Well, you can guess what you want. Perhaps you're right in this instance. But *I* wouldn't bet on it. The BSA has a long time rep as a gang of rapacious extortionists.
N.B.: Last I heard they almost only checked for Microsoft violations. I wonder if this is still true? (They know who pays their bills.)
Your statements run counter to everything I've ever heard about the BSA. Everything.
I've heard lots of stories where they essentially invented interpretations of the license, and badgered companies into admitting that they had done wrong and paying a fine, when looking at the license everything that the company did was legal. But the company didn't want to risk a fight in court.
I've never heard of a case where they negotiated reasonable terms for a company that was "essentially compliant", or which had purchase orders and accounting records and bills paid for all the software, but which couldn't locate all of the "proof of purchase" seals.
I'd need pretty convincing evidence to think of the BSA as other than a gang of crooks and extortionists. I'm not saying that it's impossible. Most of what I "know" about them is from news stories, and I know just how flagrantly wrong those can be. But you'd need good evidence, not hand waving.
That doesn't bother me at all. Most politicians I've seen deserve anything vile that happens to them, and the worst Larry Flint is likely to do is publish it.
A patent troll, however... Anyone who voluntarily helps a patent troll deserves to be bankrupted. Minimum. That's just for a janitor or a secretary.
Of course all other things aren't equal. And internet connections aren't medicine.
But consider also the overhead of the respective systems. A nationalized health system needn't have the overhead of a massive health insurance industry. Neither the health insurance nor the government are affected by the pain and desperation of the person needing medical care, and a person in such a situation cannot reasonably bargain.
So capitalism is damned EVIL in this kind of a situation. (Not that we have it, exactly, in the US.)
The reports that I've seen say that the US spends more for inferior medical care. This isn't because the doctors don't want to do a good job, it's because of the massive overhead. Most money paid for health care stays with the health insurance companies. (That may be a slight overstatement.)
If there were universal health care for all basic services, then a vast bureaucracy could be eliminated, and a large number of very profitable jobs would disappear. Profitable, that is, to those that hold them, not to the country. They are providing a necessary service at an exorbitant cost. In this case a government agency could provide an equivalent level of services much more cheaply. Non-covered services would still need to be paid for, of course, but they would be the exception.
In the case of internet connections and music licensing, I would be very concerned over who would receive how much. And how one would "break into" being an "official musician". (Actually, the very concept of "official musician" is one I find disturbing...but it's inherent in the distribution of tax moneys to musicians.) I can conceive of ways in which this could be done fairly...but I'm cynical enough to doubt that this would happen were the US to follow this path.
E.g., the govt. could establish an "official download site" to which anyone could post anything, and to which they could attach a "performer payment address". Then the taxes collected could be distributed in proportion to the number of downloads from that server. Not totally fair, but close enough. And it allows for anonymous performances...but you don't get paid. It even allows for donations, e.g. "I dedicate the funds from this performance to the re-elect vice-president Chaney fund." Presumably at the download site one would be able to see who was benefiting from the download...and then decide to proceed or skip it.
But I'm too cynical to believe that currently entrenched interests would allow such a scheme to advance.
N.B.: Were such a scheme to be offered, it would be essential that the government's handling fee be a small (2%?) proportion of the funds passed on to the musicians...and that NONE of the money be available for other purposes. (Just like Social Security was supposed to be protected.) To protect this, no money should be allowed to accumulate. It should be distributed monthly so that it never became a pot of money large enough to be tempting to raid. But as I said, I'm too cynical to believe that such a scheme would have a chance.
The short of my reply is, yes, it was once like that.
The longer version is: You're using a short timeline.
Bell is in the modern period, though at the start of it. If you go back before him, the railroad was revolutionary, but it was over a century in development. It fed off the steam engine, which was still earlier. The "industrial revolution" was comparable (or perhaps slightly more important than) the "computer revolution" It took place over a period of two or three centuries, depending exactly on how you figure the boundaries. The computer revolution started with Claude Shannon (Babbage was an outlier, and not a proper part of this) and is still continuing...but it's nearing it's point of maximal impact (probably within the next decade) after which it's place will be taken by, perhaps, nanotech, or perhaps genetic biology, or robots, or... But this is a period of less than a century. That's a speed-up factor of >2 and possibly 3. And there are reasons to believe that the increase in rate of change is, itself, speeding up. (One of those is that there are three or more obvious candidates for the "Next big thing" already visible. Contrast this with "Everything important has already been invented", reputed to have been said by a retiring patent commissioner during the 1800's.)
