This is even worse, because if it didn't have the "ON THE INTERNET" type clause, it would be even more obvious that it's a gross violation of free speech.
It's quite possible that the subsidy system doesn't make sense. However, that in no way strengthens ludicrous claims about wind turbines causing health problems or rendering land worthless.
Existing power generation technologies based on coal and oil have had a hundred years to mature and become established. Even if wind energy can be more cost effective than coal and oil eventually, it is not yet an established industry, so subsidies may help it become established and competitive more quickly than without them. Of course, government programs don't often like to go away when they're no longer needed.
I'm not sure if you're simply a troll, but it sounds like it might be serious. If so, you forgot one essential point: the TSA has a government granted monopoly to inflict their inconveniences on anyone with the audacity to fly. Your argument only makes sense if passengers can choose between TSA and non-TSA flights.
The longest our forces stay there, the more of them will be killed, the more Afghans they'll kill and the more enemies they'll make. Both the Afghan and Pakistani governments are completely ineffective against the Taliban. There is no good option for the US. Therefore, there's no point in trying any more and we should get out as quickly as we can.
There's no chance this bill will have any effect on what a a company can do for the US government. A bill restricting that would make sense rather than this useless waste of time.
Anyone know the popular arguments why governments don't band together and try and solve world hunger?
The most obvious reason governments don't band together and try and solve world hunger is that it's not in their interest. A government may be expected to try to eliminate hunger among its people, but feeding foreign people is not its purpose or responsibility. If you look at governments in North Korea and some African nations, it's clear that eliminating hunger of their own people isn't even desirable.
Pragmatically, if governemnts in the richest country in the world can't eliminate hunger among their own people, how could they or any other government expect to succeeed on the other side of the world? Though feeding foreign people is not the responsibility of a governemnt, I have far more hope that organizations that were formed for that purpose can improve things.
To the extent that people are lacking for food in the US, it is a distribution problem as it is in most of Africa. We're producing so much excess maize that people have found crazy ways to use it up like creating high fructose corn syrup and car fuel.
There's nothing new about problems resulting from overpopulation. People have been exploring, colonizing and emmigrating for thousands of years in response to population pressure. The big question is whether it will be possible to colonize places outside of Earth before things get too bad here. There is still plenty of space left on Earth, but we also need huge advances in technology to practically colonize Mars or the moons of Jupiter.
It is completely unreasonable for an employer to demand to be able to impersonate an employee or control any service of the employee's that is not directly related to the job. I think it's extremely unlikely that enough people will accept such a blatant invasion of privacy that this becomes a widespread problem so why do we need government stepping in so early? There are far more important problems Congress can be spending its time on.
I hate having to quote a person back to him, but it seems necessary in this case:
Daylight is incredibly important to our health, especially if you're older. No, flashlights are not a proper replacement.
How could your statement about the importance of daylight have anything to do with DST unless people are deciding when to wake up and go to sleep based on the numbers on their clocks? This goes double for "older" people who are more likely to be retired.
People got entrenched with it because it did the trick and now there's no good reason to change.
You seem to be forgetting that there are very good reasons to use unencumbered alternatives to MPEG formats. You also haven't addressed why Flash players are so quickly shifting from "good enough" to "not good enough" in the eyes of so many.
The fact that you think existing ad blocking on web pages isn't relevant means you've already bought into the lie that advertisers being able to force people to watch ads or prevent copying is necessary for valid business models. Of course many companies think such restrictions are necessary for a valid business model, but they are wrong and will eventually change their attitudes or become irrelevant themselves.
If you mean there could be "bad side effects" for companies whose business model is based on milking patents as long as possible rather than continually trying to out-innovate their competition, I'm sure you're right.
And you seem to have missed my point again. Most ads on the web are exceedingly easy to block but that hasn't prevented many from making money on them any more than the VCR or PVR has put TV advertisers out of business or unauthorized copying has destroyed Hollywood. The simple fact is that while many companies would prefer captive audiences and lock-in, that is not a form of business that benefits anyone but the company in question. A business that competes by providing real value to customers doesn't need to use restrictions on their customers such as DRM and forced ad display. Such a business may not make as high a profit margin as ones that benefit from restricting customers, but it is better for its customers and the market as a whole.
