Excuse me, but how effen hard is this? If operating systems can keep track of timezones then how hard is it to keep track a sales tax? It is not that difficult. Or how about software that knows where you live by the zip code, or the telephone you call from, or even the IP address you use to log onto the Internet.
Sorry, but this "it is going to be an effen nightmare" is pure crap! People don't want to do this because they get an advantage over bricks and motar places.
They will comply because if they don't it means that they can never have a US account, ask for US dollars, trade US equities, etc, etc, etc... If you are willing to 100% forgo every and any tie to the US, go for it! The US is even for us foreigners a part of our daily lives, directly or indirectly.
While France has many many funny laws and ideas, many of which I think are bogus. But on this one IMO they are right. If Skype connected directly at the user to a telephone then IMO it would be a different picture. However, SKYPE acts on behalf of the user and hence they are doing the same thing as a telco, albeit not a completely telco.
Here in Switzerland when they build highways they actually think about on ramps, and off ramps. Heck they do so in Germany, and France and so on. They realize that if you create a highway with an on ramp and off ramp there will be quite a bit of traffic that will go through the town.
Oh wait, this is the United States, the land of the free, small government and where we can't invest in infrastructure! Seriously, these days when I travel to Canada and the States what I see is how urban sprawl is killing the countries. No planning, no thought, just greed, and the thought that private money is always right. I am no socialist, nor a commie. BUT sometimes government has a role and sometimes people need to accept that.
BULLSHIT! Who did you sue and recently lost to? Sure TopGear was sensationalist. But hey you installed blackboxes without telling ANYBODY and then when you show them, it shows how crappy your car is. Here is what I posted to the Tesla website to his weblog many weeks ago. And guess what Tesla did not publish it. These were my issues:
* In the space of 550 miles one had to charge 4 times meaning that I would have "eat" for at least 1 to 2 hours. That is just not good! * 72F is considered to warm? Really? I live in Zurich and have lived in Quebec. 72F is no way too warm, if anything too cold for a car. * 62 to 81 is considered driving too fast? Really? I drive on average 140 KPH and have driven on the autobahn at 155 MPH. The "good" speed of a Tesla means that I would be driving quite a bit below the speed limit of a typical European highway. * Even with these "higher" values as per the reporter the battery underperformed by about 20%. That is not just a bit. Imagine for the moment I had driven this car in Europe during a winter. I would have to find a charger every 50 to 100 miles.For a car that costs 100K this is about the worst performance I have ever seen in a car.
What gets me with this nutter is that he invents does something once and wants to be considered a god. Remember who the two wheeled segway was supposed to revolutionize the world? Silicon Valley sometimes needs to do a reality check and stop living in their own darn bubble.
This is just plain stupid! Not just a bit, but quite a bit. How come I know? Because MY country Switzerland is right now trying to get enough signatures to have a vote. So being a good Swiss I decided to have a look at this model and ask, "can this really work?"
Answer is no. The idea itself is actually not bad. The reality of it is quite bad. What I decided to do was take three countries; Switzerland, Germany, and Canada and look at their current budgets. The idea is that if you have a basic income, then you don't need to pay handicapped people, or pensioners, or unemployed. Essentially you would simplify the entire system and potentially create a very small government.
The problem is that the costs of the program minus the current social expenditures still requires about 2 times extra tax revenues. So if a country had 100 currency units, they needed in total 300 currency units. Simple case in point, Canada. Give people a base income of say 18,000 CDN, which is not much money and minimum wage the Canadian government has just in this program an expenditure of 700 billion. Current revenues are 252 billion. This means people who are paying taxes have to pay about three times as much, and that is impossible since Canadians are already heavily taxed.
Thus this idea while interesting from a theoretical point of view, SUCKS BIG ONES in reality. Notice how all the people supporting this idea tend not to be economists or bean counters. BTW I am not against this idea, as I rather like simplicity and lean government.
