But as others have said, it's *always* really been your responsibility to protect the goods you purchase. If she had invested even $79 or so for an external USB hard drive (a lot less money than she spent on the music itself!), and did regular backups of her data to it, she wouldn't have had this issue in the first place.
I wouldn't get the ability for a "one time free replacement" of my collection of physical CDs and cassette tapes if they were all destroyed in a fire tomorrow, or they were stolen, or ??
On the other hand, I *might* have insurance that would pay for their replacement... and I suspect that's another thing we could start seeing more of, as things go digital. Perhaps companies will start pushing insurance policies covering your expenses for intangible works, like software titles downloaded onto your Playstation 3's hard drive, or iTunes music purchases.
I hate WGA as much as the next guy, but trying to file a class-action suit against Microsoft because they decided to push out an update for their OS that they deemed "critical" but some users didn't? It seems to me that Microsoft is the one who gets to choose which category they place their updates in, and a "Critical Update" like WGA authentication might seem a lot more critical to MS than to their customers....
As many people already posted here -- if you dislike the way their OS handles things, maybe it's time to consider alternatives? By now, I'm pretty sure the folks in Redmond are well aware of the complaints people have with their products. The fact they've progressively added MORE technology to verify you're a legal owner of their software instead of *removing* it makes it clear they don't care about that complaint!
Say what you will about Apple and OS X, but ever since I migrated over to it, I haven't had a single headache with "product activation" or invalid CD keys.....
Although Firefox does still appear to have Windows 2000 support, it hasn't supported Windows ME since, I believe, version 2.0. That just recently caused me problems, when I was trying to recycle an old Pentium 2 class machine to give to an unemployed woman who just needed a *really* cheap computer to do an Internet job search with. I discovered that with Windows ME (or by extension, Windows '98), there are really no "up to date" browser choices (except possibly Opera) they can use anymore. Internet Explorer 6 is the last version Microsoft offers for those OS's, and everyone's trying to kill that off as we speak.
Since Windows ME and 2000 were released in the same time-frame, I'd say Firefox's continued Win2K support has more to do with it being trivial to do than any conscious sense of a need to support an OS for "x number of years". Windows XP, after all, was pretty much based on the Windows 2000 foundation.
As far as Macs go, I'd tend to side with your view that it's "too soon to kill off Tiger support"... simply because 10.6 "Snow Leopard" doesn't really count in my book as a full-blown OS X "new version". I don't say that to knock 10.6 in any way, shape or form. (I run it on my Mac at home and love it.) I'm just saying, it's the first time Apple has sold 2 versions of OS X side-by-side on store shelves -- because Leopard isn't really superseded by Snow Leopard for PowerPC Mac owners. Snow Leopard is, essentially a "Leopard +" release to give Intel Mac owners the maximum benefit out of their processor architecture. (Why waste hard disk space with a bunch of PPC code on an Intel Mac that will never utilize it? And why not provide tools in 10.6 so developers of new apps can optimize them for the multi-core Intel processors?) The fact you could buy Snow Leopard for only $29.99 reinforces this concept.
I'm *far* from trying to defend China or claim they're "trustworthy"... but taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is a dead-end for most individuals and businesses. Ultimately, yes, you can't know for 100% certain a given piece of software is trusted unless you wrote it yourself.... but what's new? That's always been, and always will be the case... and unless you were able to engineer your own computer processor and other components on the motherboard, etc. - you STILL can't prove you're running a completely trusted system, can you?
In reality, I think people have to possess some awareness of their computing environment, as a whole - and that may realistically be the best we can do. If some piece of gear is "compromised", it still has to communicate the information it stole to a receiver on the other end. That means, your firewall is capable of either blocking or at least logging that connection. There's also, of course, the "strength in numbers" facet to all of this. Maybe YOU as an individual never noticed something strange was going on with a piece of gear, but as thousands or millions of people become customers/users of the same gear, chance increase that SOMEONE will figure it out. Keep an eye on the tech news and Internet forums, and you'll receive pretty quick warnings about such things. (This is probably also a good argument for going with popular products, vs. obscure ones with a far lower installed user-base?)
Yep, and I'd further point out that Apple *also* maintains a very good "last resort" system of escalating major issues.
It's not officially published in your owners' manuals or anything (for obvious reasons, if you think about it!), but it's well known on Apple related support forums and blog sites that the "sjobs@apple.com" email address will reach some upper-level corporate people, in charge of "damage control" for serious issues that weren't resolved by the normal channels.
There's even some fairly good evidence out there that in the right situations, a few of these emails even get forwarded on to Steve Jobs himself to read (and even quickly reply to) personally.
Time after time, I've read about people with real "lemons" of Apple products getting free replacements or repairs by explaining their issue to someone at that address - even when the original warranty was expired or the local store denied them service for some reason.
If too many people start using/abusing it, I wouldn't be surprised if it goes away, or stops being useful -- but Apple has been monitoring that address for many years now. It's good to keep "under your hat" in case you really get a negative and otherwise unresolvable situation with your Apple product, someday.
I agree that a lot of really competent folks no longer even bother to call in to "customer service" lines. But that's not so much because they inherently believe it best to skip that step. It's conditioned behavior, based on years and years of trying it and having miserable results!
I have a feeling that if a tech. company would experiment with the idea of having 2 different phone numbers -- one advertised as the "standard" one for customers to use, and the second listed as specifically for "advanced users" -- it might work out really well for them. Let people calling the "advanced" hotline reach 2nd. (or even 3rd.) level technical staff, while the other (perhaps more prominently published/displayed) number takes them to 1st. level, first.
Sure, this would result in some relative idiots calling the advanced line, thinking it's going to give them a quicker or better answer to their problems... BUT, that hassle would be more than offset by 1st. level techs. not wasting half their day running people through pointless basic troubleshooting steps, only to determine their issue is more complicated than something covered on the card they read off of. Not only that, but it would help resolve the original problem of "good, knowledgeable users not bothering to call in to report issues they discover". They'd start doing it, if they knew they were quickly able to convey the info to people who would really DO something with it.
Also, in this scenario - there's no reason a higher-level tech shouldn't/couldn't be allowed to "de-escalate" a call to 1st. level if it becomes clear it's a user who just needs simple help - and he/she is abusing the ability to call into the "advanced hotline"! With 1st. level freed up from doing pointless basic troubleshooting for all the people with more advanced questions, the hold times to speak with them should drop too - making this less of a problem to transfer folks back to them.
I don't really buy into the idea that "texting" and the like leads to obsolescence of correct grammar.
Latin was a different issue. In that case, you had a language nobody in the world was even using anymore as a primary means of communication. People were artificially preserving it, just to communicate certain types of information within their circle of peers. (The Catholic Church for example, held onto it until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's - when they finally decided holding a mass in Latin was no longer practical or functional.)
