Last I read, and I can't quote the source, so you can pretend I said none of this...
The proportions are at least as lopsided as you say, but...
The wealthiest 50% of Americans earn MORE than 95% of the income and hold MORE than 95% of the assets. The wealthiest 5% of Americans earn MORE than 50% of the income and hold MORE than 50% of the assets.
In other words, they're being taxed highly, but not even in proportion to their income/assets.
Again, my statistics may well have the same validity as yours.
On Freshmeat, 3.6.1p2, 3.7.1, and 3.7.1p2 are all listed as Major Security Fixes, and 3.9p1 is listed as Major Feature Enhancements. They are all point level or even less, patch level releases.
Does anyone else find it a bit odd that 4.0p1 is listed as Minor Feature Enhancements, yet it gets a whole-digit version bump?
You can't simply say, "patents are good," or "patents are evil," or that they hinder or encourage innovation. It's not that simple.
In the right environment, patents really do give the inventor a chance to make enough money from inventing to go on and invent more. Furthermore, others can read those patents and build on those works through alternative methods, licensing, or waiting for expiry. That's why we have patents - according to the US Constitution.
In the wrong environment, patents are used as a roadblock to slow innovation in the marketplace to a pace that the market leader can handle. That's where we are, now.
The real long-term winners out of this move are India, China, and anyone else smart enough and big enough to not adopt the current patent regime wholesale. For instance, I'm sure China is going to accept some level of IP reform, in order to trade with the rest of the world. But I'm equally sure they're going to tweak the accords to give them internal freedom of action, and use access to their internal markets as a bargaining chip to do so.
The net result of this is that later this century, innovation is going to fly in these other countries, and move at a Microsoft-accepted pace in the US, Europe, and others. For an example, take a look at broadband deployment elsewhere in the developed world vs the US, and that's just because of monopoly utilities. Or take a look at the gadgets and stuff in Japan that are unseen in the US. Or the deployment of advanced cell phone technology in the US.
It really has happened, and more will.
For the long-term result, look at the enlightened civilization that dominated the world, the cultural light of math and science, with peace and harmony amoung several major religions. The Islamic Empire around 1000AD.
Martha Stewart gets out of prison today, and starts her house arrest.
and AFAIK, there's only been one Enron defendent that has actually gone to prison - two if you count that the courts were going to let the man and his wife (names forgotten) server their terms serially, so the other could keep the home with the kids.
Good to know that justice was swift with a $60k problem that really affected no third parties, and nice and slow (slow as in never?) on a multi-billion dollar problem that bilked thousands out of their retirements and/or life savings. IMHO the noise against Martha last year was a sideshow to divert us from Enron. Last I heard, Ken Lay was putting together a web site to tell "his side of the story."
In spite of being the whitest state in the nation, we're a rather tolerant state. From direct knowledge, the Burlington area has large and diverse immigrant communities, including Bosnian, Indian, Viet Namese, Sudanese, etc. Many are refugees who have settled here. The real estate prices are high, but in many respects the state is "backward" compared to the rest of the country, and I like that. (Think last state in the Union to get a Wal Mart, only state capital to not have a McDonalds.)
Because some people might actually love their country, and want to make it a place they can be proud of.
Back during the election cycle my wife showed me an interesting article about, "loving your country." A little child loves his/her mommy and daddy, and won't consider that mommy and daddy might actually be doing something wrong, or that they might need to change their ways. A mother and father love their child/children, realize they're not perfect, and that they need nurturing, love, praise, and discipline/correction as part of their process of growing up.
As far as I can see, in the past decade or so, the Republicans have been MUCH more effective in doing whatever they want to do. The Democrats at least have the kindness and consideration to squabble themselves into a large degree of ineffectiveness.
Most (though not all) of the time ineffectiveness is GOOD in Government.
It's quite simple. Just about EVERYONE uses HTTP. Even if they don't know they do, they know they use the WWW, and in a few minutes can be educated to understand that "HTTP is the computer language behind the WWW," or some other such simple explanation. They'll understand that. Likewise SMTP and email.
