More accurately DVD's are the run out technology of optical media. The crunch is on for manufacturers to make the most of optical media plants and optical readers. As the price of flash ram continues to fall and the storage capacity increases, it means the end of old fashioned can't fit one in your top pocket (let alone fitting a whole bunch of them) storage media.
The squeeze is really on to get what profits are left in the optical media format, before solid state flash et al wipes them out. So stick with DVD as the media of choice to run out the end optical media and make the switch over with organic solid state printed chips (watch out for them though, as they can quite readily incorporate processing power within the storage medium). To be blunt, blu-ray is the SVHS of optical media.
A luxury carbon tax makes a lot more sense. Differentiating between the necessity of life and the luxuries and taxing accordingly should be the priority, especially as a lot of those luxuries are highly polluting and are really wasteful consumers of the planets limited resources. Those luxury carbon taxes should of course be applied continuously, as that v12 super car consume fuel at idiotic levels it should be taxed accordingly (perhaps any domestic vehicle that consume fuel beyond acceptable rates), same for the luxury yacht, private jet (perhaps even jet air flight generally), cosmetics, jewellery, luxury liners (find a stationary hotel people), mansions (as massive consumers of the planets resources and extreme energy sucking polluters), alcohol and various other recreational drugs and even junk food (double benefit on that one).
It is really rather obscene to consider that essentials should be taxed at the same rate as luxuries. It sends the worst possible message and does nothing to promote better behaviour, so zero percent tax on essentials and 100 percent or more (non tax deductible) tax on luxuries, if they absolutely need to be a pollution pus hogs to feed their ego than they should pay the price.
How is the Google's own version of an Android phone better than other versions. It really is quite simple, it is all about product marketing and placement control. Google have a temporary product out there, it gives them greater product and marketing control over the initial release of the Android operating system. When relying on other parties they are stuck with their decisions about which versions of their product they choose to promote and when, Google having a product means they have greater control and their phone will always have and promote the Android OS (which google wants to get in as many different types of computer devices as possible ie tinylimp the beast of Redmond is being slain in slow motion).
A numbers games, getting as many different types of Android phone out on the market as possible as quickly as possible to drive up consumer acceptance by being desirable and cost competitive, avoiding manufacturers tendency to mark up the price of newer 'cool' products, which slows uptake. There ain't no money in the phone or even the OS, it is all about opening up access to mobile phone customers so Google can sell it's other services.
More importantly who is more dangerous some backwoods primitive terrorist or a sociopath corporate executive. Take for example pharmaceuticals, where false product advertising has lead to thousands of deaths every year, where collusory practices used to inflate product price has lead to people going without and dying or, where poorly performing or product with lethal side affects are lied about so they can continue to be sold. Then just most recently health corporation banding together to block public health even though 45,000 a year will die in the US. Added to that, to many to mention companies willing to pollute their local environment to the point where tens of thousands die, so they can inflate their profits margins.
Even though the corporate executives kill millions every year, year in and year out, they are routinely let off the hook but terrorist are pursued with a vengeance even the rumour of being one leads to indefinite arrest and torture. The difference seems to be one generates profits for public vested intrests while the other does not (at least not publicly). So it would seem terrorists need to lift their game and come up with methods of generating millions public in profits every year and then they too will be able to kill millions with impunity (apparently promoting the profits defence and security industries is insufficient).
Now I assume that is taken from United States International Organizations Immunities ACT, Public LAw 79-291, 29 December 1945, seems to not been much of a problem until now, and please note where I found a copy http://www.icann.org/en/psc/annex9.pdf. It would really be far more appropriate the list the actual current change rather than looking at stuff 60 years old. Also that it can be granted or withdrawn either by congress or executive order, executive order is of course much quicker. Finally "No person shall, by reason of the provisions of this chapter, be considered as receiving diplomatic status". Here is a nice article http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/12/just-what-did-president-obamas-executive-order-regarding-interpol-do.html.
Googles actual market model is to drive openness as that allows them easier access and prevents them from being locked out by proprietary control. The Android business strategy is about the disruption of proprietary controls be it Apple or M$. Oddly enough it is Apples iPhone success (break up of manufacturers proprietary operating systems or M$ dominance) that will drive Androids success, not really Google's, being open, once it is out there, it is out there.
Google is just endeavouring to shift the market to an position where it has had success competing.
