It's because our legal system, like everything under capitalism, is for sale.
The rich & wealthy have been purchasing it for some time -- including the ability to put their businesses into bodies -- called corporations, through a process called incorporation. Then they get various rights and privileges that are normally reserved for people.
Most recently courts ruled that corporations are not restrained by campaign finance laws -- as it would be a violation of their constitutional protection -- given to people, of "freedom of expression".
Thus they can buy politicians at will under the protections of previously purchased rights giving them constitutional rights of free speech and such...
Incorporation didn't start in the US. If I remember, it came from Europe... the US wasn't a leader in this wedge to give corporations full governmental powers (again, recent example -- the MPAA/RIAA forming their own police branch to investigate and police the new purchased agreements with all the Internet ISP's to police user's downloads. All outside of the government!...
It's like our money system -- it's privately owned by bankers. The "Fed" is a private company and is not accountable to the people of the US.
I.e. those who own our currency have no accounting to those who, by law, must use it, and only it.
The US is NOW inventing things, but before... we were capitalist traders who's main interest was buying and selling things (including arms) to both sides of a war... Wasn't until the WW's that the US took positions on things...-- espec. after we got attacked in WWII... That gave [sic] the largest capitalism-organization in the world (the US), the right to police the world... to protect our ability to trade (ultimately)... It's all about $$$$....
How the rich use it to create governments and laws to benefit them and keep the serfs down.
According to the fourth quarter 2011, State of the Internet report from Akamai, the global average connection speed to the Internet dropped to 2.3 megabits per second (Mbps), representing a 14 percent decline from the third quarter of 2011. While the average connection speed declined, the global average peak connection speed was relatively flat, coming in at 11.7 Mbps for a 0.4 percent quarterly gain....
Also dropping were adoption rates -- I would surmise, because people saw no reason to switch to the lower speeds now available....
Lower speeds are not a very compelling reason to adopt. What they didn't mention is the likely price increase that accompanied the 'flat' connection speeds...
how stupid...undo/redo has been a staple in MS products -- something used by the majority of people for well over a decade, and they thought linux users were too stupid to be able to use such an interface?
What does that say about the developers... That they really have no clue about their user base and that they are incapable of designing for it.
I've not used gnome3... but the idea that they'd have such a feature in and remove it because it confuses poor users (if it does, give them an option to turn it off, don't remove it...IDIOTS!)
Is the Xfinity app also available on the PC? Or is this unfairly benefiting only XBOX owners because MS paid for XBOX 'free delivery. Paid or not, content neutral means irrespective of device you watch it on as well.
Why is slashdot always giving me points when there's nothing worth assigning points to yet when I find something worth modding up, my points 99% of the time, expired.
Maybe points shouldn't expire so quickly -- or better, proportional to the time the person has been registered with the site: rationale -- you know they've been around a long time, if they are someone worth giving points to and have good karma, (or have made good choices in the past), then maybe it is worth letting them take the time to make choices their way rather than force them into spending points just to spend points -- making choices that they would otherwise not have done -- thus lowering the overall quality of the grading process.
+1 for Informative or insightful, or interesting (take your pick).
That's good for little util progs, but for larger progs like 'bash' or 'vim', --help just doesn't cut it...
Then there's issues about what is a bug and what is not. I've seen that used percolate down from committee's as well. Where incompatible changes are introduced, by say, POSIX, -- but that's ok, because, it's in the POSIX spec! (the latest rev of it, that is...)..
Documentation can be used as a spec -- or it can be used to document bugs or inconsistent changes as a means of supporting the change.
Moron. What do you think vaccines do? They do exactly what you claim needs to be done. They stimulate the immune system with an 'irritant' so it builds up muscle against that 'irritant' -- making for a stronger immune system.
The way that you get a weak immune system is by not exposing to any foreign substances. so that it becomes a muscle that is never exercised and is worthless as you grow older.
Our culture's obsession with cleanliness and things being sterile and clean for baby is a two edged sword. Their immune systems need to be exposed to small amounts of pathogens in order to be stimulated to grow. Of course too much and their immune system is overwhelmed and they get sick. That's why vaccines were developed -- to give what is 99+% of the time, a safe dose of a pathogen (or a safe form of the pathogen). They are exactly what makes immune systems stronger.
