This is just another case of the laws not keeping up with reality. Just like the article said stock options have traditionally been incentives for executives until some genius figured out to pay people a lower salary and add stock options to make them work harder.
Maybe that is what helped MS become so successful. They have been doing it for years.
I thought Gattaca was pretty cool. And Aldous Huxley's Brave New World may come sooner than we thought.
I think I'll wait a few more years to have kids. Just so I can come in and order one with brown hair and above average intelligence.
And this even relates to Darwin's natural selection. We now have the ability to increase our intelligence and other genetic features that made our species successful so far. Why not use that power to better ourselves even more?
Actually the patenting of drugs was reworked back in the 80's. Because of the long wait between the granting of the patent and the permission to sell a drug Congress reworked the law.
The way the system works is a patent is granted for a drug that lasts 17 or 18 years (I forget how long). Then some years later after all the studies are done the drug is allowed to be sold. The company usually has 5-10 years of monopoly on the market. When it's time for a patent to expire the drug maker gets to do everything possible to extend the patent. It was planned that way. If a new patent isn't granted the first company to get a generic to market gets a six month monopoly for the generic version. Then after six months all generics are allowed.
It's a pretty good system considering there can be a 10 year delay from the granting of a patent until a drug goes on sale.
I bet your opinion would be different if you were a stockholder.
I still like Intel CPU's, but I put most of my money into AMD last two days. After Intel took them down 20% it was a great buy op. And when earnings come out next month it should be even better.
Business is business. A company's board has a duty to their stockholders and that is to be the best in their industry/sector and run everyone else out of business.
Only difference is ATI has always catered to OEM's who were looking for value instead of the highest frame rate in Quake II. They always made plenty of money in the OEM business.
3dfx decided to concentrate on the retail channel where only about 20% of all graphics cards are sold. Creative has been successful there because it makes good products. Lately 3dfx hasn't been in the good products category when compared to Nvidia. And now ATI which has long been a leader of mediocrity has them beat in performance.
They aren't dead yet, but their next product better be pretty good. And it better cost less than $600 and not have to be plugged into an outlet. It's one thing to engineer a low end card and market it to the lower end. But 3dfx made the mistake of marketing low performing cards to the high end where every last frame counts.
Nvidia pushes the limit with every new generation of card they make. 3dfx just sells an overclocked version of the original Voodoo card. They can best be compared to Intel and MS. MS has been selling Windows 95 under different names for the last five years with a little more every new generation. Intel has been doing the same with the Ppro core.
Nvidia learned their lesson with the NV1 and came back looking for blood with the TNT. It has been downhill for 3dfx ever since.
Got the Voodoo2 the very first week it came out. I got one of the Creative cards when they came out of no where and beat Diamond out to market. Got a Banshee the later that year. Direct3D was OK. Glide was a pain on both cards. The newer versions of glide always had trouble running older games. V3 had the same problem I heard.
Now I'm on a Geforce2 with 64MB RAM DDR. Run all my games at the highest resolution with all the features maxed out. Never had a compatibility problem with a game.
3DFX is a has been. They made some bad business decisions and now they are paying for it. Even the V5 still has a lot of roots in the original Voodoo.
User owned storage vanishes?
That will be the day. I remember Larry Ellison said the future was dumb machines connected to the Internet and everything from peoples recipes to finances would be sitting on Oracle servers. So now we have Matrox selling 60GB hard drives for less than $300 retail, Quicken and MS Money bring out new versions every year and there is plenty of home multimedia software still around. And the only dumb machines that are popular are Palm Pilots and cell phones that barely do more than check stock quotes while online.
Grow up people. Corporations are staffed by normal everyday people who go and do their jobs everyday. And with the labor market as tight as it is for skilled people everybody is just aching to turn themselves and their children into zombies for their employers.
The most important thing is that consumers have to accept any new thing. If people don't buy it, it's useless. Just being for sale isn't enough.
DIVX is a great example. So will the e-book formats that encrypt books so only one person can read them. Having been overseas for a few years in the US Army I know firsthand the reason for region coding. Movies come out in the US first then overseas. And code free players are available for extra cost.
Geeks can never seem to understand that regular consumers don't buy everything available. Nobody has the money. And consumers are notoriously conservative.
Yes but reading a book or magazine is one thing. Somebody has to look over your shoulder and make an effort to be offended. Most libraries don't have a booth or enclosure around a computer, and so any porn will be for all to see. I can just see someone trying to stretch the limits of this viewing homosexuality or golden showers in full view of everybody.
