Nope. The fear is that the government entity would be funded by tax dollars no matter how inefficient it was. The real fear is tax payer funded competition. A tax payer funded competitor could kill a private enterprise by charging little for its service and getting its real funding through tax dollars.
There are appropriate places for both government and private enterprise. Letting government and private enterprise "compete" will never tell us where to draw the line.
Personally I think the line should be drawn by things such as entry barriers and whether the industry is a natural monopoly. Of course, there is the third "hybrid" choice. Private enterprise closely regulated by government (eg utilities in many states), though this approach has dangers as well (regulatory capture).
Except everything you just said is a lie. Network neutrality has always allowed reasonable network management, including spam blocking, firewalls, etc. Why are you deliberately misrepresenting the issues involved in network neutrality? And who on/. modded you up for it?
He also explained why it can't. The SATA cables only transmit 1's and 0's. If any of those 1's and 0's were switching or degrading on the SATA cable, you would have serious computer problems and audio quality would be the least of your concerns.
I'm really curious where you got your definition of "right of way." Has a government ever been able to take back a right of way? I think that would be a problem under the Fifth Amendment. The government can regulate, of course, provided that there is no regulatory taking, but that power doesn't sprout from the fact that the right of way was granted by the government in the first place. The government's regulatory authority is independent.
Thing is, the ISP's already granted me (as a customer) an easement across their wires.
An easement is an ownership right. I don't think Internet access is analogous to an easement. An easement can't be revoked by the grantor after it is given. Your Internet access? Well, I don't know what your contract says, but I'd imagine there are a wide variety of reasons that your ISP could cut you off, and I doubt you would have any recourse.
His conclusion is right, but for all the wrong reasons...
Government subsidies are irrelevant. Could the government take back all those subsidies and right-of-ways? Problem not without compensation under the fifth amendment. Under current jurisprudence, the fifth amendment applies even to benefits provided by the government, including certain government jobs and welfare benefits.
His other argument is that there is no 'invasion' because 'these service providers chose to connect to the open internet allowing their users to request such content.' I'm not sure this is a very strong argument compared to Lyon's paper. The paper argued that net neutrality would essentially grant an easement over the ISP's wires and that this permanent invasion would be a taking under the fifth amendment. As far as I'm aware, Lyon's theory is novel in telecom regulation. I doubt the courts will accept it, but the techdirt article doesn't really have a strong argument against it either.
Under current jurisprudence, a regulatory taking is a taking under the fifth amendment. The relevant question is whether net neutrality would be a regulatory taking, and Techdirt does not address that question. I think net neutrality leaves the ISPs with enough room for profit that it would not be a regulatory taking. Whether I'm right or not, who knows...
This may have been the problem I experienced. I had played in the (multiplayer only) beta with no problems. Once the game came out though, I kept crashing in single player in between levels. I cleaned the dust out of my computer and that solved the problem.
I wonder how many people experiencing this just have too much dust built up in their computers?
Furthermore, if there's any company that's going to make damn sure to unlock it's games if it goes under, it's Valve.
I love Steam, but this argument has always been bunk. If Valve goes under, Valve will be in bankruptcy. It won't be up to Valve. Valve's debtors will be in charge, represented by the bankruptcy trustee. There's no way that a bankruptcy trustee will *ever* authorize deploying the Steam kill switch, and that's assuming that there is a Steam kill switch that could be easily deployed when necessary.
You attribute a negative characteristic to every corporation, taking a blind eye to the distinct characteristics of individual corporations.
Corporations are not all the same. They vary in many ways.
There is a reason why we have corporations: we have found the corporate form to be extremely useful as a way to facilitate business. We encourage investment by shielding investors from liability. By increasing the availability of capital, we have allowed businesses to accomplish many useful things that would not have otherwise been accomplished.
It is to BP's credit that they have said since the beginning that they would not hide behind the liability cap. However, the cap does not apply if negligence was involved in the spill. The rig, quite frankly, was not up to the level of industry standards at the time of the spill. That is strong evidence of negligence. Even if BP had tried to hide behind the liability shield, they likely would have failed.
Bush 41 didn't establish the liability cap. He *raised* it to 75 Million.
