HAH! It's funny that when Microsoft has a so called monopoly, it's the end of the world but when Google has a monopoly... it must be Microsoft.
Microsoft does have a monopoly, an illegal monopoly that was acquired via a number of seriously dirty moves, deliberately violating the law in order to remove consumer choice. Or do you believe that that our choosing to use Google's services more than any other company is a sign of inherent illegal monopolism? Well, if we do, that's not bad: it's because Google does a better job at delivering the services we want than anyone else.
Do you understand what the term monopoly means, and that having a monopoly in a particular area is not, in and of itself, against the law? It's the manner in which you achieve your monopoly status, and what you do with it once you have it that counts. I don't see Google suing competitors out of existence, although they've certainly snapped up a number of startups, generally for technologies that they need for their own products. Sure... they're damn serious competition to anyone wanting to enter the search and online advertising business, but it's because millions upon millions of people have decided that Google does what they want. It's not because of backroom deals with hardware manufacturers to only ship Google's products. That's Microsoft's way.
In short, it's not that I don't think my kids could handle porn, it's that everyone else couldn't handle the idea that my kids were exposed to porn.
That's about the most intelligent comment I've heard yet on this subject.
When I was about, oh, eleven or twelve, my Dad handed me a stack of Playboys, Penthouses and other porno mags a couple feet thick (my uncle maintained several subscriptions, apparently.) I went nuts for a week, but after I got it out of my system it wasn't such an attraction. Meanwhile, all of my friends were still hiding their own copies underneath their mattresses to keep them away from their less open-minded parents. Me, I kept mine right out in the open... none of them could believe it. "Geez, hide that or you'll get grounded for a month!" "Nah, my Dad doesn't care." It really was pretty cool, and frankly it had zero impact on how I turned out as an adult. Didn't rape anyone, don't have any particular fascination for porno: it's just another facet of life. The way I look at it, kids and pornography is mostly a big deal because some people have decided to make it a big deal (and usually for their own benefit, not the children's.) I put the hypocritical Reverend Jobs squarely in that category.
My Dad always had a way of surprising me. Still, imagine how his attitude would fly today... I can see the scenario you described happening very easily.
Apple sells the same kind of freedom as Microsoft.
Hardly. Until the advent of Android, Winmo was about the most open smartphone OS out there... Microsoft doesn't care what you do with it, any more than Google gives a flying you-know-what about whether you watch porn videos on your N1.
Me too. I think Valve Corporation is a. not as boneheaded greedy as Ubisoft and b. is more competent technically. Yes, there's just as much potential for abuse, but so far I've not had any grief with Steam at all. Certainly not when compared to the likes of Ubisoft. As always, if you buy into a DRM-laden content-distribution system, expect that at some point your "investment" may become worthless. It's the nature of the beast, and I wish more people would understand that. It's not such a big deal with a video game, I suppose. However, if I spent a lot of money on e-books (say, reference materials that I need) and I found out one day that my privileges had been revoked, I'd be pissed. And if you're involved with DRM, especially online DRM, that's what it amounts to. A privilege granted by a corporation.
Consequently, for anything that's remotely important to me, I want nothing to do with DRM.
It can still be illegal, just like murder, rape, and extortion are illegal. But copyright infringement is not equivalent to any of those things either, and to use one of those terms instead of the proper ones because it sounds "more serious" is misunderstanding what theft is at best and deliberately dishonest at worst.
I disagree. Ubisoft has been raping their customers for some time now with a DRM scheme that is little short of extortion, and I think it's high time that we murder their sales figures by spending our gaming dollars with companies that don't steal our time.
but it's impossible for these businesses to exist in the absence of regulation, so clearly some form of regulation is necessary.
The original "how quickly we forget" poster has apparently forgotten about the Communications Act of 1934, which required universal telephone coverage. Granted, AT&T was given a government-instituted monopoly in exchange for that service, however we had the about the best phone system on the planet for a long, long time, thanks largely to that one piece of legislation. I'm generally not for increased regulation, but in this case, I think we need to apply some basic standards to these people, and penalize them when they fail to live up to them.
