I am frankly shocked at the amount of disinformed entrenchment people insist on displaying over this topic.
This is a not a "President Bush vs. everyone-else" argument and he has taken heat for federally funding adult stem cell research - It was his administration that pointed out a very reasonable question (one that Californians obviously didn't hear or read) - "If stem cell research has such potential, why isn't there more private funding and effort?"
Follow the money. Determine why private research funds (even at some universities) are not being spent on stem cell research.
The abortion fanatics (all of 'em) are using this as another means to inculcate their rhetoric into the debate. Unfortunately, the bystanders in this side show are employing simple repetition and not doing the homework to get at the underlying issues to which they are voicing an opinion.
I'm sorry, where does it say that you're not a patriot if you're left wing?
Too easy. Depends on your brand of patriotism I suppose. Such as - Are you a patriot before or after the revolution?
Let's not forget too - Are you a patriot before or after the usual seizure of power by a small group of people who then invariably have to kill millions so that those not purged do what they're told?
Can someone actively agitating for a different form and methodology in government be considered a "patriot" in the present tense?
In scanning the response I would have thought such a group that haunts/. would have seen the parallel before now. Instead, everyone is arguing red/blue politics.
So, if the study has any bearing at all, it relates far more to age and gender. The politics of the country are drawn clearly along those boundaries.
Emotional fear responses, compassion masks fear quite often, are generally a feminine response and among the young. The young emulate their adult influence and most young people have far more female than male influence. Therefore, most young people display emotional fear responses into their environment.
As you age, you tend to begin receiving far more male influence and begin developing masculine responses.
Masculine responses tend to veer away from emotion since controlling agression is a balancing act in masculine responses. Therefore, logic and reason is required to achieve a balance toward naked aggression and fear related responses.
I was involved in a major California project in the early 90's where my company was a sub to Lockheed. Some of you may have heard of it as "Dead Beat Dad" tracking.
The goal was to automate and establish information sharing between cities and counties in California with the additional tie-in of Federal data sharing.
The result hit the news well after I left the company; I was offered to take over the Project Management duties and I flatly refused. I worked long enough on the project in a support role to see the underlying flaws and why the project would never deliver to goal.
In order to meet the overall goal, it would require some 50+ county and several hundred city governments to literally cooperate on various details. Of course, the Los Angeles Metro area insisted on being treated like its own little kingdom.
You'll never get that many bureaucrats and policy wonks to ever cooperate toward a common goal.
Open Source won't do anything useful toward cost cutting since the technology isn't the cost load factor toward final cost.
If you recognize the existence of hijacked or trojaned machines how can you possibly begin to track where the spam originates? Any hijacked or trojaned smtpd can easily be written to rewrite the X-originating-IP to be from an arbitrary block of predefined, or even random, IP numbers.
Which just begs the questions - How can you tell where any smtp traffic truly originates? They are a research group but I didn't see any mention at all of hacked SMTP headers. This group centered on the source IP address.
In politics, when you know the underlying specifics but gloss over those with the intent of directing people to a certain insubstantial opinion, it's appropriately called "shoving". [g]
The article mentions zombie computers, computers hijacked by backdoor trojans and the like, but the research group seems to not diferentiate between the act of using hijacked services and spam in general.
Had they done so, they might have noted where a lot of hijacking originates: Europe and Asia. How much spam is generated by hijacked computers and how much is generated by people using their own legitimate resources?
For instance, you're shooting dice if you try connecting to any url that ends in cz (as just one example). These idiots are even seeding bogus keyword hits so some dupe will click their url. You'll end up with a lot of malware and other nasties coming up the wire trying to infect your machine. Hilighting where SPAM originates but paying bare lip service to the causal attributes of the problem doesn't leave me impressed.
Perhaps it's because America bashing is more fun than impartial, thorough, research?
However, fallwell.com was clearly used to further social discourse.
You can call it an effort at "discourse" if you like but I still fail to see how this justifies squatting on the use of a domain name. It was a targeted counter-agenda that parallels all too readily the intent behind registering a domain name so that you profit in some way. They were "riding" on Falwell's name to engage in this "discourse" and that was the nature of the dispute.
As to the folks who seem to think that domains such as jerryfalwellsucks.com doesn't infringe on anything, you're missing one of the points being made in this frontier of the law - Jerry Falwell is a person and domains like the above make a statement about a person.
