It is good to know that the activist circuit judges and below are free to ignore precedents and rules set by the supreme court. Perhaps now/. can away with having separate but equal comment spaces. One for those that can code in assembly, solve differential equations, write complete sentences, paragraphs, and essays, and speak at least two natural languages. A second for the children and idiots.
Seriously, it is good we have the supreme court as an equal part of our three ring circus. In only took 20 years of so for the congress to start passing unconstitutional self serving legislation. We would have ended up with an oligarchy in our effort to stamp out a dictatorship if it weren't for the supreme court.
She is too busy selling beer. In any case, they have plenty of money to astroturf, which is what this really is. His best hope if to have free, or at least tax free beer, as he certainly isn't supporting any other personal freedoms.
Unregulated drugs are the issue. You don't know what you are going to get. This goes for vitamins, fitness drugs, or illegal drugs. In fact one of the issues of the past 20 years of so is the cutting of the expected illegal drug with substances that have no effect or are more fatal. Yet people still happily pay huge amounts of money for these things, even though they are probably not even real. For instance, vitamins are regularly shown to be far below dosage, yet nothing can be done about it.
When we are talking about the more regulated drugs, produced by the more regulated drug manufacturer that could actually be sued for everything then things become much more relaible. I would expect to Wal Mart in Canada and get the same product as a Wal Mart in the US. If I were buying unregulated vitamins, I would expect them to be equally ineffective to what I buy in the US. If I were buying Vicodin, I would expect to be equally effective. I don't expect Abott has one formulation for the US and another for Canada.
Which is to say junk is junk no matter where you buy it, while quality product has requires a auditable chain. That is not a prada bag you bought out the trunk of the car, and it is likely sucrose one gets from the spammer mail order service, if you are lucky. Neither has anything to do with ordering name brand prescriptions from reputable houses.
What scares me is not what they see in video games, but what they hear in the church
Misogynism and general hate, "Sisters making more money than brothers and it's creating problems in families... that's one of the reasons many of our women are becoming lesbians," Wilson said. One might attribute such hate to the women being raped and killed in video games rather than the Baptist church. I wonder where the game developers learned to treat women as objects, in church, as kids?
Bling Bling. God wants you to rich. Pray and get a good deal on the cell phone. Remember to pray always before you shop. I have heard his sermons, and the blatant self promotion and obsessions with physical wealth was worse than anything I have seen in video games or rap songs. Sure it is positive, but so is Ludacris.
Most will correctly identify these as isolated example, but that is missing the point. When one give the people what they want, one become famous. No one becomes famous, or elected, by telling people they will have to make sacrifices.
I ride in tiny cars. I ride in luxury cars. I ride in trucks. I am big, and my back has never been good. I find the truck to be the worst solution. Why? because I am so far from the center of mass, and the truck is so high, and so heavy, that all the forces are amplified. Sure I don't feel the road, but the F X r is a killer.
In a tiny car I am low to the ground, at the center of mass, formed into my seat, and basically snug in my cocoon. Sure i feel the road, but that is nothing compared to the kind of forces dictated by newtons laws of motion in a truck. Also, the car is safe as long I keep out of the way of other other drivers, whose ability to drive seems to be inverse to the size of the vehicle. The manufacturer did not try to save money by putting cheap tires on my care. The manufacturer did not build a car that would tip over, and then sue the people who found out how dangerous it is. The car is not going to become dangerous if the electronic stabilization hack fails.
But that does not mean I do not like driving in other cars. The ford escape is a good compromise, and the hybrid is a good choice. That is about it for American cars. A mercedes E class cannot be beat for people with back problems. In a pinch, a volvo also provides a good ride. Of course, if you can afford the maintenance, a Saab is the best.
But those cars are really expensive, and aren't trucks. The thing about trucks, and why they are so cheap in relation to cars, is that the make use of a government expection granted to car manufacturers who complained that all the farmers would go bankrupt if certain regulations were applied to trucks. In sympathy with out impoverished rural population, who only have god and guns to fall back on, the congress granted the exception. Car companies then went off an used the exception to popularize SUVs which could be built cheaply because they didn't have to get good milage or control their own waste. This then lead to the the introduction of the super SUV, which could be taken completely off the taxes as a business expense. Most of those hummers out there, the taxpayer paid 40% of the cost.
OK, so you are going to have to pay for 3G service, but how much more is that going to be, overall. The cost of the current phone, ball park figure, with minimum reasonable plan, is almost $2000 for two years. The costs of the 3G phone, if the cheapest phone is used, will also be around $2000. When I run the numbers I see a 8% increase over two years.
Within the economics of phones there is nothing wrong with this. Everyone complained at the expense of the phone in markets where one is used to going into a shop and buying a $500 phone for $250 with a contract. This is what people wanted. Few people look at the fact that they are getting into a huge debt. If they did more would pay the few dollars extra for a 1 year contract.
And you are correct, if you do not have G3, you should not pay G3. Go out an get an old style iPhone now. It makes sense as the claim it is will cost less.
But there are two other issues. First, it should be possible to buy a phone, then break the contract. This should give you a phone at about the same price as the old phone. Second, if we are indeed now buying the phone through the wireless company, it may be that normal rules apply. This means that we may be able to get one year contracts. The reduces the contracted cost of the phone considerable as well as reducing exposure to risk. For most people, they just want the cheapest phone, so are willing to take on the risk and spend their entire lives under cell phone contracts. If it is now possible to get a phone with one year contract, then that additional monthly cost will be worth it.
Everyone wanted to make SUVS because customers were willing to pay high prices for them. The profit margins were quoted as an order of magnitude over cars. People were willing to pay this money because just like a junk food buffet, the product is crap buy you get a lot of crap for your money.
However, what seems to have people hard is the lack of funds to drive these cars. A small toyota still only costs maybe $2000 a year in gas, where an SUV will costs twice that. What is insane is that families who do not even make a median wage were convinced they could afford such a vehicle. These same families were probably also convinced that they could own a home with an interest only loan. In any case, many families seem to have a vehicle they cannot afford, and others realize that that no matter how cheap the SUV may seem, the real cost of ownership is out of their means.
As far as knowing for a long time that oil extraction was going to peak, and then we would need to start planning, I think that is true. Certainly in the late 80's there was much literature say that we would begin to peak in 20 to 25 years. Of course these calculation did not predict a rise in prices to the point where is was profitable to drill and reclaim oil for low grade deposits, nor did it account for technology that allowed for more sophisticated extraction.
