Nah... politicians the world 'round polished that particular skillset to a fine gloss centuries ago. Microsoft is just taking a few pages from their book.
That is arguably one of the most asinine comments I've ever heard. I guess that means that I no longer need to pull any punches or make any attempt to be reasonable when the governments of, say, China, or India, or Mexico or {insert your nation here} do something that I don't like. I guarantee that, wherever you come from, I could find some fault with the way your country is run, and the things its people do. Human stupidity is a global phenomenon, my friend, and you're as big a fool as I take you to be if you don't understand that.
Furthermore, when you "unabashedly America-bash" that means that you have made the erroneous assumption that all Americans think the same way. Essentially, you're a bigot, and probably a hypocrite as well. I will bet my wobbly American ass that if I made any attempt to criticize your government's policies or lump all of your people together and insult their great, wide, wobbly asses you'd go ballistic. You are entitled to your opinion (well, in America you would be, obviously I can't speak for wherever you hail from) but it's not a rational one, nor is it one that I would be proud of were I in your shoes.
You may not like us... but odds are, we don't much like you either, and we probably didn't like you first. Oh, and by the way all American men have bigger penises than anyone from {insert your country here}.
the number of Windows '9x users is substantially higher than 4%. Not everyone throws out their PC and buys a new one every three years. The realtor that handled the house I bought a couple years ago still uses Windows 98 on her home PC and in their office. That kinda shocked me at the time, but as it did what little she needed she had no reason to change.
How about you stop pulling the "terrorism" card and "child porn" card, and tell us why, in no uncertain terms, you need to keep prying into our lives. What evidence do you have that proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that such additional monitoring will help stamp out child pornography? What justification do you really have for your stance? I'm talking hard numbers... how many cases have been successfully prosecuted (i.e., resulting in prison terms) for child pornography as a direct result of ISP data retention? Wiretapping (in spite of the billions spent upon it) has not justified the cost in terms of viable prosecutions, and I see no reason to think this will prove otherwise. And I'm very serious, Mr. Gonzales, partly because your current rationale makes little to no sense whatsoever, and mostly because I just don't believe you. If you want to do this to us, for God's sake prove it to us, make us understand why we need to give up still more of our precious Constitution. I would fully expect that the nation's ATTORNEY GENERAL would be capable of presenting such a case to the American public using honest facts, not trigger-words, emotional ploys and outright fiction.
A bit disappointing, really.
Maybe we do need to give up some civil liberties, given the current state of affairs with international terrorism... certain rights were temporarily rescinded during World War II and were re-established afterwards. Maybe. I've not seen sufficient evidence, as presented by my official representatives in government or their appointees (are you listening, Mr. Gonzales?) that convinces me of this.
Furthermore, I absolutely do not accept "child pornography" as good and sufficient cause to invoke yet another massive spy campaign against the American public. If the FBI needs more funds to go after these bastards... so be it. That's why we have appropriations committees. But wholesale monitoring of the entire Internet-using population?
whenever I hear a government official (any official, from any government) use the word "harmonize", I want to go hide. It usually means "let's get this area of really bad law in sync with this other area of really bad law." Gagh.
Well, the ones I see look very different, and have what appears to be some optics sticking out in front. Like I said, the local gendarmarie talked about their installation some time ago, so I'm pretty sure that they're cameras. They were originally allowed to be installed because they had the lights on top (that was part of the compromise the cops made in order to get them.) That was some time ago, though. I don't have a picture, but if I can find one on the Web I'll post a link.
Yes, but on the other hand, hands free is safer! Substantially so. The people that get into trouble with their cell phones are the ones with one hand on the wheel and the other jamming their cell phone to the side of their head. Having a conversation while driving isn't much different, safety-wise, whether it's on a hands-free cellular phone or with a passenger sitting next to you. I might argue that hands free is actually safer than driving with that passenger, since you won't be tempted to look over at them while you're talking and a cell phone can't grab the wheel. So if safety is your concern, we'd best ban passengers as well since they can also distract a driver.
I get as irritated as anyone at people that don't drive safely around me, but the problem isn't the phone it's the driver. If your brain isn't capable of proper prioritization you shouldn't be driving a car in the first place, cell phone or not. You sound a lot like people that want to ban smoking (taking away the freedom smokers have to kill themselves slowly by their own hand) just because it personally offends you. Well, sometimes I like to make a phone call in my car: I put on my headset and I drive as safely as I would be without it, and I resent your presumption that I'm automatically a threat.
