Yes. The poll is to give your opinion on which YOU THINK is number one. It's not like the reader-unpopular choices are going to be kicked off the "top 50" list to make a "top 34."
RTFA. The top 50 is presented alphabetically, chronologically, and in ranked order. QED, the ranking is done.
What are you talking about? The list posted in the comments and the excerpt are both correct, ranked orders as reported by PC World. Who modded you informative?
It's not a list of the 50 best technologies of all time. MP3, television, and cell phones aren't the aim of this particular list.
Instead, implementations that changed how we use technology ARE on the list. For example cell phones = Motorola StarTAC; mp3 = iPod; tcp/ip = Hayes modem/Compuserve/Netscape; television = Tivo and so on.
The purpose is not immediately clear maybe, but there's a reason why it's the 50 "best" *products* and not 50 best technologies.
Worn objects are not always replaced (jeans, furniture, cars). Mundane work still exists, even if it's not liked. Stale food doesn't mean it's inedible. Hackneyed is a descriptor and nothing more. You are associating a negative connotation that goes beyond the meaning of the words--connotation is always based on the word, and by definition cannot be the same for every person. As a matter of pragmatics, there are a number of degrees of liberty where semantic reference remains true to semantic sense. Your connotation is not correct. It is not the intention of the author, jackass. You simply can't argue the point.
You're the one arguing bullshit, and I'll gladly take the last word, because I WROTE THE DAMN SENTENCE. Your connotation is wrong. Period, full stop.
Enjoy your next ill-founded linguistic argument. Perhaps you will target blood oranges for not being the color of blood. Or maybe someone will comment that their car is worn out and you'll attack them for not replacing or even DESIRING a replacement.
You can't define connotations not in the definition, and certainly not contrary to the author's intentions. The very definition of "tired" is, as I said, mundane, hackneyed, or worn. None of those necessitate replacement. If you are attaching that meaning to it, you're going beyond the scope of the word. Tired does not mean "obsolete" or "broken" or "ineffective." That's the long and the short of it.
You might have that association in your mind, but it doesn't make it correct or intended. Your interpretation of the statement is wrong. That's a fact. You can't nitpick without authorities.
That's a common misbelief. "Stale" doesn't mean that it doesn't have its place--stale bread makes better French toast and croutons. Likewise, "tired" simply means worn, mundane, or hackneyed. It's erroneous to connote it with "no good." It's simply no longer new or worthy of remark. If you have stored in your head a connotation that requires anything "tired" meaning that it doesn't have its place or uses, you've lost fidelity to the original metaphor.
If the rest of the world commits to supporting Microsoft software and forcing users by extension to HAVE Microsoft software, it is no longer MS's fault. They chose to put their customers/users in Microsoft hell, so they damn well better keep up.
Law school exam software is a prime example. George Washington refuses to release the OS X version of the software (even though it exists), because their IT department has chosen to go all-Microsoft. All students are required to have a Windows notebook, and the IT department WILL NOT provide any support for Macs, even Intel Macs.
Just because it works doesn't mean it's not tired. It's old, it's unimpressive, but it's functional. So is the wheel. It's a tired metaphor, but there's no compelling reason to switch to anything else.
The general desktop interface is well established. Toolbars and menus aren't the problem. Windows 95 is dated. Again, the "start" menu isn't really well thought-out. It's a dumping ground for everything. The desktop is an icon minefield for so many users--but why? Why isn't the default, empty desktop of a computer a fully usable interface? We've got folders to keep files. We've got multiple desktops and file drawers to make use of multiple applications and quick-access to commonly used files and shortcuts. We've got an adequate menu system that can handle topical separation, instead of piling it all into submenus of a single button which might as well be called "menu." We have high-resolution displays capable of handling more than a thin strip of text and small icons to show what's open.
Just because something works well doesn't mean it's really the best. Mac OS and KDE and Gnome and BeOS all work pretty well. "Easy" shouldn't mean simply 'familiar'--nor can "revolutionary" mean "rehash." Ulteo is only "easy" if you already know Windows, in which case ANYTHING can be as easy so long as it copies Windows.
