Well the drug prohibition treaty did the exact opposite. Thanks to the US war was declared by countries upon their own citizens all over the world, turning hundreds of millions into prisoners and throwing away billions of dollars, apparently all to enrich a few US corporations.
Looks like they are at it again. Another treaty designed to get countries to declare war upon it's own citizens, imprison them and waste billions of dollars yet again to enrich a few US corporations. When will people wake up, societies are about creating healthy and happy citizens, not about enriching and empowering a handful of fucking sociopaths.
One thing to watch out for is being fobbed off by banks. Standard law for credit or debit cards is the onus is upon the seller to prove that you made the purchase not upon you to prove you didn't. If your bank wants to take a few weeks to resolve it immediately complain to your regulatory authority, the bank can take a few weeks to resolve it with the seller, not with you. Once you have made the formal claim for a stop payment it should be resolved in a couple of days, if your bank does not support you in this, it is time to change banks.
The reality the person who used your credit or debit cards details, did not steal from you, the seller with the assistance of the credit or debit card company stole from you, they should be required by law to prove that charge in fact did occur, that they were defrauded and that they attempted to defraud you in error.
The lie being spread by mass media, to suit their advertisers the credit card companies and the merchants is a lie, that the money was stolen from your by the thief that used the card details. Your money was stolen by the merchant who claimed you made the purchase, once you have made the complaint, the police should pursue the merchant who by law should prove they did not just attempt to defraud you, that someone defrauded the merchant has absolutely nothing to do with you and at no time should be considered your problem.
Societies and technology have also evolved over time so that collapse whilst it remain a risk, in more modern more evolved societies, activities and practices can be established to stabilise societies and allow them to continue to evolve in a positive fashion. Simply birth control targeted at the most inept portions of society, say the supply free intoxicants conditional to consuming the incorporated oral contraceptives. In a similar fashion targeting certain psychological birth defects like psychopathy and narcissism and restricting the ability of those extreme anti-social destructive elements from continuing to influence society. The act of extending life also enforces greater stability upon society, as the older more experienced elements those with living memories of failed decisions are more dominant whilst also be more active (not physically weakened by age).
From an external viewpoint human society is likely to be viewed as still primitive due to it's inability to direct the continued evolution of it's societies in a more positive fashion. Demonstrated by it's continued desire to indulge in self destructive violence upon a global scale, for allowing those that do suffer from anti-social psychological conditions to have so great an influence upon their societies, for continuing to allow a minority to destroy the environment of the majority to feed insatiable egos of that minority and, for the deceit and dishonesty demonstrated at all levels of society.
Likely stoned gamers, who do not consume extremes of resources, who do not indulge in violent anti social activities, who do not demand the celebrity worship of others, who do not need to pollute the environment with super polluting cars, jets, mansions and yachts and who whilst gaming still contribute to society in a peaceful fashion, sharing thoughts and ideas, creating free content, sharing some of the work load without being a fanatic and not demanding that others work for them cheap, would likely be seen in a more positive light. After all that game play is often a way to escape from the hypocritical, destructive, antisocial, deceitful viciousness of all the other short hair, crested, cranky, rock throwing monkeys.
No matter what, most MMO games will always be niche markets. Problem, playing the same game over and over and over again, really doesn't do it for most people. Learning new games playing them for a while and moving onto the next one is the majority market. Possible MMO might be able to stretch their market by allowing users to log in multiple different games, at different times and possible transfer their character skill level between games.
Perhaps it was just me but I find a game starting to get boring after playing for more than say, 12 hours, after 24 hours really boring and beyond 48 mind numbing torture (obviously not in a single stretch). Not that I can't go back to the game in say 6 months and enjoy it again but solid addict play is totally out of the question. So subscription play for one game really is a no go (I have worked on factory production lines and, always earned productivity bonuses but I would never consider it fun).
You could skip the whole controller, put the functional directly into the CPU and just have slots on the mobo or a daughter board for the memory, cheapest solution, no hdisk controller at all.
You don't actually slap a big tax randomly on things, that cost should reflect fair trade, where imported goods are subject to the exact same cost impacts of, fair and reasonable wages, safe working conditions, environmental protection costs, realistic taxation basis and, acceptable conditions of employment. In line with normal competitive practices, companies can still be required to compete whether local or foreign, but that competition should be done upon an equal basis. This is ultimately fair and humane, if other countries want to avoid the duty impost, they simply need to improve conditions so that they equal or exceed local conditions. So you are not just rebuilding the politically stability of the US middle class, you are building that politically stable middle class across the globe.
This is very important as it has already clearly be demonstrated political strife in other countries will always end up having a local impact and modern exotic pollutants know no boundaries, it is impossible to produce clean and safe products in a polluted environment.
Keep in mind that you do not need to provide every possible safe and useful web site, you only need to provide sufficient safe and useful web sites. Realistically that only needs to be few hundred. Web site publishers that want to provide internet services for children, whether they be government or privately funded, will be required to fulfil all required fit for use provisions to ensure safer access for children, ideally as an extension of the education system.
It will happen it is just a matter of how long it takes to get there, sooner is obviously better than latter but at this stage it seems it will take decades due to resistant by marketing companies who want to continue to target and manipulate the choices of ch8ldren. Advertising is content and it's affects should be subject to critical evaluation for the damage it can cause to the psychological stability of children.