But the real things that seemed to be missed was the introduction of millions of new drivers, who are not so sensitive to prices because they do not drive very far, or have efficient cars. So, even though these drivers are making a quarter of what an American would, many use a tenth of the gas Americans do. And they compete with us in the commodity market. Many of them can afford $5 a gallon, because they will use a few gallons a week. So where do you think the gas will go. Would you rather sell 50 gallans at $5 dolalrs a gallon, or 100 at $4, at probably the same profit.
I suppose they are counting on kickbacks from the two year contract with the cell phone company to generate profits. That is fine, I guess. Only problem is that it keeps people from upgrading the phone. If I have to sign up for another two years, it is unlikely I will upgrading for a long time.
it seems to me that some jocks and thugs and parents just don't know how to deal with internet. With other technology, even the phone, one could use force, intimidation, and coercion to keep people in line. If you taught your kid to fight, then the kid could survive. Anyone made a comment that challenged the kids self worth, the kid could just beat someone up, or steal the other person boy/girl friend, or some other physical attack that would restore the original sense of self worth.
The what we call the internet that no longer the case. While the typical aggressors still form the majority of the problem, no one is safe. This is a problem for people who never had to develop a real sense of self worth or coping strategies beyond violence. You can't beat up an anonymous taunter. Stealing someone's boyfriend does not take that humiliating picture or comment off the boards. The only defense against such thing is a healthy sense of self worth, and a bit of internal control does not help either. If one is raised to only woory about what other people think, the internet has become fatal. It now not only about the local population, which can be controlled, but the world population, which can't.
Which is all bullshit, but when I think what can cause a girl to kill herself because she gets some emails, the only explanation that comes to mind is the above. Sure all sorts of things can be illegal, but something can only be done after the fact. Which should be enough because very little on the internet is real, and for the sane non-egotistical person is really no different that someone writing something on the bathroom wall. Life goes on. Unless you believe that you are more relevant than is actually the case, or have control over more that what you yourself does.
It is interesting theory. There have been a couple fascinating articles on this, the latest I have seen is this.
Basically what it all boils down to is who has the economic growth, who has the money to support a large military, who has the money to buy off locals, and who has a compelling alternative government. A century and half ago, the powers were Spain and England. England had everything except cash and economic growth. Mosty people were kind of happy with the english way of life, and england had military power. However, due to england's lack of cash, it had to borrow money from the colonies, which meant that England was no longer a free agent. When you owe someone lots of money, you are no longer your own person.
My main disagreement with the article is that the US has been in a real position of power for 100 years. We had some success in the early 20th century, but we never made it to international status due to the robber barons which put us in a hole that we did not crawl out of until the 50's, but not really until 70's. At this point we have had two solid generations of superpower status. We are not leaders in economic growth, and the middle class which used to defined growth is becoming non existent. The weak dollar is just making the middle class even smaller. Now, the government and the populous has to borrow,and who are we borrowing from, the chinese.
One thing I heard about england is that it was not growing economically, and this what caused the loss of power. While the us is, we do not seem to be growing in such a way to increase spending and consumption. Those with median income and below has seen almost no growth in income over the past 40 years. Those with top 20% of income has seen their income jump 30% or more. Unless the economy is being based on yatchs and butlers, this is not a way to build a broad based economy.
So the way to fix the economy is socialization. Spend 2 trillion a month on a war. Create new redundant departments to spend more money. Pump money into the economy be giving away cash. Don' bother with structural changes, don't worry about money that can't be paid back, just socialize, just like britain.
Of course it is not the weak dollar that is the issue. It is the lack of discretionary income. It is the the fact that we are soon going to owe 40% of debt to foreign agents, who are now free to call us for favors, and we can no longer pressure. These facts put us back a pre-super power standing. What were the issues? Growth? We aren't on top. Debt? We owe everyone. Cash? We have none. Military? The F-22 is our cool jet, but the f-35 is yet to be built, and everything seems to be ineffective against kitchen table IEDs. The weak dollar is not the cause, but it is a symptom. We need to get serious about innovation, and serious about true fiscally conservative values.
We will see laptops given away with various services for one simple reason. Laptops are quickly becoming cheaper than desktops. LED screens are becoming cheap, there is cost saving in not having the large desktop case, we are having increasing monolithic components. The desktop computer, at the low end, are going to disappear. In addition, one of the most expensive component on the laptop, the screen, is going to get smaller to make the computer smaller. The idea of $1000 for a small laptop is not out of the question, if you want a full powered computer in a small space you have to pay for it, but a minimal computer in a small space will be cheap.
However we are a while out from free laptops. The technology for putting together these small machines is new. We are going to need some further integration. The high resolution screens are going to have to become cheaper. Most people can survive with a 9 inch screen, if the resolution is there. Then there is the issue of batteries. I seem to recall the base battery on the esus is crap, and people thought they were getting the extended. Finally, either users are going to have to accept *nix in these freeby machines, or MS will have to drastically review pricing for it's current OS. I don't think that manufacturers are going to accept the OS as 50% of the product cost.
The bank thing is possible if they can get the price down to $100. Otherwise, I don't know what service would work. About the only thing would be cell based internet connectivity. I don't know how much phone companies want this though. They are already complaining that user are using the internet too much, and not making enough phone calls. I gues not so many people are going over their contract limits.
It might make it this time. When I travel, I look at the relative costs of the plane or car. In many cases, flying is as cheap as driving and half the time. Giving rising travel costs, the train might be competitive with a plane, say $50 per person each way. More than that and someone will be wondering why they would spend two hours on a train when they could spend an hour on a plane,
The problem is the location. It feels like a subsidy for specific private enterprises rather than a general infrastructure project. Disney land to Las Vegas? is this the best way to spend borrowed money to increase economic output? I suppose if there was a severe congestion and parking problem that such a train would be useful. But as it is I think that this smells like the kind of pork the president says he wouldn't sign. You know, useless stuff like education for returning soldiers.
There is also a question of whether this is the best place to build a train. Many years ago a study was completed that found based on land ownership, ridership, and need the best location for a train would be between houston and dallas. But obviously sex and drugs are more important than real business.
It is things like this that make people investigate other options. Perhaps due to this down time, and not knowing if Amazon will be back up in the near future, customers go and find another, equally good source. At this point amazon has not only lost the hour of sales, but all future sales that person might have transacted. It is customer service.
