Why would anyone pay for something that is free? Are they stupid? Today, virtually every piece of music ever recorded is available for free. iTunes is trying to provide a service to people that aren't familiar with this and think they somehow (?) have to pay. I do not know very many people that believe they same way - they just download. Period.
Yes, it is just "taking". But when it is all free, can you blame them? There is nothing that will stop it. But I'll bet in 10 years nobody ever pays for anything digital.
The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
Having worked on "nowhere" projects, I'd say the essential point that you are missing is that people working on a "nowhere" project go nowhere. Or are laid off. Nobody sponsors a non-profit project out of the good feelings it gives them.
If you aren't part of the profit, you are part of the loss. And losses get cut.
Be thankful you are working on something people believe will be profitable. Many, many things Google is looking at have almost no hope of ever seeing light of day, much less being profitable.
Sorry, I don't believe there is any such case law.
Nor do I believe that as an employer anything you choose to reveal about yourself should not be used in a decision whether or not to hire you. If you rave on and on online endlessly about how all businesses are evil and the US government is out to get us all, you're not a candidate for any job I have. If you rave on and on about what great drugs you got last weekend and how you spent the entire time watching pretty patterns on the ceiling, you're not a candidate. If you rave on and on about any topic online that discloses a great deal about yourself, you're probably not a candidate for any job that requires tact, discretion or secrecy.
And there isn't a thing you can do about it. Think before you type.
If you believe you can have privacy, security and anonyminity you are wrong. You might get any two of those. Maybe.
If you main fear is the US government, think again. Your information is a marketable commodity and nobody is doiung anything to prevent commerce using that commodity. How many businesses are involved in trading information that you believe should be private? Do you believe the government should put an end to all such activity?
Interesting idea, except it cuts out the 70-80% of the people without an Internet connection fast enough to watch video. Download it? It would only take a whole evening to do so with a slow DSL or dial-up connection. Unless you think the show is watchable at 176x120.
Yeah, someday television might be replaced by the Internet. Not anytime soon, though with your average TV running $100 or less and your cheapest computer at $500 or so. And the really low-end computers aren't going to be great for video.
I can believe that this might happen, but remember that most of what the Internet is today is supported by broadcast advertising. Television is supported by broadcast advertising, on both OTA broadcast and cable channels.
If the bottom were to drop out of broadcast advertising on the Internet, on television, in print publications, we would see a massive contraction in the economy and in all things familiar since the latter half of the 20th century. Most of this growth has been financed and nutured by advertising in one way or another. I believe we could see a contraction back to the 1800's with a far more niche-oriented advertising.
MD5 is reversable. All you have to do is randomly generate every bit combination up to some maximum length until you have a matching MD5. There will be a number of collsions but these will not pass other tests on the content. It is therefor possible to reverse an MD5 hash value into the original data.
This would consume considerable finite time. Yes, considerable but finite.
HUMINT (HUMan INTelligence) - the sort gathered by humans - has been downgraded quite a bit. Sure, there is more value to it but it was decided sometime in the 1970s or so that the US shouldn't be bribing people, including people that might provide valuable intelligence. So the idea of "turning" a foreign national to gain intelligence more-or-less went away. This had a lot to do with the Church commission stripping the CIA of funds and adding lots of oversight.
The US has tried to put US citizens into foreign situations, but that pretty much requires us to have loyal immigrants for non-English speaking locations. How many people do we have in Iran? Syria? Saudia Arabia? Damn few, that's how many. The idea of any sort of "loyality" to the US among its citizens is a laughable concept these days. One only held onto by some gung-ho Marines and a few others.
Besides, today the military is riddled with Muslims that respect Allah a whole lot more than the US. Some of them made it to Iraq where they got to frag their officers and fellow servicemen in the name of Allah.
