The Electoral College pretty much means that your vote is meaningless if the majority of the people in your state disagree with you. Because of this a number of people don't vote because they do not feel that their vote really counts. I live in Georgia, a decidely conservative state politically. I tend to lean towards the more liberal side and would vote for the Libertarian Party if thought it would make any bit of difference. But I already know that it will not.
And really it is not worth my time to travel to the polls and vote when I know that even if I decide to take, in my opinion, the lesser of the two evils. it still won't matter because a majority of my neighbors are going to vote the republican party line.
Its really quite depressing that the land of the free where we take such pride in allowing our citizens to vote for who they choose. Has such a system that a lot of people are just not going to vote because they feel disillusioned by our system of voting.
What many of us touted as a PR stunt to show that their new method of encryption and protection of digital music was going to be unbreakable has instead been crushed by one simple truth.
"Anything created by a 40 year old man can be broken by a 14 year old boy"
There is never going to be such a thing as the unbeatable encryption. Or the perfect protection. the only thing that can be hoped for by the recording industry is to make a system that is difficult and discouraging to the general populace. But the information age and the example of DeCSS has proven that once a genie is released from the bottle it becomes nearly impossible to put it back. Sure you can persecute everybody who even looked cross-eyed at the horrible key that opened your magic lock... but that will not stop people from using it once out in the wild.
why are they fighting the technology instead of embracing it? Oh yeah, thats right because the technology makes it so cheap and easy now for a musician to record and release their music that the record industry would no longer be needed.
Come on Record Companies be good bloated dinosaurs and go become extinct, Ok?
Pretty much what everybody is dealing with is to many people wanting xDSL, and the ILECs don't have enough people trained to do the job.
I do tech support for a DSL provider and have to deal with all the ILECs on a daily basis. I can tell you that they are the primary reason for most DSL problems. Either they will "steal" the DSL from one line to put it on another because it is not marked properly. Or a normal tech will go out to work on the lines and disconnect the DSL just because it does not look normal; or for convenience of his work. Or even worse the DSLAM cards used in most COs is bought from the lowest bidder. And I am sure we all know that the cheapest hardware is rarely the best.
So all of these things combined together make DSL less than perfect. But one must remember that DSL is a NEW TECHNOLOGY. And as with any new technology there are going to be problems and growing pains.
For instance, how many of us can remember the reliability of network connections when we were using 300 baud modems with our C64s back in the day? It is going to take time and patience for this technology to take off.
Actually that is not a bad idea. If you place an End User Liscence Agreement on a piece of software that has a legitamate use like DeCSS, then according to the corporations would put themselves in a really bad place if they brought their own creation up for judicial review. Because according to the idea of the EULA you are stating that you created the program for a specific purpose andf that you will take no responsibility if the user uses for some other purpose.
Its kind of same reason why you cannot sue Smith & Wesson for making a rifle that is used in a murder. They made the rifle for legal use only, and it is not their fault if somebody used it for an illegal purpose.
In programming it becomes a little more complex because you will actually have to make an application with subversive code in it have some legal and useful property which requires the subversive part to function properly.
Now this could easily be done with DeCSS, just attach DeCSS to a Linux DVD player. Some of the others become a little more complex. Another option is to release a patch for an application the activates subversive code "Accidentally". Then it becomes a big Whoops, now how many times have one of the big boys released damaging patches to their software (I can remember a certain service pack of NT). It will just take a good bit of plausible deniability and playing with in their rules to cripple them.
Yep thats right I left a rather prestigious engineering school to go and try my hand in the corprate world. This was back in 94 when the job market was not quite as good as it is today.
But I got hired on three contracting jobs when I simply admited that I used to crack software copy protection as a hobby in jr. high and high school.
Who knew at that time that being a "criminal" in my younger days would get me a rather well paying job.
Now six years later I am making more money than most of my friends who stayed in college are and I don't have a massive college loan to pay off.
