Back in the day, one of the arguments for the "personal computer revolution" was to free computer users from central control. The idea was for the user to own their own basically self-sufficient computer, rather than sharing that stuff. But as time has gone on the the Internet has become ubiquitous, computer users are voluntarily being re-centralized with things like GMail, IMAP, web-based applications, etc. Are we voluntarily surrendering the freedom of personal computer ownership?
The basic problem with free will is illustrated by the following. Imagine that a computer program is eventually written that can simulate the human brain with sufficient accuracy that its behavior is indistinguishable from the behavior of a human brain. By hypothesis, this computer program will have the same amount of "free will" that a human brain has. The problem is that the behavior of any computer program (that is, how the program responds to inputs) is totally determined by the underlying structure of the program. This view, that human behavior is is determined entirely by the physical structure of the human brain, is at odds with the notion that people "deserve" to be rewarded and punished for their behavior.
This is a commonly proposed argument (indeed, it preceded modern computers) which suffers from several logical flaws. First, if the computer is indistinguisable from human brain functioning then it will not have the constraint of being deterministically programmed. Second, electromechanical devices operate differently from living organisms, and a computer (at least one made of silicon chips) will always necessarily operate differently from a biological neural network such as a brain. The biological neural network can physically reconfigure itself, building or pruning synptic connections. Organisms learn adaptively, creating novel solutions to novel situations. If computers could someday be built that could learn adaptively and self-create new neural subnetworks so that they could function "indistinguishably" from humans, then those computers would not have the programming constraint that the poster included in his argument.
The view that human behavior is determinstic is indeed at odds with the notions of reward and punishment. There is as yet no evidence that human behavior is deterministic. Human functioning is constrained but not determined. Simple daily experience shows that we make choices among the options available. We are not computers, the efforts of cognitive psychology tp describe us as such notwithstanding.
Looking at the numbers, Palm OS is not quite dead yet but severely ailing in terms of market share, even though Palm continues to ship large numbers of units. Windows Mobile has gained over 50% of the market share but its trajectory is slowing and it may be joining Palm OS on the downslide soon. Mio Technology's phenomenal growth may save them for a while. RIM OS is taking a good run at Microsoft and, while still having only half of Mobile's market share, shows better growth numbers. Interesting times in PDA land. My Palm III and Tungsten/E continue to roll right along, though, and I find no compelling reasons to replace them.
Mac OS is the easy target to attack when discussing OSes, because the Mac made the GUI a mainstream thing. Sure there were other GUIs before the Mac, but they were not aimed at home computer appliance users. It remains easier to use than Windows (I haven't seen Vista at all so I have no comparison). While OS X isn't the market leader, it is the user experience leader- hence making it the target of attack. Heck, every day at work I get to compare my productivity with that of peers using Windows. The Mac interface makes my life a lot easier than theirs, in terms of computer usage. I get my reports written faster, with better looking results. My income has actually gone up since I bought my iBook.
Carbon exhaust is causing climate change. Okay.
1) there is no scientific consensus on this
2) I seriously doubt that consensus will be forthcoming withing less than 10 or 20 years
I give you props for persistence, but you're wrong about both of these points. If you are holding out for universal acceptance, that ain't gonna happen on any topic. Expert consensus is not universal acceptance, it is acceptance by the vast majority of experts in a field. In this case, the consensus has been reached and it is that human fossil fuel use has profoundly affected the environment. And, as recent studies show, the problem of carbon dioxide pollution is accelerating (while interestingly methane levels have been contained, at least temporarily).
It always astonishes me to hear conservatives complain about the restrictions of the EPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, etc.- given that those laws and associated agencies are part of the proud heritage of the Republican Party! It also astonishes me to hear the helplessness and despair of the conservatives, that "nothing can be done to stop it so we shouldn't even try." Wah wah wah! It's too bad that the conservatives fell for Ronald Reagan's soundbite that "government isn't the solution to the problem, government is the problem." That's an attitude that guarantees incompetence in government and which has given us the past six years of vast governmental stupidity.
It is refutable that we must act now with legislation. It is refutable that the Kyoto treaty does anything for the environment. It is refutable to say that humans can stop the general warming trend.
