Man, there is this car for sale that I really like, but the dealership is pricing me out of my ability to buy it.
Man, there is this car for sale that I really like, but the dealership is pricing me out my ability to buy it so instead I think I'll copy the car for free from my neighbour using my portable replicator.
Sorry, dude, but if you can't afford a product, the normal thing is to do without
Letting artifical restrictions on supply stop you from using something makes you nothing more than a bitch to the man.
Not possible. The Treaty of European Union means that they have to or face various penalties.
So what?
If they don't dare to take the penalties, then they should just go home and let the EU run everything. If you are afraid of doing what is right because you are going to get punished, then you are little better than those deciding in your place.
"As of the submission by team "BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos" on June 26, 2009 18:42:37 UTC, the Netflix Prize competition entered the "last call" period for the Grand Prize. In accord with the Rules, teams have thirty (30) days, until July 26, 2009 18:42:37 UTC, to make submissions that will be considered for this Prize. Good luck and thank you for participating!"
so every prediction counts equally in determining your error
True, but not true. If we had talked about plain mean error I would have agreed. But as it stands, not every error counts the same. Making a serious error (guessing 1 instead of 5) costs 16 times what making a small error (guessing 4 instead of 5) costs.
With popular movies you usually have enough data to come decently close with guesses. Sure, you can optimize them more to get even closer with the guesses. But it is a minor profit. On the other hand, you don't have much data on the less popular movies, so the guesses will be far less accurate, and it will pay off far more to make those guesses more accurate.
If anything, you could say that the competition focused on minimizing the amount of serious errors.
Of course, any disruption can easily spell the end. My grandmother went from being fairly self sustaining (we just had to shop for her) to someone who you basically had to make sure that they ate, in just a few months. All because she fell and hit herself and therefore had to lie still doing nothing for a couple of weeks, after which she declined rapidly.
She is still alive, but now has to live in elder living as she can't take care of simple stuff like making food. She even forgot how to play solitaire cards. Something she used to do fairly often.
It was actually quite terrifying to experience the change as it showed just how fragile the human body really becomes as you age. But I also learned a valuable lesson. Stay active, and enjoy life.
For my style of tab-heavy browsing, I wouldn't mind perhaps the tabs running down the side of the page.
When I got a widescreen last year, one of the first things I did, was reconfigure my browser (using Opera) to have the tabs on the left. I can fit 29 tabs in one column which is more than I usually need, and it works great.
" There isn't a go program running on anything that I can't give a 9 stone handicap to and crush almost without thinking - and I'm only 2k."
In what reality do you live? Even excluding the new generation programs that are as strong or stronger than you (2kyu-1dan), the old generation programs still hover around the 6-8 kyu range. That would be 4-6 stones handicap. You could possibly get that up to 9 if you trained to specifically beat a program. But it would in no way be easy.
This isn't to say that go programs will overtake humans anytime soon. While the Monte Carlo algorithm did revolutionise the go ai world, it basically meant a quick leap up from the old min-max based ones. But now the reality is beginning to catch up with the programs. Monte Carlo may be better than min-max but brute forcing is still not really viable even if you use a more efficent way of brute forcing.
Are you intending to argue that listening to music that was produced by someone else (at a cost to the producer) is an inherent natural right of human beings and therefore downloading it (without compensation to the producer) constitutes no moral or ethical injustice?
Yes. That basically sums up my opinion.
Real injustice is to restrict the poor from experiencing all the culture ever produced even though it is both technically and economically (the poor can afford to pay for the copying himself by using file sharing) possible. Of course, we don't want the creators to not get paid anything for their work, but keeping a pay per copy system is simply unproductive in a world where we can make copies so easily. It is nothing more than destructive luddite behavior.
If you're a programmer, have any juicy source code for me to look at?
You can take a look at a couple of the plugins written for the SRS program of anki. I have written this program that help you to memorize go games. But I really don't feel like spending time uploading the source code to it right now unless there is some real demand for it. There is also this program (includes sourcecode) which I use to track tv episodes I have watched. It is a really outdated version so don't expect it to work for updating against the internet. But I did provide the source code so you can work it from there. I simply just picked something that was easily on my home page account.
As for source code produced for companies I work for. I won't share that here. Not because I care personally. I would gladly share it. But I could get in some real trouble for it, and while I do believe in civil disobedience, you have to weigh risk and reward.