The reasons why I left though were because I already knew everything that they were teaching me. They were concentrating on the mathematical aspects of programming to teach the people how to logically approach a problem. Which I will admit is really necesary for people who are coming to Computer Sciences completely cold. But the continued curiculums were only in how to use Unix, how to program in C, and that was pretty much it. All of these things you can learn at your local book store or by searching the internet for the correct resources.
But hey if you want to have that college degree and be in the IT industry... get a major in something you enjoy, and minor in CS... the minor is all you are going to really need. That is what I am doing now I am working on getting my BA Philosophy right now.
That was a FEDERAL moratorium. But the states don't have to follow suit with the federal government.
The only thing the Federal Government can do is coerce the states to do what it wants (like the 21 year old drinking age being attached to federal highway money).
This is a vain attempt by California to get some extra cash to fill their sparse coffers. I am going to guess that they are hoping they can sneak this one through and have it be active at least for a little while and make some cash before the Federal government shuts them down.
And the Federal Government will shut them down because they are attempting to gain sales tax across state line. This is expressly forbidden by more laws than I can count as well as having a little bit about interstate commerce mentioned in the Constitution which forbids this practice.
I have mentioned on this forum before how much internet commerce is like mail-order commerce and thereby should be governed by the same laws. Those laws state that the consumer must pay the sales tax of his own state and NOT the state the company is in. So the moment that this gets challenged by another state crying foul because California is taking away their tax dollars this law will be striken... or limited to only effect Califonia residents.
Here is hoping that it gets striken down by the courts.
As much as many of us are up in arms at the thought of a government agency, like the FBI, having the ability to sift through our E-mail we must face the fact that the average Joe out there is willing to accept it. Historicly Americans have been willing to give up certain rights to privacy and comfort in the intrest of law enforcment, war, or any number of other governmental needs. if you don't believe me lets look at a couple of examples.
Social Security Numbers: These were not always around, and in fact when they were first propsed they were fought against by numerous religious groups and conservatives. Their reasons for being against were valid privacy and social impact issues... but they were a small minority. And the majority of people thought that assigning a number to each person so that the elderly would be taken care of in their old age was a valid sacrifice
Search & Seizure vs Probable Cause: Even Elliot Ness and the untouchable required a warrant to search a vehicle that they suspected was carrying contraband. But because of the proliferation of ilicit drugs we saw a movement in many stattes to loosen the restrictions on a police officer for impromptu searchs for contraband. Infact in the home of the Slashdot Compound having more than two dead head stickers on your car is probable cause during a traffic stop for the officer to search the vehicle for illicit drugs... a lot of people have serious problems with this but they are in the minority.
Government Regulation: Before the late 1800s there probably would have been another revolutionary war if the government had tried to force a business to conform to its will. But the oil barrons of the turn of the century and the horrid factory conditions that were to be found in every city coupled with the run away poverty of the average worker made it more palatable for the government to create Regulatory Commissions. Around that time is when OSHA, the FTCm and other such agencies to regulate corporations were created... There were people then who fought against their creation, but of course they were in the minority.
Well this is something to stop Child pornographers, and to protect the children... of course we see where this might really go, but then we are a minority.
The answer to this is to make companies responsible for their actions. At present a company that makes mistakes has to be grossly inept in its activities to face any repurcutions for its mistakes. Now I understand that data can fall victim to file corruption, but I also know that there are many solutions to counter act file corruption. Checksums and/or shadow set data bases are all viable options to keep data viable.
But having done DB admin I know that there is no excuse for poorly stored or entered data. Except for poor programming or bad data entry. Both of these fall to the responsibility of the company to keep its employees or vendors up to snuff to be able to do a job properly.
But as I have said a couple of times before nothing will be done about anything like this unless plain old people like you and me bring it up to local and national governments.
He does have a point there. There have been a number of "breakthroughs" in the past decade that have seen no practical application, or have been thusly disproven (read: Cold Fusion).
There breakthrough still has not gone through any scientific testing (or it at least was not reported) to backup their claim.
Most great scientific breakthroughs have actually been exposed to rigorous experimentation by thrid parties to prove or disprove their validity. This is the driving force behind the scientific method. The ability to recreate results, no proof of this is mentioned anywhere in the article.