Of course it works. It just takes time. Here is what happens when you and people boycott:
1) Company writes you off as a loon 2) Company keeps creating crap that people keep consuming 3) You get angry because you feel like you are the only one who is wrong 4) Sales slow down by company and they blame it on [fill in the blank] 5) Company grows sales by acquiring the upcoming company who has "solved" the [fill in the blank] problem 6) Company still can't grow like they used to, and they now blame it on [fill in the blank with reason 2] 7) People begin to look at the hot new thing 8) Company tries to get a foothold in new thing and comes out with revolutionary crap that nobody wants 9) Company goes downhill!
Case in point Microsoft and Linux. In the mobile game, the cloud game, and HTML game Microsoft has become IRRELEVANT! Yes people still use their devices due to legacy, but Windows 8 sucks, Windows mobile is a statistical error in market share and Microsoft keeps jacking up the costs and changes plans more often than I change my underwear.
I manage a portfolio of stocks and follow the tech industry closely. Microsoft is not in the game whatsoever. They think the problem is mobile. HA that is the least of their problems. The real problem is big data (a'la IBM and Watson), it is micro devices (a'la Raspberry Pie) and a couple of other smaller niches (eg 3d printing, M2M, etc). In all of these niches Microsoft has ZERO, and I mean ZERO footprint! What does have footprint? Oh yeah Linux! Companies are now asking for Linux admins, and Linux developers.
The same will happen with the games folks. The problem is our society demands immediate change, but change takes time...
Am I the only who reads this text as a double edged sword and that somebody has picked on the wrong edge?
Namely I read this text (and yes I actually went to the original text of the bill) as protecting people, not just corporations. But hey the definition of people in the context of a corporation is another can of worms. Essentially this would stop paparazzi from taking pictures of you while nude sunbathing in a protected pool area. While I understand the double edged sword part is that it would potentially stop from taking pictures of the pig blood pollution, though there I am not sure. After all there are other ways to figure out that the pig blood was being dumped into the river.
Take a good look at that company and how it fared. What EA is proposing is a social game a'la Zynga. The problem is that such a business is showing that it does not work. People get excited about things, but then quickly move away because they are being nickled and dimed to death. People are lazy and the moment you have to keep ponying up money is the moment you say, "is this worth it?" And the moment a player takes a step back and makes that thought you the game producer have lost.
Here is how it goes:
1) Awesome game and I will tell my friends. 2) My friends are into this game 3) Friends have bought feature X and they are playing much faster than I 4) Many I need feature X as well 5) Feature X is awesome!!! 6) Oh wait cool Feature Y is out and I will tell my friends to get it! 7) Now I have Feature X, and Y! Awesome game play 8) Feature Z is out and it is way more awesome. 9) Wait, will there be a feature AA? What is Feature Z going to cost me? How much money am I burning through playing this game?
Step 9 is the brutal step and once your company is associated with this, its game OVER for your company. Hence why I say, look at Zynga. So how is Zynga trying to get out of the maliase? Simple online gambling! Yes the company that tried to make legal and legit games has to look at gambling and addictions that cause you to loose your money.
When will EA, and Activision hit gambling? Earlier than you think IMO.
Why on earth do I need to make say 100K? or let's say 150K?
If I was to live in say rural Ontario, Quebec, or in the "fly over" part of the United States how much money do I really need? Do I really need to make 100K? 150K? I could probably live pretty well on say 50K. Sure that is still more expensive that say places like Poland, Russia, India, etc. BUT you are getting American labour. Remote labour like Poland, Russia, and India has other costs.
We are not even talking infrastructure costs, and other cost of doing business costs. So I would argue even doing remote work within North America is pretty cheap.
While I think technically this is possible, IMO it will never happen. Imagine the following tagline:
"Have enough electricity for 20 years"
Do you really think any power plant company will want this? Of course maybe somebody will sell for 20 years, and 35K, thus making it not that useful. The only reason why we are not using our own generators right now is because they are too tedious and twiddly factor. If you could produce reliable energy without the twiddle factor we would not be in this mess we are.
I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name? I use Ubuntu all the time, and if anything they are making Linux usable. If you don't like that, fine, don't like it. Use another distribution. What is wonderful about Linux is that you don't have to like Ubuntu, because there is CHOICE! Think about that! Choice! Do we have choice with OSX? Windows? NO, NO and NO!
