1. the noise can permanently damage people's hearing
It's better than crashing into a building at 300/mph
2. a stray shot/ricochet will most likely injure/kill SOMEONE
that's better than all people on the plane.
3. a penetrated hull still loses air (people still need to breathe)
Planes have oxygen bags that drop down from the ceiling. Watch the flight attendant the next time you fly, the'll explain it to you.
1. It's also better than spontaneous combustion -- neither are very likely to happen while flying.
2. You'd prefer a few people injured on a continuous basis while flying to the extremely rare instance of a terrorist trying to fly a plane into a target?
3. Do you really think that aeroplanes have enough stored oxygen to supply all passengers at cruising altitude until they can make an emergency landing somewhere, all while there are people firing guns on the plane? Those oxygen masks are designed to deal with accidental depressurization on takeoff and landing; NOT a hull breach.
That being said, after I posted this, I realized that #3 wasn't really that big an issue for depressurization; all they'd need to do is find the hole(s) and plug them with something; then they could re-pressurize the hull and make the landing. The larger danger would be that the bullet would hit some circuitry or wiring in the hull. As most of this is not located in the walls of the passenger area, even this isn't so big an issue.
Still; the chances of someone firing a gun in an aeroplane are much higher than the chances of a premeditated hijacking (assuming guns are allowed on planes).
OK, so we've concluded that firing guns in an airplane does not destroy its structural integrity. However, firing a gun in a closed space packed with passengers has other issues: the noise can permanently damage people's hearing; a stray shot/ricochet will most likely injure/kill SOMEONE; a penetrated hull still loses air (people still need to breathe); and last but not least: if anyone was allowed to bring a gun onto an airplane, you can rest assured that anyone planning on taking over an airplane will have as much legal weaponry on them as was allowed... they might even wear bulletproof vests, explaining to airport security that they are afraid of random panicked passengers firing a gun at them.
Also, completely outside of such situations, firearms on aeroplanes is a bad idea. The reason for this: guns and alcohol should NEVER mix. Aeroplanes serve alcohol. I've seen a number of people who had to be subdued on flights I've been on; if they were allowed to carry a gun, I can imagine much worse situations occurring.
Re:Phew!
(Score:0)
by Archangel Michael (180766) Alter Relationship on Monday January 08, @08:55AM (#17509772)
(Last Journal: Wednesday September 22, @08:13AM)
I'm God, You are the program I wrote before there was even proteins for you to secrete.
--
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
OK... is it just me, or is there something odd about this post? Isn't this what the Archangel Lucifer got in trouble for doing?
Sounds great! Current estimates say that it will take 20-50 years for FFs to become more energy expensive to extract from the environment than there will be energy gained from using them.
Should I appoint you as the person in charge of making us a fully space-faring race that doesn't depend on FF anymore? Can you get it completed within the next 50 years?
Personally, I think FFs will last longer than 50 years, but I DO think that we probably only have around that amount of time before sending large objects into space becomes cost prohibitive. What we need is a space elevator that can be completed within that timeframe; after that, there should still be enough fuel around that we can run the thing until our asteroid mining camps can be set up.
But if we miss that window....
Re:Response from Kevin Finisterre, second bug
on
Month of Apple Fixes
·
· Score: 1
People appear to be confusing two Apple products: Quicktime and Quicktime Player. Quicktime is fully functional out of the box (sort of... you also need to install Perian and Flip4Mac, and might want to purchase the Apple MPEG2 plugin). Quicktime Player, on the other hand, comes bundled as crippleware. Replace Quicktime Player with Cellulo, BitPlayer, Metadata Hootenanny, or any of the other front ends available, and you have the same (or similar) access to the Quicktime engine you do with QuickTime Player Pro.
Tell me... HOW do you know the ATM machines are secure? Did Diebold let you personally examine one of their machines? Did a bank let you examine the method by which it communicates with said ATM? Just like with voting, the only reason you think the ATM machine is secure is that the ATM manufacturer and the bank (both of whom have a vested interest in having you think it's secure) tell you it is.