It's NOT clear that the rate of change will continue to speed up. It takes time to materialize inventions. It takes time to absorb the implications of new information. So perhaps there is an upper bound to the rate of change. There is, however, no reason to believe that we are yet approaching such a bound.
N.B.: I'm counting "The Robot Age" as different from "The Computer Age" because of several differences between computers and robots. Computers are "Thinking Machines", while robots are actors is the basic difference. "bots" are kind of on the edge of both, and so primitive that they don't easily categorize. They're rather like memes..individually small, weak, stupid, etc., but collectively quite impressive. Not exactly "smart", but adaptive. And definitely not weak. (Rather like a virus. One virus won't harm anyone. But it doesn't stay "one virus". And it doesn't stay the same. [Current "bots" are even more primitive,but they don't have the long history of adaptation, and they don't live in an environment full of sophisticated countermeasures. Virus checkers are considerably more primitive than the viruses are.])
Actually old folk never made decisions in the interest of young folk. But this used to be becasue of selfishness rather than disconnection with reality.
Of course, "old folk" used to be people in the late thirties and up rather than in their late fifties and up...
Anyway, the old males have been sending the young males off to risk being eaten by a leopard since before we were apes.
Not sure about sugar beets, and maple sugar is clearly impractical, as is honey.
Sugar cane, however, requires a very warm climate and lots of water. The fields that I've seen have been literally flooded. OTOH, you can get a lot of sugar cane from any one acre. The yield per acre is probably higher than for corn...they just don't grow in the same places.
If you go with sugar cane, you lose all the votes in Iowa and Kansas. (You could be sneaky about it, however, and just not tax importation of fuel-grade ethanol.)
I think that strategically it's a bad move for the government to specify the source of the ethanol used for fuel. OTOH, if fuel-grade ethanol comes from corn, it may price high-fructose corn sugar sweeteners off the market. That would be desirable.
Still, the article didn't say it was using corn for a feedstock. In fact, it rather implied that it was using organic wastes. This is very desirable. There is the question of what the byproducts of the process would be, and how those could be used, but almost certainly they could at least be used as high quality fertilizers.
You are aware that Johnathan Swift, the author of "A Modest Proposal", was, himself, Irish?
So to be in the proper style, you should have included yourself in the group of people to be culled. (Though, admittedly, when Swift wrote the proposal he was no longer an infant...)
You mean the party of Feinstein and Boxer? Sorry, on some issues you can make a case that the Democrats are better than the Republicans (though you often need to work at it), but on this one they are, if anything, worse. Granted, it's hard to tell the difference between the parties on this issue. Both sides seem wholly owned (with a few individual exceptions).
That's true. The technology to make them wasn't practical. So you need to look to places like Star Trek to see the devices in use.
The ideas weren't new. They didn't,and probably couldn't, build an actual device. And the never sold any in any year. The patent was an obvious extension of current technology and should not be deemed worthy of a patent.
As I recall there weren't just two, but three or four inventors with approximately the same device at about the same time. Why should ANY of them be allowed a monopoly that excludes the others?
As I recall the courts found the patents invalid...after the judgment against RIMM had been issued, and the judge refused to reconsider. I've often wondered whether corruption was involved.
Your version of the history doesn't match the news reports from the time the trials were in progress. I don't know about the rest of the assertions, but given the parts that I remember, I find you trustworthiness in doubt.
ICANN has, in the past, proven totally untrustworthy.
They had a constitution that required that the board be publicly elected. They kept postponing the election until they got the US to step in and anoint them official without the need for election. They stonewalled FOI requests. They refused to accept public comment. The performed secretly when their charter required that they be open.
I'm all in favor of an independent ICANN...but only with a totally new board of directors. And open election held the same year. The original charter was pretty good, it just lacked enforcement mechanisms against a board that ignored it.
The less-than-tech-savvy were fooled by the labels when they didn't understand what DRM was, but now they know, and convincing the masses that "It's OK to buy from iTunes now! Really, our music works with your non-iPod player," is going to be a big challenge. That's only one aspect. To me the question would be "How do I know it won't stop working, for reasons that are hidden from me?"