Corporate non-entities might be fair targets for this, but you're walking a fine line with domains such as "www.HangMarthaStewart.com" since Martha Stewart isn't a corporate entity.
However folks fall in the religion fueled debate on homosexuality issues (gay marriage, gay "normalcy", etc) this was a middle-of-the-road ruling from a court that appears that didn't side with either of the agendas being pushed.
Like cyber-squat efforts (registering domains like "pepsi.com" when you're not affiliated with Pepsi at all) overall, this was a targeted effort by someone with an agenda. The intent was to squat their agenda on any internet traffic by "hugging" search criteria and even simple mispellings in a url. Their agenda to do this was clearly spelled out.
I expect the people running Drudge Retort to be nervous over a ruling like this.
It appears from the comments that few, if any, differentiate between merely science and the merely technical; The difference between a scientist and a technician, for instance.
Someone with a 4 year CS or CE degree probably won't make a good system/network administrator/manager, and likely didn't get his or her degree for that reason. I'd like to think that people enter into a field of science to expand the discipline into as yet undefined areas of applied knowledge and study. Whereas someone acquiring technician skills are doing so for more narrow and defined purposes - Applying the known state of the science as a vocation.
How many scientists does a culture need in a given discipline? More important to the topic, in my opinion, is the quality of innovation graduating CS/CE majors bring to technology frontiers.
Thank you, I stand corrected. I browsed the articles she offers on her web site and some of 'em aren't clear or just plain wrong on the facts.
However, I do not withdraw my comments regarding the overall issue that Katy Tarball has with her involvement in the circumstances. Legally, she's not at fault and the scumbag who took advantage needs to be brought forward to face his actions. However, even youngsters in their teens have responsibility for their choices and the fact is - Katy Tarball spent nearly a year flirting and responding to very personal dialogue with a pedophile. You can charge "naive" but I ain't that generous in light of the fact that, based on nothing more than her mental image of this "friend", she conspired to shake loose of her own mother and go to a hotel room, alone, to meet a man she knew to be 13 or 14 years her senior. It isn't unreasonable to consider that she knew exactly what would occur when she got there.
In the end, her own words indict her as to how the person she saw didn't match up to her expectation. I charge she fully expected to be "molested" and was damn well looking forward to it. Fourteen or not, she damn well ought to face up to her choices.
... calculated about this, so burn karma, burn!After reading the provided excerpt from the book titled "Katie.com", it reveals something about this young woman that doesn't portray her in a good light. As a matter of fact, she seems to be hilighting the fact that the chat with a pedophile began when she was 13 but seems to de-emphasize the fact that the actual 'molestation' occurred when she was 17. Still a minor but she was not a kid and it wasn't molestation and perhaps not even rape - Had the jerk met her somewhat superficial standards at the time (had been in his 20's, had been generally kind and paced things a bit slower) she likely wouldn't have accused him of molestation.
Combine that with her attitude toward this lawyer led barnstoming over the domain that the publisher used for a book title (which has nothing to do with the events portrayed in the book) and the general lack of care for what is being done on her behalf... I don't envision this young lady a victim of anything at all except her own actions and superficial views of the world.
Also for the record, without the electoral college, the population in 6 states would control the Presidential office cycle after cycle.
It's a winner-take-all system based on the individual outcome of each state. The Presidential election is not a simple majority vote.
Once you understand the implications of how the President is voted into office, you understand that the United States is not a pure democracy and why it is not a pure democracy. No pure democracy exists that did not eventually spiral into a totalitarian mess.
`(g)(1) In this subsection, the term `intentionally induces' means intentionally aids, abets, induces, or procures, and intent may be shown by acts from which a reasonable person would find intent to induce infringement based upon all relevant information about such acts then reasonably available to the actor, including whether the activity relies on infringement for its commercial viability.
`(2) Whoever intentionally induces any violation identified in subsection (a) shall be liable as an infringer.
`(3) Nothing in this subsection shall enlarge or diminish the doctrines of vicarious and contributory liability for copyright infringement or require any court to unjustly withhold or impose any secondary liability for copyright infringement.'.
The first paragraph isn't unreasonable and even includes the "reasonable person" test. Anything can happen in a process involving lawyers, judges and law enforcement but the "reasonable person" test has a long history of staving off overzealous lawyers and enforcement knee-jerks.
