Can anyone think of a drug user who admits that their favorite drug might have nasty side effects? Or a drug virgin who admits that the government's stance on drugs could be completely wrong? Hmmm...
I've never smoked pot or used any other illegal psychotropic drug. I started drinking alchohol two-and-a-half years ago at the age of 29.
I think that the War On Drugs is a excessive response to a problem (criminal drug dealing) which the prohibitions themselves have created. But I'm in favor of very strict controls on refined opiates, PCP, and other drugs with equally equally extreme effects.
I think pot should be regulated much like alcohol.
I think the jury isn't quite in on things like E, but it sounds like it can have some icky and insidious side effects.
The mechanism that you described has a name -- corruption.
Mmmm. So government should never act on the behalf of industry?
Would you have the government act alone to devise a cellular standard? Or perhaps there should be a popular vote? Or perhaps government should stay out of it completely, and we should allow Microsoft to "invent" it?
I like the idea of a free, unencumbered standard for encoding music digitally. Better still if lots of companies pick it up. But how do you propose to make utilities like power companies and phone systems work if not by the admittedly-corrupt mode of industry-government partnerships? I think it's rather a different beast.
(Convince me that I'm wrong; I shall be delighted.)
Analog usage costs more per minute. Anyone care to explain why? I'll tell you. BECAUSE ANALOG WORKS BETTER.
Analog is easier to implement, but less efficient than digital at transmitting the same voice quality. Digital will transmit intelligible speech in conditions where analog would just plain fall apart. (But when digital reaches its limits, it degrades rapidly.)
Because of digital's higher initial cost but low per-user cost, service providers can provide the same services more cheaply to users using digital in urban areas. But it takes a while to work out to less populated areas, thus your less-than-seamless coverage.
Whaddya want? They could have stuck with analog and just plain run out of bandwidth in the cities. Prices would rise, or quality would go to hell. Or they could switch to digital and serve more customers more cheaply.
If digital cell phones hadn't come along, people would be standing around on their analog jobbies, yelling "WHAT? WHAT?". Only it would be more expensive, and there would be less of'em.
Think, no, really think hard about the meaning of this fall back feature and why it it's never implemented the other way around (analog with digital fallback).
I don't think there's any great conspiracy here. Analog is still more prevalent than digital. If you had it set up the other way around, you'd almost never "fall back" to digital. So you may as well set it to analog-only--which you can do.
Frankly, this is a major problem with ISO. It shouldn't be accepting patent-encumbered stuff as standards
What about TIA, ETSI, & cellular standards?
Qualcomm invented (well, whipped in to shape) a novel encoding scheme for cellular telephones, patented lots of parts of the encoding scheme, and got it accepted as a standard. Now it makes lots of money for lots of people (including me, a SW engineer with barely a shred of ComTheory). Qualcomm had an enormous incentive to get the standard widely accepted and make it work. The US government, seeing that Qualcomm's standard would bring in tasty tax revenue, has repeatedly thrown their weight behind getting the standard accepted.
The IPR for GSM are jointly held by several gorillas of varying sizes (Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, and a number of smaller players). That "open" standard is in fact only open to the club. Certain companies don't get to play. But because of the club (and massive governmental buy-in) a wide range of manufacturers felt comfortable making phones, protocol stacks, & what-have-you; GSM is widespread and interoperability isn't much of a problem (at least in Europe).
So standards that incorporate privately-held IP can function to get a big system (as cellular needs) accepted. Maybe they are not appropriate in all situations, but they can be useful.
And is that really so different from what ISO has done?
Why is it that everyone seems to think that convenience is always good? People should feel passionately enough about making their choice to undertake the terrible and arduous task of...getting up half an hour early? Driving ten blocks out of the way during their commute?
C'mon. This is ridiculous. Given how much television ads seem to sway voters -- elections are more about how much money you can spend putting your name in front of voters' eyeballs than about voting records or substantial policy differences -- I wonder if we shouldn't make it harder to vote!
Strangely, the Fortune 500 company where I work is not dominated by jocks or preps, but by geeks.
I hated grade school. High school was OK, but that's because I went to an alternative school-- a place halfway between "Hippy High" and an intensive college prep. I hung out with trench-coat wearers and D&D players.
That was twelve years ago.
Somewhere along the line I decided that being alienated wasn't the point. Sure, it happens, because I'm an individual and I'm kind of weird. But I try to overcome those differences when I can, because I generally like people, and would rather connect with them than piss them off.
Occasionally I chafe at the fact that I can't wear my black vinyl trousers to work. Oh, I could, but no one would take me seriously. I find that there are battles worth fighting. Oh sure, power corrupts, but only absolute power corrupts absolutely. Sometimes you can get people to do the right thing.
Giving up does no good.
