You might ask the mplayer guys. They seem to do hardware acceleration on Linux just fine. My guess is the single guy who ports to Linux is just incompetent. He can't even figure out ALSA, and the fact that various helper libraries exist confuses him.
I am not sure why they couldn't do like blender did, and open source it if they got enough money--or preferably public domain it. I'd probably be willing to chip in some money just out of curiosity of what they had. Being able to use their models and code might not be such a bad prospect either...
I'd be concerned that the "linux" they ship with would be really crappy (like Xandros on the EEE), and their hardware wouldn't be compatible with any regular distro with decent developer tools and such.
It would also be great for children. There are plenty of kids who don't have a computer at all because they are too expensive. I only got one as a kid because the Atari 130XEs were only $125 at the time. With advances in chips, I don't understand why we can't make them cheaper.
I'm sure it would be possible to make a really low powered $20 computer with a microcontroller and other common chips. Before I had the strokes and kidney failure, it was my dream to design, manufacture and sell cheap computers. At least we are starting to see companies doing this.
- write you own architecture independent programs : check (shell scripts, python, perl, javascript)
You left out C. C is quite architecture independent. It is the compiled binaries which aren't. In fact, a with slower processor it is a better idea to use C when possible. Javascript would be a bad idea for quite a few things on a 400 MHz machine. My 900MHz EEE running firefox has very noticeable slowdown problems with javascript.
Python would still be great for prototyping. Shell scripts are great for simple, one off things. But C is what you want for most jobs, or your computer will be slow as hell. Java would work if the binaries were precompiled instead of JIT (makes startup slow).
Perl may not be so bad after startup either because (from what I understand), it uses JIT compiling too, but I am not sure I would use it as the code ends up a mess (write once, read never) and it is geared more towards sysadmins who process text / log files.
Actually, Python may not be too bad a language to use, but it will need to be precompiled instead of interpreted if you want it for day to day use on a 400 MHz machine. Really 400 Mhz is a decent speed, so it can take some overhead, but not the overhead of code being interpreted. You may get away with using to glue together compiled code, but not much more (unless you want things really slow). I have heard about python compilers (I think they were JIT), so it would be worth looking into for use on these computers.
So? If you get laid off, it isn't as if you will have to starve to death. Even if you didn't save any money, you probably have some charity nearby which will give you food (and shelter, if needed). Even if you were laid off and you came down with a serious illness after your health insurance had expired (assuming your country doesn't have socialized medicine), they would still let you in the hospital, treat you, and if you
Then again, maybe you live in a stingy asshole country who won't do any of those things for the less fortunate, but I doubt it since even the US does such things, more or less.
In "less developed" nations, assuming they don't have family which can take care of them (and it would be a real hardship to the family), a person would probably die of starvation if they couldn't find a job after a few months or became disabled from an illness (much more likely without access to good healthcare). They die of illnesses we take for granted. You may think getting laid off is a great setback, but it is nothing like what you'd experience in those countries.
In the modern world, the upper class owns the machines, and the underclass collects unemployment.
Then I guess this means we live in a Manorialism. Maybe if people would think for themselves and learn how to do things for themselves, we wouldn't have to live like this. While working for companies and being under an employer has its place, doing work on your own / running a small business also has its place.
If you are able to earn some money while not employed (and you haven't overextended yourself), you don't have to be so paniked about losing your job. This allows employers to walk all over people. Tying health insurance to employment creates a similar problem (including others). Temp agencies and "cobra" insurance helps a little, but really, why can't we be allowed to control our own destiny?
Yes, I know the way they gear the economy these days, it basically penalizes you for not going into debt. I am also not saying you should never buy a house on debt. However, it seems many people use debt to continue a lifestyle they can't afford, which then cascades into a situation where they not only don't have any savings, but much of their paycheck goes into paying off debt.
I also know there are untrustworthy banks out there. That is why you think about who you do business with. Most local banks and credit unions didn't have anything to do with the government bailouts or anything to do with those centralized banks who took all the government money to pay their CEOs millions (or is it billions?) of dollars in "bonuses."
