Sure it will. Check out this link. Bush is known for his big oil contributors, he will stop all forms of advancement in the alternative energy fuels when given the word of big oil. They say "jump" and Bush replies: "How fucking high?"
With 60% of our oil coming from foreign sources, does it really matter? Once Bush takes office and this car becomes widespread, theoretically he could cut up to 60% of the oil supply and not cripple his family's home-grown oil business (or, for that matter, hurt the big oil companies that Gore and Lieberman have major investments in).
OTOH, we all know what happens when oil prices go down...people start driving more, and businesses take advantage of lower transportation costs to do more. Yes, I can see a big cut in our oil needs if this technology were widespread, but I also think that the amount of traveling we do would rise dramatically to offset some (or even most) of that drop.
To summarize, smart cards are a good thing and are not a threat to privacy. Please don't mod an otherwise informative post down b/c of this, but a good analogy is the age-old argument that guns don't kill people -- the wrong people armed w/ guns do. Technology isn't a threat to privacy -- the wrong people armed w/ technology are.
Yes, but you talk as if the technology were not going to evolve. I seem to recall a quote by Bill Gates in the 80's that PC's would never need more than 640k of RAM--hopelessly shortsighted.
Do the potential long-term abuses of this technology outweigh the short-term benefits? I don't think so.
Oh, come on...none of the Justices have announced their retirement or their imminent demise. You don't know that 3 Justices are on the line.
And what if these 3 Justices make it through the next four years? Are you going to say, "I can't vote for my candidate this election, either, because those same three Justices are still on the line!"
In every election, ALL Justices are on the line, because they could all die or retire in the next 4 years (statistically improbable, yes, but it could happen).
Besides, Justices have a funny way of doing what's not expected of them; some very conservative presidents have appointed Justices that ended up being left of center on many issues.
If you support the Green Party, you've got to vote Nader in this election so that he can get federal matching funds for the next election!
If Nader doesn't get the support he needs this time, then the next election is going to go exactly the same as this one...two major party candidates receiving most of the press and a few third party candidates doing cartwheels on the sidelines trying to get attention.
I remember playing Pong way back when and thinking, "This is very cool!" Of course, it was a two player game, so the replay value wasn't very high.
Then I got an Atari 2600 (before it was even called the 2600), and remember being blown away again. And because it was a cartridge system with a ton of single player games, the replay value was high. I spent A LOT of hours playing Atari.
Then I got an Apple ][+, and the graphics were phenomenal, compared to the Atari! And the games were much more interactive, too. Again, many more hours wasted, and loads of fun.
I won't continue on with the walk through memory lane, because you probably see where I'm going by now. The games were always fun, but in the beginning our expectations of what could be accomplished with regard to graphics and sound were pretty low. With each generation of game systems that came out, there were phenomenal improvements, and it almost made you say, "It just can't get any better than this!"
Of course, as you progress to higher and higher generations of systems, it's easy to look back on yesterday's technology and say, "Wow, that sucks! I can't believe I thought that was hot stuff!"
I'll always have fond memories of games I played on my Apple ][+ 20 years ago, but I'll never go back and play them.
At the very least, Slashdot needs a way to kill offtopic AC posts (first post, Natalie Portman, goatse.cx, etc.).
I would suggest that any AC post whose first moderation is a -1 is automatically deleted. If it gets moderated up once, and then down twice, it stays.
I'd also suggest that Slashdot limit the number of AC posts per IP address, per thread, per hour. For example, address 208.36.42.111 can post two AC posts in this thread this hour, and two more in the next hour, and so on.
This isn't the most aggressive stance possible, but I do think it would cut back on the signal to noise ratio significantly.
Aside from any real sense of how major corporations mass-market products, that is.
Then they also cut off about 50 million users in one fell swoop by releasing Mac OS 8, no, not the Rhapsody/X Mac OS 8, but the
"Mac OS 7.7 renumbered to 8.0" Mac OS 8.0. In that step, they raised hardware requirements steeply, cutting off all 68000 68020 and 68030 based
machines, and even some 68040 machines. Basically, if you bought a machine before about 1995, you were out of luck. Either upgrade or become
obsolete! Microsoft and Apple stopped supporting the older machines, as did other major software vendors. You want to run the latest Photoshop?