You've got your "refutables" and your "irrefutables" reversed. Legislation is required to initiate action. A treaty by itself does nothing unless it is ratified and adhered to. It is indeed possible for humans to affect the warming trend, although that will be difficult and will not happen immediately (just as global warming did not happen immediately with the start of the Industrial Age).
It is very refutable to say that we must pass things that look good on paper, allow politicians to pat themselves on the back to get re-elected. It is irrefutable that Kyoto would force millions of people into unemployment, it is refutable to say that Kyoto is even marginally good legislation. It is irrefutable that we really don't have enough information, to make any informed decision.
Irrefutable that Kyoto would force millions of people into unemployment? Bullshit. Many people's employment would change and some would be unemployed at least for a time, but global warming reversal would also create millions of jobs and the potential for billions of dollars of profits. Climate change deniers always forget that side (or leave it out since it counters their FUD).
As far as having enough information goes, that's just a delaying tactic and it is worthless as an argument. Enough facts are in, and the new facts that are coming in daily just paint a worse picture. Get over it. It's time to get to work.
Also running around scaring people to force unvetted political legislature on the guise that it will help, is about as helpful as saying the terrorists are everywhere and if we don't allow every phone call, email, fax and postal letter in the US to be monitored to we are going to have a successful nuclear attack against us.
Unvetted political legislation? LOL. You really just mean "legislation I disagree with." It's like activist judges- they are just the judges who don't agree with your position.
Nah. Private investment is remarkably unwilling to lose billions of dollars on things like space exploration. They will let the taxpayers spend their money until some commercial reason to go to space has been found. When it comes to high dollar investments with vague or unlikely returns, the private sector finds something else more important to spend its money on like perks for CEOs. The private sector would never have built the interstate highway system, supersonic air travel, or funded the first steps into space. The private sector left that groundwork for the government to do. People love to waffle on about the superiority of the private sector, but the private sector rides on the coattails of government time and time again. The public funds the fundamental research and the private sector reaps the profits- and hides them so that they don't return the investment to the taxpayers.
The reason that gas prices are such a big deal is that automobiles have been the symbol of American freedom and prosperity for 100 years. The bigger the automobile, the more important and prosperous one is assumed to be. Prior to the auto, a big sign of conspicuous consumption was a bicycle, and prior to that the horse. Money rides in style, everybody else walks.
When the price of gas goes up, Americans feel that their freedom is being threatened. Our cars provide us with the illusion of control and independence. Riding the bus is seen, by most Americans, as somehow declassé and a sign of personal economic inadequacy. Many feel that high gas prices force them in the direction of riding public transportation, and that creates a cognitive dissonance with their conception of themselves as independent and in control.
It's a coincidence, not a link. We don't have nearly enough information to call it a link, let alone a causal link. For example, were the tumors all of the same variety? What's the family history of these folks regarding cancer? Are there other known cancer risks in the environment where these people work? For that matter is there any reason to think that cell phone radiation would selectively affect brain tissue differently than other tissue in the body? In the case of cell phones, proximity of the radiation source is thought to be a potential issue. In the case of a cell phone tower, these people were not holding it next to their heads. They would have been having whole body exposure, and if cell tower radiation was the cause one would expect an increase in all cancers (especially leukemias).
Almost one out of two people will develop cancer. When we realize that fact, then clusters of cancers seem less amazing. For some reason, people think that cancer is a rare disease, but cancer is extremely common. Of course "it" is a set of diseases, some of which are fairly common (prostate cancer, breast cancer, skin cancers, leukemia, lymphomas, etc.) and some which are rare. Brain tumors are not all that rare, including the tumor that public sentiment tends to think is linked to cell phones (acoustic neuroma).
I'm always astounded how the measure of success in the music industry is not profitability but obscene profitability.
FWIW, the Grateful Dead allowed and facilitated giving away their music for free, and made an estimated $50,000,000 a year doing so. Almost all on concert sales. It was a good model- giving away their music and allowing it to be traded for free eliminated piracy and the bootleg market.
Too bad that the music industry hasn't tumbled onto the truth of why CD sales are slipping: that the music they are selling sucks.
I think it's pretty hard to argue that the Republicans currently in power, especially Bush, are for limited government. The government has expanded far more under Bush than under Clinton. And this conservative, for one, doesn't like it at all.
