For music, the DRM is all but gone. That Zune still carries DRM proves that to MS the end user is never the customer.
The emerging problem is certainly books and video. Niether of these is going to be trivial to convert to electronic format anytime soon, and the files don't seem be trivial to burn to an unprotected format either. This means that video and books are still on the list, as music used to be, of only be useful as long as the files stay in good shape. It is interesting that Amazon has chosen to take this one step further and limit it to a number of devices. As the article states, since one is to upgrade often, and the files are owned by Amazon, this puts an effective lifetime on the books. Where on can buy a hardback and refer to it for a lifetime, the Kindle will eventually break.
I think this is a good argument against most e-book readers. The publishers are not going to fully support them, and unless there is special need, the consumer does not get the value. Movies, are another issue, but pretty much I don't buy movies to download. Better value with $5-10 dvd.
My understanding is that the reason that people use flash and silverlight for video is so that people cannot save, reuse, and redistribute the content. Even if these are not used for DRM consideration, flash is often a much smaller file than the other codecs.
I am unclear on how the video tag is going to make things better. It seems I can already play most codecs in my browser, using, for instance, quicktime. Alternatively I can download the file and play it trough VLC, an open source solution.Of course, as mentioned, the reason that video is played in browser is prevent the user from saving it and pirating it.
I know that 'cloud computing' requires that all file types be accessible though the browser so that the user never has control over any data, even their own, but i question the wisdom of this as a universal principle. Certainly most users do not have the technical expertise to control their own computing environment, but does this have to be a universal principle? Can't IE and Safari and Chrome be the browsers for the populous, while Mozilla is the browser for the people who know what they are doing. I am not saying the video tag is bad, just that if there is confusion over the use, perhaps it is legitimate confusion.
Yeah, spending all the money you decry, spent in the 12 YEARS of Bush, being spent in the first three MONTHS under the current administration is however enlightened and useful.
Actually to be fair, government budgets are not spent over months, they are budgeted for the next year, and then, maybe spent. If you were to make an accurate statement, you would say as much money has been spent over the Bush administration as went spent during the first year of the Obama administration.
While that is the Rush/Hannity/ORealy line, it is not accurate either, on many levels. First we have pretty good growth in GDP. In the 12 years of Reagan/Bush the GDP more than doubled. In the eight years of Clinton, rose over 60%. In the 8 years of Bush, the GDP rose a little more than 50%. The amount we spend rises accordingly. A good budget seems to be a little less than 20% of GDP. What this means, according you the alarmist rhetoric, is that Bush II was an exceedingly bad president because he spent over 50% more in 8 years that Reagan/Bsuh did in 12. This off course is stupid, and anyone who says such things are either incredibly stupid or simply liars.
In fact, one of the only sensible way to look at the budget is in terms of the tax base, which can be measuring in our productivity, which can be measured by the GDP. Using this measure Regan/Bush were budgeting failures as they consumed 22%+ of the GDP for big government. Clinton brought those down to historically sustainable levels of 18% of GDP, then Bush brought us buack up 21%.
What Bush also did was raise the national deficit to perhaps 75% of GDP. This is like a family making $50,000 a year owing almost $40,000 in credit card debt. No matter what the conservative talking heads say, it was the irresponsibility of Bush building debt, 5 tillion dollars all told, that is going to kill us.
In terms of numbers, theree is little that said in comparison to Bush's budgets. Adjusted for GDP, bushed highest budget year was only 10%, maybe 20% below the Obama budget. What this means in terms of GDP is that Bush was spending 21% of our money every year, while Obama is spending 26% this year. If he can follow Clinton's polocies, we can expect this number to drop to 18%. This will mean, ike clinton, he will tax and spend less than republicans. Therefore to make any decisions we will have to wait to next year.
But history gives us hope. While Reagan/Bush pushed the total deficit from 35% to 65% of GDP, Clinton lowered it to below 60%. It did takes him three years to start lowering the excessive Republican spending, and in that time the deficit rose another 3 or 4%. Of course in four years Bush II killed all the progress Clinton had make, and in another 4 tacked another 10% on for good measure. This indicates it take a year or two or three to control the Republican urge to rape the public coffers, and bring sanity to the budgeting process. Of course, Obama has correct a whole new level of corruption. We are not simply dealing with drug dealing and the treason of giving weapons to our enemies in Iran to better kill our brave American children. No, we are talking about an attack on the core of our capitalist system, an legal structure that made it legal, as it was in the late 1800's, to steal and endanger live for a small increase in profits. I know all you kids thought it was bad when the president got a blow job, and the Republican congress appropriated 40 millions dollars to get the details of that blow job, but this is really serious. And it might cost more than 40 million to get out of.
The current plan is appears to be much more moderate than universal health care, which means that we will be free to continue letting children die at birth while giving old irresponsible people 3 and 4 bypasses.
First, it appears to requires universal coverage. This is good. I remember a long time ago when universal coverage was not the norm for automobiles. All these irresponsible people would drive around, damage other peoples property, and then not pay. What was more they often continued to damage other peoples property with little consequence. This meant that those who were responsible had to pay higher premiums. Now everyone has to have proof of financial responsibility. One consequence of this is that I can get coverage against the irresponsible motorist for very little money. The benefit of health care should be similar. No more irresponsible people going to the hospital without health insurance. This should mean that those of us who actually pay for medical treatment, instead of expecting others to cover the bills,
Second, there will be a public option. Auto insurance in many states has the same option. Most of us do not use the public option. Most of us still pay private firms to carry our insurance. The public option is used by those those who cannot or chooses not to afford private insurance. Sure this public option costs money, but not nearly as much as having some irresponsible asshole crash into your house in his SUV, then discovering he has no insurance or assets because all his or her income went to pay the note of the truck. Every uninsured person costs us money. The public option will insure that hospitals and doctors get some money for every patient, so they do not have to gouge the rest of us.
Third, and this is what I hope, that they reform payments and set standards for care. For instance, it make no sense to pay 80% of a standard cost for a procedure, when in most cases doctors charge double the standard costs. Pay 100% of the standard cost, and don't worry about co-pays. The co-pay is built in with real and opportunity costs. Likewise, set minimum standard for diagnostics. Hospitals are spending money on proton accelerators rather than prene care. We can live without proton accelerators and other machines that go beep. What we need is care.
And this is what I think many people are afraid of. That medicine is going to go back to giving care, rather than huge returns on investments for the HMO or funding for lavish and extravagant building and equipment that rich people can then put their name on because they paid half. Or, as mentioned, we might be concerned that in the US we have a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba or Hungary, the worst in the developed world.
Let's be fair. Writers of that that generation did not wait for someone to create a job. They created an industry. They used their talents and created work that had a positive impact on society. At the same time they supported a family. Like so many others they could have blamed the government for their ills, saying that some group of people took their jobs, with marches on Washington demanding legislation to insure the entitlement of work and wages that are given to you rather than earned.
