Well I've had comcast @ home, out of philly, for the past 3 years now and mines basically always been blazing fast in the downstream. I still regularly pull 500kilobyte/s downloads. Sometimes I run simultaneous transfers and pull at least 1 megabyte/s. In other words, your friends aren't too far off the mark. I also get killer pings in Quake, Counter-Strike, etc. In CS I average 15-30 ms to my preferred servers. That being said, the upstream is pretty weak. It tops out at about 50kilobyte/s (these days) and when I do, it absolutely kills my downstream capacity and pings.
As for the relative worth of cable versus DSL, that depends largely on the two providers. That being said, it's been my experience, empirically speaking, that cable tends to be faster than DSL. Although it is true, from a technical standpoint, that cable modems "share bandwidth", this is only unique in that it does it at the headend. In other words, you're sharing bandwidth with people in your immediate neighborhood. However, DSL also shares bandwidth in numerous places, but especially once you start approaching the fiber/upstream. This is where it can really get expensive, and most ISPs tend to oversubscribe these by a very large ratio. Many DSL users do, in fact, get absolutely crappy bandwidth because of this. @home, on the other hand, has truely superb routing, even if they can't run a mail server if their life depended on it.
The economics just aren't there for fast DSL, typically, at a mere ~40 dollars a month, unlike cable modem through a large provider like @home. If you're willing to pay a hefty fee for DSL, you can probably get a truely fast connection, but it's unlikely you'll get an honest to god faster DSL connection (especially with Verizon) than comcast@home for a mere 40 dollars a month. Especially since the even the quoted rates for DSL at any reasonable price is a mere fraction of what I and so many others regularly pull with cable from @home (and a couple others).
and restraining piracy is NOT the same thing. Show me a law that says companies and individuals cannot band together to present a unified legal front. If RIAA were working together to, say, fix prices, then you might have an argument. But merely saying that because they're a combination of companies and doing something that you do not like is not enough.
Ok, let's imagine for a minute that GNUTella actually works half-decently. If I were RIAA, my method for killing downloads would be simple, pursue the people that provide downloads vigorously (through their IP address), especially those that are on the fastest connections and are most capable of doing so. As it stands today, without any substantial enforcement against individuals, the user has just about zero incentive to provide downloads, but it costs them (not to mention their ISP, school, whatever) bandwidth, CPU time, HD, etc. Tne end result is, today, very few users are willing provide downloads, only a very small percentage actually does. This is the much hyped "tragedy of the commons", but it's very real nonetheless.
Ok now what happens when you start providing substantial disincentives or risk? Much much less people will be willing to "contribute". For instance, if RIAA simply starts making a few well placed calls to the largest ISPs, causing the user to lose his connection in short order. Even if it's only for a few days, or even an hour or two, most users would find this absolutely unacceptable. Those that are most likely to setup a site like that, also tend to be the most attached to their "fast" connections. When the pirate is presented with a choice between providing goods to hundreds of people he doesn't even know and incurring risk in the process or merely leaching like everyone else, the choice is simple. Add to this mix permanent bans, public embarassement, potential legal action, etc etc, and you have even less reason to take the chance. Remember, they need not bust EVERY pirate that is out there, just enough to provide a credible threat. Also, remember that this approach wouldn't take much in the way of resources or money.
Now sure, there will still be SOME nuts out there that will persist for whatever reason, but those will be so small in comparison to the downloading public that their effect will be nominal. The point is that greed works against the pirates as much as it does against the industry. I fully believe the industry is capable of doing this and that it would be highly effective. Against just about any known P2P-like system (e.g., Napster, GNUTella, Scour, CuteMX, or whatever.)
It will be very interesting to see what happens when the contracts of well-known (and lesser well-known) artists come to an end.
This is a seperate subject, but I think you're completely underestimating the absolute importance in promotion and marketing on the part of the record labels. While marketing and promotion do not necessarily have to come from the industry, a simple website will not suffice. The odds are that the artist(s) will be competing for scarce eyeballs no matter what medium they're on. Scarcity, in turn, means it'll cost lots of moola. Who has lots of capital and is willing to risk it on music investments? The industry. One way or another, capital must be risked to gain a sufficiently large following. The backers will probably be the same industry that we know today, but, even if not, it doesn't really matter. The internet isn't some kind of magical pill to make all these concerns go away.
Shrug. I don't think I'm *that* passionate about it. I just disagree strongly;) First, I happen to like the truth. When I know I'm right, I'm willing to argue my case. Second, this particular kind of mistake bothers me for a whole bunch of reasons. For instance: I think it's unfair and untrue to those that have less than sterling academic credentials. It's a mistake for an employer to fall too much into that trap. It's a mistake for investors [e.g., "Why can your company do this, when a team from MIT et. al tried and failed?"] It's also unfair to those that really accomplish things later in life, to act as if one can master a field with only 4 years of experience. Who are they kidding? I've also seen normally intelligent and open minded people that clam up in the presense of people that wear their degrees on their sleeves.
I also find some aspects the education in the system less than optimal [I think that approach is somewhat contributory]. e.g., the often crappy public school system. How can we honestly say that we're getting the best and the brightest graduates from the Ivy leagues, or where ever, when the majority of the public is at a considerable disadvantage due to recieving a mediocre education in HS? Likewise, I really don't believe the top universities to be that demanding [baring perhaps the engineering and related programs to some extent]. One need look no further, in my opinion, then the absolute lack of attrition at these schools to determine that, unless they really buy into the SAT as being that accurate of a predictor. Likewise, I'd also point you to grade inflation. Or the reduced course load....
I could go on, but let's just say that I think it's harmful to society on the whole.
Yes, I'll give you that such a degree can give _some_ assurances that a person has a certain level of understanding of some material, has a certain kind of intelligence, and is willing to at least go through the motions. However, these few guarantees, to the extent that they can really be called that, aren't enough to make a person good at their job. I have had experiences very different from yours. Yes, some are good but some are also mediocre. Yes, All things being equal I'd hire the person with the better degree, but all things are not always equal. In any event, it's not a guarantee, especially if that person essentially plans on being a professional alum the rest of his or her life.
If you are so correct, then you should be able to defend your point of view without having to resort to ad hominem comments. Do you really want to tell me that a CS degree from any institution, let alone all, is some kind of guarantee of _all_ of the necessary skills, abilities, and knowledge? Yes, a 4.0 from an excellent institution can provide some assurances that a person has attained a certain level of understanding of some material, has a certain kind of intelligence, and is willing to at least go through the motions. However, none of these necessarily make a person an excellent programmer. The required skills are often quite different. The kinds of intelligence are often quite different. The level of work is often quite different. Likewise, the volume and the difficulty of the material can exceed that person's abilities. This is not even mentioning other abilities, like the desire to work hard, the desire to learn, a certain level of humility, the ability to work well with others, maturity, etc etc etc. The point is simply that it's not a a guarantee; ask just about any employer. Good programmers are rare. If the degree were this much of a determinant, hiring would be much much easier.
FYI, I am none of your suggested stereotypes. I got a 3.8 from a very respectable 4 year instituion, while working 10-50 hours in a position of considerable responsibility. I was also fortunate to attend private school for most of my life. I can count family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances at virtually all of the well respected institutions (e.g., Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Penn, Stanford, UW, etc etc). In short, I come from a very privileged background, both economically, academically, and socially. In other words, I am not bitter, I have little reason to be bitter. What I have had is enough experience with most of the highly regarded institutions at a personal and professional level so as to know better than to deify the curriculum, the institutions, or the students.
CS degreed geeks are certified geeks! CS degreed geeks are assumed to have intimate knowledge of computers at every level of detail; down to where the Physicists and Material Scientists take over.
Oh please. I've known CS grads from tons of schools, "certified" or not, they vary from mediocre, to ok, to excellent, to merely acceptable. To put it simply, the skills, abilities, and knowledge that are "tested" in CS (same can be said for engineering and many ohters) programs are often quite different from what is required to excel in industry or even academia. Now this is not to say that a degree can't be an immense help, but it's certainly not a guarantee of knowledge, skill, or ability by any stretch of the imagination. If you think that mere performance in school is going to assure you a place in this world, you're simply kidding yourself.
