Windows 8 - Deeper Impressions

[bpalone]

More doomsday talk about the PC. It does appear that the sales are declining as per the figures from IDC. One interesting quote from the article:

Because interest in PCs remain limited, the firm explained, as the world increasingly takes up tablets and post-PC devices, there's little chance of the traditional desktop and notebook market showing positive growth beyond device replacement.

I didn't take time to read all the comments, but some were interesting.

The article can be found here: http://www.zdnet.com/pc-shipments-to-decline-further-no-significant-recovery-expected-7000023851/

I have to confess that I am part of the problem. I have my old hardware and replacement parts and fully intend to keep on using it and my old OSes with my old software.

bpalone

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

I'm okay with the guy giving away the Gucci knock-offs for free. I'm also okay with him charging money if they are not called Gucci or passed off as them ( this is NOT the same as copying a DVD and selling it ). Making a better mousetrap, or selling a clone of an existing mousetrap for a better price is an improvement upon the status quo and was once respected.

As you probably know, down in NYC they have declared war on things exactly like this ( knockoff Gucci, Rolex, etc ) and the reason is probably because of deep pocketed lobbying of the powers-that-be to protect their little empire. It's a microcosm ( or macrocosm? ) of the tech world IP battles. IMHO this all leads back to patents with their built-in arbitrary timeframe of an exclusive monopoly protected by law. Take that away, making it maybe one year tops, and many problems will fix themselves. IMHO naturally.

Yeah, it was exactly NYC that I was picturing in my head when I wrote that. What's the name of that street where all the vendors gather? I think it's near the Village. (Been a long time.)

Anyway, I agree with you on the Gucci knockoffs. If they slap Gucci logos on them then there is a case to make that it's fraud, selling them as something they're not. It gets murkier if the guy is giving them away: some people who took them would believe they were getting the real thing for free, but then one could argue that they really oughta know better and "you get what you pay for."

And yes (and this is for @jaclaz too -- loved that spoiler graphic!), it's not an exact analogy to software piracy, despite the IP (intellectual property) angle involving the logo.

Also, patents do go on for far too long, and the way patent law is working out (not) it seems to work mainly to muck things up and slow down advancement. How many billions have been spent (or imposed in fines or spent in settlements) as a result of litigation involving Apple, Samsung, and/or Microsoft? And let's not forget patent trolls, who do nothing constructive with the patents they buy but go around shaking people down for using them, often without knowing they've violated somebody's patent.

I must admit that I'm ambivalent about copyright, though. In principle my view is that so long as you're not pretending to have actually created the thing (book, song, software), then there's nothing to complain about since no fraud is being perpetrated, and in the case of a digital product it's in the nature of the beast that it's easily replicated. On the other hand, one of my customers is a small publishing house and it hurts when we discover that somebody scanned one of our titles and put it up somewhere for downloading. It's easy to picture publishing companies as being gigantic faceless Corporate Entities brimming with cash, but in reality this also happens to little two-man-show publishers. The factor that (so far) saves my position from breaking down is the belief that the sales lost to these scanners are small, comparable to books damaged during shipping to the warehouse. I'm not aware of any hard data on this one way or another (and I totally mistrust the claims of music and film industry spokesmen on this point).

--JorgeA

Not sure what block you mean, there are so many with vendor overload, some permanent, many are just weekday street events, others are holiday or periodic. My favorite place to creep around was the 8th Street corridor from St. Marks over to both ends of the island really. During the cold war years they had some great street fairs, huge gatherings of Soviet refugees from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine etc. By day it was entire blocks of "vendors" selling anything and everything, by night some of the biggest parties I ever saw stretching from end to end and of course into every bar within the zone. I liked it better down there years ago, even in Times Square which lost more than a little character after it was "cleaned up" by the powers-that-be.

Anyway, copyright with music artists is very interesting because it never was an issue until the RIAA began attacking MP3's (***), I feel safe saying that the issue never crossed the lips of any musicians I know during the entire cassette tape era ( which ironically offered better reproduction of a copied source than early MP3 implementations ). It looks like it was drummed up at the bureaucrat level in record labels who feared that they wouldn't get to sell the same music over and over again each generation.

There was a huge price to be paid for some artists ( ~cough~ Metallica ) who jumped onboard that bandwagon, and they are still paying it today. Fans are very fickle, it does not take much to insult them and turn them against you. This is a lesson that Big Data is currently still learning.

Related story from yesterday ...