One also has to consider that a science fiction writer is not necessarily pro technology at any costs. Fahrenheit 451 certainly shows a world destroyed by technology, the heros being bums who recite books to each other.
That said, Bradbury made his living in a world of relative opulence. There was a time when the library is what educates the educated, perhaps even more than formal education. However, one had to have a library near you. And the library had to be funded. The problem is that one well funded library might serve the few (hundred) thousand people that can get to it. A network of well funded libraries also support the thousands of authors that supply the books. As an author, Bradbury knows on which side his bread is buttered.
I think the current reality is both good and bad. The internet provides a order of magnitude greater learning opportunities than the average public library. Just being able to access something PLOS One is something that only those that had access to University libraries could dream of. OTOH, the ability of authors like Bradbury to make a living is going to become increasingly difficult.
Some might say an honest conservative would admit that everyone should have the opportunity to succeed, and the Internet might provide an better opportunity than the library. Certainly most kids have access for at least an hour or two a day, and some use it to learn. Most school libraries barely has books to last more than the freshman year, so the Internet provides a good supplement. The downside, that authors do not get paid as much, well, there is no entitlement to profit, only the pursuit of it.
All this is of no surprise. To get rid of the old ideas, such as woman's work is so simple that it will be computerized first, while men's work, like astronavigation, will still be done at hand, young people have to , sometimes forcibly, take control away from the old.
As long as everyone is using the same standard, it is not that big of a problem. If we go before cars, to horses, we can see why this is. The story is that James Watt used the term horsepower to market the steam engine, for instance, the ROI might be related to the number of horses you did not have to maintain. The story also is that he did not make his horses work very hard. As today, the ROI was well overstated, but as the relationship became less about horse and more about steam engines, the standard became more useful.
We saw the same issue with clock cycles. People misinterpreted, and the marketing drones were more than happy to let them do so, clocking as measure of work. A faster processor did not mean that more work would get done, but the consumer did not know that, so they would pay more for fantasy benefits.
In terms of fuel consumption, and battery life, the reality is more of the horsepower that the gigahertz. As long as one is running comparable tests, then one can assume that a car rated at 20 mpg will run longer than a car rated at 10 mpg, just like a computer that is rated for 4 hours will run longer than a computer rated at 2 hours. The problem, like the horse, is related the terms horse, hour, and mpg to actual physical quantities. We know that the physical performance is actual 20% or so less in real life.
As mentioned elsewhere, what messes life up is companies like Apple that advertise 3 hours of battery life, and, under normal use, actually get it.
Also, when a netbook with MS WIndows is cheaper than a netbook with Linux, one assumes that there is some sort of kickback going on that makes the net cost of licensing MS products negligible. Evan accounting for the alleged increased integration cost for linux, the netbook itself uses the same hardware, which is the primary costs.
For *nix to succeed to netbooks, someone, as Apple did, is going to have sell a premium netbook with a working OS that fixes all the problems listed. It is going to require a long term investment, not the fly by night attitude that permeates most hardware vendors. Of course such a venture would be silly since the average tech, as seen on/., cries out in pain when asked to pay an extra $100 for a computer, which is why MS still rules.
I would say that the court should honor precedent and set the initial judgement exactly as it did the much cited McDonald's case. That is two days of her profits from the pirated music, then reduce that by 80%, then settle for what was much likely a lower amount.
Punitive damages are meant to from doing things again. In this case I will increase my efforts to by local music, or independent, and minimize my interaction with such a dangerous organization as RIAA.
Students are not machines. Some students are going to build rules from examples. Some are going to want the rules, then apply them to examples. Some are going to want only to know how to solve the problem then mimic the process on similar problems. Some are simply going to copy the proof from another student.
The challenge of US education is to meet the need of all these students. When someone comes up with a complaint, it is normally that things are not being taught in the way that they learn. The fallacy is that if one teaches to one student, then everyone else does not learn. It is never acceptable to always teach to the same students. A competent teacher is going to teach an subject from many different angles so that each student has at least on opportunity to learn in their style. For instance, in a class of four students, I might have one that learns by reading, one that learns by working out the solution for themselves, one that likes lecture, and one that is just not to learn anything at a high level no matter what is done. This is not a atypical situation.
How in such a class can I teach using a single method, such a problem based learning, constructive learning, or drill and kill. Like how could any administrator remove any tool from my case simply because someone who doesn't teach thinks it is a bad idea. If it helps a student learn something, it is a good idea.
I hear complaints like the one posted all the time. It normally comes from 'experts' how thinks that everyone is like them. Well, everyone isn't. The world is diverse. Some students really do like math, and no matter what anyone does they will learn math. A person in the jungle of Nigeria, with no light or proper books learns math simply because the love it. Is a child in America with electricity and books and teachers who are willing to help any worse off? for students who are just getting a diploma, the math classes provide a basis. Then the teachers have to deal with the kids that don't want to learn. We can't kick them out. They are just kids. They deserve an education. Some might say it is unfair to the other kids, but I think it is unfair that I have to be late to work because someone does not know how to drive and gets into an accident, or I can't have explosives because some idiot killed themselves and others with them. Life is unfair.
School is not the aesthetic environment that mathematicians tends to live, which is one reason why it is so hard to find good math teachers. if one genuinely feels that math education sucks, and that you can do better, go teach. I can guarantee you that good math teachers are so desperately needed that you can pretty do whatever you want, and if it works you will be rewarded. The flip side of that is that a math teacher has to be honest enough to accept empirical evidence, and when something does not work to adjust the process or try something else.
Not only are most video games made by technicians, but most content is likely driven by marketing.
Let us look at an analogy. In a street festival with arts and crafts, there is some art, but most of the people there have paid significant amounts of money for a booth, and they need to recoup the costs plus a profit. So there may be a few serious artists there, but mostly what you will see are cat motifs, some regurgitated western prints, and variations on naked ladies. Now all this can be art, but it isn't. It is carefully constructed product meant to generate profit.
Call me a purist, but art has to do with an original statement made in an original medium in an original context. It's primary purpose is not to meet some marketing guidelines, but to express the arthur.
There is no lack of video games, and setting age limits or censorship does not seem to hurt the game industry. The excessive and fantasy violence and sexuality is put in purely to increase sales, and there are limits to what a civilized society will allow to increase profits.
Now, if the motives of the games were changed, if they were purveyed as art rather than purely commercial product, then things would be different. For instance, when I was a kid I was exposed to many things that kids my age were not exposed to. That is because much of my time was spent at art events where things sometimes got violent, in a fantastical way, or sexual in a not so fantastical way. It was not done to drive sales. It was not a sporting even where they hoped to sell another thousand tickets by have half naked women with little coordination prance around the field. It was art, and as such was not subject to restrictions of the average commercial product. This even extended to some television I watched. Lack of commercial focus meant more leeway in what was acceptable.
