It might be possible to use Google to build a coincidental case that a certain handle belongs to a particular individual, but just as an IP address is not absolute proof of identity (i.e. the person getting the bill from the ISP is not necessarily the only one using the account) neither is a handle absolute proof that a particular individual was behind the posts. There will always be a certain amount of plausible deniability with these sorts of things provided that user(s) of the handle do not out their real names in public (and even then they could be faking them). It is very easy to say CodeBuster is not me or CodeBuster who, and very difficult to explain to Joe Sixpack that CodeBuster is linked to me via various data mining results and complex formulas. Remember that Joe Sixpack failed high school algebra and loses interest very quickly whenever a conversation becomes technical or complex (just ask the advertisers and marketers if you don't believe that).
IMHO, the biggest problems with any computer deployment in our K-12 classrooms are always support and training. If a school district adopts Linux and open source then who is going to be the admin in charge of updates, patches, server, network, and desktop maintenance, etc? Competent Linux admins are harder to find than people with at least basic knowledge of Mac and Windows and are likely to cost more too. So unless someone within the district, who will not be any worse off for saying no, wants to step up and take on the task of learning to be a Linux admin who is going to manage the whole affair? Also, how many teachers know how to use Linux or are willing to invest the time required to learn? After all, they cannot teach their students that which they themselves do not know. These are not insubstantial difficulties.
but apparently not a technologist. The whole point of encryption is to protect data, even after it is no longer under your control. They can image an encrypted file all they want, but that will be of no help without the key(s). A laptop can be hard shutdown in seconds and most people don't keep encrypted stores open for any longer than is necessary anyway and particularly not when they know that they are going to pass through a checkpoint.
IANAL, but can't they technically keep you in detention indefinitely on an obstruction charge (i.e. you get to sit in jail until you relent, however long that takes) since it effectively stalls or postpones an open case?
Which is many encryption products implement plausible deniability (the "hidden" operating system feature in TrueCrypt, for example). Re-enable your 5th amendment rights by "unlocking" the public operating system for all to see while remaining silent about any hidden partition. In such a setup the "hidden" operating system should only be accessed for the necessary operations; all other business should be conducted on the public operating system in order to preserve plausibility (i.e. having a public operating system that is clean and never used might lead to further questions because that is less plausible, particularly if the laptop has obviously been used with worn keys and other physical evidence). The use of our knowledge and wits is the last defense that we have against those who seek to overpower our individual freedoms.
forcing him to produce what is on the laptop does not constitute compelling him to testify against himself.
The ruling is still troubling for the following reason: Suppose that the defendant had not cooperated with the agents in any way, only answering questions that are minimally necessary and required by law (i.e. his name). If the government agents then say that he has "document x" on "his laptop", but he says nothing and does not assist them in any way then could they later say that forcing him to produce "document x" which they claim is on the encrypted laptop (whether it is or not) abrogates the fifth amendment right to refuse to give up the key? If the answer to that is yes, then the 5th amendment is meaningless in these situations since the government agents could make whatever claims they like about your laptop and force the burden upon you to disprove them by giving up the keys and submitting to a search or else face the consequences.
with the intention of eliminating reading errors that occur as a result of being authored with traditional red laser technology
That would be ironic considering that abuse of published CD and DVD standards to create reading errors (i.e. "bad" sectors) on purpose is common practice in the content industry as a misguided form of copy protection; Disney being amongst the worst offenders.
The wiki article has a few links, might be a good place to get started. I would be shocked if there were no third party refill cartridge sellers on Amazon. Good luck.
I agree that Mexico has much bigger problems than software piracy. In fact, from reports that I have heard the Mexican army is losing the fight against the drug cartels who are just as well armed as the soldiers, albeit without close air support and tanks. It has even been said that a cartel boss could end up being the next president (It is likely that they will finance a candidate and run a campaign if the government continues the crackdown and they have the money to do it). What a tremendous waste of lives, money, and resources the "war on drugs" is; it is too bad that more policy makers haven't seen the film Traffic or haven't taken its message to heart.
