Since it's SO easy to get a free phoneline online (Skype, etc.) it's clear that the phone communications are going to become more like email in the future (essentially untrustworthy). It's time to consider building more anonymity into the system for users who want it.
At some point the world is going to wake up and notice that the U.S. forces it's patent and copyright laws down everyone's throats while all the big U.S. companies have agreements to ignore each other's IP.
Basically they're forcing everyone to adopt IP law while they don't (hypocritically obviously) but also telling them that it's for their good while not doing it themselves.
Points: With a finite amount of currency in circulation there will be less boom/bust economics. This is probably the biggest talking point of politicians. 2: Bitcoin seems to be very right wing in that it will make taxation impossible for several types of transactions. 3: Bitcoin will likely lead to socialist reform as people realize what percentage of the overall economy they actually have. People who have a house and make $300,000 a year will realize that they have less than a 1/1000th of a person's worth of the wealth of their country. They will likely begin charging more for their labours ushering in social change. (wanting.000001 BTC for a driveway for example). This will be much more apparent to the mathematically inept who don't understand the numbers associated with a 7 TRILLION dollar bailout.
If this is a superior communications technology, developed approximately 250 years after radio became widespread it makes sense that we could find interstellar transmissions using it.
Perhaps we should be cautious about over using it until we listen for a while.
I'd also like to recommend Piers Anthony (I know, but sometimes he's great) "Macroscope" for those that haven't read it.
Assuming you think that fascism is a bad thing... and realizing that it's a government... obviously some of it's laws would be bad things. Q.E.D.
Confucius said it best: When breaking a law you state that you know better than society. You should be sure you are correct when you make that assertion.
I think I'll make it a law that people who think that "laws == morality" must kill themselves. Problem solved.
That's more than 1%... given school aged, and the elderly, people who had to work, percentage who knew about this. This is like 20-30% of people who could have shown up. This is really a MASSIVE amount of people.
But how come our libraries aren't smarter about it.
Converting to a datetime shouldn't be so difficult. Neither should handling month short forms (Sept. I'm looking at you!) obviously we should be moving to metric time. (Five fingers FTW!).
Even 20 years ago November and December were winter, now it doesn't really get cold enough for snow until late December (in Canada)...
Screw the Romans, and screw the issues with daylight savings, how about some proper month representation.
I imagine it would be made up of extremely intelligent nanobots.
They would break into smaller and smaller pieces to intercept incoming kinetic weapons made up of other nanobots.
Depending on whether it takes a smaller/greater/equal amount of nanobots to destroy an encountered amount of mass war becomes more/less likely.
Even kinetic weapons will likely follow the same principle. Breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.
Invisibility and stealth will become increasingly impossible as technology improves.
This should be obvious from current reactive armor technology that basically reacts by firing at incoming weaponry. Current generation warplanes and tanks have outer skins which fire outward to intercept incoming weaponry... the "skin" of such is basically short range missiles. Soon ships will be made up of missiles which are integrated at different levels (think sharing explosives, fuel, processing).
Because of the danger of mis-communication orders would be pre-programmed. Eliminate nation, eliminate city, eliminate planet and so forth. Both sides will probably be using identical weaponry (since reverse engineering is already trivially easy) so the winner will be the one with more resources. Any such war would eliminate the majority of resources available to both (relatively comparable) groups. Since the weapons would benefit from being simplistic it would be a war of annihilation... and since any war using robotics and mandatory annihilation is essentially unforgivable the winner would need to wipe out all other groups (winner the Obama family?). Unless they're totally evil the next generation will massacre their parents for destroying all the resources and killing everyone. So yay!! Actually such a war readily explains why there are no aliens. The Americans are already pushing everyone around and heading for this type of war (instead of putting peace keepers and Socratic reasonable people who actually speak the local language on the ground to explain their reasonable requests. Which I guess is hard when your requests aren't reasonable).
Pakistan is probably the most legitimate theocracy in the world. Both in that it reasonably follows religious law (both when it helps and hurts) and in that Pakistan was formed when religious revolution split India, some were trapped on the wrong side of course but there was a period of free encouraged movement and sensible redistribution.
Still Pakistan is quite prickly and knows it is seen as unstable by most non-sectarian governments and even a majority of people. India's fear that Pakistan could make a dangerous enemy to protect it's religious freedom is not unfounded. If you're desperately preserving your religion you can offer some pretty insane terms (10,000,000 virgins to service U.S. Military personnel? Yea, we can do that. 5 Trillion in debt? Bring it on!) which might tempt the U.S. into siding with them at an odd moment.