Throw away your $5000 Quadra 950 and buy a $5000 Power Mac was the attitude.
Apple didn't cut off anybody. Like Windows 95/98/ME, Mac OS is largely compatible through previous generations. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you could get most off-the-shelf apps today to run under virtually any flavor of OS 7. Besides, the changes in OS 8 were mostly cosmetic and slowed down older computers; System 7.5.5 was incredibly stable and still serves many Mac users just as well.
The beauty of PCs, and why I feel Windows ultimately won out over Mac OS in the mass market despite sleazy underhanded marketing by both
Apple and Microsoft, is that PCs don't go obsolete every 2 years! Any given PC can run a wide range of DOS and Windows releases. And similarly a
given OS runs on a large variety of machines. Windows 95 runs on the slowest 386 (a 14 year old computer now!) to the fastest AMD Athlon. DOS,
good old MS-DOS, has run on every PC over the past 20 years. This great backward compatibility is what has made PCs the standard computer.
Excuse me for a moment...
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...(wipes tears from eyes)
Whew. Ok, I'm back. Um, remind me again exactly how many MAJOR computer companies have as their target market folk who upgrade their systems every 14 years? Are these people on anyone's radar screen?
Besides, you fail to appreciate two very salient points: 1) This is only a BETA; repeat after me, MAC OS X HAS NOT SHIPPED YET, and 2) Last I saw, Mac OS 9 was still available in retail outlets. In fact, Apple is reportedly prepping an OS 9.5 release for early next year to sell ALONGSIDE the OS X release, much the same way that MS sells WinME alongside Win2K, for people who aren't ready to upgrade.
Once you install Mac OS X, say goodbye to backward compatibility. Only Mac OS 9 is
supported in emulation, (or "Classic" mode as they call it) and so Mac OS 8.6 and earlier are history as far as Apple is concerned.
Why do you care about OS 8.6 emulation? Since OS 9 shares it's codebase with OS 8.6, OS 9 will run most Mac apps fine, just like WinME runs most Win98 apps just fine.
Besides, if you've got an atomic wedgie because OS 9 won't run your app, why in the world are you thinking about upgrading to OS X?
They should leverage the PC and gain a portion of its massive market instead of trying to hold on to their own separate market, which is tiny in comparison and progressively getting smaller.
Let's examine this from a business perspective...
Let's assume that Apple's typical markup on their system is 25% (since Apple doesn't have any direct competitors, they don't have to work on razor-thin margins like Dell or eMachines). On their midrange G4 system, which sells for $2499, that would mean that Apple gets roughly $600 profit.
Now let's say that Apple sells 50,000 of these babies in an average year...that would put a cool $30 million in their pockets.
Now, supposing that Apple sells OS X for x86, you can immediately assume that the bottom will fall out of Apple's hardware business; how many copies of OS X will they have to sell to recover their losses?
Let's say that OS X will sell for $99, and Apple's take is 35% (again, I'm guessing here, based on typical retail markups), so Apple makes about $35 per. A quick check of the numbers tells us that for the 50,000 midrange G4's Apple won't be selling, they would have to sell 857,142 copies of the OS (and that's just the impact on one build of one product line...Apple has 5 product lines, and several builds of each one).
Now, for Apple to successfully market to the x86 camp, two things would need to happen: 1) millions of PC users would need to jump platform as soon as x86 OS X is released, and 2) every Mac developer would need to release Cocoa versions of their apps with separate platform binaries. Regarding the first item, I don't see it happening; just look at the "mild" success that Be and Linux have had against Windows; MS is concerned, but I don't think Gates is losing a lot of sleep at night. Regarding the second, most Mac developers are taking a very conservative approach to Cocoa, in spite of the fact that everyone knows there is no going back for Apple. Just today I was reading that the upcoming QuarkXPress 5.0 would not be Carbon-compliant until possibly the 5.1 upgrade (in spite of the fact that both OS 8.6 and 9.0 have supported Carbon for almost two years), and they have yet to decide that QuarkXPress will ever be Cocoa-compliant! (boneheads!)
