OK, from glancing at TFA, looks like they're gonna push this for new computers first, build up some user base. Interesting. Whether or not they'll offer it later as a download is uncertain, but they'll release the source code for it since they're claiming open source. Makes me wonder what proprietary hooks they'll have into it though.
Sounds an awful lot like a bare bones Linux machine with the new Chrome window manager to me. All they have to do is write the window manager and installer, they can use readily available components for the stuff under the hood. Be interesting to see if they release the window manager to the rest of us to play with, might be worth checking out as an alternative to KDE & GNOME.
No doubt Microsoft will offer a cut down disc of XP or maybe even 7 as an 'upgrade path' to these machines...
Here's an idea, probably never be taken up on, though...
Talk to the Russians, license their Energia booster and get the plans for it. Go through the plans with a fine tooth comb, update it as necessary, with Americanised components and materials. STICK TO METRIC MEASUREMENTS. Refine the design, and design the payloads to fit it.
If sharing digital content (without profit) isn't made free these stupid laws are going to get more and more invasive of your personal freedom until a brain-chip is mandatory.>/blockquote>
Start worrying when that brain chip is hooked up to the credit card computers and micropay **AA every time you hear a song on the radio.
When the music industry recognized the medium changing from vinyl to eight-track to tape to CD, it always embraceed the new medium and sold on it. It's incredibly weird that it hasn't embraced the new medium, the Internet. The musci/movie/etc. industries should long ago have become ISPs, selling access to the content they produce via the modern medium, the Internet.
Until recently, the bandwidth just wasn't there for the end consumer at a price they were willing to pay. And in a lot of places here in the US, it still isn't. Want a straight download of a Blu-Ray disc at DSL speeds? Give it a couple days or so out here in the middle of nowhere. Hell, it took me 3 days to get the Kubuntu Jaunty DVD a couple weeks back. My ISP routinely throttles download speeds for the simple reason that they don't want to spend the money to upgrade the lines to something that would have a wider bandwidth, not until they get at least 5 times the customers out here first, so instead of letting the current users go full blast, they throttle hell out of everybody to keep service at a minimum contracted rate.
Heinlein came closer to the 'WWW' model in a couple of his later books, for instance, 'Time Enough For Love' (1973) where he wrote about massive computer systems actually running and managing a planetary government. He didn't predict almost universal access to that network, though. Most of Heinlein's 'computer systems' tend to be humoungus 'heavy metal', limited access, heavily centralised machines that wake up and become 'human' - Mike in 'Moon Is A Harsh Mistress', Teena in 'Time Enough For Love'. I don't include Minerva in this, as she 'took on a human body', downloaded herself into a human body.
People are still getting porn delivered in the mail?
That's the problem, see. Used to be, the government knew and got paid for delivering your porn to you (the USPO was part of the government back then, remember?). Now, with the invention of the internet, you can get all the porn you want, without having to wait for the friendly mailman to deliver it to you. That cut into the USPO's profits, and of course, the government now has to rely on the NSA to find out who's getting what. Much less cost effective.
It's all about the money. That's all it's ever been about.
Seems like an underage girl having sex (raped???) with an older man is potentially evidence of a real crime (sex with a minor is a felony, last time I checked), unless it too was faked. Do people watch fake porn?
Sure they do. Course, here in the States, you can go to jail for 'possession of kiddie porn' for having copies of certain animes laying around, on the theory that some child somewhere was exploited to make it, even though, as anime, no children whatsoever were involved. Talk about victimless crimes, if no kids are involved, how can it be kiddie porn?
Grow your hair and beard out, and show up in tshirt, jeans, & sandals, walking with a cane. They'll search you. Guaranteed. It happened to me the two times I flew last year. For the record, I'm 50+, blonde, grey eyes, half ethnic Russian. Yeah, they profile you. Or should I say, reverse-profile you. It might be politically incorrect to search somebody who's 'obviously' Muslim, so they make sure they search a couple obvious gringos to 'make up' for it.
I was thinking of wrapping the antenna in tin foil and then grounding it to the car. That being said, I think I've just grown a fondness for "classic" (pre-gps) cars as long as gasoline is king.
Unless there's no 'upgrade' option to gps and your state refuses to relicense un-gps'ed cars because the feds have decreed that they won't share these nifty taxes with them, like they did with states that didn't want to pass helmet laws. Keep in mind that the 'no upgrades' option is a win/win from the standpoint of the government and businesses. The gov gets all that nifty intrusive data. Car companies get to sell you brand new cars. Car insurance companies get more money because insuring a brand new car 'costs more', extended warrantee sellers make more because since your new gps-enabled car has more to go wrong with it they can up the price of those extended warrantees, and that's just a few things off the top of my brain without my 4th cup of coffee.
You're exactly right. You can only run in a deficit for so long before you have to make that money back. How about instead of increasing taxes, you cut spending? Same net effect, except I get to keep more of what I earn
Great idea, Comrade. Now report to Gitmo for your manditory citizen re-education training and seminars and stop criticising the Holy Government.
bonus: leads to development of all kinds energy efficient stuff
Which leads to even higher taxes as less energy is consumed, like cigarette taxes have jumped wildly as less people smoke. Taxes go up, less is consumed, leading to lower taxes and a tax increase to make up the difference, leading to less consumption and less tax revenues leading to more tax hikes. And what they use those taxes on varies as well. For instance, a couple years ago, Arizona boosted cigarette taxes a buck a pack to pay for, and I shit you not, day care for migrant workers' kids.
Personally, I'm for feeding swarmy bastards like that to the robots. Follow it up with the ALF idiots, then the PETA leadership. Should be enough cross memberships to take out Sea Shepherds as well. We recycle enough of these ecoterrorists & ecoidiots, maybe we can actually get things done.