Well, actually they've lost me as an audience. I no longer buy CDs AND I don't download. I don't even listen to my CD collection much anymore. And I don't go to movies. I WON'T pay money to the [R|M]PAA. They've corrupted congress (not difficult, admittedly) into passing laws strongly infringing on free speech. (The DMCA.) Before that they tried and failed with an even worse bill (UCITA-or-something 2B). They did get it through a couple of states (Virginia and Maryland?), though not in identical form, so the code was no longer Uniform, so they went back to congress. I can't imagine them doing sufficient good to counterbalance the evil they've done, and I don't like to support evil. So I no longer buy their merchandise.
You aren't talking about value. You're talking about cost, or perhaps price. Or maybe sometimes cost and sometimes price. Those are nearly orthogonal to value.
Price is what you pay. Cost is what is paid during production. Value is what you get out of it.
The Ford situation is more complex that the article indicated. Here's the words of a Ford representative (at second or third hand, be warned): My name is Whitney Drake and I work in Ford Communications. We've been watching this discussion with interest and I'd like to clarify what is essentially a misunderstanding.
Yesterday we spoke to both Cafe Press and the Black Mustang Club and explained the situation (about the Black Mustang Club's calendar) to everyone's satisfaction. Ford has no problem with Mustang or other car owners taking pictures of their vehicles for use in club materials like calendars. What we do have an issue with are individuals using Ford's logo and other trademarks for products they intend to sell. Understandably, we have to take the protection of our brands and licensing very seriously.
Ford did not send the Black Mustang Club a "cease and desist" letter telling them that they could not use images of their own cars in their calendar. The decision not to allow the calendars to be printed was made by Cafe Press, because we had gotten in touch with them in the past about trademark infringements on products they sold.
The Black Mustang Club, and any other Ford enthusiast club, are free to take pictures of their own vehicles for use in calendars or other materials as long as they don't use Ford trademarks in products that will be sold.
I think it is great that the Black Mustang Club, and any other enthusiast club, would take pictures of their own vehicles for use in calendars or other materials.
I'm looking forward to purchasing a copy to hang in the garage next to my Mustang (even if mine isn't black).
Thanks for giving us the chance to have our say.
I can't guarantee that this actually came from Ford, but it's what I found on a quick search. As to whether Ford's normal policy is reasonable or not, I don't know. It's clearly not *quite* as unreasonable as the recent/. story indicated. It's also based on Trademarks rather than copyright. (Trademark law is normally more reasonable that copyright and patent law have become. This doesn't mean it doesn't have large warts. One of the major ones of which is that it favors the wealthy and powerful. Just not quite as blatantly.)
The reasonable solution is a copyright period of 5-10 years. Possibly it could be different with differing media, 5 years for text, 7 for audio, 10 for movies. (I think I'd count computer programs as text.)
BUT!!! If you do this, you must make the copyright only cover non-DRM equipped material. Otherwise you'll still end up with an unjust system...just one that's even more cumbersome than the current one.
I can accept that in some cases that is true. In other cases, however, they were clearly wrong, and clearly had no creditable evidence. Yet they pursued the case anyway just because they figured the person couldn't defend themselves. As such, we I on a jury I would automatically vote against them. They have repeatedly knowingly abused the court system without any penalty, and they deserve a penalty.
Actually, my feeling is that the penalty the RIAA & MPAA deserve it to have their corporate charter stripped, their lawyers licenses revoked, and their personal fortunes confiscated. No way I could impose that, of course, but anything less than that happening to them I count as less than fair. This isn't all because of the cases they've filed. Some of it is because of cases that they haven't filed. (Like against the children of a record company exec.) And much to most of it is because of the way they bought congress-folk to write these unjust laws. (The laws are so unjust that even were they, themselves, guiltless, I'd have a great deal of trouble voting to accept that the laws should be enforced.)
I'm sure they have excuses. Their excuses don't excuse their own actions.
This didn't start in the '60s. It probably didn't start in the '40s. It may have been intensifying, but it was pretty bad in the 50's. OTOH, the total level of violence was less. I merely got beaten up occasionally and had some property destroyed, I wasn't really threatened. OTOH, I was a white kid, and larger than average. I don't know whether this made me more or less of a target. (We moved around, so I can attest that the problem wasn't confined to one school.)
It's not too surprising when you consider the economic position of the average Chinese worker. One doesn't get much innovation until one is at least "middle class" wealthy. (You've got to have disposable income and free time.)
You also need a decent education. China is strong on this (well, for it's economic position). As the Chinese populace becomes more wealthy one should expect the rate of innovation to accelerate. OTOH, do remember that the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked. Chinese with moderate income won't be innovating in areas that have recently been plucked clean. (Wealthy ones may. They'll be able to afford the setup costs.)