My bank is bailout free. So was the credit union I used before it. The bank I used before (in the '90s) was a centralized bank who screwed me several ways, so I said screw them. Don't just take it when people screw you. Look for alternatives. Sometimes there aren't any. Sometimes you have to look hard, but it is better than getting screwed all day.
If anything goes wrong in their life, even minor financial setbacks, then their life gets turned upside down. It also takes away choices. Want to move somewhere else? "Sorry can't afford to." Boss is a total bastard and the company is pushing you to do illegal things? "Well, I can't afford to lose a single paycheck, and if the company finds out I'm looking for another job, they'll fire me." Come down with the flu? "Oh crap, I missed two week's work, the company doesn't pay sick days anymore, so I'll miss quite a few payments and have to pay late charges on top of it!"
When people constantly live in a state like this, they basically have no freedom, and this is just one of many ways to lose your freedom. Don't give in to the rut of "do random actions so some guy pays me." The goal of work is to do something needed, not be someone's surf or slave.
The man who owns (I assume he owns it by how you said it) the machine shop is doing a good thing: increasing the value of the economy without submitting to an employer. That is how a person becomes self-sufficient. Yes, he may be beholden to other companies or people to buy his tubes, but hopefully if one bails out or he decides he should drop one customer, he will have others to fall back on. I don't see what is wrong with that. In fact, I think it is a very good thing.
Yes, and if they had to deal with lots of users who use less powerful machines, most likely many professional web authors would not design sites which require flash or heavy javascript.
Good question. I had to click a couple of links to get to the home page:
EtherPad is the only web-based word processor that allows people to work together in really real-time.
When multiple people edit the same document simultaneously, any changes are instantly reflected on everyone's screen. The result is a new and productive way to collaborate on text documents,..
To understand how it is really different, you need to read the FAQ:
For example, with Google Docs it takes about 5 to 15 seconds for a change to make its way from your keyboard to other people's screens. Imagine if whiteboards or telephones had this kind of delay! In contrast, the EtherPad infrastructure is built to carry your every keystroke at the speed of light, limited only by the time it takes electrons to travel over a wire (such as an "ethernet" cable).
I got a Linux EEE 900, and not only was the restore disk on a CD, the image was embedded into a windows.exe file. I don't have any computers with MS Windows anymore. WTF?
Then again, the distro they used was a never updated version of Xandros--was already way out of date when I got it. Xandros is a crappy wannabe MS distro.
As for the price, really netbooks should be $200 or perhaps $100. They're not intended to do gene sequencing or calculating the end of the universe. You shouldn't have to have so much power just to browse the web or write documents and such.
Is there a difference? Plenty of trolls deliberately post things which are wrong, but try to make people believe they are real. Anyway, slashdot doesn't have a -1 Stupid mod.
As for the contents of the post: I thought if you log out of Facebook, it doesn't show you anything. It doesn't matter what the user put for privacy settings. Am I wrong?
Many trolls love to live in the area where something may be technically true, but gives a false impression.
although I honestly can't follow the health care proposal at the rate it is changing (wait, it's "Medicare at 50" now?)
I'm Offtopic, but it is interesting how they are lowering the age to qualify for medicare, but I haven't heard anything about lowering the wait time for getting medicare after being declared disabled. It was two years last time I saw. Since medical insurance is tied to employment these days, you have to wonder what the poor saps who become disabled and potentially have to go two years without any medical insurance. Maybe the people in congress don't care.
Then again, from what I've heard, most cases the person has actually been disabled for years before the government will admit he or she is disabled. Excepting of course the cases where it is absolutely undeniable.
Pretty much guarantees you will be bankrupt forever if you get a medical condition which causes you to be disabled. Assuming you live through the "trial period."
I don't think you understand how it will work. A big ISP will have no problem cutting off some random guy's internet access. (without telling him why, and tech support doesn't know) I doubt they would even think about cutting off the access of a company which probably pays them tens of thousands or perhaps millions of dollars per month for hosting.