As most people are now realizing, there should not be a cap at all. The problem is that Congress, in response, is going to raise the cap to $10 Billion or some other arbitrary number. When the next disaster happens in twenty years, the cap will be too low again. Hopefully Congress will realize this and abolish the cap completely, but I don't have much faith that they are that forward thinking. Or worse: maybe they realize that if they completely abolish the cap, they won't be able to score environmental points by repeatedly raising it in the future every time there's a disaster.
My main point is that people don't want privacy. That's why the most popular services aren't very good at protecting privacy. People want to give it up in return for convenience and better communications platforms. It's true that you could pass a law that requires stronger privacy protections... but why is that desirable? Isn't it clear that most people don't *want* privacy? They want the convenience that Facebook provides, that you only get by giving up a little bit of privacy.
For the past several years Facebook and Google have been consistently criticized for their poor records on privacy. Yet, these sites are still two of the most popular sites on the Internet. Why is that? Are people not aware of the privacy concerns? Or do they just not care?
I think they don't care. I think they know that they're are giving up a measure of their privacy. They think that the services and convenience that they get in return are worth it.
Want to change things? You can criticize Google and Facebook all you want. As long as people are willing to give up privacy to use their services, G and FB aren't going to change. If you want to change things, there are several options. None of them are easy.
1. Convince people that their privacy is worth enough that they shouldn't give it up to use FB/Google. 2. Offer equivalent services with better privacy protection. 3. Convince the government to regulate FB/Google, forcing them to offer better privacy protections.
As a small government conservative, #3 deeply offends me. If people don't value their privacy, then it takes a high level of arrogance to use the machines of government to force private companies to protect privacy anyway.
I don't think people are stupid. They can make rational decisions about their own privacy. They've made those decisions, and that's why Google and Facebook are so popular. Don't like what the people decided? Try to change their minds. But don't use the government to shove something down their throats that they clearly do not want.
I'm a conservative. My real problem with this is that a strong central government (Texas) is making decisions that should be made at the local level.
As such, having the DOE take control of educational standards is not a good solution. There's currently a Democrat in the White House, but how would you feel if a Republican took control and shoved Texas style standards through the DOE, having nation wide effect?
These are decisions that should be made by communities and teachers, not bureaucrats.
The D&R license doesn't require anyone to die... you just have to be dead to use software under it. The license even specifies how this is to be accomplished. You're allowed to tell your heirs to use the software on your behalf after you're dead.
The really puzzling clause is the revocation clause, which not only allows the licensor to revoke the license, but proclaims that the licensor WILL revoke the license, and then the heirs will be punished "to the fullest extent of the law." I believe a court would only find liability for usage AFTER the licensor revoked, regardless of the drafter's intention.
Another strange clause seems to say that ghosts and angels are not considered dead for purposes of the license. Pure silliness, of course. What court would claim jurisdiction over angels and ghosts? Certainly not a human one. And an inhuman one is not likely to respect software licenses. The drafter made a big mistake here in failing to define ghosts and angels. These words are just begging for a legal definition.
As a 3L who can't get a job, and who will probably go back to software engineering (not necessarily a bad thing) after law school, I wholeheartedly agree. Unless you have a very good reason, don't go to law school. It is not the ticket that it once was, and considering the education required, the payoff is not going to be worth it for most people.
the game really has to be tailored to the controller to work well.
That's very true. I have a Wii but no classic controller. I plugged in a gamecube controller to play Super Mario World. The game was unplayable. The Y button was run and the B button was jump. It was impossible to hit running jumps.
The stick is in the upper left and not in the odd uncomfortable position of the dual shock stick.
The right button placement is great. Large A button in the middle. Small B button to the left. X is above the A and Y is to the right of the A. The buttons all have different shapes so you can feel what button your thumb is on without having to look.
And of course, the *epic* analog shoulder buttons. The buttons have a huge range of motion; I'm pretty sure they depress over half an inch, and they 'lock' at the bottom. I've never seen another controller with such awesome analog buttons.
Bah, lots of replies to your question, but most of them pin the blame in the wrong place.
Of course, the embargo started during the cold war. We could debate whether even *that* was a good idea, but dems da facts. The reason the ban stays in place is strictly for political reasons. But it's not to maintain a "macho" image, as other replies have stated. The reason is that the ban is very popular among cuban expatriots in Florida. Cubans are an important minority demographic in Florida. And Florida is a very important swing state. If you oppose the embargo, you lose the Cuban vote, and then you lose Florida, and then you lose the election. *This* is the one and only reason that the embargo is still in place.
