responsibly lead the industry in power requirements.
Why is being energy efficient so frequently expressed in the most ingratiating and sanctimonious terms? I like using less power, too, but I'm not going to pretend for a minute that it makes me a more moral and deserving human being.
I think like most geeks, getting more work done with less energy input is inherently valuable -- at a minimum your batteries last longer. But I can't help but want to waste energy when energy efficiency becomes a question of faith, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people who would otherwise find great appeal in what essentially amounts to getting more for less are turned off by it as well.
Chernobyl was run by a government with no concern about 'profit margin',
You mean a party with no official profit philosophy.
High level party officials are always profit minded. Diverting building materials, concrete, and workers to their private dachas or for sale on the black market was quite common.
But how have Apple's phones gone "quickly" obsolescent relative to the technology?
Apple introduced the 3G iPhone in 2008 and other than software updates for features the hardware won't support, it has only recently become "obsolete" in that 4.2.1 appears to be the end of the line for udpates. The phone itself is still usable with most apps even.
That's 3 year old hardware and it's not clear to me when the device itself becomes obsolete -- AT&T requires LTE?
Quick obsolescence made sense in the phone market when all you were selling, really, were disposable handsets that made calls and had very primitive "app" functionality (tic-tac-toe, calculator, etc). Nobody gave a shit if their firmware wasn't updatable the day after the phone was purchased because all they cared was that it kept a charge and could make calls.
Now that phones are basically computer platforms, people want to keep up and not feel like they have a dumb smart phone that is obsolete the minute they buy it and that they're stuck with it for two years.
Apple has been very smart to keep people still under contract in the family with software and feature updates so that when the contract is up and its time to upgrade people don't feel alienated.
Some people might gripe that two years isn't enough, but really, given the wear and tear that phones get and the fairly impressive leaps in hardware, I'm not sure how big the base of people who want an old smart phone really is.
Assuming ARIN decides they "won't allow this", what power do they have to stop it?
A threat like that made sense when MCI had a contract to run MAE-East and there was some ability to actually order them to blackhole those addresses, but do they have that kind of authority anymore with the size and complexity of the internet? How about the actual ability?
Given the Internet resources Microsoft consumes, the desirability of being well-connected to Microsoft and whatever other various and sundry carrots and/or sticks that Microsoft could bring to bear on ISPs they are connected with, I find it hard to believe that ARIN could unilaterally decide that some block of IPs weren't going to be usable if Microsoft also decided they would use them and announce routes to them.
And if they had the authority, how would they accomplish it, presuming MS was announcing routes to those networks? Does ARIN have some ability to announce black hole routes that must be accepted?
I think there's such a high level of hypocrisy and abuse associated with traffic stops generally and speed traps specifically that it's worth challenging them.
I doubt speed traps have EVER been set in an area because reliable statistical information held that there were a lot of accidents that resulted from speeding; they are almost always set where it's almost natural to drive faster (straight roads, clear line of sight) yet officers have good places to "hide" to check speeds.
IMHO, "speed traps" should be illegal except in areas where there are a statistically verifiable number of crashed attributable to speed; anything else is a fishing expedition and/or revenue enhancement.
I always thought that would be awesome -- open the speed trap app and drive. See a speed trap? tap the "speed trap" button as you drive past, and the GPS coordinates get uploaded to a server.
I envision two operation modes, "live" mode and "historical" mode.
In live mode, when you are approaching a speed trap, the app alerts some user-definable distance from the speed trap; if you see the trap, you click on a button to validate the speed trap.
If there is no speed trap there, clicking "no trap" would essentially vote down the speed trap and/or accelerate some expiration time associated with reported speed traps.
The user could also have validation thresholds (ie, don't warn unless there are more than N trap reports in the last N minutes/hours).
If "historical" mode is enabled, warnings would also be issued for places that have a history with reported speed traps. There would have to be some parameters for defining alert thresholds (time since last report, number of unique reporting days, frequency of reports).