It's not a bad decision, and it's not a criticism of the UI choice, because as you say, it works fine. But it's no more or less "easy" than anything else, and it's certainly not "revolutionary" in any capacity.
It's not about replacing adequate tools. Steering wheels work great on cars, but there comes a time when you can't market a steering wheel as a feature. It's to be taken for granted, because it is beyond mundane--it's expected.
"Tired" doesn't mean that it needs to be replaced. It just means that it's old and worn, and it's absurd to claim that you're doing it better than anyone else doing the exact same thing.
How can it claim to redefine ANY philosophy if its aim is merely a rehash of the tired Windows 95 interface? Come on, a "start" menu?!
I understand the need to make switchers feel at home, and that's great for an "easy Linux" standpoint, but don't try to shove some "revolution" bullshit down our throats at the same time.
Just to play devil's advocate for a bit...Turnitin is not an automatic system. Students with flagged papers are not automatically hauled in for questioning. Turnitin's algorithms also do detect a fairly high number of "cut reword and paste" plagiarism. It is far more than a simple search engine, and the reports it generates are merely tools to assist professors in pointing out potential problems.
When the instructor receives the report, it must be reviewed for findings. The Turnitin report will flag quotes as a match (because they're verbatim copies of other works), since the database contains academic research papers along with a wide body of other academic materials as well. No one gets hung out to dry based on a database query.
In an environment where you have dozens or hundreds of papers and little to no personal knowledge about your students themselves, relying on syntactic variation and style changes is not reliable.
That said, I don't believe students should be forced to use the system without opt-out provisions, and I do believe that Turnitin does benefit from the "voluntary" submission of works to its databases (more papers means greater detection accuracy and therefore better performance and more money as a result). That said, Turnitin does have disclaimers, and being forced to use a service is the problem, not the existence of one.
Speculation only works for non-perishable goods that can survive persistent storage. It further requires a tremendous number of speculators to influence a national- or global-scale supply. There's also the great risk with speculation that your stockpile will ultimately become worthless before you can capitalize on it--the planet shifting suddenly away from fossil fuels, for example (it's not all that likely in energy, but it happens frequently in other markets).
As for evidence for the latter, it's basic math. If the price is higher from the offset, the steep acceleration at the end of the curve is delayed as a function of the difference between the "market" and "regulated" prices (from the resultant extended supply time frame). The specific numbers were arbitrary for illustration. The shallower curve that comes of this ensures a more stable price over the long term--instead of cheaper prices up front and super-high prices at the end, you have ultimately spent less because the massive price upswing was delayed longer, more than offsetting the initial surcharge. The amount of the surcharge would of course have to be selected in a non-arbitrary fashion.
It depends where you draw the line. Maximum efficiency for markets can easily deplete a given resource, producing a glut of supercheap finished products, but then forcing the industry to shut down. Therefore, 100 years from now, the best thing for the economy would have been to regulate the production rates early on--consumers are not reliable for pacing.
What's absolutely best economically speaking is not always desirable. Take fossil fuels--there's plenty of demand for cheap, low priced fuels. But supply and demand simply aren't capable of pacing over time. What do you do when all the farmers grow the profitable crops and not the essential ones? What happens when "the market" uses all the old growth wood and there's nothing but saplings left and prices skyrocket?
There's the counterargument, of course, that prices will increase as supply diminishes to compensate, but by the time that mechanism kicks in, it's too late. If the people at Y0 paid 10% more, you'd have gotten Y+15 of reasonable prices. Charging more up front artificially can result in net financial savings, something raw supply and demand could not provide.
Any state may establish duties on wine, but that does not harm anyone in California. The taxes and duties are charged to the consumers, not the the suppliers, and if they are charged categorically, then it does not change the relative cost of California wines over any others. The distinction may be drawn between imported and domestic wines because one involves international agreements, which further may be controlled by federal requirements. That is not equivalent to making a distinction between Oregon and California wines. If you are the Oregon assembly, however, and you want to tax all wines imported from out of state (in order to make your own wines more competitive), you could do that, but you'd never get away with it.