Research shows removing DRM boosts music sales up to 41 percent ( TechSpot 2013-12-02 )

The researcher used 5,864 albums from 643 artists in her study, comparing sales before and after each of the four major record labels EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner decided to drop DRM. She found a 10 percent increase in revenue after the protections had been removed which also accounts for other factors like release date, music genre and typical sales variations.

Strangely enough, not all albums were affected the same. Zhang found that older releases selling less than 25,000 copies saw their sales increase by 41 percent. Overall lower-selling music saw an increase of 30 percent, too. Removing DRM has no effect on top-selling albums, however. I suppose if people really want new music, they will pay for it and accept DRM.

ADDED: *** Before anyone points it out, perhaps I was overstating it. Copyright was an issue prior to MP3 in a different manner. Famously it was the vehicle used by labels and recording studios and publishers to separate the actual artist from his/her rights. Books and movies have been made to illustrate the many ways that artists became session slaves to producers who suddenly had all or most rights to that artist's hard work, sometimes their lifetime's work. It happened in movies early on with the "studio system" with the actual actors reduced to receiving little or nothing as they appear in perpetuity on the big and little screen. Precedents again. The music world with some major overlap just continued on with the practices. Making slaves again out of pioneering southern black blues musicians, Motown pop, radio payola, all wonderful innovations by the music powers-that-be. It's no wonder when the MP3 crisis came around that many musicians were alert to their hypocrisy of using the artists as their "victim", when all along it was them - Big Music.

Humans appear to have a genetic defect that lends themselves to becoming feudal royalty lording over peasant slave workers. Movies, Music, Computers, in all three fields the same type of fiefdoms emerge to manage and profit off the intellectual property of others, their employee servants. The one thing we all have going for us now is that this Internet thing exists to let us state these facts and hopefully educate some of the uneducated.

Edited December 4, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Intel Chairman Says Company Had Lost Its Way ( Tom's Hardware 2013-11-30 )

Yeah, at around 3.9 GHz. Hasn't anybody at Intel seen Spinal Tap?

( Image Source: here )

I have wondered the same thing. Here's a possible explanation (see posts 2, 3, and 8) that jibes with what I've read before. It sounds plausible, but then I'm no physicist.

--JorgeA

Yep, cooling, that's their main excuse. It begs the question of why everything must be shrunk though. For example, shrink the lithography and features but keep the die the same and more can be fit onboard including explicit cooling zones that can be better mated to the heat sink.

I remember when we got standardized AT boards from various vendors instead of just IBM, and for quite a while it worked out well, then ATX arrived and the continual shrinking not just of the components mounted on a motherboard, but the board itself. It's as if the decided years ago to build tablets and phones and nothing was going to stop them. Note, I'm not saying AT was best, I like full ATX better actually but the point is that I was dumbfounded why they didn't stick to a large board while shrinking everything else allowing many more things to be installed on the same size board as the tech shrunk. The way it worked out was that we never gained anything except empty space.

CPU's are a microcosm of that phenomenon. A larger CPU die with shrinking features would allow more features on that CPU product, be it larger caches ( yes please! ), bigtime graphics, but perhaps most important, carefully designed onboard plumbing exposed for attachment to heat sinks or fluid coolers. They will eventually get to this ( it was already done on mainframe and supercomputer processors ). They'll likely re-arrange the geography, build in a special fluid in sealed channels, terminating at the surface of a large die assembly ( or maybe Pentium II and III type modular packages ) that increases cooling capacity several orders of magnitude.

Either that or they'll reserve this stuff for the governments maintaining that the citizen peasants don't need more powerful processing capability.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

MSFN seems to have had another hiccup. I couldn't get on at all on Monday (afternoon EST onwards).

Did we lose any posts? I think that Formfiller's reply on Google's joke Start Screen by TELVM was the last post before this one, so I don't think we did.

I have a backup that also concludes with that post by TELVM. The one by FF is new today, so if anyone else had one in between there it appears lost.

Well, at least the French are brazenly open about it:

French lawmakers propose warrantless access to live user data from ISPs and hosting sites

A wide variety of government officials could gain access to live data concerning users of ISPs and online services including content-hosting sites, without the approval of a judge, under a draft law approved by members of the French National Assembly on Friday.

The measure, a rider on the 2014-2019 defense appropriation bill, would require ISPs and content hosting companies to provide government officials with access to details of their users' activity without judicial oversight. Law enforcement officials can already ask a judge for an order to access such data.