It will be interesting to see what happens if and when Congress attempts to mandate spyware on every single operating personal computer in the United States. And, I might add, not a program that reports to a legitimate law-enforcement agency (if any such Federal organizations exist in the present time), but to the private sector.
Who would the computers of Congressmen report to, what about those of RIAA and MPAA members...
Yup, they're just using the old tactic of pushing the comfort boundaries. This is what really worries me... they'll "water this down" so that its "fair in comparison to the original proposal" after much debate, but in absolute terms it will still be ridiculous.
It will be interesting to see what happens if and when Congress attempts to mandate spyware on every single operating personal computer in the United States. And, I might add, not a program that reports to a legitimate law-enforcement agency (if any such Federal organizations exist in the present time), but to the private sector. If that does happen, the next question will be what penalties would be applied to an individual who attempts to circumvent, disable or uninstall said spyware. You know, like most of us on Slashdot. This puts a bad taste in my mouth, it really does, and anyone who claims, "hey, it's just entertainment" isn't seeing the bigger picture.
Besides, given the RIAA's demonstrated inability to reliably sue the right people, unwillingness to admit mistakes and offer redress (and absolute willingness to write off the collateral damage with out a second's thought) I have zero doubt that this would also be highly destructive, only more so. Remember folks, the MPAA is composed of people just as amoral and fundamentally dangerous as the RIAA crowd: hell, they're cut from precisely the same mold. Don't forget Jack "The VCR will DESTROY the industry!" Valenti... there are plenty more where he came from.
Really? It's entertainment. Go find something that's actually important to get your panties in a wad over.
Damn, people, are we all that spoiled and unaware of the world around us?
The problem is, it's not just entertainment. Or are you going to claim that the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (among others) only affect entertainment??? The ramifications to this are far-reaching and very dangerous, if for no other reason than that they set a very bad precedent for other industries to follow. I'm very disappointed in my own country for even entertaining these ideas: they're morally and ethically defective and should be discarded out of hand.
wake me up when apple reconsiders its near-moronic app policy, not a single case. because it is the policy that is the problem, not its application.
Even if they do, what's to stop them from going right back to it when the heat's off? I'll stick with my Android phone for the time being: does what I want and more, and I don't have to contend with stupid policies. I'm on T-Mobile and while they initially had Google pull all tethering apps off the Android Market, they seem to have rethought that particular policy. Hell, right on their website they tell you how to do it. As the 3G underdog they're doing things right, competitively speaking: I wouldn't consider moving to AT&T, Verizon or (gack!) Sprint at this point.
Google does have some guidelines for developers but they're nothing like Apple's arbitrariness, nor has Google set themselves up as a capricious gatekeeper. Personally, as a developer I'm much more comfortable with the idea of dealing with Google than I ever would be with Apple. Google makes it easy: no up front fees (well, okay $25 to sign up as a dev), no submitting your app and hoping that Apple won't decide to blow you off, no long approval periods, no NDAs, none of that crap.
I'd say you're mostly correct except for #1... you really can't lay that at the collective feet of the Republican party. You just can't, historically it's pretty damn hard to make such a determination (although Democrats love to peg Republicans as warmongers: it makes for good sound bites.) Remember, it's Congress that formally declares war upon another nation, not a sitting President.
Still, just for the record, it was a Democrat that was in office when we got involved in the Big One. Most Democrats don't want to talk about that, it would tarnish the peace-loving image they work so hard to promote.
Does the GPS chip actually constantly transmit? I was under the impression that unless you're running one of those tracking apps that you had to actually be in a voice call for the GPS chip to transmit the location. If this is the case sure you can't disable the "Only 911" on most phones but you could just not answer, their only fall back would be to track you on tower triangulation, which is I beleive an exaustive and time consuming process if you want more than a few miles locational accuracy.
Depends. The receiver transmits nothing on its own, but the cellular network can poll it for location data. That's how they use it to find people in trouble, etc.
Psychologists at the University of Minnesota's Carleton *School of Management*
Does anyone else see the correlation? Their sample group was entirely MBA-types.