But our mouths have grown up used to the taste of sucrose -- which is not good for you in volume, -- but out bodies know how to hit the satiation level faster with sucrose.
HFCS that has been artifically made more fructose - is something our taste buds are not evolutionarily designed for.. thus it is harder to judge proper intake. not too many people can consume large quantities of honey -- because it is too sweet. But put it in soda...and cut it with sucrose... HFCS, and it becomes palatable enough (though a bit thicker/syrupier than the sucrose variety -- thus it doesn't cut thirst as well).
Numerous studies show that our body doesn't digest fructose well -- it results in fat around the belly/abdominal area -- were as glucose results in fat distribution under the skin as a whole. Fructose was also connected with a rise in 'Bad cholesterol'... and a lowering of 'good' cholesterol' (likely related to it being more syrupy)...
The problem is -- if it was in small enough amounts, it wouldn't be harmful, but it has been put in most foods -- it has been in most baked goods --- even the store-baked muffins I've bought at the store... I see it in yogurts, puddings, (and soda), as well as breakfast cereals...)... it's put in everything -- which makes it an environmental toxin.
That's why it is so bad. If our bodies were made of 70% HFCS, it would be as healthy as water. But they aren't. So it isn't.
HFCS isn't natural corn sugar. It's genetically modified corn syrup. They use a genetically modified bacteria to produce an HFCS that has much higher levels of Fructose (vs. sucrose, which our government places a tax on in order to support the Hawaiian sugar industry -- something that results in about a 10X price difference for sucrose in the US vs. the rest of the world -- thus manufacturers here try to use fructose, because it is much cheaper than sucrose; The US even charges higher prices for baked goods and other foods as they are imported based on their sucrose content (this was to close a loophole whereby people imported high -sucrose pastries / foods and deconstituted to get the raw sugar -- cheaper than paying "free market" [sic] prices in the US).
It doesn't break down in the body the same way that regular corn syrup does because it's normal balance of sugars isn't natural -- as a result it puts a higher strain on the liver to turn it into energy -- with a result that the liver over converts it to fat -- making less available for energy. The Given the proximity to the liver, HFCS-fat tends to accumulate near the stomach more so than other types which are released more slowly -- increasing the apple-shaped body (vs. pear shaped), that is associated with increased diabetes and heart and circulatory problems.
In short -- it's coincides with America's 'fat explosion' starting in the late 70's early 80's...
Is it a FF bug? Do you know the bug #? According to an earlier poster the problem is only in newer versions of tinyMCE -- maybe they had implemented some not well tested features? Dunno.
The FF team is getting pretty annoying. They don't really seem to give a rats ass about what users want... they are just going to go do their thing and hope someone follows... if you are a market leader that's one thing, but you should still look back over your shoulder once in a while to see if anyone is following...
This was known decades ago. I remember projects devoted to partial compilation to provide interactive feed back on what your code is doing.
The problem isn't how fast you get feed back -- it's getting any at all.
Unless you instrument your code or run it through a debugger, most code doesn't generate any output, so you don't know what it is doing!...
To instrument it generates nearly 100% overhead and running debugger can easily take 10X as long or longer to run the same code. Neither is a great tradeoff.
If the computer could take old and new and show us differences in execution flow -- or just SHOW us execution flow, that would be useful. Even today -- tools to show *static* execution-flow are rare and complicated to use -- not to mention difficult and expensive to develop.
With the cost for development tools being pushed toward 'zero', fringe benefits like visualization seem like a frill I'll never see and is unlikely to be developed unless vendors deem code excellence to be a much higher priority than it is now: today, mediocre, is more than good enough as long as it gets something in the customer's hands.
Come on -- they are following in our government's footsteps who charge $250K/song downloaded or more years behind bars for, not exploiting, but pointing out a security flaw, than someone would get for rape? (15-25 v. 5) or... (too many examples to think about)...
Sadly government sets the example for society to follow... and you expect people to be reasonable or 'nice', or polite...?? It was worse when you had an openly mean, hostile and uncaring president in office...(not to mention the accurate comparisons of his sidekick to a characterization of evil: Darth Vader)...