The only way you can verify that YOUR ATM transactions are correct (not necessarily secure, just correct) is that you later check to see that your bank balance matches what your own personal accounting records say it should be. Well, that and the bills and receipt in your wallet.
A couple of years ago, a gang of crooks was slipping a little card holder into the ATM card slots; a person would insert their card, and the machine would ask for the person's PIN and then report an error after it was entered. It would not spit the card back out. The person would then leave the ATM in disgust, contacting the ATM operator to get their card back. Meanwhile, the crooks would come in, remove their contraption, re-insert the card, and use it to clean out (or skim) the person's bank account.
This is just ONE of the ways in which these machines have been compromised. There are many other ways (EFT fraud is the most common one IIRC) to game the electronic funds system. One of the most interesting ways I've heard of was someone who was siphoning off all the money that would otherwise be lost due to rounding... they collected billions of dollars before they were caught, just by collecting the hundredths of a cent that otherwise would just vanish from the global funds system. Talk about a design flaw.
Re:What? no mention of silly putty!?
on
5 Strangest Materials
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Actually, no; Silly Putty expands when stressed, it doesn't get more solid.
I've always known dilatants as Newtonian Solids (for instance, cornstarch mixed with water, which you can sink your hand into, but which can also withstand the force of a sledgehammer [as can your hand if it's submersed at the time]).
Or, just have the Tor server toss a little random data between two ports from time to time, as is done to secure other hardware where this technique has been tried in the past (like smartcards). Or just run WoW in the foreground;)
I take it you missed the MythBusters episode where they successfully recorded audio on to a clay pot using nothing but a turntable, the pot and some straw?
Of course, the length of the audio was less than 1 second (the time it takes to rotate the pot once) but hey...
0) I assuming you're talking about the "everyone's a criminal" statement. I admit that was used in a non-legal way. Correctly, it should have been stated "Everyone is guilty of breaking laws they have not been brought to justice for breaking."
1) I agree 100%. I never stated otherwise. However, there are enough (for instance, DMCA) that DO create crimes as to make this an issue.
2) Once again, I agree 100%. My Jury statement was not meant to imply that if you are in breach of civil law, you are required to go before a jury and can be convicted; it was made to make you think about the law from a personal standpoint instead of a "that guy over there who is obviously guilty" standpoint. The law should be crafted to prevent YOU from inappropriate infringements on YOUR freedoms -- and by extension, everyone else who is also a "you".
3) Your assertion that I asserted there is a common principle and experience in US prisons is misleading... I never stated that, and do not believe it. I was responding to the parent's claim that other systems are worse because they do not punish criminals well enough.
I admit that when I talked about the myriad types of laws in the US, I failed to mention that they are enforced in a myriad of ways. I however, did not mean to bash the US or its legal/criminal/penal/judicial systems on any point except the first one, that "everyone is a criminal." The rest of the statement is a response to the parent's attitude about what makes a good penal system. If I were to go into depth about penal systems, I would point out that in Italy, people "feel sorry" for convicted felons because of the state of their jails -- and the fact that bribery works wonders in some parts of Italy. For that matter, in France you have to prove your innocence; they don't have to prove your guilt.
With regards to California, they have a very interesting prison system... they have one of the largest prison populations in the world, but also one of the best managed as far as quality of life goes. They have instituted a correctional system, while at the same time instituting a "3 strikes" system for more severe crimes. The result is that, depending on what law you run afoul of, California's system may be either one of the best or one of the worst to be subject to.
I fail to see how your explanations make the American legal system better... you seem instead to be saying that the american justice system is punitary instead of correctional. I can assure you; American punitary jails are much different places than the correctional facilities in use in the countries you listed.
Something else to think about... 29 years is a long time. People change a lot in 29 years. If someone is a serial rapist, gets caught when they're 29 (and is placed in a holding facility) and goes to jail when they're 34 (not unheard of length of time for such a case), they'll go through intensive reconditioning from the time they're 34 until they're 63. That's pretty much all of their working life. In most parts of the world, prisons are not used to punish people, they are used to keep people out of society until they are no longer a threat to it. Punishment is secondary (or maybe tertiary).