DSL of course makes that a lie. DSL service is over a phone line, no different to a digital voice transmission in principle, even when it comes to cable, once cable carries one phone call, then all data transmission on that same hardware should be bound to common carrier status. You can not attempt false differentiations between communications on the same infrastructure, in some vain attempt via cartels and collusions to inflate profit margins.
As always google as for any other up loader never gets a free ride, the cost of transmission of traffic is paid for by the down loader, the person who request that data and pays for it, the ISP's customer. To attempt to charge both is simply double dipping, charging twice for the same traffic to inflate profit margins.
The larger ISP's ie. Telco incumbents where pushing for these schemes to create content distribution and retail monopolies. Where they would distribute content they were selling free of transmission costs and for any competing retailer they would simply price transmission costs up high enough to put them out of business (it would be cheaper to manufacture storage media and send it by post than to electronically transmit it).
The largest potential advantage for SSD drives, is clever redesign can allow for extreme expandability. Unlike harddisk drives, SSD drives can inherently be designed as more open units, with additional slots for additional memory cards ie, it is readily possible to manufacturer a SSD drive that starts with say 50 gig of memory to which you can add additional memory cards at say 25 gig a piece. All this done before adding the additional cost of another drive with it's own expanding memory slots.
As prices fall, likely target would be 100 gig drives with 100 gig expansion cards to fill out to a terabyte.
In the case of politicians you still have to bear in mind competence. That there is a bias to those that often gain wealth via corrupt practices and seek to protect and enhance those corrupt practices is known. What tends to matter most is the degree of competence in balancing that bias and not letting get wildly out of control as some crazy shared get rich quick scheme.
With regards to ACTA, the US lobbyist team is likely shooting itself in the foot with regard to blocking transparency until they get what they want, this enables other countries to use that as a simple block to prevent any progress on ACTA. Right now the US economy is still deteriorating, high unemployment with no real job prospects, deteriorating infrastructure, a damaged environment, massive government and private debt and a crazy notion that junk patents and pop music can solve those problems. Other countries are no longer listening as they do not wish to follow down that route and US influence is waning especially after the damage done through the Bush Cheney years.
From an external viewpoint it seems that the US wants to charge the rest of the world a global media tax as it's means of continuing to pay for, a wildly excessive military arsenal and, a bloated corporate executive class, even when it will solve none of their real problems, just continue to exacerbate them. One real warning about that kind of stupid thinking, it matters not where the content is created, it only matters where the licence fees are charged and under what tax arrangements that is done. China buying up US content to clear US debt will bankrupt the US in the current circumstance.
Humans are also demonstrably capable of ensuring other humans do not survive. In fact if you look at sociopaths, they will work to advance themselves even if that activity knowingly doomed the rest of the human race including their own offspring and they represent 1 percent of the human population. If you thin that doesn't count, just remember that they likely lead us into 99 percent of our wars killing hundreds of millions in the process, just to enrich and empower themselves.
Now combine that with modern technology, junk science (when it comes to blocking reasonable safety protocols), fossil fuel combustion considered as an energy source for billions of people, exotic pollutants, genetic engineering, nuclear weapons (insane that there are still people that actually want them used), then current likelihood of survival is severely diminished.
With all genetic engineering future mutation must be considered when you are inducing a genetic change that could never occur under a normal reasonable mutational evolutionary basis, especially when you are looking at short term mutations. Short term mutations because the rest of the biosphere needs to keep up in evolutionary terms to be able to undo any major fubars.
Well three weeks ago, mine wasn't a near miss and a distracted young driver who took off when they mistook the green light for going forward for that red arrow for turning across traffic. No car and three weeks left to go in a six week neck brace stint (fractured vertebrae, damaged anterior longitudinal ligament, nerve damage to root nerves of both arms) with a possible operation to follow, I would ere on the side of ensuring drivers place the maximum possible attention to what they are doing and the risks involved with operating a motor vehicle. Deadly business operating a motor vehicle and, whilst a lot of people do it a lot of the time, it does not diminish the significant risk it represents. It Australia there a laws that restrict billboards and roadside signs as they can also distract drivers and it only takes that one distraction at the wrong time to put another road user into hospital.
One point, don't filter web sites that is really a waste of time if you really want safe access. Create a permission list of sites that they can access, so basically block everything and then only allow web sites that you have personally reviewed. To be honest it would be handy if a age suitable list of web sites was created by an independent body and reviewed by the government to simplify that task for parents. On your own as an admin, of course it means your children don't ask for permission to use the internet (billions of pages to monitor, good luck with that), they ask for permission to visit particular web sites and to make use of a selected range of interactive internet activities.
They need not prosecute for online gambling, they should simply make it illegal to provide credit services for online gambling ie. forcing compulsory back charges on credit cards. The biggest problem with online gambling is the lack of controls upon the provision of the gambling service, inevitably the more online gambling servers the more corrupt they will become in order to generate revenue and the impossibility of enforcing fair (equal risk) gambling.
People agree to get conned, defrauded, lied to and cheated all the time because they agree upon a false premise, as such they should not suffer harm for falling victim to a deceit. All gambling houses should be forced to advertise losing not winning, as losing is the most likely outcome, the higher probability, the underlying reality (to advertise winning is a probability fraud). So come to "Las Vegas and Lose", "you have got to be in it to Lose It", "come on in for you chance to Lose", "only Losers step through these doors".
