What bothers me is this attitude that our rights have diminished. They have not. They are inalienable rights, which means that they cannot be taken away. Governments may attempt and even succeed at harming someone for the expression of a right, but that government CANNOT take that right away.
The time is coming, if not now, that the people of the USA must take their government to task for the abridgement of the expression of our rights.
The trouble with the original question is that it is based upon erroneous assumptions. The internet is not free. It costs energy to move all those bits around, and while that energy is tiny from a per bit stand point, it is NOT free. (There is a nice piece on the fact that it takes 10MW of energy to maintain the big server sites. I found that reference on Digg.com. That is a LOT of electical costs). Hardware and software are required to establish and maintain the delivery system. Hardware and software are required to translate the music file into sound. TIME is require to listen to the music download the music, sort the music, etc. So distribution is not free.
The supply is also finite. There is a large, but fixed number of connections to the database for downloading. Occasionaly I get an error from my download service telling me that I will have to complete my download later.
It requires money and time to create and maintain databases of music and to create the software and hardware to play the music. Taken in context, the whole experience of listening to music is not free. From the artist point of view, the Record, CD, DVD, MP3 is advertising. Most artist make their money from live performances rather than recordings. From the record company's point of view, the artist is an expense, and the recording is the profit maker. The fact that an artificially high price has been maintained on CD/DVD music is the result of price fixing and monopolistic behavior on the part of the distributor of the music rather than a supply/demand relationships (Here I refer to the class action law suits against the record companies). Music, once created is a commodity-like thing. It has a low profit margin per unit, and a low cost per unit. So does gas and electricity. (Drilling a well and the associated equipment is expensive, many barrels of oil must be sold to pay off this investment.)
I think that the idea that music creation requires a huge investment is wrong as well. It may take a lot of time, but it does not require millions of dollars of money. Decent musical equipment is available and has been available to the general public for decades at prices that are affordable. (And anecdote: As I recall the Beach Boys got their musical equipment by purchasing it with the money their parents had left them to buy food for about a week. I think I heard this on the old American Top 40 radio show back in the 80's.) The challenge for the artist remains the same: how to get the sales volume or profit margin up so that a living can be made. This was true in Mozart's day. With the low cost of distribution, the artist has the opportunity to invest the majority of his money in music creation rather than record/CD/DVD production. The stage show is where the cash is to be made. The online music drives the concert crowd. While the online music will make a little bit of money, even at itunes $0.99 per tune, the artists gets what? a nickel? a dime? So optimistically, the artist gets a dime a song and needs around $30,000 per year to live like a school teacher in Louisiana. That's 300,000 songs per year sold electronically at a price that we know will generate sales. Assuming, of course that the artist doesn't have to split that dime with anyone else.
The profits are to be made: Distribution: someone has to make the songs easy to find. Someone has to introduce me to new music that I like. Someone has to provide easy to use software and hardware to play the music on. Artist: Make a lot of good music. Distribute it online for advertising and make a small amount of money. Then use the music sold as a way to drive concert ticket sales. The thing here is similar to other markets: high volume, low profit per unit, good quality across all units. Yep, that is the way to go with online music.
As a note, most professional musicians do not make a lot of money. Neither to other artists, such as writers. The other factor to consider is this: there is a non monetary factor in the whole creation process that is a reward to the creator. This reward is not usually considered in the typical supply/demand economic model.
At the local Walmart, I had to show ID to buy school glue. No kidding, Elmer's School Glue, and whipped cream--the kind in the spray can. Some stupid law trying to prevent kids from buying things they might bet high with. Geez. The kids don't buy them, theswipe them from their parents house.
Morons
And Microsoft's Ballmer throws chairs, so do you not use Microsoft products because a chief executive acts like a five year old throwing a temper tantrum because something didn't go his/her way?