There's no way most people will understand FTP, IRC, SCP, or blah blah blah blah. But that's ok, because most people will never even hear of these things.
The Powers That Be don't generally use P2P, so they're not poised to understand it. ANY amount of explaining of P2P is just that - explaining. On the other hand, the ??AA just has to say, "$$$$ of lost revenue because of P2P" and that's quantified and comprehensible.
The government of the United States of America and a large portion of its population, simply put, Worship Money. They call themselves Christian, but they run themselves by the Bottom Line. Maybe it doesn't look like kneeling in church, but if it's the main principle by which you run your life, it looks effectively like Worship to me.
On the other hand, I've seen cases where so much time and effort and especially politicking goes into the requirments document, that by the time it gets delivered to software design and coding, the whole request is obsolete.
Code is delivered that meets the requirements document, but does nothing whatsoever for the users.
Before you can prosecute for patent violation, you have to discover it. Some patents will be immediately discoverable, because the patent covers the one way to do something, and anyone doing that thing is likely violating your patent. (Of course in this case, it ought to have been called, "obvious.")
In other cases, what's patented is merely a better way. In that case, discovery can be tough. To catch Open Source software in this kind of patent, you can simply trawl readily available source code. To catch proprietary software, you may well have to disassemble their code, which is breaking the EULA. In other words, you'll have to break Contract Law in order to discover a violation of Patent Law.
When I first got my G400 and plugged it into my K6-3, the G400 had 32MB and the K6-3 had 64MB. That the two are in the same ballpark seems crazy.
Now the K6-3 is still in service, though upgraded to 192MB. But the new GEForce we got for the kids' computer (equipped with 512MB) came with 256MB, more than my main desktop, and half as much as it's resident machine.
On a more serious note, it would be interesting to understand how transient the data in that graphics card is, and how much main memory you need in the PC in order to pump enough data into the graphics card to really use all of that graphics ram.
So what kind of signal comes out of the cable/satellite box? How do you get that signal into an HDTV-ready set? How do you get that signal into an HDTV-built-in set? How did they remove the possibility of recording?
I'm not quite sure what you mean with that. Today I have a $30 demodulator - between my DVD player and 23-year-old TV. I don't know how that box does anything for HDTV.
The issue is what frequencies cable and satellite HDTV will deliver. Today cable TV delivers NTSC on frequencies that are somewhat "standard," in that you can flick the cable/TV switch on an ordinary TV or VCR.
I'm under the impression that cable HDTV is not that way on purpose, in an effort to plug or control every possibility to record. So again, is the pcHDTV-3000 useless if you can't receive HDTV broadcast?
Copyrights and Patents were originally put into the Constitution in order to enrich the culture. They were put there as a short-term deal to reward creation with a "limited term" monopoly, in order to keep the creator creating. But the other side of the coin is to get those creations into the public domain, so the rest of us can build on them.
We've gotten completely out of balance.
Isaac Newton (IIRC) once said, "If I have done great things, it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants." Well, in today's society, nobody's allowed to stand on those shoulders without paying the descendents, at least not in the realm of copyright.
But what value is the pcHDTV-3000 if you can't receive broadcast, anyway? Due to construction in the area, or NTSC broadcast quality degraded over the years to the point where we finally got cable.
I like the idea of the pcHDTV-3000, but since I can't get a decent NTSC signal, I figure that by the time I get HDTV, it'll be over cable or satellite. In either of those cases, it'll need to be some sort of proprietary box, and the pcHDTV card will stay on the shelf collecting dust. (or get sold on eBay - step3: profit!)
The prototype that causes me the most fear in this is the old Islamic empire of around 1000AD. They were enlightened. They supported science, and felt that studying God's universe was a good, not anti-religious thing to do. They happily coexisted with Christians and Jews.
The "1" was the only visible difference. They made other underlying changes to break WinOS2. IIRC, it had something to do with how their code segments were packaged, in order to break WinOS2's dynamic loadtime editing.
Back in the day, there was also a bug (introduced? or missed?) in the calculator: 3.11-3.1 = 0 What's the real difference between Windows 3.11 and Windows 3.1?
