He also said that the act clearly favors larger corporations
Why? He never explained why. I realize they are the boogy-man now, so any time you want to imply something is bad, you imply its good for the big corporations, but the logic seems to be missing. I guess the argument is something like submarine patents will be harder to implement, but...
It's pretty obvious to me that the change to "file first" and "first to file" benefits entities with greater resources. Big corporations have people whose full time job it is to file for new patents. Small companies can't afford that.
google and apple like to do a lot of work in secret and then patent it or keep it secret for years.
microsoft and IBM are the opposite and like to patent things as soon as they finish the work on them even if there is no product yet
Neither approach is what patents are supposed to accomplish. Patents are supposed to spread public knowledge of actual inventions, not abstract ideas on paper.
Microsoft is a patent troll and should not be accommodated in their abuses regardless of the what the USPTO has said since the patents which are claimed to apply to software like Linux should never have been granted in the first place.
Based on what exactly? Your word?
My opinions are influenced by those of many smarter and more knowledgeable than I am. If you're not aware of the reasons software patents are harmful, you may have been living under a rock. Here's a good place to start in that case. Though it's not specific to software patents, This American Life has an excellent program about the current patent mess that is accessible to anyone.
In addition, no court has decided that any Microsoft patent applies to Linux, though Microsoft has sued a number of companies claiming that.
Great, I never claimed any court has made such a decision. The point is that these companies aren't just stupidly licensing these patents without having their lawyers look into it. Like I posted above, HTC isn't one that shies away from patent fights so if even they are licensing them it gives lots of credence to the fact that they are most likely valid. Or how else do you explain how they are more than willing to take Apple on in patent suits yet they licensed the ones from Microsoft without any fight?
I won't pretend to know what any of those companies should do to maximize profits in the short term. The fact that Casio, HTC and many others have yielded to patent trolls is a symptom of a deeply broken system. Even if it's in Casio's interest to make this deal with Microsoft right now, it helps keep in place a status quo that is an obstacle to innovation and therefore a financial drain on the entire industry.
Or, you know, these companies might not be as stupid as Slashtards would want to believe and have vetted these patents and have come to the conclusion that they are valid? No, that couldn't possibly be it.
Just out of curiosity, what's a Slashtard? It couldn't possibly mean someone who posts on Slashdot, could it? Microsoft is a patent troll and should not be accommodated in their abuses regardless of the what the USPTO has said since the patents which are claimed to apply to software like Linux should never have been granted in the first place. In addition, no court has decided that any Microsoft patent applies to Linux, though Microsoft has sued a number of companies claiming that. This, like much use of patents today, is extortion independent of whether patents on software should be allowed.
we dont use linux because its free of cost but because we believe it does a better job in the areas not protected by microsoft patents than microsoft os and believe a little overpaying in these areas is good for our customers.
But it's bad because every deal like this strengthens the perceived validity of Microsoft's patent trolling efforts, which may hurt anyone not willing to pay a Microsoft tax.
The Imperial ships are much larger, but they have no shields. After a couple of dozen quantum torpedoes, they'd be burning wreckage. Heck, a runabout could just transport a torpedo into the bridge of a star destroyer and it'd be toast.
Their laser cannons might pack a punch, too, but all the federation ships would have to do is remodulate the shield frequencies, and they'd be useless.
Imperial ships certainly do have shields. For example, in the battle of the second Death Star, one Imperial commander mentions something about the shields being down so they need to concentrate all fire on an incoming A-Wing.
Outsiders don't care about the differences in the movie/show, they just see that the fans are all the same. Just like people who aren't hippies don't see any difference between the Grateful Dead and Phish, or people that aren't Christians don't care too much about the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism, or Shiites vs. Sunnis, or Republicans vs. Democrats, or furries vs. panty sniffers (oh crap did I go too far?)