Here, we're talking about people disregarding the rules of the *primary* language the United States uses. Sure, you can bend and break quite a few of those rules and still decipher the content of the sentences, as people do all the time when sending text messages or chatting online. But the REASON we can do so is because we learned the rules in the first place, and our brain is able to "fill in the blanks" when parts are left out. (For example, I could write sentences with every other vowel removed from the words, and yu culd stll figr ot what ws bing sad.)
We've always understood that there are acceptable times and places to be more "informal" with language. That's why we have slang and "colloquial expressions". That's why people don't generally care if someone writes "ok" when it should technically be spelled "okay". And as time goes on, I think a majority of people breaking one of the initial rules can and should lead to the change BECOMING the new rule. But I don't see how you can really define something as a language in the first place, if there are no rules? What *is* the language, if it consists of a bunch of people doing whatever they like with words and their structure? How do you teach it to someone who doesn't know anything about it yet?
And perhaps as importantly in the "real world", the consistent (and complex!) set of rules for proper use of the language acts as sort of a benchmark of one's intelligence. The level of mastery a person illustrates gives an indicator of their amount of formal education, and is used all the time when making hiring decisions in the workplace. Do we really want to throw that concept away?
No, I agree with you here! I wasn't even much of a fan of most RPG games, but I'd probably play this one, since it's more like a 3D shooter merged with a typical RPG. The thing is though, I've pretty much switched to all Macs at home, and my only Windows PC left doesn't have a graphics card capable of playing these games very well.
I can boot into Windows 7 on my Mac Pro (or I've got XP Pro on my Macbook Pro notebook I can boot into) and play a game like this, but I don't WANT to! I hate having to reboot into a second OS just for the sake of playing a game. For me, gaming tends to be an "impulse activity" anyway, when I get a little free time at random and perhaps get tired of some other work I was doing on the computer. If I have to exit out of everything, boot up Windows, and then probably do numerous updates too - just to play a game? Chances are good I'll just skip it and play something else instead that runs natively in OS X.
Macs may still only have a "niche market", but it's slowly growing and growing. (I'm also of the opinion that most of the Mac buyers/owners of late are the people who actually still have decent-paying jobs and are willing to buy something like a new game title at full price. Meanwhile, the recent "netbook craze" has caused a lot of new Windows PC purchases to be ones driven by the low cost of entry -- and these won't be people with machines capable of running a game like Mass Effect 2, nor are they as likely to want to pay for the game either!)
Ok - all well and good, but WHY would you ever care about being able to view video in 1080p resolution on a tablet device? Even with the big screen LCD televisions, the "experts" are always advising that 1080p hi-def isn't really useful or noticeable until you get up to at least a 50" screen size or so!
I think too many people get caught up in making sure a given device meets a check-list of features, instead of looking at the functionality of it on the whole.
MSI may very well release a superior product. We'll have to wait and see. But first off, I'll be shocked if the build quality approaches anything near what Apple's is. Every MSI motherboard I've owned looks like its components were soldered on any old way, as long as they worked electrically. You'll see things like audio jacks siting several centimeters off the board in back, but flush in front, and just an overall board layout that has little concern for the person assembling the PC with it. (EG. Circuit traces are run right under the places you have to pry/pull on the clips holding the CPU down, so one small slip of a screwdriver can mean gouging a trace and destroying the board.)
And secondly, just how much performance does a 10" tablet need? If everything you run on it feels "instantaneous", it sounds like they're good. Beyond a certain point, you're just burning up battery life for unused processor cycles.
How is this "the world we live in"? You can write all the software you want for ANY hardware out there that's designed for people to openly develop on. This hasn't changed....
Apple's developer program for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and now iPad does require you "pay to play"... BUT, they're also handling all the distribution for you. You don't need to create your own web site and pay for a package with enough bandwidth to handle the demand of all the people who want to visit and download your program(s). It seems to me like that has some value... does it not?
Everyone's free to do as they like with these things. All I know is, I can see it being potentially VERY profitable to develop the right type of apps for a brand new device like the iPad. You might not want to jump through Apple's hoops if you're just wanting to make another chess or tic-tac-toe game run on one. But this thing could become HUGE in the medical industry, for example, if you made software that catered to what doctors and nurses really need in the office or hospital. (I'm thinking software that interfaces with existing back-end packages to enter/retrieve patient information? Or maybe enabling digital viewing of X-rays?) Or heck, if it turns out the device isn't approved for use in those environments - sell to chiropractors! They don't have to comply with tons of regulation on what electronic devices they opt to use in their offices.... How about insurance agents? I bet some software allowing easy collision damage estimates and mobile access to customer records might appeal to claims adjusters? Ever see how awkward it is for a lot of them trying to hold a notebook computer while walking around a wrecked car or truck? Or let's see... who else spends a large part of their day doing their job while standing up? Teachers sure do. How about some tools for education then?
Any of this stuff makes the $99 a year "entry fee" seem laughably trivial if you're serious about what you're doing.
I really don't think they were ever intending this to replace one of their portables. (That would kind of shoot themselves in the proverbial feet, since ideally, they'd like people to buy BOTH a notebook of theirs and whatever the tablet turns out to be.)
We'll all know soon enough... but my thoughts throughout this whole thing were that Apple's main focus is on finding a good way to sell digital versions of print media to people, via iTunes, just like they already do with music and now with video/movies. This device will primarily be a "means to that end", just like the iPod was for music.
I got my A+ a long time ago, because I was out of work and looking for another I.T. job, and figured "Why not? It's not real expensive to get compared to most of the certs. out there, and it's something else to put on my resume to show I'm still trying to keep up with things." As I recall, I was a little surprised it asked so many questions that related to old/obsolete computer systems. (EG. It had questions about which IRQ and I/O address was the default for COM1 and COM2. With anything resembling a "modern" version of Windows, this is pretty irrelevant -- but was critical to know if you were configuring MS-DOS based terminal packages and non "plug and play" internal modem cards.)
Given that, I'm not sure there's a necessity to make people get "re-certified" on a A+? The most significant feature of the cert. may well be that it forces people to learn a little bit of "historically relevant" computer knowledge. There are times, as a tech or support person, you'll run into that stuff -- and most self-taught computer people who started learning in the "post MS-DOS" era might not know anything about it otherwise.
I believe even CompTIA used to say that the A+ was to show "equivalency to a PC technician with 6 months of work experience". So nobody is supposed to really be *impressed" that you have it. It's simply an entry-level cert. that proves you're not just a clueless n00b who wants to fix computers because you thought your Playstation or XBox was a lot of fun, and "computers can't be much different than that!".
As far as it "getting you a job" specifically? It depends. A lot of support places require you have the A+ as a prerequisite. (I think Dell did/does, for example, if you want to do on-site service for them?)
Sure, it's always good to implement updates that improve network/computer security... but let's face it. These deadlines are put in place primarily to ensure people actually pay attention and do the update in a reasonable amount of time. It's not like govt. had inside information that right after Dec. 31, 2009 - hackers were going to go crazy trying to exploit this DNS issue, so that was the day it really NEEDED to be implemented by, across the board.