To look at it another way: in the US, everyone is a criminal. It is virtually impossible to go through life not breaking the myriad of federal, state, municipal, and corporate laws. Do you really want a jury of your "peers" to punish you for all the laws you've broken? Wouldn't you rather the court and your peers try to just persuade you never to commit those crimes in the future? Sure, it doesn't always work, but history has shown that a penal-based system is even LESS effective. Sure, the threat of getting caught is bigger, but that just means people work harder to not get caught, committing further crimes they would not otherwise have considered in the process.
It's actually a bit more complex than this... all copyable non-tangible works are copyrighted by their creator per the Berne Conventions. However, that copyright can be sold, and expires after a set amount of time.
When looking at an MP3, you are dealing with quite a number of copyrights, all of which could be held by the original creators, or by someone else. One service that Music Publishers provide is that they buy up most of the copyrights associated with the music, making it easy to gain permission.
A music MP3 will have the following copyrights:
1. Composer of the original tune
2. Composer of the original lyrics
3. Adapter of the original tune
4. Adapter of the original lyrics
5. Each performer in the piece owns copyright on their own performance
6. The recording studio owns copyright on the recording of the performance (with permission from the performers to copy their performance). This is due to the fact that two people recording the same performance can produce two very different interpretations of that performance.
7. The recording studio (usually) owns copyright on the mixing of the recording.
8. The software developers own the software used in the above creative processes.
9. Someone owns the copyright on the MP3 conversion of the mastered audio. This would be whoever did the conversion. There are also royalties to be paid to various third parties for using the MP3 codec, but this falls outside copyright.
So, there are roughly 9 copyright categories involved in an MP3, all of which can be held by any number of permutations of individuals and corporations. Publishing houses act as a buffer for the consumer, handling the copyright mess that can ensue. They usually do this by obtaining all the above copyrights themseves, in exchange for some payment agreed to with the copyright holder. In some cases, they don't get all the copyrights (for instance, for #2), but negotiate a contract with the leftover copyright holders for publication of the works including those copyrights.
One other copyright associated with popular music is on the artwork associated with the music. You could also argue that the ID3 tags on an MP3 could be copyrighted.
Anyway, I agree with you on your basic point -- it always annoys me when I hear people say "that xxx was copyrighted!" Somehow our society has trained us into thinking that the only copyrights worth anything are held by the corporations.
I suggest you try BackupPC which is extremely configurable, runs over samba, ssh, and other protocols, makes full and incremental backups, and can back up Windows, Linux and OS X machines. I've used it for years in network settings, and it hasn't failed me yet. --The best part is the restore process; a user can log in to the web interface and select individual files from any of their backup sets and those files will automatically be restored to their computer via the same network interface used for backup.
Mac being the least customizable of all the OSes. And yes I have used OS X. I give them credit because they're trying, moving to Intel and all. But they're pretty far behind and it's going to take a lot of catching up.
OK, I find this just plain odd...
I've been using the MacOS since System 6, MS since DOS, I've used various flavours of GNU/Linux, started using BSD in 1993, have used GEM, TOS, Amiga OS, BeOS, and a number of other OSes that are for more of a niche market.
Back with System 7, I had DOS users laugh at me for not having a command line on the Mac. Their faces looked funny when I hit the programmer's switch and started interacting directly with the various bits of hardware, bypassing restrictive DOS-like commands. After visibly proving all their statements of why DOS was better than the Mac System, they always fell back on "Well, DOS has more games!" as if this was because of the OS design, and not due to the fact that there was more hardware that ran DOS for a cheaper price than there was for the Mac.
