slightly frosty, I must say, but polite) and told me that sticking up my finger like might not have been such a good idea if I'd had a car full of thughs behind me. And they gave me a ticket, of course. But this is what police are like in a civilised country, I would have thought.
I think problems like this arise because police in the US are much too often simply incompetent persons, what the Chinese traditionally call 'insignificant persons'. This kind of overreaction and bullying is the natural behaviour for a person who is ignorant, narrowminded and petty. It's like that other case where a policeofficer used a tazer-gun on a 5 year old child who had a tantrum.
I don't know this might change - perhaps schools of all kinds (especially police academies) should put particular emphasis on teaching openmindedness, tolerance and mature problemsolving skills. Ah well, this probably makes me a 'communist'.
If you feel the need to control what your kid eats in high school through a system like this, you've allready failed as a parent.
Nonsense - if anything it is the 'system', capitalism, the 'free' market if you like, that is not only failing, but betraying us, especially the young, who are not only the most vulnerable. but also our future.
So how is it the fault of 'the system', you may ask. Simple: the system allows ruthless, predatory companies to market junk food and other unhealthy 'lifestyle items', and they go directly after the children and young, who are most inexperienced and therefore easiest to subvert with lies that an adult would look right through. And by doing so, they seduce the new generations into a lifestyle that threathens the health of the entire population - one just has to look around on the swollen, misshaped bodies of the larger part of the American population nowadays to see what I mean. And how can anybody call that anything else but betrayal?
America is on high alert for 'terrorists', 'threats' and 'traitors', but the real traitors are the ones that are willing to slowly steal away the health of the common people; it doesn't make it any better that they are traitors simply out of greed - not because they believe intensely in some idea or religion, but because they are greedy after money they don't even need. I mean, if you already own millions or billions, do you actually need more?
Is this really what people in general think of as 'great' and desirable? A house where you hardly have to move to achieve anything, with loads of electric and electronic gadgets that can do it all for you? To me it seems like what I call stupid luxury: luxurious things that you don't need, which will in the end make you less able to function on your own.
Take a thing like the microwave oven and the ready-made meals: A great thing because now you can try out a huge range of dishes that you would never ever be able to cook yourself. But the price is that you forget how to actually cook a decent meal; or if you are young, you never even learn it in the first place. And meanwhile the food companies do their utmost to find cheaper ways of producing things, mostly by replacing good ingredients with crap and additives - this is called product development and advertised as 'new, improved recipe'.
No, to me a really nice, luxurious and cool home would be something entirely different. It would a have nice, but not overworked garden, there would be floors and walls of natural stone or wood, the kitchen would be simple, with just the things you actually need. There would be no TV; there would be a good computer and good network connection. And that's it, no stupid automation, no stupid crap that tries to think and live for you so you don't have to yourself.
No, the good idea for Microsoft is to publicly bluster and privately strike a deal with the EU to come into compliance and pay a reduced fine. Microsoft essentially made a gamble and lost and will now minimize its losses.
I don't think so - they are long past negotiating a reduced fine. They have idiotically assumed that they could piss on the European legislation like they do on the American, but they were wrong, as it turned out. The EU are so horribly oppressive that they will actually enforce the law, EVEN IF YOU ARE LOADED WITH CASH
The best Microsoft could do, really, both to themselves and everybody else, would be to change their course altogether, publicly say 'Yes, we have been bastards for far too long, now we want to change' and then pay the fine, open their protocols, follow the rules and BE A NICE COMPANY. Much as it may surprise those who believe in The American Way, it is actually possible to do business and do well while being responsible, law-abiding and taking care of their employees, their customers and the society in which they operate. This is something that not a few companies in Europe actually do.
'Long the domain of transhumanist nut-jobs, cryogenic suspension may be just two years away from clinical trials on humans (presuming someone can solve the sticky ethical problems).'
That is easily resolved - just use it on terror-suspects. They are outside the law and mostly subhuman, like muslems and people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when American (business-) interests were enacted.
- until proven otherwise.