Maybe I'm just in a sour mood right now with this stuff in general? But lately, I sense an ever-increasing amount of importance being placed on every little security patch or change, when it's just not really warranted. It seems really self-serving to those who work in the field of "computer security", because it makes a bunch of extra billable work for them - and they get to scare more people into paying them to secure things for them.
I mean, just this morning, I came into work and checked my mail, and what do I see? People on C-Net asking questions about if they should just "quit using Internet Explorer, given the recent security exploits". (Umm, let's see here.... You successfully used the thing ever since probably when? At least back in 2001 or 2002, right? And theoretically at least, it's "safer" now than EVER before, since Microsoft has been patching and upgrading the thing that whole time. So why would you suddenly determine NOW that it's just too unsafe to use again??)
And later today, I've got to waste my afternoon ensuring "PCI Compliance" because my workplace accepts credit cards once in a while, processed via an Internet-based card processing service. We don't even store *any* of the card data here, on either our systems or on paper. They just punch the stuff into the web site to do the processing, and let the processor keep the data. But *still*, simply because we do it, we have to have monthly "penetration testing" done against our firewall's IP address (among other requirements), and the stupid test claims I "fail" right now, due to issues that hardly matter in reality. (EG. It's complaining about unpatched issues with the Outlook Web Access part of Exchange, even though nobody even has access to use OWA in our company except me, as sysadmin -- and again, I'm finding it quite the stretch to see how someone hacking OWA here would magically obtain customer credit card info, given how we operate here?)
Honestly, I think one of the big obstacles the newspapers need to overcome with the "move to digital media" is the established "norm" that on the web, your content should be free (or ad banner supported, at least).
The media corps. always give me the impression that they're screaming and hollering that "Internet users don't value their content", when instead, maybe it's THE MEDIA CORPS. who need to realize they're trying to encroach on a specific type of media that existed long before they arrived, in a "free to all takers" format, by default!
The Internet started out with content posted by educational institutions, libraries and research labs, along with free contributions on Usenet and the like by anyone who wished to contribute it. Commercial business didn't even TOUCH the thing until decades later.
And when most of us think of what commercial business has "contributed" to the Internet since then? We think of spam emails, spyware trying to monitor the sites we visit, and useless "rich media" web sites that take forever to download, only to offer non-searchable text delivered as graphics content, and typically little real "substance" on the site anyway.
It's not so much that we reject the notion that you have content worth paying something for.... It's more the idea that you need to serve it up to us in the correct "setting". The Internet is probably best used as a place to offer *some* free content, so people can easily see what you've got to offer and become "hooked" on going to you for articles. But I think the advent of e-readers (a la the Kindle, or Apple's upcoming tablet) might be where they need to shift their focus for paid subscription content. These devices function more like their "dead tree" equivalents. They're very portable and focus on reading content as a primary point of the device. People buying them don't generally have expectations or preconceptions that all the content on them should be free, either.
Sure, but IMHO, he's just stating the obvious. (Maybe that's needed though. Sometimes people just like to see things in writing that they've informally believed in and followed anyway.) It just seems to me that in every I.T. job I've ever had, the idea was put out there that our job was to come up with solutions that improved efficiency and productivity. Sure, management might dictate that certain problems be solved a specific way, and certain requirements needed to be met. But any decent I.T. person would take all of that as a set of "necessary parameters" while trying to come up with the best possible solution. More often than not, as you start evaluating products, you discover solutions to problems nobody even considered when initially starting the project. Those tend to become automatic "bonuses" you can present to management when you roll a solution out, because NOW you know about them and can be a step ahead of the game.
And frankly, I don't understand the point you're trying to make about people thinking "everything free and such is so great", as a consequence of missing the original point of this article? I know *I* think free solutions are great, mainly because if they actually work to solve a problem for me, I get to go ahead and play around with them and actually put them in place without all the "red tape" of getting purchase orders approved first. Quality free software allows I.T. to be more proactive than they could otherwise be. (EG. We have issues right now with an older Sonicwall firewall and people trying to come in remotely via VPN. Depending on the ISP, it seems some people are experiencing random disconnects, and the only real "lead" I found so far is to change the MTU size (from 1500 to a smaller value). But doing so just seems to shift the problem around. One user says their issue is improved, while a new person reports problems when they never had them before. Rather than spending big $'s on a newer, updated VPN firewall product with support agreement, I can implement a free, Linux-based OpenVPN solution as an alternative. Given our current financial situation, the new commercial VPN firewall is simply not happening.)
Yes, but all of what you just said further illustrates why govt. bureaucracy is causing our medical expenses to spiral out of control. It's not sustainable. The only people who really "win" in this mess are the attorneys, and all the talk of medical reform in the USA right now conveniently skips changes in THAT area.
Not long ago, I was reading about a heart surgeon in India who among other things, got tired of the high cost of medical sutures. Apparently, the only supplier of the ones he needed was the Johnson & Johnson company, and they kept increasing prices each year. He finally got some investors together, who opened their OWN manufacturing facility to produce the sutures in India at a far lower cost, so he can now buy from them and cut at least 35% off of his annual expenses for them. (Since he's running huge clinics doing nothing but heart surgeries there, he benefits more than most would from "economy of scale".)
It seems to me, that's exactly the type of change the medical field needs to see. Unfortunately, government legislation often seems to stand in the way of progress here in America. (A doctor my friend knows heard this story about the medical sutures and angrily protested, "But I'm not even legally ALLOWED to invest in such a thing as a surgeon in the US!")
As it stands now, doesn't it bother you at least a LITTLE bit that you had to fork out upwards of $250,000 in *lawyer fees* just to prove that it was ok for a hospital to start using what's really just a touch-screen PC in a hardened metal frame?
I'd agree with this, except for one thing. You're making an assumption that programming can't be learned without a "formal education". Most of the U.S. based software programmers I know were self-taught, actually. Many opted to continue in that vein when they attended college, since it was their area of interest already -- but they knew how to code in languages like C++ before they even got to their first college class.
I'd argue that of all the professions out there, I.T. related work is one of the most lucrative fields a person can still "break into" without formal schooling or training. Good software is good software, period. If you write and release something a lot of people enjoy using and find useful, you just earned a lot of credibility. People aren't going to say, "Great software package, but did the author complete a degree at a 4 year university? If not, I'm not installing it until he/she does!"
My experience, just from browsing web sites like www.odesk.com, is that a LOT of people are looking for contractors to do fairly complex computer-related projects for them, at a pay-scale of as little as $10 for completion. It's not US citizens bidding for those jobs paying $10.... It's people in other parts of the world, for whom that $10 US goes a lot further.