So when you have run out of toner it makes just as much economical (and/or service) sense to trash the whole printer and buy a new one
Or you could purchase a third party refill cartridge instead. So what if using the third party refill voids the warranty? The printer is so cheap compared to the "official" toner that you were willing to junk it anyway. Unless you are using high end printers, get the refill cartridges, they are much cheaper.
I have heard Richard Stallman talk about the "Kindle Swindle", but this is really quite ridiculous. If I checked out a book from the library and then hired someone to read that book to me out loud then would I be infringing the copyright of the original author? If the reading took place in a public place then maybe, but what if the reading took place on private property and admission wasn't charged? For example, suppose that a book of poetry was read out loud by an actor hired for the purpose at a private party? Consider also that the TTS, as advertised by Amazon, shows the use of headphones so that the text is always read back privately to the owner of the Kindle and not over externally audible speakers or at least not through speakers built into the Kindle. IMHO, there is no infringement of copyright for using TTS to render text in audio and particularly so when the recitation is privately and quietely enjoyed. The Kindle may be a swindle, but with extra payments for audio playback it would be even worse.
Seriously...what ever happened to requiring basic computer skills to get an office job?
Very few of them ever approached technical knowledge in general and knowledge of computers in particular with any of the formalism or rigor required for competence or mastery during their formative years. Those few of us who did, mostly the geeks who now inhabit sites like Slashdot, used that knowledge to pursue a career in IT, software development, or hard science. The rest of the people learned enough to barely get by and called upon one of us whenever they got in over their heads (which is all to often if the market for computer support services is anything to go by). The generation which has "grown up digital" is only now beginning to enter the worst job market in decades after completing their undergraduate degrees and with few really marketable technical skills other than the ability to butcher the english language at rapid fire speed in SMS.
As for what happened to basic computer skills courses, the high schools in this country have enough trouble turning out students who can read, write, and perform algebra at basic levels, never mind anything else. Many four year universities spend several months just bringing freshman students up to speed on subjects which they should have learned in high school. For a preview of coming attractions, check out Idiocracy
It is partly the Microsoft strategy of flooding the market with millions of part-time and unprofessional "developers" that is responsible for the generally low quality of many third party apps and even drivers on the Windows platform. Ironically, this is also a source of great consternation for Microsoft because people blame them when third party apps or drivers bring Windows crashing down or gum up the works with inefficient and resource hogging code. IMHO, Microsoft and the Windows platform would be much better served by promoting best practices and good software design from the start, even if it means less "developers" are unleashed upon the unsuspecting public, instead of hyping the "make an app with no code in 5 minutes with Visual Studio" and then hoping that those few who make it beyond the novice stage eventually become interested enough in the "right way" to do things to dive into MSDN and the Patterns and Practices materials. One is reminded of that ad for "The Ladders" where a large number of ordinary people jump onto a tennis court during a professional match, hitting tennis balls with brief cases and their bare hands, while the two professional players survey the scene with bemused looks on their faces.
On October 14, 1964, after being deposed by his rivals at a Central Committee meeting, primarily for being an "international embarassment," Nikita Khrushchev, who until only moments earlier was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, sat down in his office and wrote two letters. Later, his successor, Leonid Brezhnev, upon taking office found the two letters and a note Khrushchev had attached:
"To my successor: When you find yourself in a hopeless situation which you cannot escape, open the first letter, and it will save you. Later, when you again find yourself in a hopeless situation from which you cannot escape, open the second letter."
And soon enough, Brezhnev found himself in a situation which he couldn't get himself out of, and in desperation he tore open the first letter. It said simply, "Blame it all on me." This Brezhnev did, blaming Khrushchev for the latest problems, and it worked like a miracle, saving him and extending his career. However, in due time Brezhnev found himself in another disaster from which he could not extricate himself. Without despairing he eagerly searched his office and found the second letter, which he tore open desperate for its words of salvation. It read thus:
Using separate processes to render content on a single page causes significant latency due to process creation overhead.