So while as tempting and wonderful as this sounds I am chalking it up to some sensationalistic science. But I do hope that when it comes up to experimental review of the process that it does stand up to it.
A little advanced for your average user but this might be effective. Lets say you are a day trader and want to know all the news having to do with your large portfolio of stocks. An internet App that could find sites that deal with that subject and continually check it as well as continuing a general search would be good. Of course you would need to include a number of different AI concepts in the programming. First being language comprehension so that the program would be able to acurately identify good information. Second would be learning so that the user could identify sites and content that is not wanted, and the program would learn to throw out any other information "similar" to the rejected information. The program could then sit and watch its prefered sites (ie sites that it found good info on) and notify the user when there is a change on that site. This though might be a little more complex than what you are wanting to do.
Ok the common comsumer is what has caused the state of the computer industry today. They do not educate them self enough to use the damn machine on their desk and have no wish to do so. I may be a computer elitist, but there would have been better product out there for everybody to use if it were not for Bill and Jobs. Splitting up Microsoft will produce at least a little more competition in the market and may actually make it so that reliability and quality can come back to the software industry. Before the advent of Microsoft's ascension to the giant that it is today if I had a piece of software that had bugs, I didn't wait for the patch. I tossed it and informed everybody I knew that it was buggy; if I found something that had no bugs and did what it was supposed to do then I told everybody I knew that it worked. Survival of the fittest code. Now though if something is buggy well you have to sit and wait for the patch (if one comes out) because there just aren't that many choices now adays if you want an app that has sufficient support.
Actually interstate sales tax is a loop hole in that law. The way interstate sales tax is interpreted is that if the consumer is with in the borders of a state when he orders goods or services then he must pay the sales tax of the state that he is within. It is not an "official" tax or duty on exported goods from another state it is a means for the state to gather revenue from the gross product of its citizens. It sucks but its legal right now. Now company's like Wal-Mart and Target are all in a huff about this because it unfairly penalizes their attempts to destroy local small business. Yep, thats right their pissed because they can't get into the market and competition that they would have crushed at its onset is instead equal rivals like they have to deal with now.
As with all big decisions that have put into the hands of the states to decide on their own E-taxation to will become another SNAFU. Mainly because there will come questions of jurisdiciton when taxing a sale over the internet. Which state gets to collect the tax. This question was solved some years ago with mail order business when it was decided that the state of the customer's residence would be the one to collect the tax. What if a wily state, like Virginia, decides to tax from Point of Presence on the Internet. Now Virginia being the home of AOL, all AOL users would theorically have a point of presence onto the "Internet Proper". Could then Virginia be able to tax all AOL customers doing E-commerce? That will end up being something for the courts to decide, and we have all already seen the courts ability to handle internet legal problems.
In the 90's workers were abused to work longer hours than were healthy. Products were useless if not some times dangerous yet were sold anyways. Mom and Pop operations were quickly swallowed up by greedy conglomerates, and those not swallowed were forced out of business. But I am not talking about the 1990s... I'm talking about the 1890s. In that time the industrial revolution had started full swing in the US and most of the money of the time was held by only a few people (Rockafeller, Vanderbilt, etc). And the reason that happened was because there were not laws on the books to protect the people from them. Now the arena has changed but we have the same situation. Defensive Patenting may be the answer but private organisations have historicly not been able to compete with large corporations. The corporation has time and money on its side, and time and money will tend to win the day in the legal arena. What eventually broke the strangle hold of the huge corporations of the 1890s was protests and the formation of labor unions to fight for worker rights. The government also had a hand in this when they founded the FTC.
Alternativly though instead of defesively patenting ideas; maybe creating an organization of open source programers who could then lobby the Federal Government to change the laws may be more effective. We already have forums here to get our ideas heard by one another, why not get some organization?
I do Tech support right now and something that I have noticed is that most of the people that I work with are not willing to bother learning anything about the "Magic Box" on their desk. I guide them through these things as much as I can and tell them in as simple of terms as I can what we are doing and how they can do it on their own later. And 9 times out of 10 I will get these same people coming back with same exact problem and they have not even bothered to try and do the same things that I guided them through a couple of weeks ago.
