Microsoft has enough assets that even if everyone stopped buying all their products tomorrow, the company would probably continue on regardless for a decade.
Microsoft were never great technological innovators. They have always excelled at business. It's not enough to just invent a technology, no matter how good, if you don't have the legal experts, marketing experts and negociators to turn it into something successful.
I imagine that Microsoft doesn't allow them to publish anything openly for fear a competitor might be able to benefit. They probably exist for the purpose of generating patents.
It'd hurt the independant and small game publishers. Blizzard could afford to set up an international-scale CDN for their patches, WoT couldn't. The effect of banning bittorrent would be to once again tilt the industry in favor of the Big Players, where you can't compete without the resources of a developed studio or a large pile of money. Rather like how major toy manufacturers in the US lobbied for a tightening of health-and-safety certification requirements (Following the China lead paint scandal) - they knew the cost of having all their product lines tested would cost them, but they could afford ten thousand dollars or so per toy line. Their smaller competitors couldn't.
History repeats: Offshore pirate radio used to be very big in the UK. The government eventually responded by passing a law saying that any unlicensed transmission that could be recieved in the UK was illegal, even if the transmitter was in international water and regardless of the registered nationality of the transmitting ship. This was of rather dubious legality, but no other country wished to make a fuss over something so small as a legal nitpicking when they were dealing with similar issues themselves. It did indeed come down to the government sending armed attack squads to board transmitter ships and arrest the operators. So it's happene before, don't think it wouldn't happen again.
Amusingly, both the BBC (World Service) and US government (Voice of America) deliberatly broadcast unlicensed into countries where the government deems them to be operating illegally. North Korea, places like that where the only allowed media is the state propaganda service. Proving that one again, in international law, might does make right.
The underwater part is solved. Pricy still, but solved. The problem is getting the cable up to the surface in the absence of a nice steady slopeing shore, in a way that doesn't overly stress it even during the worst storms.
Because Hawkins recognizes the importance of science education and outreach, maintains a media presence and published books to help laypeople understand at least a rough outline of theoretical physics. Higgs just published really arcane mathematics. Arcane mathematics is a very useful thing to have, certainly, it is what drives science and technology forwards, but it isn't going to motivate people to get into science as a career. Hawkins did math too, and I'm not even close to qualified to judge who did the most useful math, but I know that Hawkins has done a lot more to raise the standard of science education in the wider culture, and that makes him the winner by my judgement.
Remeber the 'Tyson Homosexual' incident? A news site had an editorial policy forbidding the use of the word 'gay' and requiring 'homosexual' instead (It was a very conservative site, so they probably thought homosexual sounds scarier). The editorial policy was enforced by search-replace, so when they ran a story on an athlete named Tyson Gay, the search-replace did its job.
They didn't. The DNSChanger trogan, as the name implies, changed the DNS server configuration. The FBI was able to sieze control of those IP addresses and set up their own DNS servers there to mitigate the damage.
It's easier to build a good story using them. They are real characters, while the judeochristian God just doesn't have a personality to explore and tends to create massive plot holes via omnipotence.
My point exactly. History shows a rather poor track record on the outcome of class warfare. It's possible that new tech might help - with modern internet communications it may be practical for the population to keep a much closer eye on their leaders and cut through the propaganda - but I wouldn't want to depend on that alone.
Violent revolution is a very real possibility. On the other hand, it'd basically be a class warfare thing - the capitalists vs the now-unemployed. We've seen that happen a few times in quite recent history, with mixed results, and just because material needs are now easier to meet isn't going to solve so well the severe political oppression that always seems to follow. Even in post-scarcity, someone has to administer the resources - and without some very strict accountability, that much power in so few hands is just inviting corruption.
Only if the revolution goes well. It could go very badly, depending how the social-economic-political situation works out. Transitioning to a post-scarcity economy would not be easy - it doesn't matter if you can make food, housing and luxury goods for a few cents if almost all the population is unemployed and thus unable to afford even that, and those who do control the production equipment have no incentive to just give away their products for free.
Reminds me of a person whose name I will not mention. I used to troll his blog. He was one of those political fanboy types - the ones who support their faction with the frenzied loyalty of a sports fan. His particular faction was the conservatives, and most of his posts involved rants about the anti-american evils of the 'lefty loonies.' He was really a fanatic, believing it was his patriotic duty to purge the internet of those of opposing factions.