The Air-frames really aren't that important as we all know. The weapons and guidance systems and intelligence isn't for sale, it would be silly to buy it anyway because the level of integration means that it would have unexpected or non-working functionality.
The question is whether the F-22 can shoot down X planes where X is the number of missiles it can carry or whether massive numbers will be at all effective (as they are in tank warfare). If the answer to that isn't missiles it soon will be. To which the question will become, what's cheaper than a missile? Which is a terrifying question.
That's the party. 85% of their voters just want an extra $200 in their pocket come tax time. Explain to them what that $200 REALLY COSTS and you'll do more for the democrats (and rational voting really) than by concentrating on any issue).
100%... As far as I can tell Obama's in great shape. We're going to see some really wild ideas coming out of the GOP for the coming election. They won't actually follow through on any of them of course, but they will be "promising everything" out of desperation.
I really dislike the: he disappointed I'll vote "against" him/her mentality. From most of what I've heard it's been the issues that Obama was FORCED into by the implementational (better word appreciated) side of government. Wire taps, CIA/FBI. More Iraq, the military and intelligence services and think tanks. Bailouts, the treasury/FED/etc. If he hadn't caved on these issues they would have thrown their hands up and given up on these struggles, which was unacceptable.
That said Obama Care, Capital Gains tax increases, Kyoto 2 (or is it 3?), etc. seemed voluntary. If those are "ultimate mistakes" or the "only issue that matters" then you could make an argument for punitive voting (note: no such argument has ever been a GOOD one. But they do exist) against him.
The silly thing is that on the issues where Obama was balked by the administration and which he's being blamed for the GOP has always been further towards the side of the administration (maybe it's a reality check?) so by zeroing in on the things Obama wasn't able to get his way on and blaming him for the outcome then voting for the alternative you PROMOTE those outcomes. Pretty stupid.
Financially, and perhaps the greatest example of their stupidity is that conservative voters have always been split - 20% rich or believe that they will/should be rich and 80% poor, uneducated and brain washed. Simply by educating a few of the 80% that - You can't afford health care. 1.) You simply will not have the money if something happens. 2.) Taxes make goods/services/programs/incentives EXIST that are overwhelmingly more beneficial for the poor than the rich. (With obvious benefits like reasonable crime rates, educated work forces and social values [bullets will always be cheap, BMWs expensive and steal-able]). 3.) It's not charity. There are no forces, outside of political will, making society equal. Each of us tries to find a niche but there are forces outside of our control. The wealthy need roads/health care/education/whatever to become wealthy and be happy and existentially fulfilled just much as the poor need education/social services/medicare to be content and continue to try to better themselves. 4.) There's always someone bigger, the rich are ALLOWED to remain rich, the government is ALLOWED to remain in control, the police are ALLOWED to enforce and mollify. Do not believe that because someone made a lot of money (or spends a lot advertising to you) that they know everything, are impervious, or have any unproven quality or belief. People are people. 5.) Governing is hard. Getting two people to agree is tough, look at the divorce rates. Getting thousands to agree and then work hard towards a goal is harder. Sometimes the government is wasteful, sometimes overambitious, it would be wonderful if they knew in advance how successful each program will be. If you solve that let us know. Private companies fail all the time. 9 / 10 starting companies fail in their first year, compare that to the government's success rate and you'll be astounded. Just because it's not your money and there isn't some talking head telling you he could have done it better don't pretend non-government is a magical success, it's not. If you look at the tax incentives (read negative taxes) paid to major U.S. corporations you'd realize that their actual successes are quite modest. Many would be out of business if the government didn't support them.
I worked a lot on software for people with disabilities, did a GPS navigation app for Symbian back in the day.
