The law isn't that concerned with rehabilitation as much as its concerned with ruining people's lives. I just posted in the story about how ISPs are removing newsgroups and claiming to fight CP. In it, I suggested that they leave the newsgroups and just send the partyvan around to collect people that access it.
The justice system would have a field day with this. All of those creepy child rapists being convicted and sentenced to their lives being ruined. A virus on your computer caused it? Oh well, better hope you have the money to hire a lawyer that can argue that for ya. Oh, and aside from the fines, you're going to need about $500-per-session to see a court-approved mental health associate. All of this after you get out of jail in ten years.
Also, what about those people that get charged with vehicular homicide after some jerk jumps on the interstate and gets plowed? They aren't rehabilitated. They're struck with grief and a year or two in jail, and a civil lawsuit from the family of the interstate pedestrian.
The police, FBI, etc..they've all said many, many times in the past..usually upon arrest of someone with a large cache of CP..that they do not get their goods from an open and obvious system like USEnet. Most of the CP trading in the world happens either via sneakernet or from knowing the 'right' people.
If they really wanted to do something about it, they'd leave the newsgroups on but send a partyvan around to everyone who even looks at the newsgroup. Imagine how much fear having a few people from your neighborhood hauled off and never seen again, on charges of being a child rapist? It'd go right up there with stories like, "The sun could explode at any time!" or "Your seven year old could be off snorting a line of drano right now!"
In short, they don't really want to fight CP. Its just a PR move designed to lower their costs AND make it look like they're 'giving back' to the community.
Well, imagine if you do something stupid on the job and get fired for it. After about two months of being in a 'training period' type of setup where you aren't getting a hell of a lot done. The Company has just lost their gamble, and it has cost them money in time and wages they had to pay you.
Now it comes back that you were one of those people that had the pictures on your MySpace page featuring your popped collar and red Dixie cup full of warm beer. The person that hired you is going to catch some shit from the higher ups about the quality of the person they are hiring. Therefore, by proxy, your drinking and socializing habits have endangered the career of another person.
You can bet your ass that they won't be overlooking that in the future. And believe me..it happens a lot. I have had friends that are in HR or hiring departments. Checking out of the Facebook page is standard practice. If you even hint at drugs in your Facebook page, or have a drug-related charge on your record, you'd be fortunate to make it to the point of actually taking the drug test.
Don't blame the Company. Blame the economy. Right now you have your pick of five employees. One of them smokes pot, two of them drink, and three of them are hardcore . You single out the Muslim because he smells funny, the frat guy gets the boot too, the guy that wore the band shirt and Martin's is shown the door, and finally you hire the clean cut guy with no visible tattoos or annoyances.
Fill your office with these people and you're going to move up in the HR world!
That's fine with me as long as I get a raise to help cover the increase. Oh wait..I'm more likely to get laid off than get a cost-of-living raise. The last cost-of-living raise I got was less than $.10/hour when gas prices tripled in three months.
That's what I want to do. Pay a fine because I shared my own file, or prove to some minimum-wage clerk of the court that the file was created by me and freely shared by me.
Won't know for a few weeks. Imagine how much danger you could be in if you visited places like 4chan or anime boards, where people have a tendency to flood with links to strange Russian or Chinese sites containing CP. I don't think this would stand up in court. After all, it doesn't matter if your computer is the one addicted to CP, the owner is responsible..
Teenager gets parents to buy them a cellphone, just for emergencies.
Their BFF Jill can't talk about (insert sensitive subject) because she's in a car with her parents. So she texts.
Teenager, not wanting to be left out or seem lame, text back. Just one or two, right? They won't notice.
Then the bill comes and is over $300, $280 which is for text messaging. Parents have to pay, cell company gets richer off of human nature. Teenager gets told they have to get a job while parents grumble and sign up for the unlimited text messaging..because after all, who can say no to their children? Boom..another $15-20 a month in guaranteed revenue for phone company.