If Kansas decided to start charging a special tax on books, that tax could be collected from anywhere in Kansas that sold books. It could not be collected from Amazon by the Kansas government. Kansas has no authority outside its own borders. For this reason, you cannot import wine into Indiana (you may buy imported wine at galleries and liquor stores, but you can't join any mail-order wine clubs). This is because they want to control revenue--and the only way to control things imported from out of state at the consumer level is to ban them.
Why let them? Because there's no better solution that isn't vaporware. It's like saying, "why should you be limited by Windows, OS X, or Linux? I believe in ShinyHappyOS. Sure, we only have six developers, and they can't even agree on what SHOS should do and not do, but these other people have it all wrong!
Tax evasion isn't a noble crime. It's a crime of greed on the part of the person doing the evading. They want to keep more of their money. It's not as if they take that money and contribute it to charitable causes (because "the government" doesn't do it properly). It's also not like private companies are perfect. Do you buy strawberries? Did you know that one of the fumigants used to treat strawberry fields was used as a chemical weapon in WWI? That indignation isn't going to cause you to pay more for organic strawberries--because the bottom line is that you're cheap, not principled.
If you don't like taxes, band together with your friends and create your own libertarian paradise. But when it goes up in flames, will you request assistance from countries with foreign aid budgets?
What? Just don't install the updates if you don't want them. If you're particularly lazy and don't want to reinstall if you don't like, copy iTunes.app to another folder before running the installer. If you don't like the new version, just drag the old one back into/Applications. It's not like Windows applications can just roll back to an earlier version, and just try drag 'n drop with a Windows application folder if you want to see high tech.
Why should secretaries be treated with any less freedom and respect than you are? They have an even more irregular schedule with lots of brief periods of idle time and should be permitted those pockets to look at shoes or refrigerators or radial arm saws online or email their kids.
All well and good except that people don't really care. You think we need legislation protecting rights; joe consumer probably just wants cheaper DVDs; corporations and artists think (in some cases with good reason) that their own rights are being abused. Remember that copyright itself is an incentive for artists to produce in the first place, with the added benefit that one day it becomes free. It's not, in fact, a barrier to public consumption (though it can be abused in that way).
No copyright, no content. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, since most of the commercial art is crap anyway, but you can be damn sure that none of the great artists could really afford to be artists in our current climate--we've systematically destroyed the old world order which allowed them to be both poor and artists. There are many great, small-scale local artists but their work is viewed as overpriced compared to prints from Target and so they can only afford to do it on the side in many cases, and only one-of-a-kind artwork that isn't profitable. They don't have the star power to charge thousands of dollars per painting (and then to work on it for the 2-3 weeks it might take) that it would take to compare to the salary of even a lowly office drone. Overworked and underappreciated take on new meanings when you're literally a starving artist.
All of that has little to do with privacy and a lot more to do with economics. The capitalist system seeks to maximize itself--including taking over all forms of communication to increase sales. Do you think the first operators of printing presses anticipated that most of what's printed and sold in any real volume isn't great knowledge or engaging discussion or moving works of literature--it's advertising and porn and commoditized serial novels.
Do you think the inventors of the telephone would have been able to foresee catalog shopping and telemarketers or automated "customer service," er, customer barricade phone systems? Didn't they think their innovations were a liberating development that would share knowledge and bring the world closer together?
In any case, I don't disagree with what you said, but I fail to see where "privacy nutjob" comes into play, or the idea of privacy at all. Privacy isn't meant to shield you from illegal activities (whether they should be illegal in the first place is inconsequential to the issue). Too often people bundle their concerns and answer questions that aren't asked.
For example, do you (rhetorically) approve of gay marriage? You might say "no" because you don't approve of the institution of marriage at all--but that's not the question that was asked, and the response ends up doing more harm than good, because your response is taken with the false assumption that you actually answered the question asked--and therefore people think that there's more opposition to the issue than there actually is.
90% of 1 cubic meter is less desirable than 50% of 10 cubic meters when you're talking atmospheres. Back to Nerding 126 for you! More C02=higher density atmosphere=better heat retention=slightly more Earthlike (some intermediate steps removed).