Also, I don't really see the point of this exercise. File sharing is about copying information that has already been put out to the public and without wasting time or resources from the original creator. That is basically the opposite of me publishing never before published code (the second link) and spending time doing so.
"If the secondary market wasn't available, he wouldn't be able to buy as many new games"
But the money others put towards buying on the secondary market would move into the primary market instead. The total distribution would be less, but it could be more profitable for publishers.
In fact, there is a good chance that used sales is worse than piracy for publishers. Atleast with piracy, the pirate will still have 100% of his money left to spend on other games. However, with used games sales, a decent portion disappears into the used sales business on every transaction. That is money the publisher will never see.
Of course, arguing about what is best for publishers is not really productive, unless you are a publisher. Otherwise, you have to look at the whole picture. Copyright has a huge negative influence on the spread of information. And the more control publishers can get, the worse the negative influence on the spread gets.
but surely to actually use those laptops in lessons,
And here is the crux.
Where are the interactive video lessons complete, with recorded answers to all the common questions as well as more detailed explanation of subjects that can be more difficult for some to grasp? Where is the framework allowing teachers as well as students to jointly build upon these lessons? Where are the computer driven practice "books" for those same lessons? Where are the teacher applications that aggregates information from the above programs?
We are currently stuck in a system with one teacher teaching infront of a class where 1/3 is bored out of their mind because it is too easy, 1/3 don't get it all because it is going to fast for them and the remaining 1/3 learns adequatly in that specific subject.
The problem in the modern school system is that it expects every child to progress at an average pace in each and every subject. Or in the case of NCLB, slower than that. The truth is completly different. People learning at different pace and they have difficulty with different things.
The important thing here is that you have to actually use technology to do things better. Take for example the old idea of recording lessons and then showing them to the class on a small TV. It failed because recorded lessons didn't provide anything that an ordinary teacher could. In fact, the opposite. Recorded lessons removed the interactivity moment of class. Same with using a computer as a place to keep notes. It doesn't provide anything beyond simply using paper and pencil.
We now finally have the technology that could allow us to break through a barrier in teaching. Interactive, personlized learning with the teacher providing assistance and answer more targetted questions where needed (if many people ask the same question, the answer should be integrated into the learning software). Each child learning at its own pace. Something deemed previously impossible unless you had only a couple of students per teacher.
What is the problem? Well, there are many problems. Of course, all (or most) students need a computer. But that is only a small part. You need a learning platform that is nation wide. You need teachers that are prepared to change their teaching methods. Most dramatically, it requires you to move away from the old class based system and to a system where each student is progressing at his own rate. And I think others can come up with more problems than the ones I have listed here.
Of everything I have said above, one thing stands out, so I'll say it again in different words. Don't use the technology to do the same things you did before, just more expensivly. Instead, use it to do things you couldn't do before. Until people in charge understand that, progress won't happen.
But "emotional abuse"? What in the lamest fuck is that?
Emotional abuse is the main reason why actions such a rape and childporn are considered such serious crimes. A physical beating heals in a couple of weeks, while emotional damage can take years to pass.
Copyright doesn't restrict the spread of knowledge
Ok, then. Copyright restricts the spread of the useful arts. Better?
temporarily prevent it's commercialization by third parties.
So, it reduces the spread.
They actually help to open it up and limit trade secrets.
No. The whole "trade secret" argument is fatally flawed if you only take a few seconds to think about it. Any research that would be able to kept trade secreted for longer would still remain a trade secret. Research only become patented when companies don't think they can manage to keep it a trade secret for one reason or another.
Wealth taxes - The only tax that is actually fair when flat. Really, think about it. How are businesses judged on the market? Rate of return. Why should citizens not be judged with the same standards?
Income taxes - As wealth taxes has their own problems, the progressive income tax is usually the best main tax. It does have a negative effect on those who have a quick upward mobility in society, but they are generally the same people you need to worry the least about. As long as you don't overdo it, income taxes provide a good foundation in any tax system.
Sales taxes - The only real purpose of the sales tax, is to indirectly tax non-local goods. Otherwise it is generally worse than the income tax.