No kidding... they chose one of the most mercenary groups available. I like money but I haven't devoted my life to acquire it. In my case, maybe having me count solid-state hard disks, or maybe quad-core motherboards would work. I think all this "study" proves is that when you're distracted you don't hurt as much. BFD.
When people are reminded of money in a subtle manner by counting out hard currency
That's subtle? As Inigo Montoya once said, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Because we all know, the best mentality for treatment is only for those of us that live here. Everyone else must stay away. Stupid immigrants/"imports."
Stupid illegal immigrants you mean. I agree with the GP: the Mexican government is deliberately aiding and abetting its own citizens in breaking out laws. That's the only issue I have with Mexicans and their quasi-government. Look, I know many Mexicans who came here by following the same route that millions of other legal immigrants followed, and so far as I'm concerned they're just as American as I am, and I was born here. So get off your high horse: immigration is not the issue. Criminals are the issue.
Does this always-on surveillance mean that the govenment can track your precise whereabouts whenever it wants?
Sure... but not because there's a chemical sensor in your phone. That's just stupid. If they can track us, it's because there's a GPS chip in there, and that's nothing new.
and the filling of this demand results in child abuse.
Only until James Cameron gets involved. Then it will all be generated on render farms, and at the end of every movie, there will be a legend that says, "no children were harmed in the making of this movie."
Trust me, that's going to happen: the porn industry has vast resources and computing power is getting cheaper all the time, and the current legal/law enforcement climate will probably drive them to it. Maybe they already are, I don't know. In any event, when that does happen, when photorealistic synthesized child pornography is available... how will you feel about it then? The question then becomes "well, if children aren't being harmed in the production of this crap, has it now become just another harmless perversion?" It'll be harder for lawmakers to throw rhetoric around when kids aren't even involved anymore. Of course, they'll just begin claiming that child pornography creates sexual predators and throw up a couple of marginal studies to "prove" it. "Think of the children" has a magical effect in Washington and they won't give that up easily.
I simply cannot agree with the idea that the promotion and/or glorification of child pornography is right in any way shape or form.
While I am all for freedom of speech and the rights of the people
Apparently not. The current pogrom against child pornography is a major and, I might add, deliberate overreaction. Aren't there other disgusting aspects of human behavior that we could be examining? Aspects which do even more damage to the fabric of society than child pornography? Rhetorical question: yes there are. Yet our government has chosen this particular perversion to focus its energies upon, mainly because nobody (and I mean nobody) wants to be seen as being against the children. Consequently, it's easy for those in power to use this to push their own agendas... agendas which have nothing whatsoever to do with the children but do involve the acquisition of more power, the elimination of more of our hard-earned civil liberties.
Take, for example, the Child Online Protection Act. That's a classic example of what I'm talking about. Quoting the linked article:
On March 22, 2007, U.S. District Judge Lowell A. Reed, Jr. once again struck down the Child Online Protection Act,[7] finding the law facially in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution. In addition to the plaintiffs ACLU et al., several witnesses testified in defense of first amendment rights on the Internet, including the director of the Erotic Authors Association, Marilyn Jaye Lewis. [8] Reed issued an order permanently enjoining the government from enforcing COPA, commenting that "perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."[9] The government again appealed, and the case was heard before the Third Circuit.
There's a judge who "gets it."
So, keep that in mind when you decide to unthinkingly jump on the bandwagon. Fortunately for us,
On January 21, 2009, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear appeals of the lower court decision, effectively killing the bill.
The friendliest interface for people who don't want to learn is not the GUI or the CLI, but the TUI. A full screen text application, like a ncurses app.
You know what? I agree with you a hundred percent. The aforementioned Apple ][ apps were all TUI-based, and the interface was basically a series of nested menus, no more than ten options per menu, with a single-digit shortcut for each option, each option taking you to either an entry/display screen... or another menu. I noticed that users would come up and just type the numbers that got them to the page they wanted. Linda the cost accountant might type "2934" to get where she need to go, and Sally the secretary might enter "40375" to do what she wanted. After they used the system for a while, none of the regular users bothered using the highlight bar... they just spit out their memorized combination and BAM!, they were getting their jobs done. Because the screen updates were instantaneous, they could just snap in a few keystrokes in under a second.
