I think every major version is a service pack, except Apple charges $150 for it, and changes the API enough that you can't run new software. I wanted to run XCode on my 10.4 laptop, so I had to go buy a 10.5 upgrade, even though it didn't have any new features I actually cared about. I still think it should have been a $30 minor feature pack, not a whole OS.
I think it's the most annoying part about Apple. They definitely seem to nickel and dime you, especially by not shipping with a full-screen media player, just the crippled version of quicktime.
The German eugenics laws actually weren't too original. They were based on laws made by the "progressive" California state government, which sterilized over 20,000 people. No matter how you slice it or dice it, the Nazi's were a far-left party.
Actually, you have the issue backwards. Your selection of MS-Exchange as a messaging platform has limited the financially viable choices available to your firm to basically, Windows Mobile. Don't blame your vendor lock in on anyone other than your messaging vendor and the person who decided to buy MS-Exchange. You didn't HAVE TO do it.
Exchange != Sendmail. Which free groupware package do you recommend?
Right wing hate group, you aren't referring to the Nazi's are you? You do know that Nazi stood for Nationalsozialismus, officially National Socialism. From the 25 Points of Hitler's Nazi Party:
7. We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. If it should not be possible to feed the whole population, then aliens (non-citizens) must be expelled from the Reich.
10. The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.
11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.
17. We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.
20. In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.
21. The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young.
None of those are "right-wing" points. You'll notice that all three of the great mass-murderers in the 20th century, Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, leaned far to the left.
People have been saying for years that we're about to reach the end of the line in terms of Moore's law. So far they've all been proven wrong, and scaling continues unabated.
Unless you know something I don't, you can't make a silicon wire smaller than the width of a single atom, so there is definitely a physical limit that we aren't that far away from. I've read that practically, the limit is 4nm for silicon nanowires. That means that if we're at 45nm today (Intel's 32nm chips are slated for 2009), and we're assuming size shrinks 50% every 18 months, in less than 72 months we'll have reached the practical lower limit for silicon features. Even assuming that you can make silicon chips with wires the width of a single atom, given that the atomic radius of Silicon is 110 pm, that only gives 144 months.
In addition to that, at 3.2GHz, light in a vacuum can only travel about 9.36 centimeters per cycle. Given a dialetric constant for the Si02 used in chip manufacturing of 3.9, you can calculate the velocity of propagation of the electromagnetic waves through the Silicon as about 50.6% of C. Therefore, at 3.2 GHz, the electromagnetic waves inside the chip can only propagate about 4.7 centimeters per cycle. You also can lose a bit depending on the switching speed of the transistors, but they actually become faster the smaller they are, so the real limiter is the propagation speed.
You've probably noticed that we haven't had any really major jumps in the clock speeds of consumer processors since about 2002. Intel originally thought they'd be able to scale the Pentium 4 Netburst architecture to about 10GHz, bu they ran into a frequency ceiling at about 4GHz.
In short, unless there is a major materials breakthrough, or materials change, I would expect Moore's law to hold for the next five years or so, but not much longer after that. We're rapidly approaching the physical limits.
It may have something to do with the fact that, if you ever travel to France, you'll quickly learn what pompous assholes the French, in particular the Parisians, actually are.
This claim has been made before, but without proof of intent. An equally (or more) plausible reason is that the estimates kept going up as we got intel back from Japan about how they were preparing their *entire* population to "fight to the death". Nor was this without its own supporting evidence, try reading about what US troops encountered during the Okinawa campaign, which had a large component of native Japanese civilians. The suicidal fanaticism exhibited by the Japanese only escalated during '44-'45, rather than decrease, clearly not an indication of a people ready to surrender, and in fact it looked increasingly to the US, as evidence that perhaps an invasion of their homeland would in fact be horrifically bloody for both sides.
I'd like to expand on this a bit. There were many different ways estimates were produced. The battle of Okinawa caused 72,000 casualties in 82 days, excluding indirect deaths from wounds that occurred after the battle. The casualty rate was 407 for every 10 square miles. Assuming the casualty rate was only 5% as high on the mainland, US casualties would have numbered 297,000.