Seems to me that if such terms are in a license, then you don't really NEED any trial to speak of to get a conviction for antitrust. All you need is Exhibit A, the license that *ties* the two products together.
Of course the product that benefits from the tying (the OS) is itself a monopoly. But given that Office is also effectively a monopoly, though it hasn't been declared so in court, doesn't this qualify as a "monopoly maintenance" device, which is also illegal under antitrust.
I believe Microsoft is justified in not giving support for its products running in an unsupported environment. But to restrict patch availability to a product based on the OS running underneath is kind of like a car parts store requiring your Ford registration before you can buy Ford accessories.
In my own simplistic way, I imagine that right at the very edge, there's a router with a port. That port goes to a subnet, and is responsible for routing that subnet to/from the rest of the world. Furthermore, that port that routes that subnet has an IP that is on that subnet, by convention usually x.x.x.1.
At that precise point, and I can accept that it's only at that point, it oughtta be cheap to say, "pass only packets with a correct source address field in the IP header." In other words, match the incoming source subnet against the port subnet.
These are the same ISPs who can't manage to do source-IP filtering, to keep forged packets from coming out of their networks.
I had a chat with someone who knows more about this than me. It seemed to me that with iptables, source-IP filtering is next to trivial. But "real" routers can't do it worth spit. They have all sorts of hardware assists for the destination packet, but very little for the source packet. As a result, source-IP filtering turns into a major CPU hog.
Even though it would be a "simple" thing to do to clean up the Internet, they can't do it. Others would argue that most ISPs aren't smart enough to even understand the problem, much less how to implement a solution.
And the MPAA wants them to institute universal man-in-the-middle?
I've heard that this is done somewhere, at least with surveillance cameras. While I don't like the idea of surveillance cameras, I certainly do prefer making all of their output public, as opposed to controlled by rules, means, and people not only beyond my review, but beyond my knowledge.
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Last I read, and I can't quote the source, so you can pretend I said none of this...
The proportions are at least as lopsided as you say, but...
The wealthiest 50% of Americans earn MORE than 95% of the income and hold MORE than 95% of the assets.
The wealthiest 5% of Americans earn MORE than 50% of the income and hold MORE than 50% of the assets.
In other words, they're being taxed highly, but not even in proportion to their income/assets.
Again, my statistics may well have the same validity as yours.
On Freshmeat, 3.6.1p2, 3.7.1, and 3.7.1p2 are all listed as Major Security Fixes, and 3.9p1 is listed as Major Feature Enhancements. They are all point level or even less, patch level releases.
Does anyone else find it a bit odd that 4.0p1 is listed as Minor Feature Enhancements, yet it gets a whole-digit version bump?
You can't simply say, "patents are good," or "patents are evil," or that they hinder or encourage innovation. It's not that simple.
In the right environment, patents really do give the inventor a chance to make enough money from inventing to go on and invent more. Furthermore, others can read those patents and build on those works through alternative methods, licensing, or waiting for expiry. That's why we have patents - according to the US Constitution.
In the wrong environment, patents are used as a roadblock to slow innovation in the marketplace to a pace that the market leader can handle. That's where we are, now.
The real long-term winners out of this move are India, China, and anyone else smart enough and big enough to not adopt the current patent regime wholesale. For instance, I'm sure China is going to accept some level of IP reform, in order to trade with the rest of the world. But I'm equally sure they're going to tweak the accords to give them internal freedom of action, and use access to their internal markets as a bargaining chip to do so.
The net result of this is that later this century, innovation is going to fly in these other countries, and move at a Microsoft-accepted pace in the US, Europe, and others. For an example, take a look at broadband deployment elsewhere in the developed world vs the US, and that's just because of monopoly utilities. Or take a look at the gadgets and stuff in Japan that are unseen in the US. Or the deployment of advanced cell phone technology in the US.
It really has happened, and more will.
For the long-term result, look at the enlightened civilization that dominated the world, the cultural light of math and science, with peace and harmony amoung several major religions. The Islamic Empire around 1000AD.
