Actually, building number 10 at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington has an angular external layout which produces lots of "corner" type offices. There are several other buildings close by with the same type of layout. All of these buildings were collectively occupied, or at least they were the last time I was there, by the Windows OS groups.
In light of other studies linking antioxidants in coffee to a reduction in heart disease, who is right?
Perhaps they are both right. I remember reading in one study that coffee contains hundreds of different chemicals and compounds and that there is no data regarding the possible long term effects of many of these chemicals. It is quite possible that coffee contains both good and bad things, but either way I will not stop drinking my coffee just because of reports like this, although I do drink fewer than 4 cups per day already anyway.
The problem comes when the intrepid young VB developer, flush with his previous VB success, hooks his Honda Civic up to the 18 wheel trailer and wonders why the clutch just blew out when his Honda encountered a "load". The main problem with VB is that it frequently does not scale up when the need arrisses and managers have a difficult time understanding why something that has worked fine for years begins having problems when the number of simultaneous users begins to move into the double digits. Try explaining to that same manager why that wonderful little VB application that was so fast and cheap to build suddenly needs to be scrapped because it cannot scale up. The non-technical person will have a very difficult time wrapping their brains around that problem, they usually assume that they can just "troubleshoot" and get the whole thing working for how ever many users and whatever new features they want to throw at it. When you see his eyes glaze over and he starts nodding his head and saying yeah, uh-huh, sure, and right then you know that you have reached this point.
So in the process of determining whether Microsoft has actually produced documentation that meets the requirements, the EU checks with other companies! Oh, the horror of collusion!
Alright, but since the review process between the commission and the companies is not open to public review and scrutiny how does Microsoft know that their competitors in Europe are not simply saying that the documentation is useless no matter what it actually contains to spread FUD about Microsoft and buy time for themselves to either grab market share or play catch up? The temptation is certainly there for those companies involved in the review process.
The tech who connects the packet shaper to the network is not going to be liable, but rather the company will be liable. No jury anywhere in the US would believe that a single tech acting alone and without instruction from above installed this device on his own initiative. It wouldn't matter anyway since the corporation would be the one named as defendant. Documenting who asked might be prudent but it could also be difficult especially if the manager giving the order knows that it is illegal. Nobody wants to be the only one left without a chair when the music stops.
If Comcast and other ISPs begin using filtering technologies and/or packet shaping which makes decisions based upon the content as the packets flow over the network aren't they in danger of losing their status as a common carrier? They argue that they are a common carrier to avoid liability for services like Kazaa, eDonkey, and Bittorrent being used to trade copyrighted materials across their networks while at the same time filtering competitor's VoIP traffic to gain a competitive advantage for their own service. It seems to me that they cannot have it both ways and if a court decides that they are no longer a common carrier they may come to regret the day that they demonstrated the capability to filter competitors' VoIP traffic.
It should be possible then to design a program that scans the web looking for articles which contain certain buzzwords and then, by selecting sentances which maximize the total number of buzzword hits and joining them into paragraphs an entirely new trade magazine article can be generated automatically on the fly. The program could even select from a pre-arranged set of marketing driven conclusions, sort of like a jump to conclusions function...you see it would be a program that "jumps" to conclusions...yeah.
So just give them something that has everything and don't put stupid limitations in that don't need to be there.
Alright, but now the unit price for the previously cheaper editions has to go up in order to cover the costs of development. They cannot simply charge businesses more for the same thing that they are selling to consumers for less, the business people would revolt. So in order to price discriminate, and the monopoly maximizes their profits by price discrimination, they must draw some sort of distinction between the different "levels" of the product being sold whether artificial or not. There is also the legitimate (somewhat) argument that consumers do not like to pay more for features that they are not using. Is it enough to convince them to use something else as a substitute? In this case perhaps not, because Windows does not have perfect substitutes, but it would be a factor none the less.
The bumbling of Sony is caused in large part by an arrogance and elitist attitude born of a different decade when they were sort of innovative and had the market power to control prices and set standards, but the glory days of Sony are long since past and the shadow of what remains is still hanging around the locker room boasting of past achievements to anyone who will listen. Their marketing slogans really say it all with the phrases, "Only Sony" and "Like no Other", but increasingly they are only fooling themselves and the Joe Sixpacks of the world who still remember with fondness their Walkman days and are unable to see that they are paying premium prices for largly inferior products. The root kit fiasco was really the last straw for me, before that I would have at least considered Sony in a hardware purchase although practically speaking I had not bought any new Sony equipment for at least five years anyway because of the aforementioned lack of quality and unattractive pricing. The old Sony may come back someday if the company manages to survive this decade and reinvent themselves before they go completely off the deep end, but it will take them a long time to regain the trust and respect that they enjoyed in the 1970s and 80s. Meanwhile, for the time being, it looks as if smaller and more forward looking hardware firms, such as Apple, will be eating their lunch.