I agree.... But in some ways, I consider Kevin Smith to be a "one trick pony", too. As good a filmmaker as he is, almost all of his movies are really just a continuation of the same theme he started out with. (I'm not enough of a movie buff to argue if he's done one or two films that totally broke that mold. Quite possibly he did.) This isn't a "bad" thing either. It's better to know what you're good at and practice/hone it, than to experiment all over the place, doing things poorly and disappointing audiences.
(I'm thinking "Woody Allen" here, as another example of a guy doing a lot of movies in a similar vein, over and over again - but doing very well with them.)
If anything though, the lesson he probably brings to the table is, we're spending FAR too much on movies. If you stick to a low budget, you can still make a great movie if the script is there, and the acting is decent. If you spend loads, however, you exponentially increase your risk that it won't be profitable -- and all the money does little to nothing for the quality of the script. That part is either there, or it's not.... and they usually seem to just substitute expensive CGI and cool explosions when it's lacking. A filmmaker on a tight budget doesn't even have that *option*.
Our Nextel rep tried to sell us on some of their rubber-encased, bulky "ruggedized" phones last year, bragging about how they met U.S. military specifications and so on. We tried out a few, and one of the maintenance guys out in the shop managed to break the "push to talk" button on his the first day he had it. A couple others developed keypad failures in a matter of months.
The fact is, the cellphone makers come up with these claims based on very specific types of "accidents", such as the phone's ability to survive submerging in water to a certain depth, or surviving a drop from X number of feet. In the real world, people find MANY other ways to break these devices that weren't even investigated. (The guys in our shop do a lot of grinding and cutting of steel, for example. Eventually, the little metal filings find their way into the cellphone's speaker, where the magnet in the speaker causes them to collect up - until they make a big enough pile to short things out. When disassembling "dead" phones, we've found that a number of times. But I haven't seen a single cellphone maker take any steps in their design to prevent THAT mode of failure.
Sure... there's a mutual understanding that comes with driving. It benefits NOBODY to drive recklessly. If you attempt it, you endanger BOTH yourself AND others around you, and even ignoring the legal system - the insurance people carry dictates careful driving. (Otherwise, before long, you're punished financially by increased rates and potential cancellation.)
But I take issue with your last statement. If something makes driving safer, it merits consideration. It's not a case of "MUST be done" at all, though! If we all accepted your statement, we'd surely ban all motorcycles from the roads, since 2 wheeled vehicles are inherently less stable and more dangerous on the road than ones with 4 or more wheels. Next, we'd probably ban all vehicles except the ones that did the absolute best in crash tests. Your personal preference was for a small, fuel-efficient car that didn't do well in those crash tests? Sorry... we're putting you in a Volvo instead!
And after that? We'd come to the realization that it's just plain unsafe letting vehicles of different sizes share the same roads. So no more trucks on the same highways as cars!
Guess what? It's just not like that... and for good reasons.
The reality seems to be much different. I'm a regular Facebook user myself, and just about everyone I cared enough about to make a "friend" on there and follow posts nothing Id say would really cause a loss of privacy for them.
Most of the time, it's such "revealing" information as "I wish this cold weather would end soon!", or someone filling us in on where they decided to go out to eat earlier in the evening.
The "Facebook/MySpace" phenomenon you speak of is little more than people finding a new tool to "mass communicate" with their friends, and possibly re-locate old, lost ones. Like everything, its usefulness or destructiveness is all about HOW you implement it.
Honestly, I get the most out of Facebook when my friends dig up interesting and relevant news items and post URLs for the rest of us to see and discuss. It's far more efficient than getting one forwarded to you in a random email, when somebody has your address handy and realizes you'd be especially interested in it.
I don't have blinders on about the problem, but I also realize that part of being a free human being is having the ability to take calculated risks, without some entity (typically government) spending my money for me in the interest of my safety.
Where people can agree that the cost-benefit ratio is really there, we've seen car-makers add all sorts of technologies to improve vehicle safety over the years. Anti-lock brakes, for example, went from unheard-of to standard. After a little bit of initial resistance, most people came around to understand that they really don't interfere with one's driving at all. They simply shorten stopping distance when you're in situations where you're trying to tell the vehicle to stop as quickly as possible (slamming on the brakes). So essentially, they improve the vehicle's performance.
I think we haven't seen some of these more drastic changes, like sensors in the roads, because there's too much loss of driver control involved in the scenario. THESE technologies say, "We think our computerized system has better judgment than you, the driver, so we're going to take control of your vehicle and drive it for you when we think it's necessary." Many people consider driving almost like a sport. It's a very intimate, hands-on affair, and these people would rather accept the risks that come with it than have the experience "dumbed down" for safety. (Do you think sports like boxing would go over well, if all the contestants had big plexiglass protective bubbles around their heads so you couldn't actually hurt their heads or knock out teeth? We can all agree it would be safer though, right?)
Even the "rest of us" who just consider driving a necessary chore (or even evil?), I don't think are necessarily "sold" on paying thousands a year in increased taxes for a computerized road system.... What about malfunctions that might CAUSE a random accident? What about unforeseen circumstances where the system tries to do what's best, but it's misinterpreting what's really going on? And maybe more importantly, what if people start taking it for granted, driving haphazardly because they "know the road system will stop them from wrecking anyway"?
I don't really agree. Devices small enough to fit in one's pocket have serious disadvantages. Even *if* you designed one with new technologies allowing the display to unroll like a scroll, you'd have limited battery life issues, and probably lack a good method of input too. (They're just starting to release touch-screen displays with tactile feedback, but doubt we have any way to do tactile feedback with "electronic paper" type displays that could roll up and unroll, yet.)
I carry around, and really like my iPhone, because so far - it lets me do more with a pocket-sized device than any other single device I used to take with me. But I'd still be interested in a well thought-out tablet computer. It wouldn't replace the iPhone, but might serve a different purpose.
(Imagine, for example, a tablet that had a fold-out stand in back so it could sit upright on a desk like a photo frame? It could serve as a secondary monitor to a desktop PC that way, via USB connection and the right software drivers. Then, when you wanted to take it with you, just disconnect it and go. It could serve as a really nice universal remote control around the house, via bluetooth and/or wi-fi, and allow comfortable web-surfing from the couch or what-not. Maybe even put magnets on the back so it could be stuck to the fridge in the kitchen, if someone wanted to look up recipes and use them from it, or watch video on it while cooking? Depending on how much typing I expected to do, I could also use it in place of a notebook computer. It could easily slip into one of those "sleeve" type notebook cases, keeping it less bulky than a traditional laptop bag - and could be used, standing-up, as well as sitting down, with equal comfort.)
Additionally, something doesn't sit quite right with me when a dead person's "estate" files these claims, either. I mean, yes, legally-speaking, they're entitled - but I'm not always confident that other family members are really fully-qualified to speak for the dead person in question. Would Philip K. Dick himself have been upset or annoyed that the new phone from Google referenced his novel? Who knows? But his family has a vested interest in pretending he would have been, since they stand to profit financially from it.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite true .... but most houses can't be protected against a flood as easily or inexpensively as a computer backup solution, either.