For instance I was a customer when Amazon first came online. It was pretty crappy service, so after a while I left, and did not return for a few years. I now order a lot of stuff, but over the past several months the quality of shipping, particularly books, has dropped. Most books are not packed properly and come damaged. I don't waste my complaining, I just change my ordering habits. Since the books are going to come in used condition anyway, I just order used books, often elsewhere, and save a bundle. In this US economy where even Walmart is caving to pressure groups to keep customers, this is hardly the time for Amazon to let service slip.
If only it were so. In today parlance a megabyte will get you about 900,000 byte or so, due to the decimalization of the measurement and the overhead that modern drives seem to incur. Therefore, this would be advertised and sold as a 1.2 megabyte facility. Customers who complain will be double talked to by the same type of people who become finance and mortgage officers.
The argument is spurious. You can't just use your auto for anything. To begin with, if you use it to run over people, or knock down people mail boxes, you will be arrested. if you go over the speed limit, or park in the wrong place, you will be ticketed. To move more directly to the analogy, the amount you drive, and how fast you drive, is related to what you are willing to spend to operate and maintain the automobile.
Which is why the analogy is deeply flawed. Owning a car is not like hiring an ISP. You pay the ISP some money and they have to cover all the costs. The contract is short term. Any equipment is often consumable. It is not like owning a car, where you buy the car and can do anything you want with it because you own it. It is yours, you are keeping it, and the dealer could care less.
A more reasonable analogy is leasing a car. In this case you are paying for the use of the car for a specified time period, just like most ISP contracts, and, just like a lease, the ISPs are being forced to impose limits on the heavy users to be fair for everyone. Most lease agreements limit your use to 15000 miles. You can buy more up front, or pay for overages at the end. There are often other restrictions, But again, you are responsible for the car, so even this is not a good comparison.
Likely the best comparison is renting a car. The agency covers all maintenance, you just pay for the gas. In this cae, the agency is very interested in what you do with car, even putting tracking devices that record speed, distance, and location. It seems to me that, due to the fact that there is little physical product involve. the most reasonable case is somewhere between a lease and rental. But the idea is this, as people begin to use bandwidth, either all of us will pay equally to cover the high end users, much like what happens now with the subsidies of big cars, or those that want more will pay for it themselves.
While you may not agree with the fact that animals should not be tortured, even though most people I know do agree that animals should not suffer unduly, for instance good hunter really do try to make the kill in one shot, there is a larger issue. Poaching.
Most governments do not allow Elephants to be killed, or control the killing of elephants very carefully. The poachers who kill the elephants are criminals, just like the person who takes a deer off your land, that is if you own any land, or have the means to worry about such things. I can tell you it is one thing for a family to poach to feed themselves, but quite another to poach for profit. For instance, I can't imagine a single land owner who would tolerate deer being killed, their antlers removed, and the carcass left behind.
The ivory ban exists mostly to make sure that thieves do not remove the natural resources of a country. This is why older ivory can be sold. But it is not enough. Poachers still kill perhaps tens of thousands animals a year, and it the cross boarder demand for ivory that is causing this. It would be like your neighbor killing all your deer because he liked your deer better, leaving you with no deer at all.
As far the specific criticism on tactics, yes it is of questionable value. OTOH, that is what the organization exists to do. It is like after columbine, when Heston went there and continued to promote gun rights for the NRA. Sure it was questionable, but he was doing his job. But the key thing here is why does ebay exist. Not to be a in-between in every internet sale, but to be the middle person in enough sales, and to maximize the income from each sales, while minimizing expenses, to maximize profit.
To me complaining that ebay won't sell this or that is complete waste of time. If transacting a sale becomes too expensive, they would be stupid to continue to allow those sales. Ebay already has restrictions on items that might have providence or taxissues, items such as art, artifacts, catalytic convertors, gift cards, tobacco, etc. These are things that probably would cost more than ebay makes in single transaction. I am surprised that ivory is not already on that list.
Apple has consistently supported hardware and technogology for about 7 after release. Since it is reletively easy to stay with a release prior to current, this means that a computer can be used for 8-10 years, which is another reason why the Mac is worth the money.
This support is pretty consistent. Look at previous OS releases. Mac OS 9, released 1999, was not fully depreciated until Mac OS 10.4,in 2005. For computers, the cube, the TiPB, and the G4 Powermac, all released in 1999-2000, did not lose support until late last year.
So what does this mean in terms of expectations. The last editions of the powerbook, for example, was introduced around around 2003 and sold until 2006. Given the history of supporting 7 years old hardware, and Jobs statement that he would support 5 year old hardware, we should not see a Intel only Mac OS X until at least 2010. Given that OS X is now pretty stable, except for very new features like Time Mac machine, which does not need a new release, and Jobs statement that the release cycle wil be slower, we should not expect 10.6 until late 2009 or early 2010.
If OS 10.6 is release later this year, and does not support PPC, it will be another indication that Apple is moving away from the long term support of customers and falling into the trap of the average consumer electronics company, I have no problem with certain apps not runing on the PPC, like the newest iMovie and iPhone SDK, and expect that even if 10.6 support PPC, it won't be a full support(although they never had to do partial support in the previous transitions), but a drop of PPC prior to 2010 will be extremely damaging to their reputation of reliability.
The theory is good. One must have the assessments standards prior to any effort made to teach. Teaching without knowing the assessments methodology is extremely ineffecient. This is what happens in the real world. We are taught skills and processes that we expected to apply. it is a good plan. The devil, however,is in the details.
First, what is to be assessed. The states, due to a annoying thing called the constitution, are free to set what they consider to be reasonable standards. This in itself makes NCLB a joke. Combine this with no significant federal financing to encourage high standards, as it down say with the speed limit, makes any testing data unreliable.
Second, what passing standards are to be. It appears that these are often set on the same basis as the need to escape a bear. You don't need to outrun the bear, just your friends. In the same way, no state wants to look bad, so standards are set to insure a healthy number of students pass, not on any absolute level of demonstrated ability. This tradition of fungiable standards and data crunching are deeply rooting in the origin. Rod Paige, the man Bush broght with him from Houston to create NCLB, had a lot of experience laundering data.
Third is when should a topic be tested. Should topics be tested the grading period in which they are taught, at the end of the year, in the next year? Right now many topics are tested in the year after a student typically takes a class. This is benificial to advance students, as topics are often repeated every other year, but regular students are at a disavantage, as the NCLB tests not what they are currently learning, but work they did the previous year.