While the party is also of the opinion that non-commercial file-sharing of copyrighted works should be legalized, this is really sort of secondary
To be fair, that is also a primary point. The point being that giving everyone instant access to all knowledge ever produced is more valuable that rewarding creators via a system that restricts the spread of knowledge.
The party still feels that a compromise can be made on the commercial level, giving the creator exclusive rights to profit from his work. On the patent side, the party feels even that compromise is too big to make due to the big costs that patents bring to conducting business. (as it often isn't possible to avoid patents, unlike copyright)
The difference is that the goverment actually owned the interstate highway system.
That is the real problem nowadays. Subsidizes to private companies for building infrastructure, and then the private companies get to keep it. Talk about market distortions. If the goverment wants to pay for something, it should damn well own it afterwards (and not sell it off at bargin prices to the big companies paying bribes).
I think it meant no unnatural restriction to the market.
Actually, it doesn't really matter if the restriction is unnatural or not as long as the restriction is significant enough.
The free market needs a consistant flow of competitors, and you can't achieve that when entry barriers are too high. Why a flow of competitors? Well, simple, because you must work under the assumption that some will fail over time, and you need a flow to replace the losers. It is what keeps a free market fresh.
Otherwise you'll just end up with a stagnant market with a couple of big players.
If you wish, count the great depression in the old system, making it 14 recessions in 142 years, 10.1 is still more than 8.75. The old days may not have been perfect, but the economy was certainly more stable than in the current system of government regulation.
Yeah, right. Go ahead and ignore the duration of all those older recessions. Boom-Bust is exactly the way to describe the old days. It was like living in a rollercoaster. As far from stable as you could get.
Compare with the late 20th century which had good and bad years, but being far more stable in general and with a higher percentage of the time spent in upswings.
When they prioritize traffic based on its type (VOIP, FTP, HTTP, etc.), that's QoS shaping.
No, having the ISP prioritizing based on traffic type without your explicit permission is just as much a violating of network neutrality. It is just that this specific subtype goes under the name of QoS. A form of network neutrality violation that hits all those services that use a specific protocol uniformly.
If they give higher priority to VOIP traffic, regardless of the provider, that's just QoS shaping
But there are multiple VOIP protocols and they will only prioritize the specific protocol that they want.
You can't have net neutrality if you allow protocol prioritization, because it prevents competitors from coming in with new/better protocols.
The only issue here is: should the OS trust the sysadmin?
No. The OS should only trust the combination of a verified sysadmin and a verified program.
That is what is sorely lacking in the security models coming from the mainframe era. It is based only on the level of trust of the user, but completly ignores the programs that the user runs.
Remember the story about the trojan horse. The problem wasn't that the people who pulled the horse into the city weren't trusted, because they were. The problem was that they didn't adequatly guard/check the horse which was an untrusted object.
Computer security needs to make it easier for those who want to use the computer to run programs but also want to be security minded. And that means increasing the ability to set access rights of program.
I should be able to do stuff like give any executable in the "notsotrusted" directory no internet access, as well as read only access to the documents folder, except for documents accessed via the operating system file dialog. And these access rights should work together with user access rights, so you would need both to be allowed access.
Of course, that is mostly me dreaming, because I don't think I'll see it in a very long time if ever. In the meanwhile I'll just keep use sandboxie or other sandbox programs to keep the least trusted programs seperated from the rest. It does work pretty well, but the lack of integration with the operating system is noticable.
The silver and gold standard caused the economy to be *very* stable
No, it caused the currency to be relativly stable, which is a completly different thing.
I am not saying anything about the current system though, because it is just as flawed as the old one. I just don't see any reason to glorify the past, because it was just as bad back then. (except that you starved to death if you were unlucky)
Long ago, inventors were strongly opposed to leeches copy-catting their inventions and making a buck stealing their ideas. So they resorted to hiding, obfuscating or generally trying to apply trade secrets to their inventions so that they would have a competitive edge. The end result of this secretiveness was that many inventions died with their inventors. This was a big problem for the government
That is just propaganda used by those who want patent law. In reality, if trade secrets were good enough to actually keep secrets, people wouldn't want to patent stuff in the first place because it would be more profitable to keep it a secret.
The real reason for patents in the beginning was simply as a way to make money for the goverment. This is especially obvious when you look at the patent history in England where patents started out as generic trade monopolies that the crown sold to people willing to pay. It was first after huge protests (as stuff like salt got patented) that it was changed so that monopolies only would be given on new inventions.
