I started on Dish, and moved to DTV because they supported TiVo, and the Dish compression had gotten out of hand.
DTV was better, but it had gotten worse, and it is better now. But, yes it is really bad. (In that it is really noticeable). I have seen HD on my SD set, and it saddens me to see how glorious SD can actually be.
I use all 4 tuners... (Not at the same time but all 4 have been used). You can record 2 streams at a time, 2 of the choices are OTA, two are satellite.
It can only do Digital OTA, and it can record any Satellite.
I have three wires coming into the house, two satellite wires, and one wire for an OTA antenna.
It records the raw digital stream, so there is no setting about how to record various resolutions....
I have recorded to a recordable DVD. It only uses svideo in, but the quality is what I would expect.
And I forked out the cash, because, I simply cannot watch tv without TiVo, and now that I have HD too, I am very happy.
First TiVo just works better with satellite than over the air, because it just copies the satellites digital signal rather than recompressing the stream.
Second, HD looks GREAT on a SD TV. I have been a satellite subscriber since day one because local cable was aweful. It used to have a great picture, but the channel squeeze forced bit rates down so low it was like watching a good streaming internet image (crappy).
But I now have HDTiVo hooked up to a very nice SD set (XBR2) and a very nice HD projector (NEC HT1000). The projector is great for movies, but is just too big for watching TV. But HD channels on the SD set are some of the best quality TV around.
This will benefit all subscribers by getting high enough bandwidth for all stations, and more HD than will be provided by my local provider. I am just disappointed it is going to take 3 years to get up and running.
Ok, first, this has to get to the floor. This does not get to the floor without Republican support in a lot of places. Because, the house is currently Republican control.
So why, would this happen? It would be a win for the Dems,Right?
Well, Presidential politics is more about the threat, than the actuality. The President can be peeved for his core that the Congress wouldn't let him have this, and just look how unfair this is for business etc... He gets to have the issue in his camp as unsettled. A plus for him in motivating the base.
On the Dem side, they've won. The issue for them doesn't exist anymore. As this issue had been gaining traction which results in momentum which results in votes, they have to mo pulled out.
Sometimes in winning a war, not only do you not fight all battles, sometimes it is the battles that you chose to lose that makes all the difference.
Karl Rove runs elections on innuendo, bluster, bluffing, and boasting. And it is not important whether anything is true or not, the more unverifiable the better. And if there is a pesky verifiable truth that is getting in the way, make the truth go away, give it up without much fight, make the issue go away. Then continue with the fantasy.
Karl makes Maitlin and Carville look like playground punks when it comes to methodology for winning an election.
This is about presidential politics. The new overtime rules was a target for the dems, and was gaining some sorts of traction. Republican house all of the sudden gets a vote to roll back the rules.
Problem solved. There is always after the election to bring the rules back...
The chairman of China, pointing out the obvious Chernobylesque failures of the US Capitalism system, has vowed to only use "safe" power adapters in all its laptops...
The discovery of a single collision is not a big deal. Discovery of an algorithm to create a collision WOULD be a very big deal.
The greatest weakness would be in password systems where only hashes are stored. If you could create an arbitrary password that had the same hash as one stored on the system (and there have been attacks on the password generation side, but none successfully on the side of specifically creating a password *based* on a hash), then you can get in.
There may yet be discovered a formula for creating that collision, now that we have discovered one, we can determine if there is a relationship between the two plaintexts that can be exploited if we know either the plaintext, or the hash, and can generate an arbitrary collision.
Document signatures are much less problematic. You would have to create a *sensible* document to replace the hashed document. This is way less likely to occur, to the point that would be attacking by far the strongest link in the chain.
The recordings exist. Just because you will somehow post process them, I don't think you have really met your standard of not recording the whole day.
Would you submit them under subpeona? Will they be destroyed? When? How?
I think anybody in the CS dept could write the program you require. But I am pretty sure you are going to have to keep coming up with a way to do this "pre-record". And exactly why is it so hard to just buy *enough* recorders?
XP is built on the NT kernal, NOT the DOS kernal of ME and previous.
There is alot of emulation code to support, um arguably buggy or unsupported methods going forward.
The problem is really NOT in the operating system, but in default security functionality, overly "functional" common applications, (outlook and IE), an ignorant user base (Really, a FREE kournakova JPG? How did they know?), and an extraordinarily malicious mal-ware community.
SP2 changes default security functionality, and reduces the "functionality" of common apps, even adds some new clever code to prevent buffer overflows if the hardware supports it, because you can't do too much about the user base and the bastards...