No, I don't see any HUMINT program moving very far forward. Yes, it is known that it is needed at all levels. But today you are far more likely to spend 3 years training someone to operate in a foreign country and then have them sell their life story to a UK newspaper. 200 years ago such a person would be executed for treason. Today, they get lots of money and a lot of people saying they did a good thing selling out an intelligence program.
Why didn't we have 500,000 men in Iraq? Because Former President William Jefferson Clinton cut the legs out from under the Army and other armed forces so there were not enough people to do that.
Could the US have instituted a draft and built the military back up? Sure. In about five years.
Watch the president after Hillary. There will be a sudden awakening that we need to spend more on the armed forces and it will be like 1981 all over again. Carter did the same thing and when he needed the military it wasn't there for him.
The thing that a lot of people do not understand is that for the most part cell phones are one-time-programmable consumer electronic devices. Once the code is released to manufacturing, that is it. There are no more bugs - just unexpected features.
It matters not who is looking at the code in terms of fixing it. It is not updatable. I suppose it is possible that someone might come up with an updatable phone that was 100% impossible to "brick" but so far I've not see it. The risks do not outweigh the rewards with that and the current "experiment" with the iPhone is not proving to be very satisfying. Yes, they have a distribution technique for software updates through iTunes, but how many phones did they lose with the first update?
Treo has a slightly better record, except they do not have a distribution method. You have to download stuff and jump through all kinds of hoops. Perhaps 1 in 10 people update their Treo. I suspect Blackberry isn't much different from that. Also, it is far, far too easy to utterly destroy a Treo with a bad update.
No, I would not count on updates. Too risky and too little penetration. The end result is bugs that get released are features. And they are there to stay.
So you agree that everything should be free, right?
Sure, put the streetcorner pirates out of business but allow the gamers to have their games for the price of a download. Eliminate all software sales because it should all be free, right? Music and everything else that CAN be shared should be, right?
Because that is the world the NET act was trying to stop. That is pretty much how people viewed things in 1995.
If you cannot discern the difference between "fair use" and "unpermitted redistribution", there will be difficulties in exercising your fair use rights. The problem is that people have taken "fair use" to mean "give it to the rest of the non-paying planet". Nobody in their right mind respects the copyright holder to make a buck on the sale of digital material. It is all free, all the time.
Sure there are some people that do not share - they downloaded it or (if they don't have a high speed Internet connection) they bought it. They are offended when people ask them why they aren't sharing their materials. And they get really upset when they feel their rights are being infringed because they cannot easily do things with the material they think they should.
These folks are in a dying minority. I do not know anyone that pays for any digital material, except maybe NetFlix. Download, download, download. We are seeing the last desperate actions of people that believe digital media has value when it has already been proven it has none. Fair use? I don't see anything like that - I see a lot of "unfair use" involving redistribution. Fair use isn't going to help with this - it just extends the life of the dying minority that still think they should pay for something that is free.
People may be losing their homes over property tax increases, but it isn't the school board that is making THAT decision. That decision was made when the state decided that every child, regardless of status, was going to be educated. Then the Federal Government decided that the borders should not be defended against invasion. Then the cities, towns, villages decided it was too much trouble to turn people over to the INS when they were determined to be in the country illegally.
Then there is the law that says a baby born in the US is automatically a citizen who can have its parents in the US to care for it. And brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents and the rest of the village.
So now we have all these children that need to be educated. Make no mistake about this, it wasn't a local decision. If the school board doesn't educate them, they will be replaced with a board that will.
Sorry, I don't think any sort of disclaimer on the web is worth the bits. No legal basis exists.
While it would be nice to be able to get the bank president to sign a piece of paper saying they won't prosecute you for bank robbery and that you are not a bank robber, if you then subsequently rob the bank they are still going to come after you, signed paper or not.
Same thing with the stupid disclaimers you see on the web. If it is warez that is pirated, you can be prosecuted. Chances are you aren't going to be, but the possiblity still exists. Even if your web page says that law enforcement people or copyright owners aren't permitted to enter the site.