The Secretary of War estimated that 1.7-4 million American casualties, and 5-10 million Japanese fatalities would occur if there was a land invasion. This estimate took into account the expected large scale civilian involvement.
One mobilized high school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself issued an awl and told, "Even killing one American soldier will do.... You must aim for the abdomen."
The Japanese mobilized all healthy men aged 15-60, and women 17-40, and armed them with whatever was available, including longbows, muzzle-loading muskets, and bamboo spears. The battle was, at the very least, going to be hard fought. Over 28 Million Japanese had been mobilized in this way, and were considered combat capable, before the first atomic bomb dropped.
In retrospect, our estimates may have been low. In August, 1945 we estimated only 9 divisions numbering 545,000 defenders at KyÅshÅ, and largely hadn't accounted for the Citizens Fighting Corps described above.
The intelligence revelations about Japanese preparations on Kyushu emerging in mid-July transmitted powerful shock waves both in the Pacific and in Washington. On 29 July, [MacArthur's intelligence chief, Major General Charles A.] Willoughby... noted first that the April estimate allowed for the Japanese capability to deploy six divisions on Kyushu, with the potential to deploy ten. "These [six] divisions have since made their appearance, as predicted," he observed, "and the end is not in sight." If not checked, this threatened "to grow to [the] point where we attack on a ratio of one (1) to one (1) which is not the recipe for victory."
In actuality, by August 1945 the Japanese had 14 divisions and three tank brigades totaling 900,000 men, as well as 40% of the ammunition in all of Japan stationed at Kyushu. In comparison, Normandy was defended by 4 German divisions, with no civilian defense forces. The Germans also didn't know where the Allies would land. Operation Downfall would have been the largest, bloodiest campaign in history, and would have quite possibly lead to the complete and utter destruction of Japan.
On July 26, Truman and other allied leaders issued The Potsdam Declaration outlining terms of surrender for Japan. It was presented as an ultimatum and stated that without a surrender, the Allies would attack Japan, resulting in "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland" but the atomic bomb was not mentioned. On July 28, Japanese papers reported that the declaration had been rejected by the Japanese government. That afternoon, Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki declared at a press conference that the Potsdam Declaration was no more than a rehash (yakinaoshi) of the Cairo Declaration and that the government intended to ignore it (mokusatsu lit. "kill by silence").[16] The statement was taken by both Japanese and foreign papers as a clear rejection of the declaration. Emperor Hirohito, who was waiting for a Soviet reply to noncommittal Japanese peace feelers made no move to change the government position.[17] On July 31, he made clear to his advisor KÅichi Kido that the Imperial Regalia of Japan had to be defended at all costs.[18]
In early July, on his way to Potsdam, Truman had re-examined the decision to use the bomb. In the end, Truman made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. His stated intention in ordering the bombings was to bring about a quick resolution of the war by inflicting destruction and instilling fear of further destruction in sufficient strength to cause Japan to surrender.
Doesn't sound like they surrendered.
"The problem now [August 13] is whether or not, assuming the Japanese do not capitulate, to continue dropping them every time one is made and shipped out there or whether to hold them . . . and then pour them all on in a reasonably short time. Not all in one day, but over a short period. And that also takes into consideration the target that we are after. In other words, should we not concentrate on targets that will be of the greatest assistance to an invasion rather than industry, morale, psychology, and the like? Nearer the tactical use rather than other use." - General of the Army George Marshall
That memo from 4 days after the bomb fell at Nagasaki, doesn't exactly make it seem like the individual in charge of the United States army though the Japanese were about to surrender, since he was basically asking to use atomic weapons to soften up Japanese defenses for a land invasion.
On August 12, the Emperor informed the imperial family of his decision to surrender. One of his uncles, Prince Asaka, then asked whether the war would be continued if the kokutai could not be preserved. Hirohito simply replied "of course".[66] As the Allied terms seemed to leave intact the principle of the preservation of the Throne, Hirohito recorded on August 14 his capitulation announcement which was broadcast to the Japanese nation the next day despite a short rebellion by militarists opposed to the surrender.
You'll notice that the Emperor didn't intend to surrender unless the kokutai could be preserved. You'll also notice there were rebellions amongst the military elite.