One thing that might come out of China is advancements in 3-D printing. That's an area that appears to be becoming accessible. And, of course, software. That doesn't require much up-front investment.
But don't expect much until the size and wealth of the Chinese middle class increases.
The two parent family is not a myth. It also wasn't always a happy environment. It was, however, a fact of life in the US up through the 1950's. Separation meant that neither parent could remarry. Divorce was usually possible, but very expensive. Over the course of the 1960's and early 1970's this changed. It's partially good and partially bad that it did, but there have been major costs to society in the change...and society has been ignoring those costs.
I'm glad your experience was good, but don't presume that it's been universally the case. It hasn't.
Also, be aware that the purpose of education is not really to inform you, but to control you. (It does inform you, but that's not the chief purpose.) Ideally you will internalize the controls and become a "good citizen". I'm not saying that it's bad (intrinsically, as opposed to in implementation), but don't deceive yourself about it's basic purpose. It's thanks to education that people can live together in cities without wholesale slaughter. (When it becomes impaired, violent crime rises.)
N.B.: Other things also cause crime to rise. Good anonymous transportation systems, e.g. Think how e-mail fostered spam. (I'm not adopting a legalistic definition of crime, but an ethical one. Fraud is a crime even in contexts where there is no law against it.)
1) Read Plato. People have always blamed kids for being lazy. Usually if they're lazy it's because there's no reward for not being lazy.
2) The nuclear family itself was a part of the problem. The traditional family included grandparents, uncles, and aunts living in close proximity. In such a situation children has LOTS more support than they ever got from even an idealized nuclear family. Of course, it made moving around difficult. (I.e., there were reasons why the nuclear family evolved...but those same reasons cause it to dissolve into single parent households when both parents are employed by corporations that want the parents to move.)
3) Yes.
4) See 3. Also, the school of education at universities has fads in theory, but no feedback. This causes educational fashion to be disjoint from results. (Not totally...but with a several decade delay loop.)
5) Read Plato on Socrates.
Religion isn't a non-issue. Not when they adopt anti-scientific planks as a main part of their faith. But there are definitely other major problems.
There are a few who will invest in computer science, engineering, physics, etc. no matter what the rewards are. They are driven. There aren't many.
I wouldn't claim to be a brilliant programmer, but I am knowledgeable, capable, competent, careful, etc. I went into programming in the 1960's because it was the most profitable place to invest my skills in math. I could have gone into statistics (officially I did, but that's because statisticians were temporarily paid more than programmers. The work was programming, and neither I nor my bosses though otherwise.
These days I don't know what I'd go into. It sure wouldn't be computers. Probably molecular biology or nanotechnology. There is probably a temporary surplus of jobs there. I'd likely be a technician rather than a researcher, because I'm not academically brilliant. (99th percentile doesn't rate when most people don't believe in evolution.)
The right direction? Only if we want to become 3rd world, or possibly lower. In the last couple of decades we've started to lose the imported brain power. Used to be people would come here to work and arrange to stay. Now a sizable (and increasing) fraction head back home as soon as their contract is up.
When countries rely on patents for their superiority it's evidence that they're living off of their past, not creating it in the present.
P.S.: Looking over things, I realize I wasn't totally clear. I count myself as one of the ones who is driven. I needed to find a career in math or science. Many of those I went to school with were more brilliant, but not driven. They would have had no trouble choosing a different major if it had seemed more appropriate. Some of them did, but the rewards in tech were looking pretty good 40 years ago. Some of them mixed finance and tech, and would have been quite happy to drop the tech if it hadn't looked so promising. Many of the most higly skilled people AREN'T driven in any one particular area. They have a particular skill-set, and they look for places that they can apply it. If that place is finance, that's where they go. If it's France, or Japan, that's where they go.
P.P.S.: This isn't a short term phenomenon. It's been happening for a long time to increasing degree. I expect the US to slip back to 2nd world status within a couple of decades, and to third not long afterwards. And it's because of our "leadership", and our "education" system. (If most people end up hating school, you know your country is going to be anti-intellectual. Our "education" system seems designed to cause both the brilliant and the sub-normal to hate it...which is more than half of the population.)
I seem to recall that their last promise not to sue over patents only covered "fully compliant applications". I'm not sure this promise is the same as the last one, but I don't have any reason to doubt it. In which case, guess what the promise not to sue is worth...