It reminds me of the practical problems that were encountered in the Mach kernel implementations and which, despite great initial interest and subsequent effort, were never satisfactoraly resolved. In fact, many have concluded that the concept of independent kernel process cooperating via message passing, regardless of the tasks that they are attempting to perform, is inherently slower than single process monolithic designs and although object orientation allows greater flexability and abstraction it is always paid for in raw performance. In many cases, and particularly in user space application software, the price is worth paying. However, it turns out that OS kernels are probably NOT one of those cases. I would be highly skeptical that Microsoft has found a way around the performance problems that the Mach people missed when it comes to a "multi-prinicipal browser" operating system. In fact, it is more likely that this is yet another case of Microsoft leveraging monopoly power in the OS market to answer the renewed threat on the browser front and "cutt off the oxygen supply" of mozilla, opera, and other competing browsers.
Not a new idea. It has been floating around in SciFi at least since the Cyberpunk movement began in 1983 with a short stroy of the same name. The idea was more recently featured in the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series (especially in 2nd gig) with the Tachikoma AIs extensively assisting the protaganists in their hacking, network penetration, and intelligence gathering activities.
because I imagine the new Health Information Network will use a lot of open source software.
Not unless some of the present economic realities in the US health care delivery system change drastically in 2009. Technologies of various sorts have been applied with great profit by other US businesses since the very beginning of the modern computing era and yet these technologies, except as they relate directly to medical treatments, have failed to make much of an impression on the health care industry which is still drowning in paper records, shelves full of folders, and filing cabinets that would not have been out of place for most of the last century. Is it not instructive to ask why hospitals and other health care providers have NOT invested in record keeping and processing technologies to the same extent as say insurance or shipping companies? I will not profess to offer a whole answer here, but IMHO a big part of the answer lies in the heavy regulation and "everyone must be served regardless of ability to pay" laws as they apply to health care here in the United States. The "no software" problem in health care is not a technical problem, it could have been done decades ago, but rather an economic problem(s). If there is little or no profit in health care delivery and few choices for consumers then why invest in these technologies? Most private (and public) hospitals loose money every year anyway and electronic record handling would not save enough by itself to put them back in the black when many people treat the emergency room as their primary care physician and then simply refuse to pay the bill.
I just don't think that the bad intentions that your quote implies are actually there for the most part. Most of these legislators are just seeking solutions to the problems that exist in society at the command of their constituents (voters and special interests).
Perhaps, but we all know of a certain road that is paved with good intentions.
The only solution to the issue is not more laws, but fewer and clearer laws. Fewer programs and less expecting of people like Congress and the President to "create jobs" or "protect our children". The government should not become an omnipresent service organization.
Unfortunately, for the Libertarians amongst us, this solution is slipping faster and further out of sight then at any time in recent history. The socialists, reinvigorated by Obama and empowered by the financial meltdown set in motion by poor Federal Reserve policy timing (ironic given the government "solution" being pushed for the problem caused by government meddling), are once again on the march and before they are finished our freedoms are likely to become a casualty of their ill conceived reforms. It took decades for the real causes of the Great Depression to finally become fully clear in scholarly research. I suspect that it may be a long time before the true causes of the present crisis are fully known, but I have no doubt then when the final analysis is complete the government will share no small part of the blame.
Steve Jobs became the largest shareholder of Disney almost by accident when Disney bought Pixar, so in a manner of speaking he actually fell into being the largest Disney shareholder; he wasn't actively seeking to become the largest individual Disney shareholder. I am not an Apple apologist by any stretch of the definition, but neither do I believe that Steve Job's secret ambition was to control Disney. However, I do agree that his position on video DRM is inconsistent with his previous positions on music DRM and DRM in general. Steve Jobs makes a distinction between video and music, but it is my own opinion, and probably one shared by most Slashdotters, that DRM is always the wrong way to treat your paying customers and doesn't stop warez or large scale professional piracy anyway. At best DRM frustrates some casual copying which goes back to the first point of the wrong way to treat paying customers.
But usually whoever puts satellites up there is too cheap to worry about disposal
Not only that, but if you use that last bit of fuel for station keeping instead of de-orbiting then a satellite will have a few more months of useful life (which means more satellite TV and phone subscription payments) before you have to send up another one. The Space Junk problem is a classic case of the Tragedy of the Commons and Externalized Costson a grand scale.
Microsoft is a big enough target that it doesn't want to get sued over copyright violations.
