>Being entirely reliant on someone else's software and hardware is a bleak thought for a person used to some degree of independence and self sufficiency in the tech world.
It's also a nightmare from any sort of privacy perspective, in a world that's already becoming too much like a panopticon.
In the late 80s and early 90s there was a great deal of blatantly pirated SF, Fantasy, and Anime videotapes for sale at conventions, typically recorded from OTA, satellite, or cable for Western stuff. Anime was typically better quality, copied from Japanese originals with fan dubs added. Some of it was "at cost" where you were paying other fans for the their time, equipment, and the tape. Others were more obviously for-profit, with higher prices and sometimes better quality.
To be clear, this was the only way to get most of the stuff being traded and sold. TV shows or films with no VHS release, or anime with no official dub or American format release.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the depth of our self-disgrace is pretty damned obvious. (What I can or should do personally is less obvious.)
Having elected Donald Trump twice - atop all our other failings - is a giant screaming proclamation that the United States is unfit for, and undeserving of, continued existence as a state or government. The responsible thing to do is to hold a Constitutional Convention and dissolve the damned thing, and then the individual states can figure out how they ought to go forward from there. (I don't think current U.S. States are anything like perfect but they're what we have left once the United States government is gone.)
It almost could be a Hollywood movie in the vein of Sorceror. Couple of grizzled CERN vets transporting a volatile load of antimatter across a post-apocalyptic wasteland while being chased by energy terrorists.
Those people with a straight face was all US intelligence agencies and their leaders that also testified to congress as Trump ripped up the deal because Obama did it. Are you saying that all US intelligence agency were wrong?
I would not wager money on a revolution coming from this war, either. But if a revolution does come as a result of the war, it seems at least as likely to be in the United States as in Iran.
It's also a nightmare from any sort of privacy perspective, in a world that's already becoming too much like a panopticon.
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