This is the future of the Internet. Corporate censorship at the demand of the loudest group. One by one, sites are going to filter user areas. Then content. Starting with obvious things that few will care about, like prostitution. Slowly, everything is going to be so pasteurized that sites with no filters will be considered criminal organizations.

Look, whatever you think of it is irrelevant, abused or not, the racier parts of the internet are a necessary part of freedom. Draw the line of allowed hosted content straight through what most people find offensive and leave it there.

It may not happen in our lifetime, but if we don't demand full neutrality (for host and carriers), it's going to happen.

"It's not that simple. Quicktime is neither backwards nor forwards compatible, nor does it allow for multiple simultaneous installations."

I not entirely sure WIndows even allows that. OS X does. WIth a knowledgable hand, Linux should (as well with most Unix systems). IIRC, Windows isn't so keen on multi versions of libs. Apps should be able to code around this, but the core operating system doesn't provide that level of versioning. What you are describing is a Windows issue, which Apple has to work around.

I'm not a fan of the oil subsidies either. Though, if repealed, the oil companies would just pass the additional costs onto the consumers.

You make it sound like subsidies come out of thin air, just like magic, and no one will pay for them. The cost is passed onto everyone, and in the case of oil, everyone is dependent on it. Hence the customers are paying, but don't know they the real price.

Call my a conspiracy nut

Not a problem, I'll get his number from the CIA.

the jury found him guilty and found the death penalty appropriate

It was the only option offered, something the jururers complained about

"How do you propose Firefox prevent the installation of an extension by software that has direct file system access?"

Don't use filesystem placement as the method of registering extensions. Keep registered extensions in an encrypted database which only Firefox has access to. Only add extensions when the user interacts with a secure API verifying they want the extension added. /next question?

Save for the title being "first post" you really don't deserve a flamebait rating. Post like this is why flamebait is moved to +5 to my account.

That being said, you're wrong. GPL software is inherently incompatible with software patents. If you're a big company with a big patent portfolio, you can pretty much make any software you want. Someone sues you, you counter sue, because odds are they are breaking at least one of your patents. In general, companies try to avoid suing each other and instead opt to just cross license each others patents, by formal agreement or by understood silence.

GPL software developers have no such luxury. They aren't known for patenting things and if they do, they then promptly license the patent in a such a way that GPL compatible licenses can use the patent. Which means, BSD licenses can use the patents too. Which means, it can be incorporated into proprietary software without releasing the code. Which, of course, defeats the whole purpose of a patent.

If firefox includes H 264 decoding in their own software libraries, they are no exposed to a lawsuit. If they opt to use OS native plugins for H 264, they end up creating a logistical nightmare in development, since you can't guarantee that all installs will have the software needed to the embedded movies. Which means the user is going to blame them when it doesn't work.

The real solution is to work with the standards committees to make the video tag in HTML have real meaning. What movie containers and formats are officially supported by HTML 5? How will the patents work, etc etc. This whole Theora thing is the wrong tactic. They will stand alone and fail. They should call up Apple and Google and ask them to work with them on solving this problem permanently. If they can get the MPEG patent holders to all license their software in such a way that its compatible with the GPL, then the problem is solved.

You're really concerned what's going to happen to your ebooks when you're dead? Taking corporate paranoia to the afterlife is a little extreme, no?

I don't have to buy a different set of eyes to read books purchased at different stores. They all work, as is. Where as, with ebooks, once you have a collection from Amazon, if you EVER want to read them again, you must do so on an Amazon supplied reader. If at any point in the next couple of years, Amazon decides to stop manufacturing those readers and yours dies, all of your books stop being readable.

We already know with DRM'ed music, that companies have taken their tracking servers off line, making moving the music to new hardware IMPOSSIBLE.

If I own something, I own it. I don't need the entity I bought it from to give me permission to use it.

Competition from a new contender that is known to be a strong player causes the strongest early market entrant to throw a hissy fit, news at a 11.

Until I can actually BUY an e-book, not rent them for life, the entire market will remain irrelevant to me.

Some people see no need to pay more money to buy the most recent OS.

To say it's "impossible" is being dishonest. All display rendering in OS X is done by tasks that were offset by the graphics card. It's a native OS X feature that speeds up all applications. Firefox runs just fine on OS X and XP.

Microsoft either doesn't know to or is unwilling to write direct X in a way that creates minimum work for developers to use.

Everyone is always spending someone elses money, so the part of the market (the consumer) that's supposed to lower prices doesn't do it's job.

Insured people are spending the insurance companies money. The insurance companies are spending the money coming in from premiums, which are usually paid by the company the insured person is working for. The health care providers are spending the insurance companies money. There is little to no market pressure to lower prices. The only party who is interested in lowering cost is the guy paying for the insurance, but their employees are telling them they want the best coverage known to man with price being no object.

You want to know why wages were stagnant since the dot com bust? Companies spend somewhere around 25% more on workers during that time, with almost every penny going to health care.

This is why every nation other than the US has centralized healthcare, do varying degrees. The government acts as the voice in lowering prices. They are literally hundreds of strategies they use, some more effective than others.

Why do hearing aids cost a fortune? You can blame the rest population for NEVER looking at prices.

Smart phone with an unlimited data plan combined with KEXP out of Seattle.

And you, sir, are not helping by demonizing those who think differently than you. Saying the previous poster is demonizing is a bit harsh, don't you think. That being said... The physical properties of CO2 are well known. It's heat capacity and spectral data aren't something people can deny. How it interacts with the solar radiation is very well understood. It is a green house gas. Even the scientists who have looked at the data and disagree with man made global warming aren't going to say it isn't a green house gas. They are going to say that it's concentration level isn't high enough to be a problem and that other causes are more significant. There are people out there, usually politicians and/or business leaders, telling laymen that CO2 is completely harmless and scientists are involved in a big conspiracy to make us all Amish. Anyone who falls in that category DESERVES to be "demonized". Anti-intellicualism is not something to be proud of and should be condemned. I remember a time with SO2 as a cause of acid rain was "debated" in political theater. Everything from acid rain doesn't exist, to capping SO2 emissions will kill the economy, to acid is more complex than anyone could ever understand so we shouldn't do anything. Same damn thing we see with GW deniers. P.S. You know what a REPUBLICAN president signed into law. Cap and trade for SO2 emissions.

So, I was that guy in college who double majored in unrelated subjects. Chemistry and Religion. Then went on to a handful of jobs in unrelated fields. I get bored easily and put a lot of thought into some esoteric things that no one cares about.

As you look very closely at how belief functions in society, it becomes extremely obvious that belief in and of itself is not rational. It's a functional experience. This is true for all people, even scientists (reason is accepted because it's useful way of achieving a goal) Is a set of norms and beliefs useful for the person whom is called to believe? If answer is no, then they won't accept the belief structure or they will chose to be willfully ignorant of the subject. If answer is yes, they will accept it without question in so far as narrative can be used to explain any "apparent contradictions" between the belief and reality. The core idea of something being actually true is completely and 100% irrelevant to the evaluation.

As a side note, it appears the experiment cited in the article is useless for describing the problem. You describe nano tech to some people, then it's uses. They reject the tech, if they don't like the uses. Doesn't mean they don't BELIEVE the tech is possible, they just don't like it.