I don't think that is really the main the reason. If Microsoft wants to defend a charge of vicarious (i.e. they assisted others) infringement then they need only point to Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984) aka "the Betamax case" and make the Res Ipsa Loquitur (the matter speaks for itself) case that the Windows OS has "substantial non-infringing uses".
That was why Vista and Windows 7 have all that DRM crap.
I think that the other posters on this thread are right when they say that Microsoft was trying to capture market share in the home entertainment market by offering what they believed were enticing DRM features to the entertainment industry. There was just one small problem, they forgot about their real customers, the home users, along the way and the strategy has been largely unsuccessful as a result. It probably also doesn't help that Ballmer, the present CEO of Microsoft, has views on copyright and culture that fit closely with those of the big media companies whereas Steve Jobs of Apple is more in tune with what the consumer market wants and the "spirit of the times", even going so far as to publicly call the record company execs "greedy".
Has anyone ever built a secure file sharing utility over the internet that hasn't been abused in some way? Ever?
If I had to guess, I would say that the top level Warez groups probably have the closest thing to a secure file sharing network as anyone. They are constantly under fire from the media companies and various government agencies and that kind of heat tends to burn off the impurities and leave behind a very well configured and secured server (the lesser ones having long since been busted and broken up).
One enterprising teen could make all of your dirty laundry public knowledge.
Actually, it will probably be the Russian mafia and their hacker associates; they specialize in blackmail, but it takes a certain minimum net worth to draw their attention.
Yes, thank you. Anything which provides better standards compliance and rendering than IE6 (which is just about everything newer these days) is an improvement as far as I am concerned. The sooner IE8 (or even IE7) becomes the majority browser the sooner we can all forget about the agonizing days of IE6 and its bugs which set the web and CSS back seven (7) years, wasted billions of dollars in debugging and hacking expenses, and generally made the lives of web developers miserable.
Slashdot Mirror
and not follow the hurd
Aha! Your secret prejudice against GNU Hurd is finally revealed for all to see!
It might be possible to use Google to build a coincidental case that a certain handle belongs to a particular individual, but just as an IP address is not absolute proof of identity (i.e. the person getting the bill from the ISP is not necessarily the only one using the account) neither is a handle absolute proof that a particular individual was behind the posts. There will always be a certain amount of plausible deniability with these sorts of things provided that user(s) of the handle do not out their real names in public (and even then they could be faking them). It is very easy to say CodeBuster is not me or CodeBuster who, and very difficult to explain to Joe Sixpack that CodeBuster is linked to me via various data mining results and complex formulas. Remember that Joe Sixpack failed high school algebra and loses interest very quickly whenever a conversation becomes technical or complex (just ask the advertisers and marketers if you don't believe that).
IMHO, the biggest problems with any computer deployment in our K-12 classrooms are always support and training. If a school district adopts Linux and open source then who is going to be the admin in charge of updates, patches, server, network, and desktop maintenance, etc? Competent Linux admins are harder to find than people with at least basic knowledge of Mac and Windows and are likely to cost more too. So unless someone within the district, who will not be any worse off for saying no, wants to step up and take on the task of learning to be a Linux admin who is going to manage the whole affair? Also, how many teachers know how to use Linux or are willing to invest the time required to learn? After all, they cannot teach their students that which they themselves do not know. These are not insubstantial difficulties.
IAAL
but apparently not a technologist. The whole point of encryption is to protect data, even after it is no longer under your control. They can image an encrypted file all they want, but that will be of no help without the key(s). A laptop can be hard shutdown in seconds and most people don't keep encrypted stores open for any longer than is necessary anyway and particularly not when they know that they are going to pass through a checkpoint.
IANAL, but can't they technically keep you in detention indefinitely on an obstruction charge (i.e. you get to sit in jail until you relent, however long that takes) since it effectively stalls or postpones an open case?
