That was... quite a wall of rambling text, so I apologize - was quite sleepy when I typed up that book above. lol.

But, to follow up:

Sony's Playstation 4 has never (to my knowledge) been modded and there are no hacks other than account sharing and cloning at the present time. It was released in Nov of 2013. I frequent homebrewer sites... and basically, they've given up trying to mod consoles altogether declaring the age of the mod chip over. People are also afraid of jail time as some have been charged with DMCA violations for selling mod chips.

The Playstation 3 was never modded either - it wasn't even really hacked as someone leaked the keys, so everyone used those to make software mods.

The hardware mods only worked b/c the manufacturers weren't expecting them. Now, they hide the internals better so you can't solder between chips and perform man-in-the-middle attacks. They also check firmware versions and test for mod chips, then disable online access if anything abnormal is found. I wouldn't say hardware modding is over yet, but it's getting there. Most mods I see these days are for controllers, not systems.

As for PC miniaturization, I thought this was impressive:

Look at the latest 12" Macbook motherboard:

http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-co...

http://i.imgur.com/19nDmFc.jpg

http://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-co...

http://s3.amazonaws.com/digita...

It's smaller than a Raspberry Pi 2, and only a bit bigger than the tiny Iphone 6 motherboard. It holds a Dual Core Pentium M 1.2 Ghz with hyperthreading and turboboost to 2.6 ghz with 8 GB of RAM and Intel HD Graphics 5300 that supports the retina display.

This article basically goes on to say what I've been saying - you can't service this kind of device, you just replace the entire mobo if it breaks:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2...

The system is hardly top of the line, but it does support the idea that the internals of PCs/laptops are shrinking to credit-card size at a rapid pace and that the current GHz speed plus a decent graphics chip are "good enough" for most people. The high end macbook pro and macbook air motherboards aren't much larger, really - just some additions for more I/O and fans. If it's that small now, just wait another 10 to 20 years. We already have the tech to put that entire mobo on a chip smaller than a dime, but it'd cost a fortune to design and get a decent yield off of a wafer that size.

Of course, in 10 to 20 years, desktops will be gone. We'll maybe have a something that looks like today's PCs acting as a "home media server" with lots of laptops, phones, and tablets that connect.. maybe all on the same domain or "home network" of some sort. Maybe a few small form factor devices like mac minis, roku, tivo, etc. None of the devices will be upgradable or repairable as it'd be cheaper to buy a new one than to bother. I expect in 30 years, all of them will be locked into one walled garden or another.

I'll grant you it seems a bit dystopian, but as someone who has been in the IT field for 20 years and has an engineering background and an MBA, I've seen this coming for a very long time... it's where things are going ; or, at the very least - where Microsoft is going to try to persuade everyone in the guise of it being for their own security. MS tried before with INTEL to create a "trusted computing" with signed boot loaders. They got it, but it can be turned off in the BIOS -- for now. There's been some discussion regarding whether or not MS will allow it to be disabled in their future Surface Pros.

As to the first law of computer security, look at Ipads and Iphones - Apple hardware and software with a locked bootloader and constant updates to patch the exploits used to jailbreak them. Jailbreaks used to come out within a few days of the IOS release, then a few weeks... now, it's been 4 months since 8.1.3 was released -- no jailbreak yet. If you upgraded to a version you can't jailbreak, you now can't go back to an earlier version as Apple has stopped signing the old firmware.

http://www.redmondpie.com/ios-...

But, Apple isn't sitting on its laurels. It's released 8.2, then 8.3, and soon 8.4 which is currently in beta. They're actively responding to jailbreaks - even calling the hacker teams by name that discovered the flaws and listing the specific exploits that have been patched. Hacker teams have even expressed their frustration as they've started to work on a possible exploit only to have Apple close the hole before releasing from BETA.

No one has a hardware hack for the Iphone or Ipad. It's all software exploits. Software will likely always have bugs, but Apple is hardening IOs against privilege escalation. I fear the low-hanging fruit is gone and jailbreaking will be a thing of the past for IOs in the very near future.