The ugly intimacy of corporate and state power isn't the best of worlds. But anarchy isn't the best or most natural alternative. Unless you mean the fabulous anarchy of the Open Source, Free Software, GNU folks. Which strangely enough sprang from the womb of the corporate-federal hegemony (MIT, DARPANET, anyone?) and still depends upon a huge network maintained by the likes of Sprint, MCI, ATT, IBM, the NSF..
Slashdot Mirror
Gee, Microsoft is so evil.
Why is this such a surprise? Just because someone is personable doesn't mean they're good.
I've never smoked pot or used any other illegal psychotropic drug. I started drinking alchohol two-and-a-half years ago at the age of 29.
I think that the War On Drugs is a excessive response to a problem (criminal drug dealing) which the prohibitions themselves have created. But I'm in favor of very strict controls on refined opiates, PCP, and other drugs with equally equally extreme effects.
I think pot should be regulated much like alcohol.
I think the jury isn't quite in on things like E, but it sounds like it can have some icky and insidious side effects.
How's that?
Ickypoo.
Mmmm. So government should never act on the behalf of industry?
Would you have the government act alone to devise a cellular standard? Or perhaps there should be a popular vote? Or perhaps government should stay out of it completely, and we should allow Microsoft to "invent" it?
I like the idea of a free, unencumbered standard for encoding music digitally. Better still if lots of companies pick it up. But how do you propose to make utilities like power companies and phone systems work if not by the admittedly-corrupt mode of industry-government partnerships? I think it's rather a different beast.
(Convince me that I'm wrong; I shall be delighted.)
Analog is easier to implement, but less efficient than digital at transmitting the same voice quality. Digital will transmit intelligible speech in conditions where analog would just plain fall apart. (But when digital reaches its limits, it degrades rapidly.)
Because of digital's higher initial cost but low per-user cost, service providers can provide the same services more cheaply to users using digital in urban areas. But it takes a while to work out to less populated areas, thus your less-than-seamless coverage.
Whaddya want? They could have stuck with analog and just plain run out of bandwidth in the cities. Prices would rise, or quality would go to hell. Or they could switch to digital and serve more customers more cheaply.
If digital cell phones hadn't come along, people would be standing around on their analog jobbies, yelling "WHAT? WHAT?". Only it would be more expensive, and there would be less of'em.
Think, no, really think hard about the meaning of this fall back feature and why it it's never implemented the other way around (analog with digital fallback).
I don't think there's any great conspiracy here. Analog is still more prevalent than digital. If you had it set up the other way around, you'd almost never "fall back" to digital. So you may as well set it to analog-only--which you can do.
What about TIA, ETSI, & cellular standards?
Qualcomm invented (well, whipped in to shape) a novel encoding scheme for cellular telephones, patented lots of parts of the encoding scheme, and got it accepted as a standard. Now it makes lots of money for lots of people (including me, a SW engineer with barely a shred of ComTheory). Qualcomm had an enormous incentive to get the standard widely accepted and make it work. The US government, seeing that Qualcomm's standard would bring in tasty tax revenue, has repeatedly thrown their weight behind getting the standard accepted.
The IPR for GSM are jointly held by several gorillas of varying sizes (Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, and a number of smaller players). That "open" standard is in fact only open to the club. Certain companies don't get to play. But because of the club (and massive governmental buy-in) a wide range of manufacturers felt comfortable making phones, protocol stacks, & what-have-you; GSM is widespread and interoperability isn't much of a problem (at least in Europe).
So standards that incorporate privately-held IP can function to get a big system (as cellular needs) accepted. Maybe they are not appropriate in all situations, but they can be useful.
And is that really so different from what ISO has done?
C'mon. This is ridiculous. Given how much television ads seem to sway voters -- elections are more about how much money you can spend putting your name in front of voters' eyeballs than about voting records or substantial policy differences -- I wonder if we shouldn't make it harder to vote!
Strangely, the Fortune 500 company where I work is not dominated by jocks or preps, but by geeks.
I hated grade school. High school was OK, but that's because I went to an alternative school-- a place halfway between "Hippy High" and an intensive college prep. I hung out with trench-coat wearers and D&D players.
That was twelve years ago.
Somewhere along the line I decided that being alienated wasn't the point. Sure, it happens, because I'm an individual and I'm kind of weird. But I try to overcome those differences when I can, because I generally like people, and would rather connect with them than piss them off.
Occasionally I chafe at the fact that I can't wear my black vinyl trousers to work. Oh, I could, but no one would take me seriously. I find that there are battles worth fighting. Oh sure, power corrupts, but only absolute power corrupts absolutely. Sometimes you can get people to do the right thing.
Giving up does no good.
The ugly intimacy of corporate and state power isn't the best of worlds. But anarchy isn't the best or most natural alternative. Unless you mean the fabulous anarchy of the Open Source, Free Software, GNU folks. Which strangely enough sprang from the womb of the corporate-federal hegemony (MIT, DARPANET, anyone?) and still depends upon a huge network maintained by the likes of Sprint, MCI, ATT, IBM, the NSF..