the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) decided to drastically increase the royalties paid to musicians and record labels for streaming songs online
The new streaming royalty rates don't increase the royalties paid to musicians and record labels, they just increase the royalties collected from streamers. The RIAA (ie SoundScan, and predecessors/competitors BMI & ASCAP) have never paid all of the collected royalties to its rightful owners. Instead, the collection agencies keep it for themselves. I hope you're not surprised.
So it's excellent news that NPR is fighting this move. I hope NPR's entry also encourages other well-positioned orgs to complain. These new rates completely eliminate hobbyist and personal streaming to friends, by keeping the $500 per year minimum fee that is now equal to the per-play fee for supporting many dozens of simultaneous listeners. That minimum should be totally discarded, even more important than lowering the arbitrarily high (but still somewhat affordable, until it rises again over the next couple/few years) per-play rates that also squeeze out noncommercial and small commercial webcasters.
That's not "detailed release notes", that's marketing spin. Release notes would mention specific apps, like evolution, and specific fixes, not just buzzwords and superficial brags about how the experience is better.
Such marketsprach has its place. But the release notes are even more important. And even more important is not pretending that marketsprach is release notes.
If GNOME release managers don't release that by themselves, then the project is in serious trouble.
What the hell is wrong with you, that you can't just ask the simple question without phrasing it as an insult? Why would I lift a finger to educate you, when you're acting like a jerk?
Try again, and I'll explain. You're free to disagree, but don't be such a dick.
They should just make driving while distracted a crime, determined whenever you have broken an actual behavior law, like weaving, or colliding with someone. Make it criminal, with fines, required education, jailtime for repeat offenses, and prohibitions (or rate increases) on insurance coverage. And don't pretend that legislators can keep up with specific technologies. Or that crashing because you're arguing with your passenger is OK.
But look for distractions only after it actually results in something going wrong. There's no reason to punish or constrain those of us who can handle these devices while driving without sacrificing safety, just because those who can't are reckless enough to try anyway. Laws should make it easier to report bad drivers on the road, like by sending cameraphone pix and movies to 911. But the creeping "preemptive" laws that destroy freedom for those of us who can handle it aren't worth their occasional benefits.
Blu-Ray finally has a recording drives. The blank discs seem expensive: 25GB (1-layer) are at least $9 each, 50GB (2-layer) are over $15 each. The expensive drives are over $480, so the drives are only 60x the price of the discs.
DVD-R drives are about $14, DVD-R discs are about $0.20 each, making them about 70x. That's pretty close to the BD-R ratio, actually more expensive, before BD-R discs are even sold in larger than 2-packs. $480 isn't even that expensive for a new recordable drive (that just replaces an old DVD-R drive in a PC, with new drivers) - they're usually introduced around at least $800.
If this keeps up, BD-R will offer drives below $250 by the end of 2007, and discs in 50 or 100 packs for under $1 each. That's $0.02 per GB, while HDs will be probably about $0.20 per GB. Even including a drive, if in a 200-disc changer, that's maybe $650 for 10TB, which is $0.065 per GB.
RCA and LG are foreign (French and S Korean, respectively) corporations with $BILLIONS in marketing budgets. Yet the US government wants to give a $BILLION of our tax money to them in direct subsidies for a new product, which will cost more than the coupon, so therefore even more profit for them.
Which will serve to keep even more Americans with analog TVs, instead of the digital ones that actually exploit the services for which our taxes already subsidize (for $BILLIONS more) TV broadcasters and content producers.
While our country is $TRILLIONS in unsupportable debt. Mostly because we watch too much TV.
Cohn and his colleagues have created a design that they believe could triple the power of a test engine. [...] A vehicle that used this approach would operate around 25 percent more efficiently than a vehicle with a conventional engine.
Triple the power doesn't mean triple the efficiency, if "antiknock" means more fuel is burned. 25% more efficient is more like it. Fuelcells are typically 50% fuel efficient, compared with 40% maximum (to date) internal combustion. That's about a 25% efficiency increase, it's already here, and it's just getting started. Plus the drastically reduced pollution (especially Greenhouse pollution) means huge energy efficiency at the end of the cycle, when climate disasters are avoided. Meanwhile fuelcell efficiency is just getting started, racing towards 80% (over triple typical internal combustion efficiency) and beyond.
So while this advance might be good for the market that's not ready for fuelcells, the fuelcells still look better. But at least we've got scientists and engineers working on fuel efficiency, and not just ways to squander the remaining fuel for combustion engines. That's a big change in efficiency in itself.