Oh sure, everyone's in favor of bug powered clocks, but as soon as you put a pedestrian catcher on the front of your electric SUV to make city driving more efficient then OHHhhh, suddenly you've gone too far!
Yeah, the people making Soylent Green were bitching that pedestrian catchers cut into their resources.
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Depends on how much proprietary cruft they put into it, and whether or not the Chrome Desktop plays well with X.
Cause it's getting old and dodgy, and with the newer video cards, a lot of X can be dumped off into the card?
Sounds an awful lot like a bare bones Linux machine with the new Chrome window manager to me. All they have to do is write the window manager and installer, they can use readily available components for the stuff under the hood. Be interesting to see if they release the window manager to the rest of us to play with, might be worth checking out as an alternative to KDE & GNOME.
No doubt Microsoft will offer a cut down disc of XP or maybe even 7 as an 'upgrade path' to these machines...
I didn't know they had internet access at Gitmo.
Prob is, it's against FAA regs to drink 24 hours before flying, isn't it?
Here's an idea, probably never be taken up on, though...
Talk to the Russians, license their Energia booster and get the plans for it. Go through the plans with a fine tooth comb, update it as necessary, with Americanised components and materials. STICK TO METRIC MEASUREMENTS. Refine the design, and design the payloads to fit it.
Couldn't tell if anybody showed up or not, but the next morning, all my beer was gone and there was a serious dent in my liquor supply.
Until recently, the bandwidth just wasn't there for the end consumer at a price they were willing to pay. And in a lot of places here in the US, it still isn't. Want a straight download of a Blu-Ray disc at DSL speeds? Give it a couple days or so out here in the middle of nowhere. Hell, it took me 3 days to get the Kubuntu Jaunty DVD a couple weeks back. My ISP routinely throttles download speeds for the simple reason that they don't want to spend the money to upgrade the lines to something that would have a wider bandwidth, not until they get at least 5 times the customers out here first, so instead of letting the current users go full blast, they throttle hell out of everybody to keep service at a minimum contracted rate.
Heinlein came closer to the 'WWW' model in a couple of his later books, for instance, 'Time Enough For Love' (1973) where he wrote about massive computer systems actually running and managing a planetary government. He didn't predict almost universal access to that network, though. Most of Heinlein's 'computer systems' tend to be humoungus 'heavy metal', limited access, heavily centralised machines that wake up and become 'human' - Mike in 'Moon Is A Harsh Mistress', Teena in 'Time Enough For Love'. I don't include Minerva in this, as she 'took on a human body', downloaded herself into a human body.
Bigger production and publicity budgets.
Bigger campaign contributions.
It's all about the money. That's all it ever was.
Personally, if I wanted my kids to watch two people trying to kill each other, I woulda stayed married.
That's the problem, see. Used to be, the government knew and got paid for delivering your porn to you (the USPO was part of the government back then, remember?). Now, with the invention of the internet, you can get all the porn you want, without having to wait for the friendly mailman to deliver it to you. That cut into the USPO's profits, and of course, the government now has to rely on the NSA to find out who's getting what. Much less cost effective.
It's all about the money. That's all it's ever been about.
Sure they do. Course, here in the States, you can go to jail for 'possession of kiddie porn' for having copies of certain animes laying around, on the theory that some child somewhere was exploited to make it, even though, as anime, no children whatsoever were involved. Talk about victimless crimes, if no kids are involved, how can it be kiddie porn?
I ain't illiterate, you insensitive clod!! I SEEN my parents get married!
Grow your hair and beard out, and show up in tshirt, jeans, & sandals, walking with a cane. They'll search you. Guaranteed. It happened to me the two times I flew last year. For the record, I'm 50+, blonde, grey eyes, half ethnic Russian. Yeah, they profile you. Or should I say, reverse-profile you. It might be politically incorrect to search somebody who's 'obviously' Muslim, so they make sure they search a couple obvious gringos to 'make up' for it.
Sounds like a subsidy for SUVs to me.
Unless there's no 'upgrade' option to gps and your state refuses to relicense un-gps'ed cars because the feds have decreed that they won't share these nifty taxes with them, like they did with states that didn't want to pass helmet laws. Keep in mind that the 'no upgrades' option is a win/win from the standpoint of the government and businesses. The gov gets all that nifty intrusive data. Car companies get to sell you brand new cars. Car insurance companies get more money because insuring a brand new car 'costs more', extended warrantee sellers make more because since your new gps-enabled car has more to go wrong with it they can up the price of those extended warrantees, and that's just a few things off the top of my brain without my 4th cup of coffee.
Yeah, it is.
Great idea, Comrade. Now report to Gitmo for your manditory citizen re-education training and seminars and stop criticising the Holy Government.
No retrofit? I gotta go buy a brand new car? Hey, guess this helps prop GM/Chrysler/Ford up, doesn't it?
Prior art. Did he pay for use of the IP?
Which leads to even higher taxes as less energy is consumed, like cigarette taxes have jumped wildly as less people smoke. Taxes go up, less is consumed, leading to lower taxes and a tax increase to make up the difference, leading to less consumption and less tax revenues leading to more tax hikes. And what they use those taxes on varies as well. For instance, a couple years ago, Arizona boosted cigarette taxes a buck a pack to pay for, and I shit you not, day care for migrant workers' kids .
Personally, I'm for feeding swarmy bastards like that to the robots. Follow it up with the ALF idiots, then the PETA leadership. Should be enough cross memberships to take out Sea Shepherds as well. We recycle enough of these ecoterrorists & ecoidiots, maybe we can actually get things done.
Yeah, the people making Soylent Green were bitching that pedestrian catchers cut into their resources.