So, in reality, unless you are a big player who pays lots of money for hosting, publishing anything will risk losing your internet account. Isn't this how they took over the radio spectrum? Welcome the era of internet as tv! (Due to "webification" it is already close anyway...)
Oh yeah. Blame automation for taking "jobs" away. As if a machine doing something will require a person thousands of miles away to do something else in addition.
More likely it is this way because idiots rail against automation and insist everything be handmade, but they don't want to do all that extra labor (or any labor at all), so they ship the jobs to countries where the labor is cheaper.
I remember in the '90s when the news would show robots building cars whenever they talked about automakers. It made me proud. Now they show guys not only screwing in bolts by hand, but pushing the car themselves!?! WTF?
I will let you in on a little "secret:" if you have 100% automation, nobody has to do any work! That is why it is called automation. The labor force would then be free to do something else, even if that is just watching tv all day.
I don't understand your point. Why can't consumer grade stuff be made in the US? I have seen some, but not much. Really, we have enough technology to obsolete need for Chinese goods.
As for the debt problem, it will only be solved when spoiled people learn to live within their means. At least that seems to be the major reason. Psychopaths in major leadership positions of government and companies seems to be the second one.
One necessary thing is stiff penalties for anyone who submits false copyright infringement claims. There are stiff penalties for infringing copyrights, which some claim is "stealing" (they are two different things). However a crime which is much more close to stealing is almost always unpunished. Fraudulently taking down a work infringes on the freedom of the person who made the work.
It is not any different than someone who claims you stole the car you are driving, and elicits the help of police or others to "take it back." Really, that is stealing. I don't think copyright infringement is a great idea, but at least copying other's works does not prohibit them from using it or them from allowing others to use it.
It is similar when a company abuses copyright law to lock down their product so you are only able to use it as they approve. You bought it, it is yours. Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to copy the ROM and such, but they shouldn't be allowed to deliberately lock you out from modding it. Saying it prevents "evil pirates" from copying games or some crap is bullshit. Under the right conditions, my ass can copy newsprint. Should I be required to sugically remove my ass now?
Not that I am against Freenet, but how is it going to protect you against a "three accusations and your ISP cuts you off" law? In this respect, Freenet will probably screw you. After all, say one freesite hosts 3 images of Mickey Mouse, then all the movie studio "representative" has to do is access them through your node, and you will be cut off.
But this "three strikes" law is worse. As we have seen with the DMCA, you just need 3 assholes to want to censor you to cut you off. The question is will you be allowed to hook up with another ISP?...assuming you have more than one broadband ISP in your area.
What we really need is an adaptive network / communication system independent of the internet. Methods which would allow you to exchange, say a hard (or flash) drive with a friend, and they just connect the drive to their computer. All the data on the drive is sorted through and things which are desirable to your friend are copied to his computer. I'm not just talking about audio and video files, but also stories, books, pictures, even Usenet messages.
This doesn't have to be hollywood stuff either. If you look in the right places, there are plenty of people who like to create things in their spare time. There are probably programs to do much of this already, but I'm sure they still need some work so the average computer user can run them.
A similar protocol could be used for intermittent wifi connections too. For example, all the people on the same bus could have their computers in a sort of exchange / sleep mode instead of fully asleep. Their computers would exchange as much info as possible during the bus ride.
Using these methods, I think one could exchange as much info as on a broadband connection to the internet, without some of the hassle. Though it would have its own hassles, it may be worth it.
Yes, with any newly developed tech one needs to be weary of any potential ill effects. One should be especially careful of anything which you will consume, will touch your skin, or may become airborne if it is not in an enclosed container.
It pays to be cautious, but you don't have to be so cautious as to never use new technology. Even much of the old, commonly used stuff has dangers. Those dangers are just well known. Even most kids know not to put their fingers into light sockets, that is probably one of the first safety lessons parents should teach their children. (At least of those of us who have electricity.)