Man, I have spent more on taxes than you will earn at JPL in your life. And I like paying taxes, except the part on waste, including most of the war and intel budgets, as well as the corporate subsidies, and the unnecessary debt that all generates. I'd be happy paying about what I pay, if there were no debt and none of those wastes of my (and my neighbors') money.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, having invented several DSP and Internet technologies through the 1990s. Hell, I read every issue of NASA's technology transfer magazine from 1990-1993. I made a bundle in the 1990s, in both the US and Canada, through a consulting company that developed and deployed from my library and architectures: a businessman, inventor, and creator of jobs - and taxpayer in multiple countries. I paid more taxes personally on that, before I retired, than you will earn income. Plus all the corporate taxes and payroll taxes, mostly in Canada where we incorporated and paid most of our employees. I was happy to pay those taxes, because they didn't include most of the wasted taxes I paid in the US.
Meanwhile I had as clients the Canadian federal government, the Ontario provincial government, the Toronto and Ottawa metro governments, the US Navy, the CIA...
Since I've come out of retirement a few years ago, I've worked with NASA and its Aerospace Corp supplier. As I said, I'm most proud of my taxes paying for NASA of all of what I pay for. I know how the IP gets divided up from all government budgets, including grants, as I also work as the tech advisor to the NYC City Council's tech committee. And therefore I know there is a fair amount of IP returned to the public, as well as way too much that I pay to send to private corporations subsidized by my taxes. But when they're at least US corporations, I'm not as mad as when they're foreign corporations. And when it's not IP, but competitiveness, that's exported on my dime, I'm almost as mad.
I have answered the question of how D-Wave's subsidized project work costs me money without benefit whenever it's asked, including when I first posted in this thread. If D-Wave had to pay the full cost of NASA's fab work without years of taxpaid subsidies to the fab, they couldn't afford it. Simple. Yet you don't seem to be able to understand, or even notice, that simple answer I've given. Maybe JPL should review your competence, instead of paying you with my taxes.
I know all too well from Aerospace's preemtion onto flight exigencies how prioritization works at NASA. Which is exactly how I prefer it. So what? What is that strawman you're offering supposed to mean? Probably about as much as the homesteader red herring you're throwing out. And about as much as your denial that there are other, domestic, jobs for that NASA fab to do, even if they're not superconducting quantum computers - which is what I said, not the strawman you'd prefer to argue about.
I've got all the facts. You've got nothing but contempt for the demands of a taxpayer who's paying for your lab that our money not create foreign competition, even if American competition hasn't yet entered the specific market and phase as the Canadians we're now pushing farther ahead to pioneer the industry. You don't know anything about me, and apparently even less about the economics I'm legitimately complaining about.
Well, at least it's clear that your ax to grind is defending JPL, where you work. You don't say whether you work in the JPL low-temperature fab or other related department, but at least you clarified some details of how the economics of hiring JPL for commercial projects works.
D-Wave's is apparently the first commercial superconducting quantum computer, therefore the only one. But it's not the only such project, just the only commercial one. The distinction between commercial and academic projects is largely bureaucratic, as your mention of CalTech's interest in JPL IP demonstrates, so it's a disingenuous claim. Meanwhile, what difference does it make if D-Wave is the only one? The purpose of government investment in techniques like those at JPL used by D-Wave is to help create projects, create sciences, engineering disciplines and industries. For the benefit of the American people. There are other superconducting projects, or just extremely low temperature engineering, even if not a superconducting quantum computer, including internal to NASA.
Given your claims that CalTech will own the IP developed to complete this project, except the actual chip IP to be retained by D-Wave, I don't see how the public investments in JPL are getting me (or other members of the public) "a lot for paying nothing". Especially since it's possible only because we have paid so much to put this lab in this position.
As to Griffin, as I have mentioned, he's a hero only to Star Wars scammers and the lobbyists/bribees who love them. Including people at CalTech and JPL who have squandered billions of public dollars outside NASA, now eagerly awaiting NASA's descent into the service of this expensive boondoggle.
So go back to your JPL lab. Don't presume to tell people who actually do survive out here in the real world anything about "the wild", when you're dependent on the Alice in Wonderland world of public funding. I'm not interested in learning the contrived, cherrypicked facts you use to justify sending my tax investments abroad. And I'm certainly not interested in hearing you champion spending my money subsidizing foreign competition, just because it pays your bills, too.
Also needed is automatic translation by, say, a Firefox extension, from the domain name's registered home language (if any) into the user's default language. How do you say "goatse" in Urdu?