Fourth, when should the test be held. If the test is to be a measure of progress, ideally the test would be given as a final exam, and the grade used as such in the course. Technology and security does not allow this, so the test is given at various times during the year, over material the student may or may not have covered. One consequence of this is that for many students, learning ends when the test is over. That can mean that what is supposed to be at least 30 weeks of classes becomes as few as 20.
Fifth, how should the data be used. Even though students take some subject every year, generally only a few of these tests are used for federal compliance. Furthermore, this compliance is based on the arbitrary standard set by the state, and not based on improvement by the student. Certainly it would be more important to expect the students scores to grow year to year, instead of just passing. To make matters worse, only the aggregate score is used. No attention is paid to the broad topics. This means that a student can consistently fail a topic, and as long as that student passes the test, everything looks ok. To put this in perspecitve, a student can theoretically graduate without ever knowing how to find the area of a square.
Finally, how do we insure that students are being taught. As mentioned above, one way might be to look at individual student growth. Is every student learning something every year. While this is gaining some traction, this is not what is done at the federal level. What is done is to break the students into demographics, say white,asian, hispanic, etc, and also socio-economic status designation. A school must meet minimum passing requirements for each group. The simplest way to meet these standards is simply to make sure that you only accept kids that pass the test. if this is not possible, then the second best thing is not to have too many of these groups, i.e. make the school as homogeneous as possible. In any case, the whole thing is a farce as it does not guarantee that no child is left behind. Many, many children are left behind, and students that traditionally have not been taught still are not.
That said, the general idea is good. It is generally accepted that fewer teachers are jus
What a business should be doing is continuously reinvigorating it's core business to meet future needs. Google is the business of selling ads. It could get into the business of selling support, but then it is going to have a problem like MS, where it will do many things, few very well, and the things it does do well will get done less well. Therefore, any discussion about google and openoffice.org has to address how such work will help google sell ads.
The article mentioned IBM. IBM is in the business of selling solutions to businesses. Clearly selling support falls within that definition. They are supporting a client they developed because they support total solutions, not random mix and match. IBM was able to climb back up and deliver a blow to MS in this area because MS was busy building monopolies, not supporting customers.
Google likely has little to worry about from MS. Google is about selling ads, and that is it. It is like TV. Provide a simple to understand product, sometimes useful like the news, sometimes fun, and people will watch the ads. It works. MS, OTOH, is only interested in monopoly positions. They want to take over the living room. They want to take over the search space. They want to take over the web. Nothing is said of providing customer with solutions, or competing within a space. So they go the search route by figuring out how to leverage the desktop monopoly to force people to use thier search engine, rather than building a search engine people want to use, never realizing that search is not the issue, but ads are, and maybe there are other ways to drive ads, other than search, like, i don't know, office apps. But who was there first in office apps on the web? Google. Because google gets it, and MS does not.
Speaking of the edmunds catalog, bookmark his sm-14 website on their computer. It's like, give a man fish he eats for a day, teach him the process of fishing, he eats for a lifetime. Give a kid an answer, they have an answer. Teach them how to pose good questions and the process of answering those questions, the kid will grow up to an adult that thrives for a lifetime.
Cyptogram has a discussion of this issue in relation to the oft used argument that only people who have are committing crimes should be afraid of full disclosure. The issue in the note, iirc, related to data mining and video surveillance. The counter example to the statement was the police apparent unwillingness to give tapes of traffic stops, for example, to those private parties involved. It seems that the tapes are there to protect the cops, which is good, but no one is willing to protect the citizen. We see this even in the taping of the very occasional police overreaction.
Almost no one is comfortable with full disclosure, and the ultimate arrogance and hypocrisy is demanding it in other, while fabricating excuses why your yourself cannot comply. We see this in the current US presidential campaign, where it is typical to release tax returns, but some people feel too above everyone else to so do. This includes other cases where persons who are, like the police, are paid by the american taxpayer, but refuse to fully account for their work hours to the american tax payer. the examples, private and public, are endless.
So why would geeks, even those that never put on a tinfoil hat, demand full disclosure, especially in a market place where we have the option to simply not spend the money. In this case, if there are significant security issues with the iphone, don't buy one. It sounds trite, and everyone always complains about the philosophy, but it works. MS is a target for viruses, even if it not inherently less secure, so I don't use it on a regular basis. SUVs are less secure as they are not inherently stuck to the ground through the tire patches, and require computer intervention to keep them for tipping over, so I don't buy them. I don't shop at stores with affinity cards. If an iPhone is an attack against security, buy something else.
Back to the issue of security, there is one serious misconception that I believe many people make. Just because one does not publish ones security details on the internet does not mean that one is practicing security by obscurity. Just because I do not publish my path to work on the net, and my schedule, and the times and places that my stuff is most venerable to theft, does not mean I practice security by obscurity or have a ideological hate of full disclosure. And giving a vendor time to fix an issue, even if everyone except the average consumer knows about it, is not unreasonable. If the vendor does nothing about it in a fairly short time frame, then the equation shifts.
Which is why the most secure system may be open source. If something is discovered, then an slightly above average user may be able to fix it, and no one has to wait on the vendor. But open source solutions do not seem to have traction in the marketplace, so we are where we are.
If this is a web interface, and a user can log in from any computer, then there is no problem.
Honestly, any music one buys online is going to have a limited lifetime. The best one can hope for is that you can make a copy to CD and not lose much in the transcoding. But how many people burn to CD? For most people the just put on their computer or another device.
While I think this service is maybe inferior to something like Amazon, it is superior in many ways to ITMS. If I can pay a dime to put something in a jukebox, then play it from anywhere I can log on, what is the problem? I might make even more sense to use this service that labouriously moving all my music from on device to another.
That is if I hadn't already bought half of the music I will likely buy in my lifetime. I have many gigabytes of music that I have bought over my life. If I was a kid with a computer, a smart phone, and internet access at school, this would be a wonderful deal. An album for a dollar. I can play on anything I normally play on? Sign me up! You may think of the expense, but how much are kids paying for ringtones, SMS, and the like.
I know we have a kneejerk reaction around here to paying for things, and we believe that music wants to be free, but perhaps the objection here is more based on what we consider the norm, not rational thought. Perhaps music is not about listening to the same album a hundred times because we can only afford that one album, or listening to whatever is free on yahoo. Perhaps there is some value in having a collection of songs, that one chooses our of personal taste, and then having access to those songs over many devices located in disparate geographical area. As I said, i would not do this. I would just buy the CD or download the album. But I can imagine such a thing maybe finding a small market. It would suck to have all the music go away, though.