But as others have said, it's *always* really been your responsibility to protect the goods you purchase. If she had invested even $79 or so for an external USB hard drive (a lot less money than she spent on the music itself!), and did regular backups of her data to it, she wouldn't have had this issue in the first place.
I wouldn't get the ability for a "one time free replacement" of my collection of physical CDs and cassette tapes if they were all destroyed in a fire tomorrow, or they were stolen, or ??
On the other hand, I *might* have insurance that would pay for their replacement ... and I suspect that's another thing we could start seeing more of, as things go digital. Perhaps companies will start pushing insurance policies covering your expenses for intangible works, like software titles downloaded onto your Playstation 3's hard drive, or iTunes music purchases.
I hate WGA as much as the next guy, but trying to file a class-action suit against Microsoft because they decided to push out an update for their OS that they deemed "critical" but some users didn't? It seems to me that Microsoft is the one who gets to choose which category they place their updates in, and a "Critical Update" like WGA authentication might seem a lot more critical to MS than to their customers....
As many people already posted here -- if you dislike the way their OS handles things, maybe it's time to consider alternatives? By now, I'm pretty sure the folks in Redmond are well aware of the complaints people have with their products. The fact they've progressively added MORE technology to verify you're a legal owner of their software instead of *removing* it makes it clear they don't care about that complaint!
Say what you will about Apple and OS X, but ever since I migrated over to it, I haven't had a single headache with "product activation" or invalid CD keys.....
Although Firefox does still appear to have Windows 2000 support, it hasn't supported Windows ME since, I believe, version 2.0. That just recently caused me problems, when I was trying to recycle an old Pentium 2 class machine to give to an unemployed woman who just needed a *really* cheap computer to do an Internet job search with. I discovered that with Windows ME (or by extension, Windows '98), there are really no "up to date" browser choices (except possibly Opera) they can use anymore. Internet Explorer 6 is the last version Microsoft offers for those OS's, and everyone's trying to kill that off as we speak.
Since Windows ME and 2000 were released in the same time-frame, I'd say Firefox's continued Win2K support has more to do with it being trivial to do than any conscious sense of a need to support an OS for "x number of years". Windows XP, after all, was pretty much based on the Windows 2000 foundation.
As far as Macs go, I'd tend to side with your view that it's "too soon to kill off Tiger support" ... simply because 10.6 "Snow Leopard" doesn't really count in my book as a full-blown OS X "new version". I don't say that to knock 10.6 in any way, shape or form. (I run it on my Mac at home and love it.) I'm just saying, it's the first time Apple has sold 2 versions of OS X side-by-side on store shelves -- because Leopard isn't really superseded by Snow Leopard for PowerPC Mac owners. Snow Leopard is, essentially a "Leopard +" release to give Intel Mac owners the maximum benefit out of their processor architecture. (Why waste hard disk space with a bunch of PPC code on an Intel Mac that will never utilize it? And why not provide tools in 10.6 so developers of new apps can optimize them for the multi-core Intel processors?) The fact you could buy Snow Leopard for only $29.99 reinforces this concept.
I'm *far* from trying to defend China or claim they're "trustworthy" ... but taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking is a dead-end for most individuals and businesses. Ultimately, yes, you can't know for 100% certain a given piece of software is trusted unless you wrote it yourself .... but what's new? That's always been, and always will be the case ... and unless you were able to engineer your own computer processor and other components on the motherboard, etc. - you STILL can't prove you're running a completely trusted system, can you?
In reality, I think people have to possess some awareness of their computing environment, as a whole - and that may realistically be the best we can do. If some piece of gear is "compromised", it still has to communicate the information it stole to a receiver on the other end. That means, your firewall is capable of either blocking or at least logging that connection. There's also, of course, the "strength in numbers" facet to all of this. Maybe YOU as an individual never noticed something strange was going on with a piece of gear, but as thousands or millions of people become customers/users of the same gear, chance increase that SOMEONE will figure it out. Keep an eye on the tech news and Internet forums, and you'll receive pretty quick warnings about such things. (This is probably also a good argument for going with popular products, vs. obscure ones with a far lower installed user-base?)
Yep, and I'd further point out that Apple *also* maintains a very good "last resort" system of escalating major issues.
It's not officially published in your owners' manuals or anything (for obvious reasons, if you think about it!), but it's well known on Apple related support forums and blog sites that the "sjobs@apple.com" email address will reach some upper-level corporate people, in charge of "damage control" for serious issues that weren't resolved by the normal channels.
There's even some fairly good evidence out there that in the right situations, a few of these emails even get forwarded on to Steve Jobs himself to read (and even quickly reply to) personally.
Time after time, I've read about people with real "lemons" of Apple products getting free replacements or repairs by explaining their issue to someone at that address - even when the original warranty was expired or the local store denied them service for some reason.
If too many people start using/abusing it, I wouldn't be surprised if it goes away, or stops being useful -- but Apple has been monitoring that address for many years now. It's good to keep "under your hat" in case you really get a negative and otherwise unresolvable situation with your Apple product, someday.
I agree that a lot of really competent folks no longer even bother to call in to "customer service" lines. But that's not so much because they inherently believe it best to skip that step. It's conditioned behavior, based on years and years of trying it and having miserable results!
I have a feeling that if a tech. company would experiment with the idea of having 2 different phone numbers -- one advertised as the "standard" one for customers to use, and the second listed as specifically for "advanced users" -- it might work out really well for them. Let people calling the "advanced" hotline reach 2nd. (or even 3rd.) level technical staff, while the other (perhaps more prominently published/displayed) number takes them to 1st. level, first.
Sure, this would result in some relative idiots calling the advanced line, thinking it's going to give them a quicker or better answer to their problems ... BUT, that hassle would be more than offset by 1st. level techs. not wasting half their day running people through pointless basic troubleshooting steps, only to determine their issue is more complicated than something covered on the card they read off of. Not only that, but it would help resolve the original problem of "good, knowledgeable users not bothering to call in to report issues they discover". They'd start doing it, if they knew they were quickly able to convey the info to people who would really DO something with it.
Also, in this scenario - there's no reason a higher-level tech shouldn't/couldn't be allowed to "de-escalate" a call to 1st. level if it becomes clear it's a user who just needs simple help - and he/she is abusing the ability to call into the "advanced hotline"! With 1st. level freed up from doing pointless basic troubleshooting for all the people with more advanced questions, the hold times to speak with them should drop too - making this less of a problem to transfer folks back to them.
I don't really buy into the idea that "texting" and the like leads to obsolescence of correct grammar.
Latin was a different issue. In that case, you had a language nobody in the world was even using anymore as a primary means of communication. People were artificially preserving it, just to communicate certain types of information within their circle of peers. (The Catholic Church for example, held onto it until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960's - when they finally decided holding a mass in Latin was no longer practical or functional.)
