I'm not sure why you would think that. The idea is merely that the total number of channels allocated to TV is being reduced. The reduction is purely in terms of the high numbered UHF channels.
TV stations are not being moved to entirely new spectrum. The digital TV channel range are the same spectrum as the analog NTSC range, minus those high numbered UHF channels. For example, in my area, the local CBS affiliate broadcasts NTSC (analog) on channel 12, and ATSC (digital) on the adjacent channel 13 (they both appear as "12" on the channel selector because ATSC channels have a "soft" channel number associated with them, largely to ensure people don't have to memorize new numbers for their favorite TV stations.) When analog "goes away", channel 12 will become available for re-use.
Much as I hate to say it, your collection of three reasons is incomplete, and there is one legitimate reason to destroy the tapes, which is that they show actual undercover CIA agents performing a CIA role. The existence of such materials would, I'd expect, be procedurally destroyed whether it shows CIA agents shooting Presidents, or CIA agents having a celebration dinner after seeing Scooter Libby convicted.
Interestingly enough, that is the CIA's defense. It is, actually, a reasonable one. The problem here is that the CIA's legitimate procedures to secure it, it's agents, and the nation's, security are in conflict with the requirements of any justice system that needs evidence of illegal acts to be protected.
I mean, honestly, you're making it sound like this is unbelievably hard work. We're talking about downloading a program that installs without any trouble at all, and "just works" when upgrading. It's going to take him all of one minute to go through the upgrade process, if that, plus whatever time it takes to download. Twice in two months? Most people spend more effort switching on their computers in the morning.
And, honestly, upgrading to FF3 as soon as it is released is probably unwise anyway. I know I'm not going to. I'd prefer to wait a week or two to see the kinks ironed out.
Why? Is it going to take a month or something to download FF2, or is Firefox 2 so hard to install that it'd just be too much effort to install right now?
A few decades ago, entering a white-only place if you were black made you a criminal.
Sometimes that was enforced by using explicitly racist laws, as in South Africa. But sometimes it was enforced by using an existing law and a set of attitudes, for example the law of trespass and the right of anyone, including a racist shop owner, to bar anyone from entry for whatever reason.
Now, if we continue the analogy, it appears a lot of people, yourself included (I quote below), appear to believe that because copyright law is frequently abused (and it is, I don't disagree with that), then it's fine to disobey it for any reason:
The current copyright law is rotten. Feel free to disobey it whenever you please (just don't come whining if you get caught).
In the context of the analogy, because a racist bar owner can get the cops to beat the living shit out of some peaceful blacks who dared enter through the wrong door or sit in the wrong place in his bar, it's all just perfectly ok and fine and dandy if I walk into your home without permission.
Copyright law is legitimate. The abuse of it isn't. We can legitimately attack the abuses and the abusers, and should. I don't believe we have the right to disobey the law when it is being used legitimately.
Not quite. That might be what they're claiming but the truth is more amazing.
I have a spy in Sega, and they are planning to release the all new "Dreamcast 360x3". It features:
1. "EHDVD+", Sega's new high definition DVD format. Not compatible with Blu-ray or HD-DVD because it's better.
2. A 64 bit PowerPC that's multicore. IBM is specially designing this for Sega.
3. Some kind of ATI graphics, including a 1080i mode.
4. The ability to connect to the Internet. A new service, "Dreamcast Connected", will allow you to subscribe to multiplayer games and stuff.
5. Wireless controllers, with tilt detection for that "Not quite a Wii-mote" functionality
6. Large size and with big glowing lights on the front ensuring you'll never miss it when it's sitting in front of your TV
Sega hasn't come up with a final price yet, but they're expected to release different models of it for somewhere between $400 and $900. The $400 version will have the smaller hard drive and only an S-Video hookup, whereas the $900 will include a bundled copy of "Sonic XII: The SecondLife edition" plus an exclusive Hi-def copy of Employee of the Month on EHDVD+.
This is amazing stuff, a truly innovative console that will turn the market on its head.
I'm sorry, but in what way is it "a whole lot more harmful"? It's wrong and despicable, but I don't see how it's obviously "a whole lot more harmful". Is it more harmful to burn a cross on a black family's lawn than an asian family's lawn or a white family's lawn?