Neither does this liberal. Although I am not surprised, we saw much the same pattern of reckless spending in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, which were run by pretty much the same group of fossils that are in the Bush II administration. The current disaster was entirely foreseeable as soon as GWB named his Cabinet the first time. In many ways Clinton ran a more conservative government. Yikes!
And it seems like we agree on what the "separation of church and state" is used for. I don't agree that it's OK to make religious people second-class citizens.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of religious people who have confused the fact that public policy is not based on their particular religion with being made second class citizens. It does not make fundamentalist Christians into second class citizens that the non-science of "intelligent design" is not taught in science class. It does not make Christians into second class citizens when governments have to remove Christian paraphrenalia from public buildings. Oddly enough the Christian Right seems to have no problem with every other religion being relegated into second-class status, which demonstrates the anti-democracy and anti-freedom viewpoint of those folks.
You won't find the term "separation of church and state" in the Constitution but you will find the principle. The principle is found in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and separation has been considered established law through stare decisis.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
It is much the same as the "right" to privacy, which features highly in this situation. The U.S. Constitution does not provide a specific right to privacy; that right is inferred from the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The question is whether AT&T's actions, and those of the Federal government, violate the reasonable expectation of privacy as established by prior decisions and other settled law. I think it does- inspecting e-mail without probable cause violates due process and the reasonable expectation of privacy. It is reasonable to expect that one's mail is protected under the reasonable expectation of privacy, as has been confirmed in the courts and in legislation.
church and state is mandated in the U.S. Constitution. Too bad that separation of big business and state wasn't similarly mandated.
Why it that the "party of limited government" (the Republicans) is also the party of most intrusive and least ethical government?
As Geroge F. Will made plain a couple of days ago, the problem is not global warming but the media spin making it look like there is global warming. Sheesh. The hot air that guy has spewed over the years is a significant contributor to heating up the Earth.
This just looks like a retread of the Newton, in terms of form factor at least. Andnot all that different from the Nokia 770. Everything old is new again, I guess.
The National Security Agency has a PDF based handbook on securing OS X. It's a bit outdated (written for Panther 10.3.x). Is that what you were looking for?
It's immoral when large companies like Microsft, Sony & now Apple try trying to limit our right to do whatever the hell we like with legally purchased goods.
Except that when you buy commercial software, you don't buy the software. You buy a license to use the software, but ownership of the software itself remains with the company. You don't own it. At least that's their argument. Read your EULAs, they are self-explanatory. As a result, the software company is legally entitled to tell you what you can and can't do with their software. I think that there is some question as to whether Apple has the right to say you can't patch a legally-purchased copy of OS X to run on a standard PC, but until that's tested in court they will continue to shut down every public effort to patch the OS. None of the folks they will be shutting down will have the resources to contest it in court.
Is that an unethical or immoral situation? Many people would agree with you that it is. Many- probably most in terms of the "man on the street"- would disagree with you.
Only if something is stolen. If someone buys OS X86 and installs it on their computer, they have stolen nothing. Even if they write or otherwise obtain a patch that allows them to install OS X86 on a non-Apple computer, they still have not stolen anything. They may not even have violated Apple's EULA, unless the EULA specifies that the OS can't be installed on a non-Apple computer. I haven't looked at the OS X86 EULA, so I don't know what it says about this.
While the notion of hydrogen power with only water vapor for exhaust sounds nice and clean, it doesn't help with the greenhouse effect. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Imagine millions of tones of water vapor released into the air every year by a worldwide fleet of hydrogen burning cars. Ambient humidity especially in cities would skyrocket with local and global climate effects. Additionally, the production of hydrogen takes a lot of energy, which is likely produced through means that produce greenhouse gases.
IMHO the solution is to change towards human-scale pedestrian-centered cities with effective mass transit options and pro-bicycle urban design. The model of individual motorized vehicles for everyone is just unsustainable, no matter what the power source for those motors is. When we're talking about a couple billion vehicles or more operating every day, any emissions cumulatively are too many emissions. There is no way to have zero emissions without bending or breaking the laws of physics.
So, please explain to me how you can have a sane system of laws that restrict things like sharing over P2p and don't restrict things like letting a friend read a book. In a digital world, I do not believe this is possible.
'sharing over P2P' doesn't make sense. When it is over, you have a copy, and I have a copy. You are not 'sharing' your copy, you are creating and giving me a copy.