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Well, you can guess what you want. Perhaps you're right in this instance. But *I* wouldn't bet on it. The BSA has a long time rep as a gang of rapacious extortionists.
N.B.: Last I heard they almost only checked for Microsoft violations. I wonder if this is still true? (They know who pays their bills.)
Your statements run counter to everything I've ever heard about the BSA. Everything.
I've heard lots of stories where they essentially invented interpretations of the license, and badgered companies into admitting that they had done wrong and paying a fine, when looking at the license everything that the company did was legal. But the company didn't want to risk a fight in court.
I've never heard of a case where they negotiated reasonable terms for a company that was "essentially compliant", or which had purchase orders and accounting records and bills paid for all the software, but which couldn't locate all of the "proof of purchase" seals.
I'd need pretty convincing evidence to think of the BSA as other than a gang of crooks and extortionists. I'm not saying that it's impossible. Most of what I "know" about them is from news stories, and I know just how flagrantly wrong those can be. But you'd need good evidence, not hand waving.
That doesn't bother me at all. Most politicians I've seen deserve anything vile that happens to them, and the worst Larry Flint is likely to do is publish it.
A patent troll, however... Anyone who voluntarily helps a patent troll deserves to be bankrupted. Minimum. That's just for a janitor or a secretary.
Of course all other things aren't equal. And internet connections aren't medicine.
But consider also the overhead of the respective systems. A nationalized health system needn't have the overhead of a massive health insurance industry. Neither the health insurance nor the government are affected by the pain and desperation of the person needing medical care, and a person in such a situation cannot reasonably bargain.
So capitalism is damned EVIL in this kind of a situation. (Not that we have it, exactly, in the US.)
The reports that I've seen say that the US spends more for inferior medical care. This isn't because the doctors don't want to do a good job, it's because of the massive overhead. Most money paid for health care stays with the health insurance companies. (That may be a slight overstatement.)
If there were universal health care for all basic services, then a vast bureaucracy could be eliminated, and a large number of very profitable jobs would disappear. Profitable, that is, to those that hold them, not to the country. They are providing a necessary service at an exorbitant cost. In this case a government agency could provide an equivalent level of services much more cheaply. Non-covered services would still need to be paid for, of course, but they would be the exception.
In the case of internet connections and music licensing, I would be very concerned over who would receive how much. And how one would "break into" being an "official musician". (Actually, the very concept of "official musician" is one I find disturbing...but it's inherent in the distribution of tax moneys to musicians.) I can conceive of ways in which this could be done fairly...but I'm cynical enough to doubt that this would happen were the US to follow this path.
E.g., the govt. could establish an "official download site" to which anyone could post anything, and to which they could attach a "performer payment address". Then the taxes collected could be distributed in proportion to the number of downloads from that server. Not totally fair, but close enough. And it allows for anonymous performances...but you don't get paid. It even allows for donations, e.g. "I dedicate the funds from this performance to the re-elect vice-president Chaney fund." Presumably at the download site one would be able to see who was benefiting from the download...and then decide to proceed or skip it.
But I'm too cynical to believe that currently entrenched interests would allow such a scheme to advance.
N.B.: Were such a scheme to be offered, it would be essential that the government's handling fee be a small (2%?) proportion of the funds passed on to the musicians...and that NONE of the money be available for other purposes. (Just like Social Security was supposed to be protected.) To protect this, no money should be allowed to accumulate. It should be distributed monthly so that it never became a pot of money large enough to be tempting to raid. But as I said, I'm too cynical to believe that such a scheme would have a chance.
The short of my reply is, yes, it was once like that.
... But this is a period of less than a century. That's a speed-up factor of >2 and possibly 3. And there are reasons to believe that the increase in rate of change is, itself, speeding up. (One of those is that there are three or more obvious candidates for the "Next big thing" already visible. Contrast this with "Everything important has already been invented", reputed to have been said by a retiring patent commissioner during the 1800's.)
The longer version is:
You're using a short timeline.
Bell is in the modern period, though at the start of it. If you go back before him, the railroad was revolutionary, but it was over a century in development. It fed off the steam engine, which was still earlier. The "industrial revolution" was comparable (or perhaps slightly more important than) the "computer revolution" It took place over a period of two or three centuries, depending exactly on how you figure the boundaries. The computer revolution started with Claude Shannon (Babbage was an outlier, and not a proper part of this) and is still continuing...but it's nearing it's point of maximal impact (probably within the next decade) after which it's place will be taken by, perhaps, nanotech, or perhaps genetic biology, or robots, or
It's NOT clear that the rate of change will continue to speed up. It takes time to materialize inventions. It takes time to absorb the implications of new information. So perhaps there is an upper bound to the rate of change. There is, however, no reason to believe that we are yet approaching such a bound.