I'm sure many companies would like to prevent ad blockers from working. However, they seem to have realized that this isn't necessary to be able to make money on the web. The same can be true for video.
There are solid business reasons to have electronics manufactured outside the US. A lot of it comes down to the fact that workers in those places can not expect the same level of compensation, benefits and workplace safeguards employees and unions have fought so long to get in the US. There was a time when normal factory working conditions in the US were just as bad as in a Shenzhen factory if not worse. However, the fact that workers there do not enjoy the same working conditions workers in the US do doesn't mean they are not happy to have the job or that it's anyone else's responsibility to make things better for them. After all, it wasn't rich foreigners who improved working conditions for US workers. I doubt I would enjoy working in any factory, whether in China or the US, but I don't feel guilty for buying things that were built in them.
The issue is much bigger than Open Source development. The most fundamental issue is that it requires payment of royalties to implement what are called open standards. This is more of a problem for an Open Source project than for many proprietary ones, but it can be an unreasonable burden on them too. This is why Opera has been a very vocal supporter of unencumbered alternatives to MPEG standards despite being a totally proprietary software developer.
The primary reasons WebM has not yet become a serious contender is that it's not implemented in mobile hardware and few sites provide WebM videos. Google has a huge amount of influence in both areas, but has so far failed to exercise it.
It is not a flaw in HTML that it can't be used to subvert the will of a user as completely as a proprietary solution. I'll be very happy to avoid any web site which doesn't switch to functional open standards because of this. However, I'm sure it would be easy to implement GUI controls which work sometimes and not others in Javascript. Someone who knew how the underlying technology worked would be able to circumvent this, but the vast majority of users wouldn't bother. It's a similar situation to ad blocking solutions that have existed for a long time. The fact that anyone can install an add-on for popular browsers to eliminate all ads from web pages hasn't prevented Google and others from making huge profits from ads.
There has been a "good enough" solution for video playback on web pages for many years. It is the one that replaced ubiquitous Quicktime/WMV/Real selectors on major web sites. It is no longer considered good enough mainly because of efforts by Apple, Google, Mozilla and most recently Adobe themselves to declare it so. The reason encumbered MPEG-4 video is now considered "good enough" is because there hasn't been sufficient promotion of unencumbered alternatives by those with clout. I'm particularly disappointed that Google has only half-heartedly promoted WebM for standardization. They have not succeeded in either getting manufacturers of Android devices to support it in hardware or converting all of YouTube to WebM. If those two things happened and it were standardized by the IETF or W3C, WebM would have a real chance.
Mozilla browsers have never included the ability to decode MPEG-1 or MPEG-2. They have included the ability to use plugins to interpret any content a plugin is designed for, including MPEG video and Flash applets. Mozilla can and do include JPEG, PNG, SVG and even GIF decoding in their browsers without paying anyone for a patent license or otherwise getting permission. Decoding of any MPEG standard media (with the possible exception of ancient, very inefficient MPEG-1 video) requires a patent license from at least the MPEG-LA and possibly others. Therefore, to include software which decodes MPEG video as part of a Mozilla browser is fundamentally incompatible with Mozilla's Free and Open Source development model and the fact they do not charge for downloads of Firefox.
What Mozilla is now considering is to use video decoding interfaces exposed by the underlying platform, whether that's Windows, OpenGL, Android or something else. This would allow Firefox to pass the encoded H.264 video to an external module implemented in either software or hardware and get back the decoded video. H.264 video decoding would not be a part Mozilla browsers in the way decoding JPEG images is, but it would be seamless for the user.
It's unfortunate that we have to continue to rely on patent-encumbered formats at all, but it is true that hardware decoding of video is essential on mobile platforms. The ideal situation would be for those holding patents on MPEG standards to allow unencumbering, royalty-free use or for software patents to go away entirely. Then, there'd be no problem with using H.264 video everywhere since we already have very high quality Free and Open Source implementations. However, it may be that for now, the closest we can get to ideal is to use well-defined interfaces to licensed decoders provided by platforms.
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This is even worse, because if it didn't have the "ON THE INTERNET" type clause, it would be even more obvious that it's a gross violation of free speech.
