Hmm... this sounds familiar. Could it be this story?

"Except in some rural areas, there aren't many songs left," he says. "In the film we show how China saw this kind of music and the Tibetan culture as a threat. Tibet was never exposed to recorded music until China invaded Tibet in the late 1940s. So the first thing they did was they set up these loud speakers and they blasted Chinese propaganda music to brainwash Tibetan people. They took Tibetan folk melody and put Chinese communist lyrics. And they trained Tibetan singers to sing these songs."

... a passion for not thinking, and a chronic paranoia towards originality.

You can thank the baby boomers for that. They hate thinking and originality.

I would've thought using datamining to determine who is Jewish should be compared to the Nazis.

I wonder how they'll take care of the sneakernet or "rogue" wifi hotspots where you can exchange files without the internet. I guess "Trusted Computing" will take care of it...

BearShare, Limewire, Kazaa, and even Usenet.

They even use companies like MediaDefender to disrupt P2P networks.

The only reason P2P technology is mostly used for copyright infringement is because the big media companies sued the fuck out of anyone who wanted to create a P2P system whether it was used for a legitimate purpose or not. So a lot of people who were doing legitimate research into creating P2P technologies stopped.

Is the legal system going to require people to change their names if someone else considers it offensive?

There are people stupid enough to demand just that.

I remember when I was out looking for a job in electronics, and some guy was telling people I "stole" his name. (I have the same first and last name as he did.) I didn't even know this was going on until someone put me on the phone with him--it still took me a while to figure out.

This made it even harder to find a job. I even had one prospective employer say "if that is even your real name." Dumb asses.

No shit. On a regular basis, I hear one of the techs at the dialysis complain about the computer losing information. They run Windows for the machines they enter all the notes and vitals.

Mod funny. People who live unhealthy and risky lives die faster, therefore cause less healthcare costs.

To add to your point, he may not even need a keyboard mouse and screen plugged into his server to use X. X is designed to be run remotely too. That is what the DISPLAY environment variable is for.

Yes, but if "Trusted Computing" gains its foothold, your live CD will just be a useless coaster. Wasn't there a recent story saying to get a Windows 8 certification, a computer had to turn on the TPM module on by default? Meaning it wouldn't run an "untrusted" OS unless you shut it off in the BIOS. How long until there is no option in the BIOS to turn it off at all? The day may be coming.

That "sliver of plastic" will probably be thousands of times more powerful than today's best computers, so it should have the ability to play a video file. The question is: will computers in 80 years be so laden with "Trusted Computing" and DRM you won't be allowed to play "pirate" (meaning anything not created by a major corporation) video files.

The computer I am posting from has 256 MB of RAM. It is "only" a single core which runs at 1.8 GHz. I remember a time when the news reported the military was planning on building a 1 GHz supercomputer. Now anything slower than multi-GHz and multi-core with less than 1GB of RAM is considered "useless" for things as simple as web browsing and watching video. It's all bloat.

You may believe in the upgrade treadmill, but there are some of us who don't.

Much of slashdot is bashing things we hate. ;-)

I wasn't sure if you were from the mafia and threatening him, or you were some christian fundamentalist nutjob. The drunk people comment points to christian fundamentalist. (For those not in the know, these extremists say things like alcohol is against "god's law", and therefore anyone who drinks is "evil." They say the same things about not going to their church on Sunday, or any activity their religious leaders don't condone as "wholesome and good.")

I haven't spent lots of time around drunk people, but I am quite certain even I (after having two strokes) could easily evade or beat the shit out of any drunk people who threatened me.

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be out after midnight. Once, my shift was laid off. It was graveyard shift. When they told us, they kept us in a meeting for an hour, just long enough for me to barely miss the last bus home. I was thirty miles away from home. But then, I'm sure you will come up with a self righteous reason why it was my fault.

I have lived in Idaho and Utah for many years, and being out after dark is safe. I have never (nor do I know anyone who has) been the victim of a crime for being out after dark, well except when christain fundamentalists have made false police reports against me.

Making false police reports is a crime. Essentially you are trying to use the police as a proxy to kidnap someone else. Such a crime should carry stiff prison terms, but nobody ever gets prosecuted, probably because criminals like you always make sure you have "reasonable doubt." Unfortunately, apparently police think being a psychotic asshole who hallucinates crimes creates "reasonable doubt."