That is highly unlikely. The impact of the internet is already highly visible in the dismemberment of the lobbyist, pseudo Christian version US Republican Party. The majority of people in modern democracy have become very accustomed to the freedom of expression of the internet, the western glasnost, as the vice like grip on the public consciousness of a handful of mass media corporations has and continues to be undone.
Amoral anal technologists who can't see beyond their own wallets and their thirst for control, have always been putting forward technologies that has been rejected which is why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX_(Digital_Video_Express) became http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divx. Simple disruption of their profit seeking activities is sufficient to maintain democratic control, mass sit ins will always be sufficient, as long as they as started earlier enough to prevent sociopaths (early DNA testing would likely resolve many of humanities problems) gaining control.
They also want "content-centric networking" where all content is identified and controlled. Even "an alternative architecture that removes the intelligence from switches and routers and places these smarts in an external controller", your router or switch is no longer your own but controlled and remotely programmed by others.
The article stinks of creating an internet that matches the 20th century media model, where a handful and rich and greedy decide what is to be presented as the majority opinion. The struggle was to be expected, after all you can have the uncontrolled masses sharing and discussing there opinions.
Here's betting that their controlled, censored, monitored, restricted, "Big Brother" network dies on the drawing board, as the majority seek to protect their thoughts and opinions.
It really is such a huge lie, according to the agent of greed who obviously uses charities as self promotion venues, there was no music or creativity prior to the music publishing greed of the 20th century. The even greater lie that ISP, profits mirror recording industry losses, is just so blatantly self serving.
As for carbon tax and his support, well that's to be expected. As always the poor will pay will the rich tax deduct and carbon offset. The right to pollute is not equal it is scalar. When one individual uses the planets resources and pollutes at thousands even tens of thousands times the rate of other individuals, they should be penalised accordingly and actively discouraged, for their insane self serving aggrandisement and for demonstrating a complete lack of respect for the planet or the rest of humanity. A licence to pollutes is insanity, what they just charge the poor mug at the end of the line more to kill them with the pollution that powers the profits of the rich.
I hope no one reminds them about foreign embassies on US soil and diplomatic passports. No search and seizure there either, nor coming or going.
On a side note it is interesting that Interpol looks to be taking on a new role in providing policing capability and education in regions where military peace keeping activities are under way. It is wildly inappropriate to use military in a policing role for two reasons, the lack the proper training or the appropriate psychological profile and secondly they will bring home bad habits they pick up should they take up domestic policing (a growth in brutal and violent law enforcement where subservience is demanded with threats of violence).
When it comes to monitoring and surveillance a big shift is required with regards to what is kept and what is selectively edited out. All surveillance information should be kept, included that material counter to the case being investigated, not just selected for the prosecution edited highlights. 3 months of surveillance should produce 3 months of surveillance not just a few minutes worth that when edited and cut serves the prosecutions case, this should be considered as tampering with the evidence, tainting it and rendering it inadmissible.
That is not true in China. It is very apparent that people ruthlessly exploited on slave wages in unsafe conditions are in fact far cheaper than robotics. While unreliable will likely be true in China's case, as the factory population start to realise there is no future for them or the descendants other than working to death for cents per hour with no escape, all in highly polluted living conditions.
The west has been shutting down roboticized factories whilst China is building sweat shops upon a never before seen scale.
What is inevitable, is that people will force change in the modern democracies and establish a basis of fair trade to ensure products are manufactured upon a fair and reasonable basis, taking into account humane conditions and environmental practices, labour with a future, rather than being worked to death.
The resources for recruiting are not placed upon any skill at all, as can been seen they are specifically targeted at vulnerable people who lack skill in dealing with a modern society and have problems when dealing with women upon an equal rather than subservient basis. The question is why are struggling extrovert misogynists drawn to engineering.
The straight forward clearly defined rules of engineering and physics seems to suit their personality, of what is defined as right is right and never changes, rather than the more complex, flexible and adaptable world of social interactions. Do those individuals lack the ability of bridging the gap between the rigid world of religion and the far more flexible reality of human interactions.
What is facilitating a crime and what is not still comes under question. The pirate bay did not facilitate crime, they simply kept an open record of torrents available with controlling what was available, it was fully automated. No different they rendering anyone assistance with a problem not directly associated with a crime. For example a criminal has a flat and no spare, you see the problem and stop and assist him, once mobile they immediately commit a robbery, which with out your assistance they would not have been able to commit, did or did you not facilitate the crime.