That explanation would be appropriate when comparing Star Trek and Babylon 5. It's not appropriate when comparing Star Trek and Star Wars because they're so different. Star Wars is not Science Fiction. It's Fantasy that happens to have space ships. Star Wars is derivative; not of Star Trek, but of 1930s adventure serials and prototypical myths from many cultures. Star Wars intentionally draws on universal themes to appeal to everyone and I have no problem with that. Star Trek often has themes that appeal to a smaller audience which I also appreciate. I agree with the author of TFA that it doesn't make much sense to compare them head to head.
It is left as a exercise to the reader to see the point I'm trying to make.
I don't think that's any more relevant now than it has been for decades when using proprietary, binary-only development tools from MS and others. Thompson's point was that even having source, which was always assumed on Unix systems, is not sufficient to prevent trojans for being inserted into code.
The description "Compiler-as-a-Service" is misleading. It doesn't mean that people will ship their source to MS and get back object code. It simply means that the compiler exposes an API for introspecting code. Though it may be interesting, it's not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. I think a far more relevant reference is to Greenspun's tenth rule.
The purported advantage of the new way is that it's a lot easier to prove having filed first than to prove having reduced it to practice first.
Of course it's easier to prove having filed first, but that's not the real reason for this law. This will inevitably advantage those with greater resources (large corporations) over individuals and small companies. The patent system has been twisted to big corporations' advantage for many decades and this is just another step to raise the barriers to entry into industries. I'm surprised that the US is apparently the last to make this change. Maybe we're not the nation most beholden to corporations after all. It is further proof that there's little difference between the two major parties when it comes to their support of big corporations.
The Developer of the App knew they were going to get ban, it was obvious. Its like the child wanting to get up the parent skin just for the fun of it. It's no fun doing in on Android because they don't have guidelines. This is basically just to get attention. In reality most users like Apple's App review system, it get rid of the obvious garbage.
That's a pretty good assessment. Apple treats its users like children. I don't know why so many people accept that, but it's their right.
Allowing the application will reflect negatively on Apple just as much as censoring it (and not for reasons having to do with whether the criticism has substance). I can just imagine the headlines: "Apple is so dumb they will sell you the rope you can hang them with".
If Apple hadn't banned it, would we be discussing blog posts about it?
Ask R.Goddard - patents go poof when the gov't requires it.... When the Soviets launched Sputnik and the cold war suddenly became a race to the high ground of space, do you think the USA spent ONE DIME to compensate the patent holder for a lot of rocket technology?
I'm sure they were spending too much money and time wooing Nazi slavers to think of Goddard. It's really funny how fast Nazis switched from being evil incarnate to our best hope against the godless Communists, who had been our only hope against the Nazis.
What is unique, and questionable as to whether it will work,...
For better or worse, patents don't have to be functional to work. There's a patent out there from 1970 for a flying saucer powered by a fusion reactor with massive magnetic fields to direct the thrust. Feasible? Obviously not. Novel? Sure is.
That's certainly for the worse. Patents are supposed to be on inventions, not abstract ideas. Originally, a working example had to be submitted when appropriate. The idea that it is possible to own or hold a monopoly on an abstract idea is fundamentally illogical and harmful to innovation. Unfortunately, that's the basis for all "business method" and software patents today. At the moment, I'm not sure if the described spacecraft patents should be valid, but they definitely should not be granted if the craft doesn't work.
Everyone expects everyone to be better than it is. "If only..." has become the starting phrase for many a musing on games, programs, books, movies, cars, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands, houses, pets, plastic models, ad infinitum.
If people would just realize that what you have right now is the best that it can be in this moment, then we would have a better world. In actuality, Satisfaction == Reality / Expectation. Expect less and your satisfaction will be higher.
Being satisfied and imagining how something could be improved are not mutually exclusive. To use one of the examples from TFA, I've put many hours into playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution because its so much fun, but I also agree the boss battles don't fit that well in the game. The Fallout series are some of the buggiest, most flawed games I've ever played, but they're still some of my favorites. Because so many people loved them and imagined how they could be better, there are hundreds of mods which fix bugs and improve the games.