It's ironic that you scoff at people that view IT as being a gravy train, yet you clearly view a piece of paper as a gravy train. Mere intelligence and a degree is not enough. In fact, I'd argue that the degree is relatively insignficant compared to _actually_ being willing to work hard (working "hard" in school is almost never quite the same thing) and being willing to _really_ learn (there is learning and then there is learning...). Just as the merely "certified" MSCE is doomed to mediocrity, so to is the merely "certified" CS-degreed grad; all that seperates the two is their personal backgrounds, a piece of paper, attitude, and a relatively insigificant amount of knowledge.
Ok so if no one (or no one significant) makes purchases online due to the tax differential, then WHY should it matter if taxes are applied? As long as ACTUAL TAXES and the ACTUAL RELATED COSTS are the exact same (or near to it) for both the e-commerce and storefront retailer, I don't see how ANYONE could have a reasonable objection.
Now whether or not this can be done is another debate entirely, but let's be clear here, if taxes do not persuade the customer one way or the other (i.e., they are equal), it is FAIR; the otherway around is UNFAIR.
That said, all these people that say that today's complex tax system is too complex and too large to handle cost effectively at scale is simply ignorant. There are services and computer programs that handle these things for you, they really are not that expensive, a lot of mail order-type businesses handle them. I happen to work for one, we pay the both the city and the state, and the costs are NEGLIGIBLE. The prices of these systems would also plummet and improve if all the E-commerce companies starting purchasing them. Anyways, it's not as if any taxing of the internet necessarily means there needs to be anything so complex. For example, there could be an overhaul of the sales tax system(s). Or there could also be a federal body that would facilate all the tax transactions.....
In closing, you're kidding yourself if you think E-commerce is that big of a component of the NASDAQ, at least if you look at sales (as opposed to the relatively recent and absurd valuations on DotComs). Even if it were, if customers are merely shifting their purchases from DotComs to storefronts, then it's just that, a shift, not a net loss.
First, this is just completely irrational. If it's a sports team, we expect the teams to compete based on what they bring to the table, following the same rules. As long as they do that, then we call it fair. However, we might say two teams are competing on a "level" playing field, even if one team is cheating or is favored by the referee (i.e., one is better than the other but _lack_ of fairness makes them competetive equals). Likewise, businesses are expected to compete based on what they bring to the table. That is fair. There is a difference between equal opportunity (e.g., "fair") and equal results (e.g., "level").
Second, the poster is mostly incorrect if he thinks that retail stores have a huge natural advantage over all online stores. Retail stores with store fronts have all kinds of overhead (e.g., paying for an expensive storefront, maintaince, salesmen, other employees, inventory, plowing the parking lot, etc.) Many of the retail stores that are able to offer relatively low prices only are able to do so because they've developed an enormous amount of skill, expertise, and infrastructure to make it happen; they aren't just a bunch of teenage geeks throwing together from money being thrown at them.
Third, why should E-commerce be some kind of moral imperative? If we're going to say E-commerce should be subsidized to make the competition "level", should we not also say that high end retail stores in, say, Manhattan should have negative taxes applied to their goods (or subsidies, or what have you)? No, because they also recieve an advantage for doing so. The customer decides if they'd rather pay 5 dollars more for a 15 dollar item for the covenience. The same should go for e-commerce.
Fourth, besides merely being "unfair", it's economically damaging to the greater economy insofar as it promotes inefficiency. One of the most basic tenets of capitalism is that it creates efficiency and does so naturally. This unequal taxing is an INTENTIONAL effort to foil that. What you are effectively saying is that a business should be able to compete on the same footing as the other competitors, no matter how inefficient they are. In other words, you're promoting inefficiency.
If E-commerce is valuable to the customer, then the customer should be willing to pay a premium for it. If the customer is driven by prices, then that decision should be driven by what each company can bring about, in terms of raw efficiency, without regard to the government meddling. Likewise, if the decision is more complex, if the decision is between two things that are not entirely equal, the customer can decide. e.g., If a company wants to use supermodels to sell toothpaste, the cost will be passed onto the customer. If a company wants to use any retail location, the cost will be passed onto the customer. If a company wants to use a fancy pants E-commerce method, the customer will pay (or refuse to pay) the cost differential.
The concept of the internet land-grab is essentially the same scenario, and it worked (yes). Some people did get lucky, and many didn't. That's part of the game, and they willingly played it.
Well I agree and I disagree with this philosophy. On one hand I believe a lot of the "investors" knew better, or should have. On the other hand, most of these "profits" were made by the VCs, Investment bankers, and the few DotCom millionaires who clearly focused more on getting money from *other* investors than actually making it. I do have some moral issues with this kind of behavior. It's one thing as a supposed professional to say stock X has predicted earnings of Y and is risky, but it's another thing entirely to say stock X *is* (with little apparent doubt) going to be the next greatest thing since sliced bread and will make oodles of money, all the while simultaneously failing to do any real due dilligence and covering their collective asses. Put simply, it borders on the criminal.
But I challenge you to show me how Yahoo will not survive until the market shakes out, barring the kind of mass panic that the pundits seem hell-bent on creating. They have some of the best web properties, and I believe that the advertising models will work out just as they have for other media.
One of the things you must realize is that this hysteria essentially PRECLUDED the possibility of rational behavior on the part of management at the majority of these DotComs (assuming they were even included to do so). In other words, if you didn't play the "growth" game, venture capital wouldn't touch you. And if you didn't take the venture capital and like monies, you risk being drowned out by the cash rich competitors that essentially threw money at anything, no matter how much money they lost doing so. Put simply, it's an unhealthy market for stable competition. Though this was more true months earlier, it's not entirely false today (although they no longer have VC cash coming out the ass). Likewise, if Yahoo is still trying to maintain the illusion of being the next big thing, they can hardly pursue the more humble, but more sane, strategies that they probably should be following.
Beyond that, I don't really care that much about defending Yahoo, particularly. I own no stock in them, and I couldn't care less about their market capitalization, stock prices, earnings, or any ratio thereof.
Ok fine, but realize that if you're an investor, the question is not whether or not the internet, or even a business model survives, it's the return (or the loss) on your investment. If they're grossly overvalued, even if the company performs well, you could very well still lose your shirt when it falls back to the proper value. That's my point, and I believe Yahoo is still very well into the grossly overvalued territory.
And even if they and every single other dotcom did go under, do you really think the web would simply disappear?
Well yes and no. No, I don't believe the internet would disappear, but the tone and shape would change. You have to realize that a great deal of the services that Yahoo and others provided to the public were essentially subsized by outside investors, if Yahoo and others can't perform at par, all of that money will simply evaporate. In other words, those services would disappear, unless they can find viable alternative revenue sources, like charging fees. Now whatever you believe about the ultimate future of the online ad, it is hard to deny that they are currently pretty worthless as a source of revenue...to the extent that companies could go bankrupt before anything else materializes. This is just a reality of a any startup, cash flows are your life line, but it's aggrivated by ignorant management at the DotComs that never has really dealt with it.
We have put such a huge value on being "visionary" that everyone wants to be the first on their block to declare "the death of XXX", because with enough pundits and enough instances of XXX, *someone* is bound to be right and look brilliant.
Sure there are pundits out there, many of whom were essentially saying the opposite thing just months before. However, not everyone that says things are going one way or the other is a pundit.
Plus, enough doomsayers create a self-fufilling prophecy. If enough people keep shouting that the current business models will never work, people will stop supporting them and Viola, they don't work
Ok, so there may be some truth that that phemenon, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't speak out against irrational behavior. Did you ever consider the side-effect of the DotCom hype? *Real people* put *real money* (or resources) into these firms. When that happens, a) Those people can (and have) lose a lot of money. b) That takes resources away from other ventures, particularly in technology.
You can say Yahoo has a P/E ratio of whatever, but they're much better than most web properties who have a P/E ratio of undefined, because they have no E!
And by the way, I don't know when you bought your stock, but you must be pretty damn lucky if selling now is going to make you any kind of money.
So what? Ok, so Yahoo's financials may be a bit better than their competition. This doesn't mean it's a sane investment as 10 billion dollars. It doesn't even mean it can survive. Entire industries CAN (and have) effectively die. Anyways, I'm not a day trader. You want to see something interesting? Notice how quickly the institutional investors have been moving out of the DotComs.