This is not a bad idea, but will this be considered 'taking' and therefore require that we, the taxpayers, buy the land from the legal owners. I have read that in some cases not even the banks want the place, and have abandoned it along with the owners. Given that we have already given money to banks to cover the losses, I would hope we would not cover the losses again. In addition, given that we have paid for these homes with tax money, we would not waste the asset.
The issue to me is that hyperinflation that occurred during the early and mid 200's, and the hyperdeflation we are now living with. During the inflatory period, everyone was taking fictional money out of their fictional property values to buy real goods. Banks made money, people got stuff, everyone was happy. The problem now is that, like it was with credit cards, people owe more than they possible can pay, and so the best thing to do is to walk away from the house. All this is covered by taxpayers. We can complain, but nothing can be done.
I think we just need to admit we have lived through 8 years of insanity, a national coke addiction, get over it, and move on. We don't need to pass blame, or punish people, just solve problems. If population is declining, and there are no jobs, and no people to live in the homes, then let's raze the land and return it to natural habitat. Hell, I say with a significant portion of a development is empty, pay the people to move, and raze the whole thing.
But we do have families without homes. Families who were priced out of home given the greed of the home investors at the expense of the home owners. It seems that since we have already bailed out the banks and the taxpayers have already in effect covered those mortgages, it seems that the FHA could help families move into the foreclosed homes. Right now the FHA does not want to deal with the average foreclosed home. Right now the FHA thinks that homeless is better than a imperfect home. That a leaky roof is worse than no roof at all. So it seems to me that there is a lot of housing available, and a lot of demand for cheap housing. When I say this the first time, and I saw the brookings institute, I saw it as a plot to maintain unsustainable property values rather than an way to help the country move forward.
It is for the unsophisticated investor. It is like $50 for a gold coin. It is cool, it is something one can keep at home, and it is a hedge against all the fear that has been instilled by the various changes going on around the world. From a purely rational view, it might seem irrational. OTOH, I see people spending $5 or $10 every week on lottery tickets. Ultimately I think that gold might be the better investment, even if the purchase price is high. And it is not such a markup. If one were to buy gold jewelry, the only other way that the average person has easy access to gold, it would cost at least twice that much.
It is also helpful to remember the current fear factor it great, and we are living in times when people will pay anything just to feel a little safer. For instance guns and ammunition sales are skyrocketing, even though there is only so much one can use. A friend of mine sold a gun for twice of what it would fetched a year ago, to a guy who already had many guns. There is no logic to the inflation, just scared people who have more money than sense.
Which I mean literally, because if things come to pass as the fear mongers predict, gold and guns are not going to help that much. The food will not be sale, and will be surrounds by land mines and other high explosives, not pea shooters.
There is a theory that says the reason some people have power and others don't is that some people have information and other's don't have information. For instance, slavery in Texas did not end until June 19, 1865, even though the confederacy fell in March. One cited reason for this delay wa that the slaves could not read, so had no way to get information.
There is often three basis on which to restrict information: state secret, inciting fear and violence, or civil restrictions. If any one of these restrictions is allowed for frivolous reasons, then information will be unduly restricting, and people will be unduly subject to the control of others. The RIAA and other organizations wish to control the flow of information to maximize profits. Some of us understand the relationship between information and power, and though we agree that RIAA organization right to earn a profit, if possible, we deny that the overwhelming concern should the profit of a private organization, rather the overall freedom of the populous.
So when you talk about the RIAA, the Iran Election, and financial meltdown, you are talking about interrelated issues. The RIAA certainly wants the internet to be well controlled to insure that consumers do not have the opportunity to acquire music through alternative methods that might tend to diminish the control of the RIAA over music distribution. Some of these methods, like iTunes, are legal and fair, but diminish the profits of member companies. The existing Iran government wants to control the internet because it provides a means for people to exchange data that suggests the election results may not be valid. Like the RIAA, the profits of the Iran government are not increased by the information dispersion potential of the services like tweeter.
The financial meltdown is harder to see in terms of hoarding of information, but I think it was lessened due to information flow. Certainly we are going to avoid the disaster of the great depression. We see that many people were cheated in the home loans, so money that would have gone to saving executive pay is instead moving to the average person. It is no longer possible for congress to set an earmark to save a friends business and not save constituents houses as well. Though many decry the regulations that force public company to publish all financial data, if this data is transparent we will likely see an end to the manufactured profits that led to the meltdown.
At the end of the day, the vested interests need to control information to minimize the risk that will someday be not vested.
The price of any product is determined by what the market will bear. Therefore saying that Amazon priced the Kindle as high as they could get away with is simply circular, a tautology. A product is priced to move a certain number of units. Amazon decided that the price would move enough units, that may change in the same way that Apple lowered the price to move more units.
OTOH, the Kindle may be subsidized because of the user does not pay for the wireless plan, Amazon does. Since we do not know the details, it may be that Amazon is not incurring any additional costs, but I suspect that Amazon does pay some amount per unit per month even if no books are downloaded.
To me the kindle pricing makes good sense, if Amazon can maintain it, and if the web browser and functionality improves. It is not worth that much if all I can buy books to read from Amazon. It becomes worth something when I can download books from anywhere, and whan I can read online magazines that do not require subscriptions, or are not available through Amazon, for instance make or circuit cellar. The problem is that if I am browsing without Amazon subscription, I am using billable bandwidth, but not paying for it. If I can do this, then Kindle is a great deal. A year of browsing for $500 is much less than a netbook and wireless subscription would costs. Of course this may be why the web browser in not a major feature in Kindle.
It is not the driver that cause upgrades for many users. Many people are like me. My MS Windows machines are bought for a specific applications. The machine cost a fraction of the application. The OS changes when the application requires it, not when the OS vendor wants more money. I ran Windows NT until I no longer needed it for the application I was running. For a while I had no MS machines because I was running nothing that required it. When I did, I upgraded to Windows XP. I recently acquired another machine running XP. The application did not require MS Vista, so there is no reason for IT to support MS Vista. The 2010 versions of the software, which will be installed in July, still runs on Windows XP. That means perhaps 2012 before an MS windows upgrade even becomes an issue. By then I suspect we will be seeing MS Windows Upgrade Or Else Edition.
As cool as an integrated web server sounds, this really looks likes the bloat that made the first round of web wars really suck. It is innovative, and will gain Opera marketshare, but what is the overall picture here?
I have said this many times. Opera is a probably the coolest web browser. I believe the only reason they do not have more market share right now is because when there was a chance to become dominant on the non-MS platforms, they focused MS Platform and competing directly with MS, instead of filling a hole that existed at the time in the non-MS platforms. Now it seems that they are following MS lead by providing proprietary bloat instead cross platform functionality.