The car analogy actually isn't a bad one. If someone borrows your car and uses it to commit a crime, it'll be impounded, and you're responsible for it. It's your car. If you can't trust your friends, don't give them access to it. You can always pursue reimbursement from them in civil court, but it's the exact same scenario.
You're also responsible if you leave an axe in your yard and a kid falls on it. You can certainly argue that the kid shouldn't have been on your property and that the parents should have enforced that rule, but unless you put up a fence or a sign, you didn't really try very hard.
Same thing if you have an aggressive pet and a friend leaves your gate open and it attacks someone. Your responsibility.
Yes, like all things, you can be "framed." But if potential for abuse is a non-starter, then there would be no laws and no products in the world.
After all the DRM warpaint and hysterical tirades about fair use, a company comes along and says "fine, we can protect our content without putting usage restrictions on it." What's the result: a handful of rabid Slashdotters attacking the idea.
Wake up and face the fact that fair use is dying, and if you want to save it, you've got to stop the tide before you can reverse it. All the fantasizing in the world about "starting from scratch" is never going to happen. If you continually indicate that you're not willing to work with content providers at all, then don't expect content providers to have any consideration for your interests. Of course, this is Slashdot, so maybe correcting problems is less desirable than bitching about them (but Slashdotter hypocrisy protects us from the same derision we give to politicians and executives for doing the same thing).
I know, I know, "they" started "it." Whatever. If you can't endorse someone taking a positive step toward a fair and equitable compromise between content providers and consumers, at least recognize the fact that one of those "evil corporations" is reaching out, even just a little.
And before the privacy nutjobs come out of the woodwork, do you think that your cable box and/or ISP don't already have the capacity to track what you do? Having watermarks is no more an invasion of privacy than having a Safeway club card or a commercial DVR. All that matters is what you DO with that information.
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Yes. The poll is to give your opinion on which YOU THINK is number one. It's not like the reader-unpopular choices are going to be kicked off the "top 50" list to make a "top 34."
RTFA. The top 50 is presented alphabetically, chronologically, and in ranked order. QED, the ranking is done.
The vote link allows you to choose your favorite of the 50. In other words, "what is your number one pick."
They've already provided and ranked the 50. The poll is simply for comment purposes.
What are you talking about? The list posted in the comments and the excerpt are both correct, ranked orders as reported by PC World. Who modded you informative?
It's not a list of the 50 best technologies of all time. MP3, television, and cell phones aren't the aim of this particular list.
Instead, implementations that changed how we use technology ARE on the list. For example cell phones = Motorola StarTAC; mp3 = iPod; tcp/ip = Hayes modem/Compuserve/Netscape; television = Tivo and so on.
The purpose is not immediately clear maybe, but there's a reason why it's the 50 "best" *products* and not 50 best technologies.
Worn objects are not always replaced (jeans, furniture, cars). Mundane work still exists, even if it's not liked. Stale food doesn't mean it's inedible. Hackneyed is a descriptor and nothing more. You are associating a negative connotation that goes beyond the meaning of the words--connotation is always based on the word, and by definition cannot be the same for every person. As a matter of pragmatics, there are a number of degrees of liberty where semantic reference remains true to semantic sense. Your connotation is not correct. It is not the intention of the author, jackass. You simply can't argue the point.
You're the one arguing bullshit, and I'll gladly take the last word, because I WROTE THE DAMN SENTENCE. Your connotation is wrong. Period, full stop.
Enjoy your next ill-founded linguistic argument. Perhaps you will target blood oranges for not being the color of blood. Or maybe someone will comment that their car is worn out and you'll attack them for not replacing or even DESIRING a replacement.
What a tool.
You can't define connotations not in the definition, and certainly not contrary to the author's intentions. The very definition of "tired" is, as I said, mundane, hackneyed, or worn. None of those necessitate replacement. If you are attaching that meaning to it, you're going beyond the scope of the word. Tired does not mean "obsolete" or "broken" or "ineffective." That's the long and the short of it.