It becomes quite disheartening to get these people over and over again asking the same questions over and over again. And then they blame you for their own silly (and I do mean silly) mistakes. Now the why of this occurance is something I have been bemoaning for more than 8 years. We, meaning the geeks of the world, have been asked and payed quite handsomly to "dumb down" computers. What has happened is that users no longer feel the need to learn anything about the "magic box" and they panic and blame everything except their own ignorance for the the problems that they may have.
For instance. Presently the most common problem I see (I am working for a large ISP) has to do with a certain type of modem that needs to have its firmware updated regularly or they will no longer. We tell people this all the time, and do they ever take this to heart? No. You tell me why, because I don't understand it.
We may believe that corporate America has had enough time to learn how to be good and productive netizens, yet they have not shown any evidence of this. And the question that I ask is why is this? Why is it that the majority of the upper management echelons of the corporations of the world approach the internet like Cortez approached Technochitlan? Because that is their nature. These people do not have these jobs that pay them millions of dollars a year making decisions that could make or break a company to be good citizens of anything. Infact this reliance on them to make such decisions tends to breed a kind of arrogance that they could do no wrong, and that everything else will be bent to their wills. There seriously is a personality type to the kinds of people who usually become execs in large corporations. And this personality type tends to not care what other people think, or who may be hurt by their action; as long as they are making something off of it. I guess this may sound a bit anti-business or something or anti-capitalism. But it is not. Its just if you want corporations to do business on the internet you have to be willing to either deal with or live with the way corporations are going to act. I will sum this up with an oriental proverb that I think will get across my point. There was a Scorpion and a Frog on the bank of a river. The Scorpion asked the Frog to take her across the river. The Frog said no because the Scorpion would sting him. The Scorpion said that it wouldn't because it would die to, so the frog agreed. And halfway across the river the Scorpion stung the frog, and as the Frog died and began to sink it asked, "Why, now you will die to." And the Scorpion answered, "Because it is my nature."
Slashdot Mirror
The Electoral College pretty much means that your vote is meaningless if the majority of the people in your state disagree with you. Because of this a number of people don't vote because they do not feel that their vote really counts. I live in Georgia, a decidely conservative state politically. I tend to lean towards the more liberal side and would vote for the Libertarian Party if thought it would make any bit of difference. But I already know that it will not.
And really it is not worth my time to travel to the polls and vote when I know that even if I decide to take, in my opinion, the lesser of the two evils. it still won't matter because a majority of my neighbors are going to vote the republican party line.
Its really quite depressing that the land of the free where we take such pride in allowing our citizens to vote for who they choose. Has such a system that a lot of people are just not going to vote because they feel disillusioned by our system of voting.
What many of us touted as a PR stunt to show that their new method of encryption and protection of digital music was going to be unbreakable has instead been crushed by one simple truth.
"Anything created by a 40 year old man can be broken by a 14 year old boy"
There is never going to be such a thing as the unbeatable encryption. Or the perfect protection. the only thing that can be hoped for by the recording industry is to make a system that is difficult and discouraging to the general populace. But the information age and the example of DeCSS has proven that once a genie is released from the bottle it becomes nearly impossible to put it back. Sure you can persecute everybody who even looked cross-eyed at the horrible key that opened your magic lock... but that will not stop people from using it once out in the wild.
why are they fighting the technology instead of embracing it? Oh yeah, thats right because the technology makes it so cheap and easy now for a musician to record and release their music that the record industry would no longer be needed.
Come on Record Companies be good bloated dinosaurs and go become extinct, Ok?
Pretty much what everybody is dealing with is to many people wanting xDSL, and the ILECs don't have enough people trained to do the job.
I do tech support for a DSL provider and have to deal with all the ILECs on a daily basis. I can tell you that they are the primary reason for most DSL problems. Either they will "steal" the DSL from one line to put it on another because it is not marked properly. Or a normal tech will go out to work on the lines and disconnect the DSL just because it does not look normal; or for convenience of his work. Or even worse the DSLAM cards used in most COs is bought from the lowest bidder. And I am sure we all know that the cheapest hardware is rarely the best.