Before somebody says, "well your answer is wrong", remember this. If you had infinite sums of money could the patent be defended? Yes. Thus the problem is not the patent system per say, but the courts that cause these problems. Simply put what needs to be fixed is the fact that lawyers with big sums of money do not have an advantage that lawyers with small sums of money.
The question here is incorrect. The premise is whether or not it protects the small investor. Answer is yes. What the small investor can't do is afford a law team to defend the patent. This is the crux of the entire patent problem these days.
If a missile did try to intercept, that makes me a WHOLE BUNCH more confident. I mean if a missile system can't tell the difference between a meteor and an actual missile we are essentially SOL. Forget about itchy fingers, watch out on Mother Nature.
No spreadsheets are great because of shits like you who mock and laugh in people's faces when they only want to do some simple calculation tomorrow and you decide that it would be better for them to use a custom written library with awesome GUI interface. The problem with you is that they want to get done tomorrow not wait three months for you to get your shit in gear!
Seriously, I am a programmer, but I totally get why people use Excel. Programmers and devs have this problem in that they cant do something quickly because it needs to be abstracted, modularized, etc, etc...
What planet did you grow up on? Of course it will affect the warranty! Car makers don't like you screwing around with the car while it is still under warranty for multiple reasons, with one being they like to squeeze money out of you.
With ballmer under control they took winning ideas and killed them. For example,.NET and C# did become very successful. What did they do? They killed it in the "new" paradigm called Windows 8.
they had one of the most successful third party dev program and they killed it. Compare the price of MSDN universal when Gates was under control, and when Ballmer was under control. It is not funny! I did a price comparison of Linux, OSX, and Windows as a development environment for a small business or consultant. In this price comparison I included the price of hardware since you do need computers to run things.
Guess which was the cheapest... Drum roll Linux. Guess which was the most expensive? Drum roll Windows, and by quite a bit! OSX was only a bit more expensive than Linux. Windows was just downright expensive when you add things like Office, Windows Server, MSDN development (not talking the universal package, just the 1200 USD package).
What shocked me is that OSX is not that much more expensive than Linux. For hardware does cost quite a bit if you do an apples to apples comparison (excuse the pun). Granted that Apple is still more expensive for the same hardware, but it is not as much as I thought it was.
I firmly disagree here. I have run on hosted systems and found them to be as unreliable as my own. The only system that is fairly reliable is Amazon ECS. Others have problems here, there and everywhere else. Regarding hardware upgrades most people do that anyways, thus you have those costs whether you like it or not.
The real problem I find with hosted is that the bandwidth is pretty cheap, but the hardware costs are very expensive. I have a piece of Java software that pulls data from the Internet. When I run it on my own machine it takes about 5% of the machine. When I run it on hosted systems it essentially brings the machines to a halt. The only way it works better is if I "upgrade" the virtual machine. But then the costs become very expensive running me around 50 USD per month. Do the math on that and you get 600 USD per year, which I can easily replace with a local machine.
The reality is that dollar for dollar hardware is mucho cheaper locally vs hosted.
Since when do you pay that much for a computer? I run servers at home and I usually pay around 1K for a machine.
Bandwidth costs: Does not cost that much anymore unless you are trying to be the next facebook. For most people these days it is good enough. I have a business connection, costs me 100 USD per month, but it includes a phone with two numbers, gets me 30 MB down, and 5 MB sustained up. IMO that is good enough.
Hackers: Get yourself a decent router (not one of those consumer thingy's, a SOHO router), close all connections, and run a Linux ubuntu server. Make sure it patches itself and for the most part you are pretty good to go. SOHO routers are cool because they allow you to separate networks, so that your external exposed server runs on a different subnet than your home network. Also don't run exotic software. Run that plain vanilla stuff, Apache (or nginx, etc) as that stuff gets fixed up pretty quick.
Costs: Simple, run Linux and you are good to go. I run OSX server for my own stuff, but for the stuff exposed to the Internet its Linux, and only Linux. Linux is actually a darn good operating system that for the most part runs itself. I know that sounds like I am putting plenty of trust into the operating system, but I have to say it is pretty darn good and pretty darn cheap IMO.