It was once lean and fast but now is an industrialized bloated mess. It will take a lot more to get me to stop using Linux but that doesn't mean I can't see when something is wrong.
Lately, we have been seeing a lot of Linux's advantages fade away. Among these are its smallness and compatibility with older hardware.
I think it's just about time to revisit what made Linux great and see if there is a way to get that back while still doing great new things.
Both the original article and the above are gigantic trolls. There is no attempt to analyze deeply enough to determine which component(s) result in the performance differences. Both the FreeBSD and Linux kernels are mature and optimized enough that such large differences can't be attributed to solely the kernels. It seems the confusion about the difference between Linux and GNU/Linux-based operating systems persists. Since it's all about 3D games, I'm sure the primary differences lie in either the Nvidia driver, which is proprietary and not part of any specific operating system, or X11 components such as window managers. Of course the Nvidia driver is mostly the same between Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD so significant performance differences would have to be in its connection to the rest of the system.
Qualifying Krugman as a "prominent Keynesian economist" is like calling Stephen Hawking a "prominent Einsteinian physicist".
I call shenanigans.
That analogy would make sense only if the theories of John Maynard Keynes were as universally accepted as those of Einstein. Economics never has been and probably never will be as testable a science (if it's a science at all) as physics.
In organizations that have access to large databases of sensitive information, the security risk makes secure faxes preferable. For instance, the Internal Revenue Service has access to nearly everyone's financial information, a security breach, however unlikely it might be, would be devastating.
Are you implying that IRS facilities have no connection the Internet? Or perhaps you mean that data sent unencrypted over phone lines can't be intercepted and government types are too stupid to use Public Key encryption?
Sheet-fed scanners are ridiculously expensive, plus you have to save the file, attach it to an email, then, hopefully, the file isn't too large for the sender or recipient's mailserver. With the fax machine, one just drops the stack in, verify the fax successfully transmitted, task complete.
Also, many people feel that snooping of phone lines is much less likely to occur than snooping of email, when is sent in the clear.
If a scanner is good enough to be used on a fax machine, it's good enough to scan documents to send in emails. If you can't send a JPEG or PDF with such a low resolution scan in an email because it's too big, somebody's email system is stuck in 1995. If you think that just because your machine says it transmitted the document successfully, it was received in a readable form by the intended recipient, you've never worked in an office with a shared fax machine or received an unreadable page, both very common occurrences.
There are devices that can scan a page and send it in an email without any manual steps of attaching the image, though they tend to be big, expensive multifunction devices. Proper use of public key encryption is the solution to snooping concerns regardless of transmission medium. Fax machines persist because people would rather keep using a system that works poorly than spend a bit of effort to learn or create a better one.
Marx was right? Unless you specify about what, that's an empty statement, meaning nothing.
He made a lot of statements and drew lots of conclusions. Even diehard antiCommunists have always agreed that he got SOME things right - in fact, his insight of looking at societies from the perspective of economic strata was brilliant. Nobody's argued that, I believe.
But his ultimate assertion that societies would evolve inexorably toward a communist utopia remains absurd.
If you'd read TFA, you'd realize it says the same thing with specific examples from Marx's writings.
Communism isn't necessarily a bad idea, but true communism relies on everyone buying into the idea, not a strong arm dictatorship forcing it to work. It is built around the idea of everyone sharing what they have or skills they have voluntarily for the benefit of others. Star Trek was actually quite communistic when you think about it - everyone worked together for the benefit of the whole. Star Wars was similar, but the rebels all had a buy in (defeat the evil dictator). The revisited Battlestar Galactica was pretty much just the opposite of both of those.