I think it's safe to say that Yahoo's stock will rise eventually, that's the way real investors play the market. Day-traders can die along with the pundits.
What justifies this belief? How much income will they gross over the next 10 years (in your forcast) and when are you predicting it? What kind of margins? What does their overhead look like? Cash flows? These are the kinds of things that "real" investors look at, not just a vague assumption that because the idea sounds acceptable that a company in the industry must be acceptable, at any given market cap and/or PE.
To conclude: You bastards would have dismissed Television before the 1930s were up, wouldn't you?
That would have depended on the valuations and the companies.
The web is what, 7 years old, commercially speaking. "ad-tracking, targeting and reporting software" is still not widespread, and has only been around for a few years.
Take a chill pill already!
As for the age, that's exactly my point. It is just 7 years old, an infant, yet you're effectively betting a large sum of money on it without considering the bigger picture. That as time goes on, the players can change. Or that, even if the portals turn out to be "good", that's not necessarily good enough to justify a valuation in the billions.
That said, I *do* believe some people will make some respectable money using the internet overall. But, before that can happen, the industry and involved parties (i.e., the financial community) *needs* to *FULLY* come to its senses. As long as you have an insane valuations (which they still are), you're not going to find effective companies and you're going to have a hard time making a decent return on your investments over the long term (as opposed to, say, the venture capital/invetment banking community turning over DotComs to the ignorant public...and making a killing). This is not too unlike the BioTech crash in the early 90s. Many are starting to come back around now for IPOs and the like, the DotComs are not too disimilar.
Ok, so I'm supposed to not sell my stock yet on a company with a market capitalization of 10 billion dollars or a P/E of 140 (still!) because the eyeball business method *might* still pay off and Yahoo just *might* be on top of it (as opposed to a better capitalized competitor? No matter what the ultimate position of the portals is, Yahoo is simply not worth that much today, and they certainly weren't months earlier when it was many multiples higher. If I had any shares in Yahoo, I would sell, and quickly!
Yes, he overstated himself. However, more than half the fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware. About a third of the companies listed on the major domestic stock exchanges (NYSE, American, etc) are also incorporated in Delaware. Also, remember that many corporations are essentially mom-and-pop type stores, not major corporations. In other words, it's not totally unreasonable to say that most large companies prefer to be located in Delaware if they can afford to and where it makes sense. The corporates taxes (or rather, lack thereof) and the well established body of business law are a very large consideration.
That said, this whole Sealand argument is silly on its face. It simply wouldn't work. Corporate veil or no, the United States, or any other major nation, is not going to allow any other nation, but especially a little questionable entity such as Sealand, to flaunt blatant violation of its laws over the internet. It wouldn't even require a storming of the platform. Rather the same outcome could be had by any number of methods. I.e., by simply getting their uplinks to cut off their connection.
Although I agree with much of what you say, I simply think bringing usenet clouds the issue with respect to what my original point was, that the only reason P2P is a buzzword today is because of Napster and other "new" technologies. Napster, et. al, has popularized P2P for all the wrong reasons. In essense, it's made P2P seem like a gift from the gods, when the only uniquely "valuable" aspect of P2P on Napster is that it has skirted the law with respect to piracy (at least up to a couple days ago) while remaining a reasonably effective network. Yet somehow people infer that it must be because of some magical elements of P2P, like it not "costing" anything, or being "of the people", or what have you, and therefore must bestow great benefits on other things. By and large, there has been very little clear thinking and no articulation as to how and why P2P (the supposedly "new" stuff) will change anything but piracy.
So I went on to list a couple flaws in the common P2P architecture and why it won't work for most anything that we humans are interested in doing that is legal. That said, usenet doesn't really make a case against my argument. So a couple quick points... The newsgroup are client-server, heirarchical, and old. Its apparent "speed" largely comes from the heiarchical side of the equation. However, to the extent that is it faster, it is more heirachical, and to the extent that that this is true, it is not terribly scalable. Usenet in essense hinges around an old way of thinking, that an ISP can provide a service, providing what was largely a _text_ based service, where the costs on download and storage are nominal and the benefit was relatively large. It was not designed, it is not designed, to provide access to a large database of binaries. When an ISP sets up a newsgroup server, they're not creating additional storage space, they're essentially just a well localized mirrior with nominal space. In other words, the available database size at any given moment in time is nominal, unless an ISP wants to spend a lot of money providing an archive for everything posted on usenet. Which brings me to another point, the end users are essentially free loading by putting or downloading these large binaries, whether legal or illegal, on usenet. They're creating costs greater than what they put in. In other words, they live on the good graces of the ISP and/or its end users that ultimately pay for it (since most users dont even know what a newsgroup is), not on some unrecognized efficiency that allows them to create a vast database with trivial costs.
What has allows usenet to keep on going to some extent is that the costs of bandwidth and storage have been falling. But, here too, this is not an argument for the relative benefits of P2P, quite the contrary. It is an argument for the relative benefits of C/S technology. Now the server can serve out larger files, more often, faster, and for less.
In short, I don't see any significant relative advantage on "P2P". Of course you don't seem to disagree much, but I just wanted to clarify.
Clearly this explains why you took the time to reply! I guess I just won't be a dillweed anymore if real-winners such as yourself troll me.
FYI, I just got home, it is a Faroudja VP400. All I want to know is, how is your cult going to jive Britney Spears as the "Virgin" Mary? Ooops, I did it again...
I answered the question directly, now maybe I could have included a bit more information, but that would have involved going home and checking. Believe it or not, some people that are capable of enjoying high end equipment do not obsess over their belongings so as to remember the brand, make, serial number and all specs, even those that are otherwise skilled in technology, especially when the purchase was made a couple years earlier. You confuse being a _techie_ (i.e., someone that knows the above buzzwords and brandnames inside and out) with being skilled technically (i.e., someone that is actually capable of doing more than regurgitating words, like meaningfully advancing the art/science that they work in).
How does the fact that at least ONE unit, albeit nameless, works without any noticable loss of quality equal zero useful information? It answered his question and it is somewhat useful. If one unit works, then we know at least that the problem does not evidence itself with _all_ such units. If this information were merely worthless, it could be ignored. Your problem is that you have serious issues with the fact that maybe someone has a bit more money than you.
By the way mosch, real men will still troll without the AC, even when they've been shown to be foolish and insecure.
i believe you for about as much as i believe that britney spears is jesus reborn
I do have one. So maybe you should consider joining a new cult, eh?
even if you weren't so full of shit that your eyes turned brown, your post is equivalent to some moronic tech support guy going "it works for me" without researching the problem at all, with the exception that it tries to inflate your pathetic ego by mentioning that you have a "Line Quadruler".
The person that I was replying to asked if anyone that had such a device had problems, I answered him. Period. Now I do not pretend to be an expert on hi-fi or macrovision, nor do I pretend to be a support "guy", so it really is not at all equivalent.
the fact of the matter is that macrovision doesn't affect every projection TV, but it does affect quite a number of them, as it does quite a number of image preprocessors.
And your point is? I neither affirmed nor denied that it _works_ on all without issue, what I did say is that it works on mine and gave the context.
As for the specific size of your penis, I cannot comment, as I don't have access to a scanning electron microscope.
Perhaps you should be considering self-examination. Clearly you're the one with issue. I gave an honest and direct answer, but you can't handle it because you have issues with your self-esteem and/or relative lack of wealth. Grow up, or at least learn to troll a little better.
I've got a VCR and Projection TV with Line Quadrupler at home, never had any problems in that regard. Of course, it was professionally installed, but I've moved other VCRs to it in the past, never had to disable anything. As for the specific settings on the line quadrupler, I cannot comment. It's possible that the installer had to tweak something, but it's not on the frontend at least.
I consider the Usenet to be p2p because every user contributes network resources. With DCC, or anon FTP, or a BBS, that's not the case. The result is superb performance compared to any DCC/anonFTP/BBS. (BTW, Napster works pretty darn well too, compared to a lot of FTPs out there.)
Well Usenet really isn't P2P, but that's a semantic argument. However, even if you base Usenet P2P-ness soley on the fact that content comes from the user:
First, the same is true of most client server systems (includes newsgroups, being client-server). So it's hardly "new" or worthy of hype.