If you want to address the problem rationally rather via blind distaste, insist that drivers be trained well and not be granted a license to kil^h^h^hdrive without knowing what the hell they're doing. Most states will give driver's licenses to people that shouldn't allowed anywhere near a steering wheel, guaranteeing that significant numbers of vehicles are nothing more than badly-guided missiles waiting to commit murder. Granted, cell phone use can make a poorly-trained driver behave even more dangerously, but cell phones aren't the root of the problem.
Is that what this is for? I didn't read TFA, but it sounded more like the speakers would be individually addressable. If that's the case, it would be really annoying to be picking your nose and have a nearby camera tell you to stop it because it's gross.
Nope. It wasn't a flash, and it wasn't that bright. It was just an indicator sitting on top of the very-obvious camera assembly that lit up whenever the camera was in operation. And as I mentioned to another poster, the cops told us at the time that the cameras work that way, and at what intersections they would be installed. I don't know if they are still that open about it. Frequently I'll be sitting in traffic, at a stop light, and the camera will light up briefly as some cop somewhere is observing the intersection. It was definitely surveillance, for what it's worth.
It isn't, ever. The faster processors become, the more overhead various desktop environments add. And since programs require these toolkits and libraries to run, you can't really opt out.
True. In other words, software expands to consume all available resources. And that's pretty much always been the case. But with aggregate processing speed about to make some substantial increases in the next decade (multicore, Cell... whatever else comes out) I suspect that the GUI will become a relatively mature commodity and won't need to make exponentially increasing demands relative to available CPU power. I mean, how much more does a graphical user interface have to do anyway? Suppose, for example, that the computer sitting on your desk was the equivalent of a 30 Ghz P4. Would you be as concerned about re-virtualization?
But upon further reflection, I have to agree with you, since at the current state-of-the-art things aren't going to improve much.
Oh sure... but from the perspective of the industry it's the millions upon millions of people that will never have a clue how to do that (or even that it is possible) that are the issue here. Those are the ones at which DRM is largely aimed.
Well... I hope there's some kind of a backlash. Cameras are certainly here in the U.S., with more appearing all the time. They don't talk yet, but where I live there are cameras popping up everywhere, and that's just the ones you can see. I watched an ambulance driving down a street the other day (remotely switching all the lights to green as it went) and at each intersection a white light above the camera went on for a second or two as the vehicle went through. I guess I should be thankful they had the courtesy to have those lights, although I assume they can turn on the camera without the light. Besides, those were some of the earliest ones that were installed, back when public opinion on the matter was important ("See? It's not so bad, you'll know when we're watching you.") Not that it makes any difference, since nobody seems to care anymore. People I talk to about it use England as an example of why there's nothing to worry about. And maybe that's true in England, I don't know since I don't live there. However, I have less faith in my various governments to handle that kind of responsibility, since they're failing in so many other areas at the moment.
You're just going to have to wait until the typical x86 system becomes as fast as... well, as fast as it needs to be to make the overhead of those hideous parodies acceptable. It's the Wintel Way, and while the Linux kernel may be fast and efficient the user-space desktops that are running on top of it are anything but, nowadays.
Linux fans love to point out how "bloated" Windows as become, and how greatly major Windows apps have suffered from feature-creep. And they're right. But I don't see a lot of difference, performancewise, between XP and a typical collection of open-source apps, and Linux with the same collection of open-source apps. Both are slower than I'd like. The Linux machine may be more stable (or it may not) but KDE and Gnome are both getting pretty fat. Granted, a sophisticated graphical environment is resource-intensive by nature, but I can't help believing that a little more work spent on optimization for speed would make a big difference.
Personally, I think this will backfire. It's possible to simply learn to accept that law enforcement is watching and recording everything you do in public, as millions of Britons have apparently done. But when those cameras start vocally reminding you of their presence, they may be much more difficult to ignore. We'll see: this will be interesting to watch whatever happens.
... it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it.
This is news? All that means is that people don't like having arbitrary restrictions placed upon their behavior. Duh. Seriously, there really is no way to make Digital Restrictions Management palatable to people that actually understand the consequences. That's why most of the pro-DRM campaigns are pure spin, spin designed to make those restrictions appear not to be restrictions (you can "activate" your music on up to five machines! That's good enough! Isn't it, huh, punk?") Maybe this means that the users are waking up and smelling the DRM coffee, and finding it less than appetizing. I sincerely hope that's the case.
However, it is equally clear that the music industry is uninterested in what we want (even when it clearly makes them money) and would like to return to the days when it could simply tell us what we want and we'd be happy to oblige by opening our wallets. I have a message for any group of "capitalists" (and I use the term loosely) who think that way: "I don't want your product and I won't give you any of my money." And yes, that includes you, Apple Computer, Inc. I don't trust you to be reasonable any more than I trust anyone else in that business.