At first I thought this was another cannonball against filesharing, but --

The defense appropriation bill was introduced by the French Senate in August, and amended by the National Assembly in a series of votes on Friday. Its purpose is to define how the government guarantees the protection of French territory and citizens from threats including state aggression, terrorist attacks, cyberattacks, threats to the country's scientific or technical power, organized crime, and natural disasters, and to budget for that.

"State aggression." Hmm... So, who protects Frenchmen from this newest aggression by the French state? Maybe they're too busy faisant l'amour to care about being numbered and tracked.

The zoo society keeps marching Forward.

The absolute most important thing IMHO, is that all the governments of the world are making their moves for control and regulation of the citizen independent communication channel called the Internet. It is about power and preservation of that power. And things are accelerating as precedents come and go and they get a feel for what they can get away with.

To any government, legitimate or not, fascist or not, democratic ( small "d" ) or not, republic ( small "r" ) or not, corrupt or not, free or not, totalitarian or not, they all have one thing in common - institutionalized momentum. It matters not who is sitting in the seats because the one thing that does travel through time is their core function - self-preservation. This means that it doesn't really matter what those bureaucrats sitting in those seats has to say because it will be superseded by later seat-sitters.

And nothing cries for more scrutiny than a vehicle that allows peasants to communicate amongst themselves and without being spied upon. The Internet and all it's p2p derivatives are a bigger threat than the earlier plain old telephone system, which itself was thoroughly penetrated.

No-one who was conscious during the early USENET years before the web can possibly believe how far it has already gone. Even those around during the baby step Clipper chip and Carnivore years would not believe it has gone this far now. Yet here we are, sitting in the middle of an uber-novel jointly penned by a dream team of Orwell, Huxley and Ayn Rand. And they ain't through, not by a long-shot.

All those mentioned, widely varying types of government who can agree on nothing will in fact agree on one thing - the Internet must be controlled. They will cooperate here in ways no-one will believe. And it is already happening most likely. Our spooks and Chinese spooks might be painted as being mortal enemies, but I expect either or both to supply the other with critical info when requested, perhaps under the guise of terrorists. Tiananmen Square, 9/11 hijackers, whatever, they all appear the same to human bureaucrats, and certainly carry no differences to timeless institutionalized momentum.

This is why people and sheeple should not give an inch on anything, even something as controversial and perhaps petty as "sales taxes". The goal isn't so much the tax or to protect brick and mortar ( humans are running both and they do in fact live somewhere covered by existing laws ) the goal is building the infrastructure into the "Internet" and having it become as familiar as the tree beside the road that you stop noticing as the days go on.

Frankly, we're gonna need a new Internet now. This one is screwed.

EDIT: typos, clarity

Edited December 3, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Following Blue, Threshold' is the next wave of Windows updates ( NeoWin 2013-12-02 )

Microsoft has moved to a rapid release cycle and we have now seen the fruits of this refined release cycle with Blue which was a wave of releases across many of the companys core products. If you were wondering what would follow Blue, the answer is Threshold and it is targeting a Spring 2015 release date.

The information comes from the reliable Mary Jo Foley who has previously stated that Microsoft would be releasing updates in the spring of 2015 and now we know the codename for the updates. While we do not know exactly what all will be in the updates, know that the release will work to move all Windows based products closer together including Windows Phone, Windows, and Xbox One.

[...]

MJF states that the post Windows 8.1 update, simply called Update 1 should arrive in the Spring of 2014 along with Windows Phone 8.1

Well that would be a year and a half between updates, and I highly doubt they can wait that long. One more year and a half of getting hammered for their tone-deafness and then the inevitable "Threshold" that does nothing to address the criticism will be close to the end of the road for the Microsoft Windows brand. This name "Threshold" would be fairly appropriate if they mean taking it to the brink of oblivion. I'll propose "Precipice".

Windows 8 growth slows down in November, despite 8.1's arrival ( TechSpot 2013-12-02 )

Windows 8.1 Still Not Enough to Convert Windows 7 Users ( Maximum PC 2013-12-02 )

A few more views on the numbers posted yesterday ( see above ). It is rather unfortunate that people are adding together Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 Blew to get a grand total of Playskool marketshare. It is patently obvious that many of the exact same computers must appear in both counts and that is a statistical no-no. There is double counting going on and not one single person, including Net Applications has figured this out. But at least they have all noticed the obvious flattened uptake. There is no denying it anymore, Microsoft has found a way to make the Vista debacle look like roses.