Which is many encryption products implement plausible deniability (the "hidden" operating system feature in TrueCrypt, for example). Re-enable your 5th amendment rights by "unlocking" the public operating system for all to see while remaining silent about any hidden partition. In such a setup the "hidden" operating system should only be accessed for the necessary operations; all other business should be conducted on the public operating system in order to preserve plausibility (i.e. having a public operating system that is clean and never used might lead to further questions because that is less plausible, particularly if the laptop has obviously been used with worn keys and other physical evidence). The use of our knowledge and wits is the last defense that we have against those who seek to overpower our individual freedoms.
forcing him to produce what is on the laptop does not constitute compelling him to testify against himself.
The ruling is still troubling for the following reason: Suppose that the defendant had not cooperated with the agents in any way, only answering questions that are minimally necessary and required by law (i.e. his name). If the government agents then say that he has "document x" on "his laptop", but he says nothing and does not assist them in any way then could they later say that forcing him to produce "document x" which they claim is on the encrypted laptop (whether it is or not) abrogates the fifth amendment right to refuse to give up the key? If the answer to that is yes, then the 5th amendment is meaningless in these situations since the government agents could make whatever claims they like about your laptop and force the burden upon you to disprove them by giving up the keys and submitting to a search or else face the consequences.
*poof* sandwich appears on his desk...now he can mod the grandparent up.
with the intention of eliminating reading errors that occur as a result of being authored with traditional red laser technology
That would be ironic considering that abuse of published CD and DVD standards to create reading errors (i.e. "bad" sectors) on purpose is common practice in the content industry as a misguided form of copy protection; Disney being amongst the worst offenders.
The wiki article has a few links, might be a good place to get started. I would be shocked if there were no third party refill cartridge sellers on Amazon. Good luck.
I agree that Mexico has much bigger problems than software piracy. In fact, from reports that I have heard the Mexican army is losing the fight against the drug cartels who are just as well armed as the soldiers, albeit without close air support and tanks. It has even been said that a cartel boss could end up being the next president (It is likely that they will finance a candidate and run a campaign if the government continues the crackdown and they have the money to do it). What a tremendous waste of lives, money, and resources the "war on drugs" is; it is too bad that more policy makers haven't seen the film Traffic or haven't taken its message to heart.
So when you have run out of toner it makes just as much economical (and/or service) sense to trash the whole printer and buy a new one
Or you could purchase a third party refill cartridge instead. So what if using the third party refill voids the warranty? The printer is so cheap compared to the "official" toner that you were willing to junk it anyway. Unless you are using high end printers, get the refill cartridges, they are much cheaper.
I have heard Richard Stallman talk about the "Kindle Swindle", but this is really quite ridiculous. If I checked out a book from the library and then hired someone to read that book to me out loud then would I be infringing the copyright of the original author? If the reading took place in a public place then maybe, but what if the reading took place on private property and admission wasn't charged? For example, suppose that a book of poetry was read out loud by an actor hired for the purpose at a private party? Consider also that the TTS, as advertised by Amazon, shows the use of headphones so that the text is always read back privately to the owner of the Kindle and not over externally audible speakers or at least not through speakers built into the Kindle. IMHO, there is no infringement of copyright for using TTS to render text in audio and particularly so when the recitation is privately and quietely enjoyed. The Kindle may be a swindle, but with extra payments for audio playback it would be even worse.
I'm hard pressed to see how irrigation might have been developed for warfare.
"An army marches on its stomach." -Napoleon Bonaparte
Seriously...what ever happened to requiring basic computer skills to get an office job?
Very few of them ever approached technical knowledge in general and knowledge of computers in particular with any of the formalism or rigor required for competence or mastery during their formative years. Those few of us who did, mostly the geeks who now inhabit sites like Slashdot, used that knowledge to pursue a career in IT, software development, or hard science. The rest of the people learned enough to barely get by and called upon one of us whenever they got in over their heads (which is all to often if the market for computer support services is anything to go by). The generation which has "grown up digital" is only now beginning to enter the worst job market in decades after completing their undergraduate degrees and with few really marketable technical skills other than the ability to butcher the english language at rapid fire speed in SMS.