Martha Stewart gets out of prison today, and starts her house arrest.
and AFAIK, there's only been one Enron defendent that has actually gone to prison - two if you count that the courts were going to let the man and his wife (names forgotten) server their terms serially, so the other could keep the home with the kids.
Good to know that justice was swift with a $60k problem that really affected no third parties, and nice and slow (slow as in never?) on a multi-billion dollar problem that bilked thousands out of their retirements and/or life savings. IMHO the noise against Martha last year was a sideshow to divert us from Enron. Last I heard, Ken Lay was putting together a web site to tell "his side of the story."
In spite of being the whitest state in the nation, we're a rather tolerant state. From direct knowledge, the Burlington area has large and diverse immigrant communities, including Bosnian, Indian, Viet Namese, Sudanese, etc. Many are refugees who have settled here. The real estate prices are high, but in many respects the state is "backward" compared to the rest of the country, and I like that. (Think last state in the Union to get a Wal Mart, only state capital to not have a McDonalds.)
Because some people might actually love their country, and want to make it a place they can be proud of.
Back during the election cycle my wife showed me an interesting article about, "loving your country." A little child loves his/her mommy and daddy, and won't consider that mommy and daddy might actually be doing something wrong, or that they might need to change their ways. A mother and father love their child/children, realize they're not perfect, and that they need nurturing, love, praise, and discipline/correction as part of their process of growing up.
I beg to differ...
As far as I can see, in the past decade or so, the Republicans have been MUCH more effective in doing whatever they want to do. The Democrats at least have the kindness and consideration to squabble themselves into a large degree of ineffectiveness.
Most (though not all) of the time ineffectiveness is GOOD in Government.
Unfortunately it's also the nature of our Legal (not Justice) system.
It's quite simple. Just about EVERYONE uses HTTP. Even if they don't know they do, they know they use the WWW, and in a few minutes can be educated to understand that "HTTP is the computer language behind the WWW," or some other such simple explanation. They'll understand that. Likewise SMTP and email.
There's no way most people will understand FTP, IRC, SCP, or blah blah blah blah. But that's ok, because most people will never even hear of these things.
The Powers That Be don't generally use P2P, so they're not poised to understand it. ANY amount of explaining of P2P is just that - explaining. On the other hand, the ??AA just has to say, "$$$$ of lost revenue because of P2P" and that's quantified and comprehensible.
The government of the United States of America and a large portion of its population, simply put, Worship Money. They call themselves Christian, but they run themselves by the Bottom Line. Maybe it doesn't look like kneeling in church, but if it's the main principle by which you run your life, it looks effectively like Worship to me.
Rather a shortsighted view, in a way.
When you give up your rights, it helps give them a precedent for taking away my rights.
The US legal system runs on precedents.
On the other hand, I've seen cases where so much time and effort and especially politicking goes into the requirments document, that by the time it gets delivered to software design and coding, the whole request is obsolete.
Code is delivered that meets the requirements document, but does nothing whatsoever for the users.
Before you can prosecute for patent violation, you have to discover it. Some patents will be immediately discoverable, because the patent covers the one way to do something, and anyone doing that thing is likely violating your patent. (Of course in this case, it ought to have been called, "obvious.")
In other cases, what's patented is merely a better way. In that case, discovery can be tough. To catch Open Source software in this kind of patent, you can simply trawl readily available source code. To catch proprietary software, you may well have to disassemble their code, which is breaking the EULA. In other words, you'll have to break Contract Law in order to discover a violation of Patent Law.
Aah, but it IS encrypted - with double-rot-13.
When I first got my G400 and plugged it into my K6-3, the G400 had 32MB and the K6-3 had 64MB. That the two are in the same ballpark seems crazy.
Now the K6-3 is still in service, though upgraded to 192MB. But the new GEForce we got for the kids' computer (equipped with 512MB) came with 256MB, more than my main desktop, and half as much as it's resident machine.
On a more serious note, it would be interesting to understand how transient the data in that graphics card is, and how much main memory you need in the PC in order to pump enough data into the graphics card to really use all of that graphics ram.
So what kind of signal comes out of the cable/satellite box?
How do you get that signal into an HDTV-ready set?
How do you get that signal into an HDTV-built-in set?