Got commissioned by the U.N. to look into adaptive technologies. Summary follows: Products fall into two broad categories: commercial and altruistic. Altruistic products are usually brilliantly designed for a specific person (This is considered the central issue of adaptive technologies and is the major talking point. specificity) usually a relative or friend. These products are ingenious, well made and available for extremely reasonable prices. You can find them if you search hard online, generall,y someone making a TTS engine for his daughter isn't a web guru with a marketing budget. The second group is the commercial products, almost universally INSANELY overpriced. $50 of hardware sells for $5000. Visual basic level software selling for hundreds or thousands of dollars. This exorbitance is rationalized through: Disability being a "small" market (regardless if a product sells 100,000 a year), quality (you shouldn't force a person to learn a new technology every few years, hardware breakdown is a nightmare if it's non-standard and you NEED it to read,communicate or work) which is bullshit I've seen just as much breakdown and poorly written,documented and supported software from the major players as from the passion projects, and source of funding... taxpayers, bureaucrats and contracts. I'm sure you've seen it before, bleeding hearts SUCK at negotiation. Dignity is a problematic area I've encountered a few times as well, products that work ideally but provoke surprise or distaste from those without special needs are discarded. *(special rant follows useful information).
What I told the U.N.: You have three problems: 1.) This stuff is expensive, and overpriced... getting it to developing countries is going to be extremely difficult and infrastructure for them will also be extremely costly. 2.) Languages most people DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH. Since this stuff is commercial, not open source, there is little opportunity or motivation to create versions for Swahili speakers. It's bad... if you don't speak English, French, German, Italian or Spanish your options are diminished 99.5%. Then of course I got pissed and determined and decided I would let a blind dude in the Phillipines see. I went through the spending of all long term programs to purchase technologies for people with disabilities and looked at the actual distribution of people's needs (People in Africa have an incredibly high level of amputation for example). It turns out that THE U.S. ALONE is already spending 10x to 20x what it would cost to do the job, we're just putting the money into companies instead of open sourcing it or creating a community lead program for development. This is obviously speculation and I'd need to provide a lot of evidence to prove how inefficient it is but an example was my call to the Arizona school board. $50,000,000 a year, for approximately 4000 arriving disabled high schoolers.
My recommendation: move funding towards open source software and hardware, nothing else will solve the language and distribution issues... the technologies are just moving too fast and the users are too clueless for any help from market forces in this direction.
Rant time! Ok I'd like to introduce you to a man his name is Ray Kurzweil. From now on I will call him The Jewish Nazi or JN for short.
Mr. Kurzweil was one of the first to market will an OCR device, nothing special a webcam and a flat panel to put the documents on... and only $8000! Because he got in early his company achieved name recognition, which was good because I compiled a LIST OF EVERY ELECTRONIC DEVICE it's about 2100 products or so. Then went to several leading experts to determine which products were excellent and which were popular (huge divergence) JN sells a lot... but his products all suck and are overpriced. So now our Jewish Nazi has the disabled community by the balls and starts gouging away. $10,000 for screen readi
The big two (Bell and Rogers) just successfully lobbied to FORCE OUR OTHER COMPANIES to stop offering unlimited home internet.
Prices just went up from $24.95 a month for reasonable service (had problems with the Acanac $19.95 sorry) to $29 and that's only available paid in advance for a year (Still WAY WAY better the 3 year contracts they were handing out 5 years ago, but still...)
So our internet is now more expensive by 1/6 not sure how much that factors in but you can get a T1 anywhere so it must play a role.
Also they're rolling out wireless net, 802.11i/s equivalent... which increases penetration but hurts reliability and latency... which means no gaming + slow page refreshes + fewer home servers.
So depending on when the study was conducted they could be way off... Canadians generally are reasonably well off, educated and meticulous (fallout from the "Friendly Polite" thing) so we took to computing pretty well... doesn't mean the companies providing it are worth a damn.
I still remember receiving a file from a girlfriend living in Korea. Holy tube inferiority batman! She saturated my downlink then wrote me asking if something was broken:(
You do understand that if copyright was enforced the fracture between free and paid would be HUGE! The Pirate Bay and Torrentz, ISOHunt and so forth would be just as popular but populated with free content.
It should be obvious that the internet is wires, an OS is required to make a computer run and a browser is an obvious way of handling the web (or equivalent technology) that these things are still "owned" and controlled by U.S. companies is a tribute to the work of the OSS developers who worked for universities to build something brilliant. They got there first and sold it insanely cheap, otherwise everyone would have gotten there on their own, by a more freedom embracing path. (In both culture and software)
I do agree that this recent trend of artists trying to embrace free and open source and getting incredible community support are short lived. Albums like the NIN 7 Million $ free release aren't sustainable, artists are chasing it with the same scary look of inexperienced investors.
The problem with a truly open information economy and system is that it really embraces the notion of critics. The problem with that is the classic critic dilemma of high vs low culture (Linux vs OSX if you will), an eternal struggle with the same ups and downs as the economy... violent stuff.
