I fail to understand how giving LE the tools to do their job is Big Brother. It isn't as though they are making up new rules to enforce; they were simply limited by an individual person's ability to read/process information. A crime committed out of the site of LE is still a crime that should have resulted in punishment.
This is the very reason that organ donation by death row inmates is not allowed in the US. If a person is going to be put to death there can be no possibility that it is being done to benefit another person through organ harvesting. As wasteful as it is, it is much better that the person is executed as punishment for their crime and no other reason.
THE Church (of which I am a member) responded to this, and every other concern in the realm of human sexuality and reproduction a long time ago: New life is the result of the bond of male and female through marriage, a specific possible outcome and reward of sexual intercourse. It is the firm belief of the Church that humanity is best served in the short and long term by the bonding of one man and one woman into a mutually supportive family unit through the sacrament of marriage. Not all people are called to marry, and not all married couples are called to have children. If this turns out to be the case it is not up to man and technology to decide otherwise.
"revoking MS's copyrights"
The repercussions of this would be enormous. I know all the MS haters would love to see this happen but the fallout from messing with MS in this particular manner would be catastrophic. The United States makes a LOT of money from foreign markets on the production of "soft" goods such as software, music & movies. If for no other reason than preventing this from becoming a precedent the US government would have to defend this.
A person can have a significant impact on a company without being at the actual product production level. Herb Kelleher doesn't fly the planes at Southwest Airlines and Larry Ellison doesn't write actual Oracle code but those companies are high flyers because of what those individuals do. As long as Gates is driving the company forward, even if only to "protect the investment of shareholders" he still has a major impact on what the company produces.
E-mail is as likely to go away as package shipping and breathing. Yes, e-mail as it exists now has problems, but the concept of e-mail, is far too valuable to "go away." Of course, with a title like "E-mail problems need to be fixed" everyone would respond "No shit, Sherlock" and not read the article because it will tell us nothing we didn't already know.
I've had the same thought but I've always assumed the aggrieved party would not be DoD or the CIA but some underworld group. Then one day it will be leaked into the computing underground that the butchering of an individual was the Russian Mafia's response to their getting hit by a virus. It may be some time before it happens, but one day a truly dangerous individual is going to be hurt by some virus writer and they are going to learn very quickly that worse things than death can happen to an individual.
"It's possible to imagine surgical implants that COULD be recharged with less effort"
My electric toothbrush recharges via induction with no direct electrical connection. This would certainly work for an implant as well. A person willing to implant a live electronic device in their body is way past being worried about possible effects from exposure to magnetic or electrical fields.
"Only on slashdot do you read about people who steal free shit."
It isn't free. The viewer enters an unwritten agreement that the content they wish to view is given them in trade for their time spent watching advertisements. This is why I purchased Lost Season 2 through iTunes. I want the makers to get some compensation as these shows would not be produced for free but don't want to watch commercials. If you were to download a recording of a broadcast program with the commercials intact that would be a free product; downloading the show with the commercials stripped out is not.
I hope that you take care to blame 100% of your delays on the USPS, at least right now. I have to live very close to the Netflix distribution center in Norcross, GA and have a 3 disc a month subscription. It is very, very rare that Netflix does not email me the day after I put a disc in the mail that they have received it and the follow up disc is normally in my mailbox the next delivery day. 99% of my discs have two day turnaround.
While I realize that not everyone gets to live this close to a center, in my experience (and I have had Netflix since '93) Netflix is turning around my discs as fast as it receives them. The ONLY time I have ever experienced a delay is when once of the older, less mainstream movies happens to get shipped in which case I am assuming that it is coming from farther away because the "shipping" email still comes immediately. I know throttling exists for high volume members but we have had as many as 11 in one month in the past.
I call "BS." Even ZoneAlarms free edition has the ability to ask the user if they wish to allow a particular app to access the Internet. Given the nature of Internet connectivity the whole world would be done a favor if average joe home user were to be given a little knowledge about how these things work. I have not yet met a computer user of any ability level to whom I could not explain ZoneAlarm's use of IP addresses and ports using a phone system/extension analogy and maybe, just maybe, people being asked to understand what is going on might help to eliminate some problems we currently have. We can always give people the option to say "Let it all out" but I suspect a large number of people would be genuinely interested in knowing that message coming up can be an indicator of a problem on their system.
The list of things people do without compensation is staggering. Have you really spent so little time being involved with open source and computering to have not yet realized that in general, people are free to do with their time as they please and do a lot of useless things for nothing but their own pleasure? I know plenty of people, myself included, who have spent far more time on far less significant activities.
As for the accuracy of the translations, have you ever heard of Wikipedia? As with Wikipedia, it is certain that alternate translations will be created, especially if a particular document's translation is disputed. By and large, much of the documents will contain easily translated statements such as "On the night of Jan 16th Faisal and Hasan drove to Tikrit." Differences will be resolved in conference but the bulk of the easy work will be handled without discussion or difficulty. No organization, even the US government, would be stupid enough to take the first submitted translation, accept it as correct and consider no other possibilities without review.