You know, you might want to read what he said. He was comparing burning a cross on a black family's lawn to burning garbage on anybody's lawn.
One, the former, is an act of intimidation. It's designed to send a message to the victim (indeed, it has a real human victim) ensuring they're aware that violent people do not like them. The other is a trivial act of arson.
To say both should be punished equally is to ignore the very different nature of the crimes and what's intended by them.
Similarly, a murder of someone who just happens to be homosexual is not the same thing as a homophobic murder of someone because they're homosexual. One is an isolated case, the other is not merely a crime against the victim, but also an act of intimidation against an entire group of people. The latter has more victims, not just the person killed, but also the people who now live in fear.
In general, we treat acts of intimidation and threats of violence as beyond the pale and in most jurisdictions we punish people for them. You appear to be saying that acts of intimidation and threats of violence are ok and should be ignored as long as they're combined with - that is, a part of - some other punishable violent act. Dodd, and the rest of us, don't share your view on that.
I fear this is hyperbole. DNA isn't open source in any realistic definition of the term, in fact for the most part it's not even "source available". It's self replicating in many instances, but it's not something we have any high level representative of. It costs millions just to reverse engineer to what might be called "assembly language level" the DNA of a single human being.
And that "assembly code" is barely readable. We don't know what most of the functional parts do, and about 90% of it isn't even functional.
In time, it'll get cheaper to decode DNA into an intermediate form, but what we'll be stuck with afterwards wouldn't be dissimilar to what you'd get if you ran a decompiler over the Windows operating system.
Still, if it means I can engineer a retrovirus to get me the tail I've always wanted, then it'll be worth it.
Nope. Money is a means to an end, it is not an end in itself, especially in politics.
Try this: Next time a Democratic President wants the telcos to do something blatantly illegal, do you think AT&T and Verizon will comply if:
1. Last time it happened, they got away with it, and Qwest was (allegedly) punished for not co-operating?
2. Last time it happened, they were snowed under with legitimate lawsuits and Qwest, after initially (allegedly) being punished for having no part in it, subsequently cleaned up by being able to compete without being snowed under with the lawsuits?
If (1), the answer is "Hell yes". If (2), expect a more complex answer.
If you're a politician, do you reward those who comply with people who are in a position you want to be in some day, or do you punish them?
For one thing - back in roe-v-wade days women had much fewer options. Nowadays we've got all kinds of cheap and effective birth control options that did not exist then. If the worst were to come about and elective abortions were outlawed nation-wide, it would not be anywhere near as big a deal as it was before.
Well, kinda sorta. It would presumably mean a disproportionately higher number of women would want abortions because they've been raped, as most of the copulation dealt with by effective birth control would presumably be consensual.
Qwest refused. Supposedly they were subsequently punished for it. Whether they were or not is the subject of a court case. However:
If they were punished, not punishing the complaint telcos for doing whatever the government says sends a message to the compliant telcos that subservience and submission to illegal government orders is in their best interests.
If they weren't punished, supposedly there is no reason why the compliant telcos should have obeyed the illegal government orders. In which case, where is the moral argument for not punishing a group of corporations who illegally helped the government subvert the constitution of the United States?
So far as I can tell, the only two groups I've seen really pushing Blu-ray who aren't in the industry (ie "ordinary people") are people who bought PlayStation 3s, and a small minority of Microsoft haters (and by "small minority" I mean "some", not "all Microsoft haters" let alone "all Microsoft critics".)
Blu-ray offers little to end consumers over HD-DVD beyond the ability to swap discs less if they're buying compilations of TV shows. It doesn't support managed copy, it uses mandatory copy-prevention preventing small independent publishers from publishing their own discs, the copy prevention technology is itself poorly implemented resulting in a significant number of players rejecting new discs, and it's more expensive to press the discs (apparently.) But, right now, we don't have a choice (I mean, as in, we don't have one. It's not "You can either have BR or HDDVD", it's "You have to wait, because there's a 50% chance that whatever you buy will be withdrawn within the next year or two and it's impossible to tell which. Frankly, if you buy now you have more money than sense.") so right now, Blu-ray's backers are somewhat irrelevant.