Well, my reading of Stallman and Lessig is that creative works (e.g., art) and practical works (e.g., software) must be treated differently. Practical works have the potential to advance technology and the quality of human life. Artistic works may also improve the quality of human life, but in a less tangible way.
When you buy software from Apple or Microsoft or any other proprietary vendor, you don't in fact buy the software. You buy a license to use the software- and the vendor still actually owns the software. This is a fundamental shift in the concept of purchasing goods- when you buy a toaster or a bicycle, the vendor retains no ownership at all. Your purchase has transferred ownership to you. You are free to improve the toaster or bicycle to suit your needs, and to share those modifications with others so they can use them too. But not when you buy software. The rules have been tilted 100% in favor of the vendor and 100% against the consumer.
The current situation prevents you from doing these things with software that you buy. If the software is broken in some way, it is illegal to fix it. It is illegal to try to decompile the software and figure out the source code, and it is illegal to modify that code and to share the modifications with other. It is illegal to "buy" software and install it on your computer, and then to install it on your neighbor's computer (who is on a fixed income and can't afford to buy it herself)- being a nice person and sharing with your neighborhood has been criminalized. That's fundamentally to what Stallman objects, from reading his book. In his opinion, being able to read the source code, repair bugs or improve the operation of the software, is part of fair use. Being able to give a copy to his neighbor is a public good and a benefit to society that in his opinion outweighs the small loss of private good that Steve Jobs or Bill Gates might suffer.
The truth that Stallman and Lessig both point to is that "intellectual property" is a myth. An intellectual property is an idea- it cannot be anything else- and as soon as that idea is shared then exclusive ownership is surrendured. By restructuring the nature of the purchase transaction, the defenders of "intellectual property" have tried to have their cake and eat it too. The sheer mass of Bill Gates's and Steve Jobs's wealth shows how effectivce that strategy has been- and also shows the magnitude of the detriment to ordinary consumers who should probably still have a couple of those billions of dollars in their own pockets.
The point of copyrights and patents is to strike a balance- to allow a time-limited monopoly to derive monetary gain. What has happened is that copyrights and patents have been weighted with too much power (copyright especially at the behest of Disney and others) to the detriment of the public domain. And ultimately to the detriment of copyright holders- Disney hasn't had to work up a sweat in decades to be profitable, thanks to retaining control over old works that should have passed into the public domain decades ago. Their movies have sucked for years because they don't have the motivation of having to come up with new good ideas. The development of science in general and especially computer science is being bogged down due to the dragging weight of "intellectual property" which has done little but enrich trial lawyers. The defense of "intellectual property" ultimately hurts everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Back in the day, one of the arguments for the "personal computer revolution" was to free computer users from central control. The idea was for the user to own their own basically self-sufficient computer, rather than sharing that stuff. But as time has gone on the the Internet has become ubiquitous, computer users are voluntarily being re-centralized with things like GMail, IMAP, web-based applications, etc. Are we voluntarily surrendering the freedom of personal computer ownership?
The basic problem with free will is illustrated by the following. Imagine that a computer program is eventually written that can simulate the human brain with sufficient accuracy that its behavior is indistinguishable from the behavior of a human brain. By hypothesis, this computer program will have the same amount of "free will" that a human brain has. The problem is that the behavior of any computer program (that is, how the program responds to inputs) is totally determined by the underlying structure of the program. This view, that human behavior is is determined entirely by the physical structure of the human brain, is at odds with the notion that people "deserve" to be rewarded and punished for their behavior.
This is a commonly proposed argument (indeed, it preceded modern computers) which suffers from several logical flaws. First, if the computer is indistinguisable from human brain functioning then it will not have the constraint of being deterministically programmed. Second, electromechanical devices operate differently from living organisms, and a computer (at least one made of silicon chips) will always necessarily operate differently from a biological neural network such as a brain. The biological neural network can physically reconfigure itself, building or pruning synptic connections. Organisms learn adaptively, creating novel solutions to novel situations. If computers could someday be built that could learn adaptively and self-create new neural subnetworks so that they could function "indistinguishably" from humans, then those computers would not have the programming constraint that the poster included in his argument.
The view that human behavior is determinstic is indeed at odds with the notions of reward and punishment. There is as yet no evidence that human behavior is deterministic. Human functioning is constrained but not determined. Simple daily experience shows that we make choices among the options available. We are not computers, the efforts of cognitive psychology tp describe us as such notwithstanding.