Here, we're talking about people disregarding the rules of the *primary* language the United States uses. Sure, you can bend and break quite a few of those rules and still decipher the content of the sentences, as people do all the time when sending text messages or chatting online. But the REASON we can do so is because we learned the rules in the first place, and our brain is able to "fill in the blanks" when parts are left out. (For example, I could write sentences with every other vowel removed from the words, and yu culd stll figr ot what ws bing sad.)
We've always understood that there are acceptable times and places to be more "informal" with language. That's why we have slang and "colloquial expressions". That's why people don't generally care if someone writes "ok" when it should technically be spelled "okay". And as time goes on, I think a majority of people breaking one of the initial rules can and should lead to the change BECOMING the new rule. But I don't see how you can really define something as a language in the first place, if there are no rules? What *is* the language, if it consists of a bunch of people doing whatever they like with words and their structure? How do you teach it to someone who doesn't know anything about it yet?
And perhaps as importantly in the "real world", the consistent (and complex!) set of rules for proper use of the language acts as sort of a benchmark of one's intelligence. The level of mastery a person illustrates gives an indicator of their amount of formal education, and is used all the time when making hiring decisions in the workplace. Do we really want to throw that concept away?
No, I agree with you here! I wasn't even much of a fan of most RPG games, but I'd probably play this one, since it's more like a 3D shooter merged with a typical RPG.
The thing is though, I've pretty much switched to all Macs at home, and my only Windows PC left doesn't have a graphics card capable of playing these games very well.
I can boot into Windows 7 on my Mac Pro (or I've got XP Pro on my Macbook Pro notebook I can boot into) and play a game like this, but I don't WANT to! I hate having to reboot into a second OS just for the sake of playing a game. For me, gaming tends to be an "impulse activity" anyway, when I get a little free time at random and perhaps get tired of some other work I was doing on the computer. If I have to exit out of everything, boot up Windows, and then probably do numerous updates too - just to play a game? Chances are good I'll just skip it and play something else instead that runs natively in OS X.
Macs may still only have a "niche market", but it's slowly growing and growing. (I'm also of the opinion that most of the Mac buyers/owners of late are the people who actually still have decent-paying jobs and are willing to buy something like a new game title at full price. Meanwhile, the recent "netbook craze" has caused a lot of new Windows PC purchases to be ones driven by the low cost of entry -- and these won't be people with machines capable of running a game like Mass Effect 2, nor are they as likely to want to pay for the game either!)
Ok - all well and good, but WHY would you ever care about being able to view video in 1080p resolution on a tablet device?
Even with the big screen LCD televisions, the "experts" are always advising that 1080p hi-def isn't really useful or noticeable until you get up to at least a 50" screen size or so!
I think too many people get caught up in making sure a given device meets a check-list of features, instead of looking at the functionality of it on the whole.
MSI may very well release a superior product. We'll have to wait and see. But first off, I'll be shocked if the build quality approaches anything near what Apple's is. Every MSI motherboard I've owned looks like its components were soldered on any old way, as long as they worked electrically. You'll see things like audio jacks siting several centimeters off the board in back, but flush in front, and just an overall board layout that has little concern for the person assembling the PC with it. (EG. Circuit traces are run right under the places you have to pry/pull on the clips holding the CPU down, so one small slip of a screwdriver can mean gouging a trace and destroying the board.)
And secondly, just how much performance does a 10" tablet need? If everything you run on it feels "instantaneous", it sounds like they're good. Beyond a certain point, you're just burning up battery life for unused processor cycles.
How is this "the world we live in"? You can write all the software you want for ANY hardware out there that's designed for people to openly develop on. This hasn't changed....
Apple's developer program for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and now iPad does require you "pay to play" ... BUT, they're also handling all the distribution for you. You don't need to create your own web site and pay for a package with enough bandwidth to handle the demand of all the people who want to visit and download your program(s). It seems to me like that has some value... does it not?
Everyone's free to do as they like with these things. All I know is, I can see it being potentially VERY profitable to develop the right type of apps for a brand new device like the iPad. You might not want to jump through Apple's hoops if you're just wanting to make another chess or tic-tac-toe game run on one. But this thing could become HUGE in the medical industry, for example, if you made software that catered to what doctors and nurses really need in the office or hospital. (I'm thinking software that interfaces with existing back-end packages to enter/retrieve patient information? Or maybe enabling digital viewing of X-rays?) Or heck, if it turns out the device isn't approved for use in those environments - sell to chiropractors! They don't have to comply with tons of regulation on what electronic devices they opt to use in their offices.... How about insurance agents? I bet some software allowing easy collision damage estimates and mobile access to customer records might appeal to claims adjusters? Ever see how awkward it is for a lot of them trying to hold a notebook computer while walking around a wrecked car or truck? Or let's see ... who else spends a large part of their day doing their job while standing up? Teachers sure do. How about some tools for education then?
Any of this stuff makes the $99 a year "entry fee" seem laughably trivial if you're serious about what you're doing.
I really don't think they were ever intending this to replace one of their portables. (That would kind of shoot themselves in the proverbial feet, since ideally, they'd like people to buy BOTH a notebook of theirs and whatever the tablet turns out to be.)
We'll all know soon enough ... but my thoughts throughout this whole thing were that Apple's main focus is on finding a good way to sell digital versions of print media to people, via iTunes, just like they already do with music and now with video/movies. This device will primarily be a "means to that end", just like the iPod was for music.
I got my A+ a long time ago, because I was out of work and looking for another I.T. job, and figured "Why not? It's not real expensive to get compared to most of the certs. out there, and it's something else to put on my resume to show I'm still trying to keep up with things." As I recall, I was a little surprised it asked so many questions that related to old/obsolete computer systems. (EG. It had questions about which IRQ and I/O address was the default for COM1 and COM2. With anything resembling a "modern" version of Windows, this is pretty irrelevant -- but was critical to know if you were configuring MS-DOS based terminal packages and non "plug and play" internal modem cards.)
Given that, I'm not sure there's a necessity to make people get "re-certified" on a A+? The most significant feature of the cert. may well be that it forces people to learn a little bit of "historically relevant" computer knowledge. There are times, as a tech or support person, you'll run into that stuff -- and most self-taught computer people who started learning in the "post MS-DOS" era might not know anything about it otherwise.
I believe even CompTIA used to say that the A+ was to show "equivalency to a PC technician with 6 months of work experience". So nobody is supposed to really be *impressed" that you have it. It's simply an entry-level cert. that proves you're not just a clueless n00b who wants to fix computers because you thought your Playstation or XBox was a lot of fun, and "computers can't be much different than that!".
As far as it "getting you a job" specifically? It depends. A lot of support places require you have the A+ as a prerequisite. (I think Dell did/does, for example, if you want to do on-site service for them?)
Sure, it's always good to implement updates that improve network/computer security ... but let's face it. These deadlines are put in place primarily to ensure people actually pay attention and do the update in a reasonable amount of time. It's not like govt. had inside information that right after Dec. 31, 2009 - hackers were going to go crazy trying to exploit this DNS issue, so that was the day it really NEEDED to be implemented by, across the board.