Well, the responsibility of some former BMG execs, and Sony.
Because, as you say, Sony owns 50% of the company. That's a significant stake, enough for Sony, if it had any scruples at all, to force changes. It's rampant apologism to claim that Sony has no responsibility because it "only" owns 50% of the offending company.
I'm sure you'll be the first to bitch when you're paying for the welfare of a million or so ex-auto industry employees through higher taxes.
(And yes, getting them all jobs at Burger King isn't going to help either, you'll be still spending far more in taxes as you pay the difference between what they would have paid and what they now pay.)
(I'm putting this in those terms as I doubt a humanitarian argument about how the economy being destroyed can impact people's lives in a personal level is going to touch you in any way.)
Doesn't matter. See the 1970s for an example of how the public can wake up, with disastrous results for a backward, myopic, automotive industry. The market can swiftly change, and car manufacturing is a remarkably fragile industry.
I suspect we wouldn't have a music industry that's in such a blind panic it's gotten to the point of subpoenaing every ISP for lists of suspected pirates, who it's engaging in the fairly expensive and reputation-damaging practice of subsequently suing.
As for whether they'd be selling music over the Internet, and/or using DRM, I have no idea, but I don't see why they wouldn't be selling music. The fears of rampant piracy were heightened in large part because of Napster and its successors' success. Given every other industry has tried to make the Internet work, I would imagine the music industry would have been a little quicker, if a little more incompetent (given they wouldn't have needed the persuasion of Steve Jobs), in their efforts.
How exactly is it a *gain* to the consumer to mandate higher prices in cars?
Two reasons: because the TCO of the average vehicle will be much lower than if the mandate hadn't happened, and in the long term the US auto industry will continue to exist and therefore there will be more competition than there would have been had the industry gone under, as it very nearly did in the 1970s when similar myopia meant a sudden increase in fuel prices almost caused the entire industry's collapse.
On the TCO point: remember too that we're not just talking about money saved by having the vehicles consume less gas, but also in lower gas prices (than would otherwise be) because demand is lower.
The automotive industry is one area where the unregulated free market consistently fails over and over and over again to work to the betterment of the consumer. If it wasn't for government intervention, we'd be paying much higher prices for lower quality vehicles exclusively imported from overseas.
Because US auto makers are stupid, and need it forced upon them?
According to TFA, the US auto industry has argued that it shouldn't product cars that are fuel efficient, even in the face of crippling fuel price rises, because the Japanese are so much better at it than they are.
Essentially, the US auto industry is saying "Please, please, please let us commit suicide while fucking up the environment as much as possible while we do it". Congress is, rightly, saying "Do you have any fucking idea what the destruction of the entire US auto industry will do to the economy and the environment?" They're being the poster child for how Lassez Faire is not always sane, rational, policy.
But even they realized that it might not last forever, so they put the "right to bare arms" in the constitution to ensure that if things got too bad, a revolution could set things right.
The founding fathers believed T-shirts are going to help us bring down tyrannical governments? That does kind of make sense, they've proven very effective as a way of fundraising for political groups, and as a canvas upon which political slogans can be communicated.
Yeah, my daughter just turned three, and it's already difficult to get her off the computer once she starts. She's normally on the Disney website, but lately she's also been on Wikipedia a great deal. Usually you'll find her browsing articles on Dora the Explorer and Spongebob Squarepants, though we recently caught her making edits to Nickelodeon after noticing that some shows the latter hasn't shown in years were still listed as regulars, and also reverting a vandal who changed Nickelodeon's owner from "Viacom" to "Halliburton".
We were somewhat surprised too to find her on Mozilla's Bugzilla, reporting a problem with Firefox frequently hanging if the Flash 9 plug-in is used under Ubuntu GNU/Linux. This was somewhat embarrassing as it turned out the bug had already been reported, and Isabella hadn't made even the slightest attempt to search for similar bug entries before submitting her's.
It's somewhat difficult to drag her away the computer, especially if she's on one of the game sites. She's another Soduku addict, and if she's not playing that or browsing Wikipedia, the chances are she's playing a multiplayer Unreal Tournament 2004 Deathmatch. My wife is somewhat concerned about that, given its violent content, but to me it's all more or less cartoon violence so I'm not sure I'm that bothered. I'm more bothered by how difficult it is to drag her from the computer.