No different to Pirate bay, they were not the ones making content available and the had no control over the people or the devices making that content available. For example should someone sell a legitimate copy, knowing the person to whom they are selling, are likely to distribute it online, have they facilitated the crime by providing them with a legitimate copy. Especially now, when they are trying to shift to the principle for copyright, that everyone is guilty and they have to prove their innocence upon accusation (at their own expense without any costs being reclaimable, legal corruption at it's worst), as such any attempt to sell a legitimate copy could be considered to be facilitating crime as all possible customers are presumed guilty of copyright infringement by default.
The problem is they continually flip flop, one week they are seeking open source interaction and the next week they are attacking it and it's supporters. It all seems to be driven by nothing more than the current marketing image they wish to present. Although it does seem that M$ leans more to open source when they get screwed over by some patent dispute.
Really for them to put a foot forward they actually need to release their own branded version of a recognised open source software package and adhere to the requirements of the licence, even should their version substantially vary and they choose to host and make it available.
So what will it be, VLC, Firefox or maybe something Ruby. I think OpenOffice,org or a Linux distribution is way, way to far a stretch for them, they just lack that kind of mental flexibility and out of the box thinking.
Technically Apple makes very little of anything and contract most everything out. Sure they design the overall look and feel and select the major components and how they are to be connected, but they don't make or even assemble it. Surely these suits should in reality be targeted at manufacturers and not resellers. Technically it could be said that Apple contracted those works in good faith, upon the basis that the manufacturers were entitled to the design concepts incorporated in their products.
That's not really true, that has much more to do with ego, fawning brown nosers and mass media's control of what sold and what didn't. Once the internet collapsed the whole, look at me, idolise me, I am rich that mass media feed on order to pursue the advertising dollar decision, so marketing has been forced to change.
Those bad add campaigns mean one thing and one thing only, the advertising companies who won the jobs were not targeting the consumer they were targeting the decision markers by feeding their ego. It is the logical thing to do, great add campaign but the top executives of the target company for some reason don't like it and prefer some other advertising companies campaign because it just 'er' feels better, means you lose.
Way off topic but to explain it to you. Presidential veto, "shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives", so did they have that to battle Darth Cheney and the lobbyists or did they not. Next up was of course filibuster and blue dog democrats (actually republicans pretending to be democrats so that they would get elected and get paid by the lobbyists).
The blame thing works like this, look at what they said, the bills the presented and the way they actually voted. Now add to that the repercussion of those actions and you then blame those individuals (parties not so much, always focus on policy and specfic visibly corrupt politicians) and apply blame as you deem appropriate.
Back on topic, as for person of the year, made a ton of money for other people but saved nobodies life and contributed very little to the real improvement of humanity overall, lets be a little be more clear on whose person of the decade he was, the greedy person's person of the decade is hardly equal to the humanitarian person, person of the decade.
As long as uniforms are there to bridge the gap between, more formal office attire and shop floor clothing. Working at a desk and getting under one and in other messy places to check the connections, as well as carting around dusty computers, is rather messy for more formal attire. Likely the real reason for the uniform is so that you will stand out, so when your walking past or in the vicinity they can spot you and grab you to immediately to assist them.
This creates a new problem for support in keeping track of the company food chain and making sure those higher up get served first and those lower down get served last and making it politely clear to those waiting why they are waiting, or why you must continue on to assist someone else.
It will work like this, you leave your desk to assist one person and on the way there and on the way back other people will pester you to solve all kinds of trivial junk because you are handy and, then everyone will complain that you are never at your desk. After that comes a mobile connection so no matter where you are in the office, toilet, lunch, working under a desk with cables, you are expected to answer the phone to solve problems. Uniforms equals computer janitors.
Be careful with that, elimination of a single species or even a couple of hundred is not a mass extinction, also we are global now, so a mutation in one area will travel to another, so localised species elimination is no longer local and now becomes a global problem. As for the birds, providing food and shelter for lost and confused birds, to avoid to many dead birds scattered in public places, is a logical thing to do.
Something is bound to crop up and planning and preparing for it help to prevent a problem getting out of control and monitoring is about establishing global protocols, so when playing with probabilities of 1 in a million and you have billions of microbes, you do pick up that rare but inevitable outbreak.