As for what happened to basic computer skills courses, the high schools in this country have enough trouble turning out students who can read, write, and perform algebra at basic levels, never mind anything else. Many four year universities spend several months just bringing freshman students up to speed on subjects which they should have learned in high school. For a preview of coming attractions, check out Idiocracy
It is partly the Microsoft strategy of flooding the market with millions of part-time and unprofessional "developers" that is responsible for the generally low quality of many third party apps and even drivers on the Windows platform. Ironically, this is also a source of great consternation for Microsoft because people blame them when third party apps or drivers bring Windows crashing down or gum up the works with inefficient and resource hogging code. IMHO, Microsoft and the Windows platform would be much better served by promoting best practices and good software design from the start, even if it means less "developers" are unleashed upon the unsuspecting public, instead of hyping the "make an app with no code in 5 minutes with Visual Studio" and then hoping that those few who make it beyond the novice stage eventually become interested enough in the "right way" to do things to dive into MSDN and the Patterns and Practices materials. One is reminded of that ad for "The Ladders" where a large number of ordinary people jump onto a tennis court during a professional match, hitting tennis balls with brief cases and their bare hands, while the two professional players survey the scene with bemused looks on their faces.
The "joke" apparently has some basis in fact:
On October 14, 1964, after being deposed by his rivals at a Central Committee meeting, primarily for being an "international embarassment," Nikita Khrushchev, who until only moments earlier was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, sat down in his office and wrote two letters. Later, his successor, Leonid Brezhnev, upon taking office found the two letters and a note Khrushchev had attached:
"To my successor: When you find yourself in a hopeless situation which you cannot escape, open the first letter, and it will save you. Later, when you again find yourself in a hopeless situation from which you cannot escape, open the second letter."
And soon enough, Brezhnev found himself in a situation which he couldn't get himself out of, and in desperation he tore open the first letter. It said simply, "Blame it all on me." This Brezhnev did, blaming Khrushchev for the latest problems, and it worked like a miracle, saving him and extending his career. However, in due time Brezhnev found himself in another disaster from which he could not extricate himself. Without despairing he eagerly searched his office and found the second letter, which he tore open desperate for its words of salvation. It read thus:
"Sit down, and write two letters."
Using separate processes to render content on a single page causes significant latency due to process creation overhead.
It reminds me of the practical problems that were encountered in the Mach kernel implementations and which, despite great initial interest and subsequent effort, were never satisfactoraly resolved. In fact, many have concluded that the concept of independent kernel process cooperating via message passing, regardless of the tasks that they are attempting to perform, is inherently slower than single process monolithic designs and although object orientation allows greater flexability and abstraction it is always paid for in raw performance. In many cases, and particularly in user space application software, the price is worth paying. However, it turns out that OS kernels are probably NOT one of those cases. I would be highly skeptical that Microsoft has found a way around the performance problems that the Mach people missed when it comes to a "multi-prinicipal browser" operating system. In fact, it is more likely that this is yet another case of Microsoft leveraging monopoly power in the OS market to answer the renewed threat on the browser front and "cutt off the oxygen supply" of mozilla, opera, and other competing browsers.
Not a new idea. It has been floating around in SciFi at least since the Cyberpunk movement began in 1983 with a short stroy of the same name. The idea was more recently featured in the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series (especially in 2nd gig) with the Tachikoma AIs extensively assisting the protaganists in their hacking, network penetration, and intelligence gathering activities.
because I imagine the new Health Information Network will use a lot of open source software.
Not unless some of the present economic realities in the US health care delivery system change drastically in 2009. Technologies of various sorts have been applied with great profit by other US businesses since the very beginning of the modern computing era and yet these technologies, except as they relate directly to medical treatments, have failed to make much of an impression on the health care industry which is still drowning in paper records, shelves full of folders, and filing cabinets that would not have been out of place for most of the last century. Is it not instructive to ask why hospitals and other health care providers have NOT invested in record keeping and processing technologies to the same extent as say insurance or shipping companies? I will not profess to offer a whole answer here, but IMHO a big part of the answer lies in the heavy regulation and "everyone must be served regardless of ability to pay" laws as they apply to health care here in the United States. The "no software" problem in health care is not a technical problem, it could have been done decades ago, but rather an economic problem(s). If there is little or no profit in health care delivery and few choices for consumers then why invest in these technologies? Most private (and public) hospitals loose money every year anyway and electronic record handling would not save enough by itself to put them back in the black when many people treat the emergency room as their primary care physician and then simply refuse to pay the bill.