I installed 10.5 the week it came out. I don't normally do this, but I had ne machine was really getting bogged down on the original 10.4 install, and 10.5 was a good excuse to give it a fresh install. Given that it had been three years since the last update, I thought it was a good risk.
Overall things worked ok. X windows was more or less down, but that is has been a common problem, and I have moved away from depending on X. That said, I don't think 10.5 was functional until 10.5.1. We will see what 10.5.3 has to offer.
OTOH, I saw 10.5.2 as a minor issue, on that actually broke the DVD player on a powerbook. Thankfully VLC is there to fullfill all my video playing needs, without the complications of DVD player. Therefore, i am not sure what to expect from 10.5.3. Will it fix problems, or merely make the PPC even more obsolete. Who knows. I would now comment about the need for Apple to think of a new OS, but I still like my PPC machines. The next OS, and set of apps, will sure be Intel only.
This is an interesting comment. First the presumption. Any restrictions on property use, especially in an state that is some ways anarchistic, is bad. Property, power, and technology, will be wielded by those who are best able and willing to maximize it's potential. There will be no locked iPhones because someone else will take the technology and come out with an unlocked version, or at least that is the fantasy.
As far as the difference between physical and intellectual property rights, that is an anachronism of the industrial age when IP rights, such as the method to build a gear, was embedded in a physical device. The nice thing about the system was it required a physical implementation as proof of technology, and this is where we lose it with the so-called IP stuff. We now allow patents of ideas, with no proof that the idea will produce any value, and with no proof that it will work on a particular physical system. To go back to the industrial processes, machining steel is no the same as machining molybdenum, and so a patent should not be accepted on the method to machine a gear out of any metal.
Such a patent would suck wealth out of the economy as others are less likely to develop a working process under the assumption that such a process already exists. Such a patent, like most software patents, does seem to exist primarily to prevent the innovation of a product.
OTOH, this does not mean that IP is worthless. No, indeed, the need for patents, in spite of the anarchy idealist, are needed, We know what capitalists will do if left to run amok. Like the robber barons they will keep their profits, knowing that the workers will only waste it on food and drink, and use that money to usurp the power of the democratic process. So some sort of limited property system is needed. It clearly must limit the power of the property owner, else we get silly laws like the mickey mouse property extension, or even worse the i-sang-ten-songs-and-therefore-i-should-never-have-to-work-again-law. An I agree, this is connected to a physical device. If you have a business process, build the device the makes the process work, and patent or copyright it.
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It is good to know that the activist circuit judges and below are free to ignore precedents and rules set by the supreme court. Perhaps now /. can away with having separate but equal comment spaces. One for those that can code in assembly, solve differential equations, write complete sentences, paragraphs, and essays, and speak at least two natural languages. A second for the children and idiots.
Seriously, it is good we have the supreme court as an equal part of our three ring circus. In only took 20 years of so for the congress to start passing unconstitutional self serving legislation. We would have ended up with an oligarchy in our effort to stamp out a dictatorship if it weren't for the supreme court.
She is too busy selling beer. In any case, they have plenty of money to astroturf, which is what this really is. His best hope if to have free, or at least tax free beer, as he certainly isn't supporting any other personal freedoms.
When we are talking about the more regulated drugs, produced by the more regulated drug manufacturer that could actually be sued for everything then things become much more relaible. I would expect to Wal Mart in Canada and get the same product as a Wal Mart in the US. If I were buying unregulated vitamins, I would expect them to be equally ineffective to what I buy in the US. If I were buying Vicodin, I would expect to be equally effective. I don't expect Abott has one formulation for the US and another for Canada.
Which is to say junk is junk no matter where you buy it, while quality product has requires a auditable chain. That is not a prada bag you bought out the trunk of the car, and it is likely sucrose one gets from the spammer mail order service, if you are lucky. Neither has anything to do with ordering name brand prescriptions from reputable houses.
Misogynism and general hate, "Sisters making more money than brothers and it's creating problems in families ... that's one of the reasons many of our women are becoming lesbians," Wilson said. One might attribute such hate to the women being raped and killed in video games rather than the Baptist church. I wonder where the game developers learned to treat women as objects, in church, as kids?
Bling Bling. God wants you to rich. Pray and get a good deal on the cell phone. Remember to pray always before you shop. I have heard his sermons, and the blatant self promotion and obsessions with physical wealth was worse than anything I have seen in video games or rap songs. Sure it is positive, but so is Ludacris.
Most will correctly identify these as isolated example, but that is missing the point. When one give the people what they want, one become famous. No one becomes famous, or elected, by telling people they will have to make sacrifices.
In a tiny car I am low to the ground, at the center of mass, formed into my seat, and basically snug in my cocoon. Sure i feel the road, but that is nothing compared to the kind of forces dictated by newtons laws of motion in a truck. Also, the car is safe as long I keep out of the way of other other drivers, whose ability to drive seems to be inverse to the size of the vehicle. The manufacturer did not try to save money by putting cheap tires on my care. The manufacturer did not build a car that would tip over, and then sue the people who found out how dangerous it is. The car is not going to become dangerous if the electronic stabilization hack fails.
But that does not mean I do not like driving in other cars. The ford escape is a good compromise, and the hybrid is a good choice. That is about it for American cars. A mercedes E class cannot be beat for people with back problems. In a pinch, a volvo also provides a good ride. Of course, if you can afford the maintenance, a Saab is the best.
But those cars are really expensive, and aren't trucks. The thing about trucks, and why they are so cheap in relation to cars, is that the make use of a government expection granted to car manufacturers who complained that all the farmers would go bankrupt if certain regulations were applied to trucks. In sympathy with out impoverished rural population, who only have god and guns to fall back on, the congress granted the exception. Car companies then went off an used the exception to popularize SUVs which could be built cheaply because they didn't have to get good milage or control their own waste. This then lead to the the introduction of the super SUV, which could be taken completely off the taxes as a business expense. Most of those hummers out there, the taxpayer paid 40% of the cost.
Within the economics of phones there is nothing wrong with this. Everyone complained at the expense of the phone in markets where one is used to going into a shop and buying a $500 phone for $250 with a contract. This is what people wanted. Few people look at the fact that they are getting into a huge debt. If they did more would pay the few dollars extra for a 1 year contract.
And you are correct, if you do not have G3, you should not pay G3. Go out an get an old style iPhone now. It makes sense as the claim it is will cost less.
