I remember that I saw some pics resebling former President Bush to a monkey, even in the New Yorker Magazine!... Any actions then?

Fixed that, you had too many words in there. The incredible volume of laws and regulations under which everyone must live makes it a certainty that we all have been or are in violation of something... that is neither accident or coincidence.

Every nation has a CIA equivalence. They have to. They have to know what others are doing and if there is a real threat. For example MI6 comes to mind.

Now, if you are calling them criminal because of Iraq/Afghanistan, then nope. The real problem was not CIA. These were simply foot soldiers doing what they were ordered to by the highest level of the gov.

An EEG is not the same thing as a "brain scan". An EEG is an analog point to point system which is very good at "reading" the parts of the generalized electrical field that reaches the scalp from the brain. Using EEG output to control stuff is a fun sideline which is almost exactly as old as EEG technology itself.

It doesn't work very well, and it very probably never will. The variance in electrical activity in the brain between two people receiving the same sensory input is, in an average way, too great to be useful.

Once someone comes up with a way to shrink an MRI machine to the size of a quarter that you just stick to your forehead and talks bluetooth to all your devices, then we'll be ok.

Shouldn't one be able to believe the story summary? If not, why even bother having them?

And yes, unless its classified, it is in the American pubic domain on day one since it was paid for by US citizens. However that doesn't mean you cant sell a copy for the cost of 'printing', sort of like the GPL. Even the government often charges a 'reproduction fee' when you order documents directly.

The only people who benefit from DRM are content providers.

Well, then, maybe all of the people who want content, and who are always complaining about the quality of content, should look for a way to get what they want without there being any content creators/providers who do what they do with any prospect of earning a living. If we can just dispense with this whole notion of creative professionals, and just settle for entertainment created by junior high school vampire romance fangurlz, Bon Jovi tribute bar bands, street mimes, and hippes who want everyone to have their vegan curry recipes (for free!) then everything would just settle down nicely. There's absolutely no need for people who work for years on recording or film projects. It's pointless to expect people to work off and on for a decade on a novel. Those people should never be able to sell their works, they should instead focus on t-shirt sales and readings in coffee houses, where they are compensated with a share of the barista's tip jar. After all, it's absurd for anyone to make a single penny the week after they've spent a year doing the actual work of creating something. All entertainment should be paid for in advance by fans. Selling your work, on your own terms, after you invest the time to create it: that's, like, totally fascism.

Here's an idea: just don't do business with DRM-centric content creators or the distribution networks/agents with whom they've chosen to do business. Give your business to people who want to give away their work for free. If that really is the way to earn a living as a creative person, then truth of that notion will be plain for all to see. Put your money (or the lack of spending it) where your mouth is. If having a say in how your creative work is reproduced strikes you as eeeevil, then you surely wouldn't want to enjoy entertainment or information produced by someone who embraces the idea anyway, right? Right? Because, you know, that would be intellectually dishonest.

I think you read too much into that exchange. A short while ago the Washington D.C. gun ban fell after having stood for over 3 decades. Why did it take so long? Because the pro-gun lobby was waiting for a case that was favorable to their cause. They didn't want to bring just any case - they wanted the "perfect" case where they could be certain of the outcome (i.e. SCOTUS sides with the gun owner).

The NRA was petrified about Heller and didn't want to go for it because they thought the risks were too great. It took a non-gun-owning lawyer to actually start the case, and the NRA tried to torpedo it. Of course they took credit for it after it passed.

The End Software Patents campaign has posted:

• an analysis of the implications for software patents
• A html version of the court transcript

DRM is broken by design, the user has to have a way of decrypting the content in order to view it, so the keys have to be given out...
All DRM will do is stop "casual piracy", that is people making copies for their friends, or recording to view later etc... The serious piracy groups who produce copies and sell them will quickly work out ways to bypass any protection being used. Go on thepiratebay, there is a lot of content available there which has been ripped from DRM encumbered sources, and the pirate versions are better because they have consumer-hostile things removed.

From what I've seen of UK schools now (which have changed since I left) many are giving all the children -- especially younger ones -- small whiteboards. The teacher says "OK, everyone write down the answer. Done? OK show me!" and gets feedback from every child.

>>>have found virtually no alternative suggestions to combating piracy than DRM.

Don't. Trust that if you offer a fair product at a reasonable price, then the consumers will buy it rather than copy it. It's the same model that worked with Non-copy protected cassettes back in the 80s and 90s.

Also: The article is about the BBC which is funded by the taxpayers. In my humble opinion, the taxpayers entitled to take the product free-of-charge since they already paid for it.

(goes back to drinking German beer)

"A woman on the radio talks about revolution, but it's already passed her by. I was alive and I waited for this. Right here, right now; there is no other place I want to be..... watching the world wake-up from history. ----- I saw the decade end, when it seemed the world could change at the blink of an eye. And if anything then there's your sign. I was alive and I waited, waited for this. I was alive and I waited for this. Watching the world wake up from history! Right here. Right now."

Jaunty handled my 24" 16:9 iiyama just fine at its native resolution of 1920x1080. Upgraded to Karmic... it autodetected the native res fine, except that it's practically unusable. Screen is blank except, oddly enough, for the toolbars, which display fine. Email and gedit display when run, but nothing else does. I've looked for workarounds, none worked, ended up having to file a bug. Another guy with the same monitor and better Linux skills than I is just as stumped. Meanwhile I feel like I've gone back in time 15 years, because the only res that works properly on my monitor is the lower 16:9 at 1280x720. At 24" it reminds me of the pixellization on an old 800x600 res monitor. My eyes, my eyes...

That article is from 2007, and seems to lack many details surrounding this case. I googled up this timeline ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bush_administration_U.S._attorney_firings_controversy ) that seems largely comprised of dates, direct quotes and similar facts. I see a very different story here. For example:

On March 26, 2007, Monica Goodling, the senior counselor to Gonzales and Department of Justice liaison to the White House who was on an "indefinite leave of absence," refused to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Goodling threatened to invoke her Fifth Amendment rights to not incriminate herself

Your quote implies the fired attorneys were dismissed for wrongdoing, but the facts do not appear to support that supposition.

Electronics are going to be even more of a pain in the ass to service.

I can't see it being terribly reliable either.

Oh? Just your presupposition that God doesn't exist proves that God doesn't exist? Got it, thanks

Yes, just like his presupposition that pink unicorns don't exist. I don't understand why he just doesn't believe in whatever people tell him.