I don't know if it is, yet, because of the successes of the copyright cartel.

So what? It still magnifies the cost substantially.

I don't think even Valve can get away with that.

Because his OS doesn't have networking?

You're saying that to a slashdotter? YMBNH

Most people don't need their drive to be that fast. We'd all like faster storage, but HDDs are so slow that a fairly slow SSD is still pretty speedy.

Crowdsourcing, I suppose. You pay for the movie ahead of time, and based on your investment you get to see the film, download it, get a DVD or a Blu-Ray or an M4V, get to be an extra in a crowd scene or whatever they're offering. There's no reason that major studios can't use this model. And then there's merchandising, official conventions, and lots of other opportunities for profit. I don't really think that there will be any problem getting enough people to fund some of these big-budget stinkers.

Why should that be impossible? On most hardware it may be, but if you're lucky enough to have a system with an IOMMU, the OS should absolutely be able to defend against such attacks simply by not permitting just any jerkoff application to access the disk controller directly. Applications then have to ask the driver to mediate all transactions, and the OS is definitely in a position to then prevent firmware tampering.

Profiting from sending other people's children (or, put another way, excess population) to die in other countries which can't meaningfully fight back doesn't sound all that risky to me.

Would it surprise you to learn that the deaths from producing renewables is orders of magnitude higher than the deaths from all the reactor meltdowns combined?

If so, do a little research and prepare to be surprised.

We have the problem that we expect to be able to work whenever we want. But the sun shines brightest and the wind blows hardest at certain times, not all the time. Solution, reduce waste, and work when the energy is available, or find more power storage technologies and install 'em. Either way, big changes in the way energy is handled.

We're coming to a point where we need less and less workers, but we're expecting to do more and more work. What?

I hope they (we, etc) fail here too, but it's not a foregone conclusion. We often succeed, and that's what someone needs to take away from history before assuming that it won't happen to them.

Look, I'm not looking to familiarize local law enforcement with me. That's not even near my radar, let alone on it. I've got two great reasons for that, and only one of them is my well-earned prejudices against cops gained from such experiences as being able to speed at will by driving a Mercedes or being pulled over at double gunpoint (pointed at my face) in Santa Cruz for the crime of driving a Chevy Citation after 2 AM.

It wouldn't work because I would never fit in there. I wouldn't do what they wanted me to do, and they'd get rid of me, marginalize me, etc. They just wouldn't put me where I could make any positive difference. Indeed, they would send people like me to deal with the worst possible situations in order to dispose of them as rapidly as possible.

Still, I note that you continue to ignore my central point: It has been shown that the cops are at least as criminal as the rest of us and probably moreso, and are therefore utterly unqualified to be policing. If they can't manage to follow the law, what hope do the rest of us have, and why should we care? If they want us to believe that they have our best wishes at heart, they must follow the rules scrupulously. The whole idea that we can police ourselves through crime is insane.

You mean, like the rude awakening you'd be in for if you really knew how much police malfeasance was going on? Because it's got to be much, much more than they're being prosecuted for.

If he weren't rich, they would have done it already. But if they nail him without truly solid pretext then other rich people (who are in a position to actually enact social change) will be leery of their pogrom. I mean, program. Wait...

Well, the short answer is that in the long run I would prefer a society not based on artificial scarcity, so that people aren't so worried about getting a piece of what I've got.

You are just like my ISP. When I raise a salient point, you prevaricate. I tell them that their service frequently does not get my packets to the internet, they quote link uptime statistics. I give a fat fuck whether my radio link was up, if its radio link was down, and I couldn't get to the 'net. And likewise, I give a fat fuck whether Kim was living in the USA, because a) he was doing business in the USA and b) if you assume that the long arm of the USA ends at our borders, you're a fucking moron who ignores history and the news. There is no evidence that he is actually that stupid. If he were, he'd be locked up right now, not chillin' in a mansion in NZ.