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Xbox One can play DVD-Rs but not recordable Blu-Ray discs ( NeoWin 2013-12-01 )

Microsoft has already announced that the Xbox One cannot play 3D Blu-ray discs, although that feature could be added sometime in the future via a software upgrade. Now it's been revealed that the console also cannot play content that has been burned to a recordable Blu-Ray (BD-R) disc.

Xbox Video on Xbox One lacks downloading capabilities ( NeoWin 2013-12-02 )

Unlike the Xbox 360 and Windows version of the service, Xbox Video features no ability to download movies and shows, even for non-rented content. Instead, users appear to only be permitted to stream movies and shows on the Xbox One.

It's astonishing really, to read the comments of those enablers that defend every single thing that comes along. Astonishing and sad at the same time.

Report: PS4 outsells Xbox One in UK with 250,000 units sold in first 48 hours ( NeoWin 2013-12-02 )

Still unofficial numbers, but this one already contradicts that one from yesterday, same author too: Early data shows Xbox One leading PS4 in Black Friday U.S. sales ( NeoWin 2013-12-01 )

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Amazon reveals plans to deliver packages using autonomous drones ( TechSpot 2013-12-01 )

Amazon Prime Air Aims to Deliver Your Package by Flying Drones in 2015 ( Maximum PC 2013-12-02 )

Amazon to Use Drones to Deliver Packages in 30 Minutes ( Tom's Hardware 2013-12-02 )

Amazon wants to deliver packages via octocopter drones ( NeoWin 2013-12-02 )

Well I'm sure everyone has seen something about this story by now. Pretty interesting and do-able in the right climate and location. One problem is that the value of a octocopter ( which likely exceeds all those quadrocopters ) will be more than most packages it carries. Lots of comments about jamming but I imagine this wouldn't be operated via telemetry with a remote pilot because that would defeat the purpose by still requiring a "delivery man" in the chain. They would ideally be pre-programmed and perhaps maintain a telemetry stream for status updates.

My favorite comments so far ...

Please lord make this happen.

This is going to be so awesome.

I can't wait to see pirate drones, hijacking packages and new police drones that would have to be developed to help combat the piracy. Huge drone battles going on right above the neighborhoods.

Can life get better than this? I submit that it can not!!

What if they collide with the ones making deliveries for NewEgg ?

I'm sure the NSA won't use it to spy on people...

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

More doomsday talk about the PC. It does appear that the sales are declining as per the figures from IDC. One interesting quote from the article:

Because interest in PCs remain limited, the firm explained, as the world increasingly takes up tablets and post-PC devices, there's little chance of the traditional desktop and notebook market showing positive growth beyond device replacement.

I didn't take time to read all the comments, but some were interesting.

The article can be found here: http://www.zdnet.com/pc-shipments-to-decline-further-no-significant-recovery-expected-7000023851/

I have to confess that I am part of the problem. I have my old hardware and replacement parts and fully intend to keep on using it and my old OSes with my old software.

One might wonder what would happen if IDC or Gartner or any analyst were alive to monitor the holocaust. Could they or would they distinguish between the Jewish people fleeing Nazi Europe secretly to freedom and those being "helped" out of the countries on custom cattle cars.

There are many of the billion seven ( or whatever ) using PC's that never needed one in the first place. They always needed a tablet or just a phone but never had one to select from. Now they do and they are getting them even though they are still spending the same or more money for less functionality and less actual physical material. Apparently they are okay with it. The danger is that these analysts become enablers who steer the trend rather than report on it. Then we get more cattle cars than anything else, and a genuine self-fulfilling prophecy.

Rest assured that in the 1970's there were analysts saying the big car is dead. There are too many times this has happened already, it just so happens that the most stupid of all people that humans can produce find their way into jobs as analysts. Also sportswriters.

Lemmings, sheeple, whatever description one prefers, these customers will pour their hard-earned cash into inferior equipment with a stunted walled-garden ecosystem controlled by Big Data companies like Microsoft and Apple who take a piece of the sale of software they don't even own. It's quite an amazing achievement to pull this one over on the customers considering where we were but a decade ago. Even the original late-1800's snake-oil salesman would be tipping their hats to this scam.