I'm not against any kind of pornography but parents should have a say if it will be allowed in a public place like a library. We require pornographic magazines to be covered when in store display cases, it shouldn't be that big of a deal to either enclose all computers in a booth or restrict their use when in a public setting.
I'm going to be in the minority here and support maybe not blocking software, but laws to prohibit the viewing of pornography in a library.
To a lot of people sexuality is a very personal issue. They may not like to talk about it in public but in private they may do things that porn stars may be asking them for help. And a library is not the place to surf porn. Some are offended by certain things and nobody should have to walk by a station and view a sexuality explicit image they feel is offensive and demeaning.
Magazines and books are different. You have the right not to read them. If this is allowed what's to stop someone from viewing sexuality explicit lega images in a library. Does anybody here really want pre-teen kids to walk by a machine and see golden showers? Or if you're somebody who is very offended by homosexuality would you want your child to be able to see hosexuality in the library? If there isn't any restrictions put in place your child can be surfing on a machine and looking at the one next to him at sexualy explicit images and there is nothing you can do about it because it's perfectly legal.
Having just got out of the Army recently, I have some first hand info.
The non-classified systems run on Win NT 4 and mostly MS Exchange. Some places have good admins, others don't. The non-classified stuff is day to day email MS Office files that if were to get out to the public no damage would be done.
The classified is a different animal. First to even process classified on a computer you have to accredit it. You have to write up a system profile of the hardware, software and which info you'll be accessing. THis has to be signed by a Colonel which is a very senior officer with about 23 years in the Army. Next you have to ask for permission to access a specific classified network which isn't connected to the Internet. You have to specify how you will be accessing and then you will receive a username and password.
If you dial in to a classified network then you'll need a secure modem with a separate encryption key that has to be rekeyed at certain intervals. The dial in server won't even ask for your username if the encryption isn't synchronized. A network connection requires an encryption device at the computer and right before the Cat 5 cable enters the hub or switch. Since cables emanate energy the signal has to be encrypted. Then it is encrypted at the router and sent by fiber optic to it's next location.
Security is strong in organizations that practice it. It's ususally better on the military side of the gov't.
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This is just another case of the laws not keeping up with reality. Just like the article said stock options have traditionally been incentives for executives until some genius figured out to pay people a lower salary and add stock options to make them work harder. Maybe that is what helped MS become so successful. They have been doing it for years.
I thought Gattaca was pretty cool. And Aldous Huxley's Brave New World may come sooner than we thought. I think I'll wait a few more years to have kids. Just so I can come in and order one with brown hair and above average intelligence. And this even relates to Darwin's natural selection. We now have the ability to increase our intelligence and other genetic features that made our species successful so far. Why not use that power to better ourselves even more?
Actually the patenting of drugs was reworked back in the 80's. Because of the long wait between the granting of the patent and the permission to sell a drug Congress reworked the law. The way the system works is a patent is granted for a drug that lasts 17 or 18 years (I forget how long). Then some years later after all the studies are done the drug is allowed to be sold. The company usually has 5-10 years of monopoly on the market. When it's time for a patent to expire the drug maker gets to do everything possible to extend the patent. It was planned that way. If a new patent isn't granted the first company to get a generic to market gets a six month monopoly for the generic version. Then after six months all generics are allowed. It's a pretty good system considering there can be a 10 year delay from the granting of a patent until a drug goes on sale.
I bet your opinion would be different if you were a stockholder. I still like Intel CPU's, but I put most of my money into AMD last two days. After Intel took them down 20% it was a great buy op. And when earnings come out next month it should be even better. Business is business. A company's board has a duty to their stockholders and that is to be the best in their industry/sector and run everyone else out of business.
Only difference is ATI has always catered to OEM's who were looking for value instead of the highest frame rate in Quake II. They always made plenty of money in the OEM business. 3dfx decided to concentrate on the retail channel where only about 20% of all graphics cards are sold. Creative has been successful there because it makes good products. Lately 3dfx hasn't been in the good products category when compared to Nvidia. And now ATI which has long been a leader of mediocrity has them beat in performance. They aren't dead yet, but their next product better be pretty good. And it better cost less than $600 and not have to be plugged into an outlet. It's one thing to engineer a low end card and market it to the lower end. But 3dfx made the mistake of marketing low performing cards to the high end where every last frame counts.