Human society in Star Trek is certainly very idealized and inspired by Communism or Socialism. They don't even seem to need trade or currency, which keeps them in the realm of pure fantasy. In contrast, the Ferengi are ideal, immoral Capitalists. I don't think you can say all human society in the Star Wars universe adheres to Communist ideals. Lucas's themes are more general than that, though he certainly emphasizes compassion and unselfishness as superior to greed and lust for power. In particular, the Rebellion doesn't seem dedicated to a particular economic theory as much as simply opposing a repressive, authoritarian regime. I think the Galactic Empire was probably inspired by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, both of which were socialist.
The only successful "communists" I know of are communal Mennonites and Amish. Their buy in is religion, and they've managed to successfully keep their communes in capitalist countries, though not without some hiccups - there's a reason many of them fled the US for Canada during the first World War - religious persecution in the US (like tossing 4 kids into Leavenworth prison for being conscientious objectors and killing 3 of them).
I like the ideals of Communism, but the reality is we can't even keep marriages together, and getting an entire country to work together like that is like keeping a big marriage together. It looks nice on paper, but since there is no buy in except a promise, the only way to make it work is to force it with a strong dictatorship - in marriage terms, you need an abusive husband to beat his wife and children into being completely submissive, with the husband being the dictator and the wife and children being his people.
There are other examples of small communal societies that worked, at least for a while, such as kibbutzim. But I doubt there are any examples of a truly Communist society on a national or state scale. Trying to apply it on such a scale ignores human selfishness and almost inevitable leads to authoritarian or totalitarian systems as leaders try to enforce an inherently unnatural system. True Capitalism might work on a larger scale, but I wouldn't want to live in such a society.
The true failing comes when you add in one key component that breaks it: people. Scholars have said otherwise, but I believe that human beings are ultimately very selfish, the most selfish of those being the exceedingly rich, who will do anything, even screw their best friends, to move just that one rung higher on the ladder.
Example? Look at Apple's recent behaviour. That's being driven by shareholders and the suits that now run the firm in Steve's place.
So, who conceives, evolves, and maintains the systems if not people? The failings Marx observed in Capitalism are certainly the result of selfishness. Communism fails even more miserably because it fails to acknowledge human selfishness. Capitalism is no ideal system, but at least it's honest in that respect. A true Communist system at any significant scale is impossible, but a true, pure Capitalist one would be a nightmare. I think it's idiocy to argue for either system in its pure form.
Bakunin saw that Marx was right in his analysis of capitol, but did not appreciate the dangers of the state either. He famously said "liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality". Marx accurately predicted the end state of Capitalism. Bakunin accurately predicted the end state of Marxism.
Has made both labor and capital obsolete. Capital has been defined as sufficient money to contract salaried labor. It other words, nothing but the force and ability to gather and organize labor, by paying for it. Technology substitutes a lot of the labor, and now, it's substituting the methods for gathering, organizing, and paying for the labor.
Capitalism died a long time ago, but (almost) nobody knows how to work any other way. Humanism remains an idea nobody has ever heard of.
Yeah, there certainly was no technology around when Marx was writing. I'm overjoyed to have been born into this modern utopia where technology does everything we need without any instruction or supervision and I'm paid merely to exist rather than for the value of my labor.
Because it's easier. Honestly, if I could find a dependable source, with as broad a selection of US *and* foreign material as, say Pirate Bay, at a reasonable ($1.99 per title?) price, I'd sign right up. But no, that source doesn't (legally) exist...due to the seemingly constant bickering over licensing, and who gets how big a cut of the rapidly diminishing pie. Maybe one day the media companies will get a clue, but apparently that day isn't here yet.
This certainly reduces the likelihood I'll sign up for the streaming service, though I may get the DVD service again. Not only does Netflix streaming not work on the device I use (my GNU/Linux Mythbox) but it has an ever-changing subset of their DVD selection, while I can find a torrent of almost anything I'm interested in. I used to use torrents because I was cheap, but now I don't want to give up the convenience and control I've become accustomed to.
Slashdot Mirror
He also said that the act clearly favors larger corporations
Why? He never explained why. I realize they are the boogy-man now, so any time you want to imply something is bad, you imply its good for the big corporations, but the logic seems to be missing. I guess the argument is something like submarine patents will be harder to implement, but ...