Slowly move forward to today -- DOS was a cheap knockoff of Unix System V, which eventually forked into BSD. Those BSD underpinnings have been improved, and live on in Mac OS X (with many improvements going back into the open source community). DOS was stretched to run Windows 95 as an application, followed by 98 and ME. Finally, MS decided to ditch the kludge, and start work on their New Technology OS, and NT was born. 2000 took NT, and added some driver support, so that a lot of the stuff that made the MS OS market popular (ie: games in plenty) would work on the new NT architecture.
The problem was, because Microsoft refused to disclose their entire programming API, in order to compete with "Microsoft Chosen" software, developers had to find workarounds to speed up their code and keep memory requirements down. This resulted in games that worked great under DOS, but flopped under NT (all non-API calls tended not to work).
As a result, MS did some major reworking of 2000 to produce Windows XP -- they tried to make it more compatible with DOS/Win32 software while at the same time keeping the security and stability of NT. History has shown how this turned out (a bit of good, a bit of bad).
What does this have to do with being "far behind" and MacOS being the least customizable? Well, Windows XP isn't DOS (it breaks a lot of functionality from DOS), and it isn't NT (it breaks the security model and kernel stability). This means that both developers and end users actually have fewer options as far as ways of getting things done.
On OS X, I can run DOSBox -- this lets me run almost all DOS software, BETTER than it runs under XP. I can also run almost all Linux software (including KDE, Gnome, and their related suites). I have full access to a terminal that is an IMPROVED version of what MS stripped down to use for DOS. I have a wide range of software to get any job done, and multiple ways to use that software to achieve the same ends. The entire OS has a built in scripting system, allowing me to create solutions based workflows that use whatever features I want from whatever applications I want.
Add to this, with Parallels, I can now run win32 processes inside the MacOS environment. Compare this to MS Windows, where the bootloader fights with the hardware to prevent other OSes from being installed on the same drive.
About your other point, I think you are correct. People like Windows because it holds your hands, and lets you have "choice" in how you do the limited number of things the OS will permit you to do with YOUR hardware. The majority of people like this, as it makes them feel safe. And, if anything goes wrong, they can blame Microsoft, and restart their OS, and things generally go back to normal (or they decide that what they were trying to do "can't be done" and move on to doing it some other way). OS X puts up a facade of handholding, but for anyone willing to learn, provides multiple tiers
People who want all their content for free ignore the fact that it takes money to create content. How do you get around this basic issue?
People who want to make a profit off of content they have created ignore the fact that content is never made in a vacuum.
Look at Disney -- a large portion of their content is stolen from works that are now in the public domain. I know, I know, you can't "steal" from the public domain. Or can you? They're applying Microsoft's Embrace-Extend-Extinguish model to stories that were once free for anyone to read/tell.
The trick is that when you're dealing with intellectual property, people get rewarded for providing the information in an easy to consume form. Once the information is available, it becomes a lot harder to make money from providing it yet again. Many "content improvers" attempt to improve content they really can't afford to create by starting from something they got for nothing, thereby keeping costs within the amount they expect to recoup by improving that content. Then, to make a profit for those who lent them the money they're using to do this, they try to artificially limit how people can share their "improved" ideas.
Now for the other side:
American Entertainment is run on the debt-driven economy. This streamlines a lot of the areas required for wide-scale collaberation. Advertising is really a way of loaning money up front and expecting a return on investment down the line. So is producing a movie. If we switched to a profit-driven economy, consumers would have to pay the costs up front, and content creators would have to produce within that budget, leading to smaller budgets and consumers with a vested interest in seing a quality return on investment.
In short, we wouldn't see the kind of entertainment that the current regime is able to produce. We wouldn't see the production of experimental material either -- people would make what the consumer currently wanted, nothing more.
Funny thing is, due to the profit maximization required by investors, that's pretty much how it has turned out with this method too.
Speaking for the international community, I say that Bill Gates as president is something I would NEVER want to see... he's the one who popularized FUD and Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. We have to deal with enough of those strategies from the US already, thank you.
On the other hand, he's probably already doing more good for the world at large now than US politicians have in a long time, through his various non-profit efforts.
