A government that actually considers this amount of money to be too much to spend on something. I am speechless.

Well, notepad.exe (empty, just opened it) is using ~6-7MB of RAM, while vi is only using ~3MB with a script open - albeit a short one.

You need to start somewhere if you hope to render an apple pie.

I'm kind of surprised at the lack of backlash from the rest of you here. Even most people I know in real life are opposed to this sort of thing - and they're not tin foil hat wearing slashdotters who stay off the grid (unless they feel particularly funny and are willing to expose themselves briefly for a +5 funny).

Who would you be comfortable having this information?

Corporations? No, a lot of the +5 insightful comments around here refer to the big bad corporations holding down the lowly employee. You really trust them?

Government? No, just as many of the +5 insightful comments around here refer to the big bad overbearing government that wants to control the lowly citizen. You really trust them?

A non-profit group perhaps? Maybe. Until they have some sort of security breach (not that the corporations/governments wouldn't, they'd just be more likely to sweep it under the rug successfully) comes in and the government starts installing watch dogs.

How long until GPS statistics are used by businesses for profit? Use the existing infrastructure to profile information on what type of people go where and at what times on an unprecedented scale. It would be a marketing dream.

How long until GPS statistics are used by the government for... whatever the hell is deemed necessary for oh, I don't know, national security? "We need to have access to this tracking info to stop TERRORISM. You don't want there to be another 9/11 do you? DO YOU?" Or maybe... "If we had access to the GPS database, we could have saved that thirteen year old girl from being tortured to death."

I don't care who you give the power to. Just because you trust them now doesn't mean you will in as little as a couple years. Once the infrastructure is there and people get used to it being 'normal', it'll be expanded.

Note: I am definitely being hyperbolic. Most of the examples above I would find unlikely on an individual basis... but the chance that one of them will happen? I wouldn't be surprised. And giving somebody that capability (as well as all successors to that somebody) does not make me comfortable in the least. Call me paranoid.

Unfortunately most people's level of 'awareness' is Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. And the current awareness campaigns seem to consist of "ARE YOU AWARE THAT AUTISM EXISTS?" without really giving a succinct explanation of what it is.

Although it's good we don't have them. I'd probably get fired when they find a rack of production servers running at 4.6GHz.

Are you insinuating that artists currently DO get their rightful dues?

Complaining about inequality in Western Europe? What do they think this is, socialism?

I'm sorry, but I don't believe that genius means morally superior.

I know a lot of Slashdot might feel that genius = morally superior, since as we all know, here on Slashdot we're all certifiable geniuses. And we're inherently morally superior. None of us want safe jobs, nice cars, and enough money to buy a woman. We've above that.

Every. Download. Is. A. Lost. Sale.

It's an empirically proven fact.

Doubtful. They'd just organize it as a 'government regulated monopoly' in the best interest of the viewers. Then they could make sure that we only get the news we need.

The whole point of this 'cloud gaming' thing is that you don't need a powerful graphics card to run games. It's essentially a streaming video of the game from a server that does have the hardware to run the game. Sort of like OnLive.<p>

Although I agree nothing is going to come of this, I'm pretty sure there have been a dozen "WoW on the iPhone!" stories too.