No, it would be the same. The baby boomers who are running things act exactly like children.
Arguments based on who is in the better clique, not on the real issues or ways to solve problems or whether or not the government should try to solve certain problems in the first place. Their attempts to solve problems are based upon only a very superficial look at the problem and solution.
They succumb easily to bribes. They only consider their specific situation--one of the "solutions" for healthcare was to lower the medicare age to 55? That only helps baby boomers and no one else. In fact, the majority of people who are unable to get health insurace for themselves are under 30. Look at these figures. The percentage of uninsured poor is 21% for the ages 25-34 (the highest), and only 7% for ages 55-64. How does decreasing the medicare age to 55 help the healthcare crisis?
They act like a bunch of immature spoiled bastards who have no consideration for society in general. WTF? Mod me offtopic if you want, but my point is we have a total failure of leadership in the United States. These absurd regulation talks about the internet are just a small distraction from it.
They are just legislating things for their specific preferences, and most baby boomers don't run any game servers or web sites, so they don't care if your freedom to do such things are taken away. That is why we have these issues. Because they are in control and they don't give a shit about anyone else. In a non-tyrannical government, the leaders would act in ways which are considerate of everyone, but this is not what we have here.
Yes, and they will be incredible alarm systems. You just set it to display your favorite Fox News story, and if any unwanted person breaks into your house and looks at your reader. It will set off the DRM. Sirens will go off and the police will show up in less than 2 minutes. Gotta protect those copyrights!
You'll laugh at those neighbors who don't use this great alarm system. After all, the police will only have a response time of 20 minutes or sometimes an hour, if at all. No one really cares if some loser is getting robbed, or if they are home, raped and killed. Why stop that? It makes good TV!...I mean internet video!
Yet, in the dialysis center I go to, they use terminals running MS Windows (XP, I think), and from what I understand, the database server is MS SQL Server. I have heard plenty of conversations between techs and nurses which indicate those terminals (used for entering BP, weight, etc) constantly lose information.
Luckily the machines probably run something embedded. Otherwise, I and many other patients would probably be dead if they used any MS software on the actual machines. Crazy.
More accurately, if you are designing open source hardware because you need or want the hardware, a big company making it cheaper is a big win for you.
Slashdot Mirror
You might ask the mplayer guys. They seem to do hardware acceleration on Linux just fine. My guess is the single guy who ports to Linux is just incompetent. He can't even figure out ALSA, and the fact that various helper libraries exist confuses him.
I am not sure why they couldn't do like blender did, and open source it if they got enough money--or preferably public domain it. I'd probably be willing to chip in some money just out of curiosity of what they had. Being able to use their models and code might not be such a bad prospect either...
I'd be concerned that the "linux" they ship with would be really crappy (like Xandros on the EEE), and their hardware wouldn't be compatible with any regular distro with decent developer tools and such.
It would also be great for children. There are plenty of kids who don't have a computer at all because they are too expensive. I only got one as a kid because the Atari 130XEs were only $125 at the time. With advances in chips, I don't understand why we can't make them cheaper.
I'm sure it would be possible to make a really low powered $20 computer with a microcontroller and other common chips. Before I had the strokes and kidney failure, it was my dream to design, manufacture and sell cheap computers. At least we are starting to see companies doing this.
You left out C. C is quite architecture independent. It is the compiled binaries which aren't. In fact, a with slower processor it is a better idea to use C when possible. Javascript would be a bad idea for quite a few things on a 400 MHz machine. My 900MHz EEE running firefox has very noticeable slowdown problems with javascript.
Python would still be great for prototyping. Shell scripts are great for simple, one off things. But C is what you want for most jobs, or your computer will be slow as hell. Java would work if the binaries were precompiled instead of JIT (makes startup slow).
Perl may not be so bad after startup either because (from what I understand), it uses JIT compiling too, but I am not sure I would use it as the code ends up a mess (write once, read never) and it is geared more towards sysadmins who process text / log files.