So, what happens when Apple ports OS X to x86? Apple's profits immediately take a nose-dive, Apple goes into the red, Apple has to shut down their hardware operations, and without the revenue of their hardware business, they have to shut down OS development. The fact remains that Apple's business model is based on hardware sales, and the key to their hardware sales is the Mac OS...it would be foolish for them to give away the crown jewels.
What I gathered from the article is that the court is upholding the translation as copyrighted, not the original text.
While this is an unfortunate turn, it's no different than what bible translators do today. If you open your New International Version, you'll see a copyright notice, and it's not the Holy Spirit's...:D
In this country, BT are currently beginning the ADSL rollout and, since they haven't been able to successfully resolve the security implications, access will now be totally non-firewalled for home users by "default". They are expected to use the "correct" firewalling software. Tell me, who honestly thinks that John Doe (or rather, John Smith over here...) is going to have a clue about security.
What will probably happen is that ADSL providers will probably cut deals with firewall software vendors, and bundle the software in their ADSL install kits, much the same way that many PC manufacturers these days don't even ask if you want anti-virus software, they just toss it in. Granted, anti-virus software is built on the subscription model, but there's no reason why a company like Symantec couldn't roll a firewall and virus software into one package and sell updates.
Additionally, many home users will not appreciate that the bandwidth they are about to experience is disproportionate to that offered anywhere else - some parts of the world have no access, some are stuck on 9600bps and some now have up to 10Mbit in to the home with 53Mbit a very real possibility in the next few years.
Yeah, and over a billion people have yet to make their first phone call, too. But the "Why" has as much to do with politics as with economics.
The Internet as it is today is obviously not technically ready for such massive broadband connectivity to the end user
To misquote a line from Jeff Goldblum, "Capitalism finds a way"...if there is demand, there will be supply, I guarantee it. It may not happen immediately, but it will happen.
I think it's important that we push for this kind of accelerated growth of bandwidth...the new economy is starting to show signs of stagnation, and there's still a long ways to go. We haven't even begun to realize how broadband access will impact homes and businesses, and the applications for it can't be written until it's widely available.
Anyway, to the main point of this post: lately Apple has been moving their entire hardware line towards requiring NO FANS. Only their G4 towers require a fan right now; no fans in the Cube, Powerbooks, iBooks, or iMacs. No way they could continue this trend with an x86 processor inside.
Actually, only the iMac and the Cube are fanless...Apple hasn't yet found a way to make their portables fanless.
AFA building a business on fanless systems, though...keep in mind that the only reason Apple can create the cases they do is that they are pouring more money into case design than the overwhelming majority of case manufacturers could afford to do. However, once an Apple case hits the street, there's nothing to prevent the small time vendors from stealing Apple's ideas, ala Microsoft, just so long as they don't deliver a case that looks identical to Apple's.
Look, just because Intel isn't hot on IEEE 1394 doesn't mean that they are intentionally thumbing their nose at Apple...the fact is, Apple gets royalties on IEEE 1394 and Intel doesn't.
Intel would rather promote their own technologies and earn royalties than pay someone else. That's why they are trying to position USB 2.0 against FireWire.
Since I'm an old fag who will retire in a world run by your kids, I want to be able to teach them all about homosexuality, including where to get it and how to do it, and why they should respect their elder fags instead of beating them up or murdering them. After all, it's the officials you elected that are robbing me of my retirement fund to pay for the schools your kids go to. But I am not allowed to have any say in the kinds of things your kids - tomorrow's leaders, workers and voters - are taught in those schools.
It is for self-defense that I work so hard to thwart all your attempts to keep them ignorant and fearful of me.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, "Dad".
----------------------------
Well, let me make two points. First, your post provides an excellent argument for censorware; there are people in the world who do have social agendas that they want to foist on our children, and are very intentional in wanting to subvert the right of the parents to raise their children as they see fit.
Second, you are right, teaching children to hate is not productive, which is why I will be teaching my children what I believe about sexuality, why I believe it, and why I oppose certain things.