It isn't that easy to disclaim something. This would be a red flag to most people (and lawyers) that there is something actionable hiding in there.
Problem is, in the US you are advocating a criminal act - a hate crime. Use of racial or ethnic slurs can get you arrested. Publishing something on the web - assuming you can be identified or admit to it - will almost certainly get you arrested for a hate crime.
It is far too late to take back society in the way you would like to.
This is the Internet, folks. Who made these postings? Sure, they are on her web page and that may imply responsibility at some level, but by no means is that a settled point of law. Had she denied making the postings the plantiffs would be in the same position as the RIAA - having an IP address and little else. Probably not even that, just the postings claiming to be from someone on a blog.
Who knows who could have made them? Isn't this the whole point - some level of deniability for everything so there are no consequences?
Silly person, it sounds like she is standing up for her opinions and will get sued because of it.
Sorry, but the $10 a day fee isn't going to the hotel - it is going to the service company with the 1-800 number on the little card in your room. The hotel does not have anyone you can call about problems getting your computer connected up.
Yes, the geekier crowd doesn't have a problem, but when someone that can just barely use Outlook is trying to get connected up and has no clue they need someone to call. Enter the service company that takes over the help desk functionality.
Guess what? They are charging the hotel per use and letting the hotel take a small cut. The hotels obviously believe they need the help desk function and are just passing the cost along.
We're already there, decision made. Illinois and other states have decided to give ID to illegals. So they can have a license. Has nothing to do with insurance. But because these people have no documentation, you can't have the regular rules for getting a driver's license or state ID - they couldn't provide the documentation.
So they just give them the ID with no documentation. It is just another benefit of coming to the US.
I don't care if they drive without a license, if the license doesn't prove anything. I'd rather they go home so we can export the jobs that are exportable to them in their country rather than taking over the non-exportable jobs here at lower wages.
Yes, it would be nice if illegals didn't drive without insurance. However, most of them have no assets in the US so you can't exactly sue them.
They could be insured, if you were paying their insurance. Since they have no assets, they don't care. You can't exactly sue them. So they aren't going to pay for insurance, no matter what the cost. It could be a state-provided benefit for illegals though.
Not really. When I can get a note from a non-governmental agency that tells the state ID bureau "Nevermind your rules, give this person an ID." it means there are no requirements and any fake ID is just as good as the state-issued one.
What is happening in Illinois is the local Mexican embassy/consulate office can give you a little card that says you don't have to present any other proof of who you are because there isn't any other proof. The Secretary of State's office has decided to accept this and issue you either a driver's license or state ID card in whatever name you choose to present.
I believe several other states are doing exactly the same thing. The supposed goal is to make sure that all illegal immigrants have valid driver's licenses. What exactly this does to help matters when an uninsured illegal causes an accident is very, very unclear to me. But we now have lots of people running around with whatever sort of ID they want, in whatever name they would like to have one.
So how is having a ID like that any better than having no ID at all?
1. States issue photo IDs already to people that do not drive.
2. The problem is exactly that the states are issuing VALID ID to anyone. In Chicago, for example, you can get a driver's license or state ID with a birth certificate or passport. Or, if you happen to not have either one of those, you can get a note from the Mexican embassy saying in effect to give this person an ID with no further verificattion. Yes indeed, Illinois does recognize the authority of the Mexican embassy to determine ID requirements for the state.
Please tell me the difference between my drawing a driver's license with a crayon and using it and what Illinois is doing. I don't see any difference at all.
If the states are going to issue an ID in any name with no proof this pretty much means the ID has no value. Of course people are going to abuse the system. Why can't I have three driver's licenses in different names under this sort of system? Why should teens pay for fake ID when they can get a "real" one from the state?
The reason behind the Federal rules is to put a stop to the states that are issuing ID with no rules whatsoever.
Well, maybe. I don't think people are all that attached to owning (and maintaining) a car.