A good complement to the new system to preempt the huge coming problem of "glyph masquerade" would be registrations including a list of the domain name translated into different languages. Or at least a declaration of the home language. Without enforcement (ICANN doesn't even enforce name/address veracity) it won't be proof of anything, but it would be a start. And 3rd party databases could include in trust ratings the completeness of the name entry, as well as cross-checks.
I'd like my GUI to at least indicate when a domain name is rendered in foreign glyphs, so I can try to tell whether it's really just foreign glyphs that look like a familiar English word, fooling me into clicking on something totally unrelated.
Opening the system to foreign scripts and languages will get even more worthwhile people and orgs onto the Net, so it's well worth the risks of misidentification. But the risks are real, and largely predictable. We should roll out the new, inclusive system with risk mitigations to welcome those new people in greater security.
It's debatable who "created" the market. When I had a Newton in 1996, there was really little to no market. People like me had wanted a handheld computer assistant since we were little kids, and there weren't many more than us in the market. The handwriting wasn't the only thing that didn't appeal: it was too big, too slow (noninteractive) and did too little. And people weren't yet so overwhelmed with personal info that we needed a device to manage it.
But by 1997, the Pilot offered a tiny, fast device that just worked, as a peripheral. That extra year was the one where the Web reached critical mass of users, and thereby so many people using computers to communicate with each other (email, IRC/chat, discussion threads, etc) that a computer to help was meeting a wide demand.
The lesson of the Pilot is that people want the minimal assistance that just works. Microsoft demonstrates with every release the dangers of automation being half-bright and annoying. The most elegant solution that just assists and doesn't take over will find existing markets that didn't even know they existed, or had that demand.
If I voted for Cheney a time or two, I wouldn't go around pretending to anyone anymore that I know what I'm doing, or that anyone should take my political opinions seriously.
That guy is the devil, and 50M Americans voted twice to give him more power than anyone ever had before, except maybe his partner in crime, Bush. And of course they voted for Bush, too.
But I still hear from so many of these people about how the world really is, how it should be, and what we should do to make it that way. Even though they have demonstrated that their way of thinking about it is worse than useless: it's terminally dangerous.
Those are facts. But there are so many other facts about the political system that it's far from as simple as you describe. And full of opportunities for constructive change.
For example, look at the new Democratic senators from Montana and Virginia, respectively. They were elected outside the party apparatus, by activist party members. They're both fairly conservative, though delivered by activists more liberal than the Democratic party itself. They are not part of the deterministic system that you describe as if it's the only game going. And a third candidate, in Connecticut, forced another senator out of the party entirely, even though he ran for its presidential candidacy only 2 years prior, and VP 6 years prior. Outsiders managed to send in one third of the 6 new Democrats comprising the new Democratic Senate majority, and almost sent half.
The House election had many other similar campaigns.
Over $2 BILLION was spent in 2006, which wasn't even a presidential year. Next year, probably $4-6 BILLION will be spent. On control of about $4 TRILLION a year, over 10% of the Earth's economy. To convince over 110 million Americans what to think and do on one day in November. That is a very complex system. The major players do indeed control most of America's wealth, and even more of the rest of the world's. So it's pretty impressive that outsiders and activists can create any surprises at all, let alone make any difference, which they often do past controlling thresholds.
But the most essential ingredient is believing that you can do something. Without which the dominant elite doesn't have to spend much money or time controlling even more. If everyone just became fatalistic like you're recommending, then we'd all be doing steadily worse, instead of the gradual improvements punctuated by periodic catastrophes. And it can get a lot worse - a lot worse.
You can be right, if you want, by giving up. You can't be sure you'll be right, or get anywhere, by trying change. But it's the only way you possibly can.
Griffin has been "very good for NASA" only because, as a Star Wars careerist, he is managing its conversion to the Star Wars program. Thereby the target for larger budgets, like the extras Tom Delay pumped in before he went down for livin' the thug life. While shepherding Bush's new NASA mission supporting Pentagon and US intel "space supremacy", Griffin has also overseen Bush's corporate agenda denying Greenhouse research and even mentioning the Big Bang.
The Canadian contract money on top of the NASA budget will surely be used to justify cutting my tax dollars going to NASA science, as "model privatizing". While sending its fruits to a foreign company competing against American companies, subsidized by all the past tax dollars invested into JPL.
So I've got plenty of complaints with NASA. I've got lots of pride in what NASA has done, still does. Which is why seeing NASA doing it for foreigners on my dime, even if their penny gets their results delivered, makes me mad.