I of course prefer that gambling be legislated as gambling, fuck the liars and cheats, "EQUAL ODDS", otherwise it ain't really gambling it's just come in sucker losing. So online or offline who cares as long as the odds are equal and the lying con artists are forced to adhere to the truthful definition of taking a gamble.
That's right let's compete for all the corporations, lets pay wages that a cent's on the dollar compared to what they used to be, let's forget all those costly pollution controls, scrap all working safety conditions that affect productivity, forget all about worker insurance if they can't work why should they get paid, forget those expensive consumer protection laws, lets align law and justice with corporate profits and of course let's all be jacked up lying arse holes and shift our income to corporate styled income, where you don't get paid, your company of one get's paid, doesn't pay any taxes and pays you nothing but buys everything you want as tax deductible investments.
Imports and exports, hmm, want to fuck up tax havens, the cripple their ability to import and export anything, including capital, devalue their currency to nil (those that choose to hide their money in tax havens might end up hiding, nothing).
Firstly the argument could be made that whenever crimes against individuals are committed the perpetrator of that crime demonstrates abnormal behaviour, behaviour outside the accepted norms and hence demonstrates either temporary or permanent mental illness, the more heinous the crime by definition the greater the indication mental the illness. That prisons are full indicates that deterrence is not effective, the very first summation of the criminal is that they will not get caught and severity of punishment only motivates greater precautions when committing the crime, up to and including killing any possible witnesses.
As to who decides upon the appropriate probability risk assessment, that is obviously a decision for the whole of society, where the crime caused sufficient harm to another individual, that the risk of repetition is considered to grave, then society simply decides to isolate the person that perpetrated the crime for the remainder of their life under reasonable and humane conditions, the more tolerable the conditions the more readily society can ere on the side of safety.
As for punishment, punishment is only an end to itself where the persons who uses it upon another is a sadist, in all other circumstances is a method of rehabilitation, a method that is less affective than most other methods, including position reinforcement and psychopharmaceutical therapies. Isolation from the rest of society should not be done as punishment is should be done to protect society for repetition of that crime by that individual. It in affect should reflects the earliest similar sentences of ancient societies which was exile, unfortunately there is nowhere to exile dangerous individuals other than internal exile.
Life imprisonment is about protecting the innocent not the guilty. For the psychopath, guilt is questionable as they suffer a definable genetic defect defect that renders them incapable of making decisions based upon conscience and empathy, certainly they still need to be isolated from the rest of society in order to protect the innocent but punishment is pointless. As for purposefully creating harsh conditions in prison, that is inherently the logic of the psychopath. First a foremost, correctional services need to be considered, there mental health and the level of stress and violence they are subject to. Obviously institutions of rehabilitation and isolation need to be a psychologically healthy as possible in order to promote quality rehabilitation outcomes where possible and where not possible to preserve the peace of mind and sanity of correctional services officers.
It the case where they are banning people from situations where it is believed that they would fall to temptation and repeat their crimes, then they should not be considered rehabilitated and should remain securely under control within suitable institutions. They need to make up their minds, they can either be trusted and hence released back into the general population or they can not and should remain under lock and key. I know it is expensive but let loose all the non-violent drug users and even sellers (excluding those that distributed drugs to minors) and there will be plenty of space available and, the more reasonable the conditions of incarceration the less concern the public needs to feel about true life sentences for crimes where the risk exceeds reasonable re-establishment of trust.
If the capitalist owns all the resources to survive, all the land, you are free to choose to obey or starve and as you are already on the land they own, you will be punished for failing to obey in return payment for taken up the space you occupy. Every corporate entity will seek to eliminate it's competitor and without socially based controls forced upon it will do so, as has been demonstrated by history, the eventually inevitable result is complete ownership of all resources by a single entity.
Tell me are native Americans (north or south, or native Australians etc.) free to choose where they will hunt, fish and sleep, or was that choice stolen from them by the illusion of individual ownership and control of shared resources. Your choice is a blatant lie, in capitalist societies just like monarchies, you choose to obey or a punished for not doing so (starved, beaten, imprisoned, tortured). More socially aware and moral societies recognise this deceit, this theft of choice, where you are no longer allowed to subsist upon the resources you have every moral right to access and provide a social welfare net as support in lieu. The function of effective social democracies, to create healthier and happier human societies versus the function of capitalism to glorify and feed the ego of individuals at the expense of the rest of human society.
Full privatisation is not corporatism, it is the monarchy. Where a minority own everything including the rest of society. Democracy basically put an end to pure capitalism as expressed in monarchies. A democratic government is a expression of the majority, it is only as good or bad as the effort the majority wish to put into expressing their will upon the government. A democratic government is never a monopoly as it is based upon the will and the willingness to express that will, of the completely diverse will of the majority (many opinions not just one).
An autocracy is the will and opinions of one, a monopoly of thought, it is at the heart of capitalism, monarchy and the typical corporation, where only a very small minority decide, whilst the rest must follow. Don't think so, typical corporate response for investors who don't like the way the company is being run, sell your stock, regardless of losses that you'll incur. Typical corporate response for staff members who don't like the way the company is being run quit, regardless of the time and reputation those staff members have invested in that company.