The acid 3 test is good, but so last year. Here is what would be cool. A mechanism that would allow the browser to use firefox plugins. Opera does not seem to have the wealth of plugins that firefox does, and from what I can tell, plugins is why people use firefox. Instead of wasting effort, why not make Opera so it can use the Firefox model?
Re:I'm not against thinking outside the box
on
Introducing the Warpship
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Putting a hat on a bunny confuses people. The difference between a Stop sign and a Yield sign sends people into convulsions. Most people don't know the difference between enter and return. Just because it is going to confuse people doesn't mean that smart people should be punished.
Science fiction is mostly about the relationship between people and technology, or people and ideas, or people and people, and how those relationships grow over time. In many cases, the main technology is a plot device, as in Star Trek. It does not, most of the time, dwell on the technology, and often fiction that does is quite bad. Rather, the fiction dwells on the development or consequence. Stranger in a Strange Land would have been a might weaker book if we spent many pages describing the apparatus and working out the equations.
In this case we are talking about some possible emerging technology. Others have already written books about how the technology might effect us. What Dr. Blah, as you say, does is work out some equations and cite scientific literature. There is only one or two peer review articles on the subject, and nothing that will work. OTOH, I have seen funded proposals that have less background that this. Scientist are the real ones who dwell in science fiction, until they become science fact. Without them, science stays fiction.
The number of drivers may be the issue. I used to drive about quite a bit in rural roads. It seemed to happen quite sequentially. The land went from 100+ acre farms to 5-20 acre lots. The dirt roads became gravel. The land went from 5-20 acre lots to suburban cookie cutter. The gravel roads were laid with asphalt. If the trend continued the roads would be paved. I used to drive down down a road that paved to the town, then asphalt to the main cut off, then gravel, until the last mile, which was dirt.
There does seem to some method in the madness. If the number of drivers decrease significantly, then maybe all that is needed is gravel? If the taxes from the people driving the road don't account for a significant portion of the construction and maintenance, then the road should go away. I have even heard of cities reforming themselves around healthy cores and tearing down the excess. Painful, but if no wants to live there, what else can be done.
What is really screwed up in when a city build tens of miles of 6-10 lane highway that no body uses, in the middle of nowhere, just to connect sprawlingly developments that are no under foreclosure pressure.
I would say that and anything limited by current technology is a mistake. The Apple/// not running Apple ][ software, that is like saying that MS Vista can't run Windows XP Software. Sure, today with virtualization it sucks, but this is 25 years ago. We just did not have full virtualization. Apple/// was a good machine because it could run two OS, and, with a card, CP/m. I never had any problem with my machine due to the lack of a fan. When did computers get fans? In a addition, does the author even know how much computer costs pre-Compaq? And this Apple was introduced three years prior to the PC Jr.
Then, what about formatting disks. Did we go around formatting disks in the early 80's. I don't think so. Most of the disks I bought were pre-formatted. That was the norm. I believe it was the norm from 8" to 3.5" disks. I do know that I did order some unformatted bulk disks in the mid 80's, at the bargain basement price of $2 each, in current dollars.
Both the PC jr and lisa were victims of the disruptive technology of Compaq. By clean room reverse engineering the IBM technology, and selling a less expensive computer(no one wold say cheap), they created a market in which even Compaq ultimately failed. Soon cheap commodity computer parts were the norm, requiring a cheap commodity OS. And speaking of commodity, standard I/O hardly existed until the late 80's, and that which did, sucked. The parallel port was good, but slow. RS-232 was good, but unlike RS-422 it would only handle a single device. We are still haunted by the relic of a keyboard and mouse requiring dedicated ports, and even some modern machines cannot read a keyboard from any USB port. SCSI, a maligned as it is, at least was fast and provided plug and play functionality.
The rest of this is just evolving technology and philosophical idealism. Not everyone who owns a computer wants to epand inside the box. Honestly, those who did in the 80's built there own, often from parts bought from the back of BYTE. Otherwise, we were just looking for a tool to run a program.
We now have Windows Defender. MS should know every nook and cranny in MS Window. What is so special about Conficker that the best software company in the world can't protect it's user against a well known and defined threat. I realize that dumb users will often just go back and reinfect the computer, but then we would expect defender to block the reinstall.
And at the college level, I would rather see professors teaching and measuring learning than trying to force a person not to cheat. Not cheating should be learned in high school. In college a student is paying to learn, and any not learning should be asked to leave.
So to me the issue is original work. This is not a new problem. In Engligh one might copy a term paper, but not be able to write in class. That should be a big indication that a student should fail, if they are never able to write a paper in class. The same goes for other classes. Outside work is practice, the grade that counts is supervised class work. A student might cheat on all outside classwork, and it won't matter. A good test will show that nothing was learned.
On the issue on calculators, that needs to be a decision that is made on a individual basis. Some students are being trained at a level where calculators will not help them. Others are being trained at a level where calculators will help them. One really cannot make a broad statement that calculators are bad. What one can say is that calculators often require different assignments. For instance, I can write an assignment that a student who knows the math can finish quickly. A student with a calculator who can use the machine can finish, but it will take much longer. A student who does not know the calculator will invariably not be able to complete the assignment successfully. Such things can often be done to encourage proper behaviour.
I am honestly not sure how ATT stifled innovation in land lines. For most of the history, they did a good job innovating. The technological advances needed to get a phone into every home is not trivial. They did a good job with basic communication, and business communication.
What is true is that ATT was very expensive. What is true is that ATT had little motivation to add features beyond basic communications. What is true is that ATT had no motivation in innovate the handset. What is true that if ATT was not broken up 25 years ago, there would have been no BBS and no internet because the average user would not be able to put a cheap modem on the phone line. If the ATT monopoly had be allowed to stand, ATT would likely have continued it's policy of relatively expensive and limited phone service, would have wanted to rent us modems for $20 a month, and charged an extra $15 for thier use, in addition to existed added line charges.
But this does not mean that ATT stifled innovation. When ATT was broken up, the phone system was already very mature, and all that happened after that was some incremental development. The features were gee whiz, not time saving like touch tone dialing. In any case, ATT is not a monopoly at this point and cannot control the market. They have to compete with Verizon, Cricket, and Sprint. The lack of tethering is not an issue limited to ATT. ATT charged more for G3 by eliminating the included text messagesz(despite the complaint about tethering, text messages are the real rip off, and as far as I know most companies use this rip off). They will charge extra for tethering.
Honestly, I think this tethering is a bad idea. I can imagine the complaints on the boards. Tethering made my batteries die! Tethering is too slow! It is a customer service nightmare. I think most laptops come with cell service now, and I wish apply would do the same with the powerbooks. What sucks is that in the US the service is tied to Verizon or Sprint, both of which ARE stifiling innovation by charging exhorbant fees, often double of competitors.