I did oversimplify: before PalmOS went to Access, Palm dumped it into the spinoff PalmSource. Seems a distinction without a difference.
When did Palm reacquire the PalmOS source? The exclusive rights, so Access cannot deliver a Linux phone with a PalmOS GUI/compatibility component?
The success of Palm following Apple's abortive Newton (I had original releases of each) just shows why Palm's execs were foolish to let the Blackberry steal all their growth. And the revolving cast among all those players (except RIM, which seems isolated in Canada, to no apparent detriment) shows where the spirit resides. None of these execs have been tenacious to the vision long enough to harvest what they've sown. But Jobs wasn't there to get the Newton wrong: he killed it as premature when he returned, which it was (with which I could agree, as an owner at the time). Now Jobs is smart enough to harvest all their investments in the future of "computing", much as has did with the Apple I/][, then the Mac, then the iPod.
Apple can kill Blackberry. Since Palm has been no match for either Blackberry or even Microsoft's crappy competition, I'd say Apple will crush at least one of them, which will probably be Palm.
The main reason I'm unhappy about that is that the touchpad interface will very possibly get thrown out with the Palm bathwater. But if Jobs is committed to that interface mode, then finally we can directly work with the GUI, rather than that placebo mouse that Jobs addicted everyone to for the past quarter century.
If you still believe that Bush flew his duty during Vietnam then there's no point arguing with you. You'll believe whatever bullshit they manufacture to cover that coward's failures.
But since he saved us from Saddam's nukes, it's all OK, right?
Palm is dead. Over 2 years ago Palm sold its OS to the Japanese "Access" corp that makes so many Japanese phones and their most popular web browser. So Access could finish their long heralded "Cobalt" OS, and switch to a new OS which was Linux, under Cobalt (retained as just GUI and compatibility layer). They were supposed to release Linux (+ Cobalt GUI) phones last Fall, before anyone had heard about the (real) iPhone.
But they didn't. Just as Palm let the Blackberry come from behind and eat the market Palm created, Access has let PalmOS keep it from even reaching the market before Apple is eating it, without even a released product.
It's all too bad. The PalmOS approach, focused simplicity on tasks, designed as a tough peripheral, with the most natural interface, writing on the screen, was the right paradigm. Handled properly, it should have forced all computing, whether workstation, mobile, phone or mediaplayer, to "just work", adopting many of its friendliest innovations. Now that job, as usual, is up to Apple.
Dell probably makes about $50 per computer in HW margins. They have to make their money in increasing market share. So even if Dell pays MS only $50 per PC, selling Linux instead can double their margins. While increasing their market into one none of their competitors own, either.
On that level, selling Linux is a compelling operation into which to invest a bunch of money. And since Dell also makes customized PCs for easier support and other competitive advantages, making a custom Linux distro that suits their needs should be another natural evolution for them.
Of course that cost will be passed to the consumer. Typically of tech, the early adopters will probably have to spend more to pay for the initial R&D investment. Until HP does it, too, and the price wars begin. With the free distros on the cheapest (if not used) HW also compete with the prices. Until the market carves itself down into those people who need the preinstall, support and HW consistency of a Dell enough to pay for it.
Generally true. Though the public could also demand better reporting from both government and the media. Instead, it votes for American Idols.
Thanks for the agreement. This thread I've spent so much time battling obnoxious arguers that it's easy to get as apathetic as an American is expected to be.
So Dell spends a $million studying which Linux distro (including desktop) is best for Dell, and then supports that one. Probably its own distro derived from one that has a strong commercial support contract for Dell. It doesn't support anything but the basic use-case, whether that's office suite, web/email/whatever server, web terminal, or whichever. Then they sell PC configured only that way, and tell people who buy it that reconfiguring it for any other use case voids their support warranty.
If they did that, then Dell would wind up with a PC much easier/cheaper to support than a proprietary Windows PC. Recurrent problems could be fixed by Dell, or paid by Dell to their upstream distro team to fix, without waiting for MS to care.
And they'd sell a PC that didn't require sending a few hundred bucks to MS for licenses. They could rig their package repository to authenticate and charge a SW subscription, then charge SW vendors to deploy their SW through it.
There's a lot of money in that, and it's not so hard. While appealing to the most fanboy customer base out there. I wonder if "not pissing off the Microsoft cash cow" is really the reason.
Slashdot Mirror
The new streaming royalty rates don't increase the royalties paid to musicians and record labels, they just increase the royalties collected from streamers. The RIAA (ie SoundScan, and predecessors/competitors BMI & ASCAP) have never paid all of the collected royalties to its rightful owners. Instead, the collection agencies keep it for themselves. I hope you're not surprised.