In reality the separation between private and public (the government), is the separation between which elements of the shared human society that people will allow individuals to control for their own personal benefit and which elements of society are deem important enough to ensure that the majority will is definable expressed in their control. This has been distorted of late by corruption and deceit that allowed a minority to gain excessive control of major elements of shared human society, at the expense of the majority. Most disturbingly this minority is generally suffering from a genetic birth defect that disrupts their ability to appropriately socially interact with the rest of society, an absence of conscience and empathy (not new of course but typically of rampaging mass murdering monarchists throughout the centuries of human history).
Employers, employees, nah, this is about uni students paid to dob in other uni students. Those naughty students who use the tech skills to minimise the content expired whilst racking up tens of thousands of dollars in long term eduction debt. So future fellow staff members, seriously, would anyone trust a part time pigopolist narc that ran around pretending to be other's students friend and entrap them into sharing content so they can pick up a prosecution commission.
This is not so much about peer to peer file sharing, this is about those floating USB terrabyte hard disk drives, where content is added from many personal sources, and the drive spends each night at a different home. Getting all that inside information on how people share the content they have bought once they start to get bored with it and swap it around.
Interns for the copyright police, whose only future career will be pursuing children who swap usb thumb drives. That would be their only career choice because they would bot be trusted by any of their current students targets and potential future fellow employees. Not that they won't get plenty of volunteers to get paid bugger all and most of that on commission, you know, the anal retentive types.
It wasn't so much that they messed up, it was grandiose claims of destroying google, ludicrous claims made by Ballmer basically to bump up M$'s share price and to secure his position at M$. They simply were willing to do the hard yards, the long work over years to refine, improve, demonstrate creativity and implement realistic short, medium and long term plans. Just a whole lot of PR=B$ marketing, some behind the scenes questionable manipulations, exaggerated results and some really silly investments.
The one thing that puts google ahead of MSN search, is street view, simply a sufficient proportion of people's searches lead them to wanting to find a place, figure out the parking and establish a visual mind map of the approaches. Plus of course there is that net tourism that is fun and easy with street view, especially the latter higher quality images.
Search is just search, pretty much, meh, don't care use, what works, what people have become accustomed too and ok is good enough. The rest of the portal is still more important nad that where M$ really falls down, they still mishandle MSN, they have devalued the brand twice, first with live and now Bing and the problem with MSN remains the same, M$ just simply does not understand how value is created in a web page and how the value is sold down with each add and how that ratio needs to be managed. Just clumsy bloated egos with quick easy answers for wild get rich quick schemes and all just making M$ look more lame and uncool, a real bunch of Zunes (heh heh).
No, it ends with the less intellectually gifted being cured with the addition of suitable DNA to enhance their cerebral functions. So is it appropriate to attempt to 'cure' gullible knee jerk reactionary red necks or is it appropriate to leave them wallowing in their ignorance. You might consider that cure appropriate, hell, even they might consider that cure appropriate (although they will of course publicly deny it) but how about all those people they prey upon, abuse them and exploit them. Altough technically speaking that problem can also be cured with a few conscience gene's.
Obviously poor eyesight whether colour or focus or clarity is a no brainer but that same technology can be used in other ways and not for people's benefit. Would the political right, controlled by corporate executives, pseudo religionists, mass media and lobbyists, consider intelligence harmful to their profit potential and seek a cure for that condition, for other people of course (sure cure those lat lack a conscience or 'er' fix those that can not be exploited by them).
Now there is a rock solid example of proprietary lock in, it is too hard to change to something else regardless of whether it is better because the implementation might be worse. Once you get to that stage, the wisest thing to do, is an immediate swap, it breaks the lock in, it provides expertise in system changes and implementation, it breaks all existing security holes and it forces competition in supply contracts.
As for banning P2P software, that is really pointlessly dumb. Only approved software for specific use at each desktop should be installed, you never have a banned list you only have approved to install for a defined function list. I could bet my bottom dollar that once secure documents that ended up in P2P network lists did not get there by accident but where loaded onto the P2P network on purpose.
Lets start with a slightly more accurate link to the story http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100326/media_nm/us_venezuela_detention_3;_ylt=AukeOQVHjzcSw_2rM1SJtXf9SpZ4, briefly detained not locked up indefinitely. I really have to wonder about "pro-opposition TV station" now what exactly does that mean, I know in most of the modern western world where democracy and free speech are respected, you have 'independent' news services that report the news, not opposition TV stations or opposition news shows.
From what I have come to understand a politically biased TV or cable station stinks to high heaven of corruption, whether it be in Italy, the United States or perhaps even in Venezuela.
The whole Venezuelan political scene has that taint of corruption on one side US corporations with those Venezuelans who gained wealth and powers during colonisation days and on the other those who can trust and believe that only they have the answers and the masses who have yet to understand democracy.
A political system that still has a long way to go mature into a modern egalitarian society. One that will benefit form being left alone and not put under more pressure. Should Venezuela destabilise it will likely ignite the whole region with no winners just tens of millions of losers. Keep in mind the country that is receiving the most US aid in South America is also doing by far the worst. Ending the drug war will likely do more to stabilise South America than anything else possible.
They also remorselessly psychologically abuse their partners, use then as lab rats in testing out psychological manipulations, cheat on them as a matter of course and then of course swap them over once the relationship is no longer advantageous and, if the opportunity presents when they can legally get away with removing them they will do so without a flicker of conscience, if they believe they can get away with it they'll even go for a life insurance claim. Juts like playing Russian roulette but instead of one loaded chamber and the rest are empty, it is one empty chamber and the rest are loaded.