Coordinates alone may be tricky for coherent warnings -- many urban areas have a parallel freeway only a couple of miles away, or roads with enough turns to make driving distance and straight-line distance significantly different. But I'd imagine actual road identification via GPS may involve GIS data that would make the app far more complex.
I suspect if an app like this were made and was at all popular, it would really throw a wrench into speed traps. Enough aggregated data might even expose internal speed trap schedules (ie, Highway 62 never has traps on Tuesdays, etc).
I'm told by a currently employed police officer that this is largely what motivates many suburban districts to perform speed traps. It has nothing to do with concern about speeding, but it enables them to stop and interview drivers essentially at random, fishing for other possible crimes.
He also said that it was "widely believed" that vigorous traffic enforcement was a general deterrent to crime, the theory being that people involved in criminal behavior were sensitive to police presence and the risks associated with being stopped with incriminating items, flagged for parole violations/outstanding warrants, etc.
To me it seems like a good excuse to run a police state.
My sense is that while there are technically 4 carriers, there's only really competition between AT&T and Verizon. The only people I know that use T-Mobile are those who are interested in the cheapest plans; I don't think I know anyone who uses Sprint at all.
I'd like to believe that it will lead to faster LTE rollouts, but it's hard to say -- faster than what? AT&T can't afford to fall too far behind Verizon from a network feature perspective, even if "most people" think they're worse (IMHO, it's a wash in all but a few places and in my transition 2 years ago, it was actually an improvement).
I don't know what AT&T's actual network "problem" is now -- lack of backhaul, lack of radio density, some GSM/3G limitation, too much data, etc, but they can't be hurt by the increased in infrastructure that T-Mobile would give them.
Hudson: Movement. Signal's clean. Range, 20 meters. Ripley: They've found a way in, something we've missed. Hicks: We didn't miss anything. Hudson: 17 meters. Ripley: [Checking the tracker] Something in the floor, underneath the plant, I don't know Hudson: 15 Meters. Newt: Ripley. Hicks: Definitely inside the barricades. Newt: Let's go. Hudson: 12 meters. Ripley: That's right outside the door. Hicks, Vasquez get back. Hudson: Man, this is a big fuckin' signal. Hicks: How are we doing Vasquez, talk to me? Vasquez: Almost there. [They welded the door shut, and stepped back away from the door] Vasquez: They're right on us. Hicks: [Waiting for the Aliens] Remember, short controlled bursts. Hudson: 9 meters, 7, 6. Ripley: That can't be, that's inside the room. Hudson: It's reading right man, look. Hicks: Then, "you're" not reading it right. Hudson: 5 meters, man. 4, what the hell?
Why not have a workflow measurement? Have groups of people perform a set of standardized actions on a set of standardized web tasks and see which group on average finishes faster?
My dad "profited" from many socially and environmentally exploitive systems -- for at least a decade he drove monster V8 cars that burned leaded gas, grew up in the segregated South, benefiting from discriminatory labor practices, heated a poorly insulated old house with heating oil and then natural gas, still drives a motor home that gets 7 MPG.
But he's 78 years old, and he's never going to pay for the benefits he got exploiting the environment or for the social and economic benefits he got from living in a segregated social environment. He's gonna CASH OUT.
I cashed out from my last job -- 13 years, multiple system upgrades, zero capital investment from management the last 4, email server died 3 weeks after I quit, all mail a total loss. I cashed out, in a manner of speaking -- all the benefits of systems that worked well, none of the penalty for whatever negligence or cynicism I had.
We ALL "cash out" eventually, in large ways or small.
I had Qwest DSL which was stuck forever at 1.5/768 with no infrastructure uprgades planned as far as anyone could tell.
I called Comcast on a lark to see if they had business class options at a residential address -- low and behold, 5 statics and 12/3 or whatever the data rate is was $69 a month, which is about what I was paying for my ISP + Qwest DSL.
I signed up on the spot and actually had the entire service up and running in 6 *days*, including a weekend install appointment.
No complaints so far, everything has worked great. The only negative I might add is a perceivable throughput fluctuation at different times of the day, but at its worst its still 2-4x faster than DSL ever was at its fastest and most of the time it's close to the advertised rate.
