a specifically engineered glass impregnated with various polymers to increase it's give and prevent shattering perhaps?
I'm not sure that sounds cheaper than zinc, but yes they can probably just start making it out of some other materials that cost less than a penny per penny.
So what are the real options based on average price of materials over the past year or so?
In the case of other crimes, the depiction is entirely separate from the depicted. Reading about a bank robber does not make you a thief.
Pornography is a little different, however, in that it exists as the interaction between the subject and the material. The whole point of pornography is to not just be a depiction of some sexually-arousing act, but to actually arouse.
You have never heard of people being aroused by violence? Are not violent video games interactive and designed to cause adrenaline rush from the prospect of hunting down your opponent or the threat of being killed yourself. I am sure that some killers will be turned on by watching violence and that some pedophiles will likewise be aroused by watching depictions of despicable sexual acts. I think it is a valid fear. But it is also a valid fear that violent non-sexual predators will be engaged in violent images and simulations in a way that I am not comfortable with.
But we have to draw the line somewhere. And we should draw that line at actual physical violence or some real attempt at it. Punishment of thought crimes are not healthy for a society. Everyone offends and everyone can be offended. If we set the bar too low for defining what are actual crimes to be punished, then we will no longer live in a society of laws, but rather we will live in a society of discretionary authority.
Counter example: Hold a dividend-paying stock for more than 1 year and the capital gains rate is 15%. This is a very low tax on income generated from wealth.
I would agree that if income is taxed, then it should be taxed at the same rate or rates regardless of source. Otherwise you simply get people doing things they wouldn't otherwise do in order to avoid the higher taxes. But 15% is not exactly a "low tax". Lower tax relative to our otherwise high taxes, but I would not call it a low tax.
Dividend rates of return for public corporations are usually very low, not usually more than 1-2%, so I suspect that this rate is a gift to some privately owned corporations that are paying their owners in dividends. Not exactly fair, I agree. It is not fair to other people earning large regular salaries on a yearly basis.
We've hit a really low point as a society, when "Social Justice" are dirty words. How long will those of you who believe that absolutely unfettered economic darwinism ("Free Market") think you can throw out a word like "socialism" and think that Americans are going to drool on command? How long will we have to watch cultures diminish as a powerful few use "capitalism" to enrich themselves while constantly greater numbers of our fellow humans fall into poverty.
I agree. And I believe we have also hit a low point as a society when "free market" is also a dirty word. Free market has never meant a lawless market, but people like you still describe it as if it is a den of thieves. The free market is a place were people can come to exchange goods and services without the threat of coercion by force, it is a place were government will enforce equitable contracts made willingly and in good faith with the use of force. Ideally, it is also a place were the exchange of goods and services take place without regard to biases individuals might have against other individuals or perceived groups. Historically, free markets have been places were individuals have been able to come in order to better themselves through hard work and reputations for honesty. A free market is not incompatible with a concept social justice. The "free" in free market is free as in freedom.
The next time someone tells you that the top 5 percent of Americans are paying 50 percent of the taxes, remember, it's because they're making 90 percent of the money.
The rich pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than do any other so called group. What you just said is a lie, pure and simple. A lie meant to divide people. A lie meant to assuage the guilt of the poor for taking more than they are worth from others. A lie meant to enslave the middle class. A lie that is so obviously false that you should be ashamed of yourself for spreading it.
Oh you meant to say wealth, sure you did. But wealth is not income, wealth is a made up number. Wealth is me looking at your house and saying that I bet someone would pay a lot for it. Wealth is not income, wealth does not always generate income. But when wealth does generate income it is already taxed at very high rates. So, you say that 40% is too little, that taking nearly half of people's income is too little? How much is too much?
I have been keenly aware of the false numbers that you and your kind have been spreading on the Internet. People are overtaxed and overworked and you would justify their continued oppression by spreading false rumors and lies. The rich and the middle class pay more than their fair share while the poor pay nothing or very little.
Yes, there is an inequity in this country and it is this: That the political class would prey upon the weak to better themselves. That the political class would scare people into giving them more power and control over other people's lives. That the political class would conspire between the two parties and act as one single unified political machine seeking to enrich their co-conspirators at the expense of the poor, rich and middle classes alike.
How long until Microsoft embraces and extends its own standard? This is simply an old Microsoft trick with a new twist. As soon as Microsoft documents break compatibility with ECMA OOXML, then every other third party software will lose the ability to read and write compatible documents. Worse than the current situation, because an attempt to maintain compatibility with Microsoft Office might violate the conditions of the OOXML license. And no doubt break the format they will, in subtle ways of course, a little bit off here and there just enough to make a document look much better in Microsoft Office than it will in other applications.