You might have that association in your mind, but it doesn't make it correct or intended. Your interpretation of the statement is wrong. That's a fact. You can't nitpick without authorities.
That's a common misbelief. "Stale" doesn't mean that it doesn't have its place--stale bread makes better French toast and croutons. Likewise, "tired" simply means worn, mundane, or hackneyed. It's erroneous to connote it with "no good." It's simply no longer new or worthy of remark. If you have stored in your head a connotation that requires anything "tired" meaning that it doesn't have its place or uses, you've lost fidelity to the original metaphor.
If the rest of the world commits to supporting Microsoft software and forcing users by extension to HAVE Microsoft software, it is no longer MS's fault. They chose to put their customers/users in Microsoft hell, so they damn well better keep up.
Law school exam software is a prime example. George Washington refuses to release the OS X version of the software (even though it exists), because their IT department has chosen to go all-Microsoft. All students are required to have a Windows notebook, and the IT department WILL NOT provide any support for Macs, even Intel Macs.
Just because it works doesn't mean it's not tired. It's old, it's unimpressive, but it's functional. So is the wheel. It's a tired metaphor, but there's no compelling reason to switch to anything else.
The general desktop interface is well established. Toolbars and menus aren't the problem. Windows 95 is dated. Again, the "start" menu isn't really well thought-out. It's a dumping ground for everything. The desktop is an icon minefield for so many users--but why? Why isn't the default, empty desktop of a computer a fully usable interface? We've got folders to keep files. We've got multiple desktops and file drawers to make use of multiple applications and quick-access to commonly used files and shortcuts. We've got an adequate menu system that can handle topical separation, instead of piling it all into submenus of a single button which might as well be called "menu." We have high-resolution displays capable of handling more than a thin strip of text and small icons to show what's open.
Just because something works well doesn't mean it's really the best. Mac OS and KDE and Gnome and BeOS all work pretty well. "Easy" shouldn't mean simply 'familiar'--nor can "revolutionary" mean "rehash." Ulteo is only "easy" if you already know Windows, in which case ANYTHING can be as easy so long as it copies Windows.
It's not a bad decision, and it's not a criticism of the UI choice, because as you say, it works fine. But it's no more or less "easy" than anything else, and it's certainly not "revolutionary" in any capacity.
It's not about replacing adequate tools. Steering wheels work great on cars, but there comes a time when you can't market a steering wheel as a feature. It's to be taken for granted, because it is beyond mundane--it's expected.
"Tired" doesn't mean that it needs to be replaced. It just means that it's old and worn, and it's absurd to claim that you're doing it better than anyone else doing the exact same thing.
How can it claim to redefine ANY philosophy if its aim is merely a rehash of the tired Windows 95 interface? Come on, a "start" menu?!
I understand the need to make switchers feel at home, and that's great for an "easy Linux" standpoint, but don't try to shove some "revolution" bullshit down our throats at the same time.
Just to play devil's advocate for a bit...Turnitin is not an automatic system. Students with flagged papers are not automatically hauled in for questioning. Turnitin's algorithms also do detect a fairly high number of "cut reword and paste" plagiarism. It is far more than a simple search engine, and the reports it generates are merely tools to assist professors in pointing out potential problems.
When the instructor receives the report, it must be reviewed for findings. The Turnitin report will flag quotes as a match (because they're verbatim copies of other works), since the database contains academic research papers along with a wide body of other academic materials as well. No one gets hung out to dry based on a database query.
In an environment where you have dozens or hundreds of papers and little to no personal knowledge about your students themselves, relying on syntactic variation and style changes is not reliable.
That said, I don't believe students should be forced to use the system without opt-out provisions, and I do believe that Turnitin does benefit from the "voluntary" submission of works to its databases (more papers means greater detection accuracy and therefore better performance and more money as a result). That said, Turnitin does have disclaimers, and being forced to use a service is the problem, not the existence of one.
Speculation only works for non-perishable goods that can survive persistent storage. It further requires a tremendous number of speculators to influence a national- or global-scale supply. There's also the great risk with speculation that your stockpile will ultimately become worthless before you can capitalize on it--the planet shifting suddenly away from fossil fuels, for example (it's not all that likely in energy, but it happens frequently in other markets).