No... you can always be sued. Get that through your head. People seem to have some idea that the protections afforded individuals under copyright law are some kind of magical shield that prevents those evil-doing rightsholders from taking them to court. Nothing could be further from the truth: the RIAA's asinine campaign against file sharers has brought that realization home to a lot of people. If you buy that pirated book (and I'm using the term correctly: a publisher who sells unauthorized mass-produced copies of a copyrighted work is, indeed, a pirate) you can claim ignorance but it will be up to the court to decide if you actually are that ignorant. Either way, it's a rough road and you don't want to go down it.
What he really means is, "... I think that I would be sued the world over." But, so what. Icepicks injure people in ways that were not intended by the manufacturer. Hell, if you really work at it you could probably kill someone with a Nerf ball. "Non-lethal" doesn't mean "can't possibly injure someone", but that the product is generally designed to incapacitate, not kill, a person in reasonable health. But there's no way to know the precise condition of the rioter at whom you fire your non-lethal weapon. Some will undoubtedly have heart conditions or other medical problems (have they tested these microwave devices on people with metal plates in their heads, pacemakers, or surgical pins, I wonder? No, I didn't RTFA) that render them more susceptible to serious injury or death. It's all playing the numbers, but odds are that something which is specifically designed not to kill, most of the time, will cause a person a lot less damage than something on the order of a bullet, which is designed to kill, most of the time.
The real issue is whether these non-lethal technologies will be able to provide the same level of control of a violent population than deadly force can. If you know that the worst you're facing is a headache the next day, you'll be more likely to press your attack home, than if you know you're gonna take a bullet. I have to believe that death is a more effective deterrent to violence than a microwave-induced hangover.
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Nah ... politicians the world 'round polished that particular skillset to a fine gloss centuries ago. Microsoft is just taking a few pages from their book.
If the studios did cave to this threat they are short sighted and craven.
So, taking that as a given, how long do you think it will be 'til they cave in?
... or even what species you'd be when you get there.
Or more specifically, what species of sofa.
That is arguably one of the most asinine comments I've ever heard. I guess that means that I no longer need to pull any punches or make any attempt to be reasonable when the governments of, say, China, or India, or Mexico or {insert your nation here} do something that I don't like. I guarantee that, wherever you come from, I could find some fault with the way your country is run, and the things its people do. Human stupidity is a global phenomenon, my friend, and you're as big a fool as I take you to be if you don't understand that.
... but odds are, we don't much like you either, and we probably didn't like you first. Oh, and by the way all American men have bigger penises than anyone from {insert your country here}.
Furthermore, when you "unabashedly America-bash" that means that you have made the erroneous assumption that all Americans think the same way. Essentially, you're a bigot, and probably a hypocrite as well. I will bet my wobbly American ass that if I made any attempt to criticize your government's policies or lump all of your people together and insult their great, wide, wobbly asses you'd go ballistic. You are entitled to your opinion (well, in America you would be, obviously I can't speak for wherever you hail from) but it's not a rational one, nor is it one that I would be proud of were I in your shoes.
You may not like us
we can just kiss the industrial revolution goodbye.
the number of Windows '9x users is substantially higher than 4%. Not everyone throws out their PC and buys a new one every three years. The realtor that handled the house I bought a couple years ago still uses Windows 98 on her home PC and in their office. That kinda shocked me at the time, but as it did what little she needed she had no reason to change.
How about you stop pulling the "terrorism" card and "child porn" card, and tell us why, in no uncertain terms, you need to keep prying into our lives. What evidence do you have that proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that such additional monitoring will help stamp out child pornography? What justification do you really have for your stance? I'm talking hard numbers ... how many cases have been successfully prosecuted (i.e., resulting in prison terms) for child pornography as a direct result of ISP data retention? Wiretapping (in spite of the billions spent upon it) has not justified the cost in terms of viable prosecutions, and I see no reason to think this will prove otherwise. And I'm very serious, Mr. Gonzales, partly because your current rationale makes little to no sense whatsoever, and mostly because I just don't believe you. If you want to do this to us, for God's sake prove it to us, make us understand why we need to give up still more of our precious Constitution. I would fully expect that the nation's ATTORNEY GENERAL would be capable of presenting such a case to the American public using honest facts, not trigger-words, emotional ploys and outright fiction.