It worked well. The software got out of their way, I had no support calls (other than the occasional hardware failure) and, most importantly, I got paid in full. Happy corporate users and paychecks go hand in hand, I discovered.
“obtuse, difficult to maintain, esoteric software stack” aka, a command line.
Expectations. Thirty years ago (geez, has it been that long) I was using Apple ][ machines on a Corvus network to run custom industrial data acquisition and accounting/job costing software. I had no problem whatsoever training people (accountants, a couple of secretaries, some plant workers) to use the stuff. Their expectation was that they were going to have to learn something, and they did, and were surprised that it was nowhere near as difficult as they had assumed it would be. Nevertheless, it's that willingness to learn that is the issue here. People have been trained by a quarter-century's worth of glittering GUIs to believe that computers are really simple gadgets at heart, like toasters, and that they shouldn't need to invest any time in learning anything because that's the job of the magical gnomes that reside inside the box. The problem is, to get the full benefit of any complex bit of technology, you have to be willing to use your head. Anyone can learn a command line, just like anyone can learn to program their VCRs: neither are rocket science, but both require some determination
Of of my coworkers made the comment once that the Mac is for "people who are too stupid to use a computer." There's some truth to that. Probably why I don't like Apple products in general.
Slashdot Mirror
HAH! It's funny that when Microsoft has a so called monopoly, it's the end of the world but when Google has a monopoly... it must be Microsoft.
Microsoft does have a monopoly, an illegal monopoly that was acquired via a number of seriously dirty moves, deliberately violating the law in order to remove consumer choice. Or do you believe that that our choosing to use Google's services more than any other company is a sign of inherent illegal monopolism? Well, if we do, that's not bad: it's because Google does a better job at delivering the services we want than anyone else.
... they're damn serious competition to anyone wanting to enter the search and online advertising business, but it's because millions upon millions of people have decided that Google does what they want. It's not because of backroom deals with hardware manufacturers to only ship Google's products. That's Microsoft's way.
Do you understand what the term monopoly means, and that having a monopoly in a particular area is not, in and of itself, against the law? It's the manner in which you achieve your monopoly status, and what you do with it once you have it that counts. I don't see Google suing competitors out of existence, although they've certainly snapped up a number of startups, generally for technologies that they need for their own products. Sure
In short, it's not that I don't think my kids could handle porn, it's that everyone else couldn't handle the idea that my kids were exposed to porn.
That's about the most intelligent comment I've heard yet on this subject.
... none of them could believe it. "Geez, hide that or you'll get grounded for a month!" "Nah, my Dad doesn't care." It really was pretty cool, and frankly it had zero impact on how I turned out as an adult. Didn't rape anyone, don't have any particular fascination for porno: it's just another facet of life. The way I look at it, kids and pornography is mostly a big deal because some people have decided to make it a big deal (and usually for their own benefit, not the children's.) I put the hypocritical Reverend Jobs squarely in that category.
... I can see the scenario you described happening very easily.
When I was about, oh, eleven or twelve, my Dad handed me a stack of Playboys, Penthouses and other porno mags a couple feet thick (my uncle maintained several subscriptions, apparently.) I went nuts for a week, but after I got it out of my system it wasn't such an attraction. Meanwhile, all of my friends were still hiding their own copies underneath their mattresses to keep them away from their less open-minded parents. Me, I kept mine right out in the open
My Dad always had a way of surprising me. Still, imagine how his attitude would fly today
Apple sells the same kind of freedom as Microsoft.
Hardly. Until the advent of Android, Winmo was about the most open smartphone OS out there ... Microsoft doesn't care what you do with it, any more than Google gives a flying you-know-what about whether you watch porn videos on your N1.