I suppose you have to allow that I am not heavily into coding, as such, I have very little personal investment in it. Simply I like the language that's the easiest to code and debug. I forgot to mention another big plus for me, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Ruby_Shell, nothing like being able to run and test a single line of code to see what is not working and to check for undesired output.
It just seems a very flexible easy language that can be used in a lot of different environments, so it gets the numbers, not so much from professional coders (the cranky ones, defending their expertise and dollar value, understandable) but from learner, amateur and hobby coders (as well as of course for those for whom coding is only an adjunct to the actual professional skill) and of course numbers means a lot for creating a growing user base and defining market penetration.
I hate to break it to you, but people will read the size the "Operating System" reports and act accordingly. Complaining bitterly when the OS tells them they are being ripped off by the manufacturer. Obviously care should be taken by all involved to ensure that the customer is neither deceived nor their resources wasted. Especially when it is often done on purpose to drive the next upgrade cycle, to create patentable incompatibilities that reduce performance for the customer but for which licences can be charged and being just to cheap to fix it, even when it might cost them only tens of thousands of dollars while it costs the rest of human society hundreds of millions of dollars of waste.
What was, was, it does not mean it has to continue or that it should be tolerated. Sometimes the behaviour within the computer industry is deplorable, for a expectation of buggy products on the initial release, to lies and gross exaggerations, falsified performance testing and of course trolls all over the internet. Just to be clear I do have a very low opinion of M$.
Simpler to say Ruby is more compact, easier to read and understand. More compact you can see more code on screen especially when using an IDE, often a complete function, sometimes a complete module. Easier to read and understand has two benefits, less documenting required and, heh, of course poorly documented code is easier to understand. From this comes all the other benefits, like a large function library etc.
Ultimately of course security researchers are also security documenters. I would hope certain government departments from around the globe where paying attention and seek documentation from the process undertaken to disrupt those activities and implement those procedures.
Major intelligence and police forces from around the glob can maintain 24/7 disruption of those networks, as you can readily put thousands of white hate hackers working together against a hand full of black hats(for each network). Investigation and disruption whilst not the goal, should be a logical interim step until capture, prosecution and incarceration can be achieved. Those people whose machine has been turned into a bot should also be sent a notification so that they can clean up their machine.
Government security forces should not allow themselves to be caught into the trap of waiting till they have sufficient evidence for a prosecution before acting to alleviate the problems caused. Benefit is, put the black hats under sufficient pressure and they will start taking greater chances and making more mistakes, they can't resist, greed will drive them as it already does.
When it comes to a terrorist figure head, what is interesting in this day and age, is how they are used by both sides to further their own purposes. One side uses them as a living threat, that must be acted against and that society must be willing to surrender some civil liberties to protect against and also must heavily invest in security measure to protect against further attacks led by that individual. The other side uses them as a rallying point, a proof of strength by their continued freedom and activity. As it happens both sides would be perfectly willing to lie and present false evidence to maintain that illusion for their own purposes and, of course once down that path, they are stuck and can never admit that the figure head is dead, especially should they just passively die of natural causes rather than via violent means.
As for the current escaped prisoner, is he doing any of the things he claims to be after all his track record is not indicative of honesty or, are they updating face book at all, is it someone else playing a practical joke or just going for the advertising dollars.
Further to the interim multiple poles, other interesting things happen, the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy) aurora will appear over those poles, making for interesting light shows, where ever the poles should momentarily settle. The larger problem with momentary pole shift, is solar flares and the ability of radiation from those events to reach to the earth's surface depending upon which temporary pole they align with. So some kind of warning system will be required to reduce human exposure to those very temporary events and possibly the temporary cancellation civil air flights at those regions during those times, if any should coincide.
It will be interesting to see what impact it gas on migratory birds and what measure will need to be taken to alleviate that impact. Mutation levels in microscopic life will also need to be monitored to pick up upon any dangerous microbe mutations that might have an impact upon people or agriculture.
Overall it is going to be pretty interesting and any risks involved can be pretty readily minimised with some carefully thought out preparation and planning. On the plus side, you can expect regional tourism to take a major boost should an aurora temporarily settle over a major city, on clear nights you could expect a whole city to spend the next day half awake, aurora parties.