The problem is with the third paragraph. Making a copy of your legally purchased mechandise is still against the law. According to paragraph 3, even if you make a copy of an audio disc for your purposes; Should that copy ever be found in a condition by which it isn't under your immediate control (not on your person, on an internet connected PC, in your car) you are liable under the provisions of this law.
The moral of the story is...... When you walk up to a Republican registration table, don't be surprised that the forms are pre-checked Republican.
On a more serious note, considering the problems that Floriduh voters had in general during the last Presidential cycle, information like this should be taken with a grain of salt (and then throw that over your shoulder!).
I followed some of the threads and noted some attitudes and opinions that should be hilighted.
The first opinion that seems to stand out is that e-voting seems to be a Republican (read that as "right wing") conspiracy to harness elections. If these folks do their homework, they'd note a preponderance of e-voting initiatives are being pushed in majority Democratic districts.
The second, almost universal, view seems to contain the idea that e-voting is OK and the only problems exist in the margins. The major details seemed to be accepted. The "gee whiz" glitz seems to have misplaced general intelligence.
Considering this medium draws a lot of people in various technology fields, I'd think the overwhelming opinion would be a complete distrust of e-voting based on the potential abuses of the technology and the means to manipulate the outcome of an election.
The basic logic points should produce an overwhelming distrust for this form of individual duty and trust.
I noted the Fox News mention but that is only half the issue from Ted's point of view.
The fact of the matter is that Ted sees a battle lost after it was won - Leftist ideologues controlled and were the "fourth estate" and "fifth column" elements in the United States and around the world for 50 years.
Today, Ted is seeing his religion taking a virtual beating in the public marketplace of the Internet and televised and broadcast media outlets such as Fox News and ClearChannel successes like Rush Limbaugh and so-called "conservative talk radio" in general.
Like all leftists of Ted's stripe, the idea gives them blood-spitting fits. Stay tuned, he's falling back on the usual leftist knee-jerk in this sort of situation - He'll want the leftist elites in government to "do something" as only people in government can do anything: Use force and resort to "scorched earth" tactics if necessary.
It wasn't as hard to track down as I had thought and apparently my time sense just plain sucks. It was published in Asimov's pulp mag in the late 80's. Here's a link I,Robot:The illustrated Screenplay.
How many recall the script work done by Ellison about 10 or 12 years ago for a movie version based on Asimov's fiction? In his usual fashion, Harlan Ellison approached the studios and fought off every attempt to change the script - The script held true to the original fiction and was approved by Asimov. After some (with Ellison, I would imagine energetic) negotiations it boiled down to the studios wouldn't option the script without complete control and Asimov/Ellison wouldn't option the script without complete control of changes to the script.
This was all detailed in Asimov's pulp mag and the script was published in same as well.
Needless to say the current movie was not approved by Asimov but was approved by his estate, and obviously bears the slightest resemblence to Asimov's fiction or Ellison's original script (which kept to the original story fairly well and updated to include a modern "feel", Asimove was a bit of a romantic in the visual sense).
I'd encourage everyone to look up the I,Robot Ellison script and give it a read. Sorry for not providing a source and I have to admit, it might be difficult to find unless you can dig up a 12 year old copy of Asimov's pulp mag.
Some of the feedback I'm reading brought to mind that many are too close to the issue. Step back and think about a situation where the problem becomes how can this function and the data used or the data generated be useful today and 200 years from now?
Unless you're talking about a fundamental change in human interaction and use of technology, it isn't out of the question that data on a [say] spreadsheet today might have a use 200 years from now. The data is what is important, not the file format or the storage media.
Can the circumstance be engineered that would allow a historian access to that data? Look at the scope of the issue - file format, storage consistency, content validation, and so on; But, think in terms of 200 years from today.
... and that is the gotcha that a lot of people don't seem to understand.
Scientists don't agree on the conclusions of various cliques whithin their own community based on the science or the methods used to reach a conclusion.
In addition, we're seeing politics "shaping" the outcome for studies paid for with tax dollars. The $500M the US Congress spent to study the effect of chemicals like Freon on the ozone layer in the 90's and NASA's report on "holes" in the ozone also during the 90's, are just two examples. Both efforts were rife with politician's pressuring the people involved toward a particular outcome. It's a tainted process and the conclusion becomes questionable.
To allow interest groups like this to influence public policy is akin to allowing any particular BAR association to vet judge nominees.
Thomas Sowell is referring to both Windows and OpenSource environments.