Ok, I've gathered from my previous posts in this thread that I'm in the minority here in actually supporting censorware for kids, if only because something better doesn't yet exist.
Anyway, I first read about this in a C|Net story, which also had a very anti-censorship slant to it. I submitted my comment...and they censored it! LoL! They are refusing to put it online, and I submitted it twice just to be sure they didn't lose the first one.
Whether you agree or disagree with me, the hypocrisy over at C|Net is unbelieveable.
Here's my message, in its entirety:
Subject: Irresponsible story by C|Net
You know, you could have just reported the story without the specifics, you didn't have to actually tell all the 8 year olds how to circumvent their parent-installed software to go directly to sex.com.
Everyone says, "Oh, it's the parent's problem to monitor their children, not the internet's. The parent is solely responible for the upbringing of their children." Ok, well what about when a parent, taking the initiative, installs the filtering software and a kid reads on C|Net how to hack around it? C|Net may counter with something like, "Well, our target audience is 35 years old," but I don't remember being carded when I loaded the site.
Why is everyone on the internet in such a rush to empower pornographers and to rob parents of their rights?
Soo... Try this, instead of forbidding things to the kids, why not EDUCATE them about why you believe it's wrong? If you give your kids a decent dose of your brand of morality and teach them some kind of values then they will likely follow them. But if you just say 'NO! Don't do that, I don't want you do and I'm going to lock you out of it!' then of course they are going to do their damndest to break into it.
Oh, I see...so, you always did everything your parents told you to do, you never deviated from their instruction, you never let your will and your desires cloud your judgement when you clearly knew what your parents expected of you and why they did. You must have been a wonder kid or something...did you stay in the womb until you were 18?
Look, my problem here is not that there is pornography in the world and that that there is some chance that my kids might catch a glimpse of it somehow, somewhere...my problem is that there are mountains and mountains of adult material standing in front of my children and their peers, just screaming out for their attention.
Before the internet, there was a barrier to entry for pornography; you had to be 18 to buy a movie or magazine, or you had to have an older sibling who had some stashed away somewhere. I don't know about any of you, but I was a teenager before I viewed any of that stuff, and even then I didn't have access to a lot of it.
The barrier to entry is essentially gone for any household with internet access, or any friend's house with internet access. And everything I saw was tame (airbrushed nudity) compared to the graphic and violent depictions of sex that are available on the net. You don't even have to go looking for it, because most internet users will innocently stumble across porn sites, they are so widespread (and sometimes intentionally deceptive like whitehouse.com).
I will teach my kids the difference between right and wrong, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about the "wrong" popping up every time we turn around like some forbidden candy bar.
Not only would you have the expected screams from their advertisers, think about what happens when Akami views "breast" or "penis" as a not bad word, and some right wing Christian group wants any reference to the human body removed; where does a content provider like Akamai draw the line?
Based on my views, you would probably label me a "right wing Christian"...please explain to me why I would want to filter those words? Maybe I'm not understanding, but why is it wrong to even mention anatomy?
There's a vast difference between "anatomy" and "pornography", though, which is the real topic at issue here. I'm not sure why you think anatomy is evil.
Slashdot Mirror
Super Pitfall is on my list of ALL TIME WORST GAMES OF *ANY* PLATFORM...it was definitely the buggiest Nintendo cart I ever played.
With 60% of our oil coming from foreign sources, does it really matter? Once Bush takes office and this car becomes widespread, theoretically he could cut up to 60% of the oil supply and not cripple his family's home-grown oil business (or, for that matter, hurt the big oil companies that Gore and Lieberman have major investments in).
OTOH, we all know what happens when oil prices go down...people start driving more, and businesses take advantage of lower transportation costs to do more. Yes, I can see a big cut in our oil needs if this technology were widespread, but I also think that the amount of traveling we do would rise dramatically to offset some (or even most) of that drop.
Link all you want, Goatsex Boy, 'cuz I just had your site terminated...
(There's a cool picutre of algore as Buzz Lightyear....)
A copy of the article can also be found here. (Maybe.)
Yes, but you talk as if the technology were not going to evolve. I seem to recall a quote by Bill Gates in the 80's that PC's would never need more than 640k of RAM--hopelessly shortsighted.