Unfortunately, in the US you have two aspects that are absolutely in conflict with this goal. The first is the "drive by" factor. You pick up a car and are almost immediately stopped by the police. Lots of angry cops with guns. You didn't notice the brass casings on the floor of the car before you took it.
The second is,... well, let's call it the "spooge factor" where the previous occupant of the car (and their partner) left a little something behind. Sometimes from their behind.
But wouldn't it be better in the long term to maximize the number of people that die? Surely that is the true path to reducing the amount of energy consumed. If we can reduce the amount of energy consumed, then not only are we reducing the amount of carbon pollution but also other forms of pollution resulting from that energy use and the industries that exist to supply it.
If you drive a more efficient car, there is certainly the reduction in emmissions. But if you get rid of the car completely you also eliminate the pollution from the plastics manufacturing that goes into the trim on the car. And you eliminate the pollution from the iron foundary where they make the steel for the frame. And so on. All down the line. Eliminating one car is but a small step, but eliminating all the cars would clean up far more than just the cars and the fuel used.
Replacing the car's engine with something else doesn't solve the problem. Eliminating the car completely is a beginning. Eliminating the car, the driver and the passengers is the final solution.
Mainframe systems operate on an entirely different level of hardware versus what you are commonly familiar with as PCs and servers. The reliability of a server machine - even when using the best available server-class hardware - is many times worse than the average mainframe. Your average downtime due to hardware events with a large IBM machine is zero. Not 0.01%, but zero.
Sure, some scheduled downtime can be required, but today even this is rare. Most of the equipment is self-diagnosing and creates log records that say some part needs to be replaced because the backup has taken over. And, it can call out the part number needed.
If I have "the music", why would I go to a store and buy "the music" again? Altruism? Guilt?
Maybe there are a few Catholic downloaders that feel the need to aswage their sins by buying CDs, but I doubt it is a significant blip. Nobody I know that has high speed Internet does anything but download. No iTunes. No CDs. No subscriptions, no CD clubs. Just free downloading.
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Why would anyone pay for something that is free? Are they stupid? Today, virtually every piece of music ever recorded is available for free. iTunes is trying to provide a service to people that aren't familiar with this and think they somehow (?) have to pay. I do not know very many people that believe they same way - they just download. Period.
Yes, it is just "taking". But when it is all free, can you blame them? There is nothing that will stop it. But I'll bet in 10 years nobody ever pays for anything digital.
The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
Having worked on "nowhere" projects, I'd say the essential point that you are missing is that people working on a "nowhere" project go nowhere. Or are laid off. Nobody sponsors a non-profit project out of the good feelings it gives them.
If you aren't part of the profit, you are part of the loss. And losses get cut.
Be thankful you are working on something people believe will be profitable. Many, many things Google is looking at have almost no hope of ever seeing light of day, much less being profitable.
Sorry, I don't believe there is any such case law.
Nor do I believe that as an employer anything you choose to reveal about yourself should not be used in a decision whether or not to hire you. If you rave on and on online endlessly about how all businesses are evil and the US government is out to get us all, you're not a candidate for any job I have. If you rave on and on about what great drugs you got last weekend and how you spent the entire time watching pretty patterns on the ceiling, you're not a candidate. If you rave on and on about any topic online that discloses a great deal about yourself, you're probably not a candidate for any job that requires tact, discretion or secrecy.
And there isn't a thing you can do about it. Think before you type.
If you believe you can have privacy, security and anonyminity you are wrong. You might get any two of those. Maybe.
If you main fear is the US government, think again. Your information is a marketable commodity and nobody is doiung anything to prevent commerce using that commodity. How many businesses are involved in trading information that you believe should be private? Do you believe the government should put an end to all such activity?
It isn't going to happen.
Interesting idea, except it cuts out the 70-80% of the people without an Internet connection fast enough to watch video. Download it? It would only take a whole evening to do so with a slow DSL or dial-up connection. Unless you think the show is watchable at 176x120.