Maybe I'm just in a sour mood right now with this stuff in general? But lately, I sense an ever-increasing amount of importance being placed on every little security patch or change, when it's just not really warranted. It seems really self-serving to those who work in the field of "computer security", because it makes a bunch of extra billable work for them - and they get to scare more people into paying them to secure things for them.
I mean, just this morning, I came into work and checked my mail, and what do I see? People on C-Net asking questions about if they should just "quit using Internet Explorer, given the recent security exploits". (Umm, let's see here.... You successfully used the thing ever since probably when? At least back in 2001 or 2002, right? And theoretically at least, it's "safer" now than EVER before, since Microsoft has been patching and upgrading the thing that whole time. So why would you suddenly determine NOW that it's just too unsafe to use again??)
And later today, I've got to waste my afternoon ensuring "PCI Compliance" because my workplace accepts credit cards once in a while, processed via an Internet-based card processing service. We don't even store *any* of the card data here, on either our systems or on paper. They just punch the stuff into the web site to do the processing, and let the processor keep the data. But *still*, simply because we do it, we have to have monthly "penetration testing" done against our firewall's IP address (among other requirements), and the stupid test claims I "fail" right now, due to issues that hardly matter in reality. (EG. It's complaining about unpatched issues with the Outlook Web Access part of Exchange, even though nobody even has access to use OWA in our company except me, as sysadmin -- and again, I'm finding it quite the stretch to see how someone hacking OWA here would magically obtain customer credit card info, given how we operate here?)
Honestly, I think one of the big obstacles the newspapers need to overcome with the "move to digital media" is the established "norm" that on the web, your content should be free (or ad banner supported, at least).
The media corps. always give me the impression that they're screaming and hollering that "Internet users don't value their content", when instead, maybe it's THE MEDIA CORPS. who need to realize they're trying to encroach on a specific type of media that existed long before they arrived, in a "free to all takers" format, by default!
The Internet started out with content posted by educational institutions, libraries and research labs, along with free contributions on Usenet and the like by anyone who wished to contribute it. Commercial business didn't even TOUCH the thing until decades later.
And when most of us think of what commercial business has "contributed" to the Internet since then? We think of spam emails, spyware trying to monitor the sites we visit, and useless "rich media" web sites that take forever to download, only to offer non-searchable text delivered as graphics content, and typically little real "substance" on the site anyway.
It's not so much that we reject the notion that you have content worth paying something for.... It's more the idea that you need to serve it up to us in the correct "setting". The Internet is probably best used as a place to offer *some* free content, so people can easily see what you've got to offer and become "hooked" on going to you for articles. But I think the advent of e-readers (a la the Kindle, or Apple's upcoming tablet) might be where they need to shift their focus for paid subscription content. These devices function more like their "dead tree" equivalents. They're very portable and focus on reading content as a primary point of the device. People buying them don't generally have expectations or preconceptions that all the content on them should be free, either.
Sure, but IMHO, he's just stating the obvious. (Maybe that's needed though. Sometimes people just like to see things in writing that they've informally believed in and followed anyway.) It just seems to me that in every I.T. job I've ever had, the idea was put out there that our job was to come up with solutions that improved efficiency and productivity. Sure, management might dictate that certain problems be solved a specific way, and certain requirements needed to be met. But any decent I.T. person would take all of that as a set of "necessary parameters" while trying to come up with the best possible solution. More often than not, as you start evaluating products, you discover solutions to problems nobody even considered when initially starting the project. Those tend to become automatic "bonuses" you can present to management when you roll a solution out, because NOW you know about them and can be a step ahead of the game.
And frankly, I don't understand the point you're trying to make about people thinking "everything free and such is so great", as a consequence of missing the original point of this article? I know *I* think free solutions are great, mainly because if they actually work to solve a problem for me, I get to go ahead and play around with them and actually put them in place without all the "red tape" of getting purchase orders approved first. Quality free software allows I.T. to be more proactive than they could otherwise be. (EG. We have issues right now with an older Sonicwall firewall and people trying to come in remotely via VPN. Depending on the ISP, it seems some people are experiencing random disconnects, and the only real "lead" I found so far is to change the MTU size (from 1500 to a smaller value). But doing so just seems to shift the problem around. One user says their issue is improved, while a new person reports problems when they never had them before. Rather than spending big $'s on a newer, updated VPN firewall product with support agreement, I can implement a free, Linux-based OpenVPN solution as an alternative. Given our current financial situation, the new commercial VPN firewall is simply not happening.)
Yes, but all of what you just said further illustrates why govt. bureaucracy is causing our medical expenses to spiral out of control. It's not sustainable. The only people who really "win" in this mess are the attorneys, and all the talk of medical reform in the USA right now conveniently skips changes in THAT area.
Not long ago, I was reading about a heart surgeon in India who among other things, got tired of the high cost of medical sutures. Apparently, the only supplier of the ones he needed was the Johnson & Johnson company, and they kept increasing prices each year. He finally got some investors together, who opened their OWN manufacturing facility to produce the sutures in India at a far lower cost, so he can now buy from them and cut at least 35% off of his annual expenses for them. (Since he's running huge clinics doing nothing but heart surgeries there, he benefits more than most would from "economy of scale".)
It seems to me, that's exactly the type of change the medical field needs to see. Unfortunately, government legislation often seems to stand in the way of progress here in America. (A doctor my friend knows heard this story about the medical sutures and angrily protested, "But I'm not even legally ALLOWED to invest in such a thing as a surgeon in the US!")
As it stands now, doesn't it bother you at least a LITTLE bit that you had to fork out upwards of $250,000 in *lawyer fees* just to prove that it was ok for a hospital to start using what's really just a touch-screen PC in a hardened metal frame?
I'd agree with this, except for one thing. You're making an assumption that programming can't be learned without a "formal education". Most of the U.S. based software programmers I know were self-taught, actually. Many opted to continue in that vein when they attended college, since it was their area of interest already -- but they knew how to code in languages like C++ before they even got to their first college class.
I'd argue that of all the professions out there, I.T. related work is one of the most lucrative fields a person can still "break into" without formal schooling or training. Good software is good software, period. If you write and release something a lot of people enjoy using and find useful, you just earned a lot of credibility. People aren't going to say, "Great software package, but did the author complete a degree at a 4 year university? If not, I'm not installing it until he/she does!"
My experience, just from browsing web sites like www.odesk.com, is that a LOT of people are looking for contractors to do fairly complex computer-related projects for them, at a pay-scale of as little as $10 for completion. It's not US citizens bidding for those jobs paying $10.... It's people in other parts of the world, for whom that $10 US goes a lot further.