Slashdot Mirror
Well the drug prohibition treaty did the exact opposite. Thanks to the US war was declared by countries upon their own citizens all over the world, turning hundreds of millions into prisoners and throwing away billions of dollars, apparently all to enrich a few US corporations.
Looks like they are at it again. Another treaty designed to get countries to declare war upon it's own citizens, imprison them and waste billions of dollars yet again to enrich a few US corporations. When will people wake up, societies are about creating healthy and happy citizens, not about enriching and empowering a handful of fucking sociopaths.
One thing to watch out for is being fobbed off by banks. Standard law for credit or debit cards is the onus is upon the seller to prove that you made the purchase not upon you to prove you didn't. If your bank wants to take a few weeks to resolve it immediately complain to your regulatory authority, the bank can take a few weeks to resolve it with the seller, not with you. Once you have made the formal claim for a stop payment it should be resolved in a couple of days, if your bank does not support you in this, it is time to change banks.
The reality the person who used your credit or debit cards details, did not steal from you, the seller with the assistance of the credit or debit card company stole from you, they should be required by law to prove that charge in fact did occur, that they were defrauded and that they attempted to defraud you in error.
The lie being spread by mass media, to suit their advertisers the credit card companies and the merchants is a lie, that the money was stolen from your by the thief that used the card details. Your money was stolen by the merchant who claimed you made the purchase, once you have made the complaint, the police should pursue the merchant who by law should prove they did not just attempt to defraud you, that someone defrauded the merchant has absolutely nothing to do with you and at no time should be considered your problem.
Societies and technology have also evolved over time so that collapse whilst it remain a risk, in more modern more evolved societies, activities and practices can be established to stabilise societies and allow them to continue to evolve in a positive fashion. Simply birth control targeted at the most inept portions of society, say the supply free intoxicants conditional to consuming the incorporated oral contraceptives. In a similar fashion targeting certain psychological birth defects like psychopathy and narcissism and restricting the ability of those extreme anti-social destructive elements from continuing to influence society. The act of extending life also enforces greater stability upon society, as the older more experienced elements those with living memories of failed decisions are more dominant whilst also be more active (not physically weakened by age).
From an external viewpoint human society is likely to be viewed as still primitive due to it's inability to direct the continued evolution of it's societies in a more positive fashion. Demonstrated by it's continued desire to indulge in self destructive violence upon a global scale, for allowing those that do suffer from anti-social psychological conditions to have so great an influence upon their societies, for continuing to allow a minority to destroy the environment of the majority to feed insatiable egos of that minority and, for the deceit and dishonesty demonstrated at all levels of society.
Likely stoned gamers, who do not consume extremes of resources, who do not indulge in violent anti social activities, who do not demand the celebrity worship of others, who do not need to pollute the environment with super polluting cars, jets, mansions and yachts and who whilst gaming still contribute to society in a peaceful fashion, sharing thoughts and ideas, creating free content, sharing some of the work load without being a fanatic and not demanding that others work for them cheap, would likely be seen in a more positive light. After all that game play is often a way to escape from the hypocritical, destructive, antisocial, deceitful viciousness of all the other short hair, crested, cranky, rock throwing monkeys.
No matter what, most MMO games will always be niche markets. Problem, playing the same game over and over and over again, really doesn't do it for most people. Learning new games playing them for a while and moving onto the next one is the majority market. Possible MMO might be able to stretch their market by allowing users to log in multiple different games, at different times and possible transfer their character skill level between games.
Perhaps it was just me but I find a game starting to get boring after playing for more than say, 12 hours, after 24 hours really boring and beyond 48 mind numbing torture (obviously not in a single stretch). Not that I can't go back to the game in say 6 months and enjoy it again but solid addict play is totally out of the question. So subscription play for one game really is a no go (I have worked on factory production lines and, always earned productivity bonuses but I would never consider it fun).
You could skip the whole controller, put the functional directly into the CPU and just have slots on the mobo or a daughter board for the memory, cheapest solution, no hdisk controller at all.
You don't actually slap a big tax randomly on things, that cost should reflect fair trade, where imported goods are subject to the exact same cost impacts of, fair and reasonable wages, safe working conditions, environmental protection costs, realistic taxation basis and, acceptable conditions of employment. In line with normal competitive practices, companies can still be required to compete whether local or foreign, but that competition should be done upon an equal basis. This is ultimately fair and humane, if other countries want to avoid the duty impost, they simply need to improve conditions so that they equal or exceed local conditions. So you are not just rebuilding the politically stability of the US middle class, you are building that politically stable middle class across the globe.
This is very important as it has already clearly be demonstrated political strife in other countries will always end up having a local impact and modern exotic pollutants know no boundaries, it is impossible to produce clean and safe products in a polluted environment.
Keep in mind that you do not need to provide every possible safe and useful web site, you only need to provide sufficient safe and useful web sites. Realistically that only needs to be few hundred. Web site publishers that want to provide internet services for children, whether they be government or privately funded, will be required to fulfil all required fit for use provisions to ensure safer access for children, ideally as an extension of the education system.
It will happen it is just a matter of how long it takes to get there, sooner is obviously better than latter but at this stage it seems it will take decades due to resistant by marketing companies who want to continue to target and manipulate the choices of ch8ldren. Advertising is content and it's affects should be subject to critical evaluation for the damage it can cause to the psychological stability of children.