Yeah, someday television might be replaced by the Internet. Not anytime soon, though with your average TV running $100 or less and your cheapest computer at $500 or so. And the really low-end computers aren't going to be great for video.
I can believe that this might happen, but remember that most of what the Internet is today is supported by broadcast advertising. Television is supported by broadcast advertising, on both OTA broadcast and cable channels.
If the bottom were to drop out of broadcast advertising on the Internet, on television, in print publications, we would see a massive contraction in the economy and in all things familiar since the latter half of the 20th century. Most of this growth has been financed and nutured by advertising in one way or another. I believe we could see a contraction back to the 1800's with a far more niche-oriented advertising.
MD5 is reversable. All you have to do is randomly generate every bit combination up to some maximum length until you have a matching MD5. There will be a number of collsions but these will not pass other tests on the content. It is therefor possible to reverse an MD5 hash value into the original data.
This would consume considerable finite time. Yes, considerable but finite.
HUMINT (HUMan INTelligence) - the sort gathered by humans - has been downgraded quite a bit. Sure, there is more value to it but it was decided sometime in the 1970s or so that the US shouldn't be bribing people, including people that might provide valuable intelligence. So the idea of "turning" a foreign national to gain intelligence more-or-less went away. This had a lot to do with the Church commission stripping the CIA of funds and adding lots of oversight.
The US has tried to put US citizens into foreign situations, but that pretty much requires us to have loyal immigrants for non-English speaking locations. How many people do we have in Iran? Syria? Saudia Arabia? Damn few, that's how many. The idea of any sort of "loyality" to the US among its citizens is a laughable concept these days. One only held onto by some gung-ho Marines and a few others.
Besides, today the military is riddled with Muslims that respect Allah a whole lot more than the US. Some of them made it to Iraq where they got to frag their officers and fellow servicemen in the name of Allah.
No, I don't see any HUMINT program moving very far forward. Yes, it is known that it is needed at all levels. But today you are far more likely to spend 3 years training someone to operate in a foreign country and then have them sell their life story to a UK newspaper. 200 years ago such a person would be executed for treason. Today, they get lots of money and a lot of people saying they did a good thing selling out an intelligence program.
Data mining and technology never turns on you.
Why didn't we have 500,000 men in Iraq? Because Former President William Jefferson Clinton cut the legs out from under the Army and other armed forces so there were not enough people to do that.
Could the US have instituted a draft and built the military back up? Sure. In about five years.
Watch the president after Hillary. There will be a sudden awakening that we need to spend more on the armed forces and it will be like 1981 all over again. Carter did the same thing and when he needed the military it wasn't there for him.
The thing that a lot of people do not understand is that for the most part cell phones are one-time-programmable consumer electronic devices. Once the code is released to manufacturing, that is it. There are no more bugs - just unexpected features.
It matters not who is looking at the code in terms of fixing it. It is not updatable. I suppose it is possible that someone might come up with an updatable phone that was 100% impossible to "brick" but so far I've not see it. The risks do not outweigh the rewards with that and the current "experiment" with the iPhone is not proving to be very satisfying. Yes, they have a distribution technique for software updates through iTunes, but how many phones did they lose with the first update?
Treo has a slightly better record, except they do not have a distribution method. You have to download stuff and jump through all kinds of hoops. Perhaps 1 in 10 people update their Treo. I suspect Blackberry isn't much different from that. Also, it is far, far too easy to utterly destroy a Treo with a bad update.
No, I would not count on updates. Too risky and too little penetration. The end result is bugs that get released are features. And they are there to stay.
So you agree that everything should be free, right?
Sure, put the streetcorner pirates out of business but allow the gamers to have their games for the price of a download. Eliminate all software sales because it should all be free, right? Music and everything else that CAN be shared should be, right?
Because that is the world the NET act was trying to stop. That is pretty much how people viewed things in 1995.