If the PirateBay was entirely populated by free content we wouldn't need as many distribution channels, there would be the 1 "most liked" movie and it would sit there for aeons with no financial incentive to displace it. While I support the notion of a few classics that should be widely digested the possibility of a "path of perfection" in culture, software or news is terrifying.
You can examine music from the 1940's (just before Rock) or the 1910's (before Swing and Flappers) and you'll find a very single minded approach, very quickly you'll get a notion of the "perfect song" all the artists are trying to produce. Bad for multiculturalism, good for avoiding cliquishness and social isolation but bad for innovation and the appreciation of a variety of brilliance.
So we may find out that this whole thing wasn't really the U.S. telling everyone else how to act. It was just a few isolated morons within the administration... "don't tase me for destroying your freedoms yo."
Yea, we elect politicians. Who turn around and say that the ideal or even slightly better world they proposed has become impossible due to unexpected events, rarely is the arguement that it's for the people (or that the people would lose faith in government if they did or didn't do something) but rather for some shadow group that "knows better". Where knowing better is: Providing safety, generating more income, securing power just in case.
Here here for having a more aggressive GPLv4! I know the GPLv3 went to far (in some areas not in others) but there's no reason not to have a GPLv2.1 and 3.1 to address issues.
The number of patents going into this terrifying copyright system, especially the number that could or would have been open sourced, if an acceptable and iconic licence was available.
That said the forces of "Justice" have decided people shouldn't have devices in their pockets that they have more personal control over than the device under their desk that they already fear? Linux took years, but it's ready. It runs more hardware than anything else. What makes them think something similar won't happen to phones? What's their end plan? The only thing that makes sense from their position is to run for tyranny, but we'll keep hoping they're just blocking the exit for our protection.
Anyway I already have a G1, started buying up groups of them. I recommend it as an option if you want to spend $600 on phones (buy 5!). Basically, OSS should make it a bit faster. There are some very lightweight Linux's. Every time Google seems to be stopping the flow of updates the community threatens to consolidate all their patches and upgrades. Such a "ROM", would be a much better OS than that offered by Google, further it seems that it could be quite generic existing on lots of varied hardware. I like my G1 because it has a keyboard and that slow feeling that makes me know the government isn't watching:P I hope OSS in your pocket starts with Google. But I'm worried and I hope it gets away from Google quickly.
Branding is a BIG Deal in software, I want an OS on my phone that says "Best Operating System." I have no trouble with Google creating a bunch of advertising "channels" or "categories" and being a money drip for developers (80x160x24 x 40,000 = ). But the underlying OS should be open and free! I have so much shame for being a gamer (and needing windows), please make a place for us!
I agree, didn't we solve this in the "Computer" "Space" already? Would you buy a computer that would automatically install windows8 and you couldn't install Linux on? Did you just look at your pocket?
Let's not make the debate about phones: the SLASHDOT phone maker, Nokia, with their phones that run linux (provided you're willing to work your ass off and don't need a phone phone) just shut down. Android seems modifiable but it's hit or miss. I expect some kind of theme thing to keep casual users happy. Apple's the sphinx (Modpoint!), but while they let the truly hardcore keep their jailbroken phones what they do in computer land suggests their phones will always be "Das Apple Playbox! Giggling verbotten! And dis bittorrent!".
Microsoft just Xbox'd. They're getting ready to 360, which will be frighteningly successful, why because Gears of War is FUN!
OSS hasn't really gotten behind any specific hardware, why? Because the DMCA looms over every phone, and counting on the next company to be as nice as IBM is a poor bet.
Let's keep the debate about Computers in any case, boxes... that are meant to control information together. And why we shouldn't be allowed to do that, like children, terrorists and reactionary voting.
If you stand in Mexico and use a remote control car to rob a bank in the US, the US will come after you..and visa versa.
The constitution and of course understood American doctrine is that States (and States) should be allowed their own fiscal policy (which might be better than that in the U.S.) now we're seeing that attacked openly. The hypocricy is maddening.
Slashdot Mirror
Since it's SO easy to get a free phoneline online (Skype, etc.) it's clear that the phone communications are going to become more like email in the future (essentially untrustworthy). It's time to consider building more anonymity into the system for users who want it.
Do garbage dumps first. Everything we need is... well there!
At some point the world is going to wake up and notice that the U.S. forces it's patent and copyright laws down everyone's throats while all the big U.S. companies have agreements to ignore each other's IP.