... certain rights were temporarily rescinded during World War II and were re-established afterwards. Maybe. I've not seen sufficient evidence, as presented by my official representatives in government or their appointees (are you listening, Mr. Gonzales?) that convinces me of this.
... so be it. That's why we have appropriations committees. But wholesale monitoring of the entire Internet-using population?
A bit disappointing, really.
Maybe we do need to give up some civil liberties, given the current state of affairs with international terrorism
Furthermore, I absolutely do not accept "child pornography" as good and sufficient cause to invoke yet another massive spy campaign against the American public. If the FBI needs more funds to go after these bastards
I think not.
whenever I hear a government official (any official, from any government) use the word "harmonize", I want to go hide. It usually means "let's get this area of really bad law in sync with this other area of really bad law." Gagh.
Just keep all your illegal stuff on an encrypted wireless NAS device hidden away in your attic.
Well, the ones I see look very different, and have what appears to be some optics sticking out in front. Like I said, the local gendarmarie talked about their installation some time ago, so I'm pretty sure that they're cameras. They were originally allowed to be installed because they had the lights on top (that was part of the compromise the cops made in order to get them.) That was some time ago, though. I don't have a picture, but if I can find one on the Web I'll post a link.
Yes, but on the other hand, hands free is safer! Substantially so. The people that get into trouble with their cell phones are the ones with one hand on the wheel and the other jamming their cell phone to the side of their head. Having a conversation while driving isn't much different, safety-wise, whether it's on a hands-free cellular phone or with a passenger sitting next to you. I might argue that hands free is actually safer than driving with that passenger, since you won't be tempted to look over at them while you're talking and a cell phone can't grab the wheel. So if safety is your concern, we'd best ban passengers as well since they can also distract a driver.
I get as irritated as anyone at people that don't drive safely around me, but the problem isn't the phone it's the driver. If your brain isn't capable of proper prioritization you shouldn't be driving a car in the first place, cell phone or not. You sound a lot like people that want to ban smoking (taking away the freedom smokers have to kill themselves slowly by their own hand) just because it personally offends you. Well, sometimes I like to make a phone call in my car: I put on my headset and I drive as safely as I would be without it, and I resent your presumption that I'm automatically a threat.
If you want to address the problem rationally rather via blind distaste, insist that drivers be trained well and not be granted a license to kil^h^h^hdrive without knowing what the hell they're doing. Most states will give driver's licenses to people that shouldn't allowed anywhere near a steering wheel, guaranteeing that significant numbers of vehicles are nothing more than badly-guided missiles waiting to commit murder. Granted, cell phone use can make a poorly-trained driver behave even more dangerously, but cell phones aren't the root of the problem.
George Carlin would no doubt have a lot to say on this issue.
Is that what this is for? I didn't read TFA, but it sounded more like the speakers would be individually addressable. If that's the case, it would be really annoying to be picking your nose and have a nearby camera tell you to stop it because it's gross.
Nope. It wasn't a flash, and it wasn't that bright. It was just an indicator sitting on top of the very-obvious camera assembly that lit up whenever the camera was in operation. And as I mentioned to another poster, the cops told us at the time that the cameras work that way, and at what intersections they would be installed. I don't know if they are still that open about it. Frequently I'll be sitting in traffic, at a stop light, and the camera will light up briefly as some cop somewhere is observing the intersection. It was definitely surveillance, for what it's worth.
Yes, they are cameras. The police even told us so when they were first installed, and that the white dome light on top indicates active surveillance.
The ambulance was using the strobe to pass the intersections: I wasn't confusing those with the actual cameras.
It isn't, ever. The faster processors become, the more overhead various desktop environments add. And since programs require these toolkits and libraries to run, you can't really opt out.
... whatever else comes out) I suspect that the GUI will become a relatively mature commodity and won't need to make exponentially increasing demands relative to available CPU power. I mean, how much more does a graphical user interface have to do anyway? Suppose, for example, that the computer sitting on your desk was the equivalent of a 30 Ghz P4. Would you be as concerned about re-virtualization?
True. In other words, software expands to consume all available resources. And that's pretty much always been the case. But with aggregate processing speed about to make some substantial increases in the next decade (multicore, Cell
But upon further reflection, I have to agree with you, since at the current state-of-the-art things aren't going to improve much.
Oh sure ... but from the perspective of the industry it's the millions upon millions of people that will never have a clue how to do that (or even that it is possible) that are the issue here. Those are the ones at which DRM is largely aimed.
... I like that.