Slashdot Mirror
More accurately DVD's are the run out technology of optical media. The crunch is on for manufacturers to make the most of optical media plants and optical readers. As the price of flash ram continues to fall and the storage capacity increases, it means the end of old fashioned can't fit one in your top pocket (let alone fitting a whole bunch of them) storage media.
The squeeze is really on to get what profits are left in the optical media format, before solid state flash et al wipes them out. So stick with DVD as the media of choice to run out the end optical media and make the switch over with organic solid state printed chips (watch out for them though, as they can quite readily incorporate processing power within the storage medium). To be blunt, blu-ray is the SVHS of optical media.
A luxury carbon tax makes a lot more sense. Differentiating between the necessity of life and the luxuries and taxing accordingly should be the priority, especially as a lot of those luxuries are highly polluting and are really wasteful consumers of the planets limited resources. Those luxury carbon taxes should of course be applied continuously, as that v12 super car consume fuel at idiotic levels it should be taxed accordingly (perhaps any domestic vehicle that consume fuel beyond acceptable rates), same for the luxury yacht, private jet (perhaps even jet air flight generally), cosmetics, jewellery, luxury liners (find a stationary hotel people), mansions (as massive consumers of the planets resources and extreme energy sucking polluters), alcohol and various other recreational drugs and even junk food (double benefit on that one).
It is really rather obscene to consider that essentials should be taxed at the same rate as luxuries. It sends the worst possible message and does nothing to promote better behaviour, so zero percent tax on essentials and 100 percent or more (non tax deductible) tax on luxuries, if they absolutely need to be a pollution pus hogs to feed their ego than they should pay the price.
How is the Google's own version of an Android phone better than other versions. It really is quite simple, it is all about product marketing and placement control. Google have a temporary product out there, it gives them greater product and marketing control over the initial release of the Android operating system. When relying on other parties they are stuck with their decisions about which versions of their product they choose to promote and when, Google having a product means they have greater control and their phone will always have and promote the Android OS (which google wants to get in as many different types of computer devices as possible ie tinylimp the beast of Redmond is being slain in slow motion).
A numbers games, getting as many different types of Android phone out on the market as possible as quickly as possible to drive up consumer acceptance by being desirable and cost competitive, avoiding manufacturers tendency to mark up the price of newer 'cool' products, which slows uptake. There ain't no money in the phone or even the OS, it is all about opening up access to mobile phone customers so Google can sell it's other services.
More importantly who is more dangerous some backwoods primitive terrorist or a sociopath corporate executive. Take for example pharmaceuticals, where false product advertising has lead to thousands of deaths every year, where collusory practices used to inflate product price has lead to people going without and dying or, where poorly performing or product with lethal side affects are lied about so they can continue to be sold. Then just most recently health corporation banding together to block public health even though 45,000 a year will die in the US. Added to that, to many to mention companies willing to pollute their local environment to the point where tens of thousands die, so they can inflate their profits margins.
Even though the corporate executives kill millions every year, year in and year out, they are routinely let off the hook but terrorist are pursued with a vengeance even the rumour of being one leads to indefinite arrest and torture. The difference seems to be one generates profits for public vested intrests while the other does not (at least not publicly). So it would seem terrorists need to lift their game and come up with methods of generating millions public in profits every year and then they too will be able to kill millions with impunity (apparently promoting the profits defence and security industries is insufficient).
Now I assume that is taken from United States International Organizations Immunities ACT, Public LAw 79-291, 29 December 1945, seems to not been much of a problem until now, and please note where I found a copy http://www.icann.org/en/psc/annex9.pdf. It would really be far more appropriate the list the actual current change rather than looking at stuff 60 years old. Also that it can be granted or withdrawn either by congress or executive order, executive order is of course much quicker. Finally "No person shall, by reason of the provisions of this chapter, be considered as receiving diplomatic status". Here is a nice article http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/12/just-what-did-president-obamas-executive-order-regarding-interpol-do.html.
Googles actual market model is to drive openness as that allows them easier access and prevents them from being locked out by proprietary control. The Android business strategy is about the disruption of proprietary controls be it Apple or M$. Oddly enough it is Apples iPhone success (break up of manufacturers proprietary operating systems or M$ dominance) that will drive Androids success, not really Google's, being open, once it is out there, it is out there.
Google is just endeavouring to shift the market to an position where it has had success competing.