The Microsoft license to use ECMA OOXML is contingent on following the standard to the letter, which is a seemingly innocuous condition until you realize that Microsoft itself is under no legal obligation to follow the standard to the letter. So you will have a bunch of third party software that follows the standard which won't be able to accurately read or write documents written by the dominant office software, it will just look like the other software is defective when really it is working according to the standard. And even if the other software developers want to break the standard in favor of microsoft compatibility, they won't be allowed to do so under the OOXML license. Microsoft wouldn't do this at first of course, what good is a trap sprung before your prey are fully in, so I am sure that Microsoft would spend a year or two adhering rigorously to the standard, just enough time for other software to incorporate OOXML compatibility. Then it would be time to break compatibility and continue the microsoft monopoly for another few years, while things work their way through the courts.
If Microsoft itself makes a legally binding and enforceable commitment to follow the ECMA OOXML standard to the letter, then I don't see a problem with another document format standard. But as the licensor, I don't see how they could be forced to adhere to the OOXML standard. Unless Microsoft itself can be forced to rigorously follow the OOXML standard, then this is just a monopolist's trap.
Rent versus owning can be for a variety of reasons. I could live in an apartment and have a quality of life the same as I do now for much less money, but I wish to have control over my future. Since I own and have a fixed mortgage rate, then I know what my mortgage payment will be 10-20 years from now, but I don't know what it will cost to rent an equivalent apartment because rents are driven by demand. So to with Software. But I also am aware that I am not making out as well in the short term because I own. And I assumed significant risks of losing my investment if housing prices fall more than a certain amount and never recover. All risks that I was willing to take, but others in other situations might rather not and focus their efforts towards building equity and stability in other areas.
So, I agree with your analogy in that there are a lot of good reasons to own rather than rent software, but everyone's situation will be different. And every application is different. If you are talking about document creation, then why would you possibly rent an online application when you can download a free and unencumbered feature complete software package such as OpenOffice? But if you are talking about Internet Search Software, then you would have to be nuts or extremely wealthy to own the computers and bandwidth necessary to index the entire Internet and store that index so that you could do your own complete Internet Searching on your own application.
The idea that every person or business will have the same requirements and abilities and that every piece of software should or can be served from some central provider is dumb. And people are right to point out that it is simply an unrealistic hope of companies that are desperate to create a world where they are utility like providers with steady revenue and don't have to compete quite so hard. It is a monopolistic vision of a world that would mean stagnant technology and high costs for people.
Say what? And I suppose the person stealing gets to make the judgement about whether or not the person who possesses the item has a need for it, right?
Better for the government to decide democratically what people need and don't need. Then it can distribute all those things that people don't need into the hands of faithful public servants.
The question here is whether Google is sufficiently dominant in Market A, the web search market, to be classified as a monopoly. If they are, then what they are doing could be classified as illegal abuse of that monopoly.
The latest market share figures put google at less than 50% of the US Internet search market. That is pretty far from a monopoly. If Microsoft had 45.4% of the PC OS market and Apple had 28.2 percent and Ubuntu/Linux had 11.7 percent, FreeBSD with 5.8 percent and SunOS had 5.4 percent, then we wouldn't be calling Microsoft a monopoly for desktop OSes. We would consider that a healthy competitive marketplace.
Microsoft, on the other hand, now controls 97.46 percent of the global desktop operating system market, which is clearly a monopoly. But then on the server OS side, Microsoft is pretty far from a monopoly with less than half of the server OS market, with healthy competition between Linux, Solaris and other server OSes.
Most disturbing thing about this is that the people developing the weapon have rebranded pain as the "goodbye effect". It really concerns me that weapons manufacturers would sugar coat a simple thing such as causing another human being intense pain. I know none of us wish to think of ourselves as making weapons that are meant to harm other people, but if you downplay the harm and then deploy the weapon. And troops don't understand why a bunch of political protesters that this weapon was used on suddenly want to kill Americans even more than before, then you will have done this country a disservice.
Sure maybe it has the potential to cause less permanent physical harm than beating them over the head with a club, or shooting them with a gun or blowing them up, but you are still talking about purposefully causing intense human pain and suffering. And if you are talking about crowd control then this is presumably going to be used against gathered groups that have been ordered to disband that aren't, such as political protests.
I had a similar disappointing experience both at Circuit City and Best Buy. One problem that the Circuit City sales person explained was that they didn't have a 1080p source for putting on all the 1080p HDTVs, because of the stupid copy restrictions which downgrade a signal to 720p when it is not hooked up through a unsplittable HDMI connection. So, they would have had to have each tv hooked up to a seperate 1080p video source and couldn't just split the signal from one player. He also said that some manufacturers provided individual 1080p capable DVRs with preloaded content, which looked pretty nice, but that the contract for the demo equipment stipulated that it would not be used on any other manufacturers TVs. So, for example they couldn't show me what a 1080p picture would look like on any of the Sharp 1080p HDTVs because they contractually couldn't just switch over a demo device from another manufacturer and the biggest problem was that the store was too cheap and the sales people too lazy to make one demo 1080p player available that could have been moved to each TV that you wanted to see in 1080p. Seemed pretty stupid to me, if you are going to sell these tvs for a lot of money, then you should at least be able to demo them. Ideally, there would be a box connected to each one that allowed you to see how each different input 1080p, 1080i, 720p and 480p all looked on the TV.