The advantage I find is that for the most part you already need all of this stuff at home for your daily things. So fork over a tad more and you have a great home system...
This is why I left facebook in November. I mean delete account facebook, not deactivate facebook. Granted they might have old data kicking around, though it is out of date. I realised that the power of facebook is its ability to extrapolate you on your friends. You can't give in fake info based on what you like, events that you are tagged in, etc, etc. That is very very dangerous IMO...
Interesting, I do hope you realize that what you are reading, and what you using as a medium to communicate did come from the government. Please check your facts... Thank-you and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Here is the problem with your argument. It is about me me me...
If your product can get cloned, then well guess what you can clone somebody else product. I am not talking about making a cheap knock off. I am talking about adding value and standing on the shoulders of giants.
Mankind has progressed the fastest this way? Really? Dude you are so out of touch that it ain't funny. The fact that many inventions were created in the last 200 years is not a sign that before that we did nothing. You see to be able to create inventions, and spur innovation we had to have a stable society that communicated with each other. Simply put you need a society with a certain level of government, judicial and other pieces. Once that is in place there is peace and things can be invented. Guess when society really has had peace? One guess, come on you know it, yes, 200 years ago things became stable.
Granted horrible things have happened in the 1900's, but before that it was all about royalty and one set of people waging war on another set of people. Those sorts of things do not make for stability. Also things like the great plague dampen innovation.
BTW please read the author's papers and realize that innovation happens when there are no patents. Sure the initial guy gets screwed if they have no business plan, but overall society is for the better.
The example I always argue is what if the airplane was patented. Can you imagine trying to develop around the airplane? Ain't gonna happen because the airplane is about as good as it is going to get for the current time.
My solution to the patent system is not to abolish it, but shorten the length to 5 years. That is just enough to give you a head start, but not long enough to hinder society.
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse me, but how effen hard is this? If operating systems can keep track of timezones then how hard is it to keep track a sales tax? It is not that difficult. Or how about software that knows where you live by the zip code, or the telephone you call from, or even the IP address you use to log onto the Internet.
Sorry, but this "it is going to be an effen nightmare" is pure crap! People don't want to do this because they get an advantage over bricks and motar places.
They will comply because if they don't it means that they can never have a US account, ask for US dollars, trade US equities, etc, etc, etc... If you are willing to 100% forgo every and any tie to the US, go for it! The US is even for us foreigners a part of our daily lives, directly or indirectly.
ehhh you are supposed to declare it. Many don't. But if you get caught you have serious issues!
While France has many many funny laws and ideas, many of which I think are bogus. But on this one IMO they are right. If Skype connected directly at the user to a telephone then IMO it would be a different picture. However, SKYPE acts on behalf of the user and hence they are doing the same thing as a telco, albeit not a completely telco.
Here in Switzerland when they build highways they actually think about on ramps, and off ramps. Heck they do so in Germany, and France and so on. They realize that if you create a highway with an on ramp and off ramp there will be quite a bit of traffic that will go through the town.
Oh wait, this is the United States, the land of the free, small government and where we can't invest in infrastructure! Seriously, these days when I travel to Canada and the States what I see is how urban sprawl is killing the countries. No planning, no thought, just greed, and the thought that private money is always right. I am no socialist, nor a commie. BUT sometimes government has a role and sometimes people need to accept that.
"I have no problem with negative feedback"
BULLSHIT! Who did you sue and recently lost to? Sure TopGear was sensationalist. But hey you installed blackboxes without telling ANYBODY and then when you show them, it shows how crappy your car is. Here is what I posted to the Tesla website to his weblog many weeks ago. And guess what Tesla did not publish it. These were my issues:
* In the space of 550 miles one had to charge 4 times meaning that I would have "eat" for at least 1 to 2 hours. That is just not good!
* 72F is considered to warm? Really? I live in Zurich and have lived in Quebec. 72F is no way too warm, if anything too cold for a car.
* 62 to 81 is considered driving too fast? Really? I drive on average 140 KPH and have driven on the autobahn at 155 MPH. The "good" speed of a Tesla means that I would be driving quite a bit below the speed limit of a typical European highway.