Well, the first one unquestionably ended the war pretty damn quick. Granted, they could've, say, detonated it off the coast of Japan, first, to demonstrate their might *before* wiping out tens of thousands of civilians. But, hey, I'll be generous and give the US a pass on the first bomb.
But the second one? That amounted to nothing more than unjustifiable butchery.
I guess you don't recall that there were only two bombs available, and the Japanese didn't surrender till 6 days after the second bomb was dropped on them. There wasn't a bomb available for a warning shot. In addition to that, Truman let them know in no uncertain terms that if they didn't unconditionally surrender, they would face "prompt and utter destruction." They were warned again, before the second bomb was released.
we managed to commit some of the most terrible crimes against humanity via the atomic bombs
Which is nothing compared to the war crimes the Japanese themselves managed to commit. The Japanese engaged in mass killings of civilians, numbering between 3-10 million during the war. In addition, the Japanese conducted experiments not unlike those performed by Mendle under Unit 731, which was accused of both vivisection and cannibalism. They also used banned toxic gasses on the Chinese, tortured and executed prisoners, cannibalized allied prisoners, employed sex slaves and serial rape, and ran forced labor camps which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The atomic weapons used on Japan saved millions and millions of lives, and prevented even greater Japanese atrocities. Indeed, we still have purple hearts left over today from the supply ordered before the invasion of Japan, as the estimated casualties approached 1 million Americans, and nearly all the Japanese.
Single point of failure. It's easier to secure one system with everybody's eyes on it than thousands of systems, when none draws enough attention for their to be any consequences for failure.
By this logic Windows would be the most secure operating system.
Bad example. If the federal government wasn't overtaxing the populace in order to raise funds to give back to the states as highway funds for the sole purpose of subverting the United States Constitution to push federal agenda on the states, the states would be perfectly capable of building the highways themselves, without an added layer of bureaucracy. Why do you think the maximum speed limit was 55 and the drinking age is 21 across the country. It has everything to do with those "federal" highway funds.
Do you honestly believe the additional layer of bureaucracy is more efficient.
It's not about being able to recover the data, it's also about everyone's medical records being sold. If medical records can't even be protected at the state level, what makes people believe that national electronic health records will be any safer? Just wait until your laying in the hospital, but you can't be treated because access to your online health records are down.
I'm increasingly amazed by the willingness of people to bitch and moan about incompetent and inefficient bureaucrats, while at the same time, insisting on turning over more and more important societal functions to these same bureaucrats.
Hate to break it to you, but this was the way it was originally in 1913, when everyone was required to pay taxes with cash-basis accounting. In 1916, this was changed so that companies could use the accrual-based GAAP that they already use to produce their financial statements, to pay their taxes. Practically no company will use cash based accounting to produce their financial statements, as it doesn't provide an accurate picture of the companies true financial situation.
Given a choice, most companies would rather pay taxes with the accrual based statements they already have. However, you sometimes run into the situation where you have accrued income that you haven't actually received (e.g. you've completed a $1M contract, but client has 6 months to pay). In this case, it's quite possible to simply not have the cash available to cover the accrued tax expenses. In that case, you'd have to file on a cash-basis.
There is generally a reason why things are done they way they are done.
They're worse. I've never had to wait for weeks to be given the privilege to develop software on a cellphone that I own. I can't speak to the application approval process, since I've been waiting for weeks just to get my developer account approved. It's absolutely pathetic.
Doesn't have to be totally unbreakable, just unbreakable enough, like the Xbox 360. If you really want to see some serious trusted computing initiatives, modify copyright law.
More seriously, your argument hinges on the investor recouping his costs. Let's assume this, even though one can argue that it is not true (F/OSS seems to be working).
As a pretty serious contributor to FOSS (it's all I've worked on in the last three weeks), I would argue that it only works in certain cases. It's great for library or framework code, or code that will mainly be used by programmers for programming related tasks (ide's, scripting languages), but falls flat most everywhere else. There still isn't a good FOSS image editor, groupware client/server, or office suite. I still can't get a linux desktop to detect my monitors, my mouse, my graphics card, and my network card, all in one go.