He's obviously talking about the Windows app bloat that has been building for 10 years and his lament is that you used to be able to install an application and then use it without any fuss or 30 hours of studying the user manual. If there is a user manual...
Unfortunately, OpenSource environments share that aspect. He touches on a good point about multimedia bloat too! Not every damn app has to be a multimedia bonanza of audio/video features. OpenSource environments are getting sucked into this maelstrom too.
It isn't an accident that Richard Dreyfuss sounds so knowledgable on efforts to censor so-called free speech; Hollywood has had years of practise in generating social/political spin all the while most Hollywood types have the blood-spitting fits when confronted with views on which they disagree.
Otherwise, this reads like a publicity stunt. No one watches PBS all that much.
Slashdot Mirror
I am frankly shocked at the amount of disinformed entrenchment people insist on displaying over this topic.
This is a not a "President Bush vs. everyone-else" argument and he has taken heat for federally funding adult stem cell research - It was his administration that pointed out a very reasonable question (one that Californians obviously didn't hear or read) - "If stem cell research has such potential, why isn't there more private funding and effort?"
Follow the money. Determine why private research funds (even at some universities) are not being spent on stem cell research.
The abortion fanatics (all of 'em) are using this as another means to inculcate their rhetoric into the debate. Unfortunately, the bystanders in this side show are employing simple repetition and not doing the homework to get at the underlying issues to which they are voicing an opinion.
A perfect opportunity to moon the satellites overhead!
Let's not forget too - Are you a patriot before or after the usual seizure of power by a small group of people who then invariably have to kill millions so that those not purged do what they're told?
Can someone actively agitating for a different form and methodology in government be considered a "patriot" in the present tense?
In scanning the response I would have thought such a group that haunts /. would have seen the parallel before now. Instead, everyone is arguing red/blue politics.
So, if the study has any bearing at all, it relates far more to age and gender. The politics of the country are drawn clearly along those boundaries.
Emotional fear responses, compassion masks fear quite often, are generally a feminine response and among the young. The young emulate their adult influence and most young people have far more female than male influence. Therefore, most young people display emotional fear responses into their environment.
As you age, you tend to begin receiving far more male influence and begin developing masculine responses.
Masculine responses tend to veer away from emotion since controlling agression is a balancing act in masculine responses. Therefore, logic and reason is required to achieve a balance toward naked aggression and fear related responses.
... it's the bureaucratic minded people involved.
I was involved in a major California project in the early 90's where my company was a sub to Lockheed. Some of you may have heard of it as "Dead Beat Dad" tracking.
The goal was to automate and establish information sharing between cities and counties in California with the additional tie-in of Federal data sharing.
The result hit the news well after I left the company; I was offered to take over the Project Management duties and I flatly refused. I worked long enough on the project in a support role to see the underlying flaws and why the project would never deliver to goal.
In order to meet the overall goal, it would require some 50+ county and several hundred city governments to literally cooperate on various details. Of course, the Los Angeles Metro area insisted on being treated like its own little kingdom.
You'll never get that many bureaucrats and policy wonks to ever cooperate toward a common goal.
Open Source won't do anything useful toward cost cutting since the technology isn't the cost load factor toward final cost.
In politics, when you know the underlying specifics but gloss over those with the intent of directing people to a certain insubstantial opinion, it's appropriately called "shoving". [g]
The article mentions zombie computers, computers hijacked by backdoor trojans and the like, but the research group seems to not diferentiate between the act of using hijacked services and spam in general.
Had they done so, they might have noted where a lot of hijacking originates: Europe and Asia. How much spam is generated by hijacked computers and how much is generated by people using their own legitimate resources?
For instance, you're shooting dice if you try connecting to any url that ends in cz (as just one example). These idiots are even seeding bogus keyword hits so some dupe will click their url. You'll end up with a lot of malware and other nasties coming up the wire trying to infect your machine. Hilighting where SPAM originates but paying bare lip service to the causal attributes of the problem doesn't leave me impressed.
Perhaps it's because America bashing is more fun than impartial, thorough, research?
As to the folks who seem to think that domains such as jerryfalwellsucks.com doesn't infringe on anything, you're missing one of the points being made in this frontier of the law - Jerry Falwell is a person and domains like the above make a statement about a person.
Corporate non-entities might be fair targets for this, but you're walking a fine line with domains such as "www.HangMarthaStewart.com" since Martha Stewart isn't a corporate entity.