If you cannot discern the difference between "fair use" and "unpermitted redistribution", there will be difficulties in exercising your fair use rights. The problem is that people have taken "fair use" to mean "give it to the rest of the non-paying planet". Nobody in their right mind respects the copyright holder to make a buck on the sale of digital material. It is all free, all the time.
Sure there are some people that do not share - they downloaded it or (if they don't have a high speed Internet connection) they bought it. They are offended when people ask them why they aren't sharing their materials. And they get really upset when they feel their rights are being infringed because they cannot easily do things with the material they think they should.
These folks are in a dying minority. I do not know anyone that pays for any digital material, except maybe NetFlix. Download, download, download. We are seeing the last desperate actions of people that believe digital media has value when it has already been proven it has none. Fair use? I don't see anything like that - I see a lot of "unfair use" involving redistribution. Fair use isn't going to help with this - it just extends the life of the dying minority that still think they should pay for something that is free.
People may be losing their homes over property tax increases, but it isn't the school board that is making THAT decision. That decision was made when the state decided that every child, regardless of status, was going to be educated. Then the Federal Government decided that the borders should not be defended against invasion. Then the cities, towns, villages decided it was too much trouble to turn people over to the INS when they were determined to be in the country illegally.
Then there is the law that says a baby born in the US is automatically a citizen who can have its parents in the US to care for it. And brothers and sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents and the rest of the village.
So now we have all these children that need to be educated. Make no mistake about this, it wasn't a local decision. If the school board doesn't educate them, they will be replaced with a board that will.
Sorry, I don't think any sort of disclaimer on the web is worth the bits. No legal basis exists.
While it would be nice to be able to get the bank president to sign a piece of paper saying they won't prosecute you for bank robbery and that you are not a bank robber, if you then subsequently rob the bank they are still going to come after you, signed paper or not.
Same thing with the stupid disclaimers you see on the web. If it is warez that is pirated, you can be prosecuted. Chances are you aren't going to be, but the possiblity still exists. Even if your web page says that law enforcement people or copyright owners aren't permitted to enter the site.
It isn't that easy to disclaim something. This would be a red flag to most people (and lawyers) that there is something actionable hiding in there.
Problem is, in the US you are advocating a criminal act - a hate crime. Use of racial or ethnic slurs can get you arrested. Publishing something on the web - assuming you can be identified or admit to it - will almost certainly get you arrested for a hate crime.
It is far too late to take back society in the way you would like to.
This is the Internet, folks. Who made these postings? Sure, they are on her web page and that may imply responsibility at some level, but by no means is that a settled point of law. Had she denied making the postings the plantiffs would be in the same position as the RIAA - having an IP address and little else. Probably not even that, just the postings claiming to be from someone on a blog.
Who knows who could have made them? Isn't this the whole point - some level of deniability for everything so there are no consequences?
Silly person, it sounds like she is standing up for her opinions and will get sued because of it.
Sorry, but the $10 a day fee isn't going to the hotel - it is going to the service company with the 1-800 number on the little card in your room. The hotel does not have anyone you can call about problems getting your computer connected up.
Yes, the geekier crowd doesn't have a problem, but when someone that can just barely use Outlook is trying to get connected up and has no clue they need someone to call. Enter the service company that takes over the help desk functionality.
Guess what? They are charging the hotel per use and letting the hotel take a small cut. The hotels obviously believe they need the help desk function and are just passing the cost along.
We're already there, decision made. Illinois and other states have decided to give ID to illegals. So they can have a license. Has nothing to do with insurance. But because these people have no documentation, you can't have the regular rules for getting a driver's license or state ID - they couldn't provide the documentation.
So they just give them the ID with no documentation. It is just another benefit of coming to the US.
I don't care if they drive without a license, if the license doesn't prove anything. I'd rather they go home so we can export the jobs that are exportable to them in their country rather than taking over the non-exportable jobs here at lower wages.
Yes, it would be nice if illegals didn't drive without insurance. However, most of them have no assets in the US so you can't exactly sue them.