(brought to you by the Microsoft the makers of Personal Area Netwoks, and Pfizer the maker of Viagra. They both ask "Where in the hell do you want to go today..."
No a drawer is not the same. As the tool bars and window widgets are not in the correct place. They are relative to the main window and not the drawer. So if you close the drawer then the window is too far to the right, if the drawer is open then the the controls are too far to the right...
I have yet to see any application that is better suited to drawers than a multipaned representation.
I live in mail preview. So that works best for me..
As to the list view problem... Set your inbox so that last mail is on the top...
Now go three mails down and delete a message.
Do this in mail and do this in thunderbird.
The thunderbird method is correct, the behavior of what happens after delete, and which item gets focused should not change based on sort order of the list. This is true in all operating systems, and UI's but is different in mail. This makes mail extremely difficult for me to use.
But as you do not use preview, I do not use vcards. So I don't miss the feature, though I agree it needs to be fixed.
And configuration doesn't bother me, though I find it odd to have to wait until getting mail the first time to enter in my password rather than at account creation time.
The stupid drawer, and the fact that delete does not work correctly in the mail view.
I have used mail.app because there was nothing really better on osx, and the mail app is pretty good. But it has now been regulated away. I much prefer the three-pane view over the drawer view, which for mail seems just kinda clunky. Drawers are good, if they are not OPEN all the time.
Actually strike that, I think drawers are a bad UI concept.
And the fact that the list widget doesn't work properly just drives me crazy, and the fact that thunderbirds DOES work properly is enough!
The cost increase will be nearly non-existent. Implementations are not one off. All it will mean is more code in the firmware, at a near-zero marginal cost.
The reason for having two codecs is that it allows competition between *encoder* manufacturers. And this is where the real money is made/spent.
Electronic voting machines need to make human readable paper ballots that *can* be hand-counted. Anything short of that opens up the elections to all sorts of tampering that can be undiscoverable, even if the code is "open source."
You can collect the votes, in a variety of electronic methods, that will meet the needs of quick reporting, but ultimately the votes need to be auditable, which means being able to recount by some manual method.
The ballots need to be human readable so that they can be verified by the voter AND the auditor.
If the protocol is secure, then it doesn't matter if the code is open source, or closed source. Whatever. As a taxpayer, I would hope that they choose something that is as inexpensive as possible that provides a secure and auditable voting record.
No no no... The problem with the current model is microsoft is stuck making the boxes.
Microsoft, can do better... That is let your OEM's MAKE the boxes. This allows the market to come up with packages to sell into the living room. They will be able to decide whether or not to include media edition, xbox, and other things.
There are many ways to include the xbox, likely for content control it would be a daughter card in the box.
And I for one would want one. I want a PC on my HDTV, and there are no decent solutions yet.
Because of the "original physicality of the disc".
You are borrowing the actual disc, not a copy of the disc or its content.
However, your argument has been tried in court in a manner of speaking. It has been a tenant of fair use, that I can make a copy and give it or lend it to a friend.
The problem with the internet is the scope of the distribution, both geographically and numerically. And the total result, that the distribution method is better, cheaper, and audially just as good as official distribution. This is what moves it from fair use, to copyright violation, and the DMCA is what moves it from civil law to criminal law.
NEC has one of the best home theater projectors in the sub 10's of thousand dollar range the HT1000. It has been replaced by the HT1100.
This projector has been on the top of most folks most recommended list for the past year or so. You can look it up on the avs forums.
They listed for 4995 originally (and that was a blow out price for the performance of the projector). But it is currently being phased out, and can be purchased at really good prices but they are extremely limited. Many home theater providers are out of them, but they can still be had... You can get one for 2625 at triocomputers.com, which was a good enough deal I just bought one.
But... The 1100 is out, and can be purchased in the 3800 dollar range and has a few nice features, but also has a 200 dollar upgrade for an anamorphic lens (which goes for 1100-1800 bucks ordinarally). This allows you to show a wide screen display, but still use all of the pixels in the projector. This results in about a 20% improvment in brightness, better sharpness, and much less visibility of individual pixels.
But the HT1000, is a more than satisfactory projector, indeed it is one of the best home theater projectors available in the below 10k price range, and at 2625 is a steal.
You are required by law, to pay the use tax (there isn't really anything called a "sales tax") for the state where it is used.
Normally this tax is collected by the person selling it to you.