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I'm not sure why you would think that. The idea is merely that the total number of channels allocated to TV is being reduced. The reduction is purely in terms of the high numbered UHF channels.
TV stations are not being moved to entirely new spectrum. The digital TV channel range are the same spectrum as the analog NTSC range, minus those high numbered UHF channels. For example, in my area, the local CBS affiliate broadcasts NTSC (analog) on channel 12, and ATSC (digital) on the adjacent channel 13 (they both appear as "12" on the channel selector because ATSC channels have a "soft" channel number associated with them, largely to ensure people don't have to memorize new numbers for their favorite TV stations.) When analog "goes away", channel 12 will become available for re-use.
Much as I hate to say it, your collection of three reasons is incomplete, and there is one legitimate reason to destroy the tapes, which is that they show actual undercover CIA agents performing a CIA role. The existence of such materials would, I'd expect, be procedurally destroyed whether it shows CIA agents shooting Presidents, or CIA agents having a celebration dinner after seeing Scooter Libby convicted.
Interestingly enough, that is the CIA's defense. It is, actually, a reasonable one. The problem here is that the CIA's legitimate procedures to secure it, it's agents, and the nation's, security are in conflict with the requirements of any justice system that needs evidence of illegal acts to be protected.
Because there's no downside?
I mean, honestly, you're making it sound like this is unbelievably hard work. We're talking about downloading a program that installs without any trouble at all, and "just works" when upgrading. It's going to take him all of one minute to go through the upgrade process, if that, plus whatever time it takes to download. Twice in two months? Most people spend more effort switching on their computers in the morning.
And, honestly, upgrading to FF3 as soon as it is released is probably unwise anyway. I know I'm not going to. I'd prefer to wait a week or two to see the kinks ironed out.
Why? Is it going to take a month or something to download FF2, or is Firefox 2 so hard to install that it'd just be too much effort to install right now?
Sometimes that was enforced by using explicitly racist laws, as in South Africa. But sometimes it was enforced by using an existing law and a set of attitudes, for example the law of trespass and the right of anyone, including a racist shop owner, to bar anyone from entry for whatever reason.
Now, if we continue the analogy, it appears a lot of people, yourself included (I quote below), appear to believe that because copyright law is frequently abused (and it is, I don't disagree with that), then it's fine to disobey it for any reason:
In the context of the analogy, because a racist bar owner can get the cops to beat the living shit out of some peaceful blacks who dared enter through the wrong door or sit in the wrong place in his bar, it's all just perfectly ok and fine and dandy if I walk into your home without permission.
Copyright law is legitimate. The abuse of it isn't. We can legitimately attack the abuses and the abusers, and should. I don't believe we have the right to disobey the law when it is being used legitimately.
Not quite. That might be what they're claiming but the truth is more amazing.
I have a spy in Sega, and they are planning to release the all new "Dreamcast 360x3". It features:
1. "EHDVD+", Sega's new high definition DVD format. Not compatible with Blu-ray or HD-DVD because it's better.
2. A 64 bit PowerPC that's multicore. IBM is specially designing this for Sega.
3. Some kind of ATI graphics, including a 1080i mode.
4. The ability to connect to the Internet. A new service, "Dreamcast Connected", will allow you to subscribe to multiplayer games and stuff.
5. Wireless controllers, with tilt detection for that "Not quite a Wii-mote" functionality
6. Large size and with big glowing lights on the front ensuring you'll never miss it when it's sitting in front of your TV
Sega hasn't come up with a final price yet, but they're expected to release different models of it for somewhere between $400 and $900. The $400 version will have the smaller hard drive and only an S-Video hookup, whereas the $900 will include a bundled copy of "Sonic XII: The SecondLife edition" plus an exclusive Hi-def copy of Employee of the Month on EHDVD+.
This is amazing stuff, a truly innovative console that will turn the market on its head.
You know, you might want to read what he said. He was comparing burning a cross on a black family's lawn to burning garbage on anybody's lawn.