If copyright is just to recoup costs, given the 3-6 year cycle of theater -> DVD -> TV, where the majority of income is made, why do we need copyrights longer than a decade? But then you did not argue that. You argued that without any copyright (and DRM) the costs could not be recouped. So, I'll try again.
What about things that aren't movies. If an author writes a book when he's young, then writes another and becomes famous for the second one, but then everyone realizes his earlier work was the true masterpiece, are you OK with the megacorporation publishing companies exploiting him to reap massive profits for little work? The reason FOSS library and framework code works so well is that you can make the calculation that by contributing code, others can expand, improve and maintain your code. Your sacrificing the competitive advantage the proprietary code gives you, for the long term advantage of a library with more features than you could realistically create yourself.
Given that there are so few media producers and distributors, it seems that contractual agreements against copying (similar to how NDAs work) could possibly be a solution as well. Theaters not abiding to the contracts can get blacklisted and sued. Technology already exists to determine which theaters copy illegally.
Good luck with that.
What about other methods? Imagine theaters band together and sponsor creations, which those theaters alone are able to show? Then, those theaters have an incentive to not leak the movie.
Isn't this proposed solution much more restrictive than copyright.
What about on your government tax return, you fill in movie producer numbers and the amount of money you want the government to fund that company for the following year? To get government funding, you need to register for a number, and all footage related to a given movie must be released to a public database the day that the movie goes live.
That should work as well as use tax. With brilliant ideas like this, you should definitely go into politics. After all, the government runs everything else so well, they should provide our circuses as well.
There are many inventive ways of causing movies to be made even without copyright. Free your imagination.
The ideas you had, while imaginative, were stupid, impractical, and more restrictive than copyright actually is. Join me in reality.
Slashdot Mirror
I think every major version is a service pack, except Apple charges $150 for it, and changes the API enough that you can't run new software. I wanted to run XCode on my 10.4 laptop, so I had to go buy a 10.5 upgrade, even though it didn't have any new features I actually cared about. I still think it should have been a $30 minor feature pack, not a whole OS.
I think it's the most annoying part about Apple. They definitely seem to nickel and dime you, especially by not shipping with a full-screen media player, just the crippled version of quicktime.
Outlook licenses are included with Exchange.
You also forgot the racist and eugenics part
The German eugenics laws actually weren't too original. They were based on laws made by the "progressive" California state government, which sterilized over 20,000 people. No matter how you slice it or dice it, the Nazi's were a far-left party.
killing anyone in the party who disagreed.
As all great 20th century liberals did.
Zimbra actually costs more than Exchange for the same feature set. Why pay more for less.
Actually, you have the issue backwards. Your selection of MS-Exchange as a messaging platform has limited the financially viable choices available to your firm to basically, Windows Mobile. Don't blame your vendor lock in on anyone other than your messaging vendor and the person who decided to buy MS-Exchange. You didn't HAVE TO do it.
Exchange != Sendmail. Which free groupware package do you recommend?
You're aware that the author of that "revisionist history" was Adolph Hitler?
Right wing hate group, you aren't referring to the Nazi's are you? You do know that Nazi stood for Nationalsozialismus, officially National Socialism. From the 25 Points of Hitler's Nazi Party:
7. We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. If it should not be possible to feed the whole population, then aliens (non-citizens) must be expelled from the Reich.
10. The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.
11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the immediate communalization of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.
17. We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
18. We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.
20. In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning. We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.
21. The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile labor, by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young.
None of those are "right-wing" points. You'll notice that all three of the great mass-murderers in the 20th century, Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin, leaned far to the left.
People have been saying for years that we're about to reach the end of the line in terms of Moore's law. So far they've all been proven wrong, and scaling continues unabated.
Unless you know something I don't, you can't make a silicon wire smaller than the width of a single atom, so there is definitely a physical limit that we aren't that far away from. I've read that practically, the limit is 4nm for silicon nanowires. That means that if we're at 45nm today (Intel's 32nm chips are slated for 2009), and we're assuming size shrinks 50% every 18 months, in less than 72 months we'll have reached the practical lower limit for silicon features. Even assuming that you can make silicon chips with wires the width of a single atom, given that the atomic radius of Silicon is 110 pm, that only gives 144 months.