Reverse engineering, employees jumping ships and parallel invention (very common as ideas are shaped by the society you live in) just work too well combined to keep secrets. And the excuse has become even worse as companies grew larger as secrets don't work well with larger groups.
Why are digital copies of games bought online via Steam, Direct2Drive and so on nearly always the same price (if not sometimes more expensive) than a retail box version?
Supply & Demand
or more accuratly, since we are dealing with a low-margin cost, non-fungible, monopoly restricted goods
Demand
Why should they sell for lower than retail when there obviously are people buying it at the prices they charge? Here are the most basic things that would affect internet prices
Cheaper: * The buyer doesn't get anything "real" so the apparent value is less. * No resale value
More expensive: * Higher availability, making it convienient to the buyer * There is less to gain on the margin cost using economy of scale. (basically, there is less incentive to use economics of scale)
The only place where cheaper to produce comes in is in the buyer mind. Which of course can have a real effect on price, but not as much as you would expect. The basic economic theory behind it all is simple. You draw a diagram with Price on one axis and MarginProfit*Demand on the other. After which you select the price point on the resulting curve where you makes the most profit.
Actually, only drawing one curve is a simplification. In reality you can have multiple curves. One for each customer group that you can manage to seperate out. With taxes, it is usually done by income, but that obviously doesn't work in ordinary markets. Instead, a good way to do it with games is to start out with a higher price and getting a first group to buy, then lower the price and getting a second group willing to wait for a lower price to buy, and so on.
Finally, a note regarding non-fungibility as mentioned above. In reality there is actually some fungibility. People may be willing to exchange one game for another. And this of course does have a slight effect in introducing some supply&demand effects into everything. Economy is definitly not a simple subject.
Slashdot Mirror
Man, there is this car for sale that I really like, but the dealership is pricing me out of my ability to buy it.
Man, there is this car for sale that I really like, but the dealership is pricing me out my ability to buy it so instead I think I'll copy the car for free from my neighbour using my portable replicator.
Sorry, dude, but if you can't afford a product, the normal thing is to do without
Letting artifical restrictions on supply stop you from using something makes you nothing more than a bitch to the man.
Not possible. The Treaty of European Union means that they have to or face various penalties.
So what?
If they don't dare to take the penalties, then they should just go home and let the EU run everything. If you are afraid of doing what is right because you are going to get punished, then you are little better than those deciding in your place.
~0.85 points (on a five-point scale)
Actually the scale is not 0-1-2-3-4 but 0-1-4-9-16 as they use Root-Mean-Square. Just thought it was worth pointing out.
Actually, this email has been sent out
"As of the submission by team "BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos" on June 26, 2009 18:42:37 UTC, the Netflix Prize competition entered the "last call" period for the Grand Prize. In accord with the Rules, teams have thirty (30) days, until July 26, 2009 18:42:37 UTC, to make submissions that will be considered for this Prize. Good luck and thank you for participating!"
so every prediction counts equally in determining your error
True, but not true. If we had talked about plain mean error I would have agreed. But as it stands, not every error counts the same. Making a serious error (guessing 1 instead of 5) costs 16 times what making a small error (guessing 4 instead of 5) costs.
With popular movies you usually have enough data to come decently close with guesses. Sure, you can optimize them more to get even closer with the guesses. But it is a minor profit. On the other hand, you don't have much data on the less popular movies, so the guesses will be far less accurate, and it will pay off far more to make those guesses more accurate.
If anything, you could say that the competition focused on minimizing the amount of serious errors.
So true.
Of course, any disruption can easily spell the end. My grandmother went from being fairly self sustaining (we just had to shop for her) to someone who you basically had to make sure that they ate, in just a few months. All because she fell and hit herself and therefore had to lie still doing nothing for a couple of weeks, after which she declined rapidly.
She is still alive, but now has to live in elder living as she can't take care of simple stuff like making food. She even forgot how to play solitaire cards. Something she used to do fairly often.
It was actually quite terrifying to experience the change as it showed just how fragile the human body really becomes as you age. But I also learned a valuable lesson. Stay active, and enjoy life.
For my style of tab-heavy browsing, I wouldn't mind perhaps the tabs running down the side of the page.