Think about it: people get into politics because they want to change the world... Gates has already achieved that in multiple ways without having to stoop to politicking. He'd have everything to lose and nothing to gain by becoming a more public figure.
I agree about keyboard use... I see this as more of a touch screen replacement, or an audio mixer's dream! Notice that you can have multiple points sensed at the same time... this could be great for any 2-D scrubber application, including graphical art, volume/frequency shifting, scroll/zoom, virtual percussion instruments, etc.
I do wonder what this could do when coupled with those suction cups that make a flat surface into a stereo speaker though;)
Actually, a 'computer virus' is something that attaches/appends itself to other files, and has some method for self propagation. By your definition, the cat command could be a virus as well, in which case every version of OS X has come bundled with a number of viruses.
Add to that that only 1 in 20 spammers makes a profit -- but that one spammer raking in the dough is enough to convince the small outfits to try it themselves. After all, start-up costs and operational costs are almost nil. Even though almost all of them lose, they only lose a few thousand dollars, not their life savings (until they're caught).
Thanks to your message, you just increased the traffic load on the network between you and the spammers. Just because it doesn't make it to your inbox doesn't mean it isn't out there. You've only stopped the last hop. The only way your method will have an appreciable difference is if the majority of people used it.
One interesting point about them doing this... if they implement such an upload filter, they suddenly become 100% responsible for what ends up on their system. They have no common carrier protections, no press-style protections. If someone obfuscates a song, gets it past the filters, and 1,000 people download it, MySpace is fully legally culpable for willfull copyright infringement on a grand scale. The IP holder involved can sue them for $5,000 per incident IIRC, which would be $5,000,000 for this single incident. It wouldn't take too many of such incidents to close their doors to audio hosting permanently.
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1. It's also better than spontaneous combustion -- neither are very likely to happen while flying.
2. You'd prefer a few people injured on a continuous basis while flying to the extremely rare instance of a terrorist trying to fly a plane into a target?
3. Do you really think that aeroplanes have enough stored oxygen to supply all passengers at cruising altitude until they can make an emergency landing somewhere, all while there are people firing guns on the plane? Those oxygen masks are designed to deal with accidental depressurization on takeoff and landing; NOT a hull breach.
That being said, after I posted this, I realized that #3 wasn't really that big an issue for depressurization; all they'd need to do is find the hole(s) and plug them with something; then they could re-pressurize the hull and make the landing. The larger danger would be that the bullet would hit some circuitry or wiring in the hull. As most of this is not located in the walls of the passenger area, even this isn't so big an issue.
Still; the chances of someone firing a gun in an aeroplane are much higher than the chances of a premeditated hijacking (assuming guns are allowed on planes).
Also, completely outside of such situations, firearms on aeroplanes is a bad idea. The reason for this: guns and alcohol should NEVER mix. Aeroplanes serve alcohol. I've seen a number of people who had to be subdued on flights I've been on; if they were allowed to carry a gun, I can imagine much worse situations occurring.
I didn't think the archangel Michael would troll on slashdot either... especially not while claiming to be his boss ;)
Should I appoint you as the person in charge of making us a fully space-faring race that doesn't depend on FF anymore? Can you get it completed within the next 50 years?
Personally, I think FFs will last longer than 50 years, but I DO think that we probably only have around that amount of time before sending large objects into space becomes cost prohibitive. What we need is a space elevator that can be completed within that timeframe; after that, there should still be enough fuel around that we can run the thing until our asteroid mining camps can be set up.
But if we miss that window....
People appear to be confusing two Apple products: Quicktime and Quicktime Player. Quicktime is fully functional out of the box (sort of... you also need to install Perian and Flip4Mac, and might want to purchase the Apple MPEG2 plugin). Quicktime Player, on the other hand, comes bundled as crippleware. Replace Quicktime Player with Cellulo, BitPlayer, Metadata Hootenanny, or any of the other front ends available, and you have the same (or similar) access to the Quicktime engine you do with QuickTime Player Pro.