[Tripredacus]

Microsoft developing a bra.

http://kotaku.com/microsoft-is-researching-a-bra-make-that-a-smart-bra-1476241287

[jaclaz]

Microsoft developing a bra.

http://kotaku.com/microsoft-is-researching-a-bra-make-that-a-smart-bra-1476241287

The only device where a touch interface would be welcome (at least by the boys) .

jaclaz

[bphlpt]

Loved this comment:

--------------

Reminds me of this

--------------

Cheers and Regards

[ROTS]

Instead of starting a new, thread, lets be realistic. Wireless connections are less secure then wired connections. Meaning their is less freedoms, because so many people are now wireless on a national scale, they ( meaning police interrogation marketing investors ) want to have monitoring of activity to be equal to a person traveling thru an underground or, people standing outside the "League of nations", and one could even point to public access points like public facilities.

When you use the internet or your mobile/cellular/pocketpc/satellite /bounce-signal device you are basically standing inside a crowded mall, court-house, or even place.

Do you get free internet? No you pay for something that hyper monitored, and running programs/applications ( or whatever ), is instantly identifying who you are. No longer is the, what if? or this person is most likely located in? As I have mentioned before people using the Yahoo answers system have had their privacy compromised and is harassed by the law just because Yahoo has private information about you, especially when you order things threw them, Yahoo collects little things about you and sell them to officials.

The creator of Facebook mother is a lawyer. I will not discriminate the fact that she is a woman, but it takes no id*** to realize who is running the show, and comming up with these ideas about how to use facebook as a tool. The same could be your storage box

WTF are you going to do with 3G-6G networks? Watch ex-HD content while your driving? on a tiny finey tilltle screen that is even smaller then your DVD displays? I mean oh my gosh I can go to the XXX network while I am on the train, that is sooo revolutionary. That is what a walkman is for.

I understand the old invention of video phone service. Video phone service is a really old idea, and with a computer program, running 24/7 it is virtually free asides when you disconnect and the recording goes to a e-mail box. To think we are basically locking down all information, to a point where if we did have a official video phone service, it would be monitored and unprivate at all angles. Not like that scene from "Demolition Man".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNpeAPYsvsI

In todays world this is impossible, in terms of privacy. Even back when we usted to send emails to each other with such material, it was more private then things are now. Just by paying into this service we fund our enemies, our enemies who disrespects our privacies. Privacy is privacy, not a laughing matter, not something to be displayed in public, this is not the 10th century, this is the 21st century, we should be bigger then a rambling stooge who has nothing else besides the little rush of power they get from yelling "fire fire fire, look that person is doing that in their own privacy, blah blah, inhuman.

The garbage yucking fool who pays money for internet service on a mobile device, and thinks they are special and they are living in Star-Treck, and by paying for it, they are helping man-kind move to the stars. Before mankind can move to the stars, they have to cease everyone's property, by some form of another. I guess we all will be r-tarded monks ) or monkeys, sitting in a ball of flesh like some barn animals for heat, whille using our devices.

 

Microsoft developing a bra.

http://kotaku.com/microsoft-is-researching-a-bra-make-that-a-smart-bra-1476241287

The only device where a touch interface would be welcome (at least by the boys) .

jaclaz

I like SONY's wig idea better, nobody really cares about breasts so much, they just get in the way. Mothers on the other hand would have many uses for such bra. It could tell you, how much milk is inside, pasterize it, and maybe even vibrate dem ta ta's to churn out organic buttery, fresh from the cows teeth. Yeah that is all I would think of right now.

Edited December 5, 2013 by ROTS

[JorgeA]

Darn you ROTS, I ended up playing that clip from Demolition Man like 35 times.

But seriously, I'm with you on this. We just got smartphones, but we're keeping them turned off until needed, and we are certainly not signing up for Google Play. Even a certain serf-mentality family member who's OK with being tracked and monitored and having his choices constrained as long as he gets his government handout, advises against Google Play. I managed to live 384 years without smartphone apps, I can go on just as long again without them.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

Related story from yesterday ...

Research shows removing DRM boosts music sales up to 41 percent ( TechSpot 2013-12-02 )

The researcher used 5,864 albums from 643 artists in her study, comparing sales before and after each of the four major record labels EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner decided to drop DRM. She found a 10 percent increase in revenue after the protections had been removed which also accounts for other factors like release date, music genre and typical sales variations.

Strangely enough, not all albums were affected the same. Zhang found that older releases selling less than 25,000 copies saw their sales increase by 41 percent. Overall lower-selling music saw an increase of 30 percent, too. Removing DRM has no effect on top-selling albums, however. I suppose if people really want new music, they will pay for it and accept DRM.