I read this from a parent's point of view. The IB program is a school project. So, he uses school time and school property to access information for a school project. The school is angry about this, and has a parent teacher conference (I've been at these conferences defending my own kids from a lame brained ID10T.) where the school complains that jr is doing is school work at school on school time and on school property. So the parents ask quite reasonably, why are you harrassing our kid over doing his homework at school? The teachers can't really answer and the adminstration won't decide without consulting the school board. So nothing is done. Later, they try to corner the kid and bully him into "conforming" to their ID10T "expectations" or it will "adversely affect" his graduation. This is so they don't have to show up at a school board meeting looking like a dain bramaged rat.
(1) The US military is made up of volunteers who would have to come back to American soil and kill members of their families for some politician. Not EVERY soldier will do this. Many will join the opposition. Your assumption appears to be that the American soldier does not think about his orders. He does. He must. American soldiers are not mindless killing droids. They are very well educated and trained in comparison with most of the military forces through out the world. They are not going to kill their own people with the same ease they would strangers.
(2) The US military would be fighting itself on its own ground. The best way to view this is by reading about the last Civil War we had. Neither the rebellion, nor the Republican attempted Coup that followed succeeded in over throwing the US constitution. The fight was long, bloody, and demonstrated that americans can fight a long war with barely enough to fight with. I would not bet on who would win in another civil war.
(3) The US has one of the most heavily armed and trained populaces in the world. Many of our citizens are military or ex military. We keep our skills in marksmanship good because we enjoy it. The highly advanced and trained US military is losing in Iraq and lost in Vietnam because the only totally successful conquest of other people has been and is to kill everyone on the other side to destroy them utterly. Sherman practiced this type of warfare on his march through the south to the Atlantic Ocean. The American settlers practiced this on the indigenous populace.
(4) The Jews in the Ghetto did not have an entire country for territory and were mostly unsupported by the general populace. They are a better comparison to the Branch Davidians, who were small, lightly armed, unsupported by the general populace, and surrounded. Sure, any group of lightly armed people when facing an army superior in arms and numbers will lose, but this has been true since Tsun Tsu was writing his first page.
(5) As for thinking that the average American soldier will be better supplied than some guy in his neighborhood, think twice about that. The soldier will be in both unfriendly and unfamiliar territory, most likely, and most of us folks out here in the suburbs are armed and well armed at that. Maybe folks in New York City will have trouble finding guns, ammo, and first aid supplies, but in my neighborhood we have plenty. That soldier will have to carry his stuff with him. Big difference and every attempt to deprive a rebellious populace of its supplies increases the number of rebels.
(6) Any civil war in America will be fought like the revolutionary war and the civil war: bloody nasty, and done in sneaky ways. To hell with engaging a tank with a.22. I'll leave a bomb beside the road and set it off with a few parts from radio shack. Americans are ingenious and all of that fancy ass technology is vulnerable and subject to attack by the very people who designed and built it.
I would really like to see the US government return to being a government of the people and by the people and for the people, and get off of this destructive fascist kick. This DNA database would be mismanaged, wrong, and misused. No good will come of it. Hell the Veterans bureau can't even keep up with Veteran's information. The DOD has "lost" a trillion dollars worth of "stuff" they can't find.
The government should mind the business of keeping the roads working, the infrastructure intact, the poor and disabled fed, and keeping the military a lean mean "don't even think about fucking with us" fighting machine.
It's not new. It's just different. You spend 6 months getting your people trained. Then two years of putting along just fine. Now along comes MS and "improves" their software so that you can spend another 6 months learning how to do the same thing on the "new" software. It does the SAME thing only in a different way. No better, faster, more reliable. Nope. Just different. Had lots of issues like this moving from office 2000 to 2003. More headaches and no descernable benefits.
Interesting in that after I dumped the high-fructose corn syrup drinks out of my diet, my health improved. I drink very weak iced tea instead so that it is little more than slightly flavored water.