I certainly wonder if Blu Ray is going to replace the DVD. The DVD certainly took long enough to replace the VHS, even though the VHS has disadvantages. Though the VHS was infinitely more user friendly, put it in, watch a movie, no 5th grade animation, no unskippable adverts, things like audio commentary made the DVD a compelling alternative. Combine this with the fact that the DVD was simpler to copy than the copy protected VHS that were popular at the time, and it was a reasonable choice.
But the DVD did not have netflix streaming. The DVD did not have online instant download purchase and rental. The DVD did not have the legacy of broken promised that the DVD delivered. Who believes that producers are going to invest in fully utilizing the Blu Ray features.
It seems to me that given the increases in bandwidth and processing power, in five years the movie industry will be at the place that music industry was a few years ago. Desperately trying to protect content, adding increasing layers of copy protection to the media, and losing sales because they made the purchase product so much less attractive than the alternatively acquired product. The reality is that the DVD is easy to crack, but sales are still very strong. Back in the VHS days, the copy protection did little to stop the coping of tapes.
If the copy protection is done right it will be transparent. More than likely no one will care. But I suspect that the copy protection will add costs to the products, which will make them less attractive. I suspect we will see DVDs for a long time, and when they are gone, people will just download the content. I can't imagine that Blu Ray will ever be a major player in the average household. It will be like plasma tv. An interesting plaything for people who can afford it.
People complain that we are going socialist, but how long has Hatch been in office, and how long has he been shouting these socialist ideals. Sure someone, somewhere might be losing all that money, but who cares! Look at how much money Chrysler lost, Than god we live a more or less capitalist economy, so even though they could take away tax money to throw after bad, at least Hatch did not have the power to force me to buy an American Car, though by his statements I am sure he would have wanted to.
If someone is losing money, it is not because someone else is stealing it. It is because the product is not competitive. If an album is not selling, it is not because of piracy, it is because it is not competitive. Either enough money has not been spent on marketing, or it is priced too high, or it is too hard to get. How many of us pay more to get milk from the corner store. How many of us would pay that same high price at the big grocery stores. Recorded music still has value, just not the value it did. I am sure Mr. Hatch is confused to why a audio tape manufacturers are not making as much as they did, and probably wanted to a bailout to help them. Under his logic, I could build a fishing pole, sell it for a while, then make it more expensive or reduce the quality, then claim that pirates have stolen my design and I need the feds help.
Although economics is not a zero sum game, one person does sometimes get rich at the expense of another, or at least that is the perception. The music industry is currently in an uproar that it cannot extort more money from the radio stations. Sure the music industry provides the raw materials, but it is the radio station that adds value. What I would like to see an end to compulsory licensing. They could use a bid based system, you know, we will play you album on the station only if you charge this much and no more. Oh, you want the money you used to get, won't happen. Not in a capitalist market.
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The emerging problem is certainly books and video. Niether of these is going to be trivial to convert to electronic format anytime soon, and the files don't seem be trivial to burn to an unprotected format either. This means that video and books are still on the list, as music used to be, of only be useful as long as the files stay in good shape. It is interesting that Amazon has chosen to take this one step further and limit it to a number of devices. As the article states, since one is to upgrade often, and the files are owned by Amazon, this puts an effective lifetime on the books. Where on can buy a hardback and refer to it for a lifetime, the Kindle will eventually break.
I think this is a good argument against most e-book readers. The publishers are not going to fully support them, and unless there is special need, the consumer does not get the value. Movies, are another issue, but pretty much I don't buy movies to download. Better value with $5-10 dvd.
I am unclear on how the video tag is going to make things better. It seems I can already play most codecs in my browser, using, for instance, quicktime. Alternatively I can download the file and play it trough VLC, an open source solution.Of course, as mentioned, the reason that video is played in browser is prevent the user from saving it and pirating it.
I know that 'cloud computing' requires that all file types be accessible though the browser so that the user never has control over any data, even their own, but i question the wisdom of this as a universal principle. Certainly most users do not have the technical expertise to control their own computing environment, but does this have to be a universal principle? Can't IE and Safari and Chrome be the browsers for the populous, while Mozilla is the browser for the people who know what they are doing. I am not saying the video tag is bad, just that if there is confusion over the use, perhaps it is legitimate confusion.
Actually to be fair, government budgets are not spent over months, they are budgeted for the next year, and then, maybe spent. If you were to make an accurate statement, you would say as much money has been spent over the Bush administration as went spent during the first year of the Obama administration.
While that is the Rush/Hannity/ORealy line, it is not accurate either, on many levels. First we have pretty good growth in GDP. In the 12 years of Reagan/Bush the GDP more than doubled. In the eight years of Clinton, rose over 60%. In the 8 years of Bush, the GDP rose a little more than 50%. The amount we spend rises accordingly. A good budget seems to be a little less than 20% of GDP. What this means, according you the alarmist rhetoric, is that Bush II was an exceedingly bad president because he spent over 50% more in 8 years that Reagan/Bsuh did in 12. This off course is stupid, and anyone who says such things are either incredibly stupid or simply liars.
In fact, one of the only sensible way to look at the budget is in terms of the tax base, which can be measuring in our productivity, which can be measured by the GDP. Using this measure Regan/Bush were budgeting failures as they consumed 22%+ of the GDP for big government. Clinton brought those down to historically sustainable levels of 18% of GDP, then Bush brought us buack up 21%.
What Bush also did was raise the national deficit to perhaps 75% of GDP. This is like a family making $50,000 a year owing almost $40,000 in credit card debt. No matter what the conservative talking heads say, it was the irresponsibility of Bush building debt, 5 tillion dollars all told, that is going to kill us.
In terms of numbers, theree is little that said in comparison to Bush's budgets. Adjusted for GDP, bushed highest budget year was only 10%, maybe 20% below the Obama budget. What this means in terms of GDP is that Bush was spending 21% of our money every year, while Obama is spending 26% this year. If he can follow Clinton's polocies, we can expect this number to drop to 18%. This will mean, ike clinton, he will tax and spend less than republicans. Therefore to make any decisions we will have to wait to next year.
But history gives us hope. While Reagan/Bush pushed the total deficit from 35% to 65% of GDP, Clinton lowered it to below 60%. It did takes him three years to start lowering the excessive Republican spending, and in that time the deficit rose another 3 or 4%. Of course in four years Bush II killed all the progress Clinton had make, and in another 4 tacked another 10% on for good measure. This indicates it take a year or two or three to control the Republican urge to rape the public coffers, and bring sanity to the budgeting process. Of course, Obama has correct a whole new level of corruption. We are not simply dealing with drug dealing and the treason of giving weapons to our enemies in Iran to better kill our brave American children. No, we are talking about an attack on the core of our capitalist system, an legal structure that made it legal, as it was in the late 1800's, to steal and endanger live for a small increase in profits. I know all you kids thought it was bad when the president got a blow job, and the Republican congress appropriated 40 millions dollars to get the details of that blow job, but this is really serious. And it might cost more than 40 million to get out of.