The only way you can verify that YOUR ATM transactions are correct (not necessarily secure, just correct) is that you later check to see that your bank balance matches what your own personal accounting records say it should be. Well, that and the bills and receipt in your wallet.
A couple of years ago, a gang of crooks was slipping a little card holder into the ATM card slots; a person would insert their card, and the machine would ask for the person's PIN and then report an error after it was entered. It would not spit the card back out. The person would then leave the ATM in disgust, contacting the ATM operator to get their card back. Meanwhile, the crooks would come in, remove their contraption, re-insert the card, and use it to clean out (or skim) the person's bank account.
This is just ONE of the ways in which these machines have been compromised. There are many other ways (EFT fraud is the most common one IIRC) to game the electronic funds system. One of the most interesting ways I've heard of was someone who was siphoning off all the money that would otherwise be lost due to rounding... they collected billions of dollars before they were caught, just by collecting the hundredths of a cent that otherwise would just vanish from the global funds system. Talk about a design flaw.
I've always known dilatants as Newtonian Solids (for instance, cornstarch mixed with water, which you can sink your hand into, but which can also withstand the force of a sledgehammer [as can your hand if it's submersed at the time]).
Or, just have the Tor server toss a little random data between two ports from time to time, as is done to secure other hardware where this technique has been tried in the past (like smartcards). Or just run WoW in the foreground ;)
Of course, the length of the audio was less than 1 second (the time it takes to rotate the pot once) but hey...
0) I assuming you're talking about the "everyone's a criminal" statement. I admit that was used in a non-legal way. Correctly, it should have been stated "Everyone is guilty of breaking laws they have not been brought to justice for breaking."
1) I agree 100%. I never stated otherwise. However, there are enough (for instance, DMCA) that DO create crimes as to make this an issue.
2) Once again, I agree 100%. My Jury statement was not meant to imply that if you are in breach of civil law, you are required to go before a jury and can be convicted; it was made to make you think about the law from a personal standpoint instead of a "that guy over there who is obviously guilty" standpoint. The law should be crafted to prevent YOU from inappropriate infringements on YOUR freedoms -- and by extension, everyone else who is also a "you".
3) Your assertion that I asserted there is a common principle and experience in US prisons is misleading... I never stated that, and do not believe it. I was responding to the parent's claim that other systems are worse because they do not punish criminals well enough.
I admit that when I talked about the myriad types of laws in the US, I failed to mention that they are enforced in a myriad of ways. I however, did not mean to bash the US or its legal/criminal/penal/judicial systems on any point except the first one, that "everyone is a criminal." The rest of the statement is a response to the parent's attitude about what makes a good penal system. If I were to go into depth about penal systems, I would point out that in Italy, people "feel sorry" for convicted felons because of the state of their jails -- and the fact that bribery works wonders in some parts of Italy. For that matter, in France you have to prove your innocence; they don't have to prove your guilt.
With regards to California, they have a very interesting prison system... they have one of the largest prison populations in the world, but also one of the best managed as far as quality of life goes. They have instituted a correctional system, while at the same time instituting a "3 strikes" system for more severe crimes. The result is that, depending on what law you run afoul of, California's system may be either one of the best or one of the worst to be subject to.
Something else to think about... 29 years is a long time. People change a lot in 29 years. If someone is a serial rapist, gets caught when they're 29 (and is placed in a holding facility) and goes to jail when they're 34 (not unheard of length of time for such a case), they'll go through intensive reconditioning from the time they're 34 until they're 63. That's pretty much all of their working life. In most parts of the world, prisons are not used to punish people, they are used to keep people out of society until they are no longer a threat to it. Punishment is secondary (or maybe tertiary).
To look at it another way: in the US, everyone is a criminal. It is virtually impossible to go through life not breaking the myriad of federal, state, municipal, and corporate laws. Do you really want a jury of your "peers" to punish you for all the laws you've broken? Wouldn't you rather the court and your peers try to just persuade you never to commit those crimes in the future? Sure, it doesn't always work, but history has shown that a penal-based system is even LESS effective. Sure, the threat of getting caught is bigger, but that just means people work harder to not get caught, committing further crimes they would not otherwise have considered in the process.