Second, virtually all of the popular file downloads and such are not user generated at all, they're piracy of some form or another. So it's truely not user generated, it's user supplied. If the user is essentially just a middleman, why bother with the middleman? If piracy were to be made legal, you could get it all from one source. The point is (I know you accept this argument somewhat already) that MOST (except for amateur porn and such, as you point out. But even there....) of these file transfers would be made obselete.
Third, do not confuse user interaction with speed. Usenet is not fast because of your self-defined definition of P2P, it is fast because the data is essentially PULLED by your ISP to a _server_ very near to you and because your routing to the outside world sucks relatively speaking. (Again, this is well established technology, it has nothing to do with P2P.) What's more, to the extent that this is P2P, it is essentially relatively faster because of freerider syndrome. In other words, you and the other uploaders are not the one that have to pay for the total bandwidth and storage costs. Let's say you upload your 500mb of home videos to a particular usenet server, this goes from your ISPs newsgroup servers, to more central newsgroup servers, to the other ISPs newsgroup servers. It takes up space and bandwidth across many systems, no matter if anyone wants it or not.
You have a good point here; P2P is a security problem. But digital signatures by trusted folks would be a good solution to this problem. Here's hoping they catch on one of these years. In the meanwhile, this is only a problem for software; audiovisual material is fine.
First, why bother with P2P when you can go to a dependable server? Second, this depends on user(s) to follow some kind of standard in signing. It depends on users using standard name conventions, in order for searching to be reliable. It probably can't be indexed effectively, forcing users to search everything. It probably couldn't be effectively rated, promoted, improved, etc.
If I have five hundred megabytes of video that I want to distribute for free, I can't use an HTTP or FTP server to do it. The cost will be much too high. P2P, and Usenet in particular, is the only reasonable solution at this time.
Actually you're wrong. There are all kinds of servers and such online that'll archive it for you. Like I believe I-drive (I think that's what they call it) will do it. The only real fixed cost is the storage costs. The bandwidth scales with demand, and with demand there are generally sources of revenue that can be obtained. It comes down to a judgement call, but speaking for myself at least, I believe most people would rather pay some nominal fee in some way or another (i.e., watching ads, paying a fee, or what have you) then have to put up with _unnecessary_ inconveniences associated with these decentralized techniques. What's more, there's nothing magical about usenet. Someone is paying for your file uploads, just not you.
It's pretty rare when some random schmoe has 500mb of video that any substantial group in the world would want to watch. It's even rarer when you can match the consumer with the producer (and to that end, traditional client-server is far more apt to produce a solution by indexing and such).
The free software community is so tech savvy that we keep ourselves nicely set up with ftp and web sites, even with no revenue to spend. Other free data communities, like fan artwork or cult video communities, find p2p more attractive.
Who is "we"? If you say the avg. open source coder, then I'd say no. It's the ISPs and other parties that provide those services, whether for charity or for profit. These exist because it is legitmate and because it fits other nominal requirements (like decency).
I agree that client/server is best for a revenue generating corporation. It delivers ease of use, ease of administration, and control. But in the realm of free data, it's necessary for end users to kick in. Distributed p2p (including Usenet) is a viable solution that is working today. "Monied and legitimate downloads" is an inadequate measure; the non-monied stuff is of interest to me also.
I'd certainly agree that it's essentially necessary for a corporation. However, I think you miss the point. My point is not that the corporations must be made rich, rather that revenue is _ultimately_ necessary for the creation and distribution of _most_ desired resources. Hence, even where systems like Napster appear to work, they only work in a context where you ignore the creation of value. Yes, I know that issues like open source software are debatable, but even there I'd assert that open source leaves, and will always leave, a lot to be desired.
They are incorporated, but that does not prevent the IRS from forcing liquidity, especially when they're majority shareholders. Now, in their case, it's an absolute necessity to incorporate, but you're simply ignorant if you think incorporating is a magic bullet. First, there are significant additional costs (e.g., getting taxed twice). Second, the structure does not make sense for every company and the liabilities run all over the map. Incorporating may free the investor from direct personal liability, but it does not free the shareholders/investors from losing everything they put into the company.
In any event, if you read my comments a little more carefully, you would have noticed words such as "shareholders". These, at the very least, imply that the companies are corporations.
I haven't studied his agricultural programs much, yet. But this doesn't necessarily follow. If he was cutting subsidies (quite likely), this is hardly contradictory with his belief that farmers should keep THEIR hard earned money. One can be against subsidies and against estate taxes at the same time, in fact, I'd argue that's a very sane and intelligent position.
Ok, first let me point out that these rich people are but a small handful of rich people. Second, some are some of them are the richest and most famous, they have the least to lose in many ways. Third, in any group, you're going to find a small percentage that disagrees, but that doesn't mean they're right. Fourth, maybe some people get more enjoyment out of putting their name in the news then they would out of giving their heirs (if they have any that they care about) an extra billion dollars or so.
That said, I don't think you truely understand the situation. The way the estate taxes are currently arranged businesses and farms are at threat. This is not just a myth. I am "rich", or rather my parents are. If either of them were to pass away tomorrow, the IRS would, in essence, demand the present value of their share of the company in cash OR they would be willing to "loan" us the amount, which we would have to pay back later. Neither solution is acceptable. The first essentially demands that a fire sale be done in the company. Both companies are currently privately held and are not in a condition to be sold so rapidly--the assets simply are not that liquid. In effect, this would essentially hurt all of the other shareholders in the company. In other words, it makes the already risky (and very much worthwhile) investment much riskier and forces my parents to do things like buy specialized life insurance policies to cover just this kind of event for the company and herself and consult a great many lawyers. All of these things are horribly inefficient and have the net effect of depriving their startups of valuable resources. (I can only imagine what a family farm or smaller family owned business must go through). The other option, taking the "loan", is totally unacceptable because the interest rate and the manner in which the value is company is appraised do not necessarily compute with what I can sell it for. In essense, if they valued the company at 90m dollars, but I was only able to eventually get, say, 30m for it, I'd be up shit creek.
What's more, I think you lack an appreciation for even the basic mathematics involved here. So I'll give a quick and dirty run down of it (ignoring the previously mentioned issues). Ok, let's suppose my mom just sold her company for 100m dollars. Then she dies tomorrow. That estate would be taxed at 55%. That leaves 45m dollars. Ok, now I am one of 4 children. Assuming that she gives all of her money to us (which would not be true). You now divide that 45m by 4. Which leaves you with about 11.25m per person. But we're not done yet. Now we apply INCOME tax to each of us at about 40% (yes, the total adds up to about 73%). This would leave us each with about 6.75m dollars. Now that may sound like a lot, but it's a far cry from 100m dollars. And that's minimizing virtually everything. In reality, it works out to a much smaller percentage than that. The point being is that it's not enough to live the high life on, even with what sounds initially like an astronomical figure to some. If that money is not properly invested or used wisely, it would disappear very shortly.
Furthermore, even if you figure that we get and keep this money, the only way that would happen is if it is invested. In other words, this isn't a zero sum equation. Just because I have "money", doesn't mean others don't. In fact, it's quite the other way around. When I take that money and use it towards starting my own company (which I probably would), I create jobs directly and indirectly. What's more, I create value for society in the goods and services that I produce. This leads me to another point, I truely don't believe the government is capable of efficiently allocating resources. Put differently, I believe that those extra dollars are better spent in my hands than they are in the governments. (Yes, I believe there is a need for government and taxes, I'm not a libertarian by any means, but there is also a lot of waste).
And yet another point, did it ever occur to anyone that maybe some people have greater aims than just their own immediate consuption? Perhaps their chief incentive is to assure that their children, friends, family, or what have you have the means to live as they see fit. Or perhaps their lifes work is to create a company that benefits their community. In other words, the founder may place a great deal of importance on say, integrity and high quality service. He (or she), the entreprenuer, knows his trust and/or his heirs will see the company through the way he wants. But if the government comes in and demands more than half, the company must either be liquidated or have a bunch of shares change hand, forcing control and such out of the hands of the desired party.