In addition to that, at 3.2GHz, light in a vacuum can only travel about 9.36 centimeters per cycle. Given a dialetric constant for the Si02 used in chip manufacturing of 3.9, you can calculate the velocity of propagation of the electromagnetic waves through the Silicon as about 50.6% of C. Therefore, at 3.2 GHz, the electromagnetic waves inside the chip can only propagate about 4.7 centimeters per cycle. You also can lose a bit depending on the switching speed of the transistors, but they actually become faster the smaller they are, so the real limiter is the propagation speed.
You've probably noticed that we haven't had any really major jumps in the clock speeds of consumer processors since about 2002. Intel originally thought they'd be able to scale the Pentium 4 Netburst architecture to about 10GHz, bu they ran into a frequency ceiling at about 4GHz.
In short, unless there is a major materials breakthrough, or materials change, I would expect Moore's law to hold for the next five years or so, but not much longer after that. We're rapidly approaching the physical limits.
It may have something to do with the fact that, if you ever travel to France, you'll quickly learn what pompous assholes the French, in particular the Parisians, actually are.
The other 95% can feel free to do something for themselves. You don't need to rely on us.
War isn't some kind of a game. You aren't beaten until you surrender.
This claim has been made before, but without proof of intent. An equally (or more) plausible reason is that the estimates kept going up as we got intel back from Japan about how they were preparing their *entire* population to "fight to the death". Nor was this without its own supporting evidence, try reading about what US troops encountered during the Okinawa campaign, which had a large component of native Japanese civilians. The suicidal fanaticism exhibited by the Japanese only escalated during '44-'45, rather than decrease, clearly not an indication of a people ready to surrender, and in fact it looked increasingly to the US, as evidence that perhaps an invasion of their homeland would in fact be horrifically bloody for both sides.
I'd like to expand on this a bit. There were many different ways estimates were produced. The battle of Okinawa caused 72,000 casualties in 82 days, excluding indirect deaths from wounds that occurred after the battle. The casualty rate was 407 for every 10 square miles. Assuming the casualty rate was only 5% as high on the mainland, US casualties would have numbered 297,000.
The Secretary of War estimated that 1.7-4 million American casualties, and 5-10 million Japanese fatalities would occur if there was a land invasion. This estimate took into account the expected large scale civilian involvement.
One mobilized high school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself issued an awl and told, "Even killing one American soldier will do. ... You must aim for the abdomen."
The Japanese mobilized all healthy men aged 15-60, and women 17-40, and armed them with whatever was available, including longbows, muzzle-loading muskets, and bamboo spears. The battle was, at the very least, going to be hard fought. Over 28 Million Japanese had been mobilized in this way, and were considered combat capable, before the first atomic bomb dropped.
In retrospect, our estimates may have been low. In August, 1945 we estimated only 9 divisions numbering 545,000 defenders at KyÅshÅ, and largely hadn't accounted for the Citizens Fighting Corps described above.
The intelligence revelations about Japanese preparations on Kyushu emerging in mid-July transmitted powerful shock waves both in the Pacific and in Washington. On 29 July, [MacArthur's intelligence chief, Major General Charles A.] Willoughby ... noted first that the April estimate allowed for the Japanese capability to deploy six divisions on Kyushu, with the potential to deploy ten. "These [six] divisions have since made their appearance, as predicted," he observed, "and the end is not in sight." If not checked, this threatened "to grow to [the] point where we attack on a ratio of one (1) to one (1) which is not the recipe for victory."
In actuality, by August 1945 the Japanese had 14 divisions and three tank brigades totaling 900,000 men, as well as 40% of the ammunition in all of Japan stationed at Kyushu. In comparison, Normandy was defended by 4 German divisions, with no civilian defense forces. The Germans also didn't know where the Allies would land. Operation Downfall would have been the largest, bloodiest campaign in history, and would have quite possibly lead to the complete and utter destruction of Japan.