DSL of course makes that a lie. DSL service is over a phone line, no different to a digital voice transmission in principle, even when it comes to cable, once cable carries one phone call, then all data transmission on that same hardware should be bound to common carrier status. You can not attempt false differentiations between communications on the same infrastructure, in some vain attempt via cartels and collusions to inflate profit margins.
As always google as for any other up loader never gets a free ride, the cost of transmission of traffic is paid for by the down loader, the person who request that data and pays for it, the ISP's customer. To attempt to charge both is simply double dipping, charging twice for the same traffic to inflate profit margins.
The larger ISP's ie. Telco incumbents where pushing for these schemes to create content distribution and retail monopolies. Where they would distribute content they were selling free of transmission costs and for any competing retailer they would simply price transmission costs up high enough to put them out of business (it would be cheaper to manufacture storage media and send it by post than to electronically transmit it).
The largest potential advantage for SSD drives, is clever redesign can allow for extreme expandability. Unlike harddisk drives, SSD drives can inherently be designed as more open units, with additional slots for additional memory cards ie, it is readily possible to manufacturer a SSD drive that starts with say 50 gig of memory to which you can add additional memory cards at say 25 gig a piece. All this done before adding the additional cost of another drive with it's own expanding memory slots.
As prices fall, likely target would be 100 gig drives with 100 gig expansion cards to fill out to a terabyte.
In the case of politicians you still have to bear in mind competence. That there is a bias to those that often gain wealth via corrupt practices and seek to protect and enhance those corrupt practices is known. What tends to matter most is the degree of competence in balancing that bias and not letting get wildly out of control as some crazy shared get rich quick scheme.
With regards to ACTA, the US lobbyist team is likely shooting itself in the foot with regard to blocking transparency until they get what they want, this enables other countries to use that as a simple block to prevent any progress on ACTA. Right now the US economy is still deteriorating, high unemployment with no real job prospects, deteriorating infrastructure, a damaged environment, massive government and private debt and a crazy notion that junk patents and pop music can solve those problems. Other countries are no longer listening as they do not wish to follow down that route and US influence is waning especially after the damage done through the Bush Cheney years.
From an external viewpoint it seems that the US wants to charge the rest of the world a global media tax as it's means of continuing to pay for, a wildly excessive military arsenal and, a bloated corporate executive class, even when it will solve none of their real problems, just continue to exacerbate them. One real warning about that kind of stupid thinking, it matters not where the content is created, it only matters where the licence fees are charged and under what tax arrangements that is done. China buying up US content to clear US debt will bankrupt the US in the current circumstance.
Humans are also demonstrably capable of ensuring other humans do not survive. In fact if you look at sociopaths, they will work to advance themselves even if that activity knowingly doomed the rest of the human race including their own offspring and they represent 1 percent of the human population. If you thin that doesn't count, just remember that they likely lead us into 99 percent of our wars killing hundreds of millions in the process, just to enrich and empower themselves.
Now combine that with modern technology, junk science (when it comes to blocking reasonable safety protocols), fossil fuel combustion considered as an energy source for billions of people, exotic pollutants, genetic engineering, nuclear weapons (insane that there are still people that actually want them used), then current likelihood of survival is severely diminished.
With all genetic engineering future mutation must be considered when you are inducing a genetic change that could never occur under a normal reasonable mutational evolutionary basis, especially when you are looking at short term mutations. Short term mutations because the rest of the biosphere needs to keep up in evolutionary terms to be able to undo any major fubars.
Well three weeks ago, mine wasn't a near miss and a distracted young driver who took off when they mistook the green light for going forward for that red arrow for turning across traffic. No car and three weeks left to go in a six week neck brace stint (fractured vertebrae, damaged anterior longitudinal ligament, nerve damage to root nerves of both arms) with a possible operation to follow, I would ere on the side of ensuring drivers place the maximum possible attention to what they are doing and the risks involved with operating a motor vehicle. Deadly business operating a motor vehicle and, whilst a lot of people do it a lot of the time, it does not diminish the significant risk it represents. It Australia there a laws that restrict billboards and roadside signs as they can also distract drivers and it only takes that one distraction at the wrong time to put another road user into hospital.
One point, don't filter web sites that is really a waste of time if you really want safe access. Create a permission list of sites that they can access, so basically block everything and then only allow web sites that you have personally reviewed. To be honest it would be handy if a age suitable list of web sites was created by an independent body and reviewed by the government to simplify that task for parents. On your own as an admin, of course it means your children don't ask for permission to use the internet (billions of pages to monitor, good luck with that), they ask for permission to visit particular web sites and to make use of a selected range of interactive internet activities.
They need not prosecute for online gambling, they should simply make it illegal to provide credit services for online gambling ie. forcing compulsory back charges on credit cards. The biggest problem with online gambling is the lack of controls upon the provision of the gambling service, inevitably the more online gambling servers the more corrupt they will become in order to generate revenue and the impossibility of enforcing fair (equal risk) gambling.
People agree to get conned, defrauded, lied to and cheated all the time because they agree upon a false premise, as such they should not suffer harm for falling victim to a deceit. All gambling houses should be forced to advertise losing not winning, as losing is the most likely outcome, the higher probability, the underlying reality (to advertise winning is a probability fraud). So come to "Las Vegas and Lose", "you have got to be in it to Lose It", "come on in for you chance to Lose", "only Losers step through these doors".