Looking at the numbers, Palm OS is not quite dead yet but severely ailing in terms of market share, even though Palm continues to ship large numbers of units. Windows Mobile has gained over 50% of the market share but its trajectory is slowing and it may be joining Palm OS on the downslide soon. Mio Technology's phenomenal growth may save them for a while. RIM OS is taking a good run at Microsoft and, while still having only half of Mobile's market share, shows better growth numbers. Interesting times in PDA land. My Palm III and Tungsten/E continue to roll right along, though, and I find no compelling reasons to replace them.
Mac OS is the easy target to attack when discussing OSes, because the Mac made the GUI a mainstream thing. Sure there were other GUIs before the Mac, but they were not aimed at home computer appliance users. It remains easier to use than Windows (I haven't seen Vista at all so I have no comparison). While OS X isn't the market leader, it is the user experience leader- hence making it the target of attack. Heck, every day at work I get to compare my productivity with that of peers using Windows. The Mac interface makes my life a lot easier than theirs, in terms of computer usage. I get my reports written faster, with better looking results. My income has actually gone up since I bought my iBook.
As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.
I give you props for persistence, but you're wrong about both of these points. If you are holding out for universal acceptance, that ain't gonna happen on any topic. Expert consensus is not universal acceptance, it is acceptance by the vast majority of experts in a field. In this case, the consensus has been reached and it is that human fossil fuel use has profoundly affected the environment. And, as recent studies show, the problem of carbon dioxide pollution is accelerating (while interestingly methane levels have been contained, at least temporarily).
It always astonishes me to hear conservatives complain about the restrictions of the EPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, etc.- given that those laws and associated agencies are part of the proud heritage of the Republican Party! It also astonishes me to hear the helplessness and despair of the conservatives, that "nothing can be done to stop it so we shouldn't even try." Wah wah wah! It's too bad that the conservatives fell for Ronald Reagan's soundbite that "government isn't the solution to the problem, government is the problem." That's an attitude that guarantees incompetence in government and which has given us the past six years of vast governmental stupidity.
You've got your "refutables" and your "irrefutables" reversed. Legislation is required to initiate action. A treaty by itself does nothing unless it is ratified and adhered to. It is indeed possible for humans to affect the warming trend, although that will be difficult and will not happen immediately (just as global warming did not happen immediately with the start of the Industrial Age).
Irrefutable that Kyoto would force millions of people into unemployment? Bullshit. Many people's employment would change and some would be unemployed at least for a time, but global warming reversal would also create millions of jobs and the potential for billions of dollars of profits. Climate change deniers always forget that side (or leave it out since it counters their FUD).
As far as having enough information goes, that's just a delaying tactic and it is worthless as an argument. Enough facts are in, and the new facts that are coming in daily just paint a worse picture. Get over it. It's time to get to work.
Unvetted political legislation? LOL. You really just mean "legislation I disagree with." It's like activist judges- they are just the judges who don't agree with your position.
Nah. Private investment is remarkably unwilling to lose billions of dollars on things like space exploration. They will let the taxpayers spend their money until some commercial reason to go to space has been found. When it comes to high dollar investments with vague or unlikely returns, the private sector finds something else more important to spend its money on like perks for CEOs. The private sector would never have built the interstate highway system, supersonic air travel, or funded the first steps into space. The private sector left that groundwork for the government to do. People love to waffle on about the superiority of the private sector, but the private sector rides on the coattails of government time and time again. The public funds the fundamental research and the private sector reaps the profits- and hides them so that they don't return the investment to the taxpayers.
The reason that gas prices are such a big deal is that automobiles have been the symbol of American freedom and prosperity for 100 years. The bigger the automobile, the more important and prosperous one is assumed to be. Prior to the auto, a big sign of conspicuous consumption was a bicycle, and prior to that the horse. Money rides in style, everybody else walks.
When the price of gas goes up, Americans feel that their freedom is being threatened. Our cars provide us with the illusion of control and independence. Riding the bus is seen, by most Americans, as somehow declassé and a sign of personal economic inadequacy. Many feel that high gas prices force them in the direction of riding public transportation, and that creates a cognitive dissonance with their conception of themselves as independent and in control.