* Even with these "higher" values as per the reporter the battery underperformed by about 20%. That is not just a bit. Imagine for the moment I had driven this car in Europe during a winter. I would have to find a charger every 50 to 100 miles.For a car that costs 100K this is about the worst performance I have ever seen in a car.
What gets me with this nutter is that he invents does something once and wants to be considered a god. Remember who the two wheeled segway was supposed to revolutionize the world? Silicon Valley sometimes needs to do a reality check and stop living in their own darn bubble.
This is just plain stupid! Not just a bit, but quite a bit. How come I know? Because MY country Switzerland is right now trying to get enough signatures to have a vote. So being a good Swiss I decided to have a look at this model and ask, "can this really work?"
Answer is no. The idea itself is actually not bad. The reality of it is quite bad. What I decided to do was take three countries; Switzerland, Germany, and Canada and look at their current budgets. The idea is that if you have a basic income, then you don't need to pay handicapped people, or pensioners, or unemployed. Essentially you would simplify the entire system and potentially create a very small government.
The problem is that the costs of the program minus the current social expenditures still requires about 2 times extra tax revenues. So if a country had 100 currency units, they needed in total 300 currency units. Simple case in point, Canada. Give people a base income of say 18,000 CDN, which is not much money and minimum wage the Canadian government has just in this program an expenditure of 700 billion. Current revenues are 252 billion. This means people who are paying taxes have to pay about three times as much, and that is impossible since Canadians are already heavily taxed.
Thus this idea while interesting from a theoretical point of view, SUCKS BIG ONES in reality. Notice how all the people supporting this idea tend not to be economists or bean counters. BTW I am not against this idea, as I rather like simplicity and lean government.
Of course it works. It just takes time. Here is what happens when you and people boycott:
1) Company writes you off as a loon
2) Company keeps creating crap that people keep consuming
3) You get angry because you feel like you are the only one who is wrong
4) Sales slow down by company and they blame it on [fill in the blank]
5) Company grows sales by acquiring the upcoming company who has "solved" the [fill in the blank] problem
6) Company still can't grow like they used to, and they now blame it on [fill in the blank with reason 2]
7) People begin to look at the hot new thing
8) Company tries to get a foothold in new thing and comes out with revolutionary crap that nobody wants
9) Company goes downhill!
Case in point Microsoft and Linux. In the mobile game, the cloud game, and HTML game Microsoft has become IRRELEVANT! Yes people still use their devices due to legacy, but Windows 8 sucks, Windows mobile is a statistical error in market share and Microsoft keeps jacking up the costs and changes plans more often than I change my underwear.
I manage a portfolio of stocks and follow the tech industry closely. Microsoft is not in the game whatsoever. They think the problem is mobile. HA that is the least of their problems. The real problem is big data (a'la IBM and Watson), it is micro devices (a'la Raspberry Pie) and a couple of other smaller niches (eg 3d printing, M2M, etc). In all of these niches Microsoft has ZERO, and I mean ZERO footprint! What does have footprint? Oh yeah Linux! Companies are now asking for Linux admins, and Linux developers.
The same will happen with the games folks. The problem is our society demands immediate change, but change takes time...
Am I the only who reads this text as a double edged sword and that somebody has picked on the wrong edge?
Namely I read this text (and yes I actually went to the original text of the bill) as protecting people, not just corporations. But hey the definition of people in the context of a corporation is another can of worms. Essentially this would stop paparazzi from taking pictures of you while nude sunbathing in a protected pool area. While I understand the double edged sword part is that it would potentially stop from taking pictures of the pig blood pollution, though there I am not sure. After all there are other ways to figure out that the pig blood was being dumped into the river.
One word... Zynga!!!
Take a good look at that company and how it fared. What EA is proposing is a social game a'la Zynga. The problem is that such a business is showing that it does not work. People get excited about things, but then quickly move away because they are being nickled and dimed to death. People are lazy and the moment you have to keep ponying up money is the moment you say, "is this worth it?" And the moment a player takes a step back and makes that thought you the game producer have lost.