When I got a widescreen last year, one of the first things I did, was reconfigure my browser (using Opera) to have the tabs on the left. I can fit 29 tabs in one column which is more than I usually need, and it works great.
" There isn't a go program running on anything that I can't give a 9 stone handicap to and crush almost without thinking - and I'm only 2k."
In what reality do you live? Even excluding the new generation programs that are as strong or stronger than you (2kyu-1dan), the old generation programs still hover around the 6-8 kyu range. That would be 4-6 stones handicap. You could possibly get that up to 9 if you trained to specifically beat a program. But it would in no way be easy.
This isn't to say that go programs will overtake humans anytime soon. While the Monte Carlo algorithm did revolutionise the go ai world, it basically meant a quick leap up from the old min-max based ones. But now the reality is beginning to catch up with the programs. Monte Carlo may be better than min-max but brute forcing is still not really viable even if you use a more efficent way of brute forcing.
Are you intending to argue that listening to music that was produced by someone else (at a cost to the producer) is an inherent natural right of human beings and therefore downloading it (without compensation to the producer) constitutes no moral or ethical injustice?
Yes. That basically sums up my opinion.
Real injustice is to restrict the poor from experiencing all the culture ever produced even though it is both technically and economically (the poor can afford to pay for the copying himself by using file sharing) possible. Of course, we don't want the creators to not get paid anything for their work, but keeping a pay per copy system is simply unproductive in a world where we can make copies so easily. It is nothing more than destructive luddite behavior.
If you're a programmer, have any juicy source code for me to look at?
You can take a look at a couple of the plugins written for the SRS program of anki. I have written this program that help you to memorize go games. But I really don't feel like spending time uploading the source code to it right now unless there is some real demand for it. There is also this program (includes sourcecode) which I use to track tv episodes I have watched. It is a really outdated version so don't expect it to work for updating against the internet. But I did provide the source code so you can work it from there. I simply just picked something that was easily on my home page account.
As for source code produced for companies I work for. I won't share that here. Not because I care personally. I would gladly share it. But I could get in some real trouble for it, and while I do believe in civil disobedience, you have to weigh risk and reward.
Also, I don't really see the point of this exercise. File sharing is about copying information that has already been put out to the public and without wasting time or resources from the original creator. That is basically the opposite of me publishing never before published code (the second link) and spending time doing so.
Hollywood accounting uses "net income" to rip of artists. Cory is talking about "gross income".
"If the secondary market wasn't available, he wouldn't be able to buy as many new games"
But the money others put towards buying on the secondary market would move into the primary market instead. The total distribution would be less, but it could be more profitable for publishers.
In fact, there is a good chance that used sales is worse than piracy for publishers. Atleast with piracy, the pirate will still have 100% of his money left to spend on other games. However, with used games sales, a decent portion disappears into the used sales business on every transaction. That is money the publisher will never see.
Of course, arguing about what is best for publishers is not really productive, unless you are a publisher. Otherwise, you have to look at the whole picture. Copyright has a huge negative influence on the spread of information. And the more control publishers can get, the worse the negative influence on the spread gets.
but surely to actually use those laptops in lessons,
And here is the crux.
Where are the interactive video lessons complete, with recorded answers to all the common questions as well as more detailed explanation of subjects that can be more difficult for some to grasp? Where is the framework allowing teachers as well as students to jointly build upon these lessons? Where are the computer driven practice "books" for those same lessons? Where are the teacher applications that aggregates information from the above programs?
We are currently stuck in a system with one teacher teaching infront of a class where 1/3 is bored out of their mind because it is too easy, 1/3 don't get it all because it is going to fast for them and the remaining 1/3 learns adequatly in that specific subject.
The problem in the modern school system is that it expects every child to progress at an average pace in each and every subject. Or in the case of NCLB, slower than that. The truth is completly different. People learning at different pace and they have difficulty with different things.
The important thing here is that you have to actually use technology to do things better. Take for example the old idea of recording lessons and then showing them to the class on a small TV. It failed because recorded lessons didn't provide anything that an ordinary teacher could. In fact, the opposite. Recorded lessons removed the interactivity moment of class. Same with using a computer as a place to keep notes. It doesn't provide anything beyond simply using paper and pencil.