What's really telling is that my IT friends who used to jailbreak their Iphones (b/c it was cool... or they could hack it to install a browser with flash so they could watch HULU or some other such thing)... no longer care about jailbreaking their phones! They say it's too much trouble, they get stuck with older versions of IOs b/c the new ones aren't jailbroken yet... their TOS is invalidated if they have issues and want help at the Apple Store... and the Iphones really do everything they really want anyway without needing to jailbreak them. They've become accustomed to the DRM'd phone as-is!

If Apple can prevent jailbreaking their DRM'd Iphone and even get technically inclined (and pro-hacker, pro-pirate people at that) to not care their device is locked down, you bet MS could do the same for their Surface PRO and XBox.

But, it won't come as a hard sell. MS will say, "Here's an MS PC with MS OS, browser, office suite, games compatible with XBOX, Skype, etc etc... and it's locked down to only run our OS, our Apps, and a selection of approved apps through our store - and you must run all other non-approved programs in a sandbox/container/virtual machine so you can't get a virus from them. If you have a hardware or software issue, just call MS... and, if you upgrade to a new machine or have a hardware issue with your current one, your MS account has a record of your licenses and installation setup, so we can restore your PC (and your personal files are all backed up in the cloud for free through MS onedrive).

Don't think it won't happen -- Google practically did it themselves with Chromebooks.

Computers used to fill 2 story buildings, then a room, then a desktop PC... now most people are buying laptops that are desktop-replacements. Soon, our PCs may be as small as an Iphone. (the raspberry pi, arduino, mac mini, and a dozen other small form factors already exist). CPUs have incorporated math co-processors, modems, sound cards, gpus, northbridges, etc... it's only a matter of time before it's all system-on-a-chip the size of a credit card with a giant heat sink on it. There won't be any way to mod it.

As to your ports to repair issue... no. There will be DRM'ed firmware - eventually the entire OS will be in firmware. Think about current OS sizes. IOS and Android both exist in firmware. Windows is next. In fact, for the raspberry pi, it's almost there on a simple flash drive. If it gets corrupted, you plug it into another PC, download the latest signed firmware, flash it... and re-download all your apps which are attached to your account - just like a phone does today. Most phone repair places today just replace the glass or the batteries -- sometimes a SIM card issue (but SIMs are going software only soon, too!)

Ipads and Iphones are locked down with DRM, Google's looking to do the same eventually with Android. MS tried and failed with the original Surface, but they'll give it another go. the MPAA and RIAA really want their DRM, and so does MS, Apple and Intel. Google doesn't much care either way, but they have been designing their Chromebooks to be more difficult to override the boot lock as well.

Don't worry, though. It won't happen overnight. The megacorps are patient and worry about consumer backlash. All the pieces are there, though. MS just needs to sell its own PCs using XBOX and Surface Pro tech and lock the firmware with the trusted computing chip already in every machine and steer people towards the MS App store just like Google and Apple do with their app stores. Once the machines are as small as Iphones, just one PCB with a CPU/GPU hybrid core, there will be no way to physically hack it -- you will have to find buffer overflows or other exploits, but those will likely be undone on the next MS update... and you'll eventually be forced to get that MS update b/c some software will require it - or the OS itself will have auto-updates that a user can't override without another hack.

There will always be alternatives, but as PCs, notebooks, tablets, and phones become commodities; it's inevitable that only a few corporations will bother to produce them because you have to sell a massive number of them when you have razor-thin profit per unit. You'll eventually have your choice of Apple walled garden, Google walled garden, or MS walled garden... or some crap thing that will be the equivalent of today's random Chinese knock-off.

I'm aware of the hardware and software mods... they're very inventive. On the whole, I agree with you that with current tech, DRM is relatively easy to circumvent.

I just don't agree that will be the case in the future.

Many of the bootloaders for systems took advantage of software vulnerabilities - mostly overflow bugs that would allow you to skirt the DRM. Those can be patched with updates. The hardware mods are necessary b/c the software mods are so easy to patch -- but, they require access to the motherboard and often a logic probe to determine how to create the mod in the first place. When we have system-on-a-chip, effectively the entire motherboard will be on one or more wafers of silicon encased on a housing. You won't be able to modify it without destroying it. It would be a monumental task like trying to add instructions to a CPU after it's been packaged.

