Isn't burning a CD/DVD just storing data to a permanent medium? If burning to an optical disk constitutes creating pornography, why not burning to a magnetic disc (a hard drive)? Hell, even temp files are stored there. Could you extend this to someone who clicks a wrong link or whatever, kiddie porn pics pop up on the screen which then get written to a cache on the hard drive, and now the poor sap is guilty of accidentally creating child pornography? Give me a break.
Simple: we didn't find the outer planets that way. Uranus and Neptune, IIRC, were discovered by comparing photographs of the night sky to see what moved over the course of time, which is just a case of routine astronomy, especially as it was done at the time. Pluto was found when astronomers were looking for a 9th planet to explain orbital anonolies (sp?) in Neptune. However, they stumbled upon Pluto by sheer luck; it appeared where they were looking, but as time went on astronomers realized that Pluto could not be nearly massive enough to cause the oddness of Neptune's orbit. So, really, that has yet to be (fully) explained, and perhaps a brown dwarf way out there somewhere could do that.
Fair enough, and I agree with you that for computers, function > form. But the thread is about form, and the guy who designed it. From a design standpoint (and especially given the image Apple wishes to present of its hardware), such a scratch-prone product line is a Bad Thing, and I'm actually rather surprised that it hasn't hurt sales as much as it has (if it even has at all).
FWIW, my eMac doesn't scratch at all, I always keep my iPod in a case so it has no noticeable scratches, and my PowerBook is in fine shape.
What's to keep NARA from converting most electronic record to plain text? Surely most communications are only text themselves, so formats wouldn't be an issue there. For more complex files, OpenDocument is an option, or just any Open format. On the good side, this would make searching the archives fantastically efficient. NARA is already making some fomerly-paper records into electronic, searchable records. Imagine if everything were like that.
Wow, I didn't know about these laws. Were they enforced often, or just placed on the books so that they could say they did, and then largely ignored? If they're as wide-reaching as they seem (I didn't RTFA), there's no way they could be enforced enough to modify people's behavior, right?
If you have some information that you think is worth keeping, DON'T use electronics to store it. It seems that governments are focusing more on computers than on stuff printed or written on paper and hidden well. If you don't give them 1's and 0's to look at, they might not see anything at all. Just my $.02.
Did Tim have the whole world in mind back in 1989, or was he just trying to create a network for scientists and researchers such as himself? Surely, he couldn't have overlooked the ease of vandalism on the system he envisioned, but a community of scientists is much less likely to vandalize each other's work than the population at large. Wikis are very popular, but so is their vandalism. Heck, Slashdot just did a story about that today with Wikipedia.
Oh, great, now vandals have a motivation to vandalize even MORE pages. Before, they could get the same pages over and over again, and it wasn't THAT bad if you avoided them. But now, they'll be moving around to get all the pages that aren't protected, meaning widespread goatse links and the like. Think of it like a bully in grade school. Before, it was so easy to vandalize, I imagine most vandals got bored with it. Now, there's something of a challenge. This might promote vandalism, not stem it.
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Isn't burning a CD/DVD just storing data to a permanent medium? If burning to an optical disk constitutes creating pornography, why not burning to a magnetic disc (a hard drive)? Hell, even temp files are stored there. Could you extend this to someone who clicks a wrong link or whatever, kiddie porn pics pop up on the screen which then get written to a cache on the hard drive, and now the poor sap is guilty of accidentally creating child pornography? Give me a break.
I wouldn't buy blankets from the online Al-qaeda shop
Ah, but if you did go to Kabul and do just that, would have a visted an......Afghanistan Afghan stand?
[ducks]
Simple: we didn't find the outer planets that way. Uranus and Neptune, IIRC, were discovered by comparing photographs of the night sky to see what moved over the course of time, which is just a case of routine astronomy, especially as it was done at the time. Pluto was found when astronomers were looking for a 9th planet to explain orbital anonolies (sp?) in Neptune. However, they stumbled upon Pluto by sheer luck; it appeared where they were looking, but as time went on astronomers realized that Pluto could not be nearly massive enough to cause the oddness of Neptune's orbit. So, really, that has yet to be (fully) explained, and perhaps a brown dwarf way out there somewhere could do that.
FWIW, my eMac doesn't scratch at all, I always keep my iPod in a case so it has no noticeable scratches, and my PowerBook is in fine shape.
What's to keep NARA from converting most electronic record to plain text? Surely most communications are only text themselves, so formats wouldn't be an issue there. For more complex files, OpenDocument is an option, or just any Open format. On the good side, this would make searching the archives fantastically efficient. NARA is already making some fomerly-paper records into electronic, searchable records. Imagine if everything were like that.
Wow, I didn't know about these laws. Were they enforced often, or just placed on the books so that they could say they did, and then largely ignored? If they're as wide-reaching as they seem (I didn't RTFA), there's no way they could be enforced enough to modify people's behavior, right?
Am I missing something? What is Janet Jackson doing at the top of the search list?
Snoopy? Snoopy? NOOOOO!
If you have some information that you think is worth keeping, DON'T use electronics to store it. It seems that governments are focusing more on computers than on stuff printed or written on paper and hidden well. If you don't give them 1's and 0's to look at, they might not see anything at all. Just my $.02.
Did Tim have the whole world in mind back in 1989, or was he just trying to create a network for scientists and researchers such as himself? Surely, he couldn't have overlooked the ease of vandalism on the system he envisioned, but a community of scientists is much less likely to vandalize each other's work than the population at large. Wikis are very popular, but so is their vandalism. Heck, Slashdot just did a story about that today with Wikipedia.
Oh, great, now vandals have a motivation to vandalize even MORE pages. Before, they could get the same pages over and over again, and it wasn't THAT bad if you avoided them. But now, they'll be moving around to get all the pages that aren't protected, meaning widespread goatse links and the like. Think of it like a bully in grade school. Before, it was so easy to vandalize, I imagine most vandals got bored with it. Now, there's something of a challenge. This might promote vandalism, not stem it.