Different social conditions in 1776? How about the fact that the economy was built on the forced labor of human beings who were belittled and considered property because of their race? Slavery existed before and almost a century after 1776. Here's to enlightened leadership. Power to the people!:-9
Our founding fathers were good people, no doubt... and I'm sure that the people putting this surveillance system into place have the best intentions at heart. But the fact is, whether this country is ruled by mob, oligarchy, or autocrat, someone's going to get screwed in the interest of the enfranchised. And in a society where dishonesty and ruthlessness is rewarded in the economic realm, how do people expect such a great tool of oppression to stay in the hands of altruistic, civil-minded humanitarians?
I don't. I think a Big Brother-like society is more or less inevitable... Unfortunately, revolutions in the future will probably have more in common with slave revolts (revolters with next-to-nil resources vs. masters that control the economy and arms production), which always ended in massacres, than they will with the American Revolution (revolters with resources, production, foreign military and economic support vs. masters trying to enforce rule from thousands of miles away).
Funny that no one really complains about Apple "leveraging" their OS wrt iMovie and iPhoto.
Microsoft leveraging their OS is only illegal because they have a virtual monopoly on desktop OS's... no one would care about them integrating IE if only 5% of desktops ran Windows. If iTunes and iMovie were putting major media application vendors out of business, then maybe it would be an issue. Er, probably not... those application aren't integrated into the OS at all, and they certainly aren't going to affect the future of computing the way controlling the web browser market will.
Of course, in an alternate universe somewhere, 95% of the world's PCs are running Macintosh System 7 with OpenDoc and CyberDog. It's a thing of beauty:-9
Slashdot Mirror
The cure for 1984 is 1776.
Different social conditions in 1776? How about the fact that the economy was built on the forced labor of human beings who were belittled and considered property because of their race? Slavery existed before and almost a century after 1776. Here's to enlightened leadership. Power to the people!:-9
Our founding fathers were good people, no doubt... and I'm sure that the people putting this surveillance system into place have the best intentions at heart. But the fact is, whether this country is ruled by mob, oligarchy, or autocrat, someone's going to get screwed in the interest of the enfranchised. And in a society where dishonesty and ruthlessness is rewarded in the economic realm, how do people expect such a great tool of oppression to stay in the hands of altruistic, civil-minded humanitarians?
I don't. I think a Big Brother-like society is more or less inevitable... Unfortunately, revolutions in the future will probably have more in common with slave revolts (revolters with next-to-nil resources vs. masters that control the economy and arms production), which always ended in massacres, than they will with the American Revolution (revolters with resources, production, foreign military and economic support vs. masters trying to enforce rule from thousands of miles away).
Funny that no one really complains about Apple "leveraging" their OS wrt iMovie and iPhoto.
Microsoft leveraging their OS is only illegal because they have a virtual monopoly on desktop OS's... no one would care about them integrating IE if only 5% of desktops ran Windows. If iTunes and iMovie were putting major media application vendors out of business, then maybe it would be an issue. Er, probably not... those application aren't integrated into the OS at all, and they certainly aren't going to affect the future of computing the way controlling the web browser market will.
Of course, in an alternate universe somewhere, 95% of the world's PCs are running Macintosh System 7 with OpenDoc and CyberDog. It's a thing of beauty :-9