First, it appears to requires universal coverage. This is good. I remember a long time ago when universal coverage was not the norm for automobiles. All these irresponsible people would drive around, damage other peoples property, and then not pay. What was more they often continued to damage other peoples property with little consequence. This meant that those who were responsible had to pay higher premiums. Now everyone has to have proof of financial responsibility. One consequence of this is that I can get coverage against the irresponsible motorist for very little money. The benefit of health care should be similar. No more irresponsible people going to the hospital without health insurance. This should mean that those of us who actually pay for medical treatment, instead of expecting others to cover the bills,
Second, there will be a public option. Auto insurance in many states has the same option. Most of us do not use the public option. Most of us still pay private firms to carry our insurance. The public option is used by those those who cannot or chooses not to afford private insurance. Sure this public option costs money, but not nearly as much as having some irresponsible asshole crash into your house in his SUV, then discovering he has no insurance or assets because all his or her income went to pay the note of the truck. Every uninsured person costs us money. The public option will insure that hospitals and doctors get some money for every patient, so they do not have to gouge the rest of us.
Third, and this is what I hope, that they reform payments and set standards for care. For instance, it make no sense to pay 80% of a standard cost for a procedure, when in most cases doctors charge double the standard costs. Pay 100% of the standard cost, and don't worry about co-pays. The co-pay is built in with real and opportunity costs. Likewise, set minimum standard for diagnostics. Hospitals are spending money on proton accelerators rather than prene care. We can live without proton accelerators and other machines that go beep. What we need is care.
And this is what I think many people are afraid of. That medicine is going to go back to giving care, rather than huge returns on investments for the HMO or funding for lavish and extravagant building and equipment that rich people can then put their name on because they paid half. Or, as mentioned, we might be concerned that in the US we have a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba or Hungary, the worst in the developed world.
One also has to consider that a science fiction writer is not necessarily pro technology at any costs. Fahrenheit 451 certainly shows a world destroyed by technology, the heros being bums who recite books to each other.
That said, Bradbury made his living in a world of relative opulence. There was a time when the library is what educates the educated, perhaps even more than formal education. However, one had to have a library near you. And the library had to be funded. The problem is that one well funded library might serve the few (hundred) thousand people that can get to it. A network of well funded libraries also support the thousands of authors that supply the books. As an author, Bradbury knows on which side his bread is buttered.
I think the current reality is both good and bad. The internet provides a order of magnitude greater learning opportunities than the average public library. Just being able to access something PLOS One is something that only those that had access to University libraries could dream of. OTOH, the ability of authors like Bradbury to make a living is going to become increasingly difficult.
Some might say an honest conservative would admit that everyone should have the opportunity to succeed, and the Internet might provide an better opportunity than the library. Certainly most kids have access for at least an hour or two a day, and some use it to learn. Most school libraries barely has books to last more than the freshman year, so the Internet provides a good supplement. The downside, that authors do not get paid as much, well, there is no entitlement to profit, only the pursuit of it.
All this is of no surprise. To get rid of the old ideas, such as woman's work is so simple that it will be computerized first, while men's work, like astronavigation, will still be done at hand, young people have to , sometimes forcibly, take control away from the old.
We saw the same issue with clock cycles. People misinterpreted, and the marketing drones were more than happy to let them do so, clocking as measure of work. A faster processor did not mean that more work would get done, but the consumer did not know that, so they would pay more for fantasy benefits.
In terms of fuel consumption, and battery life, the reality is more of the horsepower that the gigahertz. As long as one is running comparable tests, then one can assume that a car rated at 20 mpg will run longer than a car rated at 10 mpg, just like a computer that is rated for 4 hours will run longer than a computer rated at 2 hours. The problem, like the horse, is related the terms horse, hour, and mpg to actual physical quantities. We know that the physical performance is actual 20% or so less in real life.
As mentioned elsewhere, what messes life up is companies like Apple that advertise 3 hours of battery life, and, under normal use, actually get it.
For *nix to succeed to netbooks, someone, as Apple did, is going to have sell a premium netbook with a working OS that fixes all the problems listed. It is going to require a long term investment, not the fly by night attitude that permeates most hardware vendors. Of course such a venture would be silly since the average tech, as seen on /., cries out in pain when asked to pay an extra $100 for a computer, which is why MS still rules.
And Hannity said the attack was not an attack, and he would allow people to throw rocks at him to prove that it was only a bit of fun.
Punitive damages are meant to from doing things again. In this case I will increase my efforts to by local music, or independent, and minimize my interaction with such a dangerous organization as RIAA.
The challenge of US education is to meet the need of all these students. When someone comes up with a complaint, it is normally that things are not being taught in the way that they learn. The fallacy is that if one teaches to one student, then everyone else does not learn. It is never acceptable to always teach to the same students. A competent teacher is going to teach an subject from many different angles so that each student has at least on opportunity to learn in their style. For instance, in a class of four students, I might have one that learns by reading, one that learns by working out the solution for themselves, one that likes lecture, and one that is just not to learn anything at a high level no matter what is done. This is not a atypical situation.
How in such a class can I teach using a single method, such a problem based learning, constructive learning, or drill and kill. Like how could any administrator remove any tool from my case simply because someone who doesn't teach thinks it is a bad idea. If it helps a student learn something, it is a good idea.
I hear complaints like the one posted all the time. It normally comes from 'experts' how thinks that everyone is like them. Well, everyone isn't. The world is diverse. Some students really do like math, and no matter what anyone does they will learn math. A person in the jungle of Nigeria, with no light or proper books learns math simply because the love it. Is a child in America with electricity and books and teachers who are willing to help any worse off? for students who are just getting a diploma, the math classes provide a basis. Then the teachers have to deal with the kids that don't want to learn. We can't kick them out. They are just kids. They deserve an education. Some might say it is unfair to the other kids, but I think it is unfair that I have to be late to work because someone does not know how to drive and gets into an accident, or I can't have explosives because some idiot killed themselves and others with them. Life is unfair.
School is not the aesthetic environment that mathematicians tends to live, which is one reason why it is so hard to find good math teachers. if one genuinely feels that math education sucks, and that you can do better, go teach. I can guarantee you that good math teachers are so desperately needed that you can pretty do whatever you want, and if it works you will be rewarded. The flip side of that is that a math teacher has to be honest enough to accept empirical evidence, and when something does not work to adjust the process or try something else.