Many of the people I know are fashion environmentalists and they are unfortunately a huge source of public opinion (all ignorant) on nuclear power.
I've heard many of them questioning "our investment in nuclear power" in this state (Minnesota, zero earthquakes, tornadoes being the worst "disaster" we face).
I've pushed back aggressively with many of them -- I ask them what they'd replace baseload generation with? Coal?
Part of the reason stopping power is such a big deal is that it takes a lot of energy to punch through rib cages and skulls. Most people who die from handgun wounds do so from exsanguination, not disablement of vital organs, and most of these people are shot with cartridges an order of magnitude more powerful than.22 long rifle.
I suspect that any energy weapon that wants to match a handgun in terms of energy delivered in the same time domain will need to produce at least as much energy to do the damage necessary, or operate on principals similar to a Taser and act on the nervous system.
Apple's lack of flexibility on the use of sounds on the iPhone is about the most irritating aspect of the "closed" nature of the iPhone to me. It mystifies me why any "ringtone" can't be used as a sound for any event that can have a sound associated with it; why they restrict mail, text, etc to a narrow set of sounds escapes me completely.
AFAIK, all food-based ethanol is a net negative in terms of energy. It only makes any sense now because the fuel-input side of the equation is relatively cheap; Federal subsidies and mandatory ethanol at the pump are the only reason there's any profit at all for farmers and distillers.
Once the fuel-input side of the equation (farm equipment, fertilizer, pesticides) is high enough, there'll be no amount of subsidies to make ethanol work at any economic level.
This stuff will make it out sooner than later. The oil age is going to fizzle quickly -- either through demand-driven depletion, inflationary undersupply or geopolitical instability. Replacements will be in demand and too economically competitive to get stashed away in Warehouse 13 by Big Oil, Inc.
I think the biggest limitation with the iPad is relative to removable media. The 2nd generation device *still* only has 64GB flash -- WTF? I'm not a genius transcoder but most DVD-length movies run nearly 1.5 GB in SD and 4 in HD. With 20 gigs of music, apps and their data you're looking at room for only about 7-8 HD movies, and that's if you pack it totally full.
That's OK for maybe a week's vacation, but it's not enough if you want to travel further or access a larger amount of data than will fit on the device. I REALLY wish there was at minimum an SD card slot.
I sometimes wonder if they will add a lightpeak-type interface to it in the future, given that port's broad usefulness and Apple's support for it on new Macs. This might allow for better removable storage or other options.
Ask the user what kind of game they enjoy -- ie, for baseball -- low-scoring pitcher's duel, high scoring home run fest, lots of good defense, etc.
For data inputs, use the accumulated statistics for teams and players they already have. Build composite teams of players who are statistically most likely to provide the game the user wants to watch. Factor in stadiums, seasons, weather, etc.
Have those two teams "play" and use an existing 3D game engine to display the output.
I'm surprised someone hasn't already done this. I don't play sports games, so I don't know what MLB 2011 or whatever the titles are called has for "auto play" but it wouldn't surprise me if they could already do something like this for existing teams based on player statistics.
I know they've done similar simulated games to determine "the greatest team ever" by having simulated games played between teams that could not have played each other (eg, 1950s Yankees vs. 1990s team, etc).
One of the truisms of the software industry I've always heard is that publishers promote and tolerate a certain baseline amount of software piracy to win mindshare and gain experienced users.
Is there any history of companies that manage to implement a very difficult to crack DRM (eg, dongles, etc) going under or fairing poorly? In other words, once the software becomes too difficult to pirate, the vendor ultimately loses legitimate sales -- hard to evaluate the product, difficult to find experienced users, etc?
I'm sure it's difficult to say "for sure, DRM made them go under" but it would be interesting to see if that kind of thing has happened.
I'm not fan of the current patent system, but they're not just about protecting the money spent developing the patented concept but the profit that can be obtained from exclusive access to it.