Bumper stickers went from 'Mean people suck' to 'Mean people rule, get over it'
I don't **like** what the silencer does -- as he's become judge, jury and executioner - and he __could__ cost lives, but at the same time, I *somewhat*, laud people who take action in this time when government is not only, NOT protecting us from corporate misdeed, but is often a 'co-perp'.
Actually, the FBI and US law enforcement agents have started picking up good bucks on the side following in the footsteps of congress-critters -- getting paid for 'outside work' by media companies.
Actually music is only supported in the US, where devices to allow easy transfer of music are generally not sold by agreements to keep them out of the hands of consumers. Like -- my last 2 phones -- no way to transfer songs to the phone over USB -- only to send them to the phone by paying to do it over the phone network where you are charged by the MB (after paying an initial $50 (~ £20-30)/mo for access.
"this is especially true in countries not so well off. like all the countries mentioned."
This is especially true in the _US_...
Getting back property is an uphill battle -- the constitution doesn't apply to "things", the courts have decided -- meaning the government doesn't have to prove guilt, they can require you (the defendant) prove your property is "innocent" of all crimes or involvement in crimes,
It has been this way since the "anti-drug-king-pin" laws were signed into law under "Bush, the first" in the late 80's. The laws were supposed to allow freezing assets so drug-king pins couldn't flee the country (also prevented them from accessing expensive lawyers and allowed them access only to government owned (public) "defenders", who's fiduciary duty is to the prosecutors (the government).
It's worse that just not living in the right country - in the US, it can be about not living in the right state.
Some states have a more pro-citizen, democratic leaning that is designed to keep people employed while others have a more pro-employer leaning that is designed to make working a privilege, (though they will call you lazy scum if you don't work).
It **used** to be the case that rules like what you mention would be accepted in california, but that changed under decades of democratic reforms where employees won their freedom - it was decided that employees were NOT owned property or 'slaves', and that what you did in your off hours, as long as it wasn't directly tied to what you did at work (and that can be a point of dispute). Now such agreements are no longer legal and even if employees sign such rules, **in California**, they are invalid and unenforceable (unless the law has changed again when Schwarzenegger and the GOP was running CA into the ground along with Bush...)...
The idea is that they don't own you outside of work -- on your own equipment. But it was heavily fought in court, so if your state hasn't already established precedent, it could be messy...
When I first started work in CA decades ago, my employer regularly took 'work' from employee's off hours (now days it is considered 'theft') -- i.e. unless they pay you 24/7 (better be getting some good over time!), those other hours are yours. But they tried to rip me off as well, -- had developed SW before I came there -- and though I worked on it at home while I was there, it was listed in my 'pre-owned' inventions, so when they tried to take it as a free demo, and were told they'd have to at least give me a bonus or anything on the side -- (I wasn't greedy... a 500-1000 bonus at the time would have bought me off), but for them it was the principle, == if they paid me, then they'd have to start paying everyone for off hours work (even though in my case it was only because it was listed under my starting agreement)... The people who wanted to use it had no problem with paying me (they were in marketing)... but my direct management nixed it -- but got flack for it -- and that only added to my popularity with management there....*sigh*...
being an unfortunate slob who lives in an area serviced by Comcast's fantastic stated speed of 16M/2M (they won't upgrade this area as it they don't consider it "financially attractive enough" tied to it being an area that is about 25% poorer than surrounding counties (and having notably poorer health care, as the feds reimburse the area about 25% less for Medicare),
I'm tied to comcast (DSL would give me 3M/768). I can say they have not even contacted some of their customers about signing their hosted domains.;-./
Because the bullshit lines have been fed that the GPL is 'viral'. It is 'encumbered' with problems.... standard "crowd source wisdom' [sic], is subject to steering by corporate propaganda...
Those in power love to tell others to follow the 'golden rule' -- and promote church activities for the "self sacrificing" state it helps engender, so that those in power can more easily manage the common folk...
Crowd management has been an art being refined for 1000's of years since 'bread and circuses'... Why do you think Republicans are against education initiatives and public funding for schools? They only want their own to be educated!.. Educating the masses -- you might end up with a bunch of liberals like in the 60's/70's who engage in riots and such, who were able to educated enough to understand how downtrodden we are and how illusory US freedom is. Then the media hit back with the 'me generation, and 'greed is good', to get kids back on track.