So all of these things combined together make DSL less than perfect. But one must remember that DSL is a NEW TECHNOLOGY. And as with any new technology there are going to be problems and growing pains.
For instance, how many of us can remember the reliability of network connections when we were using 300 baud modems with our C64s back in the day? It is going to take time and patience for this technology to take off.
Actually that is not a bad idea. If you place an End User Liscence Agreement on a piece of software that has a legitamate use like DeCSS, then according to the corporations would put themselves in a really bad place if they brought their own creation up for judicial review. Because according to the idea of the EULA you are stating that you created the program for a specific purpose andf that you will take no responsibility if the user uses for some other purpose.
Its kind of same reason why you cannot sue Smith & Wesson for making a rifle that is used in a murder. They made the rifle for legal use only, and it is not their fault if somebody used it for an illegal purpose.
In programming it becomes a little more complex because you will actually have to make an application with subversive code in it have some legal and useful property which requires the subversive part to function properly.
Now this could easily be done with DeCSS, just attach DeCSS to a Linux DVD player. Some of the others become a little more complex. Another option is to release a patch for an application the activates subversive code "Accidentally". Then it becomes a big Whoops, now how many times have one of the big boys released damaging patches to their software (I can remember a certain service pack of NT). It will just take a good bit of plausible deniability and playing with in their rules to cripple them.
Yep thats right I left a rather prestigious engineering school to go and try my hand in the corprate world. This was back in 94 when the job market was not quite as good as it is today.
But I got hired on three contracting jobs when I simply admited that I used to crack software copy protection as a hobby in jr. high and high school.
Who knew at that time that being a "criminal" in my younger days would get me a rather well paying job.
Now six years later I am making more money than most of my friends who stayed in college are and I don't have a massive college loan to pay off.
The reasons why I left though were because I already knew everything that they were teaching me. They were concentrating on the mathematical aspects of programming to teach the people how to logically approach a problem. Which I will admit is really necesary for people who are coming to Computer Sciences completely cold. But the continued curiculums were only in how to use Unix, how to program in C, and that was pretty much it. All of these things you can learn at your local book store or by searching the internet for the correct resources.
But hey if you want to have that college degree and be in the IT industry... get a major in something you enjoy, and minor in CS... the minor is all you are going to really need. That is what I am doing now I am working on getting my BA Philosophy right now.
That was a FEDERAL moratorium. But the states don't have to follow suit with the federal government.
The only thing the Federal Government can do is coerce the states to do what it wants (like the 21 year old drinking age being attached to federal highway money).
This is a vain attempt by California to get some extra cash to fill their sparse coffers. I am going to guess that they are hoping they can sneak this one through and have it be active at least for a little while and make some cash before the Federal government shuts them down.
And the Federal Government will shut them down because they are attempting to gain sales tax across state line. This is expressly forbidden by more laws than I can count as well as having a little bit about interstate commerce mentioned in the Constitution which forbids this practice.
I have mentioned on this forum before how much internet commerce is like mail-order commerce and thereby should be governed by the same laws. Those laws state that the consumer must pay the sales tax of his own state and NOT the state the company is in. So the moment that this gets challenged by another state crying foul because California is taking away their tax dollars this law will be striken... or limited to only effect Califonia residents.
Here is hoping that it gets striken down by the courts.
As much as many of us are up in arms at the thought of a government agency, like the FBI, having the ability to sift through our E-mail we must face the fact that the average Joe out there is willing to accept it. Historicly Americans have been willing to give up certain rights to privacy and comfort in the intrest of law enforcment, war, or any number of other governmental needs. if you don't believe me lets look at a couple of examples.