It does suck that they couldn't just run a 1080p signal to all of the 1080p TVs from one source. Really makes me worried that the new 1080p TVs are just too wrapped up in HDCP to be worth the extra expense. I'd rather have analog back if it means that we will actually be allowed to see a better picture, instead of being stuck with some unrealized capability of doing so.
What? You just totally supported the point of the person you are replying to, yet you wrote in a tone that made it appear you were rebutting his argument. So, you just said the same exact thing, that you didn't want to have to remember a bunch of passwords either, and then get modded "Insightful"?
Okay then, I'll play along then... I totally disagree with you, having a lot of passwords sucks. I can't believe you would suggest something like that.
Which Cabinet secretaries became president directly? I didn't look at every president, but I did a quick run through and I had thought that the Cabinet secretaries that were eventually elected or became president were either elected as governors or vice presidents first.
Under global warming, this planet will have more arable land in Russia and Canada which will more than offset the loss of other arable lands. We will have overall more rainfall, because of more water vapor in the air, which is a greenhouse gas which could accelerate global warming, but the cloud cover could also moderate global warming because white clouds reflect more radiation back into space.
The testable predictions were made starting in the mid-late 80's. They were tested, and verified. Current observed data backs up their primary predictions. Our understanding is greater now. Denalists will continue to use the "we need more predictions made" until it is literally too late, and then they will say, 'oh well it's too late', without the slightest bit of guilt.
I am no denialist. There is still a wide range in the current models, the lower end of the scale has a relatively modest change in global temperatures. And not all the models got it right, there has been a good bit of refinement based on previous errors and those refinements which could have introduced error have not been tested for predictive power except retroactively. Also there is a general problem of simply extrapolating out current trends, which often works in the short term, but not the long term.
I do not deny that there will be harm, people will die, wars will be fought. But that it may make more sense to address problems that are foreseeable rather than try and avoid problems that are perhaps inevitable.
"I think we can help things without "throwing our economy into a tizzy"
How? By passing laws? That only works so far as solutions are easier to implement than it is to break the law. Beyond a certain point laws will just lead to lawlessness and more violence, not solutions. Emissions are going to level out, not because of legal limits, but rather because the population is leveling out.
Of course climate change is real, that there is serious argument about the reality of a current trend of climate change is a fallacious premise. The evidence is there for all to see, there have been clear changes in average temperatures both in short term recorded measurements as well as through botanical evidence and the longer term geologic evidence.
The scientific questions that remain are over the relative contributions that CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor and even the suns output of radiation is having. And also serious questions remain about how to predict future changes to climate and what regional changes can be predicted, which is much more important than an overall temperature increase. The political controversy is over whether climate change will have an overall or regional negative impact on humans in the future. And whether that impact might be bad enough to sacrifice now and even if such a sacrifice would have a meaningful impact.
The political debate has become unhealthy in that there is a side that is unwilling to consider that at least some, if not all of humanity will benefit from global warming with the potential for increased crop output and less need for heating in populated northern areas. Versus the potential loss of viability of some major population centers due to their proximity to rising ocean levels. These are economic and socio-political questions that can not be addressed by the science. What can and should still be addressed by the science, is to continue to refine the models so that meaningful predictions can be made. Long term forecasts have not been verified. I would want to see more testable predictions made and verified before we start throwing our economy in a tizzy. There may be significantly more economical ways to control climate than a worldwide reduction in C02 emissions. And it should recognized that climate control is exactly what should be the aim of our efforts, not some sort of pseudo religious crusade to put mother nature back in order, as if the earth naturally existed as a stable environment without human existence in the first place. But rather the de facto aim of all sides should be better understand how we can take control of our environment to support a biologically rich biosphere, no matter which thermostat setting you are aiming for. This stop polluting attitude needs to go, our existence has an effect and we should understand that effect so we can reach a desirable result, but the environmentalists need to understand that humans are here to stay and that the earth is not better off without us.
It really is too bad Alexandria was burned. If I could undo one thing in history, I would be tempted to pick that one.
Don't worry with electronic storage and innumerable backups and copies of information we won't face this problem again. Of course with DRM we won't need to burn all of human knowledge, we can just lose the keys to decrypt it.
The exception is if a company realizes it is going to be sued, or the target of a government investigation.
Aurthur Andersen got in trouble because they thought they were going to be subject to a good old Federal probing and someone said to go ahead and follow their document retention policy anyway even though they were asked about the possibility of an investigation, which conveniently enough was to start shredding anything older than a couple months or something like that.
