Isn't your idea equivalent to no government? The idea behind government is to pool resources. Sure and who is charging for the service. Probably according to you it is not a government. Who then, is in charge of making sure we aren't held hostage on a road tax? Environmental tax? Nice idea. The whole idea behind protecting the environment is to foresee a common problem, then work towards a goal that will mitigate that problem. If we collect an "environment tax" for a so-called problem, how do we know it is going to solve that "right" problem? Besides isn't the whole idea behind a corporation is that they are fallible, that is they can die. If one of your issues suddenly become moot, we have a whole infrastructure dedicated to collecting those taxes and providing the service = less change. Most sane people (and I hate to label others the opposite) know that pooling of resources and hence some form of "socialization" is the best way to get things done, whether it be money from a general populace to an owner who prioritizes, or a government that collects taxes to do things that benefit others, and themselves. Suppose we need a road, or other infrastructure that benefits both you and your competitors, but building it would transfer wealth away from your business, would you build it? Probably not because it would put you at an immediate competitive disadvantage. Want to form a bigger group to get it done, no problem, there are bigger competitors. No one wants to be a sacrificial lamb. Can you see an answer to that problem?

In other news pizza is a vegetable.

Scientific consensus has not received a bad reputation. The scientific method has existed for hundreds of years. However, sometimes science makes people mad for the conclusions it has drawn. I bet you that "Americans for Progress" would not even venture to understand science. Others want it to be wrong, but they can't use the scientific method to disprove science. Flaimbat of a summary. Even for those who do not understand science, let us not try to weaken its conclusions by acting like it "has gotten a bad reputation".
A reputation is a little like science in that it takes several observations to come up with a reputation because there is something to it as opposed to an inkling or a hunch. The title "Some people have a hunch that science is not sound.", however false, would be more true but the real story here is "Some people want science to have a bad reputation because it serves their interest".

People Against Hockey Stick Graphs...seriously, in whose best interest is this lawsuit being filed? If his research was false, then other researchers will come forth to put another more valid model. That is how science works. The hockey stick graph was a model. Are models now illegal?

Did you know that there is a zero-day emacs flaw which allows an attacker to run arbitrary Lisp code??? Scary, I know, much less vim. If Emacs is to overtake Windows, this type of careless programming has to stop.

Respectfully sir, I don't have to. The fact that the name of the file given is infringing is not enough and the fact that the site is a torrent site. Even if there was a hash "identifying" the file, that is not 100% accurate, although it may be given a very strong indication of. I said "a site", not "the site", which is what the court will be determining, whether "a" site should be suspended due to a copyright holder's evaluation of "a" site and/or file. Like other commenters have mentioned, the burden placed on "a" site to manually check whether a file follows a certain copyright or not is expensive for "all" sites and is overy onerous. The solution is to go after the site itself, not the "linker" to the site. Perhaps there is an automated way to identifying a song, or perhaps. not "A" file on a site could be arbitrarily long and you could change just a few bits of a file and it would be different. You cannot decide with reasonable certainty right now without some algorithm or machine learning that uses incredible amounts of computing power to identify a file. BTW the industry is working tirelessly on this problem, and Google just received a patent on identifying objects in a file, so we are a step away from actually impersonating a person to see if a file resembles another file and that is the only way.

So just by looking at a site, you can tell if it is hosting infringing copies or not? How is it obvious? The bar is set way to low for prosecution. What about a site like GoDaddy who has probably hundreds of thousands of sites? Was the process automated? If so then it would be far too easy for someone to claim infringement when there is not, or even when there is clearly not infringement to try and take down someone's site because that person or organization does "not like" the site. Again just like the DMCA and we know that that process has not been abused. The problem lies with the owner and maintainer of the site. If we are going to prosecute everybody along the way for an infringement then bless our technological souls.

If you would notice a pattern where Microsoft names their products with simple, yet all encompassing names. For example:

Word,
Office,
SQL Server,
System Center,
and many others...including the name "Windows"

It is amazing as if Bill Gates had a dog and named him "Microsoft Woof".

Actually, I believe I have found the answer to this question, and have done so by googling: Read the Request for Comments from the Internet Engineering Task Force, then get back to me in a couple of years. Have a nice read and hope to see you in the new job!

Sounds like the ones defending a balanced response to a rather open ended and not specific question like are the ones who want respect and are doing the hiring and the ones who would like to start a new career, maybe for the first time, are the ones who want to be given a chance to answer a question that can show their skills, not just pull something out of a hat. Both want respect. You are hiring them to work in supposedly a new role. How do you know that their "reputation" actually puts them in a position of "not being able to do the job"? Why do HR managers (not saying that you are one) always trying to run ends-around trying to find ways in which a candidate can not be good for a job by not being direct and pretending there are x amount of ways one can find out whether a person can do the job rather than by doing it? To me it seems normal that a person's job skills can be tested best by, well, testing them at their job. If I were a younger employee, that's what I would ask for, and be more genuinely motivated to do if the job starts right here, right now, instead of having to go through all that rigamarole.
In general, in WWII there was a shortage of men, people kept on dying, and choices and trust had to be made in the men doing their jobs, because there was no one else to fill them. Now, managers have enough time, money and leisure on their hands, that they can afford to "pretend" that all this extra bs hiring stuff makes a difference. Perhaps everybody needs to step back and figure out a way where most everybody can contribute. It would be good for everybody. [/rant]

How about COMMIE OS: China Offering Multi Man Independent Effort Operating System. This is the development model: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Ha just joshing ya, that was then and this is now: Corporate Oligarchy Man in the Middle "I" on Everybody OS. "I" being a loose Chinese translation that means "eye", must have been somebody new to English.

Here we go again....we have to protect ourselves from the "criminals" even before they are deemed so by a court of law. We have to "get the criminals", well in my country now, Canada, it is now criminal to rip a dvd to your computer without the content owners permission. And going off topic a bit, how long before almost everyone can be arrested for carrying on normal-day activities?

According to this article intrinsic support for XP will end this year. (And by intrinsic I mean OS updates that keep the OS secure from 0-day flaws-not just MSE). Even if they were being run for 2014-2001 = 13 years, the end is nigh. I agree with other commenters that a PC has a shorter life span than you imagine, with 3-4 years tending to be the norm and with 1:1 in sales for "Mac":"PC" they will eventually reach parity within that time. BTW my home has been Windows free since 2004 and Google requires a business case for any Windows PC.

Accenture is another Microsoft front, and if I am right, a lot of web-hosting providers are moving away from IIS for various reasons the least of which has to do with security. The conspiracy theorist in my is thinking that the reason that they would be moving to IIS is to seal healthcare.gov 's doom. Noooooo I actually want Obamacare to succeed.

More likely an attempt to prevent more organizations switching to Linux as the first poster suggested (and in his sarcasm was modded down). Are they going to donate the computers that run them too? Looks like a lot of slashdotters have caught on to this wayward attempt to build users and acceptance.