One day he got into a bit of a feud with another blogger - I don't know what their blog was about, but I think it was something to do with native american interests. Heated words were exchanged, then flames and rants. It escalated. He ended up buying a domain name matching his opponents blog (They were someblog.blogspot.com, so he purchased someblog.org), setting up a blog there using their handle, and proceeding to make many posts calling for the legalisation of child pornography and expressing 'his' view that the age of consent should be removed as children would benefit from a healthy introduction to sex at as young an age as possible.
At that point, his blog suddenly lost all commenters, including me. We were all scared away, terrified of what he might do should we ever attract his attention. The last thing I saw was him defending his actions by saying that he purchased the domain so the handle belonged to him now, and that somebloger was just showing how easily offended lefty loony moonbats were.
Close to it. The variable costs for such a business model would be tiny, so with a large enough potential market the price can be set very low. To the point where people would rather just spend their fifty cents than go to the trouble of searching on a pirate site. There's a lot of resistance from content producers though, afraid not only of lessened profits but of seeing their product become perceived by customers as less valuable. It took years for Apple to argue the labels down to the current price of a track on iTunes.
There is one situation in which self-regulation can work: If the self-regulating businesses are afraid that if they don't regulate themselves well enough, the government will impose their regulations. The threat of government intervention is needed, or else self-regulation becomes a sham.
Drop that to 4MB: We're not using MP3 any more. Now forget the phone, and give all your pirates a 1TB external drive. This doesn't need any futuristic tech (Though extending to films and TV would). That's 25,000 albums on a drive. Enough to easily hold all the popular music of the last century, and a good chunk of the unpopular too. Finally, forget about phones and look at the older method: Drive swapping. I'll lend you my drive if you lend me yours.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft has enough assets that even if everyone stopped buying all their products tomorrow, the company would probably continue on regardless for a decade.
Microsoft were never great technological innovators. They have always excelled at business. It's not enough to just invent a technology, no matter how good, if you don't have the legal experts, marketing experts and negociators to turn it into something successful.
I imagine that Microsoft doesn't allow them to publish anything openly for fear a competitor might be able to benefit. They probably exist for the purpose of generating patents.
It'd hurt the independant and small game publishers. Blizzard could afford to set up an international-scale CDN for their patches, WoT couldn't. The effect of banning bittorrent would be to once again tilt the industry in favor of the Big Players, where you can't compete without the resources of a developed studio or a large pile of money. Rather like how major toy manufacturers in the US lobbied for a tightening of health-and-safety certification requirements (Following the China lead paint scandal) - they knew the cost of having all their product lines tested would cost them, but they could afford ten thousand dollars or so per toy line. Their smaller competitors couldn't.
History repeats: Offshore pirate radio used to be very big in the UK. The government eventually responded by passing a law saying that any unlicensed transmission that could be recieved in the UK was illegal, even if the transmitter was in international water and regardless of the registered nationality of the transmitting ship. This was of rather dubious legality, but no other country wished to make a fuss over something so small as a legal nitpicking when they were dealing with similar issues themselves. It did indeed come down to the government sending armed attack squads to board transmitter ships and arrest the operators. So it's happene before, don't think it wouldn't happen again.
Amusingly, both the BBC (World Service) and US government (Voice of America) deliberatly broadcast unlicensed into countries where the government deems them to be operating illegally. North Korea, places like that where the only allowed media is the state propaganda service. Proving that one again, in international law, might does make right.
The underwater part is solved. Pricy still, but solved. The problem is getting the cable up to the surface in the absence of a nice steady slopeing shore, in a way that doesn't overly stress it even during the worst storms.
And there I go again, adding an extra s. What is it about that name that makes me want to unconsciously turn it to possessive form?
Oddly enough, I know very well his name in Hawkings... but somehow I managed to make the same mistake three times. Consecutively.
Maybe the lawyers should stop doing so many things worth bitching about?
Perhaps they are all evil, but differ in degree?
Future events like these will affect you in the future, my friend.
