Thoughts for the week...
Well, I need to stop paying sooo much attention to what the current regime in this country is doing, and just sit back in ignorance, and be happy that I trust them. They will take care of all of us, you know, just don't ask any questions...
So, what triggers this lovely thought is a series of little articles, statements and news bits that I saw this week. It just continues to reinforce the dangerous path that our current regime is taking us.
Like the U.S. dropping form 1st to 5th in the world in use and development of Technology. Here is the link:
One possible cause? Spending huge amounts of money on mature technology, instead of new "gee that's cool " R& D ideas. As the article in MIT Technology Review reports in the April issue, there has been a HUGE shift in gov't funded R&D from industry to Military spending:
"The U.S. government’s preoccupation with security would be less important if the private sector were investing in basic research. It is not: for years, corporate R&D has stressed return on investment through the timely creation of new products. And U.S. venture capitalists have responded to government and corporate demand by disproportionately funding security-related startups. Since 2000, according to Venture Economics, communications funding has dropped 83 percent, and software investment is down 77 percent; but during the same period, defense investment fell only 58 percent. Fields like robotics, nanotechnology, and genomic medicine are underfunded. Venture capitalists have a “lemminglike instinct when it comes to investment themes,” admits Bill Kaiser, a general partner at Greylock Partners in Waltham, MA."
And then there are always the fake news stories that our fine regime feels obligated to peddle as truth. The Government Accountability Office had this to say: "memo from Comptroller General David M. Walker. Walker wrote that such stories -- designed to resemble independently reported broadcast news stories so that TV stations can run them without editing -- violate provisions in annual appropriations laws that ban covert propaganda."
And lastly, for all of you folks out there who like digital entertainment, there is this edict from the FCC... "Thanks to an FCC ruling [PDF 448k], as of July 2005, it will be illegal to manufacture or import DTV tuners unless they include DRM technologies mandated by the FCC. This means that DRM will be a standard feature on all future televisions, TiVos, and computers that want to interoperate with DTV content."
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humor_impaired) wrote,
contemplative