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I fail to understand how giving LE the tools to do their job is Big Brother. It isn't as though they are making up new rules to enforce; they were simply limited by an individual person's ability to read/process information. A crime committed out of the site of LE is still a crime that should have resulted in punishment.
This is the very reason that organ donation by death row inmates is not allowed in the US. If a person is going to be put to death there can be no possibility that it is being done to benefit another person through organ harvesting. As wasteful as it is, it is much better that the person is executed as punishment for their crime and no other reason.
THE Church (of which I am a member) responded to this, and every other concern in the realm of human sexuality and reproduction a long time ago: New life is the result of the bond of male and female through marriage, a specific possible outcome and reward of sexual intercourse. It is the firm belief of the Church that humanity is best served in the short and long term by the bonding of one man and one woman into a mutually supportive family unit through the sacrament of marriage. Not all people are called to marry, and not all married couples are called to have children. If this turns out to be the case it is not up to man and technology to decide otherwise.
"revoking MS's copyrights" The repercussions of this would be enormous. I know all the MS haters would love to see this happen but the fallout from messing with MS in this particular manner would be catastrophic. The United States makes a LOT of money from foreign markets on the production of "soft" goods such as software, music & movies. If for no other reason than preventing this from becoming a precedent the US government would have to defend this.
A person can have a significant impact on a company without being at the actual product production level. Herb Kelleher doesn't fly the planes at Southwest Airlines and Larry Ellison doesn't write actual Oracle code but those companies are high flyers because of what those individuals do. As long as Gates is driving the company forward, even if only to "protect the investment of shareholders" he still has a major impact on what the company produces.
E-mail is as likely to go away as package shipping and breathing. Yes, e-mail as it exists now has problems, but the concept of e-mail, is far too valuable to "go away." Of course, with a title like "E-mail problems need to be fixed" everyone would respond "No shit, Sherlock" and not read the article because it will tell us nothing we didn't already know.
I've had the same thought but I've always assumed the aggrieved party would not be DoD or the CIA but some underworld group. Then one day it will be leaked into the computing underground that the butchering of an individual was the Russian Mafia's response to their getting hit by a virus. It may be some time before it happens, but one day a truly dangerous individual is going to be hurt by some virus writer and they are going to learn very quickly that worse things than death can happen to an individual.
"It's possible to imagine surgical implants that COULD be recharged with less effort" My electric toothbrush recharges via induction with no direct electrical connection. This would certainly work for an implant as well. A person willing to implant a live electronic device in their body is way past being worried about possible effects from exposure to magnetic or electrical fields.
"Only on slashdot do you read about people who steal free shit." It isn't free. The viewer enters an unwritten agreement that the content they wish to view is given them in trade for their time spent watching advertisements. This is why I purchased Lost Season 2 through iTunes. I want the makers to get some compensation as these shows would not be produced for free but don't want to watch commercials. If you were to download a recording of a broadcast program with the commercials intact that would be a free product; downloading the show with the commercials stripped out is not.
I hope that you take care to blame 100% of your delays on the USPS, at least right now. I have to live very close to the Netflix distribution center in Norcross, GA and have a 3 disc a month subscription. It is very, very rare that Netflix does not email me the day after I put a disc in the mail that they have received it and the follow up disc is normally in my mailbox the next delivery day. 99% of my discs have two day turnaround. While I realize that not everyone gets to live this close to a center, in my experience (and I have had Netflix since '93) Netflix is turning around my discs as fast as it receives them. The ONLY time I have ever experienced a delay is when once of the older, less mainstream movies happens to get shipped in which case I am assuming that it is coming from farther away because the "shipping" email still comes immediately. I know throttling exists for high volume members but we have had as many as 11 in one month in the past.
I call "BS." Even ZoneAlarms free edition has the ability to ask the user if they wish to allow a particular app to access the Internet. Given the nature of Internet connectivity the whole world would be done a favor if average joe home user were to be given a little knowledge about how these things work. I have not yet met a computer user of any ability level to whom I could not explain ZoneAlarm's use of IP addresses and ports using a phone system/extension analogy and maybe, just maybe, people being asked to understand what is going on might help to eliminate some problems we currently have. We can always give people the option to say "Let it all out" but I suspect a large number of people would be genuinely interested in knowing that message coming up can be an indicator of a problem on their system.
The list of things people do without compensation is staggering. Have you really spent so little time being involved with open source and computering to have not yet realized that in general, people are free to do with their time as they please and do a lot of useless things for nothing but their own pleasure? I know plenty of people, myself included, who have spent far more time on far less significant activities.
As for the accuracy of the translations, have you ever heard of Wikipedia? As with Wikipedia, it is certain that alternate translations will be created, especially if a particular document's translation is disputed. By and large, much of the documents will contain easily translated statements such as "On the night of Jan 16th Faisal and Hasan drove to Tikrit." Differences will be resolved in conference but the bulk of the easy work will be handled without discussion or difficulty. No organization, even the US government, would be stupid enough to take the first submitted translation, accept it as correct and consider no other possibilities without review.