But there are two other issues. First, it should be possible to buy a phone, then break the contract. This should give you a phone at about the same price as the old phone. Second, if we are indeed now buying the phone through the wireless company, it may be that normal rules apply. This means that we may be able to get one year contracts. The reduces the contracted cost of the phone considerable as well as reducing exposure to risk. For most people, they just want the cheapest phone, so are willing to take on the risk and spend their entire lives under cell phone contracts. If it is now possible to get a phone with one year contract, then that additional monthly cost will be worth it.
However, what seems to have people hard is the lack of funds to drive these cars. A small toyota still only costs maybe $2000 a year in gas, where an SUV will costs twice that. What is insane is that families who do not even make a median wage were convinced they could afford such a vehicle. These same families were probably also convinced that they could own a home with an interest only loan. In any case, many families seem to have a vehicle they cannot afford, and others realize that that no matter how cheap the SUV may seem, the real cost of ownership is out of their means.
As far as knowing for a long time that oil extraction was going to peak, and then we would need to start planning, I think that is true. Certainly in the late 80's there was much literature say that we would begin to peak in 20 to 25 years. Of course these calculation did not predict a rise in prices to the point where is was profitable to drill and reclaim oil for low grade deposits, nor did it account for technology that allowed for more sophisticated extraction.
But the real things that seemed to be missed was the introduction of millions of new drivers, who are not so sensitive to prices because they do not drive very far, or have efficient cars. So, even though these drivers are making a quarter of what an American would, many use a tenth of the gas Americans do. And they compete with us in the commodity market. Many of them can afford $5 a gallon, because they will use a few gallons a week. So where do you think the gas will go. Would you rather sell 50 gallans at $5 dolalrs a gallon, or 100 at $4, at probably the same profit.
I suppose they are counting on kickbacks from the two year contract with the cell phone company to generate profits. That is fine, I guess. Only problem is that it keeps people from upgrading the phone. If I have to sign up for another two years, it is unlikely I will upgrading for a long time.
The what we call the internet that no longer the case. While the typical aggressors still form the majority of the problem, no one is safe. This is a problem for people who never had to develop a real sense of self worth or coping strategies beyond violence. You can't beat up an anonymous taunter. Stealing someone's boyfriend does not take that humiliating picture or comment off the boards. The only defense against such thing is a healthy sense of self worth, and a bit of internal control does not help either. If one is raised to only woory about what other people think, the internet has become fatal. It now not only about the local population, which can be controlled, but the world population, which can't.
Which is all bullshit, but when I think what can cause a girl to kill herself because she gets some emails, the only explanation that comes to mind is the above. Sure all sorts of things can be illegal, but something can only be done after the fact. Which should be enough because very little on the internet is real, and for the sane non-egotistical person is really no different that someone writing something on the bathroom wall. Life goes on. Unless you believe that you are more relevant than is actually the case, or have control over more that what you yourself does.
Basically what it all boils down to is who has the economic growth, who has the money to support a large military, who has the money to buy off locals, and who has a compelling alternative government. A century and half ago, the powers were Spain and England. England had everything except cash and economic growth. Mosty people were kind of happy with the english way of life, and england had military power. However, due to england's lack of cash, it had to borrow money from the colonies, which meant that England was no longer a free agent. When you owe someone lots of money, you are no longer your own person.
My main disagreement with the article is that the US has been in a real position of power for 100 years. We had some success in the early 20th century, but we never made it to international status due to the robber barons which put us in a hole that we did not crawl out of until the 50's, but not really until 70's. At this point we have had two solid generations of superpower status. We are not leaders in economic growth, and the middle class which used to defined growth is becoming non existent. The weak dollar is just making the middle class even smaller. Now, the government and the populous has to borrow,and who are we borrowing from, the chinese.
One thing I heard about england is that it was not growing economically, and this what caused the loss of power. While the us is, we do not seem to be growing in such a way to increase spending and consumption. Those with median income and below has seen almost no growth in income over the past 40 years. Those with top 20% of income has seen their income jump 30% or more. Unless the economy is being based on yatchs and butlers, this is not a way to build a broad based economy.
So the way to fix the economy is socialization. Spend 2 trillion a month on a war. Create new redundant departments to spend more money. Pump money into the economy be giving away cash. Don' bother with structural changes, don't worry about money that can't be paid back, just socialize, just like britain.
Of course it is not the weak dollar that is the issue. It is the lack of discretionary income. It is the the fact that we are soon going to owe 40% of debt to foreign agents, who are now free to call us for favors, and we can no longer pressure. These facts put us back a pre-super power standing. What were the issues? Growth? We aren't on top. Debt? We owe everyone. Cash? We have none. Military? The F-22 is our cool jet, but the f-35 is yet to be built, and everything seems to be ineffective against kitchen table IEDs. The weak dollar is not the cause, but it is a symptom. We need to get serious about innovation, and serious about true fiscally conservative values.
However we are a while out from free laptops. The technology for putting together these small machines is new. We are going to need some further integration. The high resolution screens are going to have to become cheaper. Most people can survive with a 9 inch screen, if the resolution is there. Then there is the issue of batteries. I seem to recall the base battery on the esus is crap, and people thought they were getting the extended. Finally, either users are going to have to accept *nix in these freeby machines, or MS will have to drastically review pricing for it's current OS. I don't think that manufacturers are going to accept the OS as 50% of the product cost.
The bank thing is possible if they can get the price down to $100. Otherwise, I don't know what service would work. About the only thing would be cell based internet connectivity. I don't know how much phone companies want this though. They are already complaining that user are using the internet too much, and not making enough phone calls. I gues not so many people are going over their contract limits.
The problem is the location. It feels like a subsidy for specific private enterprises rather than a general infrastructure project. Disney land to Las Vegas? is this the best way to spend borrowed money to increase economic output? I suppose if there was a severe congestion and parking problem that such a train would be useful. But as it is I think that this smells like the kind of pork the president says he wouldn't sign. You know, useless stuff like education for returning soldiers.
There is also a question of whether this is the best place to build a train. Many years ago a study was completed that found based on land ownership, ridership, and need the best location for a train would be between houston and dallas. But obviously sex and drugs are more important than real business.
For instance I was a customer when Amazon first came online. It was pretty crappy service, so after a while I left, and did not return for a few years. I now order a lot of stuff, but over the past several months the quality of shipping, particularly books, has dropped. Most books are not packed properly and come damaged. I don't waste my complaining, I just change my ordering habits. Since the books are going to come in used condition anyway, I just order used books, often elsewhere, and save a bundle. In this US economy where even Walmart is caving to pressure groups to keep customers, this is hardly the time for Amazon to let service slip.