Actually, Python may not be too bad a language to use, but it will need to be precompiled instead of interpreted if you want it for day to day use on a 400 MHz machine. Really 400 Mhz is a decent speed, so it can take some overhead, but not the overhead of code being interpreted. You may get away with using to glue together compiled code, but not much more (unless you want things really slow). I have heard about python compilers (I think they were JIT), so it would be worth looking into for use on these computers.
So? If you get laid off, it isn't as if you will have to starve to death. Even if you didn't save any money, you probably have some charity nearby which will give you food (and shelter, if needed). Even if you were laid off and you came down with a serious illness after your health insurance had expired (assuming your country doesn't have socialized medicine), they would still let you in the hospital, treat you, and if you
Then again, maybe you live in a stingy asshole country who won't do any of those things for the less fortunate, but I doubt it since even the US does such things, more or less.
In "less developed" nations, assuming they don't have family which can take care of them (and it would be a real hardship to the family), a person would probably die of starvation if they couldn't find a job after a few months or became disabled from an illness (much more likely without access to good healthcare). They die of illnesses we take for granted. You may think getting laid off is a great setback, but it is nothing like what you'd experience in those countries.
Maybe they should make robots to play for them.
No, wake me up when they have an android sailing the high seas of Titan!
Then I guess this means we live in a Manorialism. Maybe if people would think for themselves and learn how to do things for themselves, we wouldn't have to live like this. While working for companies and being under an employer has its place, doing work on your own / running a small business also has its place.
If you are able to earn some money while not employed (and you haven't overextended yourself), you don't have to be so paniked about losing your job. This allows employers to walk all over people. Tying health insurance to employment creates a similar problem (including others). Temp agencies and "cobra" insurance helps a little, but really, why can't we be allowed to control our own destiny?
Yes, I know the way they gear the economy these days, it basically penalizes you for not going into debt. I am also not saying you should never buy a house on debt. However, it seems many people use debt to continue a lifestyle they can't afford, which then cascades into a situation where they not only don't have any savings, but much of their paycheck goes into paying off debt.
I also know there are untrustworthy banks out there. That is why you think about who you do business with. Most local banks and credit unions didn't have anything to do with the government bailouts or anything to do with those centralized banks who took all the government money to pay their CEOs millions (or is it billions?) of dollars in "bonuses."
My bank is bailout free. So was the credit union I used before it. The bank I used before (in the '90s) was a centralized bank who screwed me several ways, so I said screw them. Don't just take it when people screw you. Look for alternatives. Sometimes there aren't any. Sometimes you have to look hard, but it is better than getting screwed all day.
If anything goes wrong in their life, even minor financial setbacks, then their life gets turned upside down. It also takes away choices. Want to move somewhere else? "Sorry can't afford to." Boss is a total bastard and the company is pushing you to do illegal things? "Well, I can't afford to lose a single paycheck, and if the company finds out I'm looking for another job, they'll fire me." Come down with the flu? "Oh crap, I missed two week's work, the company doesn't pay sick days anymore, so I'll miss quite a few payments and have to pay late charges on top of it!"
When people constantly live in a state like this, they basically have no freedom, and this is just one of many ways to lose your freedom. Don't give in to the rut of "do random actions so some guy pays me." The goal of work is to do something needed, not be someone's surf or slave.
The man who owns (I assume he owns it by how you said it) the machine shop is doing a good thing: increasing the value of the economy without submitting to an employer. That is how a person becomes self-sufficient. Yes, he may be beholden to other companies or people to buy his tubes, but hopefully if one bails out or he decides he should drop one customer, he will have others to fall back on. I don't see what is wrong with that. In fact, I think it is a very good thing.
Yes, and if they had to deal with lots of users who use less powerful machines, most likely many professional web authors would not design sites which require flash or heavy javascript.
Good question. I had to click a couple of links to get to the home page:
To understand how it is really different, you need to read the FAQ:
I got a Linux EEE 900, and not only was the restore disk on a CD, the image was embedded into a windows .exe file. I don't have any computers with MS Windows anymore. WTF?