One, the former, is an act of intimidation. It's designed to send a message to the victim (indeed, it has a real human victim) ensuring they're aware that violent people do not like them. The other is a trivial act of arson.
To say both should be punished equally is to ignore the very different nature of the crimes and what's intended by them.
Similarly, a murder of someone who just happens to be homosexual is not the same thing as a homophobic murder of someone because they're homosexual. One is an isolated case, the other is not merely a crime against the victim, but also an act of intimidation against an entire group of people. The latter has more victims, not just the person killed, but also the people who now live in fear.
In general, we treat acts of intimidation and threats of violence as beyond the pale and in most jurisdictions we punish people for them. You appear to be saying that acts of intimidation and threats of violence are ok and should be ignored as long as they're combined with - that is, a part of - some other punishable violent act. Dodd, and the rest of us, don't share your view on that.
I fear this is hyperbole. DNA isn't open source in any realistic definition of the term, in fact for the most part it's not even "source available". It's self replicating in many instances, but it's not something we have any high level representative of. It costs millions just to reverse engineer to what might be called "assembly language level" the DNA of a single human being.
And that "assembly code" is barely readable. We don't know what most of the functional parts do, and about 90% of it isn't even functional.
In time, it'll get cheaper to decode DNA into an intermediate form, but what we'll be stuck with afterwards wouldn't be dissimilar to what you'd get if you ran a decompiler over the Windows operating system.
Still, if it means I can engineer a retrovirus to get me the tail I've always wanted, then it'll be worth it.
Nope. Money is a means to an end, it is not an end in itself, especially in politics.
Try this: Next time a Democratic President wants the telcos to do something blatantly illegal, do you think AT&T and Verizon will comply if:
1. Last time it happened, they got away with it, and Qwest was (allegedly) punished for not co-operating?
2. Last time it happened, they were snowed under with legitimate lawsuits and Qwest, after initially (allegedly) being punished for having no part in it, subsequently cleaned up by being able to compete without being snowed under with the lawsuits?
If (1), the answer is "Hell yes". If (2), expect a more complex answer.
If you're a politician, do you reward those who comply with people who are in a position you want to be in some day, or do you punish them?
Well, kinda sorta. It would presumably mean a disproportionately higher number of women would want abortions because they've been raped, as most of the copulation dealt with by effective birth control would presumably be consensual.
Qwest refused. Supposedly they were subsequently punished for it. Whether they were or not is the subject of a court case. However:
If they were punished, not punishing the complaint telcos for doing whatever the government says sends a message to the compliant telcos that subservience and submission to illegal government orders is in their best interests.
If they weren't punished, supposedly there is no reason why the compliant telcos should have obeyed the illegal government orders. In which case, where is the moral argument for not punishing a group of corporations who illegally helped the government subvert the constitution of the United States?
Yeah, but what hope has Dennis Kucinich have of ever getting elected?
So far as I can tell, the only two groups I've seen really pushing Blu-ray who aren't in the industry (ie "ordinary people") are people who bought PlayStation 3s, and a small minority of Microsoft haters (and by "small minority" I mean "some", not "all Microsoft haters" let alone "all Microsoft critics".)
Blu-ray offers little to end consumers over HD-DVD beyond the ability to swap discs less if they're buying compilations of TV shows. It doesn't support managed copy, it uses mandatory copy-prevention preventing small independent publishers from publishing their own discs, the copy prevention technology is itself poorly implemented resulting in a significant number of players rejecting new discs, and it's more expensive to press the discs (apparently.) But, right now, we don't have a choice (I mean, as in, we don't have one. It's not "You can either have BR or HDDVD", it's "You have to wait, because there's a 50% chance that whatever you buy will be withdrawn within the next year or two and it's impossible to tell which. Frankly, if you buy now you have more money than sense.") so right now, Blu-ray's backers are somewhat irrelevant.
Well, the responsibility of some former BMG execs, and Sony.
Because, as you say, Sony owns 50% of the company. That's a significant stake, enough for Sony, if it had any scruples at all, to force changes. It's rampant apologism to claim that Sony has no responsibility because it "only" owns 50% of the offending company.