If only it were so. In today parlance a megabyte will get you about 900,000 byte or so, due to the decimalization of the measurement and the overhead that modern drives seem to incur. Therefore, this would be advertised and sold as a 1.2 megabyte facility. Customers who complain will be double talked to by the same type of people who become finance and mortgage officers.
Which is why the analogy is deeply flawed. Owning a car is not like hiring an ISP. You pay the ISP some money and they have to cover all the costs. The contract is short term. Any equipment is often consumable. It is not like owning a car, where you buy the car and can do anything you want with it because you own it. It is yours, you are keeping it, and the dealer could care less.
A more reasonable analogy is leasing a car. In this case you are paying for the use of the car for a specified time period, just like most ISP contracts, and, just like a lease, the ISPs are being forced to impose limits on the heavy users to be fair for everyone. Most lease agreements limit your use to 15000 miles. You can buy more up front, or pay for overages at the end. There are often other restrictions, But again, you are responsible for the car, so even this is not a good comparison.
Likely the best comparison is renting a car. The agency covers all maintenance, you just pay for the gas. In this cae, the agency is very interested in what you do with car, even putting tracking devices that record speed, distance, and location. It seems to me that, due to the fact that there is little physical product involve. the most reasonable case is somewhere between a lease and rental. But the idea is this, as people begin to use bandwidth, either all of us will pay equally to cover the high end users, much like what happens now with the subsidies of big cars, or those that want more will pay for it themselves.
Most governments do not allow Elephants to be killed, or control the killing of elephants very carefully. The poachers who kill the elephants are criminals, just like the person who takes a deer off your land, that is if you own any land, or have the means to worry about such things. I can tell you it is one thing for a family to poach to feed themselves, but quite another to poach for profit. For instance, I can't imagine a single land owner who would tolerate deer being killed, their antlers removed, and the carcass left behind.
The ivory ban exists mostly to make sure that thieves do not remove the natural resources of a country. This is why older ivory can be sold. But it is not enough. Poachers still kill perhaps tens of thousands animals a year, and it the cross boarder demand for ivory that is causing this. It would be like your neighbor killing all your deer because he liked your deer better, leaving you with no deer at all.
As far the specific criticism on tactics, yes it is of questionable value. OTOH, that is what the organization exists to do. It is like after columbine, when Heston went there and continued to promote gun rights for the NRA. Sure it was questionable, but he was doing his job. But the key thing here is why does ebay exist. Not to be a in-between in every internet sale, but to be the middle person in enough sales, and to maximize the income from each sales, while minimizing expenses, to maximize profit.
To me complaining that ebay won't sell this or that is complete waste of time. If transacting a sale becomes too expensive, they would be stupid to continue to allow those sales. Ebay already has restrictions on items that might have providence or taxissues, items such as art, artifacts, catalytic convertors, gift cards, tobacco, etc. These are things that probably would cost more than ebay makes in single transaction. I am surprised that ivory is not already on that list.
This support is pretty consistent. Look at previous OS releases. Mac OS 9, released 1999, was not fully depreciated until Mac OS 10.4,in 2005. For computers, the cube, the TiPB, and the G4 Powermac, all released in 1999-2000, did not lose support until late last year.
So what does this mean in terms of expectations. The last editions of the powerbook, for example, was introduced around around 2003 and sold until 2006. Given the history of supporting 7 years old hardware, and Jobs statement that he would support 5 year old hardware, we should not see a Intel only Mac OS X until at least 2010. Given that OS X is now pretty stable, except for very new features like Time Mac machine, which does not need a new release, and Jobs statement that the release cycle wil be slower, we should not expect 10.6 until late 2009 or early 2010.
If OS 10.6 is release later this year, and does not support PPC, it will be another indication that Apple is moving away from the long term support of customers and falling into the trap of the average consumer electronics company, I have no problem with certain apps not runing on the PPC, like the newest iMovie and iPhone SDK, and expect that even if 10.6 support PPC, it won't be a full support(although they never had to do partial support in the previous transitions), but a drop of PPC prior to 2010 will be extremely damaging to their reputation of reliability.
First, what is to be assessed. The states, due to a annoying thing called the constitution, are free to set what they consider to be reasonable standards. This in itself makes NCLB a joke. Combine this with no significant federal financing to encourage high standards, as it down say with the speed limit, makes any testing data unreliable.
Second, what passing standards are to be. It appears that these are often set on the same basis as the need to escape a bear. You don't need to outrun the bear, just your friends. In the same way, no state wants to look bad, so standards are set to insure a healthy number of students pass, not on any absolute level of demonstrated ability. This tradition of fungiable standards and data crunching are deeply rooting in the origin. Rod Paige, the man Bush broght with him from Houston to create NCLB, had a lot of experience laundering data.
Third is when should a topic be tested. Should topics be tested the grading period in which they are taught, at the end of the year, in the next year? Right now many topics are tested in the year after a student typically takes a class. This is benificial to advance students, as topics are often repeated every other year, but regular students are at a disavantage, as the NCLB tests not what they are currently learning, but work they did the previous year.
Fourth, when should the test be held. If the test is to be a measure of progress, ideally the test would be given as a final exam, and the grade used as such in the course. Technology and security does not allow this, so the test is given at various times during the year, over material the student may or may not have covered. One consequence of this is that for many students, learning ends when the test is over. That can mean that what is supposed to be at least 30 weeks of classes becomes as few as 20.
Fifth, how should the data be used. Even though students take some subject every year, generally only a few of these tests are used for federal compliance. Furthermore, this compliance is based on the arbitrary standard set by the state, and not based on improvement by the student. Certainly it would be more important to expect the students scores to grow year to year, instead of just passing. To make matters worse, only the aggregate score is used. No attention is paid to the broad topics. This means that a student can consistently fail a topic, and as long as that student passes the test, everything looks ok. To put this in perspecitve, a student can theoretically graduate without ever knowing how to find the area of a square.
Finally, how do we insure that students are being taught. As mentioned above, one way might be to look at individual student growth. Is every student learning something every year. While this is gaining some traction, this is not what is done at the federal level. What is done is to break the students into demographics, say white,asian, hispanic, etc, and also socio-economic status designation. A school must meet minimum passing requirements for each group. The simplest way to meet these standards is simply to make sure that you only accept kids that pass the test. if this is not possible, then the second best thing is not to have too many of these groups, i.e. make the school as homogeneous as possible. In any case, the whole thing is a farce as it does not guarantee that no child is left behind. Many, many children are left behind, and students that traditionally have not been taught still are not.