Basically they're forcing everyone to adopt IP law while they don't (hypocritically obviously) but also telling them that it's for their good while not doing it themselves.
Well Bitcoin is pretty important politically.
.000001 BTC for a driveway for example). This will be much more apparent to the mathematically inept who don't understand the numbers associated with a 7 TRILLION dollar bailout.
Points: With a finite amount of currency in circulation there will be less boom/bust economics. This is probably the biggest talking point of politicians.
2: Bitcoin seems to be very right wing in that it will make taxation impossible for several types of transactions.
3: Bitcoin will likely lead to socialist reform as people realize what percentage of the overall economy they actually have. People who have a house and make $300,000 a year will realize that they have less than a 1/1000th of a person's worth of the wealth of their country. They will likely begin charging more for their labours ushering in social change. (wanting
If this is a superior communications technology, developed approximately 250 years after radio became widespread it makes sense that we could find interstellar transmissions using it.
Perhaps we should be cautious about over using it until we listen for a while.
I'd also like to recommend Piers Anthony (I know, but sometimes he's great) "Macroscope" for those that haven't read it.
Assuming you think that fascism is a bad thing... and realizing that it's a government... obviously some of it's laws would be bad things. Q.E.D.
Confucius said it best: When breaking a law you state that you know better than society. You should be sure you are correct when you make that assertion.
I think I'll make it a law that people who think that "laws == morality" must kill themselves. Problem solved.
Yea, like Rosa Parks.
Never did trust her!
Or those Syrian revolutionaries, despicable.
That's more than 1%... given school aged, and the elderly, people who had to work, percentage who knew about this. This is like 20-30% of people who could have shown up. This is really a MASSIVE amount of people.
But how come our libraries aren't smarter about it.
Converting to a datetime shouldn't be so difficult. Neither should handling month short forms (Sept. I'm looking at you!) obviously we should be moving to metric time. (Five fingers FTW!).
Even 20 years ago November and December were winter, now it doesn't really get cold enough for snow until late December (in Canada)...
Screw the Romans, and screw the issues with daylight savings, how about some proper month representation.
Go on, acknowledge the nazis.
as sling-shotting them around a planet while the main attack is from the other side would probably be an effective technique.
Good point. a remote engine on a comet or asteroid would do the MAD thing even today.
I imagine it would be made up of extremely intelligent nanobots.
They would break into smaller and smaller pieces to intercept incoming kinetic weapons made up of other nanobots.
Depending on whether it takes a smaller/greater/equal amount of nanobots to destroy an encountered amount of mass war becomes more/less likely.
Even kinetic weapons will likely follow the same principle. Breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.
Invisibility and stealth will become increasingly impossible as technology improves.
This should be obvious from current reactive armor technology that basically reacts by firing at incoming weaponry. Current generation warplanes and tanks have outer skins which fire outward to intercept incoming weaponry... the "skin" of such is basically short range missiles. Soon ships will be made up of missiles which are integrated at different levels (think sharing explosives, fuel, processing).
Because of the danger of mis-communication orders would be pre-programmed. Eliminate nation, eliminate city, eliminate planet and so forth. Both sides will probably be using identical weaponry (since reverse engineering is already trivially easy) so the winner will be the one with more resources. Any such war would eliminate the majority of resources available to both (relatively comparable) groups. Since the weapons would benefit from being simplistic it would be a war of annihilation... and since any war using robotics and mandatory annihilation is essentially unforgivable the winner would need to wipe out all other groups (winner the Obama family?). Unless they're totally evil the next generation will massacre their parents for destroying all the resources and killing everyone. So yay!! Actually such a war readily explains why there are no aliens. The Americans are already pushing everyone around and heading for this type of war (instead of putting peace keepers and Socratic reasonable people who actually speak the local language on the ground to explain their reasonable requests. Which I guess is hard when your requests aren't reasonable).
Well I suppose humanity had a good go of it.
Pakistan is probably the most legitimate theocracy in the world. Both in that it reasonably follows religious law (both when it helps and hurts) and in that Pakistan was formed when religious revolution split India, some were trapped on the wrong side of course but there was a period of free encouraged movement and sensible redistribution.
Still Pakistan is quite prickly and knows it is seen as unstable by most non-sectarian governments and even a majority of people. India's fear that Pakistan could make a dangerous enemy to protect it's religious freedom is not unfounded. If you're desperately preserving your religion you can offer some pretty insane terms (10,000,000 virgins to service U.S. Military personnel? Yea, we can do that. 5 Trillion in debt? Bring it on!) which might tempt the U.S. into siding with them at an odd moment.
