Agreed. But I'm arguing that it is not right for DRM to prevent me from doing something legal with my hardware. It all gets convoluted below, but I think it comes out in the end...

maybe! I'm game ;)

This analogy doesn't fit because the car does not actively prevent you from taking a sawzall(sp?) to the dash and putting your own cd player in.

As I understand it (and I'm certainly no expert), the DRM actively tries to prevent the user from performing an action on the user's(!) machine that the user is legally allowed to do. This is a rather different concept from not providing the functionality in the first place as in your analogy above. In the case of DRM, a third party is actively preventing the user from doing something legal with their own property.

hmmm... I'll agree that it may not be my *right* to copy a cd, but since it is not illegal, it is therefore legal. Since it is legal for me to do something, then how can it be right for a third party to prevent me from doing it?

It is legal for me to install a radio in my car. I have no *right* to it, but it is legal for me to do so. It is almost certainly (IANAL) illegal for Toyota to prevent me from doing so. Or an even better analogy: it is almost certainly illegal for whatever entity is responsible for the fuel-injection controller to prevent me from doing so. Okay, that's a tortured analogy. Toyota is the hardware manufacturer, fuel-injection controller is the DRM-enabled operating system and installing a radio is copying a cd. phew. wow. sorry.

I think your understanding is correct. I just disagree with your reasoning :)

I'm trying to come up with another analogy...

It is legal for you to paint your house. It is not legal for the carpenter who built it to come to your house and prevent your from painting it (ignoring the whole trespassing issue here). In fact it's absurd.

It is likewise absurd and, in my non-legally-trained opinion, illegal to prevent me from doing something that is not illegal. In fact, it may even be illegal for an OS to prevent me from doing something illegal as the OS vendor is not an authorized law-enforcement officer and I'm not directly harming another, yadda yadda yadda.

There is a machine which has the capability to perform a legal action. There is a piece of software that facilitates that action. There is another piece of software that prevents that action. The software vendor is attempting to dictate what the user can or can't do with their legally owned hardware.

If the software vendor does not want the user to perform this action, then the vendor should not provide the first piece of software. That is the limit of the software vendor's rights in this case. If I choose to install software that allows me to legally perform this action, it is neither the vendor's right nor concern to prevent it.

It is not the software vendor's job to police my actions with my hardware. I think that last sentence is really the crux of the argument. Incorporating DRM into the operating system is just that: the vendor trying to dictate what I do with my hardware. The simple answer is to dump windows (which I've done). It is reasonable to attempt to educate others about how their hardware is being prevented from performing legal actions by a third party.

I know I'm veering into wacko territory now. Must be this retrofitted, but legal, steering system I've got ;)

This makes my day. Collecting for a cell phone bill by calling the cell phone number of the person who didn't pay their cell phone bill. Priceless. This stuff will only become more common as the need for an actual, up-to-date, physical address becomes less and less necessary. With online banking, cell phones, wireless networks, and the death of the landline, it going to become increasingly difficult to actually track down a debtor. I suppose they could hang out at the coffee shop whose wireless was last used to pay the bill in hopes the debtor shows up again. I know I see less and less real reason to update my address with various service providers. The only thing they use mail for is sending advertising junk. About the only thing that ties one to a location is a utility bill. If your apartment has utilities included, that goes away too.

Wow, I haven't seen mention of that thing in a long time. I didn't realize it carried into the 70's with improvements in the technology. Pretty cool! Thanks!

What I *really* want is a series hybrid with a modular power-supply. Stick in a battery module for local, daily travel. Stick in the (now) petroleum based ICE module, (later) fuel-cell module, or (really later) Mr. Fusion module for long distance travel. Heck, the neighbors and I could share the cost of the different long-distance modules... when are we all going to go long-distance at the same time? Rarely. And maybe a rental model even makes sense in that case. shrug.

Read what I wrote:

This accounts for peak oil. As peak oil hits and prices climb, the motivation to fund more incremental improvements increases. The result could be that the status quo continues to be viable for quite a while. And those incremental improvements can happen anywhere in the supply chain -- improved extraction from oil sands, more advanced location of new reserves, etc. I suspect we will become quite good at attenuating our need to keep pace with the fall in supply, until we've used every last drop

Please note that I'm no expert in this (or any other!) field and am only speculating on what might happen

Oh, I don't want that. Just stating what I think will happen...

Personally, I'm in favor of everyone (from consumer to corporation) getting their collective heads out of their collective asses and making real change instead of paying it lip service. But I don't see any flying pigs yet. And when I do, I'm sure they'll be powered by fossil fuel ICE's.

But it's potentially enough. ISTM part of the reason the ICE has lasted so long is the continued incremental improvements that make it just good enough to stick with. Continued incremental improvements in fuel economy, at a rate roughly equivalent to the inverse of the rise in fuel prices will keep the modern gasoline powered ICE a viable alternative for a long time.

This kind of improvement, along with better optimized hybrids and other "transitional" technologies effectively allow us to maintain the status quo.

IMVHO, only two things will pitch ICE's off the top of the pile: 1) a radical, cheap, viable, ready-to-go, drop-in-now replacement, or 2) time, a long time.

someone just posted on debian-user that the way to kill zombies is to have the parent processes try to reap them and if that fails, they should get reparented up the chain until their parent becomes init. Then doing `telinit u` will cause init to restart (while maintaining state) and all the zombies will be dropped. I haven't had the chance to try it.

Thankfully, *someone*'s thinking about the children!

When you get a room on the train, your meals are included, making the cost differential even smaller.

I took the family to LA for christmas last year. We flew down (from WA state, not seattle) and that was nice because we went from snow to sun in just a couple of hours. Sweet.

We took the train back with an overnight layover in Seattle before heading home. The train ride was great. We got a family bedroom which slept us all comfortably. We had windows both sides of the car for optimum viewing. We did *not* get a private bath, so next time I'd pick different accommodations, but we shared two airline style toilet rooms and a shower with one couple. not bad.

The train ride took two full days and one overnight. It was great. We hung out in the room and read or played cards. We wandered the halls of the train. We had 6 sit down meals in the dining car which were really pretty good. We had a couple of beers in the bar car. We went to a wine and cheese tasting. We went to bed early and slept in late. In all it was an extremely relaxing two days. So if you look at the train time as *part* of the vacation, it's a pretty good deal all the way around. I'll definitely do it again.

Oh, and I answered that planes are for suckers, but that's only because it was the only no-flying option. I'm not taking planes this year because I don't have the $$ :(