As for evidence for the latter, it's basic math. If the price is higher from the offset, the steep acceleration at the end of the curve is delayed as a function of the difference between the "market" and "regulated" prices (from the resultant extended supply time frame). The specific numbers were arbitrary for illustration. The shallower curve that comes of this ensures a more stable price over the long term--instead of cheaper prices up front and super-high prices at the end, you have ultimately spent less because the massive price upswing was delayed longer, more than offsetting the initial surcharge. The amount of the surcharge would of course have to be selected in a non-arbitrary fashion.
It depends where you draw the line. Maximum efficiency for markets can easily deplete a given resource, producing a glut of supercheap finished products, but then forcing the industry to shut down. Therefore, 100 years from now, the best thing for the economy would have been to regulate the production rates early on--consumers are not reliable for pacing.
What's absolutely best economically speaking is not always desirable. Take fossil fuels--there's plenty of demand for cheap, low priced fuels. But supply and demand simply aren't capable of pacing over time. What do you do when all the farmers grow the profitable crops and not the essential ones? What happens when "the market" uses all the old growth wood and there's nothing but saplings left and prices skyrocket?
There's the counterargument, of course, that prices will increase as supply diminishes to compensate, but by the time that mechanism kicks in, it's too late. If the people at Y0 paid 10% more, you'd have gotten Y+15 of reasonable prices. Charging more up front artificially can result in net financial savings, something raw supply and demand could not provide.
Why would Boeing get a tax bill? They already collect taxes on their products from all customers.
Any state may establish duties on wine, but that does not harm anyone in California. The taxes and duties are charged to the consumers, not the the suppliers, and if they are charged categorically, then it does not change the relative cost of California wines over any others. The distinction may be drawn between imported and domestic wines because one involves international agreements, which further may be controlled by federal requirements. That is not equivalent to making a distinction between Oregon and California wines. If you are the Oregon assembly, however, and you want to tax all wines imported from out of state (in order to make your own wines more competitive), you could do that, but you'd never get away with it.
If Kansas decided to start charging a special tax on books, that tax could be collected from anywhere in Kansas that sold books. It could not be collected from Amazon by the Kansas government. Kansas has no authority outside its own borders. For this reason, you cannot import wine into Indiana (you may buy imported wine at galleries and liquor stores, but you can't join any mail-order wine clubs). This is because they want to control revenue--and the only way to control things imported from out of state at the consumer level is to ban them.
Why let them? Because there's no better solution that isn't vaporware. It's like saying, "why should you be limited by Windows, OS X, or Linux? I believe in ShinyHappyOS. Sure, we only have six developers, and they can't even agree on what SHOS should do and not do, but these other people have it all wrong!
Tax evasion isn't a noble crime. It's a crime of greed on the part of the person doing the evading. They want to keep more of their money. It's not as if they take that money and contribute it to charitable causes (because "the government" doesn't do it properly). It's also not like private companies are perfect. Do you buy strawberries? Did you know that one of the fumigants used to treat strawberry fields was used as a chemical weapon in WWI? That indignation isn't going to cause you to pay more for organic strawberries--because the bottom line is that you're cheap, not principled.
If you don't like taxes, band together with your friends and create your own libertarian paradise. But when it goes up in flames, will you request assistance from countries with foreign aid budgets?
What? Just don't install the updates if you don't want them. If you're particularly lazy and don't want to reinstall if you don't like, copy iTunes.app to another folder before running the installer. If you don't like the new version, just drag the old one back into /Applications. It's not like Windows applications can just roll back to an earlier version, and just try drag 'n drop with a Windows application folder if you want to see high tech.
Why should secretaries be treated with any less freedom and respect than you are? They have an even more irregular schedule with lots of brief periods of idle time and should be permitted those pockets to look at shoes or refrigerators or radial arm saws online or email their kids.