I agree.... But in some ways, I consider Kevin Smith to be a "one trick pony", too. As good a filmmaker as he is, almost all of his movies are really just a continuation of the same theme he started out with. (I'm not enough of a movie buff to argue if he's done one or two films that totally broke that mold. Quite possibly he did.) This isn't a "bad" thing either. It's better to know what you're good at and practice/hone it, than to experiment all over the place, doing things poorly and disappointing audiences.
(I'm thinking "Woody Allen" here, as another example of a guy doing a lot of movies in a similar vein, over and over again - but doing very well with them.)
If anything though, the lesson he probably brings to the table is, we're spending FAR too much on movies. If you stick to a low budget, you can still make a great movie if the script is there, and the acting is decent. If you spend loads, however, you exponentially increase your risk that it won't be profitable -- and all the money does little to nothing for the quality of the script. That part is either there, or it's not .... and they usually seem to just substitute expensive CGI and cool explosions when it's lacking. A filmmaker on a tight budget doesn't even have that *option*.
Our Nextel rep tried to sell us on some of their rubber-encased, bulky "ruggedized" phones last year, bragging about how they met U.S. military specifications and so on. We tried out a few, and one of the maintenance guys out in the shop managed to break the "push to talk" button on his the first day he had it. A couple others developed keypad failures in a matter of months.
The fact is, the cellphone makers come up with these claims based on very specific types of "accidents", such as the phone's ability to survive submerging in water to a certain depth, or surviving a drop from X number of feet. In the real world, people find MANY other ways to break these devices that weren't even investigated. (The guys in our shop do a lot of grinding and cutting of steel, for example. Eventually, the little metal filings find their way into the cellphone's speaker, where the magnet in the speaker causes them to collect up - until they make a big enough pile to short things out. When disassembling "dead" phones, we've found that a number of times. But I haven't seen a single cellphone maker take any steps in their design to prevent THAT mode of failure.
Sure... there's a mutual understanding that comes with driving. It benefits NOBODY to drive recklessly. If you attempt it, you endanger BOTH yourself AND others around you, and even ignoring the legal system - the insurance people carry dictates careful driving. (Otherwise, before long, you're punished financially by increased rates and potential cancellation.)
But I take issue with your last statement. If something makes driving safer, it merits consideration. It's not a case of "MUST be done" at all, though! If we all accepted your statement, we'd surely ban all motorcycles from the roads, since 2 wheeled vehicles are inherently less stable and more dangerous on the road than ones with 4 or more wheels. Next, we'd probably ban all vehicles except the ones that did the absolute best in crash tests. Your personal preference was for a small, fuel-efficient car that didn't do well in those crash tests? Sorry... we're putting you in a Volvo instead!
And after that? We'd come to the realization that it's just plain unsafe letting vehicles of different sizes share the same roads. So no more trucks on the same highways as cars!
Guess what? It's just not like that... and for good reasons.
The reality seems to be much different. I'm a regular Facebook user myself, and just about everyone I cared enough about to make a "friend" on there and follow posts nothing Id say would really cause a loss of privacy for them.
Most of the time, it's such "revealing" information as "I wish this cold weather would end soon!", or someone filling us in on where they decided to go out to eat earlier in the evening.
The "Facebook/MySpace" phenomenon you speak of is little more than people finding a new tool to "mass communicate" with their friends, and possibly re-locate old, lost ones. Like everything, its usefulness or destructiveness is all about HOW you implement it.
Honestly, I get the most out of Facebook when my friends dig up interesting and relevant news items and post URLs for the rest of us to see and discuss. It's far more efficient than getting one forwarded to you in a random email, when somebody has your address handy and realizes you'd be especially interested in it.
I don't have blinders on about the problem, but I also realize that part of being a free human being is having the ability to take calculated risks, without some entity (typically government) spending my money for me in the interest of my safety.
Where people can agree that the cost-benefit ratio is really there, we've seen car-makers add all sorts of technologies to improve vehicle safety over the years. Anti-lock brakes, for example, went from unheard-of to standard. After a little bit of initial resistance, most people came around to understand that they really don't interfere with one's driving at all. They simply shorten stopping distance when you're in situations where you're trying to tell the vehicle to stop as quickly as possible (slamming on the brakes). So essentially, they improve the vehicle's performance.
I think we haven't seen some of these more drastic changes, like sensors in the roads, because there's too much loss of driver control involved in the scenario. THESE technologies say, "We think our computerized system has better judgment than you, the driver, so we're going to take control of your vehicle and drive it for you when we think it's necessary." Many people consider driving almost like a sport. It's a very intimate, hands-on affair, and these people would rather accept the risks that come with it than have the experience "dumbed down" for safety. (Do you think sports like boxing would go over well, if all the contestants had big plexiglass protective bubbles around their heads so you couldn't actually hurt their heads or knock out teeth? We can all agree it would be safer though, right?)
Even the "rest of us" who just consider driving a necessary chore (or even evil?), I don't think are necessarily "sold" on paying thousands a year in increased taxes for a computerized road system.... What about malfunctions that might CAUSE a random accident? What about unforeseen circumstances where the system tries to do what's best, but it's misinterpreting what's really going on? And maybe more importantly, what if people start taking it for granted, driving haphazardly because they "know the road system will stop them from wrecking anyway"?
I don't really agree. Devices small enough to fit in one's pocket have serious disadvantages. Even *if* you designed one with new technologies allowing the display to unroll like a scroll, you'd have limited battery life issues, and probably lack a good method of input too. (They're just starting to release touch-screen displays with tactile feedback, but doubt we have any way to do tactile feedback with "electronic paper" type displays that could roll up and unroll, yet.)
I carry around, and really like my iPhone, because so far - it lets me do more with a pocket-sized device than any other single device I used to take with me. But I'd still be interested in a well thought-out tablet computer. It wouldn't replace the iPhone, but might serve a different purpose.
(Imagine, for example, a tablet that had a fold-out stand in back so it could sit upright on a desk like a photo frame? It could serve as a secondary monitor to a desktop PC that way, via USB connection and the right software drivers. Then, when you wanted to take it with you, just disconnect it and go. It could serve as a really nice universal remote control around the house, via bluetooth and/or wi-fi, and allow comfortable web-surfing from the couch or what-not. Maybe even put magnets on the back so it could be stuck to the fridge in the kitchen, if someone wanted to look up recipes and use them from it, or watch video on it while cooking? Depending on how much typing I expected to do, I could also use it in place of a notebook computer. It could easily slip into one of those "sleeve" type notebook cases, keeping it less bulky than a traditional laptop bag - and could be used, standing-up, as well as sitting down, with equal comfort.)
That's how I looked at it....
Additionally, something doesn't sit quite right with me when a dead person's "estate" files these claims, either. I mean, yes, legally-speaking, they're entitled - but I'm not always confident that other family members are really fully-qualified to speak for the dead person in question. Would Philip K. Dick himself have been upset or annoyed that the new phone from Google referenced his novel? Who knows? But his family has a vested interest in pretending he would have been, since they stand to profit financially from it.