I've had excellent luck with Steam
Me too. I think Valve Corporation is a. not as boneheaded greedy as Ubisoft and b. is more competent technically. Yes, there's just as much potential for abuse, but so far I've not had any grief with Steam at all. Certainly not when compared to the likes of Ubisoft. As always, if you buy into a DRM-laden content-distribution system, expect that at some point your "investment" may become worthless. It's the nature of the beast, and I wish more people would understand that. It's not such a big deal with a video game, I suppose. However, if I spent a lot of money on e-books (say, reference materials that I need) and I found out one day that my privileges had been revoked, I'd be pissed. And if you're involved with DRM, especially online DRM, that's what it amounts to. A privilege granted by a corporation. Consequently, for anything that's remotely important to me, I want nothing to do with DRM.
Big companies are all the same, especially if most of their customers are from the US.
What? It's not even an American outfit and we're still to blame?
It can still be illegal, just like murder, rape, and extortion are illegal. But copyright infringement is not equivalent to any of those things either, and to use one of those terms instead of the proper ones because it sounds "more serious" is misunderstanding what theft is at best and deliberately dishonest at worst.
I disagree. Ubisoft has been raping their customers for some time now with a DRM scheme that is little short of extortion, and I think it's high time that we murder their sales figures by spending our gaming dollars with companies that don't steal our time.
So far internet access is not considered a necessary service and is not highly regulated at all.
True. And that's going to change. The question is, will the required regulation change with it?
but it's impossible for these businesses to exist in the absence of regulation, so clearly some form of regulation is necessary.
The original "how quickly we forget" poster has apparently forgotten about the Communications Act of 1934, which required universal telephone coverage. Granted, AT&T was given a government-instituted monopoly in exchange for that service, however we had the about the best phone system on the planet for a long, long time, thanks largely to that one piece of legislation. I'm generally not for increased regulation, but in this case, I think we need to apply some basic standards to these people, and penalize them when they fail to live up to them.
It will be interesting to see what happens if and when Congress attempts to mandate spyware on every single operating personal computer in the United States. And, I might add, not a program that reports to a legitimate law-enforcement agency (if any such Federal organizations exist in the present time), but to the private sector. Who would the computers of Congressmen report to, what about those of RIAA and MPAA members...
My guess? J. Edgar Hoover's ghost.
I'm very disappointed in my own country for even entertaining these ideas:
Pun intended?
Very much. I even highlighted it so you would be sure not to miss it.
Yup, they're just using the old tactic of pushing the comfort boundaries. This is what really worries me ... they'll "water this down" so that its "fair in comparison to the original proposal" after much debate, but in absolute terms it will still be ridiculous.
It will be interesting to see what happens if and when Congress attempts to mandate spyware on every single operating personal computer in the United States. And, I might add, not a program that reports to a legitimate law-enforcement agency (if any such Federal organizations exist in the present time), but to the private sector. If that does happen, the next question will be what penalties would be applied to an individual who attempts to circumvent, disable or uninstall said spyware. You know, like most of us on Slashdot. This puts a bad taste in my mouth, it really does, and anyone who claims, "hey, it's just entertainment" isn't seeing the bigger picture.
... there are plenty more where he came from.
Besides, given the RIAA's demonstrated inability to reliably sue the right people, unwillingness to admit mistakes and offer redress (and absolute willingness to write off the collateral damage with out a second's thought) I have zero doubt that this would also be highly destructive, only more so. Remember folks, the MPAA is composed of people just as amoral and fundamentally dangerous as the RIAA crowd: hell, they're cut from precisely the same mold. Don't forget Jack "The VCR will DESTROY the industry!" Valenti
Not the America I grew up in, let me tell you.
Really? It's entertainment. Go find something that's actually important to get your panties in a wad over.
Damn, people, are we all that spoiled and unaware of the world around us?
The problem is, it's not just entertainment. Or are you going to claim that the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (among others) only affect entertainment??? The ramifications to this are far-reaching and very dangerous, if for no other reason than that they set a very bad precedent for other industries to follow. I'm very disappointed in my own country for even entertaining these ideas: they're morally and ethically defective and should be discarded out of hand.
