Matt Keally's Blog

My Note: From the comments:"What this is and many other actions of the copyright cartels, says is that they have seen the results of fair trials and don't like the results. So they have decided that they are going to write their own rules to get what they want. This is perhaps one of the better objective standards to determine when an group has gone from a lawful organization to a criminal institution."

My Note: What about the US Post Office? UPS and FedEx never complain about that, yet the Post Office has a mailbox at every business and home and services each 6 days per week.I remember someone writing an op-ed piece about how the Post Office should get into the ISP business. I don't see how delivery of bits differs that much from delivery of snail mail in terms of the US Constitution.

My Note: From the comments:"'Now we have these things called drivers and libraries that do all the basic work for us'And where do drivers come from, faeries? Unless you want a generation of aging programmers who understand the workings of the machine to die off completely and become reliant on drivers originating from unknown mystical places, the younger generation of programmers MUST learn these things.I do not think it is a coincidence that computers get faster every year, but my experiences as an end-user are not one bit improved since Windows 3.11. Things still break constantly. Mysterious transient problems. Multi-vendor finger-pointing because NONE of them truly understand the complete working system or want to be responsible for it. etc. etc. I still spend about 30% of my time just waiting for my PC to do God-knows-what between certain actions.It's horrendous, and the problem, in my opinion, is that we have become reliant on 'high level' app guys like yourself who just 'trust' that whatever is beneath their app is going to do what it needs to magically and that it will all come to pass. And then the apps get heavier, and heavier, and round and round we go in perpetual mediocrity. I've been stuck in this feedback loop since 1989, and I'm telling you it makes me want to just swing a hammer for a living instead sometimes..."

My Note: From the comments:"A lot of these devices seem to prevent planning in general, even for little things. If you had to look up an address and stare at a map ahead of time to know where you were going, then you'd think of other things in the process. Now you can just hop in your car, type what you want in to your phone (e.g. bike shop), and follow its directions. Maybe you'll end up where you want, but people who do that often seem to be unprepared. And I've seen people doing that get lost in the process -- those directions aren't perfect, and if you don't have some general idea of where you're going, its still easy to make wrong turns. (Dedicated GPS devices are better, but not perfect, and I've heard that their sales are down due to smartphones).Of course, it's not like in the old days everyone planned ahead and knew where they were and where they were going at all times. My family was big on planning routes, always having maps, and knowing how to read them. This is clearly not the case for many people I have met. I still think technology isn't helping."

My Note: "Dressed in jeans and heels, the 23-year-old woman said she used to go to Granby Street in Norfolk to party but said the atmosphere felt too young."23 and complaining the atmosphere is too young?

My Note: There are a lot of people who confuse "intellectual property" with physical property, as this commenter notes:"The argument then becomes whether ideas can be property. The US Constitution, by implication, says no - 'Writings and Discoveries' are an 'exclusive right' only for a 'limited time,' a clear statement that 'intellectual property' is not property at all, but a limited and artificially constructed grant of rights."

My Note: This road isn't going to make it until 2012.

My Note: From the comments, on the tax software lobby:"Now here in California we have an actual complexity industry, with its own lobbyists! How long can that last when you have an actual industry that makes money off of negative returns on additional complexity."

My Note: Majoring in liberal arts with no grading scale? Most academic research is garbage? Does the author want to turn college into a camp?

My Note: 1 in 5 students drop out, so the school board decides to lower the graduation standards...