In that future... if you have DRM, you're fucked. lol.

No. TFA states the new turbines cost half as much and can be spaced twice as dense as conventional blade style turbines. They capture 30% less energy than a conventional turbine, but considering you can put 2 in the same spot for roughly the same price as just one conventional turbine, you should get more energy for the same cost and land space.

In theory, lower total cost of ownership as well given the lack of moving parts to replace... but who knows what real-world issues the structure may see. Maybe the materials don't hold up as well as thought under heat, light, and vibration and will require maintenance or degrade their performance over time.

Oh, I hate DRM, and I generally agree with you regarding its pitfalls and shortcomings; but, when MS bakes the DRM into the EUFI/BIOS and couples that with DRM built into the CPU, it'll be quite a trick to hack the system... similar to how DirectTV is difficult to hack -- DRM'ed hardware plus encryption keys that rotate and updates that come with a self-destruct code should the update find a hardware or software issue. The PlayStation and Xbox already have safeguards that will disable a system from being able to play games on their networks if a system is identified as modified. MS will just use that to disable any pirated warez as well.

DRM, as you said, doesn't work when you can physically get to it -- but what do you do when the DRM is encased inside BIOS and CPU chips? You can't realistically crack them open and solder them... and you bet those will be hard to mod by design. You can't easily mod the software when the hard drive is an encrypted black box that only accepts encrypted updates via MS update either... and no user has admin/root access to modify system files.

As for the Intel laser tech, yes... it's awesome. It's totally cool that the pathways don't cause EM pulses that interfere with other pathways. It's also awesome that the light generally doesn't heat up the chips... downside is that it takes a lot of juice to produce a laser pulse.

Hardware tech currently is more concerned with lowering power usage and increasing battery storage capacities than in increasing CPU speed at the moment. Server farms would rather stack several slower low-power machines in a rack than use a single equivalent high speed system that was a power hog. It's a race to the lowest watt per flop right now in both mobile and server areas.

By the time INTEL gets around to using the fiber within the cpus, it'll have already had several die shrinks and probably have gone 3D chips... the most obvious use for the light circuit in them would be the clock pulse - chips today can suffer from race conditions and clock drift b/c the paths are so long and winding to deliver the clock pulses... go 3D, you shorten the paths... go fiber, you decrease the latency of the clock pulse reaching everywhere simultaneously. The clock pulse is already a power hog and produces a lot of heat, so it's a good target to replace.

I doubt we'll see fully optical chips except in fiber routers where decreasing the latency of the transmission takes precedence over the power consumption of the router. I do think we'll see, as INTEL has already stated, fiber from the CPU to other components - especially if they can use multimode fibers with different spectrum for each I/O port. Instead of all those trace lines from the CPU and capacitors and resistors all over, just one fiber to each chip it needs to talk to. PCBs will be much less complex and smaller - driving devices to be even smaller and more portable... again putting pressure on lower power & better batteries.

As for the foundries, TSMC is very competitive with INTEL in the 20nm and 28nm fabs... and catching up in the 14nm fabs. I expect INTEL will hit 7nm before TSMC. When Moore's Law ends, it'll likely be cheaper for INTEL to sell its fabs to TSMC than to run them themselves... so, as you say, they have to rely on their patents to survive.

All they have to do is continue to release SSE extensions or other MMX/SSE additions to the x86/amd64 architecture and license the tech to AMD (if they're still around) and others, and they get to extend their monopoly by another 14 years. It won't be hard - not like they have any serious competitors.

Depending on the state, sentences can even be active (prison time), probation, and/or community service. They can also be commuted so that the record shows you're guilty and sentenced to X years, but you serve no actual time. North Carolina has a "Prayer for Judgement Continued" option for judges to basically accept a guilty plea for even some felonies, yet give no punishment or sentence, so the person is guilty, but not convicted because a conviction requires a sentence. (This works by pleading guilty, praying for the judge to continue the judgement/sentencing at a later time - say 2 or 3 years from that date... and then the judge decides after that time not to sentence you if you have obeyed the law within that time frame.) Then, there's also deferred prosecution for first time offenders which many states have -- this lets you plead guilty to a crime, abide by certain rules, and then the prosecutor agrees not to take the case to trial and simply drops the charges after you've completed all the requirements. They then tear up your guilty plea and let you seal and/or expunge the record of your arrest, too.