That said, the general idea is good. It is generally accepted that fewer teachers are jus
The article mentioned IBM. IBM is in the business of selling solutions to businesses. Clearly selling support falls within that definition. They are supporting a client they developed because they support total solutions, not random mix and match. IBM was able to climb back up and deliver a blow to MS in this area because MS was busy building monopolies, not supporting customers.
Google likely has little to worry about from MS. Google is about selling ads, and that is it. It is like TV. Provide a simple to understand product, sometimes useful like the news, sometimes fun, and people will watch the ads. It works. MS, OTOH, is only interested in monopoly positions. They want to take over the living room. They want to take over the search space. They want to take over the web. Nothing is said of providing customer with solutions, or competing within a space. So they go the search route by figuring out how to leverage the desktop monopoly to force people to use thier search engine, rather than building a search engine people want to use, never realizing that search is not the issue, but ads are, and maybe there are other ways to drive ads, other than search, like, i don't know, office apps. But who was there first in office apps on the web? Google. Because google gets it, and MS does not.
Speaking of the edmunds catalog, bookmark his sm-14 website on their computer. It's like, give a man fish he eats for a day, teach him the process of fishing, he eats for a lifetime. Give a kid an answer, they have an answer. Teach them how to pose good questions and the process of answering those questions, the kid will grow up to an adult that thrives for a lifetime.
Almost no one is comfortable with full disclosure, and the ultimate arrogance and hypocrisy is demanding it in other, while fabricating excuses why your yourself cannot comply. We see this in the current US presidential campaign, where it is typical to release tax returns, but some people feel too above everyone else to so do. This includes other cases where persons who are, like the police, are paid by the american taxpayer, but refuse to fully account for their work hours to the american tax payer. the examples, private and public, are endless.
So why would geeks, even those that never put on a tinfoil hat, demand full disclosure, especially in a market place where we have the option to simply not spend the money. In this case, if there are significant security issues with the iphone, don't buy one. It sounds trite, and everyone always complains about the philosophy, but it works. MS is a target for viruses, even if it not inherently less secure, so I don't use it on a regular basis. SUVs are less secure as they are not inherently stuck to the ground through the tire patches, and require computer intervention to keep them for tipping over, so I don't buy them. I don't shop at stores with affinity cards. If an iPhone is an attack against security, buy something else.
Back to the issue of security, there is one serious misconception that I believe many people make. Just because one does not publish ones security details on the internet does not mean that one is practicing security by obscurity. Just because I do not publish my path to work on the net, and my schedule, and the times and places that my stuff is most venerable to theft, does not mean I practice security by obscurity or have a ideological hate of full disclosure. And giving a vendor time to fix an issue, even if everyone except the average consumer knows about it, is not unreasonable. If the vendor does nothing about it in a fairly short time frame, then the equation shifts.
Which is why the most secure system may be open source. If something is discovered, then an slightly above average user may be able to fix it, and no one has to wait on the vendor. But open source solutions do not seem to have traction in the marketplace, so we are where we are.
There, no no one has to worry
Sorry, could not resist.
Honestly, any music one buys online is going to have a limited lifetime. The best one can hope for is that you can make a copy to CD and not lose much in the transcoding. But how many people burn to CD? For most people the just put on their computer or another device.
While I think this service is maybe inferior to something like Amazon, it is superior in many ways to ITMS. If I can pay a dime to put something in a jukebox, then play it from anywhere I can log on, what is the problem? I might make even more sense to use this service that labouriously moving all my music from on device to another.
That is if I hadn't already bought half of the music I will likely buy in my lifetime. I have many gigabytes of music that I have bought over my life. If I was a kid with a computer, a smart phone, and internet access at school, this would be a wonderful deal. An album for a dollar. I can play on anything I normally play on? Sign me up! You may think of the expense, but how much are kids paying for ringtones, SMS, and the like.
I know we have a kneejerk reaction around here to paying for things, and we believe that music wants to be free, but perhaps the objection here is more based on what we consider the norm, not rational thought. Perhaps music is not about listening to the same album a hundred times because we can only afford that one album, or listening to whatever is free on yahoo. Perhaps there is some value in having a collection of songs, that one chooses our of personal taste, and then having access to those songs over many devices located in disparate geographical area. As I said, i would not do this. I would just buy the CD or download the album. But I can imagine such a thing maybe finding a small market. It would suck to have all the music go away, though.
Overall things worked ok. X windows was more or less down, but that is has been a common problem, and I have moved away from depending on X. That said, I don't think 10.5 was functional until 10.5.1. We will see what 10.5.3 has to offer.
OTOH, I saw 10.5.2 as a minor issue, on that actually broke the DVD player on a powerbook. Thankfully VLC is there to fullfill all my video playing needs, without the complications of DVD player. Therefore, i am not sure what to expect from 10.5.3. Will it fix problems, or merely make the PPC even more obsolete. Who knows. I would now comment about the need for Apple to think of a new OS, but I still like my PPC machines. The next OS, and set of apps, will sure be Intel only.
As far as the difference between physical and intellectual property rights, that is an anachronism of the industrial age when IP rights, such as the method to build a gear, was embedded in a physical device. The nice thing about the system was it required a physical implementation as proof of technology, and this is where we lose it with the so-called IP stuff. We now allow patents of ideas, with no proof that the idea will produce any value, and with no proof that it will work on a particular physical system. To go back to the industrial processes, machining steel is no the same as machining molybdenum, and so a patent should not be accepted on the method to machine a gear out of any metal.
Such a patent would suck wealth out of the economy as others are less likely to develop a working process under the assumption that such a process already exists. Such a patent, like most software patents, does seem to exist primarily to prevent the innovation of a product.
OTOH, this does not mean that IP is worthless. No, indeed, the need for patents, in spite of the anarchy idealist, are needed, We know what capitalists will do if left to run amok. Like the robber barons they will keep their profits, knowing that the workers will only waste it on food and drink, and use that money to usurp the power of the democratic process. So some sort of limited property system is needed. It clearly must limit the power of the property owner, else we get silly laws like the mickey mouse property extension, or even worse the i-sang-ten-songs-and-therefore-i-should-never-have-to-work-again-law. An I agree, this is connected to a physical device. If you have a business process, build the device the makes the process work, and patent or copyright it.