It's quite possible that the subsidy system doesn't make sense. However, that in no way strengthens ludicrous claims about wind turbines causing health problems or rendering land worthless.
Existing power generation technologies based on coal and oil have had a hundred years to mature and become established. Even if wind energy can be more cost effective than coal and oil eventually, it is not yet an established industry, so subsidies may help it become established and competitive more quickly than without them. Of course, government programs don't often like to go away when they're no longer needed.
I'm not sure if you're simply a troll, but it sounds like it might be serious. If so, you forgot one essential point: the TSA has a government granted monopoly to inflict their inconveniences on anyone with the audacity to fly. Your argument only makes sense if passengers can choose between TSA and non-TSA flights.
The longest our forces stay there, the more of them will be killed, the more Afghans they'll kill and the more enemies they'll make. Both the Afghan and Pakistani governments are completely ineffective against the Taliban. There is no good option for the US. Therefore, there's no point in trying any more and we should get out as quickly as we can.
There's no chance this bill will have any effect on what a a company can do for the US government. A bill restricting that would make sense rather than this useless waste of time.
Anyone know the popular arguments why governments don't band together and try and solve world hunger?
The most obvious reason governments don't band together and try and solve world hunger is that it's not in their interest. A government may be expected to try to eliminate hunger among its people, but feeding foreign people is not its purpose or responsibility. If you look at governments in North Korea and some African nations, it's clear that eliminating hunger of their own people isn't even desirable.
Pragmatically, if governemnts in the richest country in the world can't eliminate hunger among their own people, how could they or any other government expect to succeeed on the other side of the world? Though feeding foreign people is not the responsibility of a governemnt, I have far more hope that organizations that were formed for that purpose can improve things.
To the extent that people are lacking for food in the US, it is a distribution problem as it is in most of Africa. We're producing so much excess maize that people have found crazy ways to use it up like creating high fructose corn syrup and car fuel.
There's nothing new about problems resulting from overpopulation. People have been exploring, colonizing and emmigrating for thousands of years in response to population pressure. The big question is whether it will be possible to colonize places outside of Earth before things get too bad here. There is still plenty of space left on Earth, but we also need huge advances in technology to practically colonize Mars or the moons of Jupiter.
Birth control.
That's what happens when people have enough food, education, and other prerequisites for prosperity.
It is completely unreasonable for an employer to demand to be able to impersonate an employee or control any service of the employee's that is not directly related to the job. I think it's extremely unlikely that enough people will accept such a blatant invasion of privacy that this becomes a widespread problem so why do we need government stepping in so early? There are far more important problems Congress can be spending its time on.
I hate having to quote a person back to him, but it seems necessary in this case:
Daylight is incredibly important to our health, especially if you're older. No, flashlights are not a proper replacement.
How could your statement about the importance of daylight have anything to do with DST unless people are deciding when to wake up and go to sleep based on the numbers on their clocks? This goes double for "older" people who are more likely to be retired.
People got entrenched with it because it did the trick and now there's no good reason to change.
You seem to be forgetting that there are very good reasons to use unencumbered alternatives to MPEG formats. You also haven't addressed why Flash players are so quickly shifting from "good enough" to "not good enough" in the eyes of so many.
The fact that you think existing ad blocking on web pages isn't relevant means you've already bought into the lie that advertisers being able to force people to watch ads or prevent copying is necessary for valid business models. Of course many companies think such restrictions are necessary for a valid business model, but they are wrong and will eventually change their attitudes or become irrelevant themselves.
If you mean there could be "bad side effects" for companies whose business model is based on milking patents as long as possible rather than continually trying to out-innovate their competition, I'm sure you're right.
And you seem to have missed my point again. Most ads on the web are exceedingly easy to block but that hasn't prevented many from making money on them any more than the VCR or PVR has put TV advertisers out of business or unauthorized copying has destroyed Hollywood. The simple fact is that while many companies would prefer captive audiences and lock-in, that is not a form of business that benefits anyone but the company in question. A business that competes by providing real value to customers doesn't need to use restrictions on their customers such as DRM and forced ad display. Such a business may not make as high a profit margin as ones that benefit from restricting customers, but it is better for its customers and the market as a whole.