That is highly unlikely. The impact of the internet is already highly visible in the dismemberment of the lobbyist, pseudo Christian version US Republican Party. The majority of people in modern democracy have become very accustomed to the freedom of expression of the internet, the western glasnost, as the vice like grip on the public consciousness of a handful of mass media corporations has and continues to be undone.
Amoral anal technologists who can't see beyond their own wallets and their thirst for control, have always been putting forward technologies that has been rejected which is why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX_(Digital_Video_Express) became http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divx. Simple disruption of their profit seeking activities is sufficient to maintain democratic control, mass sit ins will always be sufficient, as long as they as started earlier enough to prevent sociopaths (early DNA testing would likely resolve many of humanities problems) gaining control.
They also want "content-centric networking" where all content is identified and controlled. Even "an alternative architecture that removes the intelligence from switches and routers and places these smarts in an external controller", your router or switch is no longer your own but controlled and remotely programmed by others.
The article stinks of creating an internet that matches the 20th century media model, where a handful and rich and greedy decide what is to be presented as the majority opinion. The struggle was to be expected, after all you can have the uncontrolled masses sharing and discussing there opinions.
Here's betting that their controlled, censored, monitored, restricted, "Big Brother" network dies on the drawing board, as the majority seek to protect their thoughts and opinions.
It really is such a huge lie, according to the agent of greed who obviously uses charities as self promotion venues, there was no music or creativity prior to the music publishing greed of the 20th century. The even greater lie that ISP, profits mirror recording industry losses, is just so blatantly self serving.
As for carbon tax and his support, well that's to be expected. As always the poor will pay will the rich tax deduct and carbon offset. The right to pollute is not equal it is scalar. When one individual uses the planets resources and pollutes at thousands even tens of thousands times the rate of other individuals, they should be penalised accordingly and actively discouraged, for their insane self serving aggrandisement and for demonstrating a complete lack of respect for the planet or the rest of humanity. A licence to pollutes is insanity, what they just charge the poor mug at the end of the line more to kill them with the pollution that powers the profits of the rich.
I hope no one reminds them about foreign embassies on US soil and diplomatic passports. No search and seizure there either, nor coming or going.
On a side note it is interesting that Interpol looks to be taking on a new role in providing policing capability and education in regions where military peace keeping activities are under way. It is wildly inappropriate to use military in a policing role for two reasons, the lack the proper training or the appropriate psychological profile and secondly they will bring home bad habits they pick up should they take up domestic policing (a growth in brutal and violent law enforcement where subservience is demanded with threats of violence).
When it comes to monitoring and surveillance a big shift is required with regards to what is kept and what is selectively edited out. All surveillance information should be kept, included that material counter to the case being investigated, not just selected for the prosecution edited highlights. 3 months of surveillance should produce 3 months of surveillance not just a few minutes worth that when edited and cut serves the prosecutions case, this should be considered as tampering with the evidence, tainting it and rendering it inadmissible.
That is not true in China. It is very apparent that people ruthlessly exploited on slave wages in unsafe conditions are in fact far cheaper than robotics. While unreliable will likely be true in China's case, as the factory population start to realise there is no future for them or the descendants other than working to death for cents per hour with no escape, all in highly polluted living conditions.
The west has been shutting down roboticized factories whilst China is building sweat shops upon a never before seen scale.
What is inevitable, is that people will force change in the modern democracies and establish a basis of fair trade to ensure products are manufactured upon a fair and reasonable basis, taking into account humane conditions and environmental practices, labour with a future, rather than being worked to death.
The resources for recruiting are not placed upon any skill at all, as can been seen they are specifically targeted at vulnerable people who lack skill in dealing with a modern society and have problems when dealing with women upon an equal rather than subservient basis. The question is why are struggling extrovert misogynists drawn to engineering.
The straight forward clearly defined rules of engineering and physics seems to suit their personality, of what is defined as right is right and never changes, rather than the more complex, flexible and adaptable world of social interactions. Do those individuals lack the ability of bridging the gap between the rigid world of religion and the far more flexible reality of human interactions.
What is facilitating a crime and what is not still comes under question. The pirate bay did not facilitate crime, they simply kept an open record of torrents available with controlling what was available, it was fully automated. No different they rendering anyone assistance with a problem not directly associated with a crime. For example a criminal has a flat and no spare, you see the problem and stop and assist him, once mobile they immediately commit a robbery, which with out your assistance they would not have been able to commit, did or did you not facilitate the crime.