Then again, the distro they used was a never updated version of Xandros--was already way out of date when I got it. Xandros is a crappy wannabe MS distro.
As for the price, really netbooks should be $200 or perhaps $100. They're not intended to do gene sequencing or calculating the end of the universe. You shouldn't have to have so much power just to browse the web or write documents and such.
So you spend so much time in your bed, you never travel to the kitchen? You have some sort of robot to deliver food to you?
Is there a difference? Plenty of trolls deliberately post things which are wrong, but try to make people believe they are real. Anyway, slashdot doesn't have a -1 Stupid mod.
As for the contents of the post: I thought if you log out of Facebook, it doesn't show you anything. It doesn't matter what the user put for privacy settings. Am I wrong?
Many trolls love to live in the area where something may be technically true, but gives a false impression.
If I tip my server, won't all the bits fall out of the hard drive?
I'm Offtopic, but it is interesting how they are lowering the age to qualify for medicare, but I haven't heard anything about lowering the wait time for getting medicare after being declared disabled. It was two years last time I saw. Since medical insurance is tied to employment these days, you have to wonder what the poor saps who become disabled and potentially have to go two years without any medical insurance. Maybe the people in congress don't care.
Then again, from what I've heard, most cases the person has actually been disabled for years before the government will admit he or she is disabled. Excepting of course the cases where it is absolutely undeniable.
Pretty much guarantees you will be bankrupt forever if you get a medical condition which causes you to be disabled. Assuming you live through the "trial period."
I don't think you understand how it will work. A big ISP will have no problem cutting off some random guy's internet access. (without telling him why, and tech support doesn't know) I doubt they would even think about cutting off the access of a company which probably pays them tens of thousands or perhaps millions of dollars per month for hosting.
So, in reality, unless you are a big player who pays lots of money for hosting, publishing anything will risk losing your internet account. Isn't this how they took over the radio spectrum? Welcome the era of internet as tv! (Due to "webification" it is already close anyway...)
Oh yeah. Blame automation for taking "jobs" away. As if a machine doing something will require a person thousands of miles away to do something else in addition.
More likely it is this way because idiots rail against automation and insist everything be handmade, but they don't want to do all that extra labor (or any labor at all), so they ship the jobs to countries where the labor is cheaper.
I remember in the '90s when the news would show robots building cars whenever they talked about automakers. It made me proud. Now they show guys not only screwing in bolts by hand, but pushing the car themselves!?! WTF?
I will let you in on a little "secret:" if you have 100% automation, nobody has to do any work! That is why it is called automation. The labor force would then be free to do something else, even if that is just watching tv all day.
I don't understand your point. Why can't consumer grade stuff be made in the US? I have seen some, but not much. Really, we have enough technology to obsolete need for Chinese goods.
As for the debt problem, it will only be solved when spoiled people learn to live within their means. At least that seems to be the major reason. Psychopaths in major leadership positions of government and companies seems to be the second one.
One necessary thing is stiff penalties for anyone who submits false copyright infringement claims. There are stiff penalties for infringing copyrights, which some claim is "stealing" (they are two different things). However a crime which is much more close to stealing is almost always unpunished. Fraudulently taking down a work infringes on the freedom of the person who made the work.
It is not any different than someone who claims you stole the car you are driving, and elicits the help of police or others to "take it back." Really, that is stealing. I don't think copyright infringement is a great idea, but at least copying other's works does not prohibit them from using it or them from allowing others to use it.
It is similar when a company abuses copyright law to lock down their product so you are only able to use it as they approve. You bought it, it is yours. Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to copy the ROM and such, but they shouldn't be allowed to deliberately lock you out from modding it. Saying it prevents "evil pirates" from copying games or some crap is bullshit. Under the right conditions, my ass can copy newsprint. Should I be required to sugically remove my ass now?