It was on the Minneapolis news that Best Buy installed someone's hard drive in a different customer's computer a couple month ago.
It's a coincidence, not a link. We don't have nearly enough information to call it a link, let alone a causal link. For example, were the tumors all of the same variety? What's the family history of these folks regarding cancer? Are there other known cancer risks in the environment where these people work? For that matter is there any reason to think that cell phone radiation would selectively affect brain tissue differently than other tissue in the body? In the case of cell phones, proximity of the radiation source is thought to be a potential issue. In the case of a cell phone tower, these people were not holding it next to their heads. They would have been having whole body exposure, and if cell tower radiation was the cause one would expect an increase in all cancers (especially leukemias).
Almost one out of two people will develop cancer. When we realize that fact, then clusters of cancers seem less amazing. For some reason, people think that cancer is a rare disease, but cancer is extremely common. Of course "it" is a set of diseases, some of which are fairly common (prostate cancer, breast cancer, skin cancers, leukemia, lymphomas, etc.) and some which are rare. Brain tumors are not all that rare, including the tumor that public sentiment tends to think is linked to cell phones (acoustic neuroma).
I'm always astounded how the measure of success in the music industry is not profitability but obscene profitability.
FWIW, the Grateful Dead allowed and facilitated giving away their music for free, and made an estimated $50,000,000 a year doing so. Almost all on concert sales. It was a good model- giving away their music and allowing it to be traded for free eliminated piracy and the bootleg market.
Too bad that the music industry hasn't tumbled onto the truth of why CD sales are slipping: that the music they are selling sucks.
I think it's pretty hard to argue that the Republicans currently in power, especially Bush, are for limited government. The government has expanded far more under Bush than under Clinton. And this conservative, for one, doesn't like it at all.
Neither does this liberal. Although I am not surprised, we saw much the same pattern of reckless spending in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, which were run by pretty much the same group of fossils that are in the Bush II administration. The current disaster was entirely foreseeable as soon as GWB named his Cabinet the first time. In many ways Clinton ran a more conservative government. Yikes!
And it seems like we agree on what the "separation of church and state" is used for. I don't agree that it's OK to make religious people second-class citizens.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of religious people who have confused the fact that public policy is not based on their particular religion with being made second class citizens. It does not make fundamentalist Christians into second class citizens that the non-science of "intelligent design" is not taught in science class. It does not make Christians into second class citizens when governments have to remove Christian paraphrenalia from public buildings. Oddly enough the Christian Right seems to have no problem with every other religion being relegated into second-class status, which demonstrates the anti-democracy and anti-freedom viewpoint of those folks.
You won't find the term "separation of church and state" in the Constitution but you will find the principle. The principle is found in the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and separation has been considered established law through stare decisis.
It is much the same as the "right" to privacy, which features highly in this situation. The U.S. Constitution does not provide a specific right to privacy; that right is inferred from the Fourth Amendment:
The question is whether AT&T's actions, and those of the Federal government, violate the reasonable expectation of privacy as established by prior decisions and other settled law. I think it does- inspecting e-mail without probable cause violates due process and the reasonable expectation of privacy. It is reasonable to expect that one's mail is protected under the reasonable expectation of privacy, as has been confirmed in the courts and in legislation.
church and state is mandated in the U.S. Constitution. Too bad that separation of big business and state wasn't similarly mandated. Why it that the "party of limited government" (the Republicans) is also the party of most intrusive and least ethical government?
As Geroge F. Will made plain a couple of days ago, the problem is not global warming but the media spin making it look like there is global warming. Sheesh. The hot air that guy has spewed over the years is a significant contributor to heating up the Earth.
This just looks like a retread of the Newton, in terms of form factor at least. Andnot all that different from the Nokia 770. Everything old is new again, I guess.
The National Security Agency has a PDF based handbook on securing OS X. It's a bit outdated (written for Panther 10.3.x). Is that what you were looking for?
Armageddon outa here before that bog old rock hits!
It's immoral when large companies like Microsft, Sony & now Apple try trying to limit our right to do whatever the hell we like with legally purchased goods.