I of course prefer that gambling be legislated as gambling, fuck the liars and cheats, "EQUAL ODDS", otherwise it ain't really gambling it's just come in sucker losing. So online or offline who cares as long as the odds are equal and the lying con artists are forced to adhere to the truthful definition of taking a gamble.
That's right let's compete for all the corporations, lets pay wages that a cent's on the dollar compared to what they used to be, let's forget all those costly pollution controls, scrap all working safety conditions that affect productivity, forget all about worker insurance if they can't work why should they get paid, forget those expensive consumer protection laws, lets align law and justice with corporate profits and of course let's all be jacked up lying arse holes and shift our income to corporate styled income, where you don't get paid, your company of one get's paid, doesn't pay any taxes and pays you nothing but buys everything you want as tax deductible investments.
Imports and exports, hmm, want to fuck up tax havens, the cripple their ability to import and export anything, including capital, devalue their currency to nil (those that choose to hide their money in tax havens might end up hiding, nothing).
Firstly the argument could be made that whenever crimes against individuals are committed the perpetrator of that crime demonstrates abnormal behaviour, behaviour outside the accepted norms and hence demonstrates either temporary or permanent mental illness, the more heinous the crime by definition the greater the indication mental the illness. That prisons are full indicates that deterrence is not effective, the very first summation of the criminal is that they will not get caught and severity of punishment only motivates greater precautions when committing the crime, up to and including killing any possible witnesses.
As to who decides upon the appropriate probability risk assessment, that is obviously a decision for the whole of society, where the crime caused sufficient harm to another individual, that the risk of repetition is considered to grave, then society simply decides to isolate the person that perpetrated the crime for the remainder of their life under reasonable and humane conditions, the more tolerable the conditions the more readily society can ere on the side of safety.
As for punishment, punishment is only an end to itself where the persons who uses it upon another is a sadist, in all other circumstances is a method of rehabilitation, a method that is less affective than most other methods, including position reinforcement and psychopharmaceutical therapies. Isolation from the rest of society should not be done as punishment is should be done to protect society for repetition of that crime by that individual. It in affect should reflects the earliest similar sentences of ancient societies which was exile, unfortunately there is nowhere to exile dangerous individuals other than internal exile.
Life imprisonment is about protecting the innocent not the guilty. For the psychopath, guilt is questionable as they suffer a definable genetic defect defect that renders them incapable of making decisions based upon conscience and empathy, certainly they still need to be isolated from the rest of society in order to protect the innocent but punishment is pointless. As for purposefully creating harsh conditions in prison, that is inherently the logic of the psychopath. First a foremost, correctional services need to be considered, there mental health and the level of stress and violence they are subject to. Obviously institutions of rehabilitation and isolation need to be a psychologically healthy as possible in order to promote quality rehabilitation outcomes where possible and where not possible to preserve the peace of mind and sanity of correctional services officers.
It the case where they are banning people from situations where it is believed that they would fall to temptation and repeat their crimes, then they should not be considered rehabilitated and should remain securely under control within suitable institutions. They need to make up their minds, they can either be trusted and hence released back into the general population or they can not and should remain under lock and key. I know it is expensive but let loose all the non-violent drug users and even sellers (excluding those that distributed drugs to minors) and there will be plenty of space available and, the more reasonable the conditions of incarceration the less concern the public needs to feel about true life sentences for crimes where the risk exceeds reasonable re-establishment of trust.
If the capitalist owns all the resources to survive, all the land, you are free to choose to obey or starve and as you are already on the land they own, you will be punished for failing to obey in return payment for taken up the space you occupy. Every corporate entity will seek to eliminate it's competitor and without socially based controls forced upon it will do so, as has been demonstrated by history, the eventually inevitable result is complete ownership of all resources by a single entity.
Tell me are native Americans (north or south, or native Australians etc.) free to choose where they will hunt, fish and sleep, or was that choice stolen from them by the illusion of individual ownership and control of shared resources. Your choice is a blatant lie, in capitalist societies just like monarchies, you choose to obey or a punished for not doing so (starved, beaten, imprisoned, tortured). More socially aware and moral societies recognise this deceit, this theft of choice, where you are no longer allowed to subsist upon the resources you have every moral right to access and provide a social welfare net as support in lieu. The function of effective social democracies, to create healthier and happier human societies versus the function of capitalism to glorify and feed the ego of individuals at the expense of the rest of human society.
Full privatisation is not corporatism, it is the monarchy. Where a minority own everything including the rest of society. Democracy basically put an end to pure capitalism as expressed in monarchies. A democratic government is a expression of the majority, it is only as good or bad as the effort the majority wish to put into expressing their will upon the government. A democratic government is never a monopoly as it is based upon the will and the willingness to express that will, of the completely diverse will of the majority (many opinions not just one).
An autocracy is the will and opinions of one, a monopoly of thought, it is at the heart of capitalism, monarchy and the typical corporation, where only a very small minority decide, whilst the rest must follow. Don't think so, typical corporate response for investors who don't like the way the company is being run, sell your stock, regardless of losses that you'll incur. Typical corporate response for staff members who don't like the way the company is being run quit, regardless of the time and reputation those staff members have invested in that company.