Yes it is normal for US universities to sell exclusivity contracts for concessions such as soft drinks which are then served in all dining facilities, vending, and retail on campus. The university where I attended was contracted with Pepsi and it included all of the Pepsi owned satellite brands as well such as Doritos, Lays, and Tropicana. There was actually some controversy in the University store when they stopped selling "Red Bull" because Pepsi began marketing a competing energy drink product called "Amped" I think, but people were already used to "Red Bull". There is really nothing socialist about it because you can be sure that the university sold the exclusivity rights to the highest bidder which was, in the case of my school, Pepsi and not Coke. Indeed, you might say that it was capitalism at its finest...the University cut a deal with the soft drink company, pocketed most of the cash, and the Students got the ability to purchase Pepsi products at full retail prices with no alternatives. You might call it a lesson in the way that American companies do business.
Frankly, these contracts should be illegal for a public university.
In the matter of an obligatory durable goods purchase, such as a laptop, I am inclined to agree with you. However, for certain other things, such as the soft drink concession, I am going to side with the university as long as such monies would go towards lowering the student fees somewhat or supporting other university activities such as research, maintenance, department budgets or anything else that might otherwise result in more student fees. The inability to buy either Coke or Pepsi on campus is probably outweighed by paying somewhat less fees and from what I understand these beverage concessions can be worth quite a bit to the university. I guess it comes down to a simple choice, would you rather pay 10-20 more dollars per quarter/semester or be able to buy both Coke and Pepsi on campus? Most students would probably choose the former and not the later.
Perhaps there is another reason why they were so reluctant to release any documentation or specification...because there is none. I have seen many times now in my software career proprietary pieces of code that have been running for years using an unknown binary protocol amongst themselves that was written by one or two developers who worked for the company in question years ago and never wrote anything down. Nobody even realized this was a problem until there were change requests that could not be made because the expertise to complete the requests had long since moved on. It has been my experience that written documentation is the exception rather than the rule in closed source projects. In fact, the only documentation that is guaranteed to exist is the original source code and sometimes even that cannot be found.
For all problems, there is exactly one solution, and it always works: throw money at the problem. If this doesn't work, then increase the amount of money you throw.
Alright, but this is certainly not a new phenomenon. In fact, this type of solution has been around for as long as there has been a monetary system. For example, the Roman Senator and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero in his argument against the Gaius Verres in 70 BC decried the corruption of the Roman Senatorial Courts and the general feeling among the people that those with money will always escape justice and punishment.
If I recall correctly the way the laws are currently written in the UK if you decide that you want to encrypt your files then that is fine provided that you surrender the keys under subpoena request. If you cannot or will not produce the key for the court when formally asked then it can probably be considered tantamount to an admission of guilt or at the very least extremely unfavorable to your legal defense. In the US you could probably plead the fifth, but I am not sure if that would fly in the UK.
The question becomes, now that this technology is cheaper, will my VP be buying new Windows Mobile enabled cell phones for his entire department just so we can put in more hours?
That would probably depend upon the cost per unit of the phones along with any other expenses connected with the rollout of this system compared to the relative value of each additional potential employee hour worked. You might also ask yourself, especially if they do set this up and start abusing it on nights and weekends, if this is the type of company that you want to continue working for? Technology enables us to be on call anytime from just about anywhere, but just because we can doesn't mean that we should and anyone who has ever been asked to take their laptop with them on their "vacation" will know precisely what that means.
I remember reading that weather balloons are made from special tear resistant and self sealing polymer membranes. Is it possible then that the bullets went straight through the balloon and that the membrane simply closed in around the holes with minimal loss of internal pressure?