Because Hawkins recognizes the importance of science education and outreach, maintains a media presence and published books to help laypeople understand at least a rough outline of theoretical physics. Higgs just published really arcane mathematics. Arcane mathematics is a very useful thing to have, certainly, it is what drives science and technology forwards, but it isn't going to motivate people to get into science as a career. Hawkins did math too, and I'm not even close to qualified to judge who did the most useful math, but I know that Hawkins has done a lot more to raise the standard of science education in the wider culture, and that makes him the winner by my judgement.
Remeber the 'Tyson Homosexual' incident? A news site had an editorial policy forbidding the use of the word 'gay' and requiring 'homosexual' instead (It was a very conservative site, so they probably thought homosexual sounds scarier). The editorial policy was enforced by search-replace, so when they ran a story on an athlete named Tyson Gay, the search-replace did its job.
They didn't. The DNSChanger trogan, as the name implies, changed the DNS server configuration. The FBI was able to sieze control of those IP addresses and set up their own DNS servers there to mitigate the damage.
Lighter, too.
It's easier to build a good story using them. They are real characters, while the judeochristian God just doesn't have a personality to explore and tends to create massive plot holes via omnipotence.
My point exactly. History shows a rather poor track record on the outcome of class warfare. It's possible that new tech might help - with modern internet communications it may be practical for the population to keep a much closer eye on their leaders and cut through the propaganda - but I wouldn't want to depend on that alone.
Violent revolution is a very real possibility. On the other hand, it'd basically be a class warfare thing - the capitalists vs the now-unemployed. We've seen that happen a few times in quite recent history, with mixed results, and just because material needs are now easier to meet isn't going to solve so well the severe political oppression that always seems to follow. Even in post-scarcity, someone has to administer the resources - and without some very strict accountability, that much power in so few hands is just inviting corruption.
Only if the revolution goes well. It could go very badly, depending how the social-economic-political situation works out. Transitioning to a post-scarcity economy would not be easy - it doesn't matter if you can make food, housing and luxury goods for a few cents if almost all the population is unemployed and thus unable to afford even that, and those who do control the production equipment have no incentive to just give away their products for free.
Because I rather dislike moving parts.
Reminds me of a person whose name I will not mention. I used to troll his blog. He was one of those political fanboy types - the ones who support their faction with the frenzied loyalty of a sports fan. His particular faction was the conservatives, and most of his posts involved rants about the anti-american evils of the 'lefty loonies.' He was really a fanatic, believing it was his patriotic duty to purge the internet of those of opposing factions.
One day he got into a bit of a feud with another blogger - I don't know what their blog was about, but I think it was something to do with native american interests. Heated words were exchanged, then flames and rants. It escalated. He ended up buying a domain name matching his opponents blog (They were someblog.blogspot.com, so he purchased someblog.org), setting up a blog there using their handle, and proceeding to make many posts calling for the legalisation of child pornography and expressing 'his' view that the age of consent should be removed as children would benefit from a healthy introduction to sex at as young an age as possible.
At that point, his blog suddenly lost all commenters, including me. We were all scared away, terrified of what he might do should we ever attract his attention. The last thing I saw was him defending his actions by saying that he purchased the domain so the handle belonged to him now, and that somebloger was just showing how easily offended lefty loony moonbats were.
Close to it. The variable costs for such a business model would be tiny, so with a large enough potential market the price can be set very low. To the point where people would rather just spend their fifty cents than go to the trouble of searching on a pirate site. There's a lot of resistance from content producers though, afraid not only of lessened profits but of seeing their product become perceived by customers as less valuable. It took years for Apple to argue the labels down to the current price of a track on iTunes.
There is one situation in which self-regulation can work: If the self-regulating businesses are afraid that if they don't regulate themselves well enough, the government will impose their regulations. The threat of government intervention is needed, or else self-regulation becomes a sham.
Drop that to 4MB: We're not using MP3 any more. Now forget the phone, and give all your pirates a 1TB external drive. This doesn't need any futuristic tech (Though extending to films and TV would). That's 25,000 albums on a drive. Enough to easily hold all the popular music of the last century, and a good chunk of the unpopular too. Finally, forget about phones and look at the older method: Drive swapping. I'll lend you my drive if you lend me yours.
And the political ads - sure to inspire rage and disgust in slightly less than one-half of the viewers.