We now finally have the technology that could allow us to break through a barrier in teaching. Interactive, personlized learning with the teacher providing assistance and answer more targetted questions where needed (if many people ask the same question, the answer should be integrated into the learning software). Each child learning at its own pace. Something deemed previously impossible unless you had only a couple of students per teacher.
What is the problem? Well, there are many problems. Of course, all (or most) students need a computer. But that is only a small part. You need a learning platform that is nation wide. You need teachers that are prepared to change their teaching methods. Most dramatically, it requires you to move away from the old class based system and to a system where each student is progressing at his own rate. And I think others can come up with more problems than the ones I have listed here.
Of everything I have said above, one thing stands out, so I'll say it again in different words. Don't use the technology to do the same things you did before, just more expensivly. Instead, use it to do things you couldn't do before. Until people in charge understand that, progress won't happen.
But "emotional abuse"? What in the lamest fuck is that?
Emotional abuse is the main reason why actions such a rape and childporn are considered such serious crimes. A physical beating heals in a couple of weeks, while emotional damage can take years to pass.
Copyright doesn't restrict the spread of knowledge
Ok, then. Copyright restricts the spread of the useful arts. Better?
temporarily prevent it's commercialization by third parties.
So, it reduces the spread.
They actually help to open it up and limit trade secrets.
No. The whole "trade secret" argument is fatally flawed if you only take a few seconds to think about it. Any research that would be able to kept trade secreted for longer would still remain a trade secret. Research only become patented when companies don't think they can manage to keep it a trade secret for one reason or another.
Contrary to popular belief, executives are paid well because they are worth it
Which is why noone has been able to find a link between executive pay and actual performance. Please keep the bullshit down.
Agreed
Here are my thoughs on different taxes:
Wealth taxes - The only tax that is actually fair when flat. Really, think about it. How are businesses judged on the market? Rate of return. Why should citizens not be judged with the same standards?
Income taxes - As wealth taxes has their own problems, the progressive income tax is usually the best main tax. It does have a negative effect on those who have a quick upward mobility in society, but they are generally the same people you need to worry the least about. As long as you don't overdo it, income taxes provide a good foundation in any tax system.
Sales taxes - The only real purpose of the sales tax, is to indirectly tax non-local goods. Otherwise it is generally worse than the income tax.
While the party is also of the opinion that non-commercial file-sharing of copyrighted works should be legalized, this is really sort of secondary
To be fair, that is also a primary point. The point being that giving everyone instant access to all knowledge ever produced is more valuable that rewarding creators via a system that restricts the spread of knowledge.
The party still feels that a compromise can be made on the commercial level, giving the creator exclusive rights to profit from his work. On the patent side, the party feels even that compromise is too big to make due to the big costs that patents bring to conducting business. (as it often isn't possible to avoid patents, unlike copyright)
The difference is that the goverment actually owned the interstate highway system.
That is the real problem nowadays. Subsidizes to private companies for building infrastructure, and then the private companies get to keep it. Talk about market distortions. If the goverment wants to pay for something, it should damn well own it afterwards (and not sell it off at bargin prices to the big companies paying bribes).
I think it meant no unnatural restriction to the market.
Actually, it doesn't really matter if the restriction is unnatural or not as long as the restriction is significant enough.
The free market needs a consistant flow of competitors, and you can't achieve that when entry barriers are too high. Why a flow of competitors? Well, simple, because you must work under the assumption that some will fail over time, and you need a flow to replace the losers. It is what keeps a free market fresh.
Otherwise you'll just end up with a stagnant market with a couple of big players.
If you wish, count the great depression in the old system, making it 14 recessions in 142 years, 10.1 is still more than 8.75. The old days may not have been perfect, but the economy was certainly more stable than in the current system of government regulation.
Yeah, right. Go ahead and ignore the duration of all those older recessions. Boom-Bust is exactly the way to describe the old days. It was like living in a rollercoaster. As far from stable as you could get.
Compare with the late 20th century which had good and bad years, but being far more stable in general and with a higher percentage of the time spent in upswings.
When they prioritize traffic based on its type (VOIP, FTP, HTTP, etc.), that's QoS shaping.
No, having the ISP prioritizing based on traffic type without your explicit permission is just as much a violating of network neutrality. It is just that this specific subtype goes under the name of QoS. A form of network neutrality violation that hits all those services that use a specific protocol uniformly.