I had a big, long, TL;DR reply for this, but Slashdot killed it. lol. Probably for the best as I tend to ramble on long posts.

Basically, Intel is already feeling the effects of diminishing returns from Moore's Law. They hit the max of 4 GHz over 10 years ago and have switched to focusing on system-on-a-chip things and multicore to make up for it... but, not a lot of software uses multi-core very well. I recently recycled a 12 year old laptop with a single core Pentium 4 - not because of the CPU exactly, but because neither the CPU nor the integrated GPU which I could not upgrade supported H.264. I could play 1080p MPEG2 just fine, but it struggled with 720p H.264 video with 90%CPU. Modern CPUs have H.264 support. Most are APUs with some sort of 4K video support and early H.265 as well. I have a couple desktops, but I have 5 laptops - the latest, I think will last me at least 10 years. It's a Republic of Gamers ASUS. Even if I replace it within 10 years, that just means my slowest laptop will be handed down to someone else. lol. I use the laptops mostly as media PCs connected to HDTVs.

Intel can shrink another 3 or 4 times, but then they're done. 3D chips are great for lower power, but they won't increase speed much - they also will require innovative liquid cooling between layers as they'll be a ball of hot wires otherwise. Optical transistors currently max out at 10 Ghz, but that's just 2x or 3x the silicon speed, and INTEL doesn't see any reason to use the tech save for CPU to mobo connections.... because the fiber optics require power hungry lasers that have their own drawbacks.

I don't think Intel laments the end of Moore's Law. I think they look forward to not having to overhaul their foundries every couple years with expensive new equipment that always comes with yield issues. That would save them an immense expense on production costs. Also, they still own a ton of patents and a huge foundry they can leverage to maintain their leadership. With their R&D, they can continue to put more crypto, graphics, and components on the chips and re-design them for decades even if they don't get die shrinks. They aren't even using the die shrinks to get faster chips right now - just lower power as that's where the money is right now. They are killing the near-bankrupt AMD on all fronts, but ARM is still the leader in the mobile market which is hot right now.

Desktops have about an 8 to 10 year life cycle (used to be 3 years, then 5 years, then 7.. now approaching 10). Consoles have a forced 6 or 7 year life cycle (PlayStation release every 6 years, but it takes time... a year or more for people to buy in masse) Even Intel engineers see a future as early as 10 to 20 years from now where that life cycle extends to 15 or 20 years... and eventually even longer.

This is why most PC manufacturers are leaving the market as it's now a commodity - HP almost stopped making PCs a few years ago, but decided against it. IBM quit and sent their customers to Lenovo. Dell lost money for years and had its stock price fall until it went private (partly with MS loans) Now Dell has a huge pile of debt and may exit PCs for just corporate server and laptop contracts. HP, ACER, and Lenovo are most of what's left... and I bet MS would buy ACER in a heartbeat (likely after ACER trounces Lenovo or acquires it). HP, I dunno... I bet MS would let HP keep the server space if it gave MS the consumer space.

Why do I think this? Welll.... MS bought Nokia... and they make Surface and Surface Pros. They also make XBOX Ones -- which are modified low-end 8 core AMD DRM'd PCs with Radeon 7000 graphics that support 4K resolution. They also share a code base between Win 10, XBOX, and Windows Phone... and are giving away the phone OS while releasing Win 10 for free for users with Win 7 or higher. I can only guess that MS finally recognized that most people buy OSes with their new PCs and the OEMs and businesses pay for those licenses. It's pointless to fragment their user base over OS updates.

What does all this lead to? MS is determined to take on the Apple model. They have a phone, a tablet/laptop, a console/tv/desktop... and they now have a store where you can get the OS upgrades. They already sell you the XBox One at a loss b/c you buy the games. It would be trivial to make the XBOX successor in 2020 be a regular MS desktop with DRM sold at a loss b/c you'll buy apps and games. You can buy keyboards, controllers, monitors, etc separately and either use a long cable or wireless HDMI to connect to a TV. I currently use a laptop's HDMI output on a separate screen to stream 1080p content while using the laptop for games and web stuff... this XBOX Desktop would be no different.