N.B.: I'm counting "The Robot Age" as different from "The Computer Age" because of several differences between computers and robots. Computers are "Thinking Machines", while robots are actors is the basic difference. "bots" are kind of on the edge of both, and so primitive that they don't easily categorize. They're rather like memes..individually small, weak, stupid, etc., but collectively quite impressive. Not exactly "smart", but adaptive. And definitely not weak. (Rather like a virus. One virus won't harm anyone. But it doesn't stay "one virus". And it doesn't stay the same. [Current "bots" are even more primitive,but they don't have the long history of adaptation, and they don't live in an environment full of sophisticated countermeasures. Virus checkers are considerably more primitive than the viruses are.])
Actually old folk never made decisions in the interest of young folk. But this used to be becasue of selfishness rather than disconnection with reality.
Of course, "old folk" used to be people in the late thirties and up rather than in their late fifties and up...
Anyway, the old males have been sending the young males off to risk being eaten by a leopard since before we were apes.
Not sure about sugar beets, and maple sugar is clearly impractical, as is honey.
Sugar cane, however, requires a very warm climate and lots of water. The fields that I've seen have been literally flooded. OTOH, you can get a lot of sugar cane from any one acre. The yield per acre is probably higher than for corn...they just don't grow in the same places.
If you go with sugar cane, you lose all the votes in Iowa and Kansas. (You could be sneaky about it, however, and just not tax importation of fuel-grade ethanol.)
I think that strategically it's a bad move for the government to specify the source of the ethanol used for fuel. OTOH, if fuel-grade ethanol comes from corn, it may price high-fructose corn sugar sweeteners off the market. That would be desirable.
Still, the article didn't say it was using corn for a feedstock. In fact, it rather implied that it was using organic wastes. This is very desirable. There is the question of what the byproducts of the process would be, and how those could be used, but almost certainly they could at least be used as high quality fertilizers.
You are aware that Johnathan Swift, the author of "A Modest Proposal", was, himself, Irish?
So to be in the proper style, you should have included yourself in the group of people to be culled. (Though, admittedly, when Swift wrote the proposal he was no longer an infant...)
You mean the party of Feinstein and Boxer? Sorry, on some issues you can make a case that the Democrats are better than the Republicans (though you often need to work at it), but on this one they are, if anything, worse. Granted, it's hard to tell the difference between the parties on this issue. Both sides seem wholly owned (with a few individual exceptions).
That's true. The technology to make them wasn't practical. So you need to look to places like Star Trek to see the devices in use.
The ideas weren't new. They didn't,and probably couldn't, build an actual device. And the never sold any in any year. The patent was an obvious extension of current technology and should not be deemed worthy of a patent.
As I recall there weren't just two, but three or four inventors with approximately the same device at about the same time. Why should ANY of them be allowed a monopoly that excludes the others?
As I recall the courts found the patents invalid...after the judgment against RIMM had been issued, and the judge refused to reconsider. I've often wondered whether corruption was involved.
Your version of the history doesn't match the news reports from the time the trials were in progress. I don't know about the rest of the assertions, but given the parts that I remember, I find you trustworthiness in doubt.
ICANN has, in the past, proven totally untrustworthy.
They had a constitution that required that the board be publicly elected. They kept postponing the election until they got the US to step in and anoint them official without the need for election. They stonewalled FOI requests. They refused to accept public comment. The performed secretly when their charter required that they be open.
I'm all in favor of an independent ICANN...but only with a totally new board of directors. And open election held the same year. The original charter was pretty good, it just lacked enforcement mechanisms against a board that ignored it.
Well, actually they've lost me as an audience. I no longer buy CDs AND I don't download. I don't even listen to my CD collection much anymore. And I don't go to movies. I WON'T pay money to the [R|M]PAA. They've corrupted congress (not difficult, admittedly) into passing laws strongly infringing on free speech. (The DMCA.) Before that they tried and failed with an even worse bill (UCITA-or-something 2B). They did get it through a couple of states (Virginia and Maryland?), though not in identical form, so the code was no longer Uniform, so they went back to congress. I can't imagine them doing sufficient good to counterbalance the evil they've done, and I don't like to support evil. So I no longer buy their merchandise.