So it's excellent news that NPR is fighting this move. I hope NPR's entry also encourages other well-positioned orgs to complain. These new rates completely eliminate hobbyist and personal streaming to friends, by keeping the $500 per year minimum fee that is now equal to the per-play fee for supporting many dozens of simultaneous listeners. That minimum should be totally discarded, even more important than lowering the arbitrarily high (but still somewhat affordable, until it rises again over the next couple/few years) per-play rates that also squeeze out noncommercial and small commercial webcasters.
The Yellowstone Caldera is in Wyoming. That's the state that also produced Dick Cheney and sent him to Congress.
Just more evidence that Cheney is the devil.
Marketing doesn't always imply money. Or would you deny that GNOME has market share, just because it's free?
That's not "detailed release notes", that's marketing spin. Release notes would mention specific apps, like evolution, and specific fixes, not just buzzwords and superficial brags about how the experience is better.
Such marketsprach has its place. But the release notes are even more important. And even more important is not pretending that marketsprach is release notes.
If GNOME release managers don't release that by themselves, then the project is in serious trouble.
What the hell is wrong with you, that you can't just ask the simple question without phrasing it as an insult? Why would I lift a finger to educate you, when you're acting like a jerk?
Try again, and I'll explain. You're free to disagree, but don't be such a dick.
They should just make driving while distracted a crime, determined whenever you have broken an actual behavior law, like weaving, or colliding with someone. Make it criminal, with fines, required education, jailtime for repeat offenses, and prohibitions (or rate increases) on insurance coverage. And don't pretend that legislators can keep up with specific technologies. Or that crashing because you're arguing with your passenger is OK.
But look for distractions only after it actually results in something going wrong. There's no reason to punish or constrain those of us who can handle these devices while driving without sacrificing safety, just because those who can't are reckless enough to try anyway. Laws should make it easier to report bad drivers on the road, like by sending cameraphone pix and movies to 911. But the creeping "preemptive" laws that destroy freedom for those of us who can handle it aren't worth their occasional benefits.
Blu-Ray finally has a recording drives. The blank discs seem expensive: 25GB (1-layer) are at least $9 each, 50GB (2-layer) are over $15 each. The expensive drives are over $480, so the drives are only 60x the price of the discs.
DVD-R drives are about $14, DVD-R discs are about $0.20 each, making them about 70x. That's pretty close to the BD-R ratio, actually more expensive, before BD-R discs are even sold in larger than 2-packs. $480 isn't even that expensive for a new recordable drive (that just replaces an old DVD-R drive in a PC, with new drivers) - they're usually introduced around at least $800.
If this keeps up, BD-R will offer drives below $250 by the end of 2007, and discs in 50 or 100 packs for under $1 each. That's $0.02 per GB, while HDs will be probably about $0.20 per GB. Even including a drive, if in a 200-disc changer, that's maybe $650 for 10TB, which is $0.065 per GB.
RCA and LG are foreign (French and S Korean, respectively) corporations with $BILLIONS in marketing budgets. Yet the US government wants to give a $BILLION of our tax money to them in direct subsidies for a new product, which will cost more than the coupon, so therefore even more profit for them.
Which will serve to keep even more Americans with analog TVs, instead of the digital ones that actually exploit the services for which our taxes already subsidize (for $BILLIONS more) TV broadcasters and content producers.
While our country is $TRILLIONS in unsupportable debt. Mostly because we watch too much TV.
Apparently you're not familiar with the idiom of "X, say, Y", which means "for example Y, among other appropriate measures".
Perhaps you need an automatic translation from English to, say, duh.
Triple the power doesn't mean triple the efficiency, if "antiknock" means more fuel is burned. 25% more efficient is more like it. Fuelcells are typically 50% fuel efficient, compared with 40% maximum (to date) internal combustion. That's about a 25% efficiency increase, it's already here, and it's just getting started. Plus the drastically reduced pollution (especially Greenhouse pollution) means huge energy efficiency at the end of the cycle, when climate disasters are avoided. Meanwhile fuelcell efficiency is just getting started, racing towards 80% (over triple typical internal combustion efficiency) and beyond.
So while this advance might be good for the market that's not ready for fuelcells, the fuelcells still look better. But at least we've got scientists and engineers working on fuel efficiency, and not just ways to squander the remaining fuel for combustion engines. That's a big change in efficiency in itself.