So. . . Phillips has taken out a patent on a method of pissing the customer off. Most of the time advertisments appear where there is "entertainment." Who wants to watch TV to get pissed off? Or a movie? I get aggravated when the DVD won't let me skip the "introduction section" which has those four year old out of date "previews of comming attractions."
I sure hope we get to see who licenses this "technology."
It was a punishment by god that the frist born of each family in Egypt should die. Exodus 12:29-30.
The only way it is a "law" is if god's will is consider "law." HOWEVER, Herod a mortal king, ordered the deaths of children in Bethlehem, according to the Gospel of Matthew. In that case, it would have been a matter of law.
WOW isn't a grinding game. It can be a grinding game, but it really just depends upon what you want out of the game. You can play solo, with a group, or just hang out and cut up with friends. You can play for an hour and have a good time, and then just quit. Not a problem. I do it a lot.
I'm sure that for a reasonable fee and the appropriate amount of scrutiny, documentation, and long boring conversations about hypothetical situations that you too can be certified as living "ethically."
Finding a page with Search Engine in it will not bring up google's page. DUH. Where on the google page are those words? No where. And a search result is not a recommendation.
Does it occur to anyone that by restricting the torrent sites and trying to destroy file sharing and music sharing that the real target of this is not piracy, but an attempt to destroy the growing ability of independent artists to make a name for themselves without the big labels? It looks to me like piracy is not the issue, but rather market dominance. Once the MPAA, RIAA have destroyed this upstart internet thing, they will then embrace the technology to distribute the content that they want on the terms that they want. Think about pay per view for EVERYTHING.
No, the boss won't be upset about that, but Alice won't get paid more either. She'll get a nice salary and be on call 24/7 usually to fix Bob's Friday afternoon screwup.
Seriously, there are companies whose whole cost/benefit model excludes the productivity of the worker because "we pay them for those hours anyway" regardless of whether it is a salary or hourly employee.
Try to get improvements in productivity in that environment. So the emloyee is focused on being on time for clock in and clock out and doing the minimum to avoid getting canned. How is that different from grinding a level in WOW? It's not really skill to push a few mouse buttons over and over and over again.
As for getting ahead, that is not totally based upon job skill. Bob could be a total screw up in the job and still get ahead of Alice because Bob avoids doing his job, which he screws up, and spends his time convincing his boss that he is a great guy and deserves to be promoted.
No computer operating system does away with the "safe" file concept. Nobody willingly opens a file they think will trash their computer--maybe on accident or through trickery, but not on purpose. So what if you force the user to manually open a file? The user still believes the file to be "safe" so it gets opened. Auto scripting opening a file is not much different. The user thinks the file is X and would open it manually by double clicking on it. I suppose that if you forced everyone to open the application and then select the file to be opened you might prevent this sort of exploit, but maybe not.
Some time ago, National Geographic produced a lovely graph of the world temperature over millions of years as determined by ice cores and other valid measurement systems. The current temperature of the earth is not close to what it has been many times in the past and life was thriving. Sure it was not life as we know it now, but it was life, related to us, and it was teeming. Now the interesting thing that I noticed was that every time the temperature peaked, there was a sudden shift into an ice age. So if the earth gets too warm something happens to shift the system into a colder mode.
The real crisis for humans is not the climate but the end of cheap oil followed closely by the end of oil. Energy is the foundation of our civilization and these climate nuts and religious nuts want us to focus on the wrong issue. Whether or not Jesus comes back isn't anything we have control over. Whether or not the earth gets hotter or colder isn't in our power to control and indeed we don't understand climatology well enough to make accurate predictions. The end of civilization has already begun with the first of the oil wars. If we humans focus on solving the massive energy issue that we have then we will avoid the destruction of our civilization. Otherwise we will start over at the level of techology we had a thousand years ago.