I had thought that it was already illegal to knowingly destroy evidence when you know a investigation is coming... though I see the problem with electronic records, since you could just have a cron job deleting every email older than a year off the email server or something like that. So with this law someone needs to actively change an existing business process if they catch wind of an investigation. This seems problematic, leaving a cron job running is different than a bunch of guys scrambling around trying to shred stuff to "catch up" with their document retention policy after they catch wind of an investigation. Having some legal obligation if you hear a rumor of an investigation is a bit onerous, seems the law should require at least verbal notification to hold emails. Otherwise this looks like just another pressure tool that cops can use to squeeze people for information. I can't see a law that requires people to take action merely upon rumors to be a law that people can realistically follow.
In U.S. history people from following classes have been elected President:
1. State Governors 2. Vice-Presidents 3. U.S. Congressional Representatives 4. Generals 5 (almost never, but once in a century or so) a U.S. Senator
Us Senators have been elected much more regularly than members of the House of Representatives, I think you have those confused. Governors seem to be favored in modern history.
Why is it when Microsoft/oil company/tobacco company is torched whenever they release a study saying Windows/gasoline/smoking is good because they are paid off blow-hards serving their masters but a Wikipedia study saying their articles are accurate (and make no mistake, that is what they are saying) doesn't raise an eyebrow?
Probably because wikipedia is a charitable non profit registered 501(c)(3) educational foundation which means that it is legally obligated by both the US government and State of Florida to serve a public purpose, in this case education. While those companies that you speak of are for profit multi billion dollar corporations trying to people their products and sevices and are often lobbying the government to pass laws to make it easier to sell their stuff.
Sure anything that adds to wikipedia's reputation for accuracy will make donors feel more comfortable about donating to wikipedia. But the simple fact is that every page view on wikipedia is an expense for the Foundation, they make no money directly from their content. The best way to judge a non profit is to look at the number of people getting paid by them. And so far, the Wikimedia Foundation still seams pretty lean compared to other foundations and they are keeping their other overhead expenses reasonably low as far as I can tell.
So, yes it is good to question all studies which promote one product over another, but this simply confirms something that we might have thought anyway. That if you know more about something than others, then you are in a better position to judge the accuracy of what was written about that something.
Unfortunately, one of the proposals the broadcasters are floating is to greatly reduce or even eliminate OTA HDTV broadcasts, on the grounds that "80 or 90 percent" of households are already cable/satellite sunscribers.
Isn't that a better argument to just drop the broadcasts altogether then? We could better use the bandwidth for wireless communications if nobody is getting broadcast tv anymore.
We have gone through decades of negotiations over a new higher definition broadcast standard, all the broadcasters have upgraded their equipment and now the broadcasters want out? I don't see what benefit they would get by changing the law now? Most tvs on sale now are HDTV compatible, I don't see much point in sticking to SD broadcast, better to drop support as soon as possible and reduce costs having to support two separate broadcasts.
At least with proprietary software you have the right to demand that things get fixed, and if you don't get what you want then you can find an alternative.
Hmm... Not so sure about that. When you buy a version of software, don't you buy it with bugs? Especially if the bugs are documented before you buy it, seems you have no legal recourse to demand that they fix any specific bug. Really the comfort seems to come from your ability to bitch to someone on the phone about a bug rather than any effective means of getting it fixed on your time schedule.
With open source software if a bug is mission critical, then you can hire someone to fix it if you can't fix it yourself. You aren't reliant on the arbitrary priorities of another business. With closed source, especially when you are a smaller customer of a larger software company, then all you can do is demand that the company fix the bug. But you you can only push then as far as your contract goes, which usually won't be very far at all. Sometimes demands work, sometimes they don't. Additionally, I consider open source to be a real insurance against a company dropping support for a product, which happens more often than not.
OK, look at it the other way. Just because you're prepared to die to test out a new treatment doesn't mean that I'm prepared to kill you with it. We usually have to be pretty darned sure that something won't be harmful before starting testing on humans.
they wouldn't need to develop it just negotiate with Ubuntu. It's easier to maintain than Windows.
Isn't it common knowledge that google engineers are regular contributors to Ubuntu already or is this just an unsubstantiated rumor? Seems that Google could just re brand a version of Ubuntu to give the name some marketing weight and continue to contribute back to the Ubuntu project.
Bigger thing would be to set up some deals with at least a few top computer makers to do a good job of offering their computers with GoogleOS or Ubuntu preinstalled. Ideally they could get at least 3 of these manufacturers on board: Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Toshiba, NEC, Sony, Lenovo Group and Gateway. Google could be a very powerful sales and marketing ally for any of those companies. Basically, any company except Dell should jump at the chance to offer a Google OS installed computer if Google helps with direct marketing and sales. Dell and HP would be key of course as the top sellers of PCs, but I think a good business relationship with google could propel a smaller company into higher sales. Even a more democratic approach and a focus on smaller computer makers with combined sales that still make up a larger portion of the market, could give google the kind of market penetration that would keep Microsoft competing on its own turf.
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a specifically engineered glass impregnated with various polymers to increase it's give and prevent shattering perhaps?
I'm not sure that sounds cheaper than zinc, but yes they can probably just start making it out of some other materials that cost less than a penny per penny.