Data plans are the same way. I fucked up and open google maps on my phone when I went to FL with no data plan. The charge was over $500, but Sprint was nice enough to wave it for me when I feigned ignorance of their $FirstBorn-per-kilobyte data rates..I did sign up for the unlimited plan, though.
Actually what probably happened was that whoever found (more like, bought with a database) the number/pass/etc of yours has either set up the site themselves or were working for people that did..and that site was just a front for these operations. The bank had that list in the database and knew to mark all transactions from this site for review.
For example, I was in the market for a digital camera around Christmas. I saw a site that was listed as hundreds below retail for the camera..everything on the site looked legit except for the price. So I googled it. Turns out they wouldn't ship you a camera unless you spent over $1,000 on their site on 'extras' for the camera which always turned out to be el cheapo fakes.
Also in the stories, I found, that the company would then give your information away and it would start being charged in random places in the country or even the world..so there were later stories about how someone just bought something and immediately received a call from their bank asking if they had purchased something from the site willingly.
I can't remember the name of the site, but they were selling the XTi plus lens, MP4 player, memory card, etc, for $350. The retail price of the XTi at the time was around $800 for body and lens...
The problem is this. Sometime way back when, the cost of visiting the doctor wasn't so high. Most doctors would work with the patients, and wouldn't demand a second mortgage to pay for your broken arm.
Sometime between now and then, the AMA came in and decided that all doctors should be licensed, and that they must take years and years of medical school to be licensed..reasonable, no?
After the now-graduated student spends 100k on school, they expect to be rewarded for their years of study, responsibility, etc. Again, reasonable.
A few years later, they encounter Patient X that has an incurable brain tumor. However, he came in complaining of headaches. After a long review, the doctor determines the reason to be stress. Take a few days off, the doctor says. A week later, Patient X dies. His family sues, and the doctor is indebted for the rest of his life, all because of a foolish jury.
This is where insurance came in to play. In order to practice, you have to have insurance. And this insurance is EXPENSIVE because the payouts will no doubt be expensive if the doctor messes up. Sometimes reasonable.
So what will it be? Are YOU willing to pay $5,000 because your body decided to create a kidney stone? Or do you want to hope that it was big enough to pass? With insurance you'll have to pay about $100 or so, which will be much more affordable than coughing up $5,000 sometime in the next few months.
If people want to do it, they're going to do it. Doesn't matter if its illegal or legal, its always been that way. If they think they won't get caught, the penalties are of no consequence to them, for they think that they're pulling off the perfect crime. This is what gets many criminals caught, but by the same token, it ensures that there will always be people committing a certain crime.
I don't think this move was to avoid CP or other illegal material. That's their PR spin; the real reason is to save money. If they were serious about blocking CP, they'd block P2P, email, and IRC access as well. They'd probably eventually end up white-listing sites when it turns out that there are probably thousands of CP-or-questionable sites.
Someday it would reach a point to where non-CP sites would be blocked under the guise of CP..after all..how can you verify that the site contains CP if its blocked? And why would you want to, knowing that just clicking the wrong link these days can get you 20 years in federal?
Personally, I don't care if my system is superior to the 360. If I were losing sleep over if I got the best console or not, I'd have more problems to worried about (like if the increase-your-penis-size company I sent $500 in unmarked bills to is legit..since that'd be something else I'd worry about if I were that materialistic)
I have the resources to purchase and maintain them both, if I wanted. At no point did I ask myself, "Which system is better?" Because I knew the differences weren't great enough to say, lock out a bunch of exclusives (like MGS4, and FF13, or Halo 3 and the Forza series). The main reason I'll never get a 360 is because I've seen how much Microsoft cares about supporting their customers. At least two of my friends received replacement 360 systems that were pre-banned from Live, and Microsoft refused to do anything about it. Not to mention the hardware problems.
But guess what? If it weren't for all that, I would own both systems. Then I'd REALLY sleep well at night.