The key to understanding the market for techincal books is to realize that not everyone's time is equally valuable. You are quite correct in your assertion that all of the raw information in the book can be found on the Web for free with a few search sessions and some digging through the trash...and the web is full of bad advice and just plain wrong information, especially when it comes to web design and development where many people have conflicting opinions which they recite as factual information. That having been said the value in the technical book comes in the order and presentation of the materials, the expert (usually) peer reviewed suggestions and best practices, and the aggregation of various sources into one coherent work. All of this could be learned without spending you hard earned money by doing enough searching, digging, and reading on the web, but at the end of the day who do you want to trust....user99 the phat html h4x0|2s...or the somewhat more credible authors of these books...that and the main point which was how much is your time worth?
In my experience, the main difference between the Head First series of books and other lame publishers who are trying to be cute to increase sales is that the Head First approach includes these graphics for specific reasons to enhance the ability of the human brain, which evolution has hard-wired to discard almost all information that it deems not immediately useful to your continued survival (which is just about everything the clutters our lives in daily modern life), to understand and retain information that would otherwise require multiple readings and study sessions to convince (i.e. force) your brain to understand that you really do want to remember this stuff. The head first approach is based upon extensive research into the neurobiology of learning done by Academia over the past several decades in an attempt to teach you the information that you want to learn (you bought the book after all so you presumably want to learn more about the topics that the book purports to teach) and help you retain it with the minimum amount of re-reading, studying, and general frustration. If you don't like this approach then by all means buy the traditional textbook style presentation instead...its your money after all, but I wanted to point out that the Head First style is not trying to be cutesy or funny just for the hell of it but to help you learn the material better and for that they deserve some credit.
I could care less about what is "deprecated" by W3C, as though they are going to come over and scold me, and as though I would care.
I can understand where you are coming from on these types of issues and you can do whatever you want with your own sites, but it would be foolish not to see the other side of that coin as well. The web was built upon standards and would not be nearly as large, widespread, or useful as it is today without these types of agreements. If the web were instead released with proprietary formats, DRM, and vendor lock in then it would never have gotten off the ground. Ultimately the standards benefit everyone and the smaller developers especially, so the next time you use a deprecated tag you can go right ahead and that is fine...nobody is going to break down your door or tell you that you cannot do that, but most people agree that the newer standards have some value. Take skiing for example, I have been skiing for ten years now on a pair of shorter modern side cut skis, but every once in a while I still see an old hold-out on his 1980s vintage Olin Mark IVs because that is the way he learned to ski and he wont switch come hell or high water, even though almost everyone concedes that shaped skis are superior, because that is the way he has always done it and it is good enough for him. I am not saying that it isn't his right to ski on whatever he wants, but at some point we have to recognize when we are just being stubborn and shooting ourselves in the foot in the process. Apologizes for the rambling tone of this post, but thanks for reading all the way through...The basic point was that we should all care about the standards because we all have a stake in the way things are going.
If gasoline and ethanol were both of equal price per gallon and my vehicle could run on either fuel then I would select the gasoline every time and so would most other people, unless they really value clean air (and even if they do they can free-ride off the ethanol purchases of other people because you cannot prevent me from enjoying the clean air that you paid more to have by buying the ethanol instead of the gasoline). The problem with ethanol and other alcohol fuels is that they have less energy density per gallon than hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline which means more gallons of ethanol to travel a given distance than gasoline assuming all other things about the trip are equal. The problem with the whole global warming debate is not whether the scientists are right or wrong, but that people have to put food on the family table and pay their mortgage today and not 50 years from now, so they will not spend more money, willingly and of their own accord, for some public good that will matter years from now but not today. If you want to solve the global warming problem than you have to make the situation palatable economically speaking or people wont take the bitter medicine required to solve the problem, the vast majority of the human race is not and never will be that altruistic.
The alcohol and drug wars are a great example of the government trying to legislate morals.
The problem with some personal moral choices is that the effects of those choices are not entirely independent from the rest of society. The smokers, alcoholics, and drug addicts in our society impose negative externalities on the rest of us in the form of increased medical costs and other financial burdens which we are then forced to pay in the form of higher taxes or deficit spending. It is not fair for some people in society to pass of the costs of their poor choices unto the rest of us and so we make certain choices illegal to prevent those people from making them without consequences.
Admin access to the machines in question is not always a requirement for rootkit installer programs because they frequently exploit weaknesses in the host operating system to either escalate their privileges or bypass the OS security system completely. It would be a poor rootkit indeed if it required root to install it...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, building number 10 at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington has an angular external layout which produces lots of "corner" type offices. There are several other buildings close by with the same type of layout. All of these buildings were collectively occupied, or at least they were the last time I was there, by the Windows OS groups.