Win 8 already makes it extremely difficult to install without setting up an MS account. Win 10, it may be mandatory... and MS says Win 10 will be its last OS ever - just lots of rapid updates from here on out.

I think you're forgetting that MS loves vender lock-in. They tried with IE, they tried with DirectX and ActiveX. Don't let their current warm 'n fuzzy attitude towards open source fool you - the EU mostly forced that upon them. Give them a decade, and they'll go full Apple. They've already said as much to reporters - they want more control over hardware, have windows as a service, and sell most software through their store - as it can be authorized, DRM'd, and a record of purchases backed up to restore if hardware dies. Most users would welcome it. Fewer choices, but less confusion, more security, better hardware support.

I think everyone's headed that way. Google has its nexus and chromebooks and chromecast, apple has its products, MS will have its own hardware... and then there will still be Roku, Steambox, etc. Even Ubuntu will likely have its own brand of hardware along with being licensed for various phones and devices.

By the time that happens, I'll be full Linux I hope :-) I prefer Linux Mint.... but... even they have their own Mint hardware! woot! Mintbox and Mintbox2!

http://www.linuxmint.com/store...

I wasn't aware SD had a lameness filter... In any case, I don't think your post was lame at all imho. :-) You make some very good points. I also have emulators on my PC and use a controller for them. Yay!

I didn't mean to imply that the PC was going away - simply that MS would prefer you buy their Surface line of products in conjunction with their Xbox and Windows Phone which they could lock down through DRM and tie to an online account they can control rather than have myriad hardware configurations of a PC to support - at least on the consumer side. Corporate users are a separate issue, but they also tend to purchase large numbers of fairly homogeneous boxen.

I don't see the benefit from MS's perspective of opening up their walled garden of game+Xbox to game+anyrandomWindowsBox. They can quickly modify an Xbox remotely to deal with bugs, hacks, or upgrades without worrying about interfering with any random windows setup (assuming a user would allow the update necessary to make that change on their PC.

Homogeneity is the key. Apple's hardware is largely homogeneous. Xbox hardware and software is homogeneous. PCs are anything but. It's hard to code for that, difficult to support, and even harder to push mandatory updates towards.

Also, game makers can enjoy making users pay for the same game TWICE if they want to play on Xbox and their Windows box. Ports between them aren't trivial, but not difficult either, so a thoughtful recode and recompile to make a port isn't expensive. Why would game makers (MS included ie HALO) want their games to be so portable? They'd also have to make sure the same portable game was coded to run on the slowest/weakest hardware, but possibly would ramp up to use the best hardware depending on the system... and deal with possible customer backlash over it running worse on one system or another.

Gah... I just see the whole idea as a bit of a nightmare until we reach the end of Moore's Law and can have fairly homogeneous hardware for coders to work with. There won't be much need for specialized cheap hardware for consoles when every PC and console has basically the same CPU/GPU/RAM/BUS configuration 30 or 40 years from now. Should be trivial to port games when hopefully every system is running some form of Linux on OpenGL graphics, too ;-) *fingers crossed for STEAMBOX*

I think there's more to it that you seem to be glossing over.

Console gameplay is inherently different than PC gameplay because of the standard inputs: keyboard + mouse vs controller. Games have been redesigned to suit those I/O methods so that the PC version of a game is very different than the console version. Even with network play, Xbox will separate PC gamers from console players so that the PC gamers don't have an unfair advantage. Specifically, some games, you can highlight multiple units with a mouse and save those units as a group on an F1 key, then toggle between multiple groups of units from F1 to F12, but on the console, you cannot.

Xbox games are very easy to port to PC and vice versa, but there's some tweaking for the user experience done as well.

You also gloss over the hardware issue. Historically, many console games were designed specifically for the hardware they ran on - even taking advantage of CPU errata and other bugs as well as race conditions and timing issues which would not exist on any other configuration. Switching from Xbox to PC may not be as simple as switching out a driver or two - you may have to emulate other hardware nuances, too.