It's pretty obvious to me that the change to "file first" and "first to file" benefits entities with greater resources. Big corporations have people whose full time job it is to file for new patents. Small companies can't afford that.
google and apple like to do a lot of work in secret and then patent it or keep it secret for years.
microsoft and IBM are the opposite and like to patent things as soon as they finish the work on them even if there is no product yet
Neither approach is what patents are supposed to accomplish. Patents are supposed to spread public knowledge of actual inventions, not abstract ideas on paper.
Microsoft is a patent troll and should not be accommodated in their abuses regardless of the what the USPTO has said since the patents which are claimed to apply to software like Linux should never have been granted in the first place.
Based on what exactly? Your word?
My opinions are influenced by those of many smarter and more knowledgeable than I am. If you're not aware of the reasons software patents are harmful, you may have been living under a rock. Here's a good place to start in that case. Though it's not specific to software patents, This American Life has an excellent program about the current patent mess that is accessible to anyone.
In addition, no court has decided that any Microsoft patent applies to Linux, though Microsoft has sued a number of companies claiming that.
Great, I never claimed any court has made such a decision. The point is that these companies aren't just stupidly licensing these patents without having their lawyers look into it. Like I posted above, HTC isn't one that shies away from patent fights so if even they are licensing them it gives lots of credence to the fact that they are most likely valid. Or how else do you explain how they are more than willing to take Apple on in patent suits yet they licensed the ones from Microsoft without any fight?
I won't pretend to know what any of those companies should do to maximize profits in the short term. The fact that Casio, HTC and many others have yielded to patent trolls is a symptom of a deeply broken system. Even if it's in Casio's interest to make this deal with Microsoft right now, it helps keep in place a status quo that is an obstacle to innovation and therefore a financial drain on the entire industry.
Or, you know, these companies might not be as stupid as Slashtards would want to believe and have vetted these patents and have come to the conclusion that they are valid? No, that couldn't possibly be it.
Just out of curiosity, what's a Slashtard? It couldn't possibly mean someone who posts on Slashdot, could it? Microsoft is a patent troll and should not be accommodated in their abuses regardless of the what the USPTO has said since the patents which are claimed to apply to software like Linux should never have been granted in the first place. In addition, no court has decided that any Microsoft patent applies to Linux, though Microsoft has sued a number of companies claiming that. This, like much use of patents today, is extortion independent of whether patents on software should be allowed.
i translates to:
we dont use linux because its free of cost but because we believe it does a better job in the areas not protected by microsoft patents than microsoft os and believe a little overpaying in these areas is good for our customers.
But it's bad because every deal like this strengthens the perceived validity of Microsoft's patent trolling efforts, which may hurt anyone not willing to pay a Microsoft tax.
The Imperial ships are much larger, but they have no shields. After a couple of dozen quantum torpedoes, they'd be burning wreckage. Heck, a runabout could just transport a torpedo into the bridge of a star destroyer and it'd be toast.
Their laser cannons might pack a punch, too, but all the federation ships would have to do is remodulate the shield frequencies, and they'd be useless.
Imperial ships certainly do have shields. For example, in the battle of the second Death Star, one Imperial commander mentions something about the shields being down so they need to concentrate all fire on an incoming A-Wing.
Outsiders don't care about the differences in the movie/show, they just see that the fans are all the same. Just like people who aren't hippies don't see any difference between the Grateful Dead and Phish, or people that aren't Christians don't care too much about the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism, or Shiites vs. Sunnis, or Republicans vs. Democrats, or furries vs. panty sniffers (oh crap did I go too far?)