So what are the real options based on average price of materials over the past year or so?
For Americans who have saved, it is trouble, but it increases exports at the same time providing jobs.
Americans who have saved? Luckily then devaluing the currency won't hurt too many people.
In the case of other crimes, the depiction is entirely separate from the depicted. Reading about a bank robber does not make you a thief.
Pornography is a little different, however, in that it exists as the interaction between the subject and the material. The whole point of pornography is to not just be a depiction of some sexually-arousing act, but to actually arouse.
You have never heard of people being aroused by violence? Are not violent video games interactive and designed to cause adrenaline rush from the prospect of hunting down your opponent or the threat of being killed yourself. I am sure that some killers will be turned on by watching violence and that some pedophiles will likewise be aroused by watching depictions of despicable sexual acts. I think it is a valid fear. But it is also a valid fear that violent non-sexual predators will be engaged in violent images and simulations in a way that I am not comfortable with.
But we have to draw the line somewhere. And we should draw that line at actual physical violence or some real attempt at it. Punishment of thought crimes are not healthy for a society. Everyone offends and everyone can be offended. If we set the bar too low for defining what are actual crimes to be punished, then we will no longer live in a society of laws, but rather we will live in a society of discretionary authority.
Alcohol is one answer, but it's not exactly perfect either.
That's what I keep telling my friend Mr. Jack Daniels.
Counter example: Hold a dividend-paying stock for more than 1 year and the capital gains rate is 15%. This is a very low tax on income generated from wealth.
I would agree that if income is taxed, then it should be taxed at the same rate or rates regardless of source. Otherwise you simply get people doing things they wouldn't otherwise do in order to avoid the higher taxes. But 15% is not exactly a "low tax". Lower tax relative to our otherwise high taxes, but I would not call it a low tax.
Dividend rates of return for public corporations are usually very low, not usually more than 1-2%, so I suspect that this rate is a gift to some privately owned corporations that are paying their owners in dividends. Not exactly fair, I agree. It is not fair to other people earning large regular salaries on a yearly basis.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
I am, but are they?
We've hit a really low point as a society, when "Social Justice" are dirty words. How long will those of you who believe that absolutely unfettered economic darwinism ("Free Market") think you can throw out a word like "socialism" and think that Americans are going to drool on command? How long will we have to watch cultures diminish as a powerful few use "capitalism" to enrich themselves while constantly greater numbers of our fellow humans fall into poverty.
I agree. And I believe we have also hit a low point as a society when "free market" is also a dirty word. Free market has never meant a lawless market, but people like you still describe it as if it is a den of thieves. The free market is a place were people can come to exchange goods and services without the threat of coercion by force, it is a place were government will enforce equitable contracts made willingly and in good faith with the use of force. Ideally, it is also a place were the exchange of goods and services take place without regard to biases individuals might have against other individuals or perceived groups. Historically, free markets have been places were individuals have been able to come in order to better themselves through hard work and reputations for honesty. A free market is not incompatible with a concept social justice. The "free" in free market is free as in freedom.
The next time someone tells you that the top 5 percent of Americans are paying 50 percent of the taxes, remember, it's because they're making 90 percent of the money.
The rich pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than do any other so called group. What you just said is a lie, pure and simple. A lie meant to divide people. A lie meant to assuage the guilt of the poor for taking more than they are worth from others. A lie meant to enslave the middle class. A lie that is so obviously false that you should be ashamed of yourself for spreading it.
Oh you meant to say wealth, sure you did. But wealth is not income, wealth is a made up number. Wealth is me looking at your house and saying that I bet someone would pay a lot for it. Wealth is not income, wealth does not always generate income. But when wealth does generate income it is already taxed at very high rates. So, you say that 40% is too little, that taking nearly half of people's income is too little? How much is too much?
I have been keenly aware of the false numbers that you and your kind have been spreading on the Internet. People are overtaxed and overworked and you would justify their continued oppression by spreading false rumors and lies. The rich and the middle class pay more than their fair share while the poor pay nothing or very little.
Yes, there is an inequity in this country and it is this: That the political class would prey upon the weak to better themselves. That the political class would scare people into giving them more power and control over other people's lives. That the political class would conspire between the two parties and act as one single unified political machine seeking to enrich their co-conspirators at the expense of the poor, rich and middle classes alike.
How long until Microsoft embraces and extends its own standard? This is simply an old Microsoft trick with a new twist. As soon as Microsoft documents break compatibility with ECMA OOXML, then every other third party software will lose the ability to read and write compatible documents. Worse than the current situation, because an attempt to maintain compatibility with Microsoft Office might violate the conditions of the OOXML license. And no doubt break the format they will, in subtle ways of course, a little bit off here and there just enough to make a document look much better in Microsoft Office than it will in other applications.