We should learn from our mistakes. In the past, we have used trade sanctions to try to reform countries that did things we didn't like. In every instance, these trade sanctions have failed. It is high time to abandon trade sanctions as we knew them in the 20th century.
I suspect that the best way to go about doing so would be to first convince the Florida Cuban population that lifting the embargo would be a good thing. If you can succeed at that, then lifting the embargo becomes politically feasible. Of course, if President Obama remains popular, he may be able to do a limited number of unpopular things, such as lifting the embargo, and still win reelection in 2012. President Obama has already taken the very limited step of allowing Americans with relatives in Cuba to travel to Cuba. Although I didn't vote for Obama, and I disagree with him about a great many things, I applaud him for taking even this small step in the right direction.
/. wasn't upset because the FBI was enforcing the law. Most/.ers were upset because the FBI went in on a trumped up over-broad warrant and seized an entire data center. If they legitimately need to seize voip servers, that may be acceptable. But it's not okay to take servers of everyone who happened to be unfortunate enough to be leasing servers in the same datacenter.
There's another angle to this as well. Would the FBI ever seize telco equipment that belonged to an ILEC? No. The FBI and the courts would recognize that telephone is an essential service, and you can't just cut off someone's telephone service because their provider has been naughty. So if that's true for an ILEC, why isn't it true for a voip provider? Telephone delivered via voip is still an essential service. It's the best way to request emergency services (911). So why did the FBI cut off voip service to customers because their provider had been naughty? This is seriously unacceptable behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope. The fear is that the government entity would be funded by tax dollars no matter how inefficient it was. The real fear is tax payer funded competition. A tax payer funded competitor could kill a private enterprise by charging little for its service and getting its real funding through tax dollars.
There are appropriate places for both government and private enterprise. Letting government and private enterprise "compete" will never tell us where to draw the line.
Personally I think the line should be drawn by things such as entry barriers and whether the industry is a natural monopoly. Of course, there is the third "hybrid" choice. Private enterprise closely regulated by government (eg utilities in many states), though this approach has dangers as well (regulatory capture).
Except everything you just said is a lie. Network neutrality has always allowed reasonable network management, including spam blocking, firewalls, etc. Why are you deliberately misrepresenting the issues involved in network neutrality? And who on /. modded you up for it?
He also explained why it can't. The SATA cables only transmit 1's and 0's. If any of those 1's and 0's were switching or degrading on the SATA cable, you would have serious computer problems and audio quality would be the least of your concerns.
I'm really curious where you got your definition of "right of way." Has a government ever been able to take back a right of way? I think that would be a problem under the Fifth Amendment. The government can regulate, of course, provided that there is no regulatory taking, but that power doesn't sprout from the fact that the right of way was granted by the government in the first place. The government's regulatory authority is independent.
Thing is, the ISP's already granted me (as a customer) an easement across their wires.
An easement is an ownership right. I don't think Internet access is analogous to an easement. An easement can't be revoked by the grantor after it is given. Your Internet access? Well, I don't know what your contract says, but I'd imagine there are a wide variety of reasons that your ISP could cut you off, and I doubt you would have any recourse.
Haven't gotten my bar exam results yet...
I'll probably be going back into computers though. The legal market is pretty messed up right now.
His conclusion is right, but for all the wrong reasons...
Government subsidies are irrelevant. Could the government take back all those subsidies and right-of-ways? Problem not without compensation under the fifth amendment. Under current jurisprudence, the fifth amendment applies even to benefits provided by the government, including certain government jobs and welfare benefits.
His other argument is that there is no 'invasion' because 'these service providers chose to connect to the open internet allowing their users to request such content.' I'm not sure this is a very strong argument compared to Lyon's paper. The paper argued that net neutrality would essentially grant an easement over the ISP's wires and that this permanent invasion would be a taking under the fifth amendment. As far as I'm aware, Lyon's theory is novel in telecom regulation. I doubt the courts will accept it, but the techdirt article doesn't really have a strong argument against it either.