Do the potential long-term abuses of this technology outweigh the short-term benefits? I don't think so.
And what if these 3 Justices make it through the next four years? Are you going to say, "I can't vote for my candidate this election, either, because those same three Justices are still on the line!"
In every election, ALL Justices are on the line, because they could all die or retire in the next 4 years (statistically improbable, yes, but it could happen).
Besides, Justices have a funny way of doing what's not expected of them; some very conservative presidents have appointed Justices that ended up being left of center on many issues.
If Nader doesn't get the support he needs this time, then the next election is going to go exactly the same as this one...two major party candidates receiving most of the press and a few third party candidates doing cartwheels on the sidelines trying to get attention.
I remember playing Pong way back when and thinking, "This is very cool!" Of course, it was a two player game, so the replay value wasn't very high.
Then I got an Atari 2600 (before it was even called the 2600), and remember being blown away again. And because it was a cartridge system with a ton of single player games, the replay value was high. I spent A LOT of hours playing Atari.
Then I got an Apple ][+, and the graphics were phenomenal, compared to the Atari! And the games were much more interactive, too. Again, many more hours wasted, and loads of fun.
I won't continue on with the walk through memory lane, because you probably see where I'm going by now. The games were always fun, but in the beginning our expectations of what could be accomplished with regard to graphics and sound were pretty low. With each generation of game systems that came out, there were phenomenal improvements, and it almost made you say, "It just can't get any better than this!"
Of course, as you progress to higher and higher generations of systems, it's easy to look back on yesterday's technology and say, "Wow, that sucks! I can't believe I thought that was hot stuff!"
I'll always have fond memories of games I played on my Apple ][+ 20 years ago, but I'll never go back and play them.
At the very least, Slashdot needs a way to kill offtopic AC posts (first post, Natalie Portman, goatse.cx, etc.).
I would suggest that any AC post whose first moderation is a -1 is automatically deleted. If it gets moderated up once, and then down twice, it stays.
I'd also suggest that Slashdot limit the number of AC posts per IP address, per thread, per hour. For example, address 208.36.42.111 can post two AC posts in this thread this hour, and two more in the next hour, and so on.
This isn't the most aggressive stance possible, but I do think it would cut back on the signal to noise ratio significantly.
I don't know what's more ridiculous...that people are bidding that much, or that the seller thinks it's worth even more (the reserve isn't met yet!).
Then they also cut off about 50 million users in one fell swoop by releasing Mac OS 8, no, not the Rhapsody/X Mac OS 8, but the "Mac OS 7.7 renumbered to 8.0" Mac OS 8.0. In that step, they raised hardware requirements steeply, cutting off all 68000 68020 and 68030 based machines, and even some 68040 machines. Basically, if you bought a machine before about 1995, you were out of luck. Either upgrade or become obsolete! Microsoft and Apple stopped supporting the older machines, as did other major software vendors. You want to run the latest Photoshop? Throw away your $5000 Quadra 950 and buy a $5000 Power Mac was the attitude.
Apple didn't cut off anybody. Like Windows 95/98/ME, Mac OS is largely compatible through previous generations. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you could get most off-the-shelf apps today to run under virtually any flavor of OS 7. Besides, the changes in OS 8 were mostly cosmetic and slowed down older computers; System 7.5.5 was incredibly stable and still serves many Mac users just as well.
The beauty of PCs, and why I feel Windows ultimately won out over Mac OS in the mass market despite sleazy underhanded marketing by both Apple and Microsoft, is that PCs don't go obsolete every 2 years! Any given PC can run a wide range of DOS and Windows releases. And similarly a given OS runs on a large variety of machines. Windows 95 runs on the slowest 386 (a 14 year old computer now!) to the fastest AMD Athlon. DOS, good old MS-DOS, has run on every PC over the past 20 years. This great backward compatibility is what has made PCs the standard computer.
Excuse me for a moment...
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...(wipes tears from eyes)
Whew. Ok, I'm back. Um, remind me again exactly how many MAJOR computer companies have as their target market folk who upgrade their systems every 14 years? Are these people on anyone's radar screen?