If they give higher priority to VOIP traffic, regardless of the provider, that's just QoS shaping
But there are multiple VOIP protocols and they will only prioritize the specific protocol that they want.
You can't have net neutrality if you allow protocol prioritization, because it prevents competitors from coming in with new/better protocols.
They are very different concepts.
Not really. They are two sides of the same coin.
The only issue here is: should the OS trust the sysadmin?
No. The OS should only trust the combination of a verified sysadmin and a verified program.
That is what is sorely lacking in the security models coming from the mainframe era. It is based only on the level of trust of the user, but completly ignores the programs that the user runs.
Remember the story about the trojan horse. The problem wasn't that the people who pulled the horse into the city weren't trusted, because they were. The problem was that they didn't adequatly guard/check the horse which was an untrusted object.
Computer security needs to make it easier for those who want to use the computer to run programs but also want to be security minded. And that means increasing the ability to set access rights of program.
I should be able to do stuff like give any executable in the "notsotrusted" directory no internet access, as well as read only access to the documents folder, except for documents accessed via the operating system file dialog. And these access rights should work together with user access rights, so you would need both to be allowed access.
Of course, that is mostly me dreaming, because I don't think I'll see it in a very long time if ever. In the meanwhile I'll just keep use sandboxie or other sandbox programs to keep the least trusted programs seperated from the rest. It does work pretty well, but the lack of integration with the operating system is noticable.
Have you tried getting some hard data to back this claim?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recessions
No, the good old days weren't any better.
The silver and gold standard caused the economy to be *very* stable
No, it caused the currency to be relativly stable, which is a completly different thing.
I am not saying anything about the current system though, because it is just as flawed as the old one. I just don't see any reason to glorify the past, because it was just as bad back then. (except that you starved to death if you were unlucky)
Long ago, inventors were strongly opposed to leeches copy-catting their inventions and making a buck stealing their ideas. So they resorted to hiding, obfuscating or generally trying to apply trade secrets to their inventions so that they would have a competitive edge. The end result of this secretiveness was that many inventions died with their inventors. This was a big problem for the government
That is just propaganda used by those who want patent law. In reality, if trade secrets were good enough to actually keep secrets, people wouldn't want to patent stuff in the first place because it would be more profitable to keep it a secret.
The real reason for patents in the beginning was simply as a way to make money for the goverment. This is especially obvious when you look at the patent history in England where patents started out as generic trade monopolies that the crown sold to people willing to pay. It was first after huge protests (as stuff like salt got patented) that it was changed so that monopolies only would be given on new inventions.
Reverse engineering, employees jumping ships and parallel invention (very common as ideas are shaped by the society you live in) just work too well combined to keep secrets. And the excuse has become even worse as companies grew larger as secrets don't work well with larger groups.
Why are digital copies of games bought online via Steam, Direct2Drive and so on nearly always the same price (if not sometimes more expensive) than a retail box version?
Supply & Demand
or more accuratly, since we are dealing with a low-margin cost, non-fungible, monopoly restricted goods
Demand
Why should they sell for lower than retail when there obviously are people buying it at the prices they charge? Here are the most basic things that would affect internet prices
Cheaper:
* The buyer doesn't get anything "real" so the apparent value is less.
* No resale value
More expensive:
* Higher availability, making it convienient to the buyer
* There is less to gain on the margin cost using economy of scale. (basically, there is less incentive to use economics of scale)
The only place where cheaper to produce comes in is in the buyer mind. Which of course can have a real effect on price, but not as much as you would expect. The basic economic theory behind it all is simple. You draw a diagram with Price on one axis and MarginProfit*Demand on the other. After which you select the price point on the resulting curve where you makes the most profit.
Actually, only drawing one curve is a simplification. In reality you can have multiple curves. One for each customer group that you can manage to seperate out. With taxes, it is usually done by income, but that obviously doesn't work in ordinary markets. Instead, a good way to do it with games is to start out with a higher price and getting a first group to buy, then lower the price and getting a second group willing to wait for a lower price to buy, and so on.
Finally, a note regarding non-fungibility as mentioned above. In reality there is actually some fungibility. People may be willing to exchange one game for another. And this of course does have a slight effect in introducing some supply&demand effects into everything. Economy is definitly not a simple subject.