The money invested in developing a patentable idea is just that, for the most part -- a business investment. People with money to invest are looking for some kind of return on their investment -- not just the money they invested, but MORE than they invested, an interest percentage.
I like your idea, but you would have to raise the cost of buying out the patent to some multiple of the invested amount.
I think another idea that would help a lot would be a "mandatory sunset without marketed implementation" requirement that would set a time limit (5 years? 2 years?) within which the patent would have to be brought to market as part of a product or the patent would become public domain.
This would bring a pretty quick end to most patent trolls, since they typically wielding patents that were never turned into products, and the system is supposed to be protecting industrial innovation, not creating licensing monopolies. Even big "patent portfolio" companies with active products would feel some heat -- ie, Company A patenting some concept they don't use only to hinder Company B's product development or simply hoarding patents to hinder competitors generally.
I'm a death penalty proponent and believe in harsh sentences for crimes like robbery, sexual assault and burglary, but I think the permanent punishment people experience well after they have been tried, convicted and served their time is a grave injustice and actually ends up producing more harm than it solves.
I think that it should be illegal to ask if you have been convicted of a crime in a job application or a job interview. Only under very specific circumstances should it be possible to deny someone employment or housing based upon a past conviction -- if you are still on parole for a crime of violence or if you are applying for employment in a field tied to your conviction within 2 years of the end of your sentence (ie, you did time for embezzlement and you want to be an accountant).
And even then they should be required to spell this out. Getting caught discriminating illegally should involve a fine payable to the discriminated employee equal to a minimum of 5 years salary PLUS their legal fees with a multiplier
We're "convicting" people of crimes, letting them off with no sentences because our jails are full and then punishing them FOREVER because they once had a conviction. And then we act surprised when they turn to drug dealing, robbery, burglary or other criminal enterprises because they can't get a job.
Slashdot Mirror
responsibly lead the industry in power requirements.
Why is being energy efficient so frequently expressed in the most ingratiating and sanctimonious terms? I like using less power, too, but I'm not going to pretend for a minute that it makes me a more moral and deserving human being.
I think like most geeks, getting more work done with less energy input is inherently valuable -- at a minimum your batteries last longer. But I can't help but want to waste energy when energy efficiency becomes a question of faith, and I'm pretty sure a lot of other people who would otherwise find great appeal in what essentially amounts to getting more for less are turned off by it as well.
Chernobyl was run by a government with no concern about 'profit margin',
You mean a party with no official profit philosophy.
High level party officials are always profit minded. Diverting building materials, concrete, and workers to their private dachas or for sale on the black market was quite common.
But how have Apple's phones gone "quickly" obsolescent relative to the technology?
Apple introduced the 3G iPhone in 2008 and other than software updates for features the hardware won't support, it has only recently become "obsolete" in that 4.2.1 appears to be the end of the line for udpates. The phone itself is still usable with most apps even.
That's 3 year old hardware and it's not clear to me when the device itself becomes obsolete -- AT&T requires LTE?
Quick obsolescence made sense in the phone market when all you were selling, really, were disposable handsets that made calls and had very primitive "app" functionality (tic-tac-toe, calculator, etc). Nobody gave a shit if their firmware wasn't updatable the day after the phone was purchased because all they cared was that it kept a charge and could make calls.
Now that phones are basically computer platforms, people want to keep up and not feel like they have a dumb smart phone that is obsolete the minute they buy it and that they're stuck with it for two years.
Apple has been very smart to keep people still under contract in the family with software and feature updates so that when the contract is up and its time to upgrade people don't feel alienated.
Some people might gripe that two years isn't enough, but really, given the wear and tear that phones get and the fairly impressive leaps in hardware, I'm not sure how big the base of people who want an old smart phone really is.
Assuming ARIN decides they "won't allow this", what power do they have to stop it?
A threat like that made sense when MCI had a contract to run MAE-East and there was some ability to actually order them to blackhole those addresses, but do they have that kind of authority anymore with the size and complexity of the internet? How about the actual ability?