If you don't like it, stop using your iPhone/iPad/iWhatever, use something else, and get on with your life.
I agree 100%. That's why I dropped Apple products back in 1981 and haven't looked back.
wake me up when apple reconsiders its near-moronic app policy, not a single case. because it is the policy that is the problem, not its application.
Even if they do, what's to stop them from going right back to it when the heat's off? I'll stick with my Android phone for the time being: does what I want and more, and I don't have to contend with stupid policies. I'm on T-Mobile and while they initially had Google pull all tethering apps off the Android Market, they seem to have rethought that particular policy. Hell, right on their website they tell you how to do it. As the 3G underdog they're doing things right, competitively speaking: I wouldn't consider moving to AT&T, Verizon or (gack!) Sprint at this point.
Google does have some guidelines for developers but they're nothing like Apple's arbitrariness, nor has Google set themselves up as a capricious gatekeeper. Personally, as a developer I'm much more comfortable with the idea of dealing with Google than I ever would be with Apple. Google makes it easy: no up front fees (well, okay $25 to sign up as a dev), no submitting your app and hoping that Apple won't decide to blow you off, no long approval periods, no NDAs, none of that crap.
Jobs & Co. just irritate me.
I'd say you're mostly correct except for #1 ... you really can't lay that at the collective feet of the Republican party. You just can't, historically it's pretty damn hard to make such a determination (although Democrats love to peg Republicans as warmongers: it makes for good sound bites.) Remember, it's Congress that formally declares war upon another nation, not a sitting President.
Still, just for the record, it was a Democrat that was in office when we got involved in the Big One. Most Democrats don't want to talk about that, it would tarnish the peace-loving image they work so hard to promote.
I'm not certain that's really as clear cut as one might want.
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant "among our lawmakers, nobody wants to be seen as being against the children."
Does the GPS chip actually constantly transmit? I was under the impression that unless you're running one of those tracking apps that you had to actually be in a voice call for the GPS chip to transmit the location. If this is the case sure you can't disable the "Only 911" on most phones but you could just not answer, their only fall back would be to track you on tower triangulation, which is I beleive an exaustive and time consuming process if you want more than a few miles locational accuracy.
Depends. The receiver transmits nothing on its own, but the cellular network can poll it for location data. That's how they use it to find people in trouble, etc.
Psychologists at the University of Minnesota's Carleton *School of Management*
Does anyone else see the correlation? Their sample group was entirely MBA-types.
No kidding ... they chose one of the most mercenary groups available. I like money but I haven't devoted my life to acquire it. In my case, maybe having me count solid-state hard disks, or maybe quad-core motherboards would work. I think all this "study" proves is that when you're distracted you don't hurt as much. BFD.
When people are reminded of money in a subtle manner by counting out hard currency
That's subtle? As Inigo Montoya once said, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Thats why I'm a Republican, I don't have to be disappointed.
That's a good point, actually. If you expect nothing, and then receive precisely nothing ... well, you have nothing to complain about, do you.
Because we all know, the best mentality for treatment is only for those of us that live here. Everyone else must stay away. Stupid immigrants/"imports."
Stupid illegal immigrants you mean. I agree with the GP: the Mexican government is deliberately aiding and abetting its own citizens in breaking out laws. That's the only issue I have with Mexicans and their quasi-government. Look, I know many Mexicans who came here by following the same route that millions of other legal immigrants followed, and so far as I'm concerned they're just as American as I am, and I was born here. So get off your high horse: immigration is not the issue. Criminals are the issue.
But you know all that.
Does this always-on surveillance mean that the govenment can track your precise whereabouts whenever it wants?
Sure ... but not because there's a chemical sensor in your phone. That's just stupid. If they can track us, it's because there's a GPS chip in there, and that's nothing new.
and the filling of this demand results in child abuse.
Only until James Cameron gets involved. Then it will all be generated on render farms, and at the end of every movie, there will be a legend that says, "no children were harmed in the making of this movie."