The Microsoft license to use ECMA OOXML is contingent on following the standard to the letter, which is a seemingly innocuous condition until you realize that Microsoft itself is under no legal obligation to follow the standard to the letter. So you will have a bunch of third party software that follows the standard which won't be able to accurately read or write documents written by the dominant office software, it will just look like the other software is defective when really it is working according to the standard. And even if the other software developers want to break the standard in favor of microsoft compatibility, they won't be allowed to do so under the OOXML license. Microsoft wouldn't do this at first of course, what good is a trap sprung before your prey are fully in, so I am sure that Microsoft would spend a year or two adhering rigorously to the standard, just enough time for other software to incorporate OOXML compatibility. Then it would be time to break compatibility and continue the microsoft monopoly for another few years, while things work their way through the courts.
If Microsoft itself makes a legally binding and enforceable commitment to follow the ECMA OOXML standard to the letter, then I don't see a problem with another document format standard. But as the licensor, I don't see how they could be forced to adhere to the OOXML standard. Unless Microsoft itself can be forced to rigorously follow the OOXML standard, then this is just a monopolist's trap.
Rent versus owning can be for a variety of reasons. I could live in an apartment and have a quality of life the same as I do now for much less money, but I wish to have control over my future. Since I own and have a fixed mortgage rate, then I know what my mortgage payment will be 10-20 years from now, but I don't know what it will cost to rent an equivalent apartment because rents are driven by demand. So to with Software. But I also am aware that I am not making out as well in the short term because I own. And I assumed significant risks of losing my investment if housing prices fall more than a certain amount and never recover. All risks that I was willing to take, but others in other situations might rather not and focus their efforts towards building equity and stability in other areas.
So, I agree with your analogy in that there are a lot of good reasons to own rather than rent software, but everyone's situation will be different. And every application is different. If you are talking about document creation, then why would you possibly rent an online application when you can download a free and unencumbered feature complete software package such as OpenOffice? But if you are talking about Internet Search Software, then you would have to be nuts or extremely wealthy to own the computers and bandwidth necessary to index the entire Internet and store that index so that you could do your own complete Internet Searching on your own application.
The idea that every person or business will have the same requirements and abilities and that every piece of software should or can be served from some central provider is dumb. And people are right to point out that it is simply an unrealistic hope of companies that are desperate to create a world where they are utility like providers with steady revenue and don't have to compete quite so hard. It is a monopolistic vision of a world that would mean stagnant technology and high costs for people.
The market won't decide, people will.
Say what? And I suppose the person stealing gets to make the judgement about whether or not the person who possesses the item has a need for it, right?
Better for the government to decide democratically what people need and don't need. Then it can distribute all those things that people don't need into the hands of faithful public servants.
The question here is whether Google is sufficiently dominant in Market A, the web search market, to be classified as a monopoly. If they are, then what they are doing could be classified as illegal abuse of that monopoly.
The latest market share figures put google at less than 50% of the US Internet search market. That is pretty far from a monopoly. If Microsoft had 45.4% of the PC OS market and Apple had 28.2 percent and Ubuntu/Linux had 11.7 percent, FreeBSD with 5.8 percent and SunOS had 5.4 percent, then we wouldn't be calling Microsoft a monopoly for desktop OSes. We would consider that a healthy competitive marketplace.
Microsoft, on the other hand, now controls 97.46 percent of the global desktop operating system market, which is clearly a monopoly. But then on the server OS side, Microsoft is pretty far from a monopoly with less than half of the server OS market, with healthy competition between Linux, Solaris and other server OSes.
Most disturbing thing about this is that the people developing the weapon have rebranded pain as the "goodbye effect". It really concerns me that weapons manufacturers would sugar coat a simple thing such as causing another human being intense pain. I know none of us wish to think of ourselves as making weapons that are meant to harm other people, but if you downplay the harm and then deploy the weapon. And troops don't understand why a bunch of political protesters that this weapon was used on suddenly want to kill Americans even more than before, then you will have done this country a disservice.
Sure maybe it has the potential to cause less permanent physical harm than beating them over the head with a club, or shooting them with a gun or blowing them up, but you are still talking about purposefully causing intense human pain and suffering. And if you are talking about crowd control then this is presumably going to be used against gathered groups that have been ordered to disband that aren't, such as political protests.
I had a similar disappointing experience both at Circuit City and Best Buy. One problem that the Circuit City sales person explained was that they didn't have a 1080p source for putting on all the 1080p HDTVs, because of the stupid copy restrictions which downgrade a signal to 720p when it is not hooked up through a unsplittable HDMI connection. So, they would have had to have each tv hooked up to a seperate 1080p video source and couldn't just split the signal from one player. He also said that some manufacturers provided individual 1080p capable DVRs with preloaded content, which looked pretty nice, but that the contract for the demo equipment stipulated that it would not be used on any other manufacturers TVs. So, for example they couldn't show me what a 1080p picture would look like on any of the Sharp 1080p HDTVs because they contractually couldn't just switch over a demo device from another manufacturer and the biggest problem was that the store was too cheap and the sales people too lazy to make one demo 1080p player available that could have been moved to each TV that you wanted to see in 1080p. Seemed pretty stupid to me, if you are going to sell these tvs for a lot of money, then you should at least be able to demo them. Ideally, there would be a box connected to each one that allowed you to see how each different input 1080p, 1080i, 720p and 480p all looked on the TV.