That explanation would be appropriate when comparing Star Trek and Babylon 5. It's not appropriate when comparing Star Trek and Star Wars because they're so different. Star Wars is not Science Fiction. It's Fantasy that happens to have space ships. Star Wars is derivative; not of Star Trek, but of 1930s adventure serials and prototypical myths from many cultures. Star Wars intentionally draws on universal themes to appeal to everyone and I have no problem with that. Star Trek often has themes that appeal to a smaller audience which I also appreciate. I agree with the author of TFA that it doesn't make much sense to compare them head to head.
http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html
It is left as a exercise to the reader to see the point I'm trying to make.
I don't think that's any more relevant now than it has been for decades when using proprietary, binary-only development tools from MS and others. Thompson's point was that even having source, which was always assumed on Unix systems, is not sufficient to prevent trojans for being inserted into code.
The description "Compiler-as-a-Service" is misleading. It doesn't mean that people will ship their source to MS and get back object code. It simply means that the compiler exposes an API for introspecting code. Though it may be interesting, it's not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination. I think a far more relevant reference is to Greenspun's tenth rule.
The purported advantage of the new way is that it's a lot easier to prove having filed first than to prove having reduced it to practice first.
Of course it's easier to prove having filed first, but that's not the real reason for this law. This will inevitably advantage those with greater resources (large corporations) over individuals and small companies. The patent system has been twisted to big corporations' advantage for many decades and this is just another step to raise the barriers to entry into industries. I'm surprised that the US is apparently the last to make this change. Maybe we're not the nation most beholden to corporations after all. It is further proof that there's little difference between the two major parties when it comes to their support of big corporations.
The Developer of the App knew they were going to get ban, it was obvious. Its like the child wanting to get up the parent skin just for the fun of it. It's no fun doing in on Android because they don't have guidelines. This is basically just to get attention. In reality most users like Apple's App review system, it get rid of the obvious garbage.
That's a pretty good assessment. Apple treats its users like children. I don't know why so many people accept that, but it's their right.
Allowing the application will reflect negatively on Apple just as much as censoring it (and not for reasons having to do with whether the criticism has substance). I can just imagine the headlines: "Apple is so dumb they will sell you the rope you can hang them with".
If Apple hadn't banned it, would we be discussing blog posts about it?
Ask R.Goddard - patents go poof when the gov't requires it.... When the Soviets launched Sputnik and the cold war suddenly became a race to the high ground of space, do you think the USA spent ONE DIME to compensate the patent holder for a lot of rocket technology?
I'm sure they were spending too much money and time wooing Nazi slavers to think of Goddard. It's really funny how fast Nazis switched from being evil incarnate to our best hope against the godless Communists, who had been our only hope against the Nazis.
What is unique, and questionable as to whether it will work,...
For better or worse, patents don't have to be functional to work. There's a patent out there from 1970 for a flying saucer powered by a fusion reactor with massive magnetic fields to direct the thrust. Feasible? Obviously not. Novel? Sure is.
That's certainly for the worse. Patents are supposed to be on inventions, not abstract ideas. Originally, a working example had to be submitted when appropriate. The idea that it is possible to own or hold a monopoly on an abstract idea is fundamentally illogical and harmful to innovation. Unfortunately, that's the basis for all "business method" and software patents today. At the moment, I'm not sure if the described spacecraft patents should be valid, but they definitely should not be granted if the craft doesn't work.
Everyone expects everyone to be better than it is. "If only..." has become the starting phrase for many a musing on games, programs, books, movies, cars, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands, houses, pets, plastic models, ad infinitum.
If people would just realize that what you have right now is the best that it can be in this moment, then we would have a better world. In actuality, Satisfaction == Reality / Expectation. Expect less and your satisfaction will be higher.
Being satisfied and imagining how something could be improved are not mutually exclusive. To use one of the examples from TFA, I've put many hours into playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution because its so much fun, but I also agree the boss battles don't fit that well in the game. The Fallout series are some of the buggiest, most flawed games I've ever played, but they're still some of my favorites. Because so many people loved them and imagined how they could be better, there are hundreds of mods which fix bugs and improve the games.