Until they can emulate the quantum/holographic methods the brain employs. Keep in mind, there are some worlds-in-worlds within the physical components. Just like how metal siding can form a complete circuit around the house, the nerves of the brain form multiple networks (chemical, electrical, interference patterns, etc)
The reason GTA4 runs at a lower resolution on the PS3 is because they can do all kinds of nifty effects with the card that aren't all geometry, textures, and shading. They can do a slight motion blur, for example, and have almost everything 100% bump-mapped. In reality, you don't notice that the resolution is slightly lower.
The PS3 COULD run it in 360-resolution, but it might have to sacrifice some of those filters and special effects. I'd rather have a special effect laden game run at slightly lower resolution myself, as long as its hard to notice.
The military is more progressive because there's not a whole lot they can do to advance things.
They can hope for random breakthroughs, mostly based on chance/luck/etc..
Or they can follow the natural progression of things. If you want to make things explode you have to know the nature of the explosion. And to know the nature of explosions you have to know all about high-energy physics at a molecular level. And to know about high-energy physics you have to know about how molecules and atoms interact. Now, with all of these things you can either make them yourself and study the real explosion, or you can simulate it and confirm with real-world results..which is what they're doing.
They have the resources AND the desire to do so, and therefore, they are doing so. Private industries will rarely do things like this on their own. They're much more likely to wait for someone else to do the research, or research with grants and then patent the results for their own profit. Its the same reason NASA has spurred many developments and improvements in the rest of the civilian world.
This setup will make it easier to study weather, physics, etc, etc. On the other hand, it'll also make it easier to figure out how to make bigger sticks that are lighter and sharper.
However, instead of 'cyberbullying omg' I think that harassment laws should be revised to cover the Internet-era.
Killing someone on a PvP server is not harassment. You came to the server willingly, and it is beyond reasonable that you expect that you will kill and be killed.
Receiving messages on social networking sites, even lewd ones (assuming you're of legal age) is not harassment. You came there willingly, and it is beyond reasonable that you expect that you will receive messages..and its common sense that some people are perverts and have no shame.
Its difficult to come up with harassment laws because there are so many ways to harass people. Is it harassment for that girl on the personals site to say that she's 120lbs and has no kids when she turns out to be 200lbs, married, and has three kids? What about if that hottie turned out to be your ex-girlfriend, there to get you out into public so she could try and guilt trip/threaten/be an annoying bitch? What if you went to see the hottie and decided to make new screenies to lure her out into public, and to just generally be a creepy bastard towards because she rejected you?
The list goes on and on. I'd like to say that it needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis but that opens up the whole interpretation can of worms. Is it harassment because you're the rich snobish girl that had a practical joke pulled on her and some people laughed at for a few minutes? You bet your ass it is, because her daddy and mommy can afford an expensive lawyer to convince the judge that it is, and send some tasteless teenagers to jail for a few years.
I have never seen one on any store shelves since release.
Seven months after release my friend wanted one..so we found out when the local Kmart (least busy department store in the area) would get their shipment. We show up before they open and wait at the door. Yes, they received their shipment before they opened. And yes, they were sold out. All ten units were purchased by three employees. You can guess where these ended up.
Everything is elastic. When people can no longer afford gas, they won't be buying it.
They'll be stealing it.
They'll be getting fired for not being able to make it to work anymore. They'll be living off of welfare/food stamps because they can't afford to move closer to the jobs.
The demand is going to go down from all of these people not being able to afford it. But the price drop will not be immediate. By the time the price starts to drop, output and refinery capacity will be reduced to compensate for the decreased demand. Speculators will still be playing the "..it could rise sharply at any time!" game.
Speculators hope that the price rises like they've been betting on so that they'll make more money.
Speculators fail to realize that if they trigger an economic depression that their money won't be worth a whole lot anymore. Inflation will more than make up for any gains they have made off of the market.
You can still use your laptop. The movie might be in 5.1 but most likely its going to come out as 2.1 or 2 from your laptop.
Also, if you're going to do that, just get something like a PS3 and stream the movie from a wireless-capable PC or fileserver type of setup..that way you can have your 5.1 cake, your laptop, and don't have to deal with cords.