In order to understand lying and liars, one must first understand the nature of language. Language, is a tool for the manipulation of other people. Children are hardwired to understand this as a fundamental part of their survival. A child is not capable of providing for its needs and must communicate those needs so that they are met in a timely fashion. Children do not intend to lie as a fundamental sign of evil, but rather they intend to speak what ever phrase will achieve their end. Example: One child hits another child and the adult places the first child in "time out," which is the new name for the old concept of "standing in the corner." The child wants out and will cry and plead, etc. When the adult asks a question: "ARe you going to hit the other child?" The child will answer "No" not because they intend to be good, but rather because that is the word that gets the adult to meet their need to be out of "time out."
Accurately delivering information, ie., the truth, is something that must be taught. It should be interesting to note that trust and truth are closely related. therefore societies value truthful communication, while individual tend towards manipulation.
If you think that the folks that run this society are christians, then your in pretty bad shape. There is nothing christian about the Iraq fiasco, except maybe some of the soldiers. These are evil people doing what evil people do best...lie, cheat, murder, and steal.
I've owned a lot of systems over the years. The apples have always lasted longer and given me less trouble than the X86 hardware. I bought apple and it was painfully expensive, but some of it still works just fine twelve years later. I spend hundreds or even thousands less on X86 boxes to do basic computing and a year later (or less) and I'm replacing the mother board, the ram, the hard drive, or some other component. The X86 stuff is cheap and in many cases, cheap crap. For things that I don't want to fix, I spend extra money. You can do this with x86 hardware, but I've found that the good stuff is about the same price as apple. I recommend Apple, or higher end X86 for those people who don't want to tweek or fix, but just want the box to work for years.
I'm not so much worried about privacy, as I am about secrecy. The feds have become very secretive about the use of information collected on citizens. Technology allows this to be done efficiently, and the move is slowly towards tracking everyone for every moment of every day of their lives through RFID, or ID, etc. Tracking people 24/7 is a tool for good or bad and depends entirely upon the actions of the user. A secretive government has the power to abuse the system to make people that dissagree with the current regime "vanish" or have lots of trouble with their lives.
People are already having trouble with secret government information. Why would anyone want to give the government more information to screw us with?
Imagine how criminals and unscrupulous politicans could use tracking information that is coupled to ever aspect of your life. Records could get "mixed" with terrorist, criminals, or just plain lost. A massive and barely competent bureaucracy would form around this information and getting anything done would become a multi-month epic saga, which is already evidenced in many social programs curently in existence.
I think that push to control the last minute of everyone's life will grind every thing to a halt. Criminals could assault the whole of the country by crippling the tracking system that the goverment uses to control the flow of good, services, money, and people. Imaging being stranded in an airport without the ability to use your money or even place a call because the network tracking system is down.
Yes, I think that DRM in the BIOS is something the Chinese security aparatus would like to give everyone. Consider that the Chinese government regulates all aspects of its society including speech and religion. They would see this as natural extension of the state's right to control every ounce of your life. The media companies would find that the DRM shoe was not very comfortable, especially when it was purchased for them by the Chinese government.
I'll apply the so what argument to the billions spent on research. What has Microsoft developed? Just because R&D is funded doesn't mean that anything useful comes out. I've heard of the products of Apple R&D (this comes as a product: itunes, ipod etc) but what about MS? R&D spent to develop a copy of someone else's already sucessful product? Another search engine? Another music site? Another game plateform? Articles come out about the new innovative chip set that Playstation will use. We crack open an XBOX and its based on off theshelf technology. That's not research and development that's reverse engineer and copy. So MS spends billions on R&D and gets what? Someone else's product done less well? It takes a long time to do fundamental, innovative research and development. MS has some flaws that prevent it from ever doing good R&D leading to useful products: the customer is always last and monopoly is always the goal. That's why when MS comes out with a product, it aint the best thing ever in the customer's eyes. they don't think it has to be, because they intend on gaining the monopoly and forcing you to buy their stuff.