It also comes down to the fundamental question of whether you believe taxes, or indeed the government, should be involved in social programs like this. Taxes were originally designed to generate income. When the inheritance taxes came into being, it was essentially just a social scheme. So where does this end? If we can tax the rich with the intent of making them less rich, why not tax white and/or jewish people for making them less rich? After all, clearly things need to be evened up. So where does it all end? It it _truly_ needed in this day and age? If, supposedly, Bill G. and others want estate taxes, they'd also be willing to give away most of their estates to other causes. So why is it that we assume it would be perpertual wealth? I know a lot of rich people and, by and large, almost anyone that has earned it themselves (which is most) is disgusted by the notion of the decadent existence.
These are just some of the (presently unstructured -- my apologies -- gotta run) reasons why I think estate taxes need to be abolished, or at least, severely adjusted (73% is just too high).
Such places are very unusual these days, especially in the developed world. Though it is probably true that those that grow up in a rural environment know a bit more about agriculture, what most of them know is today's agriculture, with technology and the rest of the world contributing to their efforts. Unless your community was some kind of idealogical effort, I doubt the extent of what you say. If you have time to spend on slashdot, _mess_ around with computers, or what have you, you in all likelyhood are well removed from the day to day toils that is involved with the production of food and other essentials at a subsistence level. I dare you to show me one low tech farming community that, without _any_ physical contributions from the outside world (such as machinary, pestisides, fertilizers, water, etc.), has truely prospered. In other words, name your community or any other. 80 years was a long time ago technologically and developmentally. Even if your grandparents understood what this meant, doesn't mean that you truely know that existence.
It's simply impossible to write an algorithm that would allow the general public to access the information and/or the title without allowing RIAA and others the same information. To the extent that RIAA (and/or Napster's enforcement--if they really cared enough to try) is incapable of reading or understanding what a file is, so to is the public. In other words, it's entirely self-defeating when it comes to distribution.
Distribution is really the only key point at the present moment. This "method", if you might call it that, simply CANNOT address this problem.
As for HD copy protection, it makes little sense either. First, I believe most of these HD copy protection methods do not try to magically determine copyrighted material, rather they take specifically encrypted and tagged copyrighted material and try to prevent the user from committing unallowed actions on it (such as copying the file in question). So the only trick is just getting a "raw" copy, encryption is pointless. Second, even if HD copy protection really tries to play Big Brother, just about any number of existing encryption techniques could cover it just as well as this "method", in any event.
As for your vague DeCSS and subpoena statements, these come down to the same logical issues. If you are capable of decrypting the materials manually, the courts can compel you to release the key. Even if you claim that you can't retrieve the key for some reason, what's to stop the court from simply confiscating the material until you do, since you can't read it anyways? If your software does the decoding for you, it must contain the means to decode it. I don't see how it is logically possible to hide a key or the algorithm in such a way that only the software can get to it. In fact, it seems pretty much impossible. You might be able to do some things to the slight of hand, but not be truely secure.
Is there any possible and novel proposition here? I simply don't see any.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I've had comcast @ home, out of philly, for the past 3 years now and mines basically always been blazing fast in the downstream. I still regularly pull 500kilobyte/s downloads. Sometimes I run simultaneous transfers and pull at least 1 megabyte/s. In other words, your friends aren't too far off the mark. I also get killer pings in Quake, Counter-Strike, etc. In CS I average 15-30 ms to my preferred servers. That being said, the upstream is pretty weak. It tops out at about 50kilobyte/s (these days) and when I do, it absolutely kills my downstream capacity and pings.
As for the relative worth of cable versus DSL, that depends largely on the two providers. That being said, it's been my experience, empirically speaking, that cable tends to be faster than DSL. Although it is true, from a technical standpoint, that cable modems "share bandwidth", this is only unique in that it does it at the headend. In other words, you're sharing bandwidth with people in your immediate neighborhood. However, DSL also shares bandwidth in numerous places, but especially once you start approaching the fiber/upstream. This is where it can really get expensive, and most ISPs tend to oversubscribe these by a very large ratio. Many DSL users do, in fact, get absolutely crappy bandwidth because of this. @home, on the other hand, has truely superb routing, even if they can't run a mail server if their life depended on it.
The economics just aren't there for fast DSL, typically, at a mere ~40 dollars a month, unlike cable modem through a large provider like @home. If you're willing to pay a hefty fee for DSL, you can probably get a truely fast connection, but it's unlikely you'll get an honest to god faster DSL connection (especially with Verizon) than comcast@home for a mere 40 dollars a month. Especially since the even the quoted rates for DSL at any reasonable price is a mere fraction of what I and so many others regularly pull with cable from @home (and a couple others).
and restraining piracy is NOT the same thing. Show me a law that says companies and individuals cannot band together to present a unified legal front. If RIAA were working together to, say, fix prices, then you might have an argument. But merely saying that because they're a combination of companies and doing something that you do not like is not enough.
Ok now what happens when you start providing substantial disincentives or risk? Much much less people will be willing to "contribute". For instance, if RIAA simply starts making a few well placed calls to the largest ISPs, causing the user to lose his connection in short order. Even if it's only for a few days, or even an hour or two, most users would find this absolutely unacceptable. Those that are most likely to setup a site like that, also tend to be the most attached to their "fast" connections. When the pirate is presented with a choice between providing goods to hundreds of people he doesn't even know and incurring risk in the process or merely leaching like everyone else, the choice is simple. Add to this mix permanent bans, public embarassement, potential legal action, etc etc, and you have even less reason to take the chance. Remember, they need not bust EVERY pirate that is out there, just enough to provide a credible threat. Also, remember that this approach wouldn't take much in the way of resources or money.
Now sure, there will still be SOME nuts out there that will persist for whatever reason, but those will be so small in comparison to the downloading public that their effect will be nominal. The point is that greed works against the pirates as much as it does against the industry. I fully believe the industry is capable of doing this and that it would be highly effective. Against just about any known P2P-like system (e.g., Napster, GNUTella, Scour, CuteMX, or whatever.)
This is a seperate subject, but I think you're completely underestimating the absolute importance in promotion and marketing on the part of the record labels. While marketing and promotion do not necessarily have to come from the industry, a simple website will not suffice. The odds are that the artist(s) will be competing for scarce eyeballs no matter what medium they're on. Scarcity, in turn, means it'll cost lots of moola. Who has lots of capital and is willing to risk it on music investments? The industry. One way or another, capital must be risked to gain a sufficiently large following. The backers will probably be the same industry that we know today, but, even if not, it doesn't really matter. The internet isn't some kind of magical pill to make all these concerns go away.
Shrug. I don't think I'm *that* passionate about it. I just disagree strongly ;) First, I happen to like the truth. When I know I'm right, I'm willing to argue my case. Second, this particular kind of mistake bothers me for a whole bunch of reasons. For instance: I think it's unfair and untrue to those that have less than sterling academic credentials. It's a mistake for an employer to fall too much into that trap. It's a mistake for investors [e.g., "Why can your company do this, when a team from MIT et. al tried and failed?"] It's also unfair to those that really accomplish things later in life, to act as if one can master a field with only 4 years of experience. Who are they kidding? I've also seen normally intelligent and open minded people that clam up in the presense of people that wear their degrees on their sleeves.
I also find some aspects the education in the system less than optimal [I think that approach is somewhat contributory]. e.g., the often crappy public school system. How can we honestly say that we're getting the best and the brightest graduates from the Ivy leagues, or where ever, when the majority of the public is at a considerable disadvantage due to recieving a mediocre education in HS? Likewise, I really don't believe the top universities to be that demanding [baring perhaps the engineering and related programs to some extent]. One need look no further, in my opinion, then the absolute lack of attrition at these schools to determine that, unless they really buy into the SAT as being that accurate of a predictor. Likewise, I'd also point you to grade inflation. Or the reduced course load....
I could go on, but let's just say that I think it's harmful to society on the whole.
Yes, I'll give you that such a degree can give _some_ assurances that a person has a certain level of understanding of some material, has a certain kind of intelligence, and is willing to at least go through the motions. However, these few guarantees, to the extent that they can really be called that, aren't enough to make a person good at their job. I have had experiences very different from yours. Yes, some are good but some are also mediocre. Yes, All things being equal I'd hire the person with the better degree, but all things are not always equal. In any event, it's not a guarantee, especially if that person essentially plans on being a professional alum the rest of his or her life.