I just don't think that the bad intentions that your quote implies are actually there for the most part. Most of these legislators are just seeking solutions to the problems that exist in society at the command of their constituents (voters and special interests).
Perhaps, but we all know of a certain road that is paved with good intentions.
The only solution to the issue is not more laws, but fewer and clearer laws. Fewer programs and less expecting of people like Congress and the President to "create jobs" or "protect our children". The government should not become an omnipresent service organization.
Unfortunately, for the Libertarians amongst us, this solution is slipping faster and further out of sight then at any time in recent history. The socialists, reinvigorated by Obama and empowered by the financial meltdown set in motion by poor Federal Reserve policy timing (ironic given the government "solution" being pushed for the problem caused by government meddling), are once again on the march and before they are finished our freedoms are likely to become a casualty of their ill conceived reforms. It took decades for the real causes of the Great Depression to finally become fully clear in scholarly research. I suspect that it may be a long time before the true causes of the present crisis are fully known, but I have no doubt then when the final analysis is complete the government will share no small part of the blame.
Steve Jobs became the largest shareholder of Disney almost by accident when Disney bought Pixar, so in a manner of speaking he actually fell into being the largest Disney shareholder; he wasn't actively seeking to become the largest individual Disney shareholder. I am not an Apple apologist by any stretch of the definition, but neither do I believe that Steve Job's secret ambition was to control Disney. However, I do agree that his position on video DRM is inconsistent with his previous positions on music DRM and DRM in general. Steve Jobs makes a distinction between video and music, but it is my own opinion, and probably one shared by most Slashdotters, that DRM is always the wrong way to treat your paying customers and doesn't stop warez or large scale professional piracy anyway. At best DRM frustrates some casual copying which goes back to the first point of the wrong way to treat paying customers.
But usually whoever puts satellites up there is too cheap to worry about disposal
Not only that, but if you use that last bit of fuel for station keeping instead of de-orbiting then a satellite will have a few more months of useful life (which means more satellite TV and phone subscription payments) before you have to send up another one. The Space Junk problem is a classic case of the Tragedy of the Commons and Externalized Costson a grand scale.
Microsoft is a big enough target that it doesn't want to get sued over copyright violations.
I don't think that is really the main the reason. If Microsoft wants to defend a charge of vicarious (i.e. they assisted others) infringement then they need only point to Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984) aka "the Betamax case" and make the Res Ipsa Loquitur (the matter speaks for itself) case that the Windows OS has "substantial non-infringing uses".
That was why Vista and Windows 7 have all that DRM crap.
I think that the other posters on this thread are right when they say that Microsoft was trying to capture market share in the home entertainment market by offering what they believed were enticing DRM features to the entertainment industry. There was just one small problem, they forgot about their real customers, the home users, along the way and the strategy has been largely unsuccessful as a result. It probably also doesn't help that Ballmer, the present CEO of Microsoft, has views on copyright and culture that fit closely with those of the big media companies whereas Steve Jobs of Apple is more in tune with what the consumer market wants and the "spirit of the times", even going so far as to publicly call the record company execs "greedy".
Has anyone ever built a secure file sharing utility over the internet that hasn't been abused in some way? Ever?
If I had to guess, I would say that the top level Warez groups probably have the closest thing to a secure file sharing network as anyone. They are constantly under fire from the media companies and various government agencies and that kind of heat tends to burn off the impurities and leave behind a very well configured and secured server (the lesser ones having long since been busted and broken up).
One enterprising teen could make all of your dirty laundry public knowledge.
Actually, it will probably be the Russian mafia and their hacker associates; they specialize in blackmail, but it takes a certain minimum net worth to draw their attention.
Yes, thank you. Anything which provides better standards compliance and rendering than IE6 (which is just about everything newer these days) is an improvement as far as I am concerned. The sooner IE8 (or even IE7) becomes the majority browser the sooner we can all forget about the agonizing days of IE6 and its bugs which set the web and CSS back seven (7) years, wasted billions of dollars in debugging and hacking expenses, and generally made the lives of web developers miserable.