FreeBSD had always ran Linux binaries faster than Linux. Interesting that this may still be the case.
Care to back that up with anything?
Linux has lost its way.
It was once lean and fast but now is an industrialized bloated mess. It will take a lot more to get me to stop using Linux but that doesn't mean I can't see when something is wrong.
Lately, we have been seeing a lot of Linux's advantages fade away. Among these are its smallness and compatibility with older hardware.
I think it's just about time to revisit what made Linux great and see if there is a way to get that back while still doing great new things.
Both the original article and the above are gigantic trolls. There is no attempt to analyze deeply enough to determine which component(s) result in the performance differences. Both the FreeBSD and Linux kernels are mature and optimized enough that such large differences can't be attributed to solely the kernels. It seems the confusion about the difference between Linux and GNU/Linux-based operating systems persists. Since it's all about 3D games, I'm sure the primary differences lie in either the Nvidia driver, which is proprietary and not part of any specific operating system, or X11 components such as window managers. Of course the Nvidia driver is mostly the same between Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD so significant performance differences would have to be in its connection to the rest of the system.
Qualifying Krugman as a "prominent Keynesian economist" is like calling Stephen Hawking a "prominent Einsteinian physicist".
I call shenanigans.
That analogy would make sense only if the theories of John Maynard Keynes were as universally accepted as those of Einstein. Economics never has been and probably never will be as testable a science (if it's a science at all) as physics.
In organizations that have access to large databases of sensitive information, the security risk makes secure faxes preferable. For instance, the Internal Revenue Service has access to nearly everyone's financial information, a security breach, however unlikely it might be, would be devastating.
Are you implying that IRS facilities have no connection the Internet? Or perhaps you mean that data sent unencrypted over phone lines can't be intercepted and government types are too stupid to use Public Key encryption?
Sheet-fed scanners are ridiculously expensive, plus you have to save the file, attach it to an email, then, hopefully, the file isn't too large for the sender or recipient's mailserver. With the fax machine, one just drops the stack in, verify the fax successfully transmitted, task complete.
Also, many people feel that snooping of phone lines is much less likely to occur than snooping of email, when is sent in the clear.
If a scanner is good enough to be used on a fax machine, it's good enough to scan documents to send in emails. If you can't send a JPEG or PDF with such a low resolution scan in an email because it's too big, somebody's email system is stuck in 1995. If you think that just because your machine says it transmitted the document successfully, it was received in a readable form by the intended recipient, you've never worked in an office with a shared fax machine or received an unreadable page, both very common occurrences.
There are devices that can scan a page and send it in an email without any manual steps of attaching the image, though they tend to be big, expensive multifunction devices. Proper use of public key encryption is the solution to snooping concerns regardless of transmission medium. Fax machines persist because people would rather keep using a system that works poorly than spend a bit of effort to learn or create a better one.
Marx was right? Unless you specify about what, that's an empty statement, meaning nothing.
He made a lot of statements and drew lots of conclusions. Even diehard antiCommunists have always agreed that he got SOME things right - in fact, his insight of looking at societies from the perspective of economic strata was brilliant. Nobody's argued that, I believe.
But his ultimate assertion that societies would evolve inexorably toward a communist utopia remains absurd.
If you'd read TFA, you'd realize it says the same thing with specific examples from Marx's writings.
Communism isn't necessarily a bad idea, but true communism relies on everyone buying into the idea, not a strong arm dictatorship forcing it to work. It is built around the idea of everyone sharing what they have or skills they have voluntarily for the benefit of others. Star Trek was actually quite communistic when you think about it - everyone worked together for the benefit of the whole. Star Wars was similar, but the rebels all had a buy in (defeat the evil dictator). The revisited Battlestar Galactica was pretty much just the opposite of both of those.