When looking at an MP3, you are dealing with quite a number of copyrights, all of which could be held by the original creators, or by someone else. One service that Music Publishers provide is that they buy up most of the copyrights associated with the music, making it easy to gain permission.
A music MP3 will have the following copyrights:
1. Composer of the original tune
2. Composer of the original lyrics
3. Adapter of the original tune
4. Adapter of the original lyrics
5. Each performer in the piece owns copyright on their own performance
6. The recording studio owns copyright on the recording of the performance (with permission from the performers to copy their performance). This is due to the fact that two people recording the same performance can produce two very different interpretations of that performance.
7. The recording studio (usually) owns copyright on the mixing of the recording.
8. The software developers own the software used in the above creative processes. 9. Someone owns the copyright on the MP3 conversion of the mastered audio. This would be whoever did the conversion. There are also royalties to be paid to various third parties for using the MP3 codec, but this falls outside copyright.
So, there are roughly 9 copyright categories involved in an MP3, all of which can be held by any number of permutations of individuals and corporations. Publishing houses act as a buffer for the consumer, handling the copyright mess that can ensue. They usually do this by obtaining all the above copyrights themseves, in exchange for some payment agreed to with the copyright holder. In some cases, they don't get all the copyrights (for instance, for #2), but negotiate a contract with the leftover copyright holders for publication of the works including those copyrights.
One other copyright associated with popular music is on the artwork associated with the music. You could also argue that the ID3 tags on an MP3 could be copyrighted.
Anyway, I agree with you on your basic point -- it always annoys me when I hear people say "that xxx was copyrighted!" Somehow our society has trained us into thinking that the only copyrights worth anything are held by the corporations.
I suggest you try BackupPC which is extremely configurable, runs over samba, ssh, and other protocols, makes full and incremental backups, and can back up Windows, Linux and OS X machines. I've used it for years in network settings, and it hasn't failed me yet. --The best part is the restore process; a user can log in to the web interface and select individual files from any of their backup sets and those files will automatically be restored to their computer via the same network interface used for backup.
OK, I find this just plain odd...
I've been using the MacOS since System 6, MS since DOS, I've used various flavours of GNU/Linux, started using BSD in 1993, have used GEM, TOS, Amiga OS, BeOS, and a number of other OSes that are for more of a niche market.
Back with System 7, I had DOS users laugh at me for not having a command line on the Mac. Their faces looked funny when I hit the programmer's switch and started interacting directly with the various bits of hardware, bypassing restrictive DOS-like commands. After visibly proving all their statements of why DOS was better than the Mac System, they always fell back on "Well, DOS has more games!" as if this was because of the OS design, and not due to the fact that there was more hardware that ran DOS for a cheaper price than there was for the Mac.
Slowly move forward to today -- DOS was a cheap knockoff of Unix System V, which eventually forked into BSD. Those BSD underpinnings have been improved, and live on in Mac OS X (with many improvements going back into the open source community). DOS was stretched to run Windows 95 as an application, followed by 98 and ME. Finally, MS decided to ditch the kludge, and start work on their New Technology OS, and NT was born. 2000 took NT, and added some driver support, so that a lot of the stuff that made the MS OS market popular (ie: games in plenty) would work on the new NT architecture.
The problem was, because Microsoft refused to disclose their entire programming API, in order to compete with "Microsoft Chosen" software, developers had to find workarounds to speed up their code and keep memory requirements down. This resulted in games that worked great under DOS, but flopped under NT (all non-API calls tended not to work).
As a result, MS did some major reworking of 2000 to produce Windows XP -- they tried to make it more compatible with DOS/Win32 software while at the same time keeping the security and stability of NT. History has shown how this turned out (a bit of good, a bit of bad).