However folks fall in the religion fueled debate on homosexuality issues (gay marriage, gay "normalcy", etc) this was a middle-of-the-road ruling from a court that appears that didn't side with either of the agendas being pushed.
Like cyber-squat efforts (registering domains like "pepsi.com" when you're not affiliated with Pepsi at all) overall, this was a targeted effort by someone with an agenda. The intent was to squat their agenda on any internet traffic by "hugging" search criteria and even simple mispellings in a url. Their agenda to do this was clearly spelled out.
I expect the people running Drudge Retort to be nervous over a ruling like this.
It appears from the comments that few, if any, differentiate between merely science and the merely technical; The difference between a scientist and a technician, for instance.
Someone with a 4 year CS or CE degree probably won't make a good system/network administrator/manager, and likely didn't get his or her degree for that reason. I'd like to think that people enter into a field of science to expand the discipline into as yet undefined areas of applied knowledge and study. Whereas someone acquiring technician skills are doing so for more narrow and defined purposes - Applying the known state of the science as a vocation.
How many scientists does a culture need in a given discipline? More important to the topic, in my opinion, is the quality of innovation graduating CS/CE majors bring to technology frontiers.
Thank you, I stand corrected. I browsed the articles she offers on her web site and some of 'em aren't clear or just plain wrong on the facts.
However, I do not withdraw my comments regarding the overall issue that Katy Tarball has with her involvement in the circumstances. Legally, she's not at fault and the scumbag who took advantage needs to be brought forward to face his actions. However, even youngsters in their teens have responsibility for their choices and the fact is - Katy Tarball spent nearly a year flirting and responding to very personal dialogue with a pedophile. You can charge "naive" but I ain't that generous in light of the fact that, based on nothing more than her mental image of this "friend", she conspired to shake loose of her own mother and go to a hotel room, alone, to meet a man she knew to be 13 or 14 years her senior. It isn't unreasonable to consider that she knew exactly what would occur when she got there.
In the end, her own words indict her as to how the person she saw didn't match up to her expectation. I charge she fully expected to be "molested" and was damn well looking forward to it. Fourteen or not, she damn well ought to face up to her choices.
... calculated about this, so burn karma, burn!After reading the provided excerpt from the book titled "Katie.com", it reveals something about this young woman that doesn't portray her in a good light. As a matter of fact, she seems to be hilighting the fact that the chat with a pedophile began when she was 13 but seems to de-emphasize the fact that the actual 'molestation' occurred when she was 17. Still a minor but she was not a kid and it wasn't molestation and perhaps not even rape - Had the jerk met her somewhat superficial standards at the time (had been in his 20's, had been generally kind and paced things a bit slower) she likely wouldn't have accused him of molestation.
Combine that with her attitude toward this lawyer led barnstoming over the domain that the publisher used for a book title (which has nothing to do with the events portrayed in the book) and the general lack of care for what is being done on her behalf... I don't envision this young lady a victim of anything at all except her own actions and superficial views of the world.
I can see it now - A pressure gauge implanted among your chest hairs.
:p
If they wanted to make this technology useful, give me a way to "tune" my pressure. It'll ruin the market for viagra!
Also for the record, without the electoral college, the population in 6 states would control the Presidential office cycle after cycle.
It's a winner-take-all system based on the individual outcome of each state. The Presidential election is not a simple majority vote.
Once you understand the implications of how the President is voted into office, you understand that the United States is not a pure democracy and why it is not a pure democracy. No pure democracy exists that did not eventually spiral into a totalitarian mess.
The problem is with the third paragraph. Making a copy of your legally purchased mechandise is still against the law. According to paragraph 3, even if you make a copy of an audio disc for your purposes; Should that copy ever be found in a condition by which it isn't under your immediate control (not on your person, on an internet connected PC, in your car) you are liable under the provisions of this law.
The moral of the story is... ... When you walk up to a Republican registration table, don't be surprised that the forms are pre-checked Republican.
On a more serious note, considering the problems that Floriduh voters had in general during the last Presidential cycle, information like this should be taken with a grain of salt (and then throw that over your shoulder!).
I followed some of the threads and noted some attitudes and opinions that should be hilighted.
The first opinion that seems to stand out is that e-voting seems to be a Republican (read that as "right wing") conspiracy to harness elections. If these folks do their homework, they'd note a preponderance of e-voting initiatives are being pushed in majority Democratic districts.