Man, I have spent more on taxes than you will earn at JPL in your life. And I like paying taxes, except the part on waste, including most of the war and intel budgets, as well as the corporate subsidies, and the unnecessary debt that all generates. I'd be happy paying about what I pay, if there were no debt and none of those wastes of my (and my neighbors') money.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, having invented several DSP and Internet technologies through the 1990s. Hell, I read every issue of NASA's technology transfer magazine from 1990-1993. I made a bundle in the 1990s, in both the US and Canada, through a consulting company that developed and deployed from my library and architectures: a businessman, inventor, and creator of jobs - and taxpayer in multiple countries. I paid more taxes personally on that, before I retired, than you will earn income. Plus all the corporate taxes and payroll taxes, mostly in Canada where we incorporated and paid most of our employees. I was happy to pay those taxes, because they didn't include most of the wasted taxes I paid in the US.
Meanwhile I had as clients the Canadian federal government, the Ontario provincial government, the Toronto and Ottawa metro governments, the US Navy, the CIA...
Since I've come out of retirement a few years ago, I've worked with NASA and its Aerospace Corp supplier. As I said, I'm most proud of my taxes paying for NASA of all of what I pay for. I know how the IP gets divided up from all government budgets, including grants, as I also work as the tech advisor to the NYC City Council's tech committee. And therefore I know there is a fair amount of IP returned to the public, as well as way too much that I pay to send to private corporations subsidized by my taxes. But when they're at least US corporations, I'm not as mad as when they're foreign corporations. And when it's not IP, but competitiveness, that's exported on my dime, I'm almost as mad.
I have answered the question of how D-Wave's subsidized project work costs me money without benefit whenever it's asked, including when I first posted in this thread. If D-Wave had to pay the full cost of NASA's fab work without years of taxpaid subsidies to the fab, they couldn't afford it. Simple. Yet you don't seem to be able to understand, or even notice, that simple answer I've given. Maybe JPL should review your competence, instead of paying you with my taxes.
I know all too well from Aerospace's preemtion onto flight exigencies how prioritization works at NASA. Which is exactly how I prefer it. So what? What is that strawman you're offering supposed to mean? Probably about as much as the homesteader red herring you're throwing out. And about as much as your denial that there are other, domestic, jobs for that NASA fab to do, even if they're not superconducting quantum computers - which is what I said, not the strawman you'd prefer to argue about.
I've got all the facts. You've got nothing but contempt for the demands of a taxpayer who's paying for your lab that our money not create foreign competition, even if American competition hasn't yet entered the specific market and phase as the Canadians we're now pushing farther ahead to pioneer the industry. You don't know anything about me, and apparently even less about the economics I'm legitimately complaining about.
Well, at least it's clear that your ax to grind is defending JPL, where you work. You don't say whether you work in the JPL low-temperature fab or other related department, but at least you clarified some details of how the economics of hiring JPL for commercial projects works.
D-Wave's is apparently the first commercial superconducting quantum computer, therefore the only one. But it's not the only such project, just the only commercial one. The distinction between commercial and academic projects is largely bureaucratic, as your mention of CalTech's interest in JPL IP demonstrates, so it's a disingenuous claim. Meanwhile, what difference does it make if D-Wave is the only one? The purpose of government investment in techniques like those at JPL used by D-Wave is to help create projects, create sciences, engineering disciplines and industries. For the benefit of the American people. There are other superconducting projects, or just extremely low temperature engineering, even if not a superconducting quantum computer, including internal to NASA.
Given your claims that CalTech will own the IP developed to complete this project, except the actual chip IP to be retained by D-Wave, I don't see how the public investments in JPL are getting me (or other members of the public) "a lot for paying nothing". Especially since it's possible only because we have paid so much to put this lab in this position.
As to Griffin, as I have mentioned, he's a hero only to Star Wars scammers and the lobbyists/bribees who love them. Including people at CalTech and JPL who have squandered billions of public dollars outside NASA, now eagerly awaiting NASA's descent into the service of this expensive boondoggle.
So go back to your JPL lab. Don't presume to tell people who actually do survive out here in the real world anything about "the wild", when you're dependent on the Alice in Wonderland world of public funding. I'm not interested in learning the contrived, cherrypicked facts you use to justify sending my tax investments abroad. And I'm certainly not interested in hearing you champion spending my money subsidizing foreign competition, just because it pays your bills, too.
Also needed is automatic translation by, say, a Firefox extension, from the domain name's registered home language (if any) into the user's default language. How do you say "goatse" in Urdu?