Technically, they do already. If my job will pay me say $15 for an hour of my time, then my time is worth at least 1.5x that in my eyes..there's always ambition, room for negotiation, etc.
If they want to charge me for commercials, let them. I'll send them a contract after a few months demanding back-pay for my services (viewing of their advertisements) and demanding future pay as well. And I promise, that my time is more expensive than theirs.
Now, if I were able to get that contract pushed through without it being signed or authorized by them, then it would be more like what they do to us. The days of 'this contract can be changed anytime, with or without your notification, and changes will be posted 30 days before they go into effect' need to end. Everytime they change the contract, they should have to get new authorizations. And people should be able to modify it and submit it back for their approval.
Oh wait, we can't do that. Because they all have us by the balls.
Its safe to assume that all communications across a corporate network is monitored. So before you go asking that new secretary what kind of panties she has on, and if she can prove it, you might want to switch to a more secure method..AKA SMS or sneakernet.
I wouldn't say anything on corporate IM that I had a problem with my boss reading. I know most IT people don't sit around reading people's IMs for the hell of it, but if you assume they do, you just might stay out of trouble.
As far as extra limbs go, we're only set up in hardware to be able to control two of something. Left brain controls right arm, right brain controls left arm. There's no doubt in my mind that the brain has the capability and plasticity to learn to control a new limb, bit it could very well cost you dexterity or strength in one of your existing arms.
Upgrading existing limbs would be a whole lot easier on the brain and body than adding new ones. Imagine a 360 degree wrist, for example. Or typing fingers a la Ghost in the Shell. It could happen someday..if someone can pay for it.
Slashdot Mirror
The law isn't that concerned with rehabilitation as much as its concerned with ruining people's lives. I just posted in the story about how ISPs are removing newsgroups and claiming to fight CP. In it, I suggested that they leave the newsgroups and just send the partyvan around to collect people that access it.
The justice system would have a field day with this. All of those creepy child rapists being convicted and sentenced to their lives being ruined. A virus on your computer caused it? Oh well, better hope you have the money to hire a lawyer that can argue that for ya. Oh, and aside from the fines, you're going to need about $500-per-session to see a court-approved mental health associate. All of this after you get out of jail in ten years.
Also, what about those people that get charged with vehicular homicide after some jerk jumps on the interstate and gets plowed? They aren't rehabilitated. They're struck with grief and a year or two in jail, and a civil lawsuit from the family of the interstate pedestrian.
All this does is keep honest people honest.
The police, FBI, etc..they've all said many, many times in the past..usually upon arrest of someone with a large cache of CP..that they do not get their goods from an open and obvious system like USEnet. Most of the CP trading in the world happens either via sneakernet or from knowing the 'right' people.
If they really wanted to do something about it, they'd leave the newsgroups on but send a partyvan around to everyone who even looks at the newsgroup. Imagine how much fear having a few people from your neighborhood hauled off and never seen again, on charges of being a child rapist? It'd go right up there with stories like, "The sun could explode at any time!" or "Your seven year old could be off snorting a line of drano right now!"
In short, they don't really want to fight CP. Its just a PR move designed to lower their costs AND make it look like they're 'giving back' to the community.
Well, imagine if you do something stupid on the job and get fired for it. After about two months of being in a 'training period' type of setup where you aren't getting a hell of a lot done. The Company has just lost their gamble, and it has cost them money in time and wages they had to pay you.
Now it comes back that you were one of those people that had the pictures on your MySpace page featuring your popped collar and red Dixie cup full of warm beer. The person that hired you is going to catch some shit from the higher ups about the quality of the person they are hiring. Therefore, by proxy, your drinking and socializing habits have endangered the career of another person.
You can bet your ass that they won't be overlooking that in the future. And believe me..it happens a lot. I have had friends that are in HR or hiring departments. Checking out of the Facebook page is standard practice. If you even hint at drugs in your Facebook page, or have a drug-related charge on your record, you'd be fortunate to make it to the point of actually taking the drug test.