It does suck that they couldn't just run a 1080p signal to all of the 1080p TVs from one source. Really makes me worried that the new 1080p TVs are just too wrapped up in HDCP to be worth the extra expense. I'd rather have analog back if it means that we will actually be allowed to see a better picture, instead of being stuck with some unrealized capability of doing so.
What? You just totally supported the point of the person you are replying to, yet you wrote in a tone that made it appear you were rebutting his argument. So, you just said the same exact thing, that you didn't want to have to remember a bunch of passwords either, and then get modded "Insightful"?
Okay then, I'll play along then... I totally disagree with you, having a lot of passwords sucks. I can't believe you would suggest something like that.
Which Cabinet secretaries became president directly? I didn't look at every president, but I did a quick run through and I had thought that the Cabinet secretaries that were eventually elected or became president were either elected as governors or vice presidents first.
Under global warming, this planet will have more arable land in Russia and Canada which will more than offset the loss of other arable lands. We will have overall more rainfall, because of more water vapor in the air, which is a greenhouse gas which could accelerate global warming, but the cloud cover could also moderate global warming because white clouds reflect more radiation back into space.
The testable predictions were made starting in the mid-late 80's. They were tested, and verified. Current observed data backs up their primary predictions. Our understanding is greater now. Denalists will continue to use the "we need more predictions made" until it is literally too late, and then they will say, 'oh well it's too late', without the slightest bit of guilt.
I am no denialist. There is still a wide range in the current models, the lower end of the scale has a relatively modest change in global temperatures. And not all the models got it right, there has been a good bit of refinement based on previous errors and those refinements which could have introduced error have not been tested for predictive power except retroactively. Also there is a general problem of simply extrapolating out current trends, which often works in the short term, but not the long term.
I do not deny that there will be harm, people will die, wars will be fought. But that it may make more sense to address problems that are foreseeable rather than try and avoid problems that are perhaps inevitable.
"I think we can help things without "throwing our economy into a tizzy"
How? By passing laws? That only works so far as solutions are easier to implement than it is to break the law. Beyond a certain point laws will just lead to lawlessness and more violence, not solutions. Emissions are going to level out, not because of legal limits, but rather because the population is leveling out.
Of course climate change is real, that there is serious argument about the reality of a current trend of climate change is a fallacious premise. The evidence is there for all to see, there have been clear changes in average temperatures both in short term recorded measurements as well as through botanical evidence and the longer term geologic evidence.
The scientific questions that remain are over the relative contributions that CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor and even the suns output of radiation is having. And also serious questions remain about how to predict future changes to climate and what regional changes can be predicted, which is much more important than an overall temperature increase. The political controversy is over whether climate change will have an overall or regional negative impact on humans in the future. And whether that impact might be bad enough to sacrifice now and even if such a sacrifice would have a meaningful impact.
The political debate has become unhealthy in that there is a side that is unwilling to consider that at least some, if not all of humanity will benefit from global warming with the potential for increased crop output and less need for heating in populated northern areas. Versus the potential loss of viability of some major population centers due to their proximity to rising ocean levels. These are economic and socio-political questions that can not be addressed by the science. What can and should still be addressed by the science, is to continue to refine the models so that meaningful predictions can be made. Long term forecasts have not been verified. I would want to see more testable predictions made and verified before we start throwing our economy in a tizzy. There may be significantly more economical ways to control climate than a worldwide reduction in C02 emissions. And it should recognized that climate control is exactly what should be the aim of our efforts, not some sort of pseudo religious crusade to put mother nature back in order, as if the earth naturally existed as a stable environment without human existence in the first place. But rather the de facto aim of all sides should be better understand how we can take control of our environment to support a biologically rich biosphere, no matter which thermostat setting you are aiming for. This stop polluting attitude needs to go, our existence has an effect and we should understand that effect so we can reach a desirable result, but the environmentalists need to understand that humans are here to stay and that the earth is not better off without us.
It really is too bad Alexandria was burned. If I could undo one thing in history, I would be tempted to pick that one.
Don't worry with electronic storage and innumerable backups and copies of information we won't face this problem again. Of course with DRM we won't need to burn all of human knowledge, we can just lose the keys to decrypt it.
The exception is if a company realizes it is going to be sued, or the target of a government investigation.
Aurthur Andersen got in trouble because they thought they were going to be subject to a good old Federal probing and someone said to go ahead and follow their document retention policy anyway even though they were asked about the possibility of an investigation, which conveniently enough was to start shredding anything older than a couple months or something like that.