The point is that if Flash can be displaced, so can other encumbered formats. It is only a matter of will.
I'm sure many companies would like to prevent ad blockers from working. However, they seem to have realized that this isn't necessary to be able to make money on the web. The same can be true for video.
There are solid business reasons to have electronics manufactured outside the US. A lot of it comes down to the fact that workers in those places can not expect the same level of compensation, benefits and workplace safeguards employees and unions have fought so long to get in the US. There was a time when normal factory working conditions in the US were just as bad as in a Shenzhen factory if not worse. However, the fact that workers there do not enjoy the same working conditions workers in the US do doesn't mean they are not happy to have the job or that it's anyone else's responsibility to make things better for them. After all, it wasn't rich foreigners who improved working conditions for US workers. I doubt I would enjoy working in any factory, whether in China or the US, but I don't feel guilty for buying things that were built in them.
The issue is much bigger than Open Source development. The most fundamental issue is that it requires payment of royalties to implement what are called open standards. This is more of a problem for an Open Source project than for many proprietary ones, but it can be an unreasonable burden on them too. This is why Opera has been a very vocal supporter of unencumbered alternatives to MPEG standards despite being a totally proprietary software developer.
The primary reasons WebM has not yet become a serious contender is that it's not implemented in mobile hardware and few sites provide WebM videos. Google has a huge amount of influence in both areas, but has so far failed to exercise it.
It is not a flaw in HTML that it can't be used to subvert the will of a user as completely as a proprietary solution. I'll be very happy to avoid any web site which doesn't switch to functional open standards because of this. However, I'm sure it would be easy to implement GUI controls which work sometimes and not others in Javascript. Someone who knew how the underlying technology worked would be able to circumvent this, but the vast majority of users wouldn't bother. It's a similar situation to ad blocking solutions that have existed for a long time. The fact that anyone can install an add-on for popular browsers to eliminate all ads from web pages hasn't prevented Google and others from making huge profits from ads.
There has been a "good enough" solution for video playback on web pages for many years. It is the one that replaced ubiquitous Quicktime/WMV/Real selectors on major web sites. It is no longer considered good enough mainly because of efforts by Apple, Google, Mozilla and most recently Adobe themselves to declare it so. The reason encumbered MPEG-4 video is now considered "good enough" is because there hasn't been sufficient promotion of unencumbered alternatives by those with clout. I'm particularly disappointed that Google has only half-heartedly promoted WebM for standardization. They have not succeeded in either getting manufacturers of Android devices to support it in hardware or converting all of YouTube to WebM. If those two things happened and it were standardized by the IETF or W3C, WebM would have a real chance.
Mozilla browsers have never included the ability to decode MPEG-1 or MPEG-2. They have included the ability to use plugins to interpret any content a plugin is designed for, including MPEG video and Flash applets. Mozilla can and do include JPEG, PNG, SVG and even GIF decoding in their browsers without paying anyone for a patent license or otherwise getting permission. Decoding of any MPEG standard media (with the possible exception of ancient, very inefficient MPEG-1 video) requires a patent license from at least the MPEG-LA and possibly others. Therefore, to include software which decodes MPEG video as part of a Mozilla browser is fundamentally incompatible with Mozilla's Free and Open Source development model and the fact they do not charge for downloads of Firefox.
What Mozilla is now considering is to use video decoding interfaces exposed by the underlying platform, whether that's Windows, OpenGL, Android or something else. This would allow Firefox to pass the encoded H.264 video to an external module implemented in either software or hardware and get back the decoded video. H.264 video decoding would not be a part Mozilla browsers in the way decoding JPEG images is, but it would be seamless for the user.
It's unfortunate that we have to continue to rely on patent-encumbered formats at all, but it is true that hardware decoding of video is essential on mobile platforms. The ideal situation would be for those holding patents on MPEG standards to allow unencumbering, royalty-free use or for software patents to go away entirely. Then, there'd be no problem with using H.264 video everywhere since we already have very high quality Free and Open Source implementations. However, it may be that for now, the closest we can get to ideal is to use well-defined interfaces to licensed decoders provided by platforms.
There's a big difference between making iDevices hard to work on because that's what customers want and doing so because they can get away with it.