In light of other studies linking antioxidants in coffee to a reduction in heart disease, who is right?
Perhaps they are both right. I remember reading in one study that coffee contains hundreds of different chemicals and compounds and that there is no data regarding the possible long term effects of many of these chemicals. It is quite possible that coffee contains both good and bad things, but either way I will not stop drinking my coffee just because of reports like this, although I do drink fewer than 4 cups per day already anyway.
The problem comes when the intrepid young VB developer, flush with his previous VB success, hooks his Honda Civic up to the 18 wheel trailer and wonders why the clutch just blew out when his Honda encountered a "load". The main problem with VB is that it frequently does not scale up when the need arrisses and managers have a difficult time understanding why something that has worked fine for years begins having problems when the number of simultaneous users begins to move into the double digits. Try explaining to that same manager why that wonderful little VB application that was so fast and cheap to build suddenly needs to be scrapped because it cannot scale up. The non-technical person will have a very difficult time wrapping their brains around that problem, they usually assume that they can just "troubleshoot" and get the whole thing working for how ever many users and whatever new features they want to throw at it. When you see his eyes glaze over and he starts nodding his head and saying yeah, uh-huh, sure, and right then you know that you have reached this point.
Did you try using ngen.exe? This can also been run from windows installer via a custom action.
NGen Revs Up Your Performance with Powerful New Features
So in the process of determining whether Microsoft has actually produced documentation that meets the requirements, the EU checks with other companies! Oh, the horror of collusion!
Alright, but since the review process between the commission and the companies is not open to public review and scrutiny how does Microsoft know that their competitors in Europe are not simply saying that the documentation is useless no matter what it actually contains to spread FUD about Microsoft and buy time for themselves to either grab market share or play catch up? The temptation is certainly there for those companies involved in the review process.
The tech who connects the packet shaper to the network is not going to be liable, but rather the company will be liable. No jury anywhere in the US would believe that a single tech acting alone and without instruction from above installed this device on his own initiative. It wouldn't matter anyway since the corporation would be the one named as defendant. Documenting who asked might be prudent but it could also be difficult especially if the manager giving the order knows that it is illegal. Nobody wants to be the only one left without a chair when the music stops.
If Comcast and other ISPs begin using filtering technologies and/or packet shaping which makes decisions based upon the content as the packets flow over the network aren't they in danger of losing their status as a common carrier? They argue that they are a common carrier to avoid liability for services like Kazaa, eDonkey, and Bittorrent being used to trade copyrighted materials across their networks while at the same time filtering competitor's VoIP traffic to gain a competitive advantage for their own service. It seems to me that they cannot have it both ways and if a court decides that they are no longer a common carrier they may come to regret the day that they demonstrated the capability to filter competitors' VoIP traffic.
I have a plan for a truck that can drive thousands of miles on less then one gallon! Granted, it is a gallon of plutonium, but less then one gallon!
Yes, but will the hybrid electric motor be able to supply the necessary 1.21 jigawatts to the flux capacitor?
It should be possible then to design a program that scans the web looking for articles which contain certain buzzwords and then, by selecting sentances which maximize the total number of buzzword hits and joining them into paragraphs an entirely new trade magazine article can be generated automatically on the fly. The program could even select from a pre-arranged set of marketing driven conclusions, sort of like a jump to conclusions function...you see it would be a program that "jumps" to conclusions...yeah.
So just give them something that has everything and don't put stupid limitations in that don't need to be there.
Alright, but now the unit price for the previously cheaper editions has to go up in order to cover the costs of development. They cannot simply charge businesses more for the same thing that they are selling to consumers for less, the business people would revolt. So in order to price discriminate, and the monopoly maximizes their profits by price discrimination, they must draw some sort of distinction between the different "levels" of the product being sold whether artificial or not. There is also the legitimate (somewhat) argument that consumers do not like to pay more for features that they are not using. Is it enough to convince them to use something else as a substitute? In this case perhaps not, because Windows does not have perfect substitutes, but it would be a factor none the less.
