Definitely a program with a database of politicians' emails and what bills they proposed / approved, would be a great help for our democracy in the 21st century.
That's so right. The 'information superhighway' put to good use. Even better, direct partecipation of 'netizens' in the process of making laws and deciding how to spend public money. The internet's potential is only starting to be appreciated and might even eliminate the need for politicians.
Instead of assuming they are "targeting" MS, couldn't it just be that they saw a product, and saw a better way to develop that product?
Considering how spreadsheets are very difficult to audit - especially when many users can edit them - it would be good if G developed more robust paradigms for spreadsheets. At the moment MS is just playing with formats and without serious competition they have no reason to innovate. See the recent article
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/06/ 05/185201
Well, I can see you get my drift. But think about this:
yes, do cut out the intermediary, because we all know the mob will have so much better judgment *cough*americanidol*cough*. there is no better way to guarantee that those who rule the media rule america than to do this.
the mob = the people
it won't be painless, given that the media influence more people than university education, but countries such as Switzerland do quite well with popular referenda
In Italy 25% of pay per view satellite TV is watched using pirate smartcards. There is a lively black (and white) market of cards, equipment, codes etc. The content providers only make token attempts to stop this, because they realize that it actually increases the sale of their packages, as many people buy minimal cheap subscriptions to appear legit. The point is that piracy (and porn) is another form of inducement to take up a new technology that requires initial equipment investments (and higher running costs). It has all happened before: VCRs, internet, even chat lines. Tiscali understands this very well and will use it to reinforce their market penetration. Other broadband providers such as BT are making tentative noises that they want to cap the traffic for 'heavy' users and obstruct P2P usage. My bet is that they will soon find that users give them a wide berth. Of course in order to remain attractive Tiscali will have to keep increasing capacity and manage their contention ratios wisely, but this is a small price to pay for this aggressively expanding company.
I think copyright means just that: the right to copy. Of course the consumer is entitled to butcher the film she has bought, or pay a company to do it. The point is this must be done on the original, they cannot legally copy the clean bits and sell a new version without the copyright owner's consent. This might just work on books and videotapes, trickier on DVDs... but after all this would mean even better protection for the kids!
Slashdot Mirror
That's so right. The 'information superhighway' put to good use. Even better, direct partecipation of 'netizens' in the process of making laws and deciding how to spend public money. The internet's potential is only starting to be appreciated and might even eliminate the need for politicians.
This is also a great idea for a really silent cpu cooler. When is it going to be on the market?
In Italy 25% of pay per view satellite TV is watched using pirate smartcards. There is a lively black (and white) market of cards, equipment, codes etc.
The content providers only make token attempts to stop this, because they realize that it actually increases the sale of their packages, as many people buy minimal cheap subscriptions to appear legit. The point is that piracy (and porn) is another form of inducement to take up a new technology that requires initial equipment investments (and higher running costs). It has all happened before: VCRs, internet, even chat lines. Tiscali understands this very well and will use it to reinforce their market penetration. Other broadband providers such as BT are making tentative noises that they want to cap the traffic for 'heavy' users and obstruct P2P usage. My bet is that they will soon find that users give them a wide berth. Of course in order to remain attractive Tiscali will have to keep increasing capacity and manage their contention ratios wisely, but this is a small price to pay for this aggressively expanding company.
I think copyright means just that: the right to copy. Of course the consumer is entitled to butcher the film she has bought, or pay a company to do it. The point is this must be done on the original, they cannot legally copy the clean bits and sell a new version without the copyright owner's consent. This might just work on books and videotapes, trickier on DVDs... but after all this would mean even better protection for the kids!