Let us look at an analogy. In a street festival with arts and crafts, there is some art, but most of the people there have paid significant amounts of money for a booth, and they need to recoup the costs plus a profit. So there may be a few serious artists there, but mostly what you will see are cat motifs, some regurgitated western prints, and variations on naked ladies. Now all this can be art, but it isn't. It is carefully constructed product meant to generate profit.
Call me a purist, but art has to do with an original statement made in an original medium in an original context. It's primary purpose is not to meet some marketing guidelines, but to express the arthur.
There is no lack of video games, and setting age limits or censorship does not seem to hurt the game industry. The excessive and fantasy violence and sexuality is put in purely to increase sales, and there are limits to what a civilized society will allow to increase profits.
Now, if the motives of the games were changed, if they were purveyed as art rather than purely commercial product, then things would be different. For instance, when I was a kid I was exposed to many things that kids my age were not exposed to. That is because much of my time was spent at art events where things sometimes got violent, in a fantastical way, or sexual in a not so fantastical way. It was not done to drive sales. It was not a sporting even where they hoped to sell another thousand tickets by have half naked women with little coordination prance around the field. It was art, and as such was not subject to restrictions of the average commercial product. This even extended to some television I watched. Lack of commercial focus meant more leeway in what was acceptable.
The issue to me is that hyperinflation that occurred during the early and mid 200's, and the hyperdeflation we are now living with. During the inflatory period, everyone was taking fictional money out of their fictional property values to buy real goods. Banks made money, people got stuff, everyone was happy. The problem now is that, like it was with credit cards, people owe more than they possible can pay, and so the best thing to do is to walk away from the house. All this is covered by taxpayers. We can complain, but nothing can be done.
I think we just need to admit we have lived through 8 years of insanity, a national coke addiction, get over it, and move on. We don't need to pass blame, or punish people, just solve problems. If population is declining, and there are no jobs, and no people to live in the homes, then let's raze the land and return it to natural habitat. Hell, I say with a significant portion of a development is empty, pay the people to move, and raze the whole thing.
But we do have families without homes. Families who were priced out of home given the greed of the home investors at the expense of the home owners. It seems that since we have already bailed out the banks and the taxpayers have already in effect covered those mortgages, it seems that the FHA could help families move into the foreclosed homes. Right now the FHA does not want to deal with the average foreclosed home. Right now the FHA thinks that homeless is better than a imperfect home. That a leaky roof is worse than no roof at all. So it seems to me that there is a lot of housing available, and a lot of demand for cheap housing. When I say this the first time, and I saw the brookings institute, I saw it as a plot to maintain unsustainable property values rather than an way to help the country move forward.
It is also helpful to remember the current fear factor it great, and we are living in times when people will pay anything just to feel a little safer. For instance guns and ammunition sales are skyrocketing, even though there is only so much one can use. A friend of mine sold a gun for twice of what it would fetched a year ago, to a guy who already had many guns. There is no logic to the inflation, just scared people who have more money than sense.
Which I mean literally, because if things come to pass as the fear mongers predict, gold and guns are not going to help that much. The food will not be sale, and will be surrounds by land mines and other high explosives, not pea shooters.
There is often three basis on which to restrict information: state secret, inciting fear and violence, or civil restrictions. If any one of these restrictions is allowed for frivolous reasons, then information will be unduly restricting, and people will be unduly subject to the control of others. The RIAA and other organizations wish to control the flow of information to maximize profits. Some of us understand the relationship between information and power, and though we agree that RIAA organization right to earn a profit, if possible, we deny that the overwhelming concern should the profit of a private organization, rather the overall freedom of the populous.
So when you talk about the RIAA, the Iran Election, and financial meltdown, you are talking about interrelated issues. The RIAA certainly wants the internet to be well controlled to insure that consumers do not have the opportunity to acquire music through alternative methods that might tend to diminish the control of the RIAA over music distribution. Some of these methods, like iTunes, are legal and fair, but diminish the profits of member companies. The existing Iran government wants to control the internet because it provides a means for people to exchange data that suggests the election results may not be valid. Like the RIAA, the profits of the Iran government are not increased by the information dispersion potential of the services like tweeter.
The financial meltdown is harder to see in terms of hoarding of information, but I think it was lessened due to information flow. Certainly we are going to avoid the disaster of the great depression. We see that many people were cheated in the home loans, so money that would have gone to saving executive pay is instead moving to the average person. It is no longer possible for congress to set an earmark to save a friends business and not save constituents houses as well. Though many decry the regulations that force public company to publish all financial data, if this data is transparent we will likely see an end to the manufactured profits that led to the meltdown.
At the end of the day, the vested interests need to control information to minimize the risk that will someday be not vested.
OTOH, the Kindle may be subsidized because of the user does not pay for the wireless plan, Amazon does. Since we do not know the details, it may be that Amazon is not incurring any additional costs, but I suspect that Amazon does pay some amount per unit per month even if no books are downloaded.
To me the kindle pricing makes good sense, if Amazon can maintain it, and if the web browser and functionality improves. It is not worth that much if all I can buy books to read from Amazon. It becomes worth something when I can download books from anywhere, and whan I can read online magazines that do not require subscriptions, or are not available through Amazon, for instance make or circuit cellar. The problem is that if I am browsing without Amazon subscription, I am using billable bandwidth, but not paying for it. If I can do this, then Kindle is a great deal. A year of browsing for $500 is much less than a netbook and wireless subscription would costs. Of course this may be why the web browser in not a major feature in Kindle.
It is not the driver that cause upgrades for many users. Many people are like me. My MS Windows machines are bought for a specific applications. The machine cost a fraction of the application. The OS changes when the application requires it, not when the OS vendor wants more money. I ran Windows NT until I no longer needed it for the application I was running. For a while I had no MS machines because I was running nothing that required it. When I did, I upgraded to Windows XP. I recently acquired another machine running XP. The application did not require MS Vista, so there is no reason for IT to support MS Vista. The 2010 versions of the software, which will be installed in July, still runs on Windows XP. That means perhaps 2012 before an MS windows upgrade even becomes an issue. By then I suspect we will be seeing MS Windows Upgrade Or Else Edition.
I have said this many times. Opera is a probably the coolest web browser. I believe the only reason they do not have more market share right now is because when there was a chance to become dominant on the non-MS platforms, they focused MS Platform and competing directly with MS, instead of filling a hole that existed at the time in the non-MS platforms. Now it seems that they are following MS lead by providing proprietary bloat instead cross platform functionality.
The acid 3 test is good, but so last year. Here is what would be cool. A mechanism that would allow the browser to use firefox plugins. Opera does not seem to have the wealth of plugins that firefox does, and from what I can tell, plugins is why people use firefox. Instead of wasting effort, why not make Opera so it can use the Firefox model?