Social Security Numbers:
These were not always around, and in fact when they were first propsed they were fought against by numerous religious groups and conservatives. Their reasons for being against were valid privacy and social impact issues... but they were a small minority. And the majority of people thought that assigning a number to each person so that the elderly would be taken care of in their old age was a valid sacrifice
Search & Seizure vs Probable Cause:
Even Elliot Ness and the untouchable required a warrant to search a vehicle that they suspected was carrying contraband. But because of the proliferation of ilicit drugs we saw a movement in many stattes to loosen the restrictions on a police officer for impromptu searchs for contraband. Infact in the home of the Slashdot Compound having more than two dead head stickers on your car is probable cause during a traffic stop for the officer to search the vehicle for illicit drugs... a lot of people have serious problems with this but they are in the minority.
Government Regulation:
Before the late 1800s there probably would have been another revolutionary war if the government had tried to force a business to conform to its will. But the oil barrons of the turn of the century and the horrid factory conditions that were to be found in every city coupled with the run away poverty of the average worker made it more palatable for the government to create Regulatory Commissions. Around that time is when OSHA, the FTCm and other such agencies to regulate corporations were created... There were people then who fought against their creation, but of course they were in the minority.
Well this is something to stop Child pornographers, and to protect the children... of course we see where this might really go, but then we are a minority.
The answer to this is to make companies responsible for their actions. At present a company that makes mistakes has to be grossly inept in its activities to face any repurcutions for its mistakes. Now I understand that data can fall victim to file corruption, but I also know that there are many solutions to counter act file corruption. Checksums and/or shadow set data bases are all viable options to keep data viable.
But having done DB admin I know that there is no excuse for poorly stored or entered data. Except for poor programming or bad data entry. Both of these fall to the responsibility of the company to keep its employees or vendors up to snuff to be able to do a job properly.
But as I have said a couple of times before nothing will be done about anything like this unless plain old people like you and me bring it up to local and national governments.
He does have a point there. There have been a number of "breakthroughs" in the past decade that have seen no practical application, or have been thusly disproven (read: Cold Fusion).
There breakthrough still has not gone through any scientific testing (or it at least was not reported) to backup their claim.
Most great scientific breakthroughs have actually been exposed to rigorous experimentation by thrid parties to prove or disprove their validity. This is the driving force behind the scientific method. The ability to recreate results, no proof of this is mentioned anywhere in the article.
So while as tempting and wonderful as this sounds I am chalking it up to some sensationalistic science. But I do hope that when it comes up to experimental review of the process that it does stand up to it.
A little advanced for your average user but this might be effective. Lets say you are a day trader and want to know all the news having to do with your large portfolio of stocks. An internet App that could find sites that deal with that subject and continually check it as well as continuing a general search would be good. Of course you would need to include a number of different AI concepts in the programming. First being language comprehension so that the program would be able to acurately identify good information. Second would be learning so that the user could identify sites and content that is not wanted, and the program would learn to throw out any other information "similar" to the rejected information. The program could then sit and watch its prefered sites (ie sites that it found good info on) and notify the user when there is a change on that site. This though might be a little more complex than what you are wanting to do.
Ok the common comsumer is what has caused the state of the computer industry today. They do not educate them self enough to use the damn machine on their desk and have no wish to do so. I may be a computer elitist, but there would have been better product out there for everybody to use if it were not for Bill and Jobs. Splitting up Microsoft will produce at least a little more competition in the market and may actually make it so that reliability and quality can come back to the software industry. Before the advent of Microsoft's ascension to the giant that it is today if I had a piece of software that had bugs, I didn't wait for the patch. I tossed it and informed everybody I knew that it was buggy; if I found something that had no bugs and did what it was supposed to do then I told everybody I knew that it worked. Survival of the fittest code. Now though if something is buggy well you have to sit and wait for the patch (if one comes out) because there just aren't that many choices now adays if you want an app that has sufficient support.
Actually interstate sales tax is a loop hole in that law. The way interstate sales tax is interpreted is that if the consumer is with in the borders of a state when he orders goods or services then he must pay the sales tax of the state that he is within. It is not an "official" tax or duty on exported goods from another state it is a means for the state to gather revenue from the gross product of its citizens. It sucks but its legal right now. Now company's like Wal-Mart and Target are all in a huff about this because it unfairly penalizes their attempts to destroy local small business. Yep, thats right their pissed because they can't get into the market and competition that they would have crushed at its onset is instead equal rivals like they have to deal with now.