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What bothers me is this attitude that our rights have diminished. They have not. They are inalienable rights, which means that they cannot be taken away. Governments may attempt and even succeed at harming someone for the expression of a right, but that government CANNOT take that right away.
The time is coming, if not now, that the people of the USA must take their government to task for the abridgement of the expression of our rights.
The trouble with the original question is that it is based upon erroneous assumptions. The internet is not free. It costs energy to move all those bits around, and while that energy is tiny from a per bit stand point, it is NOT free. (There is a nice piece on the fact that it takes 10MW of energy to maintain the big server sites. I found that reference on Digg.com. That is a LOT of electical costs). Hardware and software are required to establish and maintain the delivery system. Hardware and software are required to translate the music file into sound. TIME is require to listen to the music download the music, sort the music, etc. So distribution is not free.
The supply is also finite. There is a large, but fixed number of connections to the database for downloading. Occasionaly I get an error from my download service telling me that I will have to complete my download later.
It requires money and time to create and maintain databases of music and to create the software and hardware to play the music. Taken in context, the whole experience of listening to music is not free. From the artist point of view, the Record, CD, DVD, MP3 is advertising. Most artist make their money from live performances rather than recordings. From the record company's point of view, the artist is an expense, and the recording is the profit maker. The fact that an artificially high price has been maintained on CD/DVD music is the result of price fixing and monopolistic behavior on the part of the distributor of the music rather than a supply/demand relationships (Here I refer to the class action law suits against the record companies). Music, once created is a commodity-like thing. It has a low profit margin per unit, and a low cost per unit. So does gas and electricity. (Drilling a well and the associated equipment is expensive, many barrels of oil must be sold to pay off this investment.)
I think that the idea that music creation requires a huge investment is wrong as well. It may take a lot of time, but it does not require millions of dollars of money. Decent musical equipment is available and has been available to the general public for decades at prices that are affordable. (And anecdote: As I recall the Beach Boys got their musical equipment by purchasing it with the money their parents had left them to buy food for about a week. I think I heard this on the old American Top 40 radio show back in the 80's.) The challenge for the artist remains the same: how to get the sales volume or profit margin up so that a living can be made. This was true in Mozart's day. With the low cost of distribution, the artist has the opportunity to invest the majority of his money in music creation rather than record/CD/DVD production. The stage show is where the cash is to be made. The online music drives the concert crowd. While the online music will make a little bit of money, even at itunes $0.99 per tune, the artists gets what? a nickel? a dime? So optimistically, the artist gets a dime a song and needs around $30,000 per year to live like a school teacher in Louisiana. That's 300,000 songs per year sold electronically at a price that we know will generate sales. Assuming, of course that the artist doesn't have to split that dime with anyone else.
The profits are to be made: Distribution: someone has to make the songs easy to find. Someone has to introduce me to new music that I like. Someone has to provide easy to use software and hardware to play the music on. Artist: Make a lot of good music. Distribute it online for advertising and make a small amount of money. Then use the music sold as a way to drive concert ticket sales. The thing here is similar to other markets: high volume, low profit per unit, good quality across all units. Yep, that is the way to go with online music.
As a note, most professional musicians do not make a lot of money. Neither to other artists, such as writers. The other factor to consider is this: there is a non monetary factor in the whole creation process that is a reward to the creator. This reward is not usually considered in the typical supply/demand economic model.
You can install only the AV part of the software. You just have to know what to run. We just did that here with the latest version of Norton.
At the local Walmart, I had to show ID to buy school glue. No kidding, Elmer's School Glue, and whipped cream--the kind in the spray can. Some stupid law trying to prevent kids from buying things they might bet high with. Geez. The kids don't buy them, theswipe them from their parents house. Morons
And Microsoft's Ballmer throws chairs, so do you not use Microsoft products because a chief executive acts like a five year old throwing a temper tantrum because something didn't go his/her way?
Adults are children with breeding rights.