If you are so correct, then you should be able to defend your point of view without having to resort to ad hominem comments. Do you really want to tell me that a CS degree from any institution, let alone all, is some kind of guarantee of _all_ of the necessary skills, abilities, and knowledge? Yes, a 4.0 from an excellent institution can provide some assurances that a person has attained a certain level of understanding of some material, has a certain kind of intelligence, and is willing to at least go through the motions. However, none of these necessarily make a person an excellent programmer. The required skills are often quite different. The kinds of intelligence are often quite different. The level of work is often quite different. Likewise, the volume and the difficulty of the material can exceed that person's abilities. This is not even mentioning other abilities, like the desire to work hard, the desire to learn, a certain level of humility, the ability to work well with others, maturity, etc etc etc. The point is simply that it's not a a guarantee; ask just about any employer. Good programmers are rare. If the degree were this much of a determinant, hiring would be much much easier.
FYI, I am none of your suggested stereotypes. I got a 3.8 from a very respectable 4 year instituion, while working 10-50 hours in a position of considerable responsibility. I was also fortunate to attend private school for most of my life. I can count family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances at virtually all of the well respected institutions (e.g., Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Penn, Stanford, UW, etc etc). In short, I come from a very privileged background, both economically, academically, and socially. In other words, I am not bitter, I have little reason to be bitter. What I have had is enough experience with most of the highly regarded institutions at a personal and professional level so as to know better than to deify the curriculum, the institutions, or the students.
It's ironic that you scoff at people that view IT as being a gravy train, yet you clearly view a piece of paper as a gravy train. Mere intelligence and a degree is not enough. In fact, I'd argue that the degree is relatively insignficant compared to _actually_ being willing to work hard (working "hard" in school is almost never quite the same thing) and being willing to _really_ learn (there is learning and then there is learning...). Just as the merely "certified" MSCE is doomed to mediocrity, so to is the merely "certified" CS-degreed grad; all that seperates the two is their personal backgrounds, a piece of paper, attitude, and a relatively insigificant amount of knowledge.
Sorry, I just had to say it.....
Ok so if no one (or no one significant) makes purchases online due to the tax differential, then WHY should it matter if taxes are applied? As long as ACTUAL TAXES and the ACTUAL RELATED COSTS are the exact same (or near to it) for both the e-commerce and storefront retailer, I don't see how ANYONE could have a reasonable objection.
Now whether or not this can be done is another debate entirely, but let's be clear here, if taxes do not persuade the customer one way or the other (i.e., they are equal), it is FAIR; the otherway around is UNFAIR.
That said, all these people that say that today's complex tax system is too complex and too large to handle cost effectively at scale is simply ignorant. There are services and computer programs that handle these things for you, they really are not that expensive, a lot of mail order-type businesses handle them. I happen to work for one, we pay the both the city and the state, and the costs are NEGLIGIBLE. The prices of these systems would also plummet and improve if all the E-commerce companies starting purchasing them. Anyways, it's not as if any taxing of the internet necessarily means there needs to be anything so complex. For example, there could be an overhaul of the sales tax system(s). Or there could also be a federal body that would facilate all the tax transactions.....
In closing, you're kidding yourself if you think E-commerce is that big of a component of the NASDAQ, at least if you look at sales (as opposed to the relatively recent and absurd valuations on DotComs). Even if it were, if customers are merely shifting their purchases from DotComs to storefronts, then it's just that, a shift, not a net loss.
First, this is just completely irrational. If it's a sports team, we expect the teams to compete based on what they bring to the table, following the same rules. As long as they do that, then we call it fair. However, we might say two teams are competing on a "level" playing field, even if one team is cheating or is favored by the referee (i.e., one is better than the other but _lack_ of fairness makes them competetive equals). Likewise, businesses are expected to compete based on what they bring to the table. That is fair. There is a difference between equal opportunity (e.g., "fair") and equal results (e.g., "level").
Second, the poster is mostly incorrect if he thinks that retail stores have a huge natural advantage over all online stores. Retail stores with store fronts have all kinds of overhead (e.g., paying for an expensive storefront, maintaince, salesmen, other employees, inventory, plowing the parking lot, etc.) Many of the retail stores that are able to offer relatively low prices only are able to do so because they've developed an enormous amount of skill, expertise, and infrastructure to make it happen; they aren't just a bunch of teenage geeks throwing together from money being thrown at them.
Third, why should E-commerce be some kind of moral imperative? If we're going to say E-commerce should be subsidized to make the competition "level", should we not also say that high end retail stores in, say, Manhattan should have negative taxes applied to their goods (or subsidies, or what have you)? No, because they also recieve an advantage for doing so. The customer decides if they'd rather pay 5 dollars more for a 15 dollar item for the covenience. The same should go for e-commerce.
Fourth, besides merely being "unfair", it's economically damaging to the greater economy insofar as it promotes inefficiency. One of the most basic tenets of capitalism is that it creates efficiency and does so naturally. This unequal taxing is an INTENTIONAL effort to foil that. What you are effectively saying is that a business should be able to compete on the same footing as the other competitors, no matter how inefficient they are. In other words, you're promoting inefficiency.
If E-commerce is valuable to the customer, then the customer should be willing to pay a premium for it. If the customer is driven by prices, then that decision should be driven by what each company can bring about, in terms of raw efficiency, without regard to the government meddling. Likewise, if the decision is more complex, if the decision is between two things that are not entirely equal, the customer can decide. e.g., If a company wants to use supermodels to sell toothpaste, the cost will be passed onto the customer. If a company wants to use any retail location, the cost will be passed onto the customer. If a company wants to use a fancy pants E-commerce method, the customer will pay (or refuse to pay) the cost differential.
One of the things you must realize is that this hysteria essentially PRECLUDED the possibility of rational behavior on the part of management at the majority of these DotComs (assuming they were even included to do so). In other words, if you didn't play the "growth" game, venture capital wouldn't touch you. And if you didn't take the venture capital and like monies, you risk being drowned out by the cash rich competitors that essentially threw money at anything, no matter how much money they lost doing so. Put simply, it's an unhealthy market for stable competition. Though this was more true months earlier, it's not entirely false today (although they no longer have VC cash coming out the ass). Likewise, if Yahoo is still trying to maintain the illusion of being the next big thing, they can hardly pursue the more humble, but more sane, strategies that they probably should be following.
Ok fine, but realize that if you're an investor, the question is not whether or not the internet, or even a business model survives, it's the return (or the loss) on your investment. If they're grossly overvalued, even if the company performs well, you could very well still lose your shirt when it falls back to the proper value. That's my point, and I believe Yahoo is still very well into the grossly overvalued territory.
Well yes and no. No, I don't believe the internet would disappear, but the tone and shape would change. You have to realize that a great deal of the services that Yahoo and others provided to the public were essentially subsized by outside investors, if Yahoo and others can't perform at par, all of that money will simply evaporate. In other words, those services would disappear, unless they can find viable alternative revenue sources, like charging fees. Now whatever you believe about the ultimate future of the online ad, it is hard to deny that they are currently pretty worthless as a source of revenue...to the extent that companies could go bankrupt before anything else materializes. This is just a reality of a any startup, cash flows are your life line, but it's aggrivated by ignorant management at the DotComs that never has really dealt with it.
Ok, so there may be some truth that that phemenon, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't speak out against irrational behavior. Did you ever consider the side-effect of the DotCom hype? *Real people* put *real money* (or resources) into these firms. When that happens, a) Those people can (and have) lose a lot of money. b) That takes resources away from other ventures, particularly in technology.
So what? Ok, so Yahoo's financials may be a bit better than their competition. This doesn't mean it's a sane investment as 10 billion dollars. It doesn't even mean it can survive. Entire industries CAN (and have) effectively die. Anyways, I'm not a day trader. You want to see something interesting? Notice how quickly the institutional investors have been moving out of the DotComs.
What justifies this belief? How much income will they gross over the next 10 years (in your forcast) and when are you predicting it? What kind of margins? What does their overhead look like? Cash flows? These are the kinds of things that "real" investors look at, not just a vague assumption that because the idea sounds acceptable that a company in the industry must be acceptable, at any given market cap and/or PE.
That would have depended on the valuations and the companies.
As for the age, that's exactly my point. It is just 7 years old, an infant, yet you're effectively betting a large sum of money on it without considering the bigger picture. That as time goes on, the players can change. Or that, even if the portals turn out to be "good", that's not necessarily good enough to justify a valuation in the billions.