"mix, burn, rip"
Well ... I hope there's some kind of a backlash. Cameras are certainly here in the U.S., with more appearing all the time. They don't talk yet, but where I live there are cameras popping up everywhere, and that's just the ones you can see. I watched an ambulance driving down a street the other day (remotely switching all the lights to green as it went) and at each intersection a white light above the camera went on for a second or two as the vehicle went through. I guess I should be thankful they had the courtesy to have those lights, although I assume they can turn on the camera without the light. Besides, those were some of the earliest ones that were installed, back when public opinion on the matter was important ("See? It's not so bad, you'll know when we're watching you.") Not that it makes any difference, since nobody seems to care anymore. People I talk to about it use England as an example of why there's nothing to worry about. And maybe that's true in England, I don't know since I don't live there. However, I have less faith in my various governments to handle that kind of responsibility, since they're failing in so many other areas at the moment.
You're just going to have to wait until the typical x86 system becomes as fast as ... well, as fast as it needs to be to make the overhead of those hideous parodies acceptable. It's the Wintel Way, and while the Linux kernel may be fast and efficient the user-space desktops that are running on top of it are anything but, nowadays.
Linux fans love to point out how "bloated" Windows as become, and how greatly major Windows apps have suffered from feature-creep. And they're right. But I don't see a lot of difference, performancewise, between XP and a typical collection of open-source apps, and Linux with the same collection of open-source apps. Both are slower than I'd like. The Linux machine may be more stable (or it may not) but KDE and Gnome are both getting pretty fat. Granted, a sophisticated graphical environment is resource-intensive by nature, but I can't help believing that a little more work spent on optimization for speed would make a big difference.
Personally, I think this will backfire. It's possible to simply learn to accept that law enforcement is watching and recording everything you do in public, as millions of Britons have apparently done. But when those cameras start vocally reminding you of their presence, they may be much more difficult to ignore. We'll see: this will be interesting to watch whatever happens.
... it is clear that users prefer DRM-free music, and are willing to pay for it and take the trouble to rip it.
This is news? All that means is that people don't like having arbitrary restrictions placed upon their behavior. Duh. Seriously, there really is no way to make Digital Restrictions Management palatable to people that actually understand the consequences. That's why most of the pro-DRM campaigns are pure spin, spin designed to make those restrictions appear not to be restrictions (you can "activate" your music on up to five machines! That's good enough! Isn't it, huh, punk?") Maybe this means that the users are waking up and smelling the DRM coffee, and finding it less than appetizing. I sincerely hope that's the case.
However, it is equally clear that the music industry is uninterested in what we want (even when it clearly makes them money) and would like to return to the days when it could simply tell us what we want and we'd be happy to oblige by opening our wallets. I have a message for any group of "capitalists" (and I use the term loosely) who think that way: "I don't want your product and I won't give you any of my money." And yes, that includes you, Apple Computer, Inc. I don't trust you to be reasonable any more than I trust anyone else in that business.
I dunno ... seems kinda "rediculous" to me.
No ... you can always be sued. Get that through your head. People seem to have some idea that the protections afforded individuals under copyright law are some kind of magical shield that prevents those evil-doing rightsholders from taking them to court. Nothing could be further from the truth: the RIAA's asinine campaign against file sharers has brought that realization home to a lot of people. If you buy that pirated book (and I'm using the term correctly: a publisher who sells unauthorized mass-produced copies of a copyrighted work is, indeed, a pirate) you can claim ignorance but it will be up to the court to decide if you actually are that ignorant. Either way, it's a rough road and you don't want to go down it.
What he really means is, "... I think that I would be sued the world over." But, so what. Icepicks injure people in ways that were not intended by the manufacturer. Hell, if you really work at it you could probably kill someone with a Nerf ball. "Non-lethal" doesn't mean "can't possibly injure someone", but that the product is generally designed to incapacitate, not kill, a person in reasonable health. But there's no way to know the precise condition of the rioter at whom you fire your non-lethal weapon. Some will undoubtedly have heart conditions or other medical problems (have they tested these microwave devices on people with metal plates in their heads, pacemakers, or surgical pins, I wonder? No, I didn't RTFA) that render them more susceptible to serious injury or death. It's all playing the numbers, but odds are that something which is specifically designed not to kill, most of the time, will cause a person a lot less damage than something on the order of a bullet, which is designed to kill, most of the time.
The real issue is whether these non-lethal technologies will be able to provide the same level of control of a violent population than deadly force can. If you know that the worst you're facing is a headache the next day, you'll be more likely to press your attack home, than if you know you're gonna take a bullet. I have to believe that death is a more effective deterrent to violence than a microwave-induced hangover.
Hm ... Project YoyoStorm. I like it.