The Air-frames really aren't that important as we all know. The weapons and guidance systems and intelligence isn't for sale, it would be silly to buy it anyway because the level of integration means that it would have unexpected or non-working functionality.
The question is whether the F-22 can shoot down X planes where X is the number of missiles it can carry or whether massive numbers will be at all effective (as they are in tank warfare). If the answer to that isn't missiles it soon will be. To which the question will become, what's cheaper than a missile? Which is a terrifying question.
That's the party. 85% of their voters just want an extra $200 in their pocket come tax time. Explain to them what that $200 REALLY COSTS and you'll do more for the democrats (and rational voting really) than by concentrating on any issue).
100%... As far as I can tell Obama's in great shape. We're going to see some really wild ideas coming out of the GOP for the coming election. They won't actually follow through on any of them of course, but they will be "promising everything" out of desperation.
I really dislike the: he disappointed I'll vote "against" him/her mentality. From most of what I've heard it's been the issues that Obama was FORCED into by the implementational (better word appreciated) side of government. Wire taps, CIA/FBI. More Iraq, the military and intelligence services and think tanks. Bailouts, the treasury/FED/etc. If he hadn't caved on these issues they would have thrown their hands up and given up on these struggles, which was unacceptable.
That said Obama Care, Capital Gains tax increases, Kyoto 2 (or is it 3?), etc. seemed voluntary. If those are "ultimate mistakes" or the "only issue that matters" then you could make an argument for punitive voting (note: no such argument has ever been a GOOD one. But they do exist) against him.
The silly thing is that on the issues where Obama was balked by the administration and which he's being blamed for the GOP has always been further towards the side of the administration (maybe it's a reality check?) so by zeroing in on the things Obama wasn't able to get his way on and blaming him for the outcome then voting for the alternative you PROMOTE those outcomes. Pretty stupid.
Financially, and perhaps the greatest example of their stupidity is that conservative voters have always been split - 20% rich or believe that they will/should be rich and 80% poor, uneducated and brain washed. Simply by educating a few of the 80% that - You can't afford health care. 1.) You simply will not have the money if something happens. 2.) Taxes make goods/services/programs/incentives EXIST that are overwhelmingly more beneficial for the poor than the rich. (With obvious benefits like reasonable crime rates, educated work forces and social values [bullets will always be cheap, BMWs expensive and steal-able]). 3.) It's not charity. There are no forces, outside of political will, making society equal. Each of us tries to find a niche but there are forces outside of our control. The wealthy need roads/health care/education/whatever to become wealthy and be happy and existentially fulfilled just much as the poor need education/social services/medicare to be content and continue to try to better themselves. 4.) There's always someone bigger, the rich are ALLOWED to remain rich, the government is ALLOWED to remain in control, the police are ALLOWED to enforce and mollify. Do not believe that because someone made a lot of money (or spends a lot advertising to you) that they know everything, are impervious, or have any unproven quality or belief. People are people. 5.) Governing is hard. Getting two people to agree is tough, look at the divorce rates. Getting thousands to agree and then work hard towards a goal is harder. Sometimes the government is wasteful, sometimes overambitious, it would be wonderful if they knew in advance how successful each program will be. If you solve that let us know. Private companies fail all the time. 9 / 10 starting companies fail in their first year, compare that to the government's success rate and you'll be astounded. Just because it's not your money and there isn't some talking head telling you he could have done it better don't pretend non-government is a magical success, it's not. If you look at the tax incentives (read negative taxes) paid to major U.S. corporations you'd realize that their actual successes are quite modest. Many would be out of business if the government didn't support them.
or that I have to agree to a virtual strip search to fly on a plane.
Interesting, as a Canadian outsider I always understood this was a Bush Republican mistake. Care to explain?
I worked a lot on software for people with disabilities, did a GPS navigation app for Symbian back in the day.