Now we have today and no signs of a reversal yet...
Except that if you read the article, it targets your cache, not your history.
It just tries to load various sites to see if they load quickly or not. If yes, then in local cache, else not. Thus used as how recently you have visited site (it it still in cache).
History -- i keep that going back about 240-360 days... much faster and more useful than google.
I mean if I wanna go to a site, why would I go to google rather than typing in a few letters of the site, -- and it knows which ones I visit most... all stored in my private cache... no ads inserted...
And you'd delete your history and use google -- when it's NOT the privacy issue (unless your machine is physically compromised...)...
Funny thing is the thing doesn't work very well.
First I had to permit it to run w/noscript.
But then it ran and came back that I hadn't visited slashdot (among several others ) that visit almost daily, but certainly within the last week.
Oh... Gee, howwdoes his test work, it tries to use your browser to contact other website... um... you wanna just allow that at random? Well, interface could use a bit of work, but Request Policy, doesn't allow the things that go through no script because they are simple fetches...
Though on one website, as soon as I gave a site needed permission to run its interface, it loaded an XUL security sheet that rewrote my browsers allowed security policy so it could talk to any site it wanted...
Ad block, blocked the XUL sheet.
The site stopped being functional (music play site) in any way.
Sorry, Put me in front of a computer with vi (with no auto complete builtin though some configure it to generate such, but I've found it usually slows down my coding more than speeds it up given the length of perl words), with a set of perl man manpages I can invoke in a separate window,and I can spin up some random demo perl prog in no time at all...of course please be there when I ask you about all the assumptions you left unstated.
Put me in front of a whiteboard...and try to get anything legible out of me -- let alone with keywords correct.
I'd even go on to say (this would be harder to allow) to let me have my own dir of self-written sample scripts I use all the time time -- because I'll often forget the basics of how to do a relatively simple algorithm if I known it is well encapsulated in one of my scripts and I can copy it on command whenever I need it as a starting point.
I even have a template of header code that has my most commonly used 'good programming practices' debug features/settings. Start a new file, I can save myself 5 minutes up front just by copying the template and commenting out/deleting portions I don't need.
Alot of my script progs (sometimes written explicitly as libs), are similar....Algorithms and shortcuts I find useful in my development -- without which I might spend hours recreating a bug free alternative.
So -- sure strip someone of their 'tools, and their collected knowledge' (which any good CS person would store on a computer, and not try to memory -- as it constantly needs updating and After 500-600 manuals, the memory access time really drops -- not to mention, for most people, the fidelity.
Might as well ask a race car driver to demonstrate how well they drive on a chalkboard....
Then again, that's NOT the USA, a common belief of the illiterate masses is that the US is a democracy, when in fact it is a republic -- the public is 'represented' by people we vote for -- but that doesn't mean they need to respond to every whim and fancy that current fashion, or the hotheads of the day have promoted.
Theoretically (not that it's been working so well in practice), the representatives are supposed to be those with more experience and wisdom (what a crock...how did this get so fracked up?)... who look at the longer view and don't fly-off the handle and do things based on current "popular opinion".... It's like the difference between basing decisions on science vs. pop-science. Pops are spikes and may not represent the best basis for making long term decisions.
Representatives are supposed to be looking out for the long term interests of the US -- unfortunately, instant-media, starting with radio and TV, but coming into full force with the internet and twittering, has brought the consequences of instant feedback to a representative for EVERY decision. No longer are they remembered/evaluated at election time on their record as a whole -- but instead, will be evaluated (by some, permanently), on each decision. This heavily influences ther decision making -- and is turning government decisions into more of a popularity contests -- with resulting downturn in leadership, governance and a decline of the US as a national leader.
That's not to say there haven't been other factors, but the belief that our representatives should be 'robots' controlled by electorate will is something that creates "rule by mob mentality".... something considered universally bad, as it always degenerates to the intelligence and morals of the lowest common denominators...which is exactly what we see happening in the US today...
Slashdot Mirror
It's because our legal system, like everything under capitalism, is for sale.
The rich & wealthy have been purchasing it for some time -- including the ability to put their businesses into bodies -- called corporations, through a process called incorporation. Then they get various rights and privileges that are normally reserved for people.