I read this from a parent's point of view. The IB program is a school project. So, he uses school time and school property to access information for a school project. The school is angry about this, and has a parent teacher conference (I've been at these conferences defending my own kids from a lame brained ID10T.) where the school complains that jr is doing is school work at school on school time and on school property. So the parents ask quite reasonably, why are you harrassing our kid over doing his homework at school? The teachers can't really answer and the adminstration won't decide without consulting the school board. So nothing is done. Later, they try to corner the kid and bully him into "conforming" to their ID10T "expectations" or it will "adversely affect" his graduation. This is so they don't have to show up at a school board meeting looking like a dain bramaged rat.
(1) The US military is made up of volunteers who would have to come back to American soil and kill members of their families for some politician. Not EVERY soldier will do this. Many will join the opposition. Your assumption appears to be that the American soldier does not think about his orders. He does. He must. American soldiers are not mindless killing droids. They are very well educated and trained in comparison with most of the military forces through out the world. They are not going to kill their own people with the same ease they would strangers.
.22. I'll leave a bomb beside the road and set it off with a few parts from radio shack. Americans are ingenious and all of that fancy ass technology is vulnerable and subject to attack by the very people who designed and built it.
(2) The US military would be fighting itself on its own ground. The best way to view this is by reading about the last Civil War we had. Neither the rebellion, nor the Republican attempted Coup that followed succeeded in over throwing the US constitution. The fight was long, bloody, and demonstrated that americans can fight a long war with barely enough to fight with. I would not bet on who would win in another civil war.
(3) The US has one of the most heavily armed and trained populaces in the world. Many of our citizens are military or ex military. We keep our skills in marksmanship good because we enjoy it. The highly advanced and trained US military is losing in Iraq and lost in Vietnam because the only totally successful conquest of other people has been and is to kill everyone on the other side to destroy them utterly. Sherman practiced this type of warfare on his march through the south to the Atlantic Ocean. The American settlers practiced this on the indigenous populace.
(4) The Jews in the Ghetto did not have an entire country for territory and were mostly unsupported by the general populace. They are a better comparison to the Branch Davidians, who were small, lightly armed, unsupported by the general populace, and surrounded. Sure, any group of lightly armed people when facing an army superior in arms and numbers will lose, but this has been true since Tsun Tsu was writing his first page.
(5) As for thinking that the average American soldier will be better supplied than some guy in his neighborhood, think twice about that. The soldier will be in both unfriendly and unfamiliar territory, most likely, and most of us folks out here in the suburbs are armed and well armed at that. Maybe folks in New York City will have trouble finding guns, ammo, and first aid supplies, but in my neighborhood we have plenty. That soldier will have to carry his stuff with him. Big difference and every attempt to deprive a rebellious populace of its supplies increases the number of rebels.
(6) Any civil war in America will be fought like the revolutionary war and the civil war: bloody nasty, and done in sneaky ways. To hell with engaging a tank with a
I would really like to see the US government return to being a government of the people and by the people and for the people, and get off of this destructive fascist kick. This DNA database would be mismanaged, wrong, and misused. No good will come of it. Hell the Veterans bureau can't even keep up with Veteran's information. The DOD has "lost" a trillion dollars worth of "stuff" they can't find.
The government should mind the business of keeping the roads working, the infrastructure intact, the poor and disabled fed, and keeping the military a lean mean "don't even think about fucking with us" fighting machine.
Leave the rest of it to the people.
It's not new. It's just different. You spend 6 months getting your people trained. Then two years of putting along just fine. Now along comes MS and "improves" their software so that you can spend another 6 months learning how to do the same thing on the "new" software. It does the SAME thing only in a different way. No better, faster, more reliable. Nope. Just different. Had lots of issues like this moving from office 2000 to 2003. More headaches and no descernable benefits.
Interesting in that after I dumped the high-fructose corn syrup drinks out of my diet, my health improved. I drink very weak iced tea instead so that it is little more than slightly flavored water.