I had thought that it was already illegal to knowingly destroy evidence when you know a investigation is coming... though I see the problem with electronic records, since you could just have a cron job deleting every email older than a year off the email server or something like that. So with this law someone needs to actively change an existing business process if they catch wind of an investigation. This seems problematic, leaving a cron job running is different than a bunch of guys scrambling around trying to shred stuff to "catch up" with their document retention policy after they catch wind of an investigation. Having some legal obligation if you hear a rumor of an investigation is a bit onerous, seems the law should require at least verbal notification to hold emails. Otherwise this looks like just another pressure tool that cops can use to squeeze people for information. I can't see a law that requires people to take action merely upon rumors to be a law that people can realistically follow.
In U.S. history people from following classes have been elected President:
1. State Governors
2. Vice-Presidents
3. U.S. Congressional Representatives
4. Generals
5 (almost never, but once in a century or so) a U.S. Senator
Us Senators have been elected much more regularly than members of the House of Representatives, I think you have those confused. Governors seem to be favored in modern history.
Why is it when Microsoft/oil company/tobacco company is torched whenever they release a study saying Windows/gasoline/smoking is good because they are paid off blow-hards serving their masters but a Wikipedia study saying their articles are accurate (and make no mistake, that is what they are saying) doesn't raise an eyebrow?
Probably because wikipedia is a charitable non profit registered 501(c)(3) educational foundation which means that it is legally obligated by both the US government and State of Florida to serve a public purpose, in this case education. While those companies that you speak of are for profit multi billion dollar corporations trying to people their products and sevices and are often lobbying the government to pass laws to make it easier to sell their stuff.
Sure anything that adds to wikipedia's reputation for accuracy will make donors feel more comfortable about donating to wikipedia. But the simple fact is that every page view on wikipedia is an expense for the Foundation, they make no money directly from their content. The best way to judge a non profit is to look at the number of people getting paid by them. And so far, the Wikimedia Foundation still seams pretty lean compared to other foundations and they are keeping their other overhead expenses reasonably low as far as I can tell.
So, yes it is good to question all studies which promote one product over another, but this simply confirms something that we might have thought anyway. That if you know more about something than others, then you are in a better position to judge the accuracy of what was written about that something.
Unfortunately, one of the proposals the broadcasters are floating is to greatly reduce or even eliminate OTA HDTV broadcasts, on the grounds that "80 or 90 percent" of households are already cable/satellite sunscribers.
Isn't that a better argument to just drop the broadcasts altogether then? We could better use the bandwidth for wireless communications if nobody is getting broadcast tv anymore.
We have gone through decades of negotiations over a new higher definition broadcast standard, all the broadcasters have upgraded their equipment and now the broadcasters want out? I don't see what benefit they would get by changing the law now? Most tvs on sale now are HDTV compatible, I don't see much point in sticking to SD broadcast, better to drop support as soon as possible and reduce costs having to support two separate broadcasts.
At least with proprietary software you have the right to demand that things get fixed, and if you don't get what you want then you can find an alternative.
Hmm... Not so sure about that. When you buy a version of software, don't you buy it with bugs? Especially if the bugs are documented before you buy it, seems you have no legal recourse to demand that they fix any specific bug. Really the comfort seems to come from your ability to bitch to someone on the phone about a bug rather than any effective means of getting it fixed on your time schedule.
With open source software if a bug is mission critical, then you can hire someone to fix it if you can't fix it yourself. You aren't reliant on the arbitrary priorities of another business. With closed source, especially when you are a smaller customer of a larger software company, then all you can do is demand that the company fix the bug. But you you can only push then as far as your contract goes, which usually won't be very far at all. Sometimes demands work, sometimes they don't. Additionally, I consider open source to be a real insurance against a company dropping support for a product, which happens more often than not.
OK, look at it the other way. Just because you're prepared to die to test out a new treatment doesn't mean that I'm prepared to kill you with it. We usually have to be pretty darned sure that something won't be harmful before starting testing on humans.
Who is this "we" you keep talking about?
they wouldn't need to develop it just negotiate with Ubuntu. It's easier to maintain than Windows.
Isn't it common knowledge that google engineers are regular contributors to Ubuntu already or is this just an unsubstantiated rumor? Seems that Google could just re brand a version of Ubuntu to give the name some marketing weight and continue to contribute back to the Ubuntu project.
Bigger thing would be to set up some deals with at least a few top computer makers to do a good job of offering their computers with GoogleOS or Ubuntu preinstalled. Ideally they could get at least 3 of these manufacturers on board: Dell, HP, Fujitsu, Toshiba, NEC, Sony, Lenovo Group and Gateway. Google could be a very powerful sales and marketing ally for any of those companies. Basically, any company except Dell should jump at the chance to offer a Google OS installed computer if Google helps with direct marketing and sales. Dell and HP would be key of course as the top sellers of PCs, but I think a good business relationship with google could propel a smaller company into higher sales. Even a more democratic approach and a focus on smaller computer makers with combined sales that still make up a larger portion of the market, could give google the kind of market penetration that would keep Microsoft competing on its own turf.