In reality the separation between private and public (the government), is the separation between which elements of the shared human society that people will allow individuals to control for their own personal benefit and which elements of society are deem important enough to ensure that the majority will is definable expressed in their control. This has been distorted of late by corruption and deceit that allowed a minority to gain excessive control of major elements of shared human society, at the expense of the majority. Most disturbingly this minority is generally suffering from a genetic birth defect that disrupts their ability to appropriately socially interact with the rest of society, an absence of conscience and empathy (not new of course but typically of rampaging mass murdering monarchists throughout the centuries of human history).
Employers, employees, nah, this is about uni students paid to dob in other uni students. Those naughty students who use the tech skills to minimise the content expired whilst racking up tens of thousands of dollars in long term eduction debt. So future fellow staff members, seriously, would anyone trust a part time pigopolist narc that ran around pretending to be other's students friend and entrap them into sharing content so they can pick up a prosecution commission.
This is not so much about peer to peer file sharing, this is about those floating USB terrabyte hard disk drives, where content is added from many personal sources, and the drive spends each night at a different home. Getting all that inside information on how people share the content they have bought once they start to get bored with it and swap it around.
Interns for the copyright police, whose only future career will be pursuing children who swap usb thumb drives. That would be their only career choice because they would bot be trusted by any of their current students targets and potential future fellow employees. Not that they won't get plenty of volunteers to get paid bugger all and most of that on commission, you know, the anal retentive types.
It wasn't so much that they messed up, it was grandiose claims of destroying google, ludicrous claims made by Ballmer basically to bump up M$'s share price and to secure his position at M$. They simply were willing to do the hard yards, the long work over years to refine, improve, demonstrate creativity and implement realistic short, medium and long term plans. Just a whole lot of PR=B$ marketing, some behind the scenes questionable manipulations, exaggerated results and some really silly investments.
The one thing that puts google ahead of MSN search, is street view, simply a sufficient proportion of people's searches lead them to wanting to find a place, figure out the parking and establish a visual mind map of the approaches. Plus of course there is that net tourism that is fun and easy with street view, especially the latter higher quality images.
Search is just search, pretty much, meh, don't care use, what works, what people have become accustomed too and ok is good enough. The rest of the portal is still more important nad that where M$ really falls down, they still mishandle MSN, they have devalued the brand twice, first with live and now Bing and the problem with MSN remains the same, M$ just simply does not understand how value is created in a web page and how the value is sold down with each add and how that ratio needs to be managed. Just clumsy bloated egos with quick easy answers for wild get rich quick schemes and all just making M$ look more lame and uncool, a real bunch of Zunes (heh heh).
No, it ends with the less intellectually gifted being cured with the addition of suitable DNA to enhance their cerebral functions. So is it appropriate to attempt to 'cure' gullible knee jerk reactionary red necks or is it appropriate to leave them wallowing in their ignorance. You might consider that cure appropriate, hell, even they might consider that cure appropriate (although they will of course publicly deny it) but how about all those people they prey upon, abuse them and exploit them. Altough technically speaking that problem can also be cured with a few conscience gene's.
Obviously poor eyesight whether colour or focus or clarity is a no brainer but that same technology can be used in other ways and not for people's benefit. Would the political right, controlled by corporate executives, pseudo religionists, mass media and lobbyists, consider intelligence harmful to their profit potential and seek a cure for that condition, for other people of course (sure cure those lat lack a conscience or 'er' fix those that can not be exploited by them).
Now there is a rock solid example of proprietary lock in, it is too hard to change to something else regardless of whether it is better because the implementation might be worse. Once you get to that stage, the wisest thing to do, is an immediate swap, it breaks the lock in, it provides expertise in system changes and implementation, it breaks all existing security holes and it forces competition in supply contracts.
As for banning P2P software, that is really pointlessly dumb. Only approved software for specific use at each desktop should be installed, you never have a banned list you only have approved to install for a defined function list. I could bet my bottom dollar that once secure documents that ended up in P2P network lists did not get there by accident but where loaded onto the P2P network on purpose.
Lets start with a slightly more accurate link to the story http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100326/media_nm/us_venezuela_detention_3;_ylt=AukeOQVHjzcSw_2rM1SJtXf9SpZ4, briefly detained not locked up indefinitely. I really have to wonder about "pro-opposition TV station" now what exactly does that mean, I know in most of the modern western world where democracy and free speech are respected, you have 'independent' news services that report the news, not opposition TV stations or opposition news shows.
From what I have come to understand a politically biased TV or cable station stinks to high heaven of corruption, whether it be in Italy, the United States or perhaps even in Venezuela.
The whole Venezuelan political scene has that taint of corruption on one side US corporations with those Venezuelans who gained wealth and powers during colonisation days and on the other those who can trust and believe that only they have the answers and the masses who have yet to understand democracy.
A political system that still has a long way to go mature into a modern egalitarian society. One that will benefit form being left alone and not put under more pressure. Should Venezuela destabilise it will likely ignite the whole region with no winners just tens of millions of losers. Keep in mind the country that is receiving the most US aid in South America is also doing by far the worst. Ending the drug war will likely do more to stabilise South America than anything else possible.
They also remorselessly psychologically abuse their partners, use then as lab rats in testing out psychological manipulations, cheat on them as a matter of course and then of course swap them over once the relationship is no longer advantageous and, if the opportunity presents when they can legally get away with removing them they will do so without a flicker of conscience, if they believe they can get away with it they'll even go for a life insurance claim. Juts like playing Russian roulette but instead of one loaded chamber and the rest are empty, it is one empty chamber and the rest are loaded.