So. . . Phillips has taken out a patent on a method of pissing the customer off. Most of the time advertisments appear where there is "entertainment." Who wants to watch TV to get pissed off? Or a movie? I get aggravated when the DVD won't let me skip the "introduction section" which has those four year old out of date "previews of comming attractions."
I sure hope we get to see who licenses this "technology."
It was a punishment by god that the frist born of each family in Egypt should die. Exodus 12:29-30.
The only way it is a "law" is if god's will is consider "law." HOWEVER, Herod a mortal king, ordered the deaths of children in Bethlehem, according to the Gospel of Matthew. In that case, it would have been a matter of law.
WOW isn't a grinding game. It can be a grinding game, but it really just depends upon what you want out of the game. You can play solo, with a group, or just hang out and cut up with friends. You can play for an hour and have a good time, and then just quit. Not a problem. I do it a lot.
I'm sure that for a reasonable fee and the appropriate amount of scrutiny, documentation, and long boring conversations about hypothetical situations that you too can be certified as living "ethically."
Finding a page with Search Engine in it will not bring up google's page. DUH. Where on the google page are those words? No where. And a search result is not a recommendation.
Does it occur to anyone that by restricting the torrent sites and trying to destroy file sharing and music sharing that the real target of this is not piracy, but an attempt to destroy the growing ability of independent artists to make a name for themselves without the big labels? It looks to me like piracy is not the issue, but rather market dominance. Once the MPAA, RIAA have destroyed this upstart internet thing, they will then embrace the technology to distribute the content that they want on the terms that they want. Think about pay per view for EVERYTHING.
No, the boss won't be upset about that, but Alice won't get paid more either. She'll get a nice salary and be on call 24/7 usually to fix Bob's Friday afternoon screwup.
Seriously, there are companies whose whole cost/benefit model excludes the productivity of the worker because "we pay them for those hours anyway" regardless of whether it is a salary or hourly employee.
Try to get improvements in productivity in that environment. So the emloyee is focused on being on time for clock in and clock out and doing the minimum to avoid getting canned. How is that different from grinding a level in WOW? It's not really skill to push a few mouse buttons over and over and over again.
As for getting ahead, that is not totally based upon job skill. Bob could be a total screw up in the job and still get ahead of Alice because Bob avoids doing his job, which he screws up, and spends his time convincing his boss that he is a great guy and deserves to be promoted.
No computer operating system does away with the "safe" file concept. Nobody willingly opens a file they think will trash their computer--maybe on accident or through trickery, but not on purpose. So what if you force the user to manually open a file? The user still believes the file to be "safe" so it gets opened. Auto scripting opening a file is not much different. The user thinks the file is X and would open it manually by double clicking on it. I suppose that if you forced everyone to open the application and then select the file to be opened you might prevent this sort of exploit, but maybe not.
Some time ago, National Geographic produced a lovely graph of the world temperature over millions of years as determined by ice cores and other valid measurement systems. The current temperature of the earth is not close to what it has been many times in the past and life was thriving. Sure it was not life as we know it now, but it was life, related to us, and it was teeming. Now the interesting thing that I noticed was that every time the temperature peaked, there was a sudden shift into an ice age. So if the earth gets too warm something happens to shift the system into a colder mode.
The real crisis for humans is not the climate but the end of cheap oil followed closely by the end of oil. Energy is the foundation of our civilization and these climate nuts and religious nuts want us to focus on the wrong issue. Whether or not Jesus comes back isn't anything we have control over. Whether or not the earth gets hotter or colder isn't in our power to control and indeed we don't understand climatology well enough to make accurate predictions. The end of civilization has already begun with the first of the oil wars. If we humans focus on solving the massive energy issue that we have then we will avoid the destruction of our civilization. Otherwise we will start over at the level of techology we had a thousand years ago.
That looks more like a sentence than a position.