A good complement to the new system to preempt the huge coming problem of "glyph masquerade" would be registrations including a list of the domain name translated into different languages. Or at least a declaration of the home language. Without enforcement (ICANN doesn't even enforce name/address veracity) it won't be proof of anything, but it would be a start. And 3rd party databases could include in trust ratings the completeness of the name entry, as well as cross-checks.
I'd like my GUI to at least indicate when a domain name is rendered in foreign glyphs, so I can try to tell whether it's really just foreign glyphs that look like a familiar English word, fooling me into clicking on something totally unrelated.
Opening the system to foreign scripts and languages will get even more worthwhile people and orgs onto the Net, so it's well worth the risks of misidentification. But the risks are real, and largely predictable. We should roll out the new, inclusive system with risk mitigations to welcome those new people in greater security.
It's debatable who "created" the market. When I had a Newton in 1996, there was really little to no market. People like me had wanted a handheld computer assistant since we were little kids, and there weren't many more than us in the market. The handwriting wasn't the only thing that didn't appeal: it was too big, too slow (noninteractive) and did too little. And people weren't yet so overwhelmed with personal info that we needed a device to manage it.
But by 1997, the Pilot offered a tiny, fast device that just worked, as a peripheral. That extra year was the one where the Web reached critical mass of users, and thereby so many people using computers to communicate with each other (email, IRC/chat, discussion threads, etc) that a computer to help was meeting a wide demand.
The lesson of the Pilot is that people want the minimal assistance that just works. Microsoft demonstrates with every release the dangers of automation being half-bright and annoying. The most elegant solution that just assists and doesn't take over will find existing markets that didn't even know they existed, or had that demand.
If I voted for Cheney a time or two, I wouldn't go around pretending to anyone anymore that I know what I'm doing, or that anyone should take my political opinions seriously.
That guy is the devil, and 50M Americans voted twice to give him more power than anyone ever had before, except maybe his partner in crime, Bush. And of course they voted for Bush, too.
But I still hear from so many of these people about how the world really is, how it should be, and what we should do to make it that way. Even though they have demonstrated that their way of thinking about it is worse than useless: it's terminally dangerous.
Those are facts. But there are so many other facts about the political system that it's far from as simple as you describe. And full of opportunities for constructive change.
For example, look at the new Democratic senators from Montana and Virginia, respectively. They were elected outside the party apparatus, by activist party members. They're both fairly conservative, though delivered by activists more liberal than the Democratic party itself. They are not part of the deterministic system that you describe as if it's the only game going. And a third candidate, in Connecticut, forced another senator out of the party entirely, even though he ran for its presidential candidacy only 2 years prior, and VP 6 years prior. Outsiders managed to send in one third of the 6 new Democrats comprising the new Democratic Senate majority, and almost sent half.
The House election had many other similar campaigns.
Over $2 BILLION was spent in 2006, which wasn't even a presidential year. Next year, probably $4-6 BILLION will be spent. On control of about $4 TRILLION a year, over 10% of the Earth's economy. To convince over 110 million Americans what to think and do on one day in November. That is a very complex system. The major players do indeed control most of America's wealth, and even more of the rest of the world's. So it's pretty impressive that outsiders and activists can create any surprises at all, let alone make any difference, which they often do past controlling thresholds.
But the most essential ingredient is believing that you can do something. Without which the dominant elite doesn't have to spend much money or time controlling even more. If everyone just became fatalistic like you're recommending, then we'd all be doing steadily worse, instead of the gradual improvements punctuated by periodic catastrophes. And it can get a lot worse - a lot worse.
You can be right, if you want, by giving up. You can't be sure you'll be right, or get anywhere, by trying change. But it's the only way you possibly can.
Griffin has been "very good for NASA" only because, as a Star Wars careerist, he is managing its conversion to the Star Wars program. Thereby the target for larger budgets, like the extras Tom Delay pumped in before he went down for livin' the thug life. While shepherding Bush's new NASA mission supporting Pentagon and US intel "space supremacy", Griffin has also overseen Bush's corporate agenda denying Greenhouse research and even mentioning the Big Bang.
The Canadian contract money on top of the NASA budget will surely be used to justify cutting my tax dollars going to NASA science, as "model privatizing". While sending its fruits to a foreign company competing against American companies, subsidized by all the past tax dollars invested into JPL.
So I've got plenty of complaints with NASA. I've got lots of pride in what NASA has done, still does. Which is why seeing NASA doing it for foreigners on my dime, even if their penny gets their results delivered, makes me mad.