As with all big decisions that have put into the hands of the states to decide on their own E-taxation to will become another SNAFU. Mainly because there will come questions of jurisdiciton when taxing a sale over the internet. Which state gets to collect the tax. This question was solved some years ago with mail order business when it was decided that the state of the customer's residence would be the one to collect the tax.
What if a wily state, like Virginia, decides to tax from Point of Presence on the Internet. Now Virginia being the home of AOL, all AOL users would theorically have a point of presence onto the "Internet Proper". Could then Virginia be able to tax all AOL customers doing E-commerce?
That will end up being something for the courts to decide, and we have all already seen the courts ability to handle internet legal problems.
In the 90's workers were abused to work longer hours than were healthy. Products were useless if not some times dangerous yet were sold anyways. Mom and Pop operations were quickly swallowed up by greedy conglomerates, and those not swallowed were forced out of business.
But I am not talking about the 1990s... I'm talking about the 1890s. In that time the industrial revolution had started full swing in the US and most of the money of the time was held by only a few people (Rockafeller, Vanderbilt, etc). And the reason that happened was because there were not laws on the books to protect the people from them.
Now the arena has changed but we have the same situation. Defensive Patenting may be the answer but private organisations have historicly not been able to compete with large corporations. The corporation has time and money on its side, and time and money will tend to win the day in the legal arena. What eventually broke the strangle hold of the huge corporations of the 1890s was protests and the formation of labor unions to fight for worker rights. The government also had a hand in this when they founded the FTC.
Alternativly though instead of defesively patenting ideas; maybe creating an organization of open source programers who could then lobby the Federal Government to change the laws may be more effective. We already have forums here to get our ideas heard by one another, why not get some organization?
I do Tech support right now and something that I have noticed is that most of the people that I work with are not willing to bother learning anything about the "Magic Box" on their desk. I guide them through these things as much as I can and tell them in as simple of terms as I can what we are doing and how they can do it on their own later. And 9 times out of 10 I will get these same people coming back with same exact problem and they have not even bothered to try and do the same things that I guided them through a couple of weeks ago.
It becomes quite disheartening to get these people over and over again asking the same questions over and over again. And then they blame you for their own silly (and I do mean silly) mistakes. Now the why of this occurance is something I have been bemoaning for more than 8 years. We, meaning the geeks of the world, have been asked and payed quite handsomly to "dumb down" computers. What has happened is that users no longer feel the need to learn anything about the "magic box" and they panic and blame everything except their own ignorance for the the problems that they may have.
For instance. Presently the most common problem I see (I am working for a large ISP) has to do with a certain type of modem that needs to have its firmware updated regularly or they will no longer. We tell people this all the time, and do they ever take this to heart? No. You tell me why, because I don't understand it.
We may believe that corporate America has had enough time to learn how to be good and productive netizens, yet they have not shown any evidence of this. And the question that I ask is why is this? Why is it that the majority of the upper management echelons of the corporations of the world approach the internet like Cortez approached Technochitlan? Because that is their nature. These people do not have these jobs that pay them millions of dollars a year making decisions that could make or break a company to be good citizens of anything. Infact this reliance on them to make such decisions tends to breed a kind of arrogance that they could do no wrong, and that everything else will be bent to their wills. There seriously is a personality type to the kinds of people who usually become execs in large corporations. And this personality type tends to not care what other people think, or who may be hurt by their action; as long as they are making something off of it. I guess this may sound a bit anti-business or something or anti-capitalism. But it is not. Its just if you want corporations to do business on the internet you have to be willing to either deal with or live with the way corporations are going to act. I will sum this up with an oriental proverb that I think will get across my point. There was a Scorpion and a Frog on the bank of a river. The Scorpion asked the Frog to take her across the river. The Frog said no because the Scorpion would sting him. The Scorpion said that it wouldn't because it would die to, so the frog agreed. And halfway across the river the Scorpion stung the frog, and as the Frog died and began to sink it asked, "Why, now you will die to." And the Scorpion answered, "Because it is my nature."