Here is how it goes:
1) Awesome game and I will tell my friends.
2) My friends are into this game
3) Friends have bought feature X and they are playing much faster than I
4) Many I need feature X as well
5) Feature X is awesome!!!
6) Oh wait cool Feature Y is out and I will tell my friends to get it!
7) Now I have Feature X, and Y! Awesome game play
8) Feature Z is out and it is way more awesome.
9) Wait, will there be a feature AA? What is Feature Z going to cost me? How much money am I burning through playing this game?
Step 9 is the brutal step and once your company is associated with this, its game OVER for your company. Hence why I say, look at Zynga. So how is Zynga trying to get out of the maliase? Simple online gambling! Yes the company that tried to make legal and legit games has to look at gambling and addictions that cause you to loose your money.
When will EA, and Activision hit gambling? Earlier than you think IMO.
Wait one moment here...
Why on earth do I need to make say 100K? or let's say 150K?
If I was to live in say rural Ontario, Quebec, or in the "fly over" part of the United States how much money do I really need? Do I really need to make 100K? 150K? I could probably live pretty well on say 50K. Sure that is still more expensive that say places like Poland, Russia, India, etc. BUT you are getting American labour. Remote labour like Poland, Russia, and India has other costs.
We are not even talking infrastructure costs, and other cost of doing business costs. So I would argue even doing remote work within North America is pretty cheap.
While I think technically this is possible, IMO it will never happen. Imagine the following tagline:
"Have enough electricity for 20 years"
Do you really think any power plant company will want this? Of course maybe somebody will sell for 20 years, and 35K, thus making it not that useful. The only reason why we are not using our own generators right now is because they are too tedious and twiddly factor. If you could produce reliable energy without the twiddle factor we would not be in this mess we are.
I have mod points, but dude you are a bonafide coward! Why are they giving Linux a bad name? I use Ubuntu all the time, and if anything they are making Linux usable. If you don't like that, fine, don't like it. Use another distribution. What is wonderful about Linux is that you don't have to like Ubuntu, because there is CHOICE! Think about that! Choice! Do we have choice with OSX? Windows? NO, NO and NO!
Ah thanks... Sorry I mistyped... And your answer is to call me a moron! Cool, good for you! Thank-you for adding to the conversation.
Before somebody says, "well your answer is wrong", remember this. If you had infinite sums of money could the patent be defended? Yes. Thus the problem is not the patent system per say, but the courts that cause these problems. Simply put what needs to be fixed is the fact that lawyers with big sums of money do not have an advantage that lawyers with small sums of money.
The question here is incorrect. The premise is whether or not it protects the small investor. Answer is yes. What the small investor can't do is afford a law team to defend the patent. This is the crux of the entire patent problem these days.
If a missile did try to intercept, that makes me a WHOLE BUNCH more confident. I mean if a missile system can't tell the difference between a meteor and an actual missile we are essentially SOL. Forget about itchy fingers, watch out on Mother Nature.
No spreadsheets are great because of shits like you who mock and laugh in people's faces when they only want to do some simple calculation tomorrow and you decide that it would be better for them to use a custom written library with awesome GUI interface. The problem with you is that they want to get done tomorrow not wait three months for you to get your shit in gear!
Seriously, I am a programmer, but I totally get why people use Excel. Programmers and devs have this problem in that they cant do something quickly because it needs to be abstracted, modularized, etc, etc...
What planet did you grow up on? Of course it will affect the warranty! Car makers don't like you screwing around with the car while it is still under warranty for multiple reasons, with one being they like to squeeze money out of you.
it gets worse...
With ballmer under control they took winning ideas and killed them. For example, .NET and C# did become very successful. What did they do? They killed it in the "new" paradigm called Windows 8.
they had one of the most successful third party dev program and they killed it. Compare the price of MSDN universal when Gates was under control, and when Ballmer was under control. It is not funny! I did a price comparison of Linux, OSX, and Windows as a development environment for a small business or consultant. In this price comparison I included the price of hardware since you do need computers to run things.