No different to Pirate bay, they were not the ones making content available and the had no control over the people or the devices making that content available. For example should someone sell a legitimate copy, knowing the person to whom they are selling, are likely to distribute it online, have they facilitated the crime by providing them with a legitimate copy. Especially now, when they are trying to shift to the principle for copyright, that everyone is guilty and they have to prove their innocence upon accusation (at their own expense without any costs being reclaimable, legal corruption at it's worst), as such any attempt to sell a legitimate copy could be considered to be facilitating crime as all possible customers are presumed guilty of copyright infringement by default.
The problem is they continually flip flop, one week they are seeking open source interaction and the next week they are attacking it and it's supporters. It all seems to be driven by nothing more than the current marketing image they wish to present. Although it does seem that M$ leans more to open source when they get screwed over by some patent dispute.
Really for them to put a foot forward they actually need to release their own branded version of a recognised open source software package and adhere to the requirements of the licence, even should their version substantially vary and they choose to host and make it available.
So what will it be, VLC, Firefox or maybe something Ruby. I think OpenOffice,org or a Linux distribution is way, way to far a stretch for them, they just lack that kind of mental flexibility and out of the box thinking.
Technically Apple makes very little of anything and contract most everything out. Sure they design the overall look and feel and select the major components and how they are to be connected, but they don't make or even assemble it. Surely these suits should in reality be targeted at manufacturers and not resellers. Technically it could be said that Apple contracted those works in good faith, upon the basis that the manufacturers were entitled to the design concepts incorporated in their products.
That's not really true, that has much more to do with ego, fawning brown nosers and mass media's control of what sold and what didn't. Once the internet collapsed the whole, look at me, idolise me, I am rich that mass media feed on order to pursue the advertising dollar decision, so marketing has been forced to change.
Those bad add campaigns mean one thing and one thing only, the advertising companies who won the jobs were not targeting the consumer they were targeting the decision markers by feeding their ego. It is the logical thing to do, great add campaign but the top executives of the target company for some reason don't like it and prefer some other advertising companies campaign because it just 'er' feels better, means you lose.
Way off topic but to explain it to you. Presidential veto, "shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives", so did they have that to battle Darth Cheney and the lobbyists or did they not. Next up was of course filibuster and blue dog democrats (actually republicans pretending to be democrats so that they would get elected and get paid by the lobbyists).
The blame thing works like this, look at what they said, the bills the presented and the way they actually voted. Now add to that the repercussion of those actions and you then blame those individuals (parties not so much, always focus on policy and specfic visibly corrupt politicians) and apply blame as you deem appropriate.
Back on topic, as for person of the year, made a ton of money for other people but saved nobodies life and contributed very little to the real improvement of humanity overall, lets be a little be more clear on whose person of the decade he was, the greedy person's person of the decade is hardly equal to the humanitarian person, person of the decade.
As long as uniforms are there to bridge the gap between, more formal office attire and shop floor clothing. Working at a desk and getting under one and in other messy places to check the connections, as well as carting around dusty computers, is rather messy for more formal attire. Likely the real reason for the uniform is so that you will stand out, so when your walking past or in the vicinity they can spot you and grab you to immediately to assist them.
This creates a new problem for support in keeping track of the company food chain and making sure those higher up get served first and those lower down get served last and making it politely clear to those waiting why they are waiting, or why you must continue on to assist someone else.
It will work like this, you leave your desk to assist one person and on the way there and on the way back other people will pester you to solve all kinds of trivial junk because you are handy and, then everyone will complain that you are never at your desk. After that comes a mobile connection so no matter where you are in the office, toilet, lunch, working under a desk with cables, you are expected to answer the phone to solve problems. Uniforms equals computer janitors.
Be careful with that, elimination of a single species or even a couple of hundred is not a mass extinction, also we are global now, so a mutation in one area will travel to another, so localised species elimination is no longer local and now becomes a global problem. As for the birds, providing food and shelter for lost and confused birds, to avoid to many dead birds scattered in public places, is a logical thing to do.
Something is bound to crop up and planning and preparing for it help to prevent a problem getting out of control and monitoring is about establishing global protocols, so when playing with probabilities of 1 in a million and you have billions of microbes, you do pick up that rare but inevitable outbreak.