They could be insured, if you were paying their insurance. Since they have no assets, they don't care. You can't exactly sue them. So they aren't going to pay for insurance, no matter what the cost. It could be a state-provided benefit for illegals though.
Not really. When I can get a note from a non-governmental agency that tells the state ID bureau "Nevermind your rules, give this person an ID." it means there are no requirements and any fake ID is just as good as the state-issued one.
What is happening in Illinois is the local Mexican embassy/consulate office can give you a little card that says you don't have to present any other proof of who you are because there isn't any other proof. The Secretary of State's office has decided to accept this and issue you either a driver's license or state ID card in whatever name you choose to present.
I believe several other states are doing exactly the same thing. The supposed goal is to make sure that all illegal immigrants have valid driver's licenses. What exactly this does to help matters when an uninsured illegal causes an accident is very, very unclear to me. But we now have lots of people running around with whatever sort of ID they want, in whatever name they would like to have one.
So how is having a ID like that any better than having no ID at all?
1. States issue photo IDs already to people that do not drive.
2. The problem is exactly that the states are issuing VALID ID to anyone. In Chicago, for example, you can get a driver's license or state ID with a birth certificate or passport. Or, if you happen to not have either one of those, you can get a note from the Mexican embassy saying in effect to give this person an ID with no further verificattion. Yes indeed, Illinois does recognize the authority of the Mexican embassy to determine ID requirements for the state.
Please tell me the difference between my drawing a driver's license with a crayon and using it and what Illinois is doing. I don't see any difference at all.
If the states are going to issue an ID in any name with no proof this pretty much means the ID has no value. Of course people are going to abuse the system. Why can't I have three driver's licenses in different names under this sort of system? Why should teens pay for fake ID when they can get a "real" one from the state?
The reason behind the Federal rules is to put a stop to the states that are issuing ID with no rules whatsoever.
Well, maybe. I don't think people are all that attached to owning (and maintaining) a car.
... well, let's call it the "spooge factor" where the previous occupant of the car (and their partner) left a little something behind. Sometimes from their behind.
Unfortunately, in the US you have two aspects that are absolutely in conflict with this goal. The first is the "drive by" factor. You pick up a car and are almost immediately stopped by the police. Lots of angry cops with guns. You didn't notice the brass casings on the floor of the car before you took it.
The second is,
Solve these conflicts and you've got it made.
But wouldn't it be better in the long term to maximize the number of people that die? Surely that is the true path to reducing the amount of energy consumed. If we can reduce the amount of energy consumed, then not only are we reducing the amount of carbon pollution but also other forms of pollution resulting from that energy use and the industries that exist to supply it.
If you drive a more efficient car, there is certainly the reduction in emmissions. But if you get rid of the car completely you also eliminate the pollution from the plastics manufacturing that goes into the trim on the car. And you eliminate the pollution from the iron foundary where they make the steel for the frame. And so on. All down the line. Eliminating one car is but a small step, but eliminating all the cars would clean up far more than just the cars and the fuel used.
Replacing the car's engine with something else doesn't solve the problem. Eliminating the car completely is a beginning. Eliminating the car, the driver and the passengers is the final solution.
Mainframe systems operate on an entirely different level of hardware versus what you are commonly familiar with as PCs and servers. The reliability of a server machine - even when using the best available server-class hardware - is many times worse than the average mainframe. Your average downtime due to hardware events with a large IBM machine is zero. Not 0.01%, but zero.
Sure, some scheduled downtime can be required, but today even this is rare. Most of the equipment is self-diagnosing and creates log records that say some part needs to be replaced because the backup has taken over. And, it can call out the part number needed.
If I have "the music", why would I go to a store and buy "the music" again? Altruism? Guilt?
Maybe there are a few Catholic downloaders that feel the need to aswage their sins by buying CDs, but I doubt it is a significant blip. Nobody I know that has high speed Internet does anything but download. No iTunes. No CDs. No subscriptions, no CD clubs. Just free downloading.