Don't blame the Company. Blame the economy. Right now you have your pick of five employees. One of them smokes pot, two of them drink, and three of them are hardcore . You single out the Muslim because he smells funny, the frat guy gets the boot too, the guy that wore the band shirt and Martin's is shown the door, and finally you hire the clean cut guy with no visible tattoos or annoyances.
Fill your office with these people and you're going to move up in the HR world!
Just like locks on your front door and bars on your windows. Its not to keep criminals out, but its to keep honest people honest.
That's fine with me as long as I get a raise to help cover the increase. Oh wait..I'm more likely to get laid off than get a cost-of-living raise. The last cost-of-living raise I got was less than $.10/hour when gas prices tripled in three months.
Can't the FCC dictate how its advertised, then?
Filtering a network based on packets, content, etc, or cutting people off because they use to much..that doesn't sound very unlimited to me.
That's what I want to do. Pay a fine because I shared my own file, or prove to some minimum-wage clerk of the court that the file was created by me and freely shared by me.
Won't know for a few weeks. Imagine how much danger you could be in if you visited places like 4chan or anime boards, where people have a tendency to flood with links to strange Russian or Chinese sites containing CP. I don't think this would stand up in court. After all, it doesn't matter if your computer is the one addicted to CP, the owner is responsible..
Perhaps they should have purchased insurance? .
After all, the workers know not to steal the ones with the insurance stickers.
Actually, the reason is this.
Teenager gets parents to buy them a cellphone, just for emergencies.
Their BFF Jill can't talk about (insert sensitive subject) because she's in a car with her parents. So she texts.
Teenager, not wanting to be left out or seem lame, text back. Just one or two, right? They won't notice.
Then the bill comes and is over $300, $280 which is for text messaging. Parents have to pay, cell company gets richer off of human nature. Teenager gets told they have to get a job while parents grumble and sign up for the unlimited text messaging..because after all, who can say no to their children? Boom..another $15-20 a month in guaranteed revenue for phone company.
Data plans are the same way. I fucked up and open google maps on my phone when I went to FL with no data plan. The charge was over $500, but Sprint was nice enough to wave it for me when I feigned ignorance of their $FirstBorn-per-kilobyte data rates..I did sign up for the unlimited plan, though.
Actually what probably happened was that whoever found (more like, bought with a database) the number/pass/etc of yours has either set up the site themselves or were working for people that did..and that site was just a front for these operations. The bank had that list in the database and knew to mark all transactions from this site for review.
For example, I was in the market for a digital camera around Christmas. I saw a site that was listed as hundreds below retail for the camera..everything on the site looked legit except for the price. So I googled it. Turns out they wouldn't ship you a camera unless you spent over $1,000 on their site on 'extras' for the camera which always turned out to be el cheapo fakes.
Also in the stories, I found, that the company would then give your information away and it would start being charged in random places in the country or even the world..so there were later stories about how someone just bought something and immediately received a call from their bank asking if they had purchased something from the site willingly.
I can't remember the name of the site, but they were selling the XTi plus lens, MP4 player, memory card, etc, for $350. The retail price of the XTi at the time was around $800 for body and lens...
The problem is this. Sometime way back when, the cost of visiting the doctor wasn't so high. Most doctors would work with the patients, and wouldn't demand a second mortgage to pay for your broken arm.
Sometime between now and then, the AMA came in and decided that all doctors should be licensed, and that they must take years and years of medical school to be licensed..reasonable, no?
After the now-graduated student spends 100k on school, they expect to be rewarded for their years of study, responsibility, etc. Again, reasonable.
A few years later, they encounter Patient X that has an incurable brain tumor. However, he came in complaining of headaches. After a long review, the doctor determines the reason to be stress. Take a few days off, the doctor says. A week later, Patient X dies. His family sues, and the doctor is indebted for the rest of his life, all because of a foolish jury.