Except that when you buy commercial software, you don't buy the software. You buy a license to use the software, but ownership of the software itself remains with the company. You don't own it. At least that's their argument. Read your EULAs, they are self-explanatory. As a result, the software company is legally entitled to tell you what you can and can't do with their software. I think that there is some question as to whether Apple has the right to say you can't patch a legally-purchased copy of OS X to run on a standard PC, but until that's tested in court they will continue to shut down every public effort to patch the OS. None of the folks they will be shutting down will have the resources to contest it in court.
Is that an unethical or immoral situation? Many people would agree with you that it is. Many- probably most in terms of the "man on the street"- would disagree with you.
Regardless, theft is theft
Only if something is stolen. If someone buys OS X86 and installs it on their computer, they have stolen nothing. Even if they write or otherwise obtain a patch that allows them to install OS X86 on a non-Apple computer, they still have not stolen anything. They may not even have violated Apple's EULA, unless the EULA specifies that the OS can't be installed on a non-Apple computer. I haven't looked at the OS X86 EULA, so I don't know what it says about this.
While the notion of hydrogen power with only water vapor for exhaust sounds nice and clean, it doesn't help with the greenhouse effect. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas. Imagine millions of tones of water vapor released into the air every year by a worldwide fleet of hydrogen burning cars. Ambient humidity especially in cities would skyrocket with local and global climate effects. Additionally, the production of hydrogen takes a lot of energy, which is likely produced through means that produce greenhouse gases.
IMHO the solution is to change towards human-scale pedestrian-centered cities with effective mass transit options and pro-bicycle urban design. The model of individual motorized vehicles for everyone is just unsustainable, no matter what the power source for those motors is. When we're talking about a couple billion vehicles or more operating every day, any emissions cumulatively are too many emissions. There is no way to have zero emissions without bending or breaking the laws of physics.
Precedent is a dangerous thing, and this is precedent.
Well, my reading of Stallman and Lessig is that creative works (e.g., art) and practical works (e.g., software) must be treated differently. Practical works have the potential to advance technology and the quality of human life. Artistic works may also improve the quality of human life, but in a less tangible way.
When you buy software from Apple or Microsoft or any other proprietary vendor, you don't in fact buy the software. You buy a license to use the software- and the vendor still actually owns the software. This is a fundamental shift in the concept of purchasing goods- when you buy a toaster or a bicycle, the vendor retains no ownership at all. Your purchase has transferred ownership to you. You are free to improve the toaster or bicycle to suit your needs, and to share those modifications with others so they can use them too. But not when you buy software. The rules have been tilted 100% in favor of the vendor and 100% against the consumer.
The current situation prevents you from doing these things with software that you buy. If the software is broken in some way, it is illegal to fix it. It is illegal to try to decompile the software and figure out the source code, and it is illegal to modify that code and to share the modifications with other. It is illegal to "buy" software and install it on your computer, and then to install it on your neighbor's computer (who is on a fixed income and can't afford to buy it herself)- being a nice person and sharing with your neighborhood has been criminalized. That's fundamentally to what Stallman objects, from reading his book. In his opinion, being able to read the source code, repair bugs or improve the operation of the software, is part of fair use. Being able to give a copy to his neighbor is a public good and a benefit to society that in his opinion outweighs the small loss of private good that Steve Jobs or Bill Gates might suffer.
The truth that Stallman and Lessig both point to is that "intellectual property" is a myth. An intellectual property is an idea- it cannot be anything else- and as soon as that idea is shared then exclusive ownership is surrendured. By restructuring the nature of the purchase transaction, the defenders of "intellectual property" have tried to have their cake and eat it too. The sheer mass of Bill Gates's and Steve Jobs's wealth shows how effectivce that strategy has been- and also shows the magnitude of the detriment to ordinary consumers who should probably still have a couple of those billions of dollars in their own pockets.
The point of copyrights and patents is to strike a balance- to allow a time-limited monopoly to derive monetary gain. What has happened is that copyrights and patents have been weighted with too much power (copyright especially at the behest of Disney and others) to the detriment of the public domain. And ultimately to the detriment of copyright holders- Disney hasn't had to work up a sweat in decades to be profitable, thanks to retaining control over old works that should have passed into the public domain decades ago. Their movies have sucked for years because they don't have the motivation of having to come up with new good ideas. The development of science in general and especially computer science is being bogged down due to the dragging weight of "intellectual property" which has done little but enrich trial lawyers. The defense of "intellectual property" ultimately hurts everyone.