Nvidia pushes the limit with every new generation of card they make. 3dfx just sells an overclocked version of the original Voodoo card. They can best be compared to Intel and MS. MS has been selling Windows 95 under different names for the last five years with a little more every new generation. Intel has been doing the same with the Ppro core. Nvidia learned their lesson with the NV1 and came back looking for blood with the TNT. It has been downhill for 3dfx ever since.
SB Live has been out for 2 years now.
Got the Voodoo2 the very first week it came out. I got one of the Creative cards when they came out of no where and beat Diamond out to market. Got a Banshee the later that year. Direct3D was OK. Glide was a pain on both cards. The newer versions of glide always had trouble running older games. V3 had the same problem I heard. Now I'm on a Geforce2 with 64MB RAM DDR. Run all my games at the highest resolution with all the features maxed out. Never had a compatibility problem with a game. 3DFX is a has been. They made some bad business decisions and now they are paying for it. Even the V5 still has a lot of roots in the original Voodoo.
Why should Intel support an Apple design? Who wants to pay money to their competitor?
User owned storage vanishes? That will be the day. I remember Larry Ellison said the future was dumb machines connected to the Internet and everything from peoples recipes to finances would be sitting on Oracle servers. So now we have Matrox selling 60GB hard drives for less than $300 retail, Quicken and MS Money bring out new versions every year and there is plenty of home multimedia software still around. And the only dumb machines that are popular are Palm Pilots and cell phones that barely do more than check stock quotes while online. Grow up people. Corporations are staffed by normal everyday people who go and do their jobs everyday. And with the labor market as tight as it is for skilled people everybody is just aching to turn themselves and their children into zombies for their employers.
The most important thing is that consumers have to accept any new thing. If people don't buy it, it's useless. Just being for sale isn't enough. DIVX is a great example. So will the e-book formats that encrypt books so only one person can read them. Having been overseas for a few years in the US Army I know firsthand the reason for region coding. Movies come out in the US first then overseas. And code free players are available for extra cost. Geeks can never seem to understand that regular consumers don't buy everything available. Nobody has the money. And consumers are notoriously conservative.
Yes but reading a book or magazine is one thing. Somebody has to look over your shoulder and make an effort to be offended. Most libraries don't have a booth or enclosure around a computer, and so any porn will be for all to see. I can just see someone trying to stretch the limits of this viewing homosexuality or golden showers in full view of everybody. I'm not against any kind of pornography but parents should have a say if it will be allowed in a public place like a library. We require pornographic magazines to be covered when in store display cases, it shouldn't be that big of a deal to either enclose all computers in a booth or restrict their use when in a public setting.
I'm going to be in the minority here and support maybe not blocking software, but laws to prohibit the viewing of pornography in a library. To a lot of people sexuality is a very personal issue. They may not like to talk about it in public but in private they may do things that porn stars may be asking them for help. And a library is not the place to surf porn. Some are offended by certain things and nobody should have to walk by a station and view a sexuality explicit image they feel is offensive and demeaning. Magazines and books are different. You have the right not to read them. If this is allowed what's to stop someone from viewing sexuality explicit lega images in a library. Does anybody here really want pre-teen kids to walk by a machine and see golden showers? Or if you're somebody who is very offended by homosexuality would you want your child to be able to see hosexuality in the library? If there isn't any restrictions put in place your child can be surfing on a machine and looking at the one next to him at sexualy explicit images and there is nothing you can do about it because it's perfectly legal.
Hopefully this time sending a civilian into space will turn out better than in 1986.
Having just got out of the Army recently, I have some first hand info. The non-classified systems run on Win NT 4 and mostly MS Exchange. Some places have good admins, others don't. The non-classified stuff is day to day email MS Office files that if were to get out to the public no damage would be done. The classified is a different animal. First to even process classified on a computer you have to accredit it. You have to write up a system profile of the hardware, software and which info you'll be accessing. THis has to be signed by a Colonel which is a very senior officer with about 23 years in the Army. Next you have to ask for permission to access a specific classified network which isn't connected to the Internet. You have to specify how you will be accessing and then you will receive a username and password. If you dial in to a classified network then you'll need a secure modem with a separate encryption key that has to be rekeyed at certain intervals. The dial in server won't even ask for your username if the encryption isn't synchronized. A network connection requires an encryption device at the computer and right before the Cat 5 cable enters the hub or switch. Since cables emanate energy the signal has to be encrypted. Then it is encrypted at the router and sent by fiber optic to it's next location. Security is strong in organizations that practice it. It's ususally better on the military side of the gov't.