I suppose you have to allow that I am not heavily into coding, as such, I have very little personal investment in it. Simply I like the language that's the easiest to code and debug. I forgot to mention another big plus for me, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Ruby_Shell, nothing like being able to run and test a single line of code to see what is not working and to check for undesired output.
It just seems a very flexible easy language that can be used in a lot of different environments, so it gets the numbers, not so much from professional coders (the cranky ones, defending their expertise and dollar value, understandable) but from learner, amateur and hobby coders (as well as of course for those for whom coding is only an adjunct to the actual professional skill) and of course numbers means a lot for creating a growing user base and defining market penetration.
I hate to break it to you, but people will read the size the "Operating System" reports and act accordingly. Complaining bitterly when the OS tells them they are being ripped off by the manufacturer. Obviously care should be taken by all involved to ensure that the customer is neither deceived nor their resources wasted. Especially when it is often done on purpose to drive the next upgrade cycle, to create patentable incompatibilities that reduce performance for the customer but for which licences can be charged and being just to cheap to fix it, even when it might cost them only tens of thousands of dollars while it costs the rest of human society hundreds of millions of dollars of waste.
What was, was, it does not mean it has to continue or that it should be tolerated. Sometimes the behaviour within the computer industry is deplorable, for a expectation of buggy products on the initial release, to lies and gross exaggerations, falsified performance testing and of course trolls all over the internet. Just to be clear I do have a very low opinion of M$.
Simpler to say Ruby is more compact, easier to read and understand. More compact you can see more code on screen especially when using an IDE, often a complete function, sometimes a complete module. Easier to read and understand has two benefits, less documenting required and, heh, of course poorly documented code is easier to understand. From this comes all the other benefits, like a large function library etc.
Ultimately of course security researchers are also security documenters. I would hope certain government departments from around the globe where paying attention and seek documentation from the process undertaken to disrupt those activities and implement those procedures.
Major intelligence and police forces from around the glob can maintain 24/7 disruption of those networks, as you can readily put thousands of white hate hackers working together against a hand full of black hats(for each network). Investigation and disruption whilst not the goal, should be a logical interim step until capture, prosecution and incarceration can be achieved. Those people whose machine has been turned into a bot should also be sent a notification so that they can clean up their machine.
Government security forces should not allow themselves to be caught into the trap of waiting till they have sufficient evidence for a prosecution before acting to alleviate the problems caused. Benefit is, put the black hats under sufficient pressure and they will start taking greater chances and making more mistakes, they can't resist, greed will drive them as it already does.
When it comes to a terrorist figure head, what is interesting in this day and age, is how they are used by both sides to further their own purposes. One side uses them as a living threat, that must be acted against and that society must be willing to surrender some civil liberties to protect against and also must heavily invest in security measure to protect against further attacks led by that individual. The other side uses them as a rallying point, a proof of strength by their continued freedom and activity. As it happens both sides would be perfectly willing to lie and present false evidence to maintain that illusion for their own purposes and, of course once down that path, they are stuck and can never admit that the figure head is dead, especially should they just passively die of natural causes rather than via violent means.
As for the current escaped prisoner, is he doing any of the things he claims to be after all his track record is not indicative of honesty or, are they updating face book at all, is it someone else playing a practical joke or just going for the advertising dollars.
Further to the interim multiple poles, other interesting things happen, the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_(astronomy) aurora will appear over those poles, making for interesting light shows, where ever the poles should momentarily settle. The larger problem with momentary pole shift, is solar flares and the ability of radiation from those events to reach to the earth's surface depending upon which temporary pole they align with. So some kind of warning system will be required to reduce human exposure to those very temporary events and possibly the temporary cancellation civil air flights at those regions during those times, if any should coincide.
It will be interesting to see what impact it gas on migratory birds and what measure will need to be taken to alleviate that impact. Mutation levels in microscopic life will also need to be monitored to pick up upon any dangerous microbe mutations that might have an impact upon people or agriculture.
Overall it is going to be pretty interesting and any risks involved can be pretty readily minimised with some carefully thought out preparation and planning. On the plus side, you can expect regional tourism to take a major boost should an aurora temporarily settle over a major city, on clear nights you could expect a whole city to spend the next day half awake, aurora parties.