Given the Internet resources Microsoft consumes, the desirability of being well-connected to Microsoft and whatever other various and sundry carrots and/or sticks that Microsoft could bring to bear on ISPs they are connected with, I find it hard to believe that ARIN could unilaterally decide that some block of IPs weren't going to be usable if Microsoft also decided they would use them and announce routes to them.
And if they had the authority, how would they accomplish it, presuming MS was announcing routes to those networks? Does ARIN have some ability to announce black hole routes that must be accepted?
I think there's such a high level of hypocrisy and abuse associated with traffic stops generally and speed traps specifically that it's worth challenging them.
I doubt speed traps have EVER been set in an area because reliable statistical information held that there were a lot of accidents that resulted from speeding; they are almost always set where it's almost natural to drive faster (straight roads, clear line of sight) yet officers have good places to "hide" to check speeds.
IMHO, "speed traps" should be illegal except in areas where there are a statistically verifiable number of crashed attributable to speed; anything else is a fishing expedition and/or revenue enhancement.
I always thought that would be awesome -- open the speed trap app and drive. See a speed trap? tap the "speed trap" button as you drive past, and the GPS coordinates get uploaded to a server.
I envision two operation modes, "live" mode and "historical" mode.
In live mode, when you are approaching a speed trap, the app alerts some user-definable distance from the speed trap; if you see the trap, you click on a button to validate the speed trap.
If there is no speed trap there, clicking "no trap" would essentially vote down the speed trap and/or accelerate some expiration time associated with reported speed traps.
The user could also have validation thresholds (ie, don't warn unless there are more than N trap reports in the last N minutes/hours).
If "historical" mode is enabled, warnings would also be issued for places that have a history with reported speed traps. There would have to be some parameters for defining alert thresholds (time since last report, number of unique reporting days, frequency of reports).
Coordinates alone may be tricky for coherent warnings -- many urban areas have a parallel freeway only a couple of miles away, or roads with enough turns to make driving distance and straight-line distance significantly different. But I'd imagine actual road identification via GPS may involve GIS data that would make the app far more complex.
I suspect if an app like this were made and was at all popular, it would really throw a wrench into speed traps. Enough aggregated data might even expose internal speed trap schedules (ie, Highway 62 never has traps on Tuesdays, etc).
I'm told by a currently employed police officer that this is largely what motivates many suburban districts to perform speed traps. It has nothing to do with concern about speeding, but it enables them to stop and interview drivers essentially at random, fishing for other possible crimes.
He also said that it was "widely believed" that vigorous traffic enforcement was a general deterrent to crime, the theory being that people involved in criminal behavior were sensitive to police presence and the risks associated with being stopped with incriminating items, flagged for parole violations/outstanding warrants, etc.
To me it seems like a good excuse to run a police state.
"all we need to do is elevate the third world out of poverty"? Is that it?
Do you read that and actually take it seriously?
My sense is that while there are technically 4 carriers, there's only really competition between AT&T and Verizon. The only people I know that use T-Mobile are those who are interested in the cheapest plans; I don't think I know anyone who uses Sprint at all.
I'd like to believe that it will lead to faster LTE rollouts, but it's hard to say -- faster than what? AT&T can't afford to fall too far behind Verizon from a network feature perspective, even if "most people" think they're worse (IMHO, it's a wash in all but a few places and in my transition 2 years ago, it was actually an improvement).
I don't know what AT&T's actual network "problem" is now -- lack of backhaul, lack of radio density, some GSM/3G limitation, too much data, etc, but they can't be hurt by the increased in infrastructure that T-Mobile would give them.
Hudson: Movement. Signal's clean. Range, 20 meters.
Ripley: They've found a way in, something we've missed.
Hicks: We didn't miss anything.
Hudson: 17 meters.
Ripley: [Checking the tracker] Something in the floor, underneath the plant, I don't know
Hudson: 15 Meters.
Newt: Ripley.
Hicks: Definitely inside the barricades.
Newt: Let's go.
Hudson: 12 meters.
Ripley: That's right outside the door. Hicks, Vasquez get back.
Hudson: Man, this is a big fuckin' signal.