How did they remove the possibility of recording?
I'm not quite sure what you mean with that. Today I have a $30 demodulator - between my DVD player and 23-year-old TV. I don't know how that box does anything for HDTV.
The issue is what frequencies cable and satellite HDTV will deliver. Today cable TV delivers NTSC on frequencies that are somewhat "standard," in that you can flick the cable/TV switch on an ordinary TV or VCR.
I'm under the impression that cable HDTV is not that way on purpose, in an effort to plug or control every possibility to record. So again, is the pcHDTV-3000 useless if you can't receive HDTV broadcast?
Copyrights and Patents were originally put into the Constitution in order to enrich the culture. They were put there as a short-term deal to reward creation with a "limited term" monopoly, in order to keep the creator creating. But the other side of the coin is to get those creations into the public domain, so the rest of us can build on them.
We've gotten completely out of balance.
Isaac Newton (IIRC) once said, "If I have done great things, it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants." Well, in today's society, nobody's allowed to stand on those shoulders without paying the descendents, at least not in the realm of copyright.
But what value is the pcHDTV-3000 if you can't receive broadcast, anyway? Due to construction in the area, or NTSC broadcast quality degraded over the years to the point where we finally got cable.
I like the idea of the pcHDTV-3000, but since I can't get a decent NTSC signal, I figure that by the time I get HDTV, it'll be over cable or satellite. In either of those cases, it'll need to be some sort of proprietary box, and the pcHDTV card will stay on the shelf collecting dust. (or get sold on eBay - step3: profit!)
The prototype that causes me the most fear in this is the old Islamic empire of around 1000AD. They were enlightened. They supported science, and felt that studying God's universe was a good, not anti-religious thing to do. They happily coexisted with Christians and Jews.
Those days are long gone.
I hope we don't go down the same road.
The "1" was the only visible difference. They made other underlying changes to break WinOS2. IIRC, it had something to do with how their code segments were packaged, in order to break WinOS2's dynamic loadtime editing.
Back in the day, there was also a bug (introduced? or missed?) in the calculator:
3.11-3.1 = 0
What's the real difference between Windows 3.11 and Windows 3.1?
Obviously IANAL...
Seems to me that if such terms are in a license, then you don't really NEED any trial to speak of to get a conviction for antitrust. All you need is Exhibit A, the license that *ties* the two products together.
Of course the product that benefits from the tying (the OS) is itself a monopoly. But given that Office is also effectively a monopoly, though it hasn't been declared so in court, doesn't this qualify as a "monopoly maintenance" device, which is also illegal under antitrust.
I believe Microsoft is justified in not giving support for its products running in an unsupported environment. But to restrict patch availability to a product based on the OS running underneath is kind of like a car parts store requiring your Ford registration before you can buy Ford accessories.
In my own simplistic way, I imagine that right at the very edge, there's a router with a port. That port goes to a subnet, and is responsible for routing that subnet to/from the rest of the world. Furthermore, that port that routes that subnet has an IP that is on that subnet, by convention usually x.x.x.1.
At that precise point, and I can accept that it's only at that point, it oughtta be cheap to say, "pass only packets with a correct source address field in the IP header." In other words, match the incoming source subnet against the port subnet.
These are the same ISPs who can't manage to do source-IP filtering, to keep forged packets from coming out of their networks.
I had a chat with someone who knows more about this than me. It seemed to me that with iptables, source-IP filtering is next to trivial. But "real" routers can't do it worth spit. They have all sorts of hardware assists for the destination packet, but very little for the source packet. As a result, source-IP filtering turns into a major CPU hog.
Even though it would be a "simple" thing to do to clean up the Internet, they can't do it. Others would argue that most ISPs aren't smart enough to even understand the problem, much less how to implement a solution.
And the MPAA wants them to institute universal man-in-the-middle?
I believe you mean, "GNU/Linux on every desktop!" don't you?
I've heard that this is done somewhere, at least with surveillance cameras. While I don't like the idea of surveillance cameras, I certainly do prefer making all of their output public, as opposed to controlled by rules, means, and people not only beyond my review, but beyond my knowledge.