I did oversimplify: before PalmOS went to Access, Palm dumped it into the spinoff PalmSource. Seems a distinction without a difference.
When did Palm reacquire the PalmOS source? The exclusive rights, so Access cannot deliver a Linux phone with a PalmOS GUI/compatibility component?
The success of Palm following Apple's abortive Newton (I had original releases of each) just shows why Palm's execs were foolish to let the Blackberry steal all their growth. And the revolving cast among all those players (except RIM, which seems isolated in Canada, to no apparent detriment) shows where the spirit resides. None of these execs have been tenacious to the vision long enough to harvest what they've sown. But Jobs wasn't there to get the Newton wrong: he killed it as premature when he returned, which it was (with which I could agree, as an owner at the time). Now Jobs is smart enough to harvest all their investments in the future of "computing", much as has did with the Apple I/][, then the Mac, then the iPod.
Apple can kill Blackberry. Since Palm has been no match for either Blackberry or even Microsoft's crappy competition, I'd say Apple will crush at least one of them, which will probably be Palm.
The main reason I'm unhappy about that is that the touchpad interface will very possibly get thrown out with the Palm bathwater. But if Jobs is committed to that interface mode, then finally we can directly work with the GUI, rather than that placebo mouse that Jobs addicted everyone to for the past quarter century.
If you still believe that Bush flew his duty during Vietnam then there's no point arguing with you. You'll believe whatever bullshit they manufacture to cover that coward's failures.
But since he saved us from Saddam's nukes, it's all OK, right?
I wonder whether you can install Linux on that sucker and get all its built-in devices to work right.
Palm is dead. Over 2 years ago Palm sold its OS to the Japanese "Access" corp that makes so many Japanese phones and their most popular web browser. So Access could finish their long heralded "Cobalt" OS, and switch to a new OS which was Linux, under Cobalt (retained as just GUI and compatibility layer). They were supposed to release Linux (+ Cobalt GUI) phones last Fall, before anyone had heard about the (real) iPhone.
But they didn't. Just as Palm let the Blackberry come from behind and eat the market Palm created, Access has let PalmOS keep it from even reaching the market before Apple is eating it, without even a released product.
It's all too bad. The PalmOS approach, focused simplicity on tasks, designed as a tough peripheral, with the most natural interface, writing on the screen, was the right paradigm. Handled properly, it should have forced all computing, whether workstation, mobile, phone or mediaplayer, to "just work", adopting many of its friendliest innovations. Now that job, as usual, is up to Apple.
Dell probably makes about $50 per computer in HW margins. They have to make their money in increasing market share. So even if Dell pays MS only $50 per PC, selling Linux instead can double their margins. While increasing their market into one none of their competitors own, either.
On that level, selling Linux is a compelling operation into which to invest a bunch of money. And since Dell also makes customized PCs for easier support and other competitive advantages, making a custom Linux distro that suits their needs should be another natural evolution for them.
Of course that cost will be passed to the consumer. Typically of tech, the early adopters will probably have to spend more to pay for the initial R&D investment. Until HP does it, too, and the price wars begin. With the free distros on the cheapest (if not used) HW also compete with the prices. Until the market carves itself down into those people who need the preinstall, support and HW consistency of a Dell enough to pay for it.
Generally true. Though the public could also demand better reporting from both government and the media. Instead, it votes for American Idols.
Thanks for the agreement. This thread I've spent so much time battling obnoxious arguers that it's easy to get as apathetic as an American is expected to be.
So Dell spends a $million studying which Linux distro (including desktop) is best for Dell, and then supports that one. Probably its own distro derived from one that has a strong commercial support contract for Dell. It doesn't support anything but the basic use-case, whether that's office suite, web/email/whatever server, web terminal, or whichever. Then they sell PC configured only that way, and tell people who buy it that reconfiguring it for any other use case voids their support warranty.
If they did that, then Dell would wind up with a PC much easier/cheaper to support than a proprietary Windows PC. Recurrent problems could be fixed by Dell, or paid by Dell to their upstream distro team to fix, without waiting for MS to care.
And they'd sell a PC that didn't require sending a few hundred bucks to MS for licenses. They could rig their package repository to authenticate and charge a SW subscription, then charge SW vendors to deploy their SW through it.
There's a lot of money in that, and it's not so hard. While appealing to the most fanboy customer base out there. I wonder if "not pissing off the Microsoft cash cow" is really the reason.
Moderation -1
100% Troll
Foreign looter trollMods hate it when you point out how they're arrogant freeloaders.