P.S.:
I intentionally didn't mention money. Money is only one component of cost, and price. Value bears no predictable relation to money.
You aren't talking about value. You're talking about cost, or perhaps price. Or maybe sometimes cost and sometimes price. Those are nearly orthogonal to value.
Price is what you pay. Cost is what is paid during production. Value is what you get out of it.
The Ford situation is more complex that the article indicated. Here's the words of a Ford representative (at second or third hand, be warned):
/. story indicated. It's also based on Trademarks rather than copyright. (Trademark law is normally more reasonable that copyright and patent law have become. This doesn't mean it doesn't have large warts. One of the major ones of which is that it favors the wealthy and powerful. Just not quite as blatantly.)
My name is Whitney Drake and I work in Ford Communications.
We've been watching this discussion with interest and I'd like to
clarify what is essentially a misunderstanding.
Yesterday we spoke to both Cafe Press and the Black Mustang Club
and explained the situation (about the Black Mustang Club's calendar) to everyone's satisfaction. Ford has no problem with Mustang or other car owners taking pictures of their vehicles for use in club materials like calendars. What we do have an issue with are individuals using Ford's logo and other trademarks for products they intend to sell. Understandably, we have to take the protection of our brands and licensing very seriously.
Ford did not send the Black Mustang Club a "cease and desist" letter telling them that they could not use images of their own cars in their calendar. The decision not to allow the calendars to be printed was made by Cafe Press, because we had gotten in touch with them in the past about trademark infringements on products they sold.
The Black Mustang Club, and any other Ford enthusiast club, are free to take pictures of their own vehicles for use in calendars or other materials as long as they don't use Ford trademarks in products that will be sold.
I think it is great that the Black Mustang Club, and any other enthusiast club, would take pictures of their own vehicles for use in calendars or other materials.
I'm looking forward to purchasing a copy to hang in the garage next
to my Mustang (even if mine isn't black).
Thanks for giving us the chance to have our say.
I can't guarantee that this actually came from Ford, but it's what I found on a quick search. As to whether Ford's normal policy is reasonable or not, I don't know. It's clearly not *quite* as unreasonable as the recent
The reasonable solution is a copyright period of 5-10 years. Possibly it could be different with differing media, 5 years for text, 7 for audio, 10 for movies. (I think I'd count computer programs as text.)
BUT!!! If you do this, you must make the copyright only cover non-DRM equipped material. Otherwise you'll still end up with an unjust system...just one that's even more cumbersome than the current one.
I can accept that in some cases that is true. In other cases, however, they were clearly wrong, and clearly had no creditable evidence. Yet they pursued the case anyway just because they figured the person couldn't defend themselves. As such, we I on a jury I would automatically vote against them. They have repeatedly knowingly abused the court system without any penalty, and they deserve a penalty.
Actually, my feeling is that the penalty the RIAA & MPAA deserve it to have their corporate charter stripped, their lawyers licenses revoked, and their personal fortunes confiscated. No way I could impose that, of course, but anything less than that happening to them I count as less than fair. This isn't all because of the cases they've filed. Some of it is because of cases that they haven't filed. (Like against the children of a record company exec.) And much to most of it is because of the way they bought congress-folk to write these unjust laws. (The laws are so unjust that even were they, themselves, guiltless, I'd have a great deal of trouble voting to accept that the laws should be enforced.)
I'm sure they have excuses. Their excuses don't excuse their own actions.
This didn't start in the '60s. It probably didn't start in the '40s. It may have been intensifying, but it was pretty bad in the 50's. OTOH, the total level of violence was less. I merely got beaten up occasionally and had some property destroyed, I wasn't really threatened. OTOH, I was a white kid, and larger than average. I don't know whether this made me more or less of a target. (We moved around, so I can attest that the problem wasn't confined to one school.)
It's not too surprising when you consider the economic position of the average Chinese worker. One doesn't get much innovation until one is at least "middle class" wealthy. (You've got to have disposable income and free time.)
You also need a decent education. China is strong on this (well, for it's economic position). As the Chinese populace becomes more wealthy one should expect the rate of innovation to accelerate. OTOH, do remember that the low-hanging fruit has already been plucked. Chinese with moderate income won't be innovating in areas that have recently been plucked clean. (Wealthy ones may. They'll be able to afford the setup costs.)
