not voting is the closest thing this system has to a 'vote of no confidence' that much better republics and democracy's have. it's a sign that the majority don't like the current system but because it holds no legal weight both corrupt parties continue on.

the alternatives are not much better either. the constitutional party wants a government run in such a way that the constitution is a religious document free from error and supersedes new law, the exact opposite of what it was intended to be. a living document to be amended and brought up to date when needed.

libertarians want a government similar to those third world south american ones where the government only hands certain things. that's good, if you like the rest of the sphere being ruled and run by corporations. water merchants is a famous example, because of the limited scope of the government people in many countries in south america can not legally even use the rain that falls on them to drink. they have to pay more then a years salary to flowing water. oh and if you can't pay? privately run cops will show up and pour cement into your pipes.

the tea party wants a government that doesn't collect taxes but somehow still functions, there is a sever logical disconnect there.

even if a third party guy manages to 'win' the popular vote. one of the other two could take the case to the supreme court and win that way, it happened to al gore yet i don't recall riots and other things from this. people just 'accepted it'

this system is too corrupt to be fixed by within, and the people are too lazy to take it down from the outside. So i am just enjoying my life and watching the whole thing like a side show.

also had a 486, all in one machine too. looked a lot like the imac. i don't think it was very popular though cause it used token ring.

This is where a world government would make sense. then you would have a flat tax no matter 'where' the company is set up. they can set up where ever they want to get the best workforce, not to just get the best rate depriving people of jobs in some cases.

NOPE.
these deals also include allowing the company to keep what would normally be given to the state as 'state taxes on earnings' to add to their profits. while thankfully right now allowing it to be considered 'payed taxes for the wage earner'.
I don't expect that last part to last very long.

it took me a while to admit this, dedicated scifi nerds/fans(fan is short for fanatic after all.) are a minority. too small to through traditional means to keep a show alive.
it's the main stream and / or the casual watcher's that are the determining factor. with star trek or star wars still around they will always pick them over another scifi show despite if the other show is better.

the movie studio's and the tv studio's know this. this is why they kept pumping star trek all the way down the drain to enterprise. and then did that bad(sci-fi wise) reboot movie of star trek to try to restart it.

these franchises need to stop, they are drowning good talent and good shows simply because they are viewed as less risky then a new sci-fi property. the sad thing is due to the sheer amount of money needed to produce either a movie or tv series in the traditional sense. no studio is going to risk that on a unknown franchise. the new one may turn out to be a hit like babylon 5(i loved it too). they just simply WON'T take that risk unless they are garenteed a return.

that is why babylon 5 was a success, there was no star trek to draw the more main stream crowd away if you wanted sci-fi it was basically the only show on. and it's why firefly died. enterprise despite how bad it was, was backed by the star trek name. when people in this group only have a short amount of time to watch a show, they go for the one with name brand recognition.

That star trek and star wars stuff should stop being made, as in movies and tv shows? they had their run and there really isn't much new they can offer. even more if there is a star trek show or star wars one they seem to crowd out other sci-fi shows even if those shows are better. babylon 5 only became successful be was out in between major star trek tv shows. firefly died because it had the bad luck of being out at the same time a star trek show was out despite how horrible that star trek show was.

exactly. the reason why most things are so cheap that you as a non-rich person. can buy them is that somewhere along the line of it's manufacture is either a slave wage paid person working 16 hour days, actual slave labor, etc. if you don't want to participate in this process there is basically only a single option. join the amish or similarly minded groups.

the current civilization, as in what's generally called 'western' or 'European' is based solely on exploitation. if not of people through actual slave labor or slave wages. then through exploitation and destruction of land for natural resources. oil, natural gas, coal, diamonds, ore mining.

it used to be in the 1800's the people portion was here at home, the labor conditions in china right now strangely mirror the ones in the united states during this time. 12+ hour days. company towns/complexes where your in perpetual debt to the company(i sold my soul at the company store), payed so little you could barely eat etc. all so the richer people here could enjoy a very similar lifestyle to what you and i do now(they did not have the advanced electronics but a lot of modern gadgets were around back then at least in the later 1800's in one form or another.)

the people then had enough, through years of violent labor strikes and other means people here won better wages, shorter work days, rights and protections. but this also came about because technology improved and a lot of the labor that was done by people could be replaced with machines. the labor that could not would be pushed elsewhere.

to make a long explanation short. the reason your here right now, able to have time to worry about the 'ethical implications' of buying widget A instead of widget B is that you knowingly or unknowingly live in a society that has exported it's exploitation in it's majority to countries 'far away' for stuff that machines can't do, and replaced human workers with machines when they can. exploitation is in the nature of the machine and is the only reason why you have the free time to worry about these things in the first place.

google only collects what is typed or searched for in the omnibox, nothing else.
but don't let facts get in the way of your idea of the google eye looking at everything on your computer including your porn collection.

you don't need a second video card to have a second monitor on linux...

Or use a player that ignores that junk. vlc, mplayer, xine..

if this wasn't a election year, he would pass it.

the article does mention they want someone with kernel module experience. looking at what the steam client does drm wise and how linux is, it makes sense because the only way it can do such things is have hooks in the kernel.

self process obfuscation to prevent cheating programs in general.
network interface monitoring to prevent the packet modifying cheats.
a hook into the opengl rendering stack to allow checking for aim-bots and the like.
system process monitoring and inspection, can't do this as a normal user. used to prevent some other cheating programs that disguise themselves.
input-dev hooks to check for marco and other bot programs made to enter input.

some things it does can be done without it.

handling each game in one large file while hiding the .bin from the user.
payment and network encryption for payment, libssl maybe?

either way any such module would put the kernel into 'taint status' like the amd and nvidia drivers simply from what it needs to do to facilitate the same level of protection from cheaters.

Your title was exactly what i was thinking when the article stated they wanted kernel dev's.
doing some research it would seem that the only way for steam to keep the same drm(compression / encryption + process monitoring etc all above the control of the user) is to have a run time kernel module inserted either upon boot or load of the client.

IF the claim by them is true that steam is getting a linux port. and IF the only way they want to do this is to make one of the first few pieces of linux native drm. THEN i can predict what happens.

client is released, No distro's pick it up because they can no longer contribute to the kernel as the drm module taints it thus all bugs are layed on the tainting module. a fraction of the users then they expected adopt the client, half a year or one quarter later they drop the client due to poor linux game sales being a fraction of the mac-osx sales which are a fraction of windows. the vocal part of the community bitches and moans about their commitment. osx users are quiet because they are a small percentage of users. window's users of the system act smugly saying 'i told you so' in leet along with some decade year old misconceptions on linux.

when the fact of the matter is the platform it's self considers stuff like DRM as damage and works around it. No distro will pick it up because to do so would mean extra money, time, and effort dealing with kernel bugs by trying to reproduce them without their drm loaded. kernel and software devs will off hand refuse to listen to bug reports posted by people who have it installed. etc.