That said, I *do* believe some people will make some respectable money using the internet overall. But, before that can happen, the industry and involved parties (i.e., the financial community) *needs* to *FULLY* come to its senses. As long as you have an insane valuations (which they still are), you're not going to find effective companies and you're going to have a hard time making a decent return on your investments over the long term (as opposed to, say, the venture capital/invetment banking community turning over DotComs to the ignorant public...and making a killing). This is not too unlike the BioTech crash in the early 90s. Many are starting to come back around now for IPOs and the like, the DotComs are not too disimilar.
Ok, so I'm supposed to not sell my stock yet on a company with a market capitalization of 10 billion dollars or a P/E of 140 (still!) because the eyeball business method *might* still pay off and Yahoo just *might* be on top of it (as opposed to a better capitalized competitor? No matter what the ultimate position of the portals is, Yahoo is simply not worth that much today, and they certainly weren't months earlier when it was many multiples higher. If I had any shares in Yahoo, I would sell, and quickly!
Yes, he overstated himself. However, more than half the fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware. About a third of the companies listed on the major domestic stock exchanges (NYSE, American, etc) are also incorporated in Delaware. Also, remember that many corporations are essentially mom-and-pop type stores, not major corporations. In other words, it's not totally unreasonable to say that most large companies prefer to be located in Delaware if they can afford to and where it makes sense. The corporates taxes (or rather, lack thereof) and the well established body of business law are a very large consideration.
That said, this whole Sealand argument is silly on its face. It simply wouldn't work. Corporate veil or no, the United States, or any other major nation, is not going to allow any other nation, but especially a little questionable entity such as Sealand, to flaunt blatant violation of its laws over the internet. It wouldn't even require a storming of the platform. Rather the same outcome could be had by any number of methods. I.e., by simply getting their uplinks to cut off their connection.
Although I agree with much of what you say, I simply think bringing usenet clouds the issue with respect to what my original point was, that the only reason P2P is a buzzword today is because of Napster and other "new" technologies. Napster, et. al, has popularized P2P for all the wrong reasons. In essense, it's made P2P seem like a gift from the gods, when the only uniquely "valuable" aspect of P2P on Napster is that it has skirted the law with respect to piracy (at least up to a couple days ago) while remaining a reasonably effective network. Yet somehow people infer that it must be because of some magical elements of P2P, like it not "costing" anything, or being "of the people", or what have you, and therefore must bestow great benefits on other things. By and large, there has been very little clear thinking and no articulation as to how and why P2P (the supposedly "new" stuff) will change anything but piracy.
So I went on to list a couple flaws in the common P2P architecture and why it won't work for most anything that we humans are interested in doing that is legal. That said, usenet doesn't really make a case against my argument. So a couple quick points... The newsgroup are client-server, heirarchical, and old. Its apparent "speed" largely comes from the heiarchical side of the equation. However, to the extent that is it faster, it is more heirachical, and to the extent that that this is true, it is not terribly scalable. Usenet in essense hinges around an old way of thinking, that an ISP can provide a service, providing what was largely a _text_ based service, where the costs on download and storage are nominal and the benefit was relatively large. It was not designed, it is not designed, to provide access to a large database of binaries. When an ISP sets up a newsgroup server, they're not creating additional storage space, they're essentially just a well localized mirrior with nominal space. In other words, the available database size at any given moment in time is nominal, unless an ISP wants to spend a lot of money providing an archive for everything posted on usenet. Which brings me to another point, the end users are essentially free loading by putting or downloading these large binaries, whether legal or illegal, on usenet. They're creating costs greater than what they put in. In other words, they live on the good graces of the ISP and/or its end users that ultimately pay for it (since most users dont even know what a newsgroup is), not on some unrecognized efficiency that allows them to create a vast database with trivial costs.
What has allows usenet to keep on going to some extent is that the costs of bandwidth and storage have been falling. But, here too, this is not an argument for the relative benefits of P2P, quite the contrary. It is an argument for the relative benefits of C/S technology. Now the server can serve out larger files, more often, faster, and for less.
In short, I don't see any significant relative advantage on "P2P". Of course you don't seem to disagree much, but I just wanted to clarify.
Clearly this explains why you took the time to reply! I guess I just won't be a dillweed anymore if real-winners such as yourself troll me.
FYI, I just got home, it is a Faroudja VP400. All I want to know is, how is your cult going to jive Britney Spears as the "Virgin" Mary? Ooops, I did it again...
I answered the question directly, now maybe I could have included a bit more information, but that would have involved going home and checking. Believe it or not, some people that are capable of enjoying high end equipment do not obsess over their belongings so as to remember the brand, make, serial number and all specs, even those that are otherwise skilled in technology, especially when the purchase was made a couple years earlier. You confuse being a _techie_ (i.e., someone that knows the above buzzwords and brandnames inside and out) with being skilled technically (i.e., someone that is actually capable of doing more than regurgitating words, like meaningfully advancing the art/science that they work in).
How does the fact that at least ONE unit, albeit nameless, works without any noticable loss of quality equal zero useful information? It answered his question and it is somewhat useful. If one unit works, then we know at least that the problem does not evidence itself with _all_ such units. If this information were merely worthless, it could be ignored. Your problem is that you have serious issues with the fact that maybe someone has a bit more money than you.
By the way mosch, real men will still troll without the AC, even when they've been shown to be foolish and insecure.
The person that I was replying to asked if anyone that had such a device had problems, I answered him. Period. Now I do not pretend to be an expert on hi-fi or macrovision, nor do I pretend to be a support "guy", so it really is not at all equivalent.
And your point is? I neither affirmed nor denied that it _works_ on all without issue, what I did say is that it works on mine and gave the context.
Perhaps you should be considering self-examination. Clearly you're the one with issue. I gave an honest and direct answer, but you can't handle it because you have issues with your self-esteem and/or relative lack of wealth. Grow up, or at least learn to troll a little better.
I've got a VCR and Projection TV with Line Quadrupler at home, never had any problems in that regard. Of course, it was professionally installed, but I've moved other VCRs to it in the past, never had to disable anything. As for the specific settings on the line quadrupler, I cannot comment. It's possible that the installer had to tweak something, but it's not on the frontend at least.
First, the same is true of most client server systems (includes newsgroups, being client-server). So it's hardly "new" or worthy of hype.
Second, virtually all of the popular file downloads and such are not user generated at all, they're piracy of some form or another. So it's truely not user generated, it's user supplied. If the user is essentially just a middleman, why bother with the middleman? If piracy were to be made legal, you could get it all from one source. The point is (I know you accept this argument somewhat already) that MOST (except for amateur porn and such, as you point out. But even there....) of these file transfers would be made obselete.
Third, do not confuse user interaction with speed. Usenet is not fast because of your self-defined definition of P2P, it is fast because the data is essentially PULLED by your ISP to a _server_ very near to you and because your routing to the outside world sucks relatively speaking. (Again, this is well established technology, it has nothing to do with P2P.) What's more, to the extent that this is P2P, it is essentially relatively faster because of freerider syndrome. In other words, you and the other uploaders are not the one that have to pay for the total bandwidth and storage costs. Let's say you upload your 500mb of home videos to a particular usenet server, this goes from your ISPs newsgroup servers, to more central newsgroup servers, to the other ISPs newsgroup servers. It takes up space and bandwidth across many systems, no matter if anyone wants it or not.
First, why bother with P2P when you can go to a dependable server? Second, this depends on user(s) to follow some kind of standard in signing. It depends on users using standard name conventions, in order for searching to be reliable. It probably can't be indexed effectively, forcing users to search everything. It probably couldn't be effectively rated, promoted, improved, etc.
Actually you're wrong. There are all kinds of servers and such online that'll archive it for you. Like I believe I-drive (I think that's what they call it) will do it. The only real fixed cost is the storage costs. The bandwidth scales with demand, and with demand there are generally sources of revenue that can be obtained. It comes down to a judgement call, but speaking for myself at least, I believe most people would rather pay some nominal fee in some way or another (i.e., watching ads, paying a fee, or what have you) then have to put up with _unnecessary_ inconveniences associated with these decentralized techniques. What's more, there's nothing magical about usenet. Someone is paying for your file uploads, just not you.