I'm sure you'll be the first to bitch when you're paying for the welfare of a million or so ex-auto industry employees through higher taxes.
(And yes, getting them all jobs at Burger King isn't going to help either, you'll be still spending far more in taxes as you pay the difference between what they would have paid and what they now pay.)
(I'm putting this in those terms as I doubt a humanitarian argument about how the economy being destroyed can impact people's lives in a personal level is going to touch you in any way.)
Doesn't matter. See the 1970s for an example of how the public can wake up, with disastrous results for a backward, myopic, automotive industry. The market can swiftly change, and car manufacturing is a remarkably fragile industry.
I suspect we wouldn't have a music industry that's in such a blind panic it's gotten to the point of subpoenaing every ISP for lists of suspected pirates, who it's engaging in the fairly expensive and reputation-damaging practice of subsequently suing.
As for whether they'd be selling music over the Internet, and/or using DRM, I have no idea, but I don't see why they wouldn't be selling music. The fears of rampant piracy were heightened in large part because of Napster and its successors' success. Given every other industry has tried to make the Internet work, I would imagine the music industry would have been a little quicker, if a little more incompetent (given they wouldn't have needed the persuasion of Steve Jobs), in their efforts.
You don't view it as doing harm. The authors who want recognition for their work do. And copyright law is on their side.
Two reasons: because the TCO of the average vehicle will be much lower than if the mandate hadn't happened, and in the long term the US auto industry will continue to exist and therefore there will be more competition than there would have been had the industry gone under, as it very nearly did in the 1970s when similar myopia meant a sudden increase in fuel prices almost caused the entire industry's collapse.
On the TCO point: remember too that we're not just talking about money saved by having the vehicles consume less gas, but also in lower gas prices (than would otherwise be) because demand is lower.
The automotive industry is one area where the unregulated free market consistently fails over and over and over again to work to the betterment of the consumer. If it wasn't for government intervention, we'd be paying much higher prices for lower quality vehicles exclusively imported from overseas.
Well, actually, I was hoping to have an engine that craps diamonds. That would solve so many problems...
Because US auto makers are stupid, and need it forced upon them?
According to TFA, the US auto industry has argued that it shouldn't product cars that are fuel efficient, even in the face of crippling fuel price rises, because the Japanese are so much better at it than they are.
Essentially, the US auto industry is saying "Please, please, please let us commit suicide while fucking up the environment as much as possible while we do it". Congress is, rightly, saying "Do you have any fucking idea what the destruction of the entire US auto industry will do to the economy and the environment?" They're being the poster child for how Lassez Faire is not always sane, rational, policy.
The founding fathers believed T-shirts are going to help us bring down tyrannical governments? That does kind of make sense, they've proven very effective as a way of fundraising for political groups, and as a canvas upon which political slogans can be communicated.
You're that upset that Miguel left the GNOME project half a decade ago? He's not working on KDE...
Honestly, don't you realize that Warner Brothers and NBC are just a fictional parody of Fox? Tsk!
Yeah, my daughter just turned three, and it's already difficult to get her off the computer once she starts. She's normally on the Disney website, but lately she's also been on Wikipedia a great deal. Usually you'll find her browsing articles on Dora the Explorer and Spongebob Squarepants, though we recently caught her making edits to Nickelodeon after noticing that some shows the latter hasn't shown in years were still listed as regulars, and also reverting a vandal who changed Nickelodeon's owner from "Viacom" to "Halliburton".
We were somewhat surprised too to find her on Mozilla's Bugzilla, reporting a problem with Firefox frequently hanging if the Flash 9 plug-in is used under Ubuntu GNU/Linux. This was somewhat embarrassing as it turned out the bug had already been reported, and Isabella hadn't made even the slightest attempt to search for similar bug entries before submitting her's.
It's somewhat difficult to drag her away the computer, especially if she's on one of the game sites. She's another Soduku addict, and if she's not playing that or browsing Wikipedia, the chances are she's playing a multiplayer Unreal Tournament 2004 Deathmatch. My wife is somewhat concerned about that, given its violent content, but to me it's all more or less cartoon violence so I'm not sure I'm that bothered. I'm more bothered by how difficult it is to drag her from the computer.
*sigh* Kids.