This is where insurance came in to play. In order to practice, you have to have insurance. And this insurance is EXPENSIVE because the payouts will no doubt be expensive if the doctor messes up. Sometimes reasonable.
So what will it be? Are YOU willing to pay $5,000 because your body decided to create a kidney stone? Or do you want to hope that it was big enough to pass? With insurance you'll have to pay about $100 or so, which will be much more affordable than coughing up $5,000 sometime in the next few months.
If people want to do it, they're going to do it. Doesn't matter if its illegal or legal, its always been that way. If they think they won't get caught, the penalties are of no consequence to them, for they think that they're pulling off the perfect crime. This is what gets many criminals caught, but by the same token, it ensures that there will always be people committing a certain crime.
I don't think this move was to avoid CP or other illegal material. That's their PR spin; the real reason is to save money. If they were serious about blocking CP, they'd block P2P, email, and IRC access as well. They'd probably eventually end up white-listing sites when it turns out that there are probably thousands of CP-or-questionable sites.
Someday it would reach a point to where non-CP sites would be blocked under the guise of CP..after all..how can you verify that the site contains CP if its blocked? And why would you want to, knowing that just clicking the wrong link these days can get you 20 years in federal?
Personally, I don't care if my system is superior to the 360. If I were losing sleep over if I got the best console or not, I'd have more problems to worried about (like if the increase-your-penis-size company I sent $500 in unmarked bills to is legit..since that'd be something else I'd worry about if I were that materialistic)
I have the resources to purchase and maintain them both, if I wanted. At no point did I ask myself, "Which system is better?" Because I knew the differences weren't great enough to say, lock out a bunch of exclusives (like MGS4, and FF13, or Halo 3 and the Forza series). The main reason I'll never get a 360 is because I've seen how much Microsoft cares about supporting their customers. At least two of my friends received replacement 360 systems that were pre-banned from Live, and Microsoft refused to do anything about it. Not to mention the hardware problems.
But guess what? If it weren't for all that, I would own both systems. Then I'd REALLY sleep well at night.
How long, you ask?
Until they can emulate the quantum/holographic methods the brain employs. Keep in mind, there are some worlds-in-worlds within the physical components. Just like how metal siding can form a complete circuit around the house, the nerves of the brain form multiple networks (chemical, electrical, interference patterns, etc)
The reason GTA4 runs at a lower resolution on the PS3 is because they can do all kinds of nifty effects with the card that aren't all geometry, textures, and shading. They can do a slight motion blur, for example, and have almost everything 100% bump-mapped. In reality, you don't notice that the resolution is slightly lower.
The PS3 COULD run it in 360-resolution, but it might have to sacrifice some of those filters and special effects. I'd rather have a special effect laden game run at slightly lower resolution myself, as long as its hard to notice.
The military is more progressive because there's not a whole lot they can do to advance things.
They can hope for random breakthroughs, mostly based on chance/luck/etc..
Or they can follow the natural progression of things. If you want to make things explode you have to know the nature of the explosion. And to know the nature of explosions you have to know all about high-energy physics at a molecular level. And to know about high-energy physics you have to know about how molecules and atoms interact. Now, with all of these things you can either make them yourself and study the real explosion, or you can simulate it and confirm with real-world results..which is what they're doing.
They have the resources AND the desire to do so, and therefore, they are doing so. Private industries will rarely do things like this on their own. They're much more likely to wait for someone else to do the research, or research with grants and then patent the results for their own profit. Its the same reason NASA has spurred many developments and improvements in the rest of the civilian world.
This setup will make it easier to study weather, physics, etc, etc. On the other hand, it'll also make it easier to figure out how to make bigger sticks that are lighter and sharper.
Who didn't see this coming from Cell?
Personally, I support the idea.
However, instead of 'cyberbullying omg' I think that harassment laws should be revised to cover the Internet-era.
Killing someone on a PvP server is not harassment. You came to the server willingly, and it is beyond reasonable that you expect that you will kill and be killed.