Under current jurisprudence, a regulatory taking is a taking under the fifth amendment. The relevant question is whether net neutrality would be a regulatory taking, and Techdirt does not address that question. I think net neutrality leaves the ISPs with enough room for profit that it would not be a regulatory taking. Whether I'm right or not, who knows...
IANAL and this is not legal advice.
This may have been the problem I experienced. I had played in the (multiplayer only) beta with no problems. Once the game came out though, I kept crashing in single player in between levels. I cleaned the dust out of my computer and that solved the problem.
I wonder how many people experiencing this just have too much dust built up in their computers?
Furthermore, if there's any company that's going to make damn sure to unlock it's games if it goes under, it's Valve.
I love Steam, but this argument has always been bunk. If Valve goes under, Valve will be in bankruptcy. It won't be up to Valve. Valve's debtors will be in charge, represented by the bankruptcy trustee. There's no way that a bankruptcy trustee will *ever* authorize deploying the Steam kill switch, and that's assuming that there is a Steam kill switch that could be easily deployed when necessary.
You attribute a negative characteristic to every corporation, taking a blind eye to the distinct characteristics of individual corporations.
Corporations are not all the same. They vary in many ways.
There is a reason why we have corporations: we have found the corporate form to be extremely useful as a way to facilitate business. We encourage investment by shielding investors from liability. By increasing the availability of capital, we have allowed businesses to accomplish many useful things that would not have otherwise been accomplished.
It is to BP's credit that they have said since the beginning that they would not hide behind the liability cap. However, the cap does not apply if negligence was involved in the spill. The rig, quite frankly, was not up to the level of industry standards at the time of the spill. That is strong evidence of negligence. Even if BP had tried to hide behind the liability shield, they likely would have failed.
Bush 41 didn't establish the liability cap. He *raised* it to 75 Million.
As most people are now realizing, there should not be a cap at all. The problem is that Congress, in response, is going to raise the cap to $10 Billion or some other arbitrary number. When the next disaster happens in twenty years, the cap will be too low again. Hopefully Congress will realize this and abolish the cap completely, but I don't have much faith that they are that forward thinking. Or worse: maybe they realize that if they completely abolish the cap, they won't be able to score environmental points by repeatedly raising it in the future every time there's a disaster.
[citation needed]
A blind anti corporate attitude is not insightful.
My main point is that people don't want privacy. That's why the most popular services aren't very good at protecting privacy. People want to give it up in return for convenience and better communications platforms. It's true that you could pass a law that requires stronger privacy protections... but why is that desirable? Isn't it clear that most people don't *want* privacy? They want the convenience that Facebook provides, that you only get by giving up a little bit of privacy.
For the past several years Facebook and Google have been consistently criticized for their poor records on privacy. Yet, these sites are still two of the most popular sites on the Internet. Why is that? Are people not aware of the privacy concerns? Or do they just not care?
I think they don't care. I think they know that they're are giving up a measure of their privacy. They think that the services and convenience that they get in return are worth it.
Want to change things? You can criticize Google and Facebook all you want. As long as people are willing to give up privacy to use their services, G and FB aren't going to change. If you want to change things, there are several options. None of them are easy.
1. Convince people that their privacy is worth enough that they shouldn't give it up to use FB/Google.
2. Offer equivalent services with better privacy protection.
3. Convince the government to regulate FB/Google, forcing them to offer better privacy protections.
As a small government conservative, #3 deeply offends me. If people don't value their privacy, then it takes a high level of arrogance to use the machines of government to force private companies to protect privacy anyway.
I don't think people are stupid. They can make rational decisions about their own privacy. They've made those decisions, and that's why Google and Facebook are so popular. Don't like what the people decided? Try to change their minds. But don't use the government to shove something down their throats that they clearly do not want.
I'm a conservative. My real problem with this is that a strong central government (Texas) is making decisions that should be made at the local level.
As such, having the DOE take control of educational standards is not a good solution. There's currently a Democrat in the White House, but how would you feel if a Republican took control and shoved Texas style standards through the DOE, having nation wide effect?
These are decisions that should be made by communities and teachers, not bureaucrats.
The D&R license doesn't require anyone to die... you just have to be dead to use software under it. The license even specifies how this is to be accomplished. You're allowed to tell your heirs to use the software on your behalf after you're dead.