There is a supreme court ruling on this, but it has to do with the burden of collection, not on the burden of payment. Basically it states that if the business has a nexus (A legal term meaning legal presence) in the state that has a use tax, they are required to collect the tax, but that a state cannot place that burden on a state that does not have a nexus in it. (Basically the supreme court ruling is that a catalog delivered into a state, is NOT enough to create nexus).
Practically, this means if the item is big enough they can come for the tax. Happens all the time with cars purchased in Oregon and then brought into Washington state. They will come for you for the tax. It also has practicalities for businesses, who have to report all types of expenses and have to report use tax to the state for things that were purchased and not collected at point of sale.
It also means, that for certain types of purchases, especially when the item is NOT USED in the state where purchased, that you can claim a refund from that state (or even claim at the point of sale that you are not required to pay that tax), and then pay that tax in the state where it is used.
But ultimately, in practice, most private purchases are not tracked therefor even though the tax is owed, it is impossible to track.
However, it is a really bad idea to put zero on the line, because you are essentially making a fradulent statement, and that does open you to tax evasion, and fradulent tax return charges that will certainly outweigh the benefits of lying.
There is alot in the JVM that does not "belong" to Sun, so it isn't thiers to open source. Most of the imaging and type model comes from Adobe for instance... I am sure that there is other stuff that isn't "thiers" as well.
The primary goal is to not allow perfect digital copies. IE the copy is exactly the same as the original. DAD (Digital-Analog-Digital), will always happen with some form of comprimise of the material.
This provides value for the original, and that value has been why even though I can make VHS copies of things I rent etc, there is enough value in the original, that people are willing to pay for that value.
What worries the distributors, is when the value they provide, and what people are paying for, is no longer value enough that people buy their product.
Napster, and Kazaa dramatically changed the value proposition. Now there is a reasonable argument, that they have in fact not changed the value proposition enough. That poorly created MP3 files are not good enough for people that buy CD's. And that in fact, exposure to music through these services actually increase the need for high quality distribution.
However, it is also equally reasonable to state, that this is mearly an interim state. That bandwidth and storage and software solutions will get to the point that pristine digital copies will be easy to make, easy to distribute, and easy to get, moving the tipping point that the distributor is in fact completely devalued.
Currently, it is believed that the current economics of IP distribution, are critical to the creation of IP. That if IP distirbution is completely devalued than, the quality of IP creation will go down, because the economic incentives to create high quality IP will not be there.
Whether this is true or not I think remains to be seen.
My personal belief, is that there is benefit for keeping a viable commercial market place based on control of distribution. Because it allows the continuance of the market that has provided us everything from the Beatles to Blink 182.
But, I also believe that there are equally valid alternate economic models that allow distribution of music, and some will be very successful. The Grateful Dead probably being the epitome if that kind of altenate model.
I believe that the consumer is best served, not by destroying the controlled distribution model, but competing against it. Linux is better because windows exists. Windows is better because Linux exists. The same is true of the GIMP and Photoshop, Open Office and Word.
There is no reason to believe that this isn't true of music. There is no reason to believe that thisn't also true of all sorts of IP.
The constricted model is by it's nature exclusive and means that certain IP will never get into the hands of the consumer. And occasionally this will mean something worthwhile and important will not see the time of day... This is bad. But as a consumer, I get on average a better product. It has better editorial control, production value, marketing of the product etc...
The unconstricted model is like the raw diamond mind. A few gems amongst the coal. Lack of editorial control leads to the expansion of crap. However, there is talent that exists there that would be unexposed in the constricted model. And that talent will shine and be presented to the consumer. Meaning the consumer is better served by having that option.
However, there has historically always been practical impediments to "IP piracy." The technology to duplicate has been expensive, but more importantly, the physical distribution (movement) of the product from the IP duplicator to the IP consumer. Enough so that markets for the IPCreator/Distributor remains unharmed, and that indeed below a certain point that it is cost effective form of marketing. If it is worth stealing, it is worth buying...)
Removing the A from DAD, and removing physical (both in human interaction, distance, and presentation) costs from the process, and we have really for the first time, historically, the ability to do so, and to remove the economic incentives to IP Distribution, and therefor to IP Creation...
Is not are they pirates, but are they "customers?"
The truth is that the vast majority probably do use them to pirate games. But, that is not necessarily lost revenue or signficantly revenue, as they are probably not customers either...
But that probably shouldn't mean that it should be "easy", because then customers DO become pirates.
Paul Allen is about the worst business man and biggest loser of money the world has ever known. From Asymetrix, His Dot.com ventures, Cable Companies, TV shows, and Sports teams, have just about