Not that I am against Freenet, but how is it going to protect you against a "three accusations and your ISP cuts you off" law? In this respect, Freenet will probably screw you. After all, say one freesite hosts 3 images of Mickey Mouse, then all the movie studio "representative" has to do is access them through your node, and you will be cut off.
But this "three strikes" law is worse. As we have seen with the DMCA, you just need 3 assholes to want to censor you to cut you off. The question is will you be allowed to hook up with another ISP? ...assuming you have more than one broadband ISP in your area.
What we really need is an adaptive network / communication system independent of the internet. Methods which would allow you to exchange, say a hard (or flash) drive with a friend, and they just connect the drive to their computer. All the data on the drive is sorted through and things which are desirable to your friend are copied to his computer. I'm not just talking about audio and video files, but also stories, books, pictures, even Usenet messages.
This doesn't have to be hollywood stuff either. If you look in the right places, there are plenty of people who like to create things in their spare time. There are probably programs to do much of this already, but I'm sure they still need some work so the average computer user can run them.
A similar protocol could be used for intermittent wifi connections too. For example, all the people on the same bus could have their computers in a sort of exchange / sleep mode instead of fully asleep. Their computers would exchange as much info as possible during the bus ride.
Using these methods, I think one could exchange as much info as on a broadband connection to the internet, without some of the hassle. Though it would have its own hassles, it may be worth it.
All we need to do is mine the asteroids. Get on it NASA!
Yes, with any newly developed tech one needs to be weary of any potential ill effects. One should be especially careful of anything which you will consume, will touch your skin, or may become airborne if it is not in an enclosed container.
It pays to be cautious, but you don't have to be so cautious as to never use new technology. Even much of the old, commonly used stuff has dangers. Those dangers are just well known. Even most kids know not to put their fingers into light sockets, that is probably one of the first safety lessons parents should teach their children. (At least of those of us who have electricity.)
No, it would be the same. The baby boomers who are running things act exactly like children.
Arguments based on who is in the better clique, not on the real issues or ways to solve problems or whether or not the government should try to solve certain problems in the first place. Their attempts to solve problems are based upon only a very superficial look at the problem and solution.
They succumb easily to bribes. They only consider their specific situation--one of the "solutions" for healthcare was to lower the medicare age to 55? That only helps baby boomers and no one else. In fact, the majority of people who are unable to get health insurace for themselves are under 30. Look at these figures. The percentage of uninsured poor is 21% for the ages 25-34 (the highest), and only 7% for ages 55-64. How does decreasing the medicare age to 55 help the healthcare crisis?
They act like a bunch of immature spoiled bastards who have no consideration for society in general. WTF? Mod me offtopic if you want, but my point is we have a total failure of leadership in the United States. These absurd regulation talks about the internet are just a small distraction from it.
They are just legislating things for their specific preferences, and most baby boomers don't run any game servers or web sites, so they don't care if your freedom to do such things are taken away. That is why we have these issues. Because they are in control and they don't give a shit about anyone else. In a non-tyrannical government, the leaders would act in ways which are considerate of everyone, but this is not what we have here.
Yes, and they will be incredible alarm systems. You just set it to display your favorite Fox News story, and if any unwanted person breaks into your house and looks at your reader. It will set off the DRM. Sirens will go off and the police will show up in less than 2 minutes. Gotta protect those copyrights!
You'll laugh at those neighbors who don't use this great alarm system. After all, the police will only have a response time of 20 minutes or sometimes an hour, if at all. No one really cares if some loser is getting robbed, or if they are home, raped and killed. Why stop that? It makes good TV! ...I mean internet video!
Yet, in the dialysis center I go to, they use terminals running MS Windows (XP, I think), and from what I understand, the database server is MS SQL Server. I have heard plenty of conversations between techs and nurses which indicate those terminals (used for entering BP, weight, etc) constantly lose information.
Luckily the machines probably run something embedded. Otherwise, I and many other patients would probably be dead if they used any MS software on the actual machines. Crazy.
More accurately, if you are designing open source hardware because you need or want the hardware, a big company making it cheaper is a big win for you.