It's pretty rare when some random schmoe has 500mb of video that any substantial group in the world would want to watch. It's even rarer when you can match the consumer with the producer (and to that end, traditional client-server is far more apt to produce a solution by indexing and such).
Who is "we"? If you say the avg. open source coder, then I'd say no. It's the ISPs and other parties that provide those services, whether for charity or for profit. These exist because it is legitmate and because it fits other nominal requirements (like decency).
I'd certainly agree that it's essentially necessary for a corporation. However, I think you miss the point. My point is not that the corporations must be made rich, rather that revenue is _ultimately_ necessary for the creation and distribution of _most_ desired resources. Hence, even where systems like Napster appear to work, they only work in a context where you ignore the creation of value. Yes, I know that issues like open source software are debatable, but even there I'd assert that open source leaves, and will always leave, a lot to be desired.
They are incorporated, but that does not prevent the IRS from forcing liquidity, especially when they're majority shareholders. Now, in their case, it's an absolute necessity to incorporate, but you're simply ignorant if you think incorporating is a magic bullet. First, there are significant additional costs (e.g., getting taxed twice). Second, the structure does not make sense for every company and the liabilities run all over the map. Incorporating may free the investor from direct personal liability, but it does not free the shareholders/investors from losing everything they put into the company.
In any event, if you read my comments a little more carefully, you would have noticed words such as "shareholders". These, at the very least, imply that the companies are corporations.
I haven't studied his agricultural programs much, yet. But this doesn't necessarily follow. If he was cutting subsidies (quite likely), this is hardly contradictory with his belief that farmers should keep THEIR hard earned money. One can be against subsidies and against estate taxes at the same time, in fact, I'd argue that's a very sane and intelligent position.
Ok, first let me point out that these rich people are but a small handful of rich people. Second, some are some of them are the richest and most famous, they have the least to lose in many ways. Third, in any group, you're going to find a small percentage that disagrees, but that doesn't mean they're right. Fourth, maybe some people get more enjoyment out of putting their name in the news then they would out of giving their heirs (if they have any that they care about) an extra billion dollars or so.
That said, I don't think you truely understand the situation. The way the estate taxes are currently arranged businesses and farms are at threat. This is not just a myth. I am "rich", or rather my parents are. If either of them were to pass away tomorrow, the IRS would, in essence, demand the present value of their share of the company in cash OR they would be willing to "loan" us the amount, which we would have to pay back later. Neither solution is acceptable. The first essentially demands that a fire sale be done in the company. Both companies are currently privately held and are not in a condition to be sold so rapidly--the assets simply are not that liquid. In effect, this would essentially hurt all of the other shareholders in the company. In other words, it makes the already risky (and very much worthwhile) investment much riskier and forces my parents to do things like buy specialized life insurance policies to cover just this kind of event for the company and herself and consult a great many lawyers. All of these things are horribly inefficient and have the net effect of depriving their startups of valuable resources. (I can only imagine what a family farm or smaller family owned business must go through). The other option, taking the "loan", is totally unacceptable because the interest rate and the manner in which the value is company is appraised do not necessarily compute with what I can sell it for. In essense, if they valued the company at 90m dollars, but I was only able to eventually get, say, 30m for it, I'd be up shit creek.
What's more, I think you lack an appreciation for even the basic mathematics involved here. So I'll give a quick and dirty run down of it (ignoring the previously mentioned issues). Ok, let's suppose my mom just sold her company for 100m dollars. Then she dies tomorrow. That estate would be taxed at 55%. That leaves 45m dollars. Ok, now I am one of 4 children. Assuming that she gives all of her money to us (which would not be true). You now divide that 45m by 4. Which leaves you with about 11.25m per person. But we're not done yet. Now we apply INCOME tax to each of us at about 40% (yes, the total adds up to about 73%). This would leave us each with about 6.75m dollars. Now that may sound like a lot, but it's a far cry from 100m dollars. And that's minimizing virtually everything. In reality, it works out to a much smaller percentage than that. The point being is that it's not enough to live the high life on, even with what sounds initially like an astronomical figure to some. If that money is not properly invested or used wisely, it would disappear very shortly.
Furthermore, even if you figure that we get and keep this money, the only way that would happen is if it is invested. In other words, this isn't a zero sum equation. Just because I have "money", doesn't mean others don't. In fact, it's quite the other way around. When I take that money and use it towards starting my own company (which I probably would), I create jobs directly and indirectly. What's more, I create value for society in the goods and services that I produce. This leads me to another point, I truely don't believe the government is capable of efficiently allocating resources. Put differently, I believe that those extra dollars are better spent in my hands than they are in the governments. (Yes, I believe there is a need for government and taxes, I'm not a libertarian by any means, but there is also a lot of waste).
And yet another point, did it ever occur to anyone that maybe some people have greater aims than just their own immediate consuption? Perhaps their chief incentive is to assure that their children, friends, family, or what have you have the means to live as they see fit. Or perhaps their lifes work is to create a company that benefits their community. In other words, the founder may place a great deal of importance on say, integrity and high quality service. He (or she), the entreprenuer, knows his trust and/or his heirs will see the company through the way he wants. But if the government comes in and demands more than half, the company must either be liquidated or have a bunch of shares change hand, forcing control and such out of the hands of the desired party.
It also comes down to the fundamental question of whether you believe taxes, or indeed the government, should be involved in social programs like this. Taxes were originally designed to generate income. When the inheritance taxes came into being, it was essentially just a social scheme. So where does this end? If we can tax the rich with the intent of making them less rich, why not tax white and/or jewish people for making them less rich? After all, clearly things need to be evened up. So where does it all end? It it _truly_ needed in this day and age? If, supposedly, Bill G. and others want estate taxes, they'd also be willing to give away most of their estates to other causes. So why is it that we assume it would be perpertual wealth? I know a lot of rich people and, by and large, almost anyone that has earned it themselves (which is most) is disgusted by the notion of the decadent existence.
These are just some of the (presently unstructured -- my apologies -- gotta run) reasons why I think estate taxes need to be abolished, or at least, severely adjusted (73% is just too high).
Such places are very unusual these days, especially in the developed world. Though it is probably true that those that grow up in a rural environment know a bit more about agriculture, what most of them know is today's agriculture, with technology and the rest of the world contributing to their efforts. Unless your community was some kind of idealogical effort, I doubt the extent of what you say. If you have time to spend on slashdot, _mess_ around with computers, or what have you, you in all likelyhood are well removed from the day to day toils that is involved with the production of food and other essentials at a subsistence level. I dare you to show me one low tech farming community that, without _any_ physical contributions from the outside world (such as machinary, pestisides, fertilizers, water, etc.), has truely prospered. In other words, name your community or any other. 80 years was a long time ago technologically and developmentally. Even if your grandparents understood what this meant, doesn't mean that you truely know that existence.
I think you're kidding yourself.
It's simply impossible to write an algorithm that would allow the general public to access the information and/or the title without allowing RIAA and others the same information. To the extent that RIAA (and/or Napster's enforcement--if they really cared enough to try) is incapable of reading or understanding what a file is, so to is the public. In other words, it's entirely self-defeating when it comes to distribution.
Distribution is really the only key point at the present moment. This "method", if you might call it that, simply CANNOT address this problem.
As for HD copy protection, it makes little sense either. First, I believe most of these HD copy protection methods do not try to magically determine copyrighted material, rather they take specifically encrypted and tagged copyrighted material and try to prevent the user from committing unallowed actions on it (such as copying the file in question). So the only trick is just getting a "raw" copy, encryption is pointless. Second, even if HD copy protection really tries to play Big Brother, just about any number of existing encryption techniques could cover it just as well as this "method", in any event.
As for your vague DeCSS and subpoena statements, these come down to the same logical issues. If you are capable of decrypting the materials manually, the courts can compel you to release the key. Even if you claim that you can't retrieve the key for some reason, what's to stop the court from simply confiscating the material until you do, since you can't read it anyways? If your software does the decoding for you, it must contain the means to decode it. I don't see how it is logically possible to hide a key or the algorithm in such a way that only the software can get to it. In fact, it seems pretty much impossible. You might be able to do some things to the slight of hand, but not be truely secure.
Is there any possible and novel proposition here? I simply don't see any.