Not saying it can't be done. Emulators for consoles are easy to find for the PC. DirectX, x86 or AMD64 architecture, and similar code base in Xbox and Windows should make it much simpler to port, but games would have to be aware of whether they have keyboard + mouse or joystick to provide the proper interface options for the game and match people online fairly - and take into account any nuances between the Xbox and the PC setup with drivers and/or emulation.

Frankly, I think Microsoft has no interest in opening up their Xbox platform to other devices. They can DRM the heck out of the box and give homogeneous specs to publishers to code for. Game companies can already port their games to PCs if they wish. There's no reason for MS to bother.

MS sees the XBox as an entertainment portal - a Windows Media Center of sorts that can play Netflix and other content as well as games. If anything, I think they'd prefer your PC die by the wayside and everyone own an XBox, a Windows Phone, and a Surface instead -- all DRM locked down, controlled by MS and sync'ed to your Microsoft Account online.

I think jellomizer was referring to the fact that hormonal adolescents who do not yet have a fully formed prefrontal cortex have a much higher incidence of indulging in risky, violent, and/or unwise behavior as compared to fully grown adults due to the fact that they lack both the experience and the actual brain grey matter to fully think things through which would help inhibit such adolescent behavior. That does not excuse such behavior, but it does not mean we should treat children as if they were adults who generally have a better ability to control and channel their emotions.

I'm unsure why you believe "adult behavior" is on par with teenage adolescent behavior simply because adults can and do engage in similar behaviors (though it is worth noting that often when adults do this sort of thing, their judgement is impaired by alcohol or drugs which puts them into a more uninhibited mental state similar to juveniles). Psychologists would strongly disagree with you if you're making the case that adults and teenagers have the same incidence of such behavior.

You don't treat a 5 year old like you would a 12 year old... nor a 12 year old like a 16 year old. Even still, one should not treat a 15 year old like an 18 or 21 year old.

Personally, I say send the boy to counseling and to juvenile detention, make the family pay restitution. Wipe his record and seal it when he turns 18 so he can have a normal life. Maybe he'll make better decisions when his brain is fully formed and learn from his mistakes. Maybe not. Giving him a felony record and shoving him in a state prison with hardened felons is not great way to reform this child. It may just turn him into a lifetime criminal with new criminal connections and no job prospects due to his record.

Wow, that was a lot of hogwash. lol.

When you are born into a country, you must obey that country's laws. Welcome to the planet Earth. I didn't choose to have the legal drinking age set for me at 21 in SC... but it is... and it was when I was born. Not just myself, but EVERYONE's right to self-determination is removed when you live in a country with laws - you are restricted by those laws, right or wrong. The Hawaiians born today are Americans by birth - and if they're of Hawaiian ancestry, they have additional rights to live on the Hawaiian Homelands if they choose. They even get minority status grants and such.

The ancient Hawaiian society is a myth - by the time the USA took over, the islands were heavily populated by foreigners and even the kingdom which was only around for a short time was built by subjugating tribes itself!

As for your hilarious argument about stealing from families generations ago, MY FAMILY had its houses BURNED during the Civil War - because we helped slaves escape to the north. Exactly whom should I call to get the large plantation houses rebuilt that society apparently OWES me?!?! No one! But then, I didn't buy those lands or build those houses in the first place, so who is anyone to say that simply because my ancestors owned something that was taken away from them that I am somehow the grieved party?

Also, take note that while you seem to imply that Americans are proud of our rebellion, yet deny others the same rebellion -- we also put down our own rebellious states in our Civil War. Personally, I believe the USA should have some legislative process for succession - not because I necessarily support any particular succession, but because there should at least be a process for it. Say if Hawaii were to decide to succeed and become an independent country or join the British Commonwealth. There should be a process of ratifying that succession peacefully.

I would never imply that the USA is perfect - or even that it is right in many of the international politics it plays. I'm just a realist. We can't turn back the clock and we can't bow to pressure from "natives" just because their ancestors were there first. If two people are born in Hawaii - one of European descent and another of native descent, why should the one of native descent have any greater say in such issues? They're both Americans! You know, democracy is one person, one vote -- we don't weight the votes by ancestry.