The really puzzling clause is the revocation clause, which not only allows the licensor to revoke the license, but proclaims that the licensor WILL revoke the license, and then the heirs will be punished "to the fullest extent of the law." I believe a court would only find liability for usage AFTER the licensor revoked, regardless of the drafter's intention.
Another strange clause seems to say that ghosts and angels are not considered dead for purposes of the license. Pure silliness, of course. What court would claim jurisdiction over angels and ghosts? Certainly not a human one. And an inhuman one is not likely to respect software licenses. The drafter made a big mistake here in failing to define ghosts and angels. These words are just begging for a legal definition.
I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
Of course! That's what Nintendo fans want.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/9/15/
"I can't wait to buy Zelda again."
"Which one?"
"All of them. Over and over."
I'm a huge Nintendo fanboy, and I don't dare count how many copies of Zelda and Metroid I've purchased over the years.
As a 3L who can't get a job, and who will probably go back to software engineering (not necessarily a bad thing) after law school, I wholeheartedly agree. Unless you have a very good reason, don't go to law school. It is not the ticket that it once was, and considering the education required, the payoff is not going to be worth it for most people.
the game really has to be tailored to the controller to work well.
That's very true. I have a Wii but no classic controller. I plugged in a gamecube controller to play Super Mario World. The game was unplayable. The Y button was run and the B button was jump. It was impossible to hit running jumps.
The gamecube controller is the best ever, imo.
The stick is in the upper left and not in the odd uncomfortable position of the dual shock stick.
The right button placement is great. Large A button in the middle. Small B button to the left. X is above the A and Y is to the right of the A. The buttons all have different shapes so you can feel what button your thumb is on without having to look.
And of course, the *epic* analog shoulder buttons. The buttons have a huge range of motion; I'm pretty sure they depress over half an inch, and they 'lock' at the bottom. I've never seen another controller with such awesome analog buttons.
Don't buy names from squatters. It only encourages the business model, and we don't want to do that.
Bah, lots of replies to your question, but most of them pin the blame in the wrong place.
Of course, the embargo started during the cold war. We could debate whether even *that* was a good idea, but dems da facts. The reason the ban stays in place is strictly for political reasons. But it's not to maintain a "macho" image, as other replies have stated. The reason is that the ban is very popular among cuban expatriots in Florida. Cubans are an important minority demographic in Florida. And Florida is a very important swing state. If you oppose the embargo, you lose the Cuban vote, and then you lose Florida, and then you lose the election. *This* is the one and only reason that the embargo is still in place.
We should learn from our mistakes. In the past, we have used trade sanctions to try to reform countries that did things we didn't like. In every instance, these trade sanctions have failed. It is high time to abandon trade sanctions as we knew them in the 20th century.
I suspect that the best way to go about doing so would be to first convince the Florida Cuban population that lifting the embargo would be a good thing. If you can succeed at that, then lifting the embargo becomes politically feasible. Of course, if President Obama remains popular, he may be able to do a limited number of unpopular things, such as lifting the embargo, and still win reelection in 2012. President Obama has already taken the very limited step of allowing Americans with relatives in Cuba to travel to Cuba. Although I didn't vote for Obama, and I disagree with him about a great many things, I applaud him for taking even this small step in the right direction.
If you value independence more than money... then you already made your decision.
Why would you give up something you value (independence) for something that doesn't mean much to you (money)?
Yeah, seriously.
Steam needs a rental service =]
/. wasn't upset because the FBI was enforcing the law. Most /.ers were upset because the FBI went in on a trumped up over-broad warrant and seized an entire data center. If they legitimately need to seize voip servers, that may be acceptable. But it's not okay to take servers of everyone who happened to be unfortunate enough to be leasing servers in the same datacenter.
There's another angle to this as well. Would the FBI ever seize telco equipment that belonged to an ILEC? No. The FBI and the courts would recognize that telephone is an essential service, and you can't just cut off someone's telephone service because their provider has been naughty. So if that's true for an ILEC, why isn't it true for a voip provider? Telephone delivered via voip is still an essential service. It's the best way to request emergency services (911). So why did the FBI cut off voip service to customers because their provider had been naughty? This is seriously unacceptable behavior.