One thing that might come out of China is advancements in 3-D printing. That's an area that appears to be becoming accessible. And, of course, software. That doesn't require much up-front investment.
But don't expect much until the size and wealth of the Chinese middle class increases.
The two parent family is not a myth. It also wasn't always a happy environment. It was, however, a fact of life in the US up through the 1950's. Separation meant that neither parent could remarry. Divorce was usually possible, but very expensive. Over the course of the 1960's and early 1970's this changed. It's partially good and partially bad that it did, but there have been major costs to society in the change...and society has been ignoring those costs.
I'm glad your experience was good, but don't presume that it's been universally the case. It hasn't.
Also, be aware that the purpose of education is not really to inform you, but to control you. (It does inform you, but that's not the chief purpose.) Ideally you will internalize the controls and become a "good citizen". I'm not saying that it's bad (intrinsically, as opposed to in implementation), but don't deceive yourself about it's basic purpose. It's thanks to education that people can live together in cities without wholesale slaughter. (When it becomes impaired, violent crime rises.)
N.B.: Other things also cause crime to rise. Good anonymous transportation systems, e.g. Think how e-mail fostered spam. (I'm not adopting a legalistic definition of crime, but an ethical one. Fraud is a crime even in contexts where there is no law against it.)
1) Read Plato. People have always blamed kids for being lazy. Usually if they're lazy it's because there's no reward for not being lazy.
2) The nuclear family itself was a part of the problem. The traditional family included grandparents, uncles, and aunts living in close proximity. In such a situation children has LOTS more support than they ever got from even an idealized nuclear family. Of course, it made moving around difficult. (I.e., there were reasons why the nuclear family evolved...but those same reasons cause it to dissolve into single parent households when both parents are employed by corporations that want the parents to move.)
3) Yes.
4) See 3. Also, the school of education at universities has fads in theory, but no feedback. This causes educational fashion to be disjoint from results. (Not totally...but with a several decade delay loop.)
5) Read Plato on Socrates.
Religion isn't a non-issue. Not when they adopt anti-scientific planks as a main part of their faith. But there are definitely other major problems.
There are a few who will invest in computer science, engineering, physics, etc. no matter what the rewards are. They are driven. There aren't many.
I wouldn't claim to be a brilliant programmer, but I am knowledgeable, capable, competent, careful, etc. I went into programming in the 1960's because it was the most profitable place to invest my skills in math. I could have gone into statistics (officially I did, but that's because statisticians were temporarily paid more than programmers. The work was programming, and neither I nor my bosses though otherwise.
These days I don't know what I'd go into. It sure wouldn't be computers. Probably molecular biology or nanotechnology. There is probably a temporary surplus of jobs there. I'd likely be a technician rather than a researcher, because I'm not academically brilliant. (99th percentile doesn't rate when most people don't believe in evolution.)
The right direction? Only if we want to become 3rd world, or possibly lower. In the last couple of decades we've started to lose the imported brain power. Used to be people would come here to work and arrange to stay. Now a sizable (and increasing) fraction head back home as soon as their contract is up.
When countries rely on patents for their superiority it's evidence that they're living off of their past, not creating it in the present.
P.S.: Looking over things, I realize I wasn't totally clear. I count myself as one of the ones who is driven. I needed to find a career in math or science. Many of those I went to school with were more brilliant, but not driven. They would have had no trouble choosing a different major if it had seemed more appropriate. Some of them did, but the rewards in tech were looking pretty good 40 years ago. Some of them mixed finance and tech, and would have been quite happy to drop the tech if it hadn't looked so promising. Many of the most higly skilled people AREN'T driven in any one particular area. They have a particular skill-set, and they look for places that they can apply it. If that place is finance, that's where they go. If it's France, or Japan, that's where they go.
P.P.S.: This isn't a short term phenomenon. It's been happening for a long time to increasing degree. I expect the US to slip back to 2nd world status within a couple of decades, and to third not long afterwards. And it's because of our "leadership", and our "education" system. (If most people end up hating school, you know your country is going to be anti-intellectual. Our "education" system seems designed to cause both the brilliant and the sub-normal to hate it...which is more than half of the population.)
Well, if your cynicism needs help...
I seem to recall that their last promise not to sue over patents only covered "fully compliant applications". I'm not sure this promise is the same as the last one, but I don't have any reason to doubt it. In which case, guess what the promise not to sue is worth...