japan surrendered BEFORE the bombs were dropped
[citation needed]
From Wikipedia:
On July 26, Truman and other allied leaders issued The Potsdam Declaration outlining terms of surrender for Japan. It was presented as an ultimatum and stated that without a surrender, the Allies would attack Japan, resulting in "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland" but the atomic bomb was not mentioned. On July 28, Japanese papers reported that the declaration had been rejected by the Japanese government. That afternoon, Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki declared at a press conference that the Potsdam Declaration was no more than a rehash (yakinaoshi) of the Cairo Declaration and that the government intended to ignore it (mokusatsu lit. "kill by silence").[16] The statement was taken by both Japanese and foreign papers as a clear rejection of the declaration. Emperor Hirohito, who was waiting for a Soviet reply to noncommittal Japanese peace feelers made no move to change the government position.[17] On July 31, he made clear to his advisor KÅichi Kido that the Imperial Regalia of Japan had to be defended at all costs.[18]
In early July, on his way to Potsdam, Truman had re-examined the decision to use the bomb. In the end, Truman made the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. His stated intention in ordering the bombings was to bring about a quick resolution of the war by inflicting destruction and instilling fear of further destruction in sufficient strength to cause Japan to surrender.
Doesn't sound like they surrendered.
"The problem now [August 13] is whether or not, assuming the Japanese do not capitulate, to continue dropping them every time one is made and shipped out there or whether to hold them . . . and then pour them all on in a reasonably short time. Not all in one day, but over a short period. And that also takes into consideration the target that we are after. In other words, should we not concentrate on targets that will be of the greatest assistance to an invasion rather than industry, morale, psychology, and the like? Nearer the tactical use rather than other use." - General of the Army George Marshall
That memo from 4 days after the bomb fell at Nagasaki, doesn't exactly make it seem like the individual in charge of the United States army though the Japanese were about to surrender, since he was basically asking to use atomic weapons to soften up Japanese defenses for a land invasion.
On August 12, the Emperor informed the imperial family of his decision to surrender. One of his uncles, Prince Asaka, then asked whether the war would be continued if the kokutai could not be preserved. Hirohito simply replied "of course".[66] As the Allied terms seemed to leave intact the principle of the preservation of the Throne, Hirohito recorded on August 14 his capitulation announcement which was broadcast to the Japanese nation the next day despite a short rebellion by militarists opposed to the surrender.
You'll notice that the Emperor didn't intend to surrender unless the kokutai could be preserved. You'll also notice there were rebellions amongst the military elite.
Well, the first one unquestionably ended the war pretty damn quick. Granted, they could've, say, detonated it off the coast of Japan, first, to demonstrate their might *before* wiping out tens of thousands of civilians. But, hey, I'll be generous and give the US a pass on the first bomb.
But the second one? That amounted to nothing more than unjustifiable butchery.
I guess you don't recall that there were only two bombs available, and the Japanese didn't surrender till 6 days after the second bomb was dropped on them. There wasn't a bomb available for a warning shot. In addition to that, Truman let them know in no uncertain terms that if they didn't unconditionally surrender, they would face "prompt and utter destruction." They were warned again, before the second bomb was released.
we managed to commit some of the most terrible crimes against humanity via the atomic bombs
Which is nothing compared to the war crimes the Japanese themselves managed to commit. The Japanese engaged in mass killings of civilians, numbering between 3-10 million during the war. In addition, the Japanese conducted experiments not unlike those performed by Mendle under Unit 731, which was accused of both vivisection and cannibalism. They also used banned toxic gasses on the Chinese, tortured and executed prisoners, cannibalized allied prisoners, employed sex slaves and serial rape, and ran forced labor camps which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.
The atomic weapons used on Japan saved millions and millions of lives, and prevented even greater Japanese atrocities. Indeed, we still have purple hearts left over today from the supply ordered before the invasion of Japan, as the estimated casualties approached 1 million Americans, and nearly all the Japanese.
You may want to read up on what a superpower is, and what superpower remains today.
Single point of failure. It's easier to secure one system with everybody's eyes on it than thousands of systems, when none draws enough attention for their to be any consequences for failure.
By this logic Windows would be the most secure operating system.
Bad example. If the federal government wasn't overtaxing the populace in order to raise funds to give back to the states as highway funds for the sole purpose of subverting the United States Constitution to push federal agenda on the states, the states would be perfectly capable of building the highways themselves, without an added layer of bureaucracy. Why do you think the maximum speed limit was 55 and the drinking age is 21 across the country. It has everything to do with those "federal" highway funds.