The bumbling of Sony is caused in large part by an arrogance and elitist attitude born of a different decade when they were sort of innovative and had the market power to control prices and set standards, but the glory days of Sony are long since past and the shadow of what remains is still hanging around the locker room boasting of past achievements to anyone who will listen. Their marketing slogans really say it all with the phrases, "Only Sony" and "Like no Other", but increasingly they are only fooling themselves and the Joe Sixpacks of the world who still remember with fondness their Walkman days and are unable to see that they are paying premium prices for largly inferior products. The root kit fiasco was really the last straw for me, before that I would have at least considered Sony in a hardware purchase although practically speaking I had not bought any new Sony equipment for at least five years anyway because of the aforementioned lack of quality and unattractive pricing. The old Sony may come back someday if the company manages to survive this decade and reinvent themselves before they go completely off the deep end, but it will take them a long time to regain the trust and respect that they enjoyed in the 1970s and 80s. Meanwhile, for the time being, it looks as if smaller and more forward looking hardware firms, such as Apple, will be eating their lunch.
Yes it is normal for US universities to sell exclusivity contracts for concessions such as soft drinks which are then served in all dining facilities, vending, and retail on campus. The university where I attended was contracted with Pepsi and it included all of the Pepsi owned satellite brands as well such as Doritos, Lays, and Tropicana. There was actually some controversy in the University store when they stopped selling "Red Bull" because Pepsi began marketing a competing energy drink product called "Amped" I think, but people were already used to "Red Bull". There is really nothing socialist about it because you can be sure that the university sold the exclusivity rights to the highest bidder which was, in the case of my school, Pepsi and not Coke. Indeed, you might say that it was capitalism at its finest...the University cut a deal with the soft drink company, pocketed most of the cash, and the Students got the ability to purchase Pepsi products at full retail prices with no alternatives. You might call it a lesson in the way that American companies do business.
Frankly, these contracts should be illegal for a public university.
In the matter of an obligatory durable goods purchase, such as a laptop, I am inclined to agree with you. However, for certain other things, such as the soft drink concession, I am going to side with the university as long as such monies would go towards lowering the student fees somewhat or supporting other university activities such as research, maintenance, department budgets or anything else that might otherwise result in more student fees. The inability to buy either Coke or Pepsi on campus is probably outweighed by paying somewhat less fees and from what I understand these beverage concessions can be worth quite a bit to the university. I guess it comes down to a simple choice, would you rather pay 10-20 more dollars per quarter/semester or be able to buy both Coke and Pepsi on campus? Most students would probably choose the former and not the later.
Perhaps there is another reason why they were so reluctant to release any documentation or specification...because there is none. I have seen many times now in my software career proprietary pieces of code that have been running for years using an unknown binary protocol amongst themselves that was written by one or two developers who worked for the company in question years ago and never wrote anything down. Nobody even realized this was a problem until there were change requests that could not be made because the expertise to complete the requests had long since moved on. It has been my experience that written documentation is the exception rather than the rule in closed source projects. In fact, the only documentation that is guaranteed to exist is the original source code and sometimes even that cannot be found.
For all problems, there is exactly one solution, and it always works: throw money at the problem. If this doesn't work, then increase the amount of money you throw.
Alright, but this is certainly not a new phenomenon. In fact, this type of solution has been around for as long as there has been a monetary system. For example, the Roman Senator and orator Marcus Tullius Cicero in his argument against the Gaius Verres in 70 BC decried the corruption of the Roman Senatorial Courts and the general feeling among the people that those with money will always escape justice and punishment.
If I recall correctly the way the laws are currently written in the UK if you decide that you want to encrypt your files then that is fine provided that you surrender the keys under subpoena request. If you cannot or will not produce the key for the court when formally asked then it can probably be considered tantamount to an admission of guilt or at the very least extremely unfavorable to your legal defense. In the US you could probably plead the fifth, but I am not sure if that would fly in the UK.
The question becomes, now that this technology is cheaper, will my VP be buying new Windows Mobile enabled cell phones for his entire department just so we can put in more hours?
That would probably depend upon the cost per unit of the phones along with any other expenses connected with the rollout of this system compared to the relative value of each additional potential employee hour worked. You might also ask yourself, especially if they do set this up and start abusing it on nights and weekends, if this is the type of company that you want to continue working for? Technology enables us to be on call anytime from just about anywhere, but just because we can doesn't mean that we should and anyone who has ever been asked to take their laptop with them on their "vacation" will know precisely what that means.
They should land near the entrance to the secret alien base on the far side of the moon, that way they can just walk up and knock on the door...
I remember reading that weather balloons are made from special tear resistant and self sealing polymer membranes. Is it possible then that the bullets went straight through the balloon and that the membrane simply closed in around the holes with minimal loss of internal pressure?