Science fiction is mostly about the relationship between people and technology, or people and ideas, or people and people, and how those relationships grow over time. In many cases, the main technology is a plot device, as in Star Trek. It does not, most of the time, dwell on the technology, and often fiction that does is quite bad. Rather, the fiction dwells on the development or consequence. Stranger in a Strange Land would have been a might weaker book if we spent many pages describing the apparatus and working out the equations.
In this case we are talking about some possible emerging technology. Others have already written books about how the technology might effect us. What Dr. Blah, as you say, does is work out some equations and cite scientific literature. There is only one or two peer review articles on the subject, and nothing that will work. OTOH, I have seen funded proposals that have less background that this. Scientist are the real ones who dwell in science fiction, until they become science fact. Without them, science stays fiction.
There does seem to some method in the madness. If the number of drivers decrease significantly, then maybe all that is needed is gravel? If the taxes from the people driving the road don't account for a significant portion of the construction and maintenance, then the road should go away. I have even heard of cities reforming themselves around healthy cores and tearing down the excess. Painful, but if no wants to live there, what else can be done.
What is really screwed up in when a city build tens of miles of 6-10 lane highway that no body uses, in the middle of nowhere, just to connect sprawlingly developments that are no under foreclosure pressure.
Then, what about formatting disks. Did we go around formatting disks in the early 80's. I don't think so. Most of the disks I bought were pre-formatted. That was the norm. I believe it was the norm from 8" to 3.5" disks. I do know that I did order some unformatted bulk disks in the mid 80's, at the bargain basement price of $2 each, in current dollars.
Both the PC jr and lisa were victims of the disruptive technology of Compaq. By clean room reverse engineering the IBM technology, and selling a less expensive computer(no one wold say cheap), they created a market in which even Compaq ultimately failed. Soon cheap commodity computer parts were the norm, requiring a cheap commodity OS. And speaking of commodity, standard I/O hardly existed until the late 80's, and that which did, sucked. The parallel port was good, but slow. RS-232 was good, but unlike RS-422 it would only handle a single device. We are still haunted by the relic of a keyboard and mouse requiring dedicated ports, and even some modern machines cannot read a keyboard from any USB port. SCSI, a maligned as it is, at least was fast and provided plug and play functionality.
The rest of this is just evolving technology and philosophical idealism. Not everyone who owns a computer wants to epand inside the box. Honestly, those who did in the 80's built there own, often from parts bought from the back of BYTE. Otherwise, we were just looking for a tool to run a program.
We now have Windows Defender. MS should know every nook and cranny in MS Window. What is so special about Conficker that the best software company in the world can't protect it's user against a well known and defined threat. I realize that dumb users will often just go back and reinfect the computer, but then we would expect defender to block the reinstall.
So to me the issue is original work. This is not a new problem. In Engligh one might copy a term paper, but not be able to write in class. That should be a big indication that a student should fail, if they are never able to write a paper in class. The same goes for other classes. Outside work is practice, the grade that counts is supervised class work. A student might cheat on all outside classwork, and it won't matter. A good test will show that nothing was learned.
On the issue on calculators, that needs to be a decision that is made on a individual basis. Some students are being trained at a level where calculators will not help them. Others are being trained at a level where calculators will help them. One really cannot make a broad statement that calculators are bad. What one can say is that calculators often require different assignments. For instance, I can write an assignment that a student who knows the math can finish quickly. A student with a calculator who can use the machine can finish, but it will take much longer. A student who does not know the calculator will invariably not be able to complete the assignment successfully. Such things can often be done to encourage proper behaviour.
What is true is that ATT was very expensive. What is true is that ATT had little motivation to add features beyond basic communications. What is true is that ATT had no motivation in innovate the handset. What is true that if ATT was not broken up 25 years ago, there would have been no BBS and no internet because the average user would not be able to put a cheap modem on the phone line. If the ATT monopoly had be allowed to stand, ATT would likely have continued it's policy of relatively expensive and limited phone service, would have wanted to rent us modems for $20 a month, and charged an extra $15 for thier use, in addition to existed added line charges.
But this does not mean that ATT stifled innovation. When ATT was broken up, the phone system was already very mature, and all that happened after that was some incremental development. The features were gee whiz, not time saving like touch tone dialing. In any case, ATT is not a monopoly at this point and cannot control the market. They have to compete with Verizon, Cricket, and Sprint. The lack of tethering is not an issue limited to ATT. ATT charged more for G3 by eliminating the included text messagesz(despite the complaint about tethering, text messages are the real rip off, and as far as I know most companies use this rip off). They will charge extra for tethering.
Honestly, I think this tethering is a bad idea. I can imagine the complaints on the boards. Tethering made my batteries die! Tethering is too slow! It is a customer service nightmare. I think most laptops come with cell service now, and I wish apply would do the same with the powerbooks. What sucks is that in the US the service is tied to Verizon or Sprint, both of which ARE stifiling innovation by charging exhorbant fees, often double of competitors.
But the DVD did not have netflix streaming. The DVD did not have online instant download purchase and rental. The DVD did not have the legacy of broken promised that the DVD delivered. Who believes that producers are going to invest in fully utilizing the Blu Ray features.
It seems to me that given the increases in bandwidth and processing power, in five years the movie industry will be at the place that music industry was a few years ago. Desperately trying to protect content, adding increasing layers of copy protection to the media, and losing sales because they made the purchase product so much less attractive than the alternatively acquired product. The reality is that the DVD is easy to crack, but sales are still very strong. Back in the VHS days, the copy protection did little to stop the coping of tapes.
If the copy protection is done right it will be transparent. More than likely no one will care. But I suspect that the copy protection will add costs to the products, which will make them less attractive. I suspect we will see DVDs for a long time, and when they are gone, people will just download the content. I can't imagine that Blu Ray will ever be a major player in the average household. It will be like plasma tv. An interesting plaything for people who can afford it.
If someone is losing money, it is not because someone else is stealing it. It is because the product is not competitive. If an album is not selling, it is not because of piracy, it is because it is not competitive. Either enough money has not been spent on marketing, or it is priced too high, or it is too hard to get. How many of us pay more to get milk from the corner store. How many of us would pay that same high price at the big grocery stores. Recorded music still has value, just not the value it did. I am sure Mr. Hatch is confused to why a audio tape manufacturers are not making as much as they did, and probably wanted to a bailout to help them. Under his logic, I could build a fishing pole, sell it for a while, then make it more expensive or reduce the quality, then claim that pirates have stolen my design and I need the feds help.
Although economics is not a zero sum game, one person does sometimes get rich at the expense of another, or at least that is the perception. The music industry is currently in an uproar that it cannot extort more money from the radio stations. Sure the music industry provides the raw materials, but it is the radio station that adds value. What I would like to see an end to compulsory licensing. They could use a bid based system, you know, we will play you album on the station only if you charge this much and no more. Oh, you want the money you used to get, won't happen. Not in a capitalist market.