The second, almost universal, view seems to contain the idea that e-voting is OK and the only problems exist in the margins. The major details seemed to be accepted. The "gee whiz" glitz seems to have misplaced general intelligence.
Considering this medium draws a lot of people in various technology fields, I'd think the overwhelming opinion would be a complete distrust of e-voting based on the potential abuses of the technology and the means to manipulate the outcome of an election.
The basic logic points should produce an overwhelming distrust for this form of individual duty and trust.
I noted the Fox News mention but that is only half the issue from Ted's point of view.
The fact of the matter is that Ted sees a battle lost after it was won - Leftist ideologues controlled and were the "fourth estate" and "fifth column" elements in the United States and around the world for 50 years.
Today, Ted is seeing his religion taking a virtual beating in the public marketplace of the Internet and televised and broadcast media outlets such as Fox News and ClearChannel successes like Rush Limbaugh and so-called "conservative talk radio" in general.
Like all leftists of Ted's stripe, the idea gives them blood-spitting fits. Stay tuned, he's falling back on the usual leftist knee-jerk in this sort of situation - He'll want the leftist elites in government to "do something" as only people in government can do anything: Use force and resort to "scorched earth" tactics if necessary.
Ted has plans for the ashes. Count on it.
It wasn't as hard to track down as I had thought and apparently my time sense just plain sucks. It was published in Asimov's pulp mag in the late 80's. Here's a link I,Robot :The illustrated Screenplay.
How many recall the script work done by Ellison about 10 or 12 years ago for a movie version based on Asimov's fiction? In his usual fashion, Harlan Ellison approached the studios and fought off every attempt to change the script - The script held true to the original fiction and was approved by Asimov. After some (with Ellison, I would imagine energetic) negotiations it boiled down to the studios wouldn't option the script without complete control and Asimov/Ellison wouldn't option the script without complete control of changes to the script.
This was all detailed in Asimov's pulp mag and the script was published in same as well.
Needless to say the current movie was not approved by Asimov but was approved by his estate, and obviously bears the slightest resemblence to Asimov's fiction or Ellison's original script (which kept to the original story fairly well and updated to include a modern "feel", Asimove was a bit of a romantic in the visual sense).
I'd encourage everyone to look up the I,Robot Ellison script and give it a read. Sorry for not providing a source and I have to admit, it might be difficult to find unless you can dig up a 12 year old copy of Asimov's pulp mag.
Some of the feedback I'm reading brought to mind that many are too close to the issue. Step back and think about a situation where the problem becomes how can this function and the data used or the data generated be useful today and 200 years from now?
Unless you're talking about a fundamental change in human interaction and use of technology, it isn't out of the question that data on a [say] spreadsheet today might have a use 200 years from now. The data is what is important, not the file format or the storage media.
Can the circumstance be engineered that would allow a historian access to that data? Look at the scope of the issue - file format, storage consistency, content validation, and so on; But, think in terms of 200 years from today.
Time to dust off the "Testing the network..." excuse for the boss and the wife (I know, redundant).
... and that is the gotcha that a lot of people don't seem to understand.
Scientists don't agree on the conclusions of various cliques whithin their own community based on the science or the methods used to reach a conclusion.
In addition, we're seeing politics "shaping" the outcome for studies paid for with tax dollars. The $500M the US Congress spent to study the effect of chemicals like Freon on the ozone layer in the 90's and NASA's report on "holes" in the ozone also during the 90's, are just two examples. Both efforts were rife with politician's pressuring the people involved toward a particular outcome. It's a tainted process and the conclusion becomes questionable.
To allow interest groups like this to influence public policy is akin to allowing any particular BAR association to vet judge nominees.
Thomas Sowell is referring to both Windows and OpenSource environments.
He's obviously talking about the Windows app bloat that has been building for 10 years and his lament is that you used to be able to install an application and then use it without any fuss or 30 hours of studying the user manual. If there is a user manual...
Unfortunately, OpenSource environments share that aspect. He touches on a good point about multimedia bloat too! Not every damn app has to be a multimedia bonanza of audio/video features. OpenSource environments are getting sucked into this maelstrom too.
It isn't an accident that Richard Dreyfuss sounds so knowledgable on efforts to censor so-called free speech; Hollywood has had years of practise in generating social/political spin all the while most Hollywood types have the blood-spitting fits when confronted with views on which they disagree.
Otherwise, this reads like a publicity stunt. No one watches PBS all that much.