Human society in Star Trek is certainly very idealized and inspired by Communism or Socialism. They don't even seem to need trade or currency, which keeps them in the realm of pure fantasy. In contrast, the Ferengi are ideal, immoral Capitalists. I don't think you can say all human society in the Star Wars universe adheres to Communist ideals. Lucas's themes are more general than that, though he certainly emphasizes compassion and unselfishness as superior to greed and lust for power. In particular, the Rebellion doesn't seem dedicated to a particular economic theory as much as simply opposing a repressive, authoritarian regime. I think the Galactic Empire was probably inspired by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, both of which were socialist.
The only successful "communists" I know of are communal Mennonites and Amish. Their buy in is religion, and they've managed to successfully keep their communes in capitalist countries, though not without some hiccups - there's a reason many of them fled the US for Canada during the first World War - religious persecution in the US (like tossing 4 kids into Leavenworth prison for being conscientious objectors and killing 3 of them).
I like the ideals of Communism, but the reality is we can't even keep marriages together, and getting an entire country to work together like that is like keeping a big marriage together. It looks nice on paper, but since there is no buy in except a promise, the only way to make it work is to force it with a strong dictatorship - in marriage terms, you need an abusive husband to beat his wife and children into being completely submissive, with the husband being the dictator and the wife and children being his people.
There are other examples of small communal societies that worked, at least for a while, such as kibbutzim. But I doubt there are any examples of a truly Communist society on a national or state scale. Trying to apply it on such a scale ignores human selfishness and almost inevitable leads to authoritarian or totalitarian systems as leaders try to enforce an inherently unnatural system. True Capitalism might work on a larger scale, but I wouldn't want to live in such a society.
The true failing comes when you add in one key component that breaks it: people. Scholars have said otherwise, but I believe that human beings are ultimately very selfish, the most selfish of those being the exceedingly rich, who will do anything, even screw their best friends, to move just that one rung higher on the ladder.
Example? Look at Apple's recent behaviour. That's being driven by shareholders and the suits that now run the firm in Steve's place.
So, who conceives, evolves, and maintains the systems if not people? The failings Marx observed in Capitalism are certainly the result of selfishness. Communism fails even more miserably because it fails to acknowledge human selfishness. Capitalism is no ideal system, but at least it's honest in that respect. A true Communist system at any significant scale is impossible, but a true, pure Capitalist one would be a nightmare. I think it's idiocy to argue for either system in its pure form.
Bakunin saw that Marx was right in his analysis of capitol, but did not appreciate the dangers of the state either. He famously said "liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality". Marx accurately predicted the end state of Capitalism. Bakunin accurately predicted the end state of Marxism.
To put it more succintly, "Under capitalism, man exploits man; under communism, it is the other way around."
Has made both labor and capital obsolete. Capital has been defined as sufficient money to contract salaried labor. It other words, nothing but the force and ability to gather and organize labor, by paying for it. Technology substitutes a lot of the labor, and now, it's substituting the methods for gathering, organizing, and paying for the labor.
Capitalism died a long time ago, but (almost) nobody knows how to work any other way. Humanism remains an idea nobody has ever heard of.
Yeah, there certainly was no technology around when Marx was writing. I'm overjoyed to have been born into this modern utopia where technology does everything we need without any instruction or supervision and I'm paid merely to exist rather than for the value of my labor.
Because it's easier. Honestly, if I could find a dependable source, with as broad a selection of US *and* foreign material as, say Pirate Bay, at a reasonable ($1.99 per title?) price, I'd sign right up. But no, that source doesn't (legally) exist...due to the seemingly constant bickering over licensing, and who gets how big a cut of the rapidly diminishing pie. Maybe one day the media companies will get a clue, but apparently that day isn't here yet.
This certainly reduces the likelihood I'll sign up for the streaming service, though I may get the DVD service again. Not only does Netflix streaming not work on the device I use (my GNU/Linux Mythbox) but it has an ever-changing subset of their DVD selection, while I can find a torrent of almost anything I'm interested in. I used to use torrents because I was cheap, but now I don't want to give up the convenience and control I've become accustomed to.