Guess which was the cheapest... Drum roll Linux. Guess which was the most expensive? Drum roll Windows, and by quite a bit! OSX was only a bit more expensive than Linux. Windows was just downright expensive when you add things like Office, Windows Server, MSDN development (not talking the universal package, just the 1200 USD package).
What shocked me is that OSX is not that much more expensive than Linux. For hardware does cost quite a bit if you do an apples to apples comparison (excuse the pun). Granted that Apple is still more expensive for the same hardware, but it is not as much as I thought it was.
I firmly disagree here. I have run on hosted systems and found them to be as unreliable as my own. The only system that is fairly reliable is Amazon ECS. Others have problems here, there and everywhere else. Regarding hardware upgrades most people do that anyways, thus you have those costs whether you like it or not.
The real problem I find with hosted is that the bandwidth is pretty cheap, but the hardware costs are very expensive. I have a piece of Java software that pulls data from the Internet. When I run it on my own machine it takes about 5% of the machine. When I run it on hosted systems it essentially brings the machines to a halt. The only way it works better is if I "upgrade" the virtual machine. But then the costs become very expensive running me around 50 USD per month. Do the math on that and you get 600 USD per year, which I can easily replace with a local machine.
The reality is that dollar for dollar hardware is mucho cheaper locally vs hosted.
Since when do you pay that much for a computer? I run servers at home and I usually pay around 1K for a machine.
Bandwidth costs: Does not cost that much anymore unless you are trying to be the next facebook. For most people these days it is good enough. I have a business connection, costs me 100 USD per month, but it includes a phone with two numbers, gets me 30 MB down, and 5 MB sustained up. IMO that is good enough.
Hackers: Get yourself a decent router (not one of those consumer thingy's, a SOHO router), close all connections, and run a Linux ubuntu server. Make sure it patches itself and for the most part you are pretty good to go. SOHO routers are cool because they allow you to separate networks, so that your external exposed server runs on a different subnet than your home network. Also don't run exotic software. Run that plain vanilla stuff, Apache (or nginx, etc) as that stuff gets fixed up pretty quick.
Costs: Simple, run Linux and you are good to go. I run OSX server for my own stuff, but for the stuff exposed to the Internet its Linux, and only Linux. Linux is actually a darn good operating system that for the most part runs itself. I know that sounds like I am putting plenty of trust into the operating system, but I have to say it is pretty darn good and pretty darn cheap IMO.
The advantage I find is that for the most part you already need all of this stuff at home for your daily things. So fork over a tad more and you have a great home system...
This is why I left facebook in November. I mean delete account facebook, not deactivate facebook. Granted they might have old data kicking around, though it is out of date. I realised that the power of facebook is its ability to extrapolate you on your friends. You can't give in fake info based on what you like, events that you are tagged in, etc, etc. That is very very dangerous IMO...
Interesting, I do hope you realize that what you are reading, and what you using as a medium to communicate did come from the government. Please check your facts... Thank-you and don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Here is the problem with your argument. It is about me me me...
If your product can get cloned, then well guess what you can clone somebody else product. I am not talking about making a cheap knock off. I am talking about adding value and standing on the shoulders of giants.
Mankind has progressed the fastest this way? Really? Dude you are so out of touch that it ain't funny. The fact that many inventions were created in the last 200 years is not a sign that before that we did nothing. You see to be able to create inventions, and spur innovation we had to have a stable society that communicated with each other. Simply put you need a society with a certain level of government, judicial and other pieces. Once that is in place there is peace and things can be invented. Guess when society really has had peace? One guess, come on you know it, yes, 200 years ago things became stable.
Granted horrible things have happened in the 1900's, but before that it was all about royalty and one set of people waging war on another set of people. Those sorts of things do not make for stability. Also things like the great plague dampen innovation.
BTW please read the author's papers and realize that innovation happens when there are no patents. Sure the initial guy gets screwed if they have no business plan, but overall society is for the better.
The example I always argue is what if the airplane was patented. Can you imagine trying to develop around the airplane? Ain't gonna happen because the airplane is about as good as it is going to get for the current time.
My solution to the patent system is not to abolish it, but shorten the length to 5 years. That is just enough to give you a head start, but not long enough to hinder society.