I have no idea what Pa'i'ai is, but I shall have to put it on my list of things to try next! :-)

I hear spam is much more popular than the poi there, but It could be a myth as I haven't seen any polling data to back it up - just anecdotal evidence. haha.

I have no issues with people protesting. I've had friends that got extra credit in their humanities studies for protesting, though so I find such uninformed student protests dubious.

I don't mean to imply that there is no sense of injustice with the US occupation of the island, but I see it as historical fact, not something we can turn back the clock on. Same with the Native Americans - terrible track record with wars (including biological warfare) and breaking peace treaties, trail of tears, etc. etc. But, their small consolation is the reservations and today, many of my friends are 1/4 or 1/8th of Native American descent. "Pure" native american populations have been declining for a long time and more of them identify as Americans rather than members of their native tribes. What's done is done, and it's too late for the Natives to have a say in who builds what on what mountaintop that someone else owns.

That's why I say the religious route is a good argument. The mountain should have been protected as part of the agreement to make the Hawaiian Homelands if it's sacred... but still, no one would stand for someone destroying Jerusalem or Mecca - even if the destroyers rightfully owned the land. I'm sure there's a way to lobby for protected status if it's that important.

Heck, I think Hawaii is gorgeous and maybe we shouldn't built giant telescopes on pretty mountains anyway ;-) I'm sure the locals could make a zoning ordinance to scrap the construction easily.

I just don't think the simple fact that they're of native descent should hold much weight in the decision. I mean, who cares who their parents and grandparents were - they're Americans living in Hawaii now and if they choose to live a traditional Hawaiian lifestyle, they can live on the reservations... er... "homelands."

The Hawaiian Kingdom folks in particular are a bit nutty and want to "end the US occupation" of Hawaii.
http://www.hawaiiankingdom.org... I have a hard time taking them seriously - especially since they're hypocritical in thinking that because the kingdom usurped other tribal lands and conquered the islands that they're the true stewards of Hawaii and not the USA which, in turn, usurped them.

Actually, I've known about the "reservations" on Hawaii for decades. Interesting how you're an anonymous coward that presumes to know me and what I know.

The luau wasn't a hotel one... geez... I don't think the hotel had the space for it anyway. Never claimed to be an expert on Hawaii btw - but at least I've visited and taken an interest unlike most armchair pundits.

1893 was 122 years ago. I sympathize with the actual natives living at the time, but they aren't alive anymore. Six "generations" later, I don't think anyone is entitled to reparations. There is an unspoken statute of limitations on this sort of thing. Not a single disgruntled Hawaiian today was born knowing anything other than living with the reality of the rule of the USA - same as any other citizen born in the USA. Why should their ancestry or DNA give them any privilege?

Did you know that my native South Carolina was once a British colony? Seems the demographics shifted a bit over time and the rebels stole her away to form the USA.... then she broke off that yoke to form a Confederacy with many other states... and was attacked by the USA and again re-absorbed into the union.

Should I as a native South Carolinian get reparations for not being part of the British Commonwealth? or the Confederacy? Nonsense.

I believe the Hawaiian Homelands is sufficient restitution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...

Let's not forget that the Kingdom of Hawaii was forged from bloodshed, war, and usurping land itself from OTHER natives on various islands -- and it was a rather short-lived kingdom that lasted less than 100 years. Seems odd to opine for the bad old days of bloody island warfare and subjugation that spanned less time than the state of Hawaii has existed. Throughout the history of the world, countries have come and go. Hawaii was taken over by an internal rebellion - granted, mostly consisting of settled foreigners... but, still -- they lived there, so I can't fault them for fighting to become a state.

I've visited the lovely land of Hawaii. Beautiful place... the luau I attended was fantastic. I was served poi. Disgusting stuff that makes paper mache paste sound delicious (though the other food was quite good). The native serving the poi said "yeah, this is the nasty stuff we used to eat before foreigners visited the island. POI -- I assume it was named for the sound you make when you spit it out of your mouth.. poi poi poi."

But, I digress. I see all this Kingdom of Hawaii stuff as merely delusional fantasies of people's ancestral rights to govern themselves rather than appease the country they actually live within. I think the religious desecration angle is a more convincing argument if they truly believe the land is sacred.