You do realize that he might not be in the US, right? For instance, in Canada, what he said is applied to all media regardless (for example...). Just because the MPAA/RIAA haven't done something like this in the US doesn't mean that what the parent said doesn't apply elsewhere.

Easy. The key you're given is only valid for the country the plane is over, and you rotate keys on a regular basis without repeating (and get your key on entry to a particular country/block of countries like the EU). That way, only planes which have already been authorized to go over a particular country's airspace can get keys. The keys don't have to be in the public hands, and you could even have a few hour grace period for transitioning keys so that the planes that were still in the air when the key changed aren't immediately flagged as using an illegal encryption key.

To be honest, it's a surprise that they don't actually do something like this. You still would know that there's a plane there when it responds back, but at least you can't get anything from it without knowing the key being used at that particular time (and leaking keys would only be valid for a limited period of time, which would make it so that they could just change what key to use for a particular interval when they know in advance that their list has been compromised).

Uh... wrong. Even if you tab, it won't indent properly when displayed using other spacing patterns. For instance, if you are lining up some statements that run over the line to make the code easier to read (which is a perfectly acceptable style), then different tab indents could screw that up. Using tabbing to just mask for indenting with spaces isn't a real solution to code indenting because of this, since you're still relying on a set tab spacing anyways in order to make your code readable, even if you don't think you are.

Because of this, what you're saying doesn't make a lot of sense to begin with, and it doesn't pay to try to trivialize the whole spacing debate. In any case, indenting with spaces removes ambiguity in how your code should be indented that tabbing introduces. If you seriously don't think that this is an issue, then you should seriously take a closer look at some lines of code which run over a line. If you've never had this problem, then you've never really done any serious programming before, and shouldn't really be commenting on something which you aren't familiar with.

As a programmer, I could really care less how many spaces a tab represents, or if someone uses tabs vs. spaces, but I do want to see consistency in its use within the bundle of code that I have to work on or consult, since having to switch back and forth for code spacing is going to be a huge drain on readability. And, like I stated before, just telling people to use ambiguous tabs over spaces without a tab to space convention already specified within a style document for your project doesn't do much more than to make the person viewing the code guess how many spaces their tabs represent. It may not sound like a big deal to you, but it can be a big headache when you have to continually switch back and forth between different tab spacing defines because different people like you assumed that a tab will look the same for everyone no matter how many spaces are used. Because of this, I would much rather prefer to define how many spaces a tab should represent in the code style documents for languages which have tabs as part of their syntax (like Python), and unambiguous spaces for everything else, so that I don't have to either guess at what sort of spacing the person used, or to read more style documents than I have to (most are designed rather well so that you can infer the style from code you've already seen. I personally would much rather not have to consult a style document unless I reach a case that seems ambiguous to me. That way, I can focus more on coding what I need to, rather than just reading every piece of documentation that comes my way.)

So, did Project Natal just become a part of KDE? This is a totally unexpected move from Microsoft. ;)

I prefer evolved games to intelligently designed games any day. Far more believable. ;)

Music as a service would be called concert venues. Basically, the bands would distribute their music in a recorded form as a way of advertisement over the net, and use it as a way to try to attract people to attend their live performances. They could then also attempt to sell other merchandise options, including CDs, if they still have value to their particular audience. Many smaller groups have had decent success this route, and it also gets rid of the need for middlemen like the RIAA. What we are seeing today is the music industry trying to fight tooth and nail to not be made irrelevant, even though they don't really add much value, if any, anymore. This sort of a model works, and there's many indie artists who have proven so. So in short, I'd say that there's plenty of people that would support that.

As for software as a service, the way you describe doing it is not software as a service, persay. I'd describe software as a service being done successfully as utilizing parts or all of a few different models. The first is cloud type services, like MMORPGs, or other online apps. These make it irrelevant as to whether you own the software or not, since what is really being sold is a subscription service (much like rentals). The other model, which I haven't seen a lot outside of the business world (which is a shame, really), is ticket based release. This is a lot like setting a bounty up on different targets, then being able to cash in on those bounties when those targets are acheived. So, developers can place down target features on a site, and let users invest in what they want to see done. Then, the company is more likely to chase after tickets which have higher bounties on them. The last way that I can think of that can be rather successful would be to sell support contracts. This is a lot like the last suggestion, but which is instead a flat fee paid monthly, yearly, etc. in which you're guaranteed that if you happen to have a problem with the software, that you will be able to have someone be able to resolve your issue, and will work to make custom patches especially for you if needed (or for your own software running on theirs, if needed).

Is it as much of a cash cow as the current way of doing things? Well, it depends. What these sort of models force you to do is to think smarter, not harder, which scares a lot of people. However, I think that it's inevitable that we will eventually arrive at a point where this will be the way in which media is handled. You can only keep fake barriers going for so long before you're just hurting yourselves by doing so (for instance, living off of a lie). I think that industries which are trying to uphold the old way of doing things are eventually going to either die off like the buggy whip makers or embrace and utilize alternative revenue streams that don't rely on them inflating an artificial market. We've seen this time and again throughout history, and we've always killed off leech or dead industries. The arguments that we see now were said about just about every technological advance that has ever been made. The difference is that now we seem to be paying them far more attention than they have gotten before.

In any case, if any industry really cares about adding value for their products, all they really need to do is to continue to do things for consumers that they can't do for themselves. If they fail to do this, then they should rightfully die off. If copying is at a point where any consumer can do so with ease (and it is), the answer is not to cut into your own profits by trying to kill that, the real answer is to change your business model to be able to acknowledge that your copying is no longer providing any value to the consumer. The sooner businesses realize this, and stop treating consumers as guilty until proven innocent, the healthier of a marketplace we can have.

Yeah. Tablets are dead. Long live suppositories!

And yet this is exactly what's going on with the internet and holding ISP's responsible. I think that's what the grandparent was trying to refer to in a roundabout way.

You don't mess with Texas.

Not to mention the racing stripes to make it go faster.