Most recently courts ruled that corporations are not restrained by campaign finance laws -- as it would be a violation of their constitutional protection -- given to people, of "freedom of expression".
Thus they can buy politicians at will under the protections of previously purchased rights giving them constitutional rights of free speech and such...
Incorporation didn't start in the US. If I remember, it came from Europe...
the US wasn't a leader in this wedge to give corporations full governmental powers (again, recent example -- the MPAA/RIAA forming their own police branch to investigate and police the new purchased agreements with all the Internet ISP's to police user's downloads. All outside of the government!...
It's like our money system -- it's privately owned by bankers. The "Fed" is a private company and is not accountable to the people of the US.
I.e. those who own our currency have no accounting to those who, by law, must use it, and only it.
The US is NOW inventing things, but before... we were capitalist traders who's main interest was buying and selling things (including arms) to both sides of a war... Wasn't until the WW's that the US took positions on things...-- espec. after we got attacked in WWII... That gave [sic] the largest capitalism-organization in the world (the US), the right to police the world... to protect our ability to trade (ultimately)... It's all about $$$$....
How the rich use it to create governments and laws to benefit them and keep the serfs down.
From the article:
According to the fourth quarter 2011, State of the Internet report from Akamai, the global average connection speed to the Internet dropped to 2.3 megabits per second (Mbps), representing a 14 percent decline from the third quarter of 2011. While the average connection speed declined, the global average peak connection speed was relatively flat, coming in at 11.7 Mbps for a 0.4 percent quarterly gain....
Also dropping were adoption rates -- I would surmise, because people saw no reason to switch to the lower speeds now available....
Lower speeds are not a very compelling reason to adopt. What they didn't mention is the likely price increase that accompanied the 'flat' connection speeds...
What is this .. science for idiots? This has been known for decades, but what's this got to do with computers or tech?
-1 offtopic, troll, spam
how stupid...undo/redo has been a staple in MS products -- something used by the majority of people for well over a decade, and they thought linux users were too stupid to be able to use such an interface?
What does that say about the developers... That they really have no clue about their user base and that they are incapable of designing for it.
I've not used gnome3... but the idea that they'd have such a feature in and remove it because it confuses poor users (if it does, give them an option to turn it off, don't remove it...IDIOTS!)
Another example of no points /., you listening out there?
+1 informative.
Hey
Is the Xfinity app also available on the PC? Or is this unfairly benefiting only XBOX owners because MS paid for XBOX 'free delivery. Paid or not, content neutral means irrespective of device you watch it on as well.
Why is slashdot always giving me points when there's nothing worth assigning points to yet when I find something worth modding up, my points 99% of the time, expired.
Maybe points shouldn't expire so quickly -- or better, proportional to the time the person has been registered with the site: rationale -- you know they've been around a long time, if they are someone worth giving points to and have good karma, (or have made good choices in the past), then maybe it is worth letting them take the time to make choices their way rather than force them into spending points just to spend points -- making choices that they would otherwise not have done -- thus lowering the overall quality of the grading process.
+1 for Informative or insightful, or interesting (take your pick).
That's good for little util progs, but for larger progs like 'bash' or 'vim', --help just doesn't cut it...
Then there's issues about what is a bug and what is not. I've seen that used percolate down from committee's as well. Where incompatible changes are introduced, by say, POSIX, -- but that's ok, because, it's in the POSIX spec! (the latest rev of it, that is...)..
Documentation can be used as a spec -- or it can be used to document bugs or inconsistent changes as a means of supporting the change.
Moron.
What do you think vaccines do?
They do exactly what you claim needs to be done. They stimulate the immune system with an 'irritant' so it builds up muscle against that 'irritant' -- making for a stronger immune system.
The way that you get a weak immune system is by not exposing to any foreign substances. so that it becomes a muscle that is never exercised and is worthless as you grow older.
Our culture's obsession with cleanliness and things being sterile and clean for baby is a two edged sword. Their immune systems need to be exposed to small amounts of pathogens in order to be stimulated to grow. Of course too much and their immune system is overwhelmed and they get sick. That's why vaccines were developed -- to give what is 99+% of the time, a safe dose of a pathogen (or a safe form of the pathogen). They are exactly what makes immune systems stronger.