Receiving messages on social networking sites, even lewd ones (assuming you're of legal age) is not harassment. You came there willingly, and it is beyond reasonable that you expect that you will receive messages..and its common sense that some people are perverts and have no shame.
Its difficult to come up with harassment laws because there are so many ways to harass people. Is it harassment for that girl on the personals site to say that she's 120lbs and has no kids when she turns out to be 200lbs, married, and has three kids? What about if that hottie turned out to be your ex-girlfriend, there to get you out into public so she could try and guilt trip/threaten/be an annoying bitch? What if you went to see the hottie and decided to make new screenies to lure her out into public, and to just generally be a creepy bastard towards because she rejected you?
The list goes on and on. I'd like to say that it needs to be handled on a case-by-case basis but that opens up the whole interpretation can of worms. Is it harassment because you're the rich snobish girl that had a practical joke pulled on her and some people laughed at for a few minutes? You bet your ass it is, because her daddy and mommy can afford an expensive lawyer to convince the judge that it is, and send some tasteless teenagers to jail for a few years.
The Wii is a fucking joke.
I have never seen one on any store shelves since release.
Seven months after release my friend wanted one..so we found out when the local Kmart (least busy department store in the area) would get their shipment. We show up before they open and wait at the door. Yes, they received their shipment before they opened. And yes, they were sold out. All ten units were purchased by three employees. You can guess where these ended up.
Everything is elastic. When people can no longer afford gas, they won't be buying it.
They'll be stealing it.
They'll be getting fired for not being able to make it to work anymore. They'll be living off of welfare/food stamps because they can't afford to move closer to the jobs.
The demand is going to go down from all of these people not being able to afford it. But the price drop will not be immediate. By the time the price starts to drop, output and refinery capacity will be reduced to compensate for the decreased demand. Speculators will still be playing the "..it could rise sharply at any time!" game.
Speculators hope that the price rises like they've been betting on so that they'll make more money.
Speculators fail to realize that if they trigger an economic depression that their money won't be worth a whole lot anymore. Inflation will more than make up for any gains they have made off of the market.
In the end? Everyone loses.
You can still use your laptop. The movie might be in 5.1 but most likely its going to come out as 2.1 or 2 from your laptop.
Also, if you're going to do that, just get something like a PS3 and stream the movie from a wireless-capable PC or fileserver type of setup..that way you can have your 5.1 cake, your laptop, and don't have to deal with cords.
Technically, they do already. If my job will pay me say $15 for an hour of my time, then my time is worth at least 1.5x that in my eyes..there's always ambition, room for negotiation, etc.
If they want to charge me for commercials, let them. I'll send them a contract after a few months demanding back-pay for my services (viewing of their advertisements) and demanding future pay as well. And I promise, that my time is more expensive than theirs.
Now, if I were able to get that contract pushed through without it being signed or authorized by them, then it would be more like what they do to us. The days of 'this contract can be changed anytime, with or without your notification, and changes will be posted 30 days before they go into effect' need to end. Everytime they change the contract, they should have to get new authorizations. And people should be able to modify it and submit it back for their approval.
Oh wait, we can't do that. Because they all have us by the balls.
Its safe to assume that all communications across a corporate network is monitored. So before you go asking that new secretary what kind of panties she has on, and if she can prove it, you might want to switch to a more secure method..AKA SMS or sneakernet.
I wouldn't say anything on corporate IM that I had a problem with my boss reading. I know most IT people don't sit around reading people's IMs for the hell of it, but if you assume they do, you just might stay out of trouble.
As far as extra limbs go, we're only set up in hardware to be able to control two of something. Left brain controls right arm, right brain controls left arm. There's no doubt in my mind that the brain has the capability and plasticity to learn to control a new limb, bit it could very well cost you dexterity or strength in one of your existing arms.
Upgrading existing limbs would be a whole lot easier on the brain and body than adding new ones. Imagine a 360 degree wrist, for example. Or typing fingers a la Ghost in the Shell. It could happen someday..if someone can pay for it.