Got commissioned by the U.N. to look into adaptive technologies. Summary follows: Products fall into two broad categories: commercial and altruistic. Altruistic products are usually brilliantly designed for a specific person (This is considered the central issue of adaptive technologies and is the major talking point. specificity) usually a relative or friend. These products are ingenious, well made and available for extremely reasonable prices. You can find them if you search hard online, generall,y someone making a TTS engine for his daughter isn't a web guru with a marketing budget. The second group is the commercial products, almost universally INSANELY overpriced. $50 of hardware sells for $5000. Visual basic level software selling for hundreds or thousands of dollars. This exorbitance is rationalized through: Disability being a "small" market (regardless if a product sells 100,000 a year), quality (you shouldn't force a person to learn a new technology every few years, hardware breakdown is a nightmare if it's non-standard and you NEED it to read,communicate or work) which is bullshit I've seen just as much breakdown and poorly written,documented and supported software from the major players as from the passion projects, and source of funding... taxpayers, bureaucrats and contracts. I'm sure you've seen it before, bleeding hearts SUCK at negotiation. Dignity is a problematic area I've encountered a few times as well, products that work ideally but provoke surprise or distaste from those without special needs are discarded. *(special rant follows useful information).
What I told the U.N.: You have three problems: 1.) This stuff is expensive, and overpriced... getting it to developing countries is going to be extremely difficult and infrastructure for them will also be extremely costly. 2.) Languages most people DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH. Since this stuff is commercial, not open source, there is little opportunity or motivation to create versions for Swahili speakers. It's bad... if you don't speak English, French, German, Italian or Spanish your options are diminished 99.5%.
Then of course I got pissed and determined and decided I would let a blind dude in the Phillipines see. I went through the spending of all long term programs to purchase technologies for people with disabilities and looked at the actual distribution of people's needs (People in Africa have an incredibly high level of amputation for example). It turns out that THE U.S. ALONE is already spending 10x to 20x what it would cost to do the job, we're just putting the money into companies instead of open sourcing it or creating a community lead program for development.
This is obviously speculation and I'd need to provide a lot of evidence to prove how inefficient it is but an example was my call to the Arizona school board. $50,000,000 a year, for approximately 4000 arriving disabled high schoolers.
My recommendation: move funding towards open source software and hardware, nothing else will solve the language and distribution issues... the technologies are just moving too fast and the users are too clueless for any help from market forces in this direction.
Rant time! Ok I'd like to introduce you to a man his name is Ray Kurzweil. From now on I will call him The Jewish Nazi or JN for short.
Mr. Kurzweil was one of the first to market will an OCR device, nothing special a webcam and a flat panel to put the documents on... and only $8000! Because he got in early his company achieved name recognition, which was good because I compiled a LIST OF EVERY ELECTRONIC DEVICE it's about 2100 products or so. Then went to several leading experts to determine which products were excellent and which were popular (huge divergence) JN sells a lot... but his products all suck and are overpriced.
So now our Jewish Nazi has the disabled community by the balls and starts gouging away. $10,000 for screen readi
The big two (Bell and Rogers) just successfully lobbied to FORCE OUR OTHER COMPANIES to stop offering unlimited home internet.
:(
Prices just went up from $24.95 a month for reasonable service (had problems with the Acanac $19.95 sorry) to $29 and that's only available paid in advance for a year (Still WAY WAY better the 3 year contracts they were handing out 5 years ago, but still...)
So our internet is now more expensive by 1/6 not sure how much that factors in but you can get a T1 anywhere so it must play a role.
Also they're rolling out wireless net, 802.11i/s equivalent... which increases penetration but hurts reliability and latency... which means no gaming + slow page refreshes + fewer home servers.
So depending on when the study was conducted they could be way off... Canadians generally are reasonably well off, educated and meticulous (fallout from the "Friendly Polite" thing) so we took to computing pretty well... doesn't mean the companies providing it are worth a damn.
I still remember receiving a file from a girlfriend living in Korea. Holy tube inferiority batman! She saturated my downlink then wrote me asking if something was broken
You do understand that if copyright was enforced the fracture between free and paid would be HUGE! The Pirate Bay and Torrentz, ISOHunt and so forth would be just as popular but populated with free content.
It should be obvious that the internet is wires, an OS is required to make a computer run and a browser is an obvious way of handling the web (or equivalent technology) that these things are still "owned" and controlled by U.S. companies is a tribute to the work of the OSS developers who worked for universities to build something brilliant. They got there first and sold it insanely cheap, otherwise everyone would have gotten there on their own, by a more freedom embracing path. (In both culture and software)
I do agree that this recent trend of artists trying to embrace free and open source and getting incredible community support are short lived. Albums like the NIN 7 Million $ free release aren't sustainable, artists are chasing it with the same scary look of inexperienced investors.