Hicks: How are we doing Vasquez, talk to me?
Vasquez: Almost there.
[They welded the door shut, and stepped back away from the door]
Vasquez: They're right on us.
Hicks: [Waiting for the Aliens] Remember, short controlled bursts.
Hudson: 9 meters, 7, 6.
Ripley: That can't be, that's inside the room.
Hudson: It's reading right man, look.
Hicks: Then, "you're" not reading it right.
Hudson: 5 meters, man. 4, what the hell?
Henry was actually the defacto leader of the company well into the 1930s, more than 30 years after the founding of Ford.
Thus, by your logic, it makes sense that R, S, & A would be involved in RSA's business.
Why not have a workflow measurement? Have groups of people perform a set of standardized actions on a set of standardized web tasks and see which group on average finishes faster?
Everyone cashes out over time.
My dad "profited" from many socially and environmentally exploitive systems -- for at least a decade he drove monster V8 cars that burned leaded gas, grew up in the segregated South, benefiting from discriminatory labor practices, heated a poorly insulated old house with heating oil and then natural gas, still drives a motor home that gets 7 MPG.
But he's 78 years old, and he's never going to pay for the benefits he got exploiting the environment or for the social and economic benefits he got from living in a segregated social environment. He's gonna CASH OUT.
I cashed out from my last job -- 13 years, multiple system upgrades, zero capital investment from management the last 4, email server died 3 weeks after I quit, all mail a total loss. I cashed out, in a manner of speaking -- all the benefits of systems that worked well, none of the penalty for whatever negligence or cynicism I had.
We ALL "cash out" eventually, in large ways or small.
Let's hope they don't catch on to that.
I had Qwest DSL which was stuck forever at 1.5/768 with no infrastructure uprgades planned as far as anyone could tell.
I called Comcast on a lark to see if they had business class options at a residential address -- low and behold, 5 statics and 12/3 or whatever the data rate is was $69 a month, which is about what I was paying for my ISP + Qwest DSL.
I signed up on the spot and actually had the entire service up and running in 6 *days*, including a weekend install appointment.
No complaints so far, everything has worked great. The only negative I might add is a perceivable throughput fluctuation at different times of the day, but at its worst its still 2-4x faster than DSL ever was at its fastest and most of the time it's close to the advertised rate.
Many of the people I know are fashion environmentalists and they are unfortunately a huge source of public opinion (all ignorant) on nuclear power.
I've heard many of them questioning "our investment in nuclear power" in this state (Minnesota, zero earthquakes, tornadoes being the worst "disaster" we face).
I've pushed back aggressively with many of them -- I ask them what they'd replace baseload generation with? Coal?
Do they really want their electric cars?
Part of the reason stopping power is such a big deal is that it takes a lot of energy to punch through rib cages and skulls. Most people who die from handgun wounds do so from exsanguination, not disablement of vital organs, and most of these people are shot with cartridges an order of magnitude more powerful than .22 long rifle.
I suspect that any energy weapon that wants to match a handgun in terms of energy delivered in the same time domain will need to produce at least as much energy to do the damage necessary, or operate on principals similar to a Taser and act on the nervous system.
Apple's lack of flexibility on the use of sounds on the iPhone is about the most irritating aspect of the "closed" nature of the iPhone to me. It mystifies me why any "ringtone" can't be used as a sound for any event that can have a sound associated with it; why they restrict mail, text, etc to a narrow set of sounds escapes me completely.
AFAIK, all food-based ethanol is a net negative in terms of energy. It only makes any sense now because the fuel-input side of the equation is relatively cheap; Federal subsidies and mandatory ethanol at the pump are the only reason there's any profit at all for farmers and distillers.
Once the fuel-input side of the equation (farm equipment, fertilizer, pesticides) is high enough, there'll be no amount of subsidies to make ethanol work at any economic level.
This stuff will make it out sooner than later. The oil age is going to fizzle quickly -- either through demand-driven depletion, inflationary undersupply or geopolitical instability. Replacements will be in demand and too economically competitive to get stashed away in Warehouse 13 by Big Oil, Inc.