ADDED: *** Before anyone points it out, perhaps I was overstating it. Copyright was an issue prior to MP3 in a different manner. Famously it was the vehicle used by labels and recording studios and publishers to separate the actual artist from his/her rights. Books and movies have been made to illustrate the many ways that artists became session slaves to producers who suddenly had all or most rights to that artist's hard work, sometimes their lifetime's work. It happened in movies early on with the "studio system" with the actual actors reduced to receiving little or nothing as they appear in perpetuity on the big and little screen. Precedents again. The music world with some major overlap just continued on with the practices. Making slaves again out of pioneering southern black blues musicians, Motown pop, radio payola, all wonderful innovations by the music powers-that-be. It's no wonder when the MP3 crisis came around that many musicians were alert to their hypocrisy of using the artists as their "victim", when all along it was them - Big Music.

Humans appear to have a genetic defect that lends themselves to becoming feudal royalty lording over peasant slave workers. Movies, Music, Computers, in all three fields the same type of fiefdoms emerge to manage and profit off the intellectual property of others, their employee servants. The one thing we all have going for us now is that this Internet thing exists to let us state these facts and hopefully educate some of the uneducated.

Wow, that was interesting. I'm definitely on board for evidence showing that getting rid of DRM actually increases sales. Wouldn't be the first time that dynamic factors outweighed plausible mechanistic logic.

I agree that there seems to be a flaw in people's makeup, which predisposes (too many of) them to become groupies and followers given the right circumstances. We saw it happen in our native land, where a charismatic BSer seduced most of a nation; people who previously had appeared to be reasonable thinking folk suddenly became militant groupthinkers incapable of recognizing the reality of what was happening all around them even as the country became one big plantation. It was as if a switch had been flipped and they fell into line.

It's not as OT as it might sound, as in the tech world we see an analogous process going on with Metro: some people are fanatical apologists impervious to facts or reason.

--JorgeA

[JorgeA]

The absolute most important thing IMHO, is that all the governments of the world are making their moves for control and regulation of the citizen independent communication channel called the Internet. It is about power and preservation of that power. And things are accelerating as precedents come and go and they get a feel for what they can get away with.

To any government, legitimate or not, fascist or not, democratic ( small "d" ) or not, republic ( small "r" ) or not, corrupt or not, free or not, totalitarian or not, they all have one thing in common - institutionalized momentum. It matters not who is sitting in the seats because the one thing that does travel through time is their core function - self-preservation. This means that it doesn't really matter what those bureaucrats sitting in those seats has to say because it will be superseded by later seat-sitters.

And nothing cries for more scrutiny than a vehicle that allows peasants to communicate amongst themselves and without being spied upon. The Internet and all it's p2p derivatives are a bigger threat than the earlier plain old telephone system, which itself was thoroughly penetrated.

No-one who was conscious during the early USENET years before the web can possibly believe how far it has already gone. Even those around during the baby step Clipper chip and Carnivore years would not believe it has gone this far now. Yet here we are, sitting in the middle of an uber-novel jointly penned by a dream team of Orwell, Huxley and Ayn Rand. And they ain't through, not by a long-shot.

All those mentioned, widely varying types of government who can agree on nothing will in fact agree on one thing - the Internet must be controlled. They will cooperate here in ways no-one will believe. And it is already happening most likely. Our spooks and Chinese spooks might be painted as being mortal enemies, but I expect either or both to supply the other with critical info when requested, perhaps under the guise of terrorists. Tiananmen Square, 9/11 hijackers, whatever, they all appear the same to human bureaucrats, and certainly carry no differences to timeless institutionalized momentum.

This is why people and sheeple should not give an inch on anything, even something as controversial and perhaps petty as "sales taxes". The goal isn't so much the tax or to protect brick and mortar ( humans are running both and they do in fact live somewhere covered by existing laws ) the goal is building the infrastructure into the "Internet" and having it become as familiar as the tree beside the road that you stop noticing as the days go on.

Frankly, we're gonna need a new Internet now. This one is screwed.

Darknet, anyone?

I think you hit the mail on the head. Sooner or later, every organization loses sight of its original purpose and starts focusing on aggrandizing itself, accumulating power and wielding it. Governments, corporations, unions, volunteer organizations -- they all ultimately become more about themselves than about the people they were originally founded to serve. That's why I think that the smaller they are or the easier it is to leave them and start a fresh new one, the better for everyone (except the powermongers): It helps to keep 'em honest and humble.

This would be a really good time for the ReactOS people to get their act together and start moving in a serious way.

--JorgeA