All well and good except that people don't really care. You think we need legislation protecting rights; joe consumer probably just wants cheaper DVDs; corporations and artists think (in some cases with good reason) that their own rights are being abused. Remember that copyright itself is an incentive for artists to produce in the first place, with the added benefit that one day it becomes free. It's not, in fact, a barrier to public consumption (though it can be abused in that way).
No copyright, no content. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, since most of the commercial art is crap anyway, but you can be damn sure that none of the great artists could really afford to be artists in our current climate--we've systematically destroyed the old world order which allowed them to be both poor and artists. There are many great, small-scale local artists but their work is viewed as overpriced compared to prints from Target and so they can only afford to do it on the side in many cases, and only one-of-a-kind artwork that isn't profitable. They don't have the star power to charge thousands of dollars per painting (and then to work on it for the 2-3 weeks it might take) that it would take to compare to the salary of even a lowly office drone. Overworked and underappreciated take on new meanings when you're literally a starving artist.
All of that has little to do with privacy and a lot more to do with economics. The capitalist system seeks to maximize itself--including taking over all forms of communication to increase sales. Do you think the first operators of printing presses anticipated that most of what's printed and sold in any real volume isn't great knowledge or engaging discussion or moving works of literature--it's advertising and porn and commoditized serial novels.
Do you think the inventors of the telephone would have been able to foresee catalog shopping and telemarketers or automated "customer service," er, customer barricade phone systems? Didn't they think their innovations were a liberating development that would share knowledge and bring the world closer together?
In any case, I don't disagree with what you said, but I fail to see where "privacy nutjob" comes into play, or the idea of privacy at all. Privacy isn't meant to shield you from illegal activities (whether they should be illegal in the first place is inconsequential to the issue). Too often people bundle their concerns and answer questions that aren't asked.
For example, do you (rhetorically) approve of gay marriage? You might say "no" because you don't approve of the institution of marriage at all--but that's not the question that was asked, and the response ends up doing more harm than good, because your response is taken with the false assumption that you actually answered the question asked--and therefore people think that there's more opposition to the issue than there actually is.
90% of 1 cubic meter is less desirable than 50% of 10 cubic meters when you're talking atmospheres. Back to Nerding 126 for you! More C02=higher density atmosphere=better heat retention=slightly more Earthlike (some intermediate steps removed).
The car analogy actually isn't a bad one. If someone borrows your car and uses it to commit a crime, it'll be impounded, and you're responsible for it. It's your car. If you can't trust your friends, don't give them access to it. You can always pursue reimbursement from them in civil court, but it's the exact same scenario.
You're also responsible if you leave an axe in your yard and a kid falls on it. You can certainly argue that the kid shouldn't have been on your property and that the parents should have enforced that rule, but unless you put up a fence or a sign, you didn't really try very hard.
Same thing if you have an aggressive pet and a friend leaves your gate open and it attacks someone. Your responsibility.
Yes, like all things, you can be "framed." But if potential for abuse is a non-starter, then there would be no laws and no products in the world.
After all the DRM warpaint and hysterical tirades about fair use, a company comes along and says "fine, we can protect our content without putting usage restrictions on it." What's the result: a handful of rabid Slashdotters attacking the idea.
Wake up and face the fact that fair use is dying, and if you want to save it, you've got to stop the tide before you can reverse it. All the fantasizing in the world about "starting from scratch" is never going to happen. If you continually indicate that you're not willing to work with content providers at all, then don't expect content providers to have any consideration for your interests. Of course, this is Slashdot, so maybe correcting problems is less desirable than bitching about them (but Slashdotter hypocrisy protects us from the same derision we give to politicians and executives for doing the same thing).
I know, I know, "they" started "it." Whatever. If you can't endorse someone taking a positive step toward a fair and equitable compromise between content providers and consumers, at least recognize the fact that one of those "evil corporations" is reaching out, even just a little.
And before the privacy nutjobs come out of the woodwork, do you think that your cable box and/or ISP don't already have the capacity to track what you do? Having watermarks is no more an invasion of privacy than having a Safeway club card or a commercial DVR. All that matters is what you DO with that information.
Remember: there are two trips to work each day. Once to work, and once back. The calculations assume 20mpg in rush hour traffic.