I think the biggest limitation with the iPad is relative to removable media. The 2nd generation device *still* only has 64GB flash -- WTF? I'm not a genius transcoder but most DVD-length movies run nearly 1.5 GB in SD and 4 in HD. With 20 gigs of music, apps and their data you're looking at room for only about 7-8 HD movies, and that's if you pack it totally full.
That's OK for maybe a week's vacation, but it's not enough if you want to travel further or access a larger amount of data than will fit on the device. I REALLY wish there was at minimum an SD card slot.
I sometimes wonder if they will add a lightpeak-type interface to it in the future, given that port's broad usefulness and Apple's support for it on new Macs. This might allow for better removable storage or other options.
Couldn't they come close to doing this now?
Ask the user what kind of game they enjoy -- ie, for baseball -- low-scoring pitcher's duel, high scoring home run fest, lots of good defense, etc.
For data inputs, use the accumulated statistics for teams and players they already have. Build composite teams of players who are statistically most likely to provide the game the user wants to watch. Factor in stadiums, seasons, weather, etc.
Have those two teams "play" and use an existing 3D game engine to display the output.
I'm surprised someone hasn't already done this. I don't play sports games, so I don't know what MLB 2011 or whatever the titles are called has for "auto play" but it wouldn't surprise me if they could already do something like this for existing teams based on player statistics.
I know they've done similar simulated games to determine "the greatest team ever" by having simulated games played between teams that could not have played each other (eg, 1950s Yankees vs. 1990s team, etc).
One of the truisms of the software industry I've always heard is that publishers promote and tolerate a certain baseline amount of software piracy to win mindshare and gain experienced users.
Is there any history of companies that manage to implement a very difficult to crack DRM (eg, dongles, etc) going under or fairing poorly? In other words, once the software becomes too difficult to pirate, the vendor ultimately loses legitimate sales -- hard to evaluate the product, difficult to find experienced users, etc?
I'm sure it's difficult to say "for sure, DRM made them go under" but it would be interesting to see if that kind of thing has happened.
I'm not fan of the current patent system, but they're not just about protecting the money spent developing the patented concept but the profit that can be obtained from exclusive access to it.
The money invested in developing a patentable idea is just that, for the most part -- a business investment. People with money to invest are looking for some kind of return on their investment -- not just the money they invested, but MORE than they invested, an interest percentage.
I like your idea, but you would have to raise the cost of buying out the patent to some multiple of the invested amount.
I think another idea that would help a lot would be a "mandatory sunset without marketed implementation" requirement that would set a time limit (5 years? 2 years?) within which the patent would have to be brought to market as part of a product or the patent would become public domain.
This would bring a pretty quick end to most patent trolls, since they typically wielding patents that were never turned into products, and the system is supposed to be protecting industrial innovation, not creating licensing monopolies. Even big "patent portfolio" companies with active products would feel some heat -- ie, Company A patenting some concept they don't use only to hinder Company B's product development or simply hoarding patents to hinder competitors generally.
I'm a death penalty proponent and believe in harsh sentences for crimes like robbery, sexual assault and burglary, but I think the permanent punishment people experience well after they have been tried, convicted and served their time is a grave injustice and actually ends up producing more harm than it solves.
I think that it should be illegal to ask if you have been convicted of a crime in a job application or a job interview. Only under very specific circumstances should it be possible to deny someone employment or housing based upon a past conviction -- if you are still on parole for a crime of violence or if you are applying for employment in a field tied to your conviction within 2 years of the end of your sentence (ie, you did time for embezzlement and you want to be an accountant).
And even then they should be required to spell this out. Getting caught discriminating illegally should involve a fine payable to the discriminated employee equal to a minimum of 5 years salary PLUS their legal fees with a multiplier
We're "convicting" people of crimes, letting them off with no sentences because our jails are full and then punishing them FOREVER because they once had a conviction. And then we act surprised when they turn to drug dealing, robbery, burglary or other criminal enterprises because they can't get a job.