I wonder - will the entertainment industry ever learn that what they get out of this kind of things is simply that people in general find it more and more acceptable to use cracked SW and pirated films and CDs? When you assume that your customers are criminals and treat them accordingly, they will be alienated, what a surprise!
It should have been 'How Washington want to shape the Internet'. Fortunately the Internet is so much more than an internal US affair - even if the US government could succeed in raising an iron curtain around all of you guys, we in the free world will still be out here. And as the goings on in China show, one can always find a way around that kind of nonsense.
... but sadly 18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version ;) Go do that now.
I think not - for several reasons:
1. Some of the best extensions don't work in the newest version. Last time I tried (long ago, admittedly) things like Noscript, AniDisable, FlashBlock and Tab Mix Plus didn't work; I consider them absolutely essential for any sensible use of the net.
2. I'm just plain weird; I hate some of the 'cool' features in the later versions. In fact I hate anything that is only meant to be cool, but turns out to be counterproductive. Eg. the incremental search that is now mandatory (or was when I last looked)
3. I also hate not being able to completely remove what used to be the nullplugin, which tends to keep nagging about installing plugins that don't exist.
It will run Linux!
- CPUs that can run several microcode architectures, either in parallel or by timesharing between them. Just imagine a CPU with both Intel, SPARC and POWER instruction sets. Yes, yes, there's a lot more to it than just swapping between different instruction sets, but it can be done, and since there has for long been a trend towards making peripherals that can be used in several architectures it shouldn't be too difficult.
Yes, its smut, but if you don't like it, don't watch it
True, up to a point. However, the sad fact is (at least in UK, I imagine it is the same everywhere) that all you are given to watch on tv is crap like 'reality' TV, sports events, celebrity chefs and makeover programs; so it becomes a question of not having a tv or enjoying this brainless shite by the cubic meter. How I miss the days when tv was at times well made and intelligent.
I don't think so. The EU have in the past doled out some very hefty fines and made sure they got the money. They will do the same to Microsoft. And if MS don't want to pay, the EU can always start seizing their assets.
... the relatively recent origins of every human on earth.
Indeed, it has been found out that nobody living on Earth today goes back more than about 100 to 120 years at most!!
the UN is essentially beholden to the dictatorships that make up its majority
Blah blah blah. Did you think long about that one? The UN is meant as forum where the nations of the world can meet and discuss the issues that arise because it better to communicate than start yet another stupid war. The US was one of the founding members of that institution and it was founded on the background of two catastrophic world wars. But in recent years neoconservatives like you have poisoned the minds of the American public against the UN because you think the 'right' of the strong looks more attractive - I guess you fancy yourself so strong and mighty that nobody can challenge your might. Korea, Vietnam and Iraq should have taught you a lesson about the limits to your strength and military power.
Giving all groups equal say in the future of the internet would be a disaster for free expression
What? Limiting which opinions are permissible and who is allowed to express their opinion is supposed to protect free expression? All you are saying here is that you don't want anybody else to have a say because you want to have your way always. This is the perennial problem with the US; you say you believe in freedom and tolerance, but in fact you are just narrowminded, intolerant and blind to reality. What a beacon for democracy you are...
I think you're quite right; except I can't see why China would want a fragmented internet. China's influence in culture, finance and politics is growing ever stronger. Just as an example: in little, insignificant Denmark, where a few years ago, the only foreign languages anyone could imagine learning would be either English, German or French, public schools are now increasingly offering Chinese courses. English as a second language is slowly becoming less important, simply, and in the future speaking Chinese will be an ever bigger advantage. Seen in this light China has no reason at all to keep the world out.
It's funny how all discussions about global issues always degenerate into a fight over whether China is an evil, communist dictatorship or whether USA is a fascist, imperialist pseudo-democracy. Why not try to look for the parallels instead and try to understand what concerns they are trying to address; perhaps what they are doing in both countries is not necessarily all intended as a means of repression of free thought.
A scientist encroaching on the domain of politicians and business? For shame!!!