Besides, you fail to appreciate two very salient points: 1) This is only a BETA; repeat after me, MAC OS X HAS NOT SHIPPED YET, and 2) Last I saw, Mac OS 9 was still available in retail outlets. In fact, Apple is reportedly prepping an OS 9.5 release for early next year to sell ALONGSIDE the OS X release, much the same way that MS sells WinME alongside Win2K, for people who aren't ready to upgrade.
Once you install Mac OS X, say goodbye to backward compatibility. Only Mac OS 9 is supported in emulation, (or "Classic" mode as they call it) and so Mac OS 8.6 and earlier are history as far as Apple is concerned.
Why do you care about OS 8.6 emulation? Since OS 9 shares it's codebase with OS 8.6, OS 9 will run most Mac apps fine, just like WinME runs most Win98 apps just fine.
Besides, if you've got an atomic wedgie because OS 9 won't run your app, why in the world are you thinking about upgrading to OS X?
Let's examine this from a business perspective...
Let's assume that Apple's typical markup on their system is 25% (since Apple doesn't have any direct competitors, they don't have to work on razor-thin margins like Dell or eMachines). On their midrange G4 system, which sells for $2499, that would mean that Apple gets roughly $600 profit.
Now let's say that Apple sells 50,000 of these babies in an average year...that would put a cool $30 million in their pockets.
Now, supposing that Apple sells OS X for x86, you can immediately assume that the bottom will fall out of Apple's hardware business; how many copies of OS X will they have to sell to recover their losses?
Let's say that OS X will sell for $99, and Apple's take is 35% (again, I'm guessing here, based on typical retail markups), so Apple makes about $35 per. A quick check of the numbers tells us that for the 50,000 midrange G4's Apple won't be selling, they would have to sell 857,142 copies of the OS (and that's just the impact on one build of one product line...Apple has 5 product lines, and several builds of each one).
Now, for Apple to successfully market to the x86 camp, two things would need to happen: 1) millions of PC users would need to jump platform as soon as x86 OS X is released, and 2) every Mac developer would need to release Cocoa versions of their apps with separate platform binaries. Regarding the first item, I don't see it happening; just look at the "mild" success that Be and Linux have had against Windows; MS is concerned, but I don't think Gates is losing a lot of sleep at night. Regarding the second, most Mac developers are taking a very conservative approach to Cocoa, in spite of the fact that everyone knows there is no going back for Apple. Just today I was reading that the upcoming QuarkXPress 5.0 would not be Carbon-compliant until possibly the 5.1 upgrade (in spite of the fact that both OS 8.6 and 9.0 have supported Carbon for almost two years), and they have yet to decide that QuarkXPress will ever be Cocoa-compliant! (boneheads!)
So, what happens when Apple ports OS X to x86? Apple's profits immediately take a nose-dive, Apple goes into the red, Apple has to shut down their hardware operations, and without the revenue of their hardware business, they have to shut down OS development. The fact remains that Apple's business model is based on hardware sales, and the key to their hardware sales is the Mac OS...it would be foolish for them to give away the crown jewels.
Yes, it means that Apple chages for OS X so that Aqua doesn't look like a variation of KDE.
I won't be impressed until someone shows me how to make the fuzzy red guy belt out some Hendrix guitar riffs.
While this is an unfortunate turn, it's no different than what bible translators do today. If you open your New International Version, you'll see a copyright notice, and it's not the Holy Spirit's... :D
What will probably happen is that ADSL providers will probably cut deals with firewall software vendors, and bundle the software in their ADSL install kits, much the same way that many PC manufacturers these days don't even ask if you want anti-virus software, they just toss it in. Granted, anti-virus software is built on the subscription model, but there's no reason why a company like Symantec couldn't roll a firewall and virus software into one package and sell updates.
Additionally, many home users will not appreciate that the bandwidth they are about to experience is disproportionate to that offered anywhere else - some parts of the world have no access, some are stuck on 9600bps and some now have up to 10Mbit in to the home with 53Mbit a very real possibility in the next few years.