In order to understand lying and liars, one must first understand the nature of language. Language, is a tool for the manipulation of other people. Children are hardwired to understand this as a fundamental part of their survival. A child is not capable of providing for its needs and must communicate those needs so that they are met in a timely fashion. Children do not intend to lie as a fundamental sign of evil, but rather they intend to speak what ever phrase will achieve their end. Example: One child hits another child and the adult places the first child in "time out," which is the new name for the old concept of "standing in the corner." The child wants out and will cry and plead, etc. When the adult asks a question: "ARe you going to hit the other child?" The child will answer "No" not because they intend to be good, but rather because that is the word that gets the adult to meet their need to be out of "time out."
Accurately delivering information, ie., the truth, is something that must be taught. It should be interesting to note that trust and truth are closely related. therefore societies value truthful communication, while individual tend towards manipulation.
If you think that the folks that run this society are christians, then your in pretty bad shape. There is nothing christian about the Iraq fiasco, except maybe some of the soldiers. These are evil people doing what evil people do best...lie, cheat, murder, and steal.
I've owned a lot of systems over the years. The apples have always lasted longer and given me less trouble than the X86 hardware. I bought apple and it was painfully expensive, but some of it still works just fine twelve years later. I spend hundreds or even thousands less on X86 boxes to do basic computing and a year later (or less) and I'm replacing the mother board, the ram, the hard drive, or some other component. The X86 stuff is cheap and in many cases, cheap crap. For things that I don't want to fix, I spend extra money. You can do this with x86 hardware, but I've found that the good stuff is about the same price as apple. I recommend Apple, or higher end X86 for those people who don't want to tweek or fix, but just want the box to work for years.
I'm not so much worried about privacy, as I am about secrecy. The feds have become very secretive about the use of information collected on citizens. Technology allows this to be done efficiently, and the move is slowly towards tracking everyone for every moment of every day of their lives through RFID, or ID, etc. Tracking people 24/7 is a tool for good or bad and depends entirely upon the actions of the user. A secretive government has the power to abuse the system to make people that dissagree with the current regime "vanish" or have lots of trouble with their lives.
People are already having trouble with secret government information. Why would anyone want to give the government more information to screw us with?
Imagine how criminals and unscrupulous politicans could use tracking information that is coupled to ever aspect of your life. Records could get "mixed" with terrorist, criminals, or just plain lost. A massive and barely competent bureaucracy would form around this information and getting anything done would become a multi-month epic saga, which is already evidenced in many social programs curently in existence.
I think that push to control the last minute of everyone's life will grind every thing to a halt. Criminals could assault the whole of the country by crippling the tracking system that the goverment uses to control the flow of good, services, money, and people. Imaging being stranded in an airport without the ability to use your money or even place a call because the network tracking system is down.
Yes, I think that DRM in the BIOS is something the Chinese security aparatus would like to give everyone. Consider that the Chinese government regulates all aspects of its society including speech and religion. They would see this as natural extension of the state's right to control every ounce of your life. The media companies would find that the DRM shoe was not very comfortable, especially when it was purchased for them by the Chinese government.
I'll apply the so what argument to the billions spent on research. What has Microsoft developed? Just because R&D is funded doesn't mean that anything useful comes out. I've heard of the products of Apple R&D (this comes as a product: itunes, ipod etc) but what about MS? R&D spent to develop a copy of someone else's already sucessful product? Another search engine? Another music site? Another game plateform? Articles come out about the new innovative chip set that Playstation will use. We crack open an XBOX and its based on off theshelf technology. That's not research and development that's reverse engineer and copy. So MS spends billions on R&D and gets what? Someone else's product done less well? It takes a long time to do fundamental, innovative research and development. MS has some flaws that prevent it from ever doing good R&D leading to useful products: the customer is always last and monopoly is always the goal. That's why when MS comes out with a product, it aint the best thing ever in the customer's eyes. they don't think it has to be, because they intend on gaining the monopoly and forcing you to buy their stuff.