The key to understanding the market for techincal books is to realize that not everyone's time is equally valuable. You are quite correct in your assertion that all of the raw information in the book can be found on the Web for free with a few search sessions and some digging through the trash...and the web is full of bad advice and just plain wrong information, especially when it comes to web design and development where many people have conflicting opinions which they recite as factual information. That having been said the value in the technical book comes in the order and presentation of the materials, the expert (usually) peer reviewed suggestions and best practices, and the aggregation of various sources into one coherent work. All of this could be learned without spending you hard earned money by doing enough searching, digging, and reading on the web, but at the end of the day who do you want to trust....user99 the phat html h4x0|2s...or the somewhat more credible authors of these books...that and the main point which was how much is your time worth?
In my experience, the main difference between the Head First series of books and other lame publishers who are trying to be cute to increase sales is that the Head First approach includes these graphics for specific reasons to enhance the ability of the human brain, which evolution has hard-wired to discard almost all information that it deems not immediately useful to your continued survival (which is just about everything the clutters our lives in daily modern life), to understand and retain information that would otherwise require multiple readings and study sessions to convince (i.e. force) your brain to understand that you really do want to remember this stuff. The head first approach is based upon extensive research into the neurobiology of learning done by Academia over the past several decades in an attempt to teach you the information that you want to learn (you bought the book after all so you presumably want to learn more about the topics that the book purports to teach) and help you retain it with the minimum amount of re-reading, studying, and general frustration. If you don't like this approach then by all means buy the traditional textbook style presentation instead...its your money after all, but I wanted to point out that the Head First style is not trying to be cutesy or funny just for the hell of it but to help you learn the material better and for that they deserve some credit.
I could care less about what is "deprecated" by W3C, as though they are going to come over and scold me, and as though I would care.
I can understand where you are coming from on these types of issues and you can do whatever you want with your own sites, but it would be foolish not to see the other side of that coin as well. The web was built upon standards and would not be nearly as large, widespread, or useful as it is today without these types of agreements. If the web were instead released with proprietary formats, DRM, and vendor lock in then it would never have gotten off the ground. Ultimately the standards benefit everyone and the smaller developers especially, so the next time you use a deprecated tag you can go right ahead and that is fine...nobody is going to break down your door or tell you that you cannot do that, but most people agree that the newer standards have some value. Take skiing for example, I have been skiing for ten years now on a pair of shorter modern side cut skis, but every once in a while I still see an old hold-out on his 1980s vintage Olin Mark IVs because that is the way he learned to ski and he wont switch come hell or high water, even though almost everyone concedes that shaped skis are superior, because that is the way he has always done it and it is good enough for him. I am not saying that it isn't his right to ski on whatever he wants, but at some point we have to recognize when we are just being stubborn and shooting ourselves in the foot in the process. Apologizes for the rambling tone of this post, but thanks for reading all the way through...The basic point was that we should all care about the standards because we all have a stake in the way things are going.
If gasoline and ethanol were both of equal price per gallon and my vehicle could run on either fuel then I would select the gasoline every time and so would most other people, unless they really value clean air (and even if they do they can free-ride off the ethanol purchases of other people because you cannot prevent me from enjoying the clean air that you paid more to have by buying the ethanol instead of the gasoline). The problem with ethanol and other alcohol fuels is that they have less energy density per gallon than hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline which means more gallons of ethanol to travel a given distance than gasoline assuming all other things about the trip are equal. The problem with the whole global warming debate is not whether the scientists are right or wrong, but that people have to put food on the family table and pay their mortgage today and not 50 years from now, so they will not spend more money, willingly and of their own accord, for some public good that will matter years from now but not today. If you want to solve the global warming problem than you have to make the situation palatable economically speaking or people wont take the bitter medicine required to solve the problem, the vast majority of the human race is not and never will be that altruistic.
The alcohol and drug wars are a great example of the government trying to legislate morals.
The problem with some personal moral choices is that the effects of those choices are not entirely independent from the rest of society. The smokers, alcoholics, and drug addicts in our society impose negative externalities on the rest of us in the form of increased medical costs and other financial burdens which we are then forced to pay in the form of higher taxes or deficit spending. It is not fair for some people in society to pass of the costs of their poor choices unto the rest of us and so we make certain choices illegal to prevent those people from making them without consequences.
Admin access to the machines in question is not always a requirement for rootkit installer programs because they frequently exploit weaknesses in the host operating system to either escalate their privileges or bypass the OS security system completely. It would be a poor rootkit indeed if it required root to install it...