Yeah, and over a billion people have yet to make their first phone call, too. But the "Why" has as much to do with politics as with economics.
To misquote a line from Jeff Goldblum, "Capitalism finds a way"...if there is demand, there will be supply, I guarantee it. It may not happen immediately, but it will happen.
I think it's important that we push for this kind of accelerated growth of bandwidth...the new economy is starting to show signs of stagnation, and there's still a long ways to go. We haven't even begun to realize how broadband access will impact homes and businesses, and the applications for it can't be written until it's widely available.
How do I hook this MP3 player up to my kid's Rock and Roll Elmo?
Actually, only the iMac and the Cube are fanless...Apple hasn't yet found a way to make their portables fanless.
AFA building a business on fanless systems, though...keep in mind that the only reason Apple can create the cases they do is that they are pouring more money into case design than the overwhelming majority of case manufacturers could afford to do. However, once an Apple case hits the street, there's nothing to prevent the small time vendors from stealing Apple's ideas, ala Microsoft, just so long as they don't deliver a case that looks identical to Apple's.
Apple can't patent convection, after all.
Intel would rather promote their own technologies and earn royalties than pay someone else. That's why they are trying to position USB 2.0 against FireWire.
It is for self-defense that I work so hard to thwart all your attempts to keep them ignorant and fearful of me.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, "Dad".
----------------------------
Well, let me make two points. First, your post provides an excellent argument for censorware; there are people in the world who do have social agendas that they want to foist on our children, and are very intentional in wanting to subvert the right of the parents to raise their children as they see fit.
Second, you are right, teaching children to hate is not productive, which is why I will be teaching my children what I believe about sexuality, why I believe it, and why I oppose certain things.
BTW, I don't smoke.
Anyway, I first read about this in a C|Net story, which also had a very anti-censorship slant to it. I submitted my comment...and they censored it! LoL! They are refusing to put it online, and I submitted it twice just to be sure they didn't lose the first one.
Whether you agree or disagree with me, the hypocrisy over at C|Net is unbelieveable.
Here's my message, in its entirety:
Subject: Irresponsible story by C|Net
You know, you could have just reported the story without the specifics, you didn't have to actually tell all the 8 year olds how to circumvent their parent-installed software to go directly to sex.com.
Everyone says, "Oh, it's the parent's problem to monitor their children, not the internet's. The parent is solely responible for the upbringing of their children." Ok, well what about when a parent, taking the initiative, installs the filtering software and a kid reads on C|Net how to hack around it? C|Net may counter with something like, "Well, our target audience is 35 years old," but I don't remember being carded when I loaded the site.
Why is everyone on the internet in such a rush to empower pornographers and to rob parents of their rights?
Oh, I see...so, you always did everything your parents told you to do, you never deviated from their instruction, you never let your will and your desires cloud your judgement when you clearly knew what your parents expected of you and why they did. You must have been a wonder kid or something...did you stay in the womb until you were 18?
Look, my problem here is not that there is pornography in the world and that that there is some chance that my kids might catch a glimpse of it somehow, somewhere...my problem is that there are mountains and mountains of adult material standing in front of my children and their peers, just screaming out for their attention.
Before the internet, there was a barrier to entry for pornography; you had to be 18 to buy a movie or magazine, or you had to have an older sibling who had some stashed away somewhere. I don't know about any of you, but I was a teenager before I viewed any of that stuff, and even then I didn't have access to a lot of it.
The barrier to entry is essentially gone for any household with internet access, or any friend's house with internet access. And everything I saw was tame (airbrushed nudity) compared to the graphic and violent depictions of sex that are available on the net. You don't even have to go looking for it, because most internet users will innocently stumble across porn sites, they are so widespread (and sometimes intentionally deceptive like whitehouse.com).
I will teach my kids the difference between right and wrong, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy about the "wrong" popping up every time we turn around like some forbidden candy bar.
Based on my views, you would probably label me a "right wing Christian"...please explain to me why I would want to filter those words? Maybe I'm not understanding, but why is it wrong to even mention anatomy?
There's a vast difference between "anatomy" and "pornography", though, which is the real topic at issue here. I'm not sure why you think anatomy is evil.