The problem with a truly open information economy and system is that it really embraces the notion of critics. The problem with that is the classic critic dilemma of high vs low culture (Linux vs OSX if you will), an eternal struggle with the same ups and downs as the economy... violent stuff.
If the PirateBay was entirely populated by free content we wouldn't need as many distribution channels, there would be the 1 "most liked" movie and it would sit there for aeons with no financial incentive to displace it. While I support the notion of a few classics that should be widely digested the possibility of a "path of perfection" in culture, software or news is terrifying.
You can examine music from the 1940's (just before Rock) or the 1910's (before Swing and Flappers) and you'll find a very single minded approach, very quickly you'll get a notion of the "perfect song" all the artists are trying to produce. Bad for multiculturalism, good for avoiding cliquishness and social isolation but bad for innovation and the appreciation of a variety of brilliance.
So we may find out that this whole thing wasn't really the U.S. telling everyone else how to act. It was just a few isolated morons within the administration... "don't tase me for destroying your freedoms yo."
Yea, we elect politicians. Who turn around and say that the ideal or even slightly better world they proposed has become impossible due to unexpected events, rarely is the arguement that it's for the people (or that the people would lose faith in government if they did or didn't do something) but rather for some shadow group that "knows better". Where knowing better is: Providing safety, generating more income, securing power just in case.
Where does the buck stop?
Here here for having a more aggressive GPLv4! I know the GPLv3 went to far (in some areas not in others) but there's no reason not to have a GPLv2.1 and 3.1 to address issues.
:P I hope OSS in your pocket starts with Google. But I'm worried and I hope it gets away from Google quickly.
The number of patents going into this terrifying copyright system, especially the number that could or would have been open sourced, if an acceptable and iconic licence was available.
That said the forces of "Justice" have decided people shouldn't have devices in their pockets that they have more personal control over than the device under their desk that they already fear? Linux took years, but it's ready. It runs more hardware than anything else. What makes them think something similar won't happen to phones? What's their end plan? The only thing that makes sense from their position is to run for tyranny, but we'll keep hoping they're just blocking the exit for our protection.
Anyway I already have a G1, started buying up groups of them. I recommend it as an option if you want to spend $600 on phones (buy 5!). Basically, OSS should make it a bit faster. There are some very lightweight Linux's. Every time Google seems to be stopping the flow of updates the community threatens to consolidate all their patches and upgrades. Such a "ROM", would be a much better OS than that offered by Google, further it seems that it could be quite generic existing on lots of varied hardware. I like my G1 because it has a keyboard and that slow feeling that makes me know the government isn't watching
Branding is a BIG Deal in software, I want an OS on my phone that says "Best Operating System." I have no trouble with Google creating a bunch of advertising "channels" or "categories" and being a money drip for developers (80x160x24 x 40,000 = ). But the underlying OS should be open and free! I have so much shame for being a gamer (and needing windows), please make a place for us!
Anyway phones, more freedom yea. Gonna smoke.
I agree, didn't we solve this in the "Computer" "Space" already? Would you buy a computer that would automatically install windows8 and you couldn't install Linux on? Did you just look at your pocket?
Let's not make the debate about phones: the SLASHDOT phone maker, Nokia, with their phones that run linux (provided you're willing to work your ass off and don't need a phone phone) just shut down. Android seems modifiable but it's hit or miss. I expect some kind of theme thing to keep casual users happy. Apple's the sphinx (Modpoint!), but while they let the truly hardcore keep their jailbroken phones what they do in computer land suggests their phones will always be "Das Apple Playbox! Giggling verbotten! And dis bittorrent!".
Microsoft just Xbox'd. They're getting ready to 360, which will be frighteningly successful, why because Gears of War is FUN!
OSS hasn't really gotten behind any specific hardware, why? Because the DMCA looms over every phone, and counting on the next company to be as nice as IBM is a poor bet.
Let's keep the debate about Computers in any case, boxes... that are meant to control information together. And why we shouldn't be allowed to do that, like children, terrorists and reactionary voting.
If you stand in Mexico and use a remote control car to rob a bank in the US, the US will come after you..and visa versa.
The constitution and of course understood American doctrine is that States (and States) should be allowed their own fiscal policy (which might be better than that in the U.S.) now we're seeing that attacked openly. The hypocricy is maddening.
This is something that probably won't happen to other countries though. So the U.S. will be left culturally destitute, what else is new?