... how will you feel about it then? The question then becomes "well, if children aren't being harmed in the production of this crap, has it now become just another harmless perversion?" It'll be harder for lawmakers to throw rhetoric around when kids aren't even involved anymore. Of course, they'll just begin claiming that child pornography creates sexual predators and throw up a couple of marginal studies to "prove" it. "Think of the children" has a magical effect in Washington and they won't give that up easily.
Trust me, that's going to happen: the porn industry has vast resources and computing power is getting cheaper all the time, and the current legal/law enforcement climate will probably drive them to it. Maybe they already are, I don't know. In any event, when that does happen, when photorealistic synthesized child pornography is available
I simply cannot agree with the idea that the promotion and/or glorification of child pornography is right in any way shape or form.
While I am all for freedom of speech and the rights of the people
Apparently not. The current pogrom against child pornography is a major and, I might add, deliberate overreaction. Aren't there other disgusting aspects of human behavior that we could be examining? Aspects which do even more damage to the fabric of society than child pornography? Rhetorical question: yes there are. Yet our government has chosen this particular perversion to focus its energies upon, mainly because nobody (and I mean nobody) wants to be seen as being against the children. Consequently, it's easy for those in power to use this to push their own agendas ... agendas which have nothing whatsoever to do with the children but do involve the acquisition of more power, the elimination of more of our hard-earned civil liberties.
Take, for example, the Child Online Protection Act. That's a classic example of what I'm talking about. Quoting the linked article:
On March 22, 2007, U.S. District Judge Lowell A. Reed, Jr. once again struck down the Child Online Protection Act,[7] finding the law facially in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution. In addition to the plaintiffs ACLU et al., several witnesses testified in defense of first amendment rights on the Internet, including the director of the Erotic Authors Association, Marilyn Jaye Lewis. [8] Reed issued an order permanently enjoining the government from enforcing COPA, commenting that "perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."[9] The government again appealed, and the case was heard before the Third Circuit.
There's a judge who "gets it." So, keep that in mind when you decide to unthinkingly jump on the bandwagon. Fortunately for us,
On January 21, 2009, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear appeals of the lower court decision, effectively killing the bill.
.
The friendliest interface for people who don't want to learn is not the GUI or the CLI, but the TUI. A full screen text application, like a ncurses app.
You know what? I agree with you a hundred percent. The aforementioned Apple ][ apps were all TUI-based, and the interface was basically a series of nested menus, no more than ten options per menu, with a single-digit shortcut for each option, each option taking you to either an entry/display screen ... or another menu. I noticed that users would come up and just type the numbers that got them to the page they wanted. Linda the cost accountant might type "2934" to get where she need to go, and Sally the secretary might enter "40375" to do what she wanted. After they used the system for a while, none of the regular users bothered using the highlight bar ... they just spit out their memorized combination and BAM!, they were getting their jobs done. Because the screen updates were instantaneous, they could just snap in a few keystrokes in under a second.
It worked well. The software got out of their way, I had no support calls (other than the occasional hardware failure) and, most importantly, I got paid in full. Happy corporate users and paychecks go hand in hand, I discovered.
“obtuse, difficult to maintain, esoteric software stack” aka, a command line.
Expectations. Thirty years ago (geez, has it been that long) I was using Apple ][ machines on a Corvus network to run custom industrial data acquisition and accounting/job costing software. I had no problem whatsoever training people (accountants, a couple of secretaries, some plant workers) to use the stuff. Their expectation was that they were going to have to learn something, and they did, and were surprised that it was nowhere near as difficult as they had assumed it would be. Nevertheless, it's that willingness to learn that is the issue here. People have been trained by a quarter-century's worth of glittering GUIs to believe that computers are really simple gadgets at heart, like toasters, and that they shouldn't need to invest any time in learning anything because that's the job of the magical gnomes that reside inside the box. The problem is, to get the full benefit of any complex bit of technology, you have to be willing to use your head. Anyone can learn a command line, just like anyone can learn to program their VCRs: neither are rocket science, but both require some determination
Of of my coworkers made the comment once that the Mac is for "people who are too stupid to use a computer." There's some truth to that. Probably why I don't like Apple products in general.