Do you honestly believe the additional layer of bureaucracy is more efficient.
The army shouldn't be building any kind of society, civil or otherwise. They aren't designed to be, and don't function well as, a peacekeeping force.
It's not about being able to recover the data, it's also about everyone's medical records being sold. If medical records can't even be protected at the state level, what makes people believe that national electronic health records will be any safer? Just wait until your laying in the hospital, but you can't be treated because access to your online health records are down.
I'm increasingly amazed by the willingness of people to bitch and moan about incompetent and inefficient bureaucrats, while at the same time, insisting on turning over more and more important societal functions to these same bureaucrats.
You can think that, but you probably shouldn't say it, as it only exposes your ignorance.
Hate to break it to you, but this was the way it was originally in 1913, when everyone was required to pay taxes with cash-basis accounting. In 1916, this was changed so that companies could use the accrual-based GAAP that they already use to produce their financial statements, to pay their taxes. Practically no company will use cash based accounting to produce their financial statements, as it doesn't provide an accurate picture of the companies true financial situation.
Given a choice, most companies would rather pay taxes with the accrual based statements they already have. However, you sometimes run into the situation where you have accrued income that you haven't actually received (e.g. you've completed a $1M contract, but client has 6 months to pay). In this case, it's quite possible to simply not have the cash available to cover the accrued tax expenses. In that case, you'd have to file on a cash-basis.
There is generally a reason why things are done they way they are done.
They're worse. I've never had to wait for weeks to be given the privilege to develop software on a cellphone that I own. I can't speak to the application approval process, since I've been waiting for weeks just to get my developer account approved. It's absolutely pathetic.
LOL. Tell me, which DRM was unbreakable?
Doesn't have to be totally unbreakable, just unbreakable enough, like the Xbox 360. If you really want to see some serious trusted computing initiatives, modify copyright law.
More seriously, your argument hinges on the investor recouping his costs. Let's assume this, even though one can argue that it is not true (F/OSS seems to be working).
As a pretty serious contributor to FOSS (it's all I've worked on in the last three weeks), I would argue that it only works in certain cases. It's great for library or framework code, or code that will mainly be used by programmers for programming related tasks (ide's, scripting languages), but falls flat most everywhere else. There still isn't a good FOSS image editor, groupware client/server, or office suite. I still can't get a linux desktop to detect my monitors, my mouse, my graphics card, and my network card, all in one go.
If copyright is just to recoup costs, given the 3-6 year cycle of theater -> DVD -> TV, where the majority of income is made, why do we need copyrights longer than a decade? But then you did not argue that. You argued that without any copyright (and DRM) the costs could not be recouped. So, I'll try again.
What about things that aren't movies. If an author writes a book when he's young, then writes another and becomes famous for the second one, but then everyone realizes his earlier work was the true masterpiece, are you OK with the megacorporation publishing companies exploiting him to reap massive profits for little work? The reason FOSS library and framework code works so well is that you can make the calculation that by contributing code, others can expand, improve and maintain your code. Your sacrificing the competitive advantage the proprietary code gives you, for the long term advantage of a library with more features than you could realistically create yourself.
Given that there are so few media producers and distributors, it seems that contractual agreements against copying (similar to how NDAs work) could possibly be a solution as well. Theaters not abiding to the contracts can get blacklisted and sued. Technology already exists to determine which theaters copy illegally.
Good luck with that.
What about other methods? Imagine theaters band together and sponsor creations, which those theaters alone are able to show? Then, those theaters have an incentive to not leak the movie.
Isn't this proposed solution much more restrictive than copyright.
What about on your government tax return, you fill in movie producer numbers and the amount of money you want the government to fund that company for the following year? To get government funding, you need to register for a number, and all footage related to a given movie must be released to a public database the day that the movie goes live.
That should work as well as use tax. With brilliant ideas like this, you should definitely go into politics. After all, the government runs everything else so well, they should provide our circuses as well.
There are many inventive ways of causing movies to be made even without copyright. Free your imagination.
The ideas you had, while imaginative, were stupid, impractical, and more restrictive than copyright actually is. Join me in reality.