What does this have to do with being "far behind" and MacOS being the least customizable? Well, Windows XP isn't DOS (it breaks a lot of functionality from DOS), and it isn't NT (it breaks the security model and kernel stability). This means that both developers and end users actually have fewer options as far as ways of getting things done.
On OS X, I can run DOSBox -- this lets me run almost all DOS software, BETTER than it runs under XP. I can also run almost all Linux software (including KDE, Gnome, and their related suites). I have full access to a terminal that is an IMPROVED version of what MS stripped down to use for DOS. I have a wide range of software to get any job done, and multiple ways to use that software to achieve the same ends. The entire OS has a built in scripting system, allowing me to create solutions based workflows that use whatever features I want from whatever applications I want.
Add to this, with Parallels, I can now run win32 processes inside the MacOS environment. Compare this to MS Windows, where the bootloader fights with the hardware to prevent other OSes from being installed on the same drive.
About your other point, I think you are correct. People like Windows because it holds your hands, and lets you have "choice" in how you do the limited number of things the OS will permit you to do with YOUR hardware. The majority of people like this, as it makes them feel safe. And, if anything goes wrong, they can blame Microsoft, and restart their OS, and things generally go back to normal (or they decide that what they were trying to do "can't be done" and move on to doing it some other way). OS X puts up a facade of handholding, but for anyone willing to learn, provides multiple tiers
Look at Disney -- a large portion of their content is stolen from works that are now in the public domain. I know, I know, you can't "steal" from the public domain. Or can you? They're applying Microsoft's Embrace-Extend-Extinguish model to stories that were once free for anyone to read/tell.
The trick is that when you're dealing with intellectual property, people get rewarded for providing the information in an easy to consume form. Once the information is available, it becomes a lot harder to make money from providing it yet again. Many "content improvers" attempt to improve content they really can't afford to create by starting from something they got for nothing, thereby keeping costs within the amount they expect to recoup by improving that content. Then, to make a profit for those who lent them the money they're using to do this, they try to artificially limit how people can share their "improved" ideas.
Now for the other side:
American Entertainment is run on the debt-driven economy. This streamlines a lot of the areas required for wide-scale collaberation. Advertising is really a way of loaning money up front and expecting a return on investment down the line. So is producing a movie. If we switched to a profit-driven economy, consumers would have to pay the costs up front, and content creators would have to produce within that budget, leading to smaller budgets and consumers with a vested interest in seing a quality return on investment.
In short, we wouldn't see the kind of entertainment that the current regime is able to produce. We wouldn't see the production of experimental material either -- people would make what the consumer currently wanted, nothing more.
Funny thing is, due to the profit maximization required by investors, that's pretty much how it has turned out with this method too.
--end ramble.
On the other hand, he's probably already doing more good for the world at large now than US politicians have in a long time, through his various non-profit efforts.
Think about it: people get into politics because they want to change the world... Gates has already achieved that in multiple ways without having to stoop to politicking. He'd have everything to lose and nothing to gain by becoming a more public figure.
I do wonder what this could do when coupled with those suction cups that make a flat surface into a stereo speaker though ;)
Actually, a 'computer virus' is something that attaches/appends itself to other files, and has some method for self propagation. By your definition, the cat command could be a virus as well, in which case every version of OS X has come bundled with a number of viruses.
http://koffice.darwinports.com/ http://ranger.users.finkproject.org/kde/index.php/ Home
The second one's easier, as it's torrented dmg files :)
If you read the thread above, you'll notice that these were earthquake-rated windows... it would take quite a blast to take out one of those.
Add to that that only 1 in 20 spammers makes a profit -- but that one spammer raking in the dough is enough to convince the small outfits to try it themselves. After all, start-up costs and operational costs are almost nil. Even though almost all of them lose, they only lose a few thousand dollars, not their life savings (until they're caught).
Thanks to your message, you just increased the traffic load on the network between you and the spammers. Just because it doesn't make it to your inbox doesn't mean it isn't out there. You've only stopped the last hop. The only way your method will have an appreciable difference is if the majority of people used it.
I hope they've thought this through.