But our mouths have grown up used to the taste of sucrose -- which is not good for you in volume, -- but out bodies know how to hit the satiation level faster with sucrose.
HFCS that has been artifically made more fructose - is something our taste buds are not evolutionarily designed for .. thus it is harder to judge proper intake. not too many people can consume large quantities of honey -- because it is too sweet. But put it in soda...and cut it with sucrose... HFCS, and it becomes palatable enough (though a bit thicker/syrupier than the sucrose variety -- thus it doesn't cut thirst as well).
Numerous studies show that our body doesn't digest fructose well -- it results in fat around the belly/abdominal area -- were as glucose results in fat distribution under the skin as a whole. Fructose was also connected with a rise in 'Bad cholesterol'... and a lowering of 'good' cholesterol' (likely related to it being more syrupy)...
The problem is -- if it was in small enough amounts, it wouldn't be harmful, but it has been put in most foods -- it has been in most baked goods --- even the store-baked muffins I've bought at the store... I see it in yogurts, puddings, (and soda), as well as breakfast cereals...)... it's put in everything -- which makes it an environmental toxin.
That's why it is so bad. If our bodies were made of 70% HFCS, it would be
as healthy as water. But they aren't. So it isn't.
HFCS isn't natural corn sugar. It's genetically modified corn syrup. They use a genetically modified bacteria to produce an HFCS that has much higher levels of Fructose (vs. sucrose, which our government places a tax on in order to support the Hawaiian sugar industry -- something that results in about a 10X price difference for sucrose in the US vs. the rest of the world -- thus manufacturers here try to use fructose, because it is much cheaper than sucrose; The US even charges higher prices for baked goods and other foods as they are imported based on their sucrose content (this was to close a loophole whereby people imported high -sucrose pastries / foods and deconstituted to get the raw sugar -- cheaper than paying "free market" [sic] prices in the US).
It doesn't break down in the body the same way that regular corn syrup does because it's normal balance of sugars isn't natural -- as a result it puts a higher strain on the liver to turn it into energy -- with a result that the liver over converts it to fat -- making less available for energy. The Given the proximity to the liver, HFCS-fat tends to accumulate near the stomach more so than other types which are released more slowly -- increasing the apple-shaped body (vs. pear shaped), that is associated with increased diabetes and heart and circulatory problems.
In short -- it's coincides with America's 'fat explosion' starting in the late 70's early 80's...
Is it a FF bug? Do you know the bug #? According to an earlier poster the problem is only in newer versions of tinyMCE -- maybe they had implemented some not well tested features? Dunno.
The FF team is getting pretty annoying. They don't really seem to give a rats ass about what users want... they are just going to go do their thing and hope someone follows... if you are a market leader that's one thing, but you should still look back over your shoulder once in a while to see if anyone is following...
This was known decades ago. I remember projects devoted to partial compilation to provide interactive feed back on what your code is doing.
The problem isn't how fast you get feed back -- it's getting any at all.
Unless you instrument your code or run it through a debugger, most code doesn't generate any output, so you don't know what it is doing!...
To instrument it generates nearly 100% overhead and running debugger can easily take 10X as long or longer to run the same code. Neither is a great tradeoff.
If the computer could take old and new and show us differences in execution flow -- or just SHOW us execution flow, that would be useful. Even today -- tools to show *static* execution-flow are rare and complicated to use -- not to mention difficult and expensive to develop.
With the cost for development tools being pushed toward 'zero', fringe benefits like visualization seem like a frill I'll never see and is unlikely to be developed unless vendors deem code excellence to be a much higher priority than it is now: today, mediocre, is more than good enough as long as it gets something in the customer's hands.
Responses proportional to behavior?
Come on -- they are following in our government's footsteps who charge $250K/song downloaded or more years behind bars for, not exploiting, but pointing out a security flaw, than someone would get for rape? (15-25 v. 5) or... (too many examples to think about)...
Sadly government sets the example for society to follow... and you expect people to be reasonable or 'nice', or polite...?? It was worse when you had an openly mean, hostile and uncaring president in office...(not to mention the accurate comparisons of his sidekick to a characterization of evil: Darth Vader)...
Bumper stickers went from 'Mean people suck' to 'Mean people rule, get over it'
I don't **like** what the silencer does -- as he's become judge, jury and executioner - and he __could__ cost lives, but at the same time, I *somewhat*, laud people who take action in this time when government is not only, NOT protecting us from corporate misdeed, but is often a 'co-perp'.
Actually, the FBI and US law enforcement agents have started picking up good bucks on the side following in the footsteps of congress-critters -- getting paid for 'outside work' by media companies.
Actually music is only supported in the US, where devices to allow easy transfer of music are generally not sold by agreements to keep them out of the hands of consumers. Like -- my last 2 phones -- no way to transfer songs to the phone over USB -- only to send them to the phone by paying to do it over the phone network where you are charged by the MB (after paying an initial $50 (~ £20-30)/mo for access.
"this is especially true in countries not so well off. like all the countries mentioned."
This is especially true in the _US_...
Getting back property is an uphill battle -- the constitution doesn't apply to "things", the courts have decided -- meaning the government doesn't have to prove guilt, they can require you (the defendant) prove your property is "innocent" of all crimes or involvement in crimes,
It has been this way since the "anti-drug-king-pin" laws were signed into law under "Bush, the first" in the late 80's. The laws were supposed to allow freezing assets so drug-king pins couldn't flee the country (also prevented them from accessing expensive lawyers and allowed them access only to government owned (public)
"defenders", who's fiduciary duty is to the prosecutors (the government).
It's worse that just not living in the right country - in the US, it can be about not living in the right state.
Some states have a more pro-citizen, democratic leaning that is designed to keep people employed while others have a more pro-employer leaning that is designed to make working a privilege, (though they will call you lazy scum if you don't work).
It **used** to be the case that rules like what you mention would be accepted in california, but that changed under decades of democratic reforms where employees won their freedom - it was decided that employees were NOT owned property or 'slaves', and that what you did in your off hours, as long as it wasn't directly tied to what you did at work (and that can be a point of dispute). Now such agreements are no longer legal and even if employees sign such rules, **in California**, they are invalid and unenforceable (unless the law has changed again when Schwarzenegger and the GOP was running CA into the ground along with Bush...)...
The idea is that they don't own you outside of work -- on your own equipment. But it was heavily fought in court, so if your state hasn't already established precedent, it could be messy...
When I first started work in CA decades ago, my employer regularly took 'work' from employee's off hours (now days it is considered 'theft') -- i.e. unless they pay you 24/7 (better be getting some good over time!), those other hours are yours. But they tried to rip me off as well, -- had developed SW before I came there -- and though I worked on it at home while I was there, it was listed in my 'pre-owned' inventions, so when they tried to take it as a free demo, and were told they'd have to at least give me a bonus or anything on the side -- (I wasn't greedy... a 500-1000 bonus at the time would have bought me off), but for them it was the principle, == if they paid me, then they'd have to start paying everyone for off hours work (even though in my case it was only because it was listed under my starting agreement)... The people who wanted to use it had no problem with paying me (they were in marketing)... but my direct management nixed it -- but got flack for it -- and that only added to my popularity with management there....*sigh*...
So, -- Why not sell ..
WinTablet Supreme V1.0 - certified, and restricted,
Then after it's on the market, sell WinTable Supreme V1.0.1, the uncertified version?
being an unfortunate slob who lives in an area serviced by Comcast's fantastic stated speed of 16M/2M (they won't upgrade this area as it they don't consider it "financially attractive enough" tied to it being an area that is about 25% poorer than surrounding counties (and having notably poorer health care, as the feds reimburse the area about 25% less for Medicare),
I'm tied to comcast (DSL would give me 3M/768). I can say they have not even contacted some of their customers about signing their hosted domains. ;-./
Because the bullshit lines have been fed that the GPL is 'viral'. It is 'encumbered' with problems.... standard "crowd source wisdom' [sic], is subject to steering by corporate propaganda...
Those in power love to tell others to follow the 'golden rule' -- and promote church activities for the "self sacrificing" state it helps engender, so that those in power can more easily manage the common folk...
Crowd management has been an art being refined for 1000's of years since 'bread and circuses'... Why do you think Republicans are against education initiatives and public funding for schools? They only want their own to be educated!.. Educating the masses -- you might end up with a bunch of liberals like in the 60's/70's who engage in riots and such, who were able to educated enough to understand how downtrodden we are and how illusory US freedom is. Then the media hit back with the 'me generation, and 'greed is good', to get kids back on track.
Now we have today and no signs of a reversal yet...
Except that if you read the article, it targets your cache, not your history.
It just tries to load various sites to see if they load quickly or not. If yes, then in local cache, else not. Thus used as how recently you have visited site (it it still in cache).
History -- i keep that going back about 240-360 days... much faster and more useful than google.
I mean if I wanna go to a site, why would I go to google rather than typing in a few letters of the site, -- and it knows which ones I visit most... all stored in my private cache... no ads inserted...
And you'd delete your history and use google -- when it's NOT the privacy issue (unless your machine is physically compromised...)...
Funny thing is the thing doesn't work very well.
First I had to permit it to run w/noscript.
But then it ran and came back that I hadn't visited slashdot (among several others ) that visit almost daily, but certainly within the last week.
Oh... Gee, howwdoes his test work, it tries to use your browser to contact other website... um... you wanna just allow that at random? Well, interface could use a bit of work, but Request Policy, doesn't allow the things that go through no script because they are simple fetches...
Though on one website, as soon as I gave a site needed permission to run its interface, it loaded an XUL security sheet that rewrote my browsers allowed security policy so it could talk to any site it wanted...
Ad block, blocked the XUL sheet.
The site stopped being functional (music play site) in any way.
Sigh.
Sorry, Put me in front of a computer with vi (with no auto complete builtin though some configure it to generate such, but I've found it usually slows down my coding more than speeds it up given the length of perl words), with a set of perl man manpages I can invoke in a separate window,and I can spin up some random demo perl prog in no time at all...of course please be there when I ask you about all the assumptions you left unstated.
Put me in front of a whiteboard...and try to get anything legible out of me -- let alone with keywords correct.
I'd even go on to say (this would be harder to allow) to let me have my own dir of self-written sample scripts I use all the time time -- because I'll often forget the basics of how to do a relatively simple algorithm if I known it is well encapsulated in one of my scripts and I can copy it on command whenever I need it as a starting point.
I even have a template of header code that has my most commonly used 'good programming practices' debug features/settings. Start a new file, I can save myself 5 minutes up front just by copying the template and commenting out/deleting portions I don't need.
Alot of my script progs (sometimes written explicitly as libs), are similar....Algorithms and shortcuts I find useful in my development -- without which I might spend hours recreating a bug free alternative.
So -- sure strip someone of their 'tools, and their collected knowledge' (which any good CS person would store on a computer, and not try to memory -- as it constantly needs updating and After 500-600 manuals, the memory access time really drops -- not to mention, for most people, the fidelity.
Might as well ask a race car driver to demonstrate how well they drive on a chalkboard....
Then again, that's NOT the USA, a common belief of the illiterate masses is that the US is a democracy, when in fact it is a republic -- the public is 'represented' by people we vote for -- but that doesn't mean they need to respond to every whim and fancy that current fashion, or the hotheads of the day have promoted.
Theoretically (not that it's been working so well in practice), the representatives are supposed to be those with more experience and wisdom (what a crock...how did this get so fracked up?)... who look at the longer view and don't fly-off the handle and do things based on current "popular opinion".... It's like the difference between basing decisions on science vs. pop-science. Pops are spikes and may not represent the best basis for making long term decisions.
Representatives are supposed to be looking out for the long term interests of the US -- unfortunately, instant-media, starting with radio and TV, but coming into full force with the internet and twittering, has brought the consequences of instant feedback to a representative for EVERY decision. No longer are they remembered/evaluated at election time on their record as a whole -- but instead, will be evaluated (by some, permanently), on each decision. This heavily influences ther decision making -- and is turning government decisions into more of a popularity contests -- with resulting downturn in leadership, governance and a decline of the US as a national leader.
That's not to say there haven't been other factors, but the belief that our representatives should be 'robots' controlled by electorate will is something that creates "rule by mob mentality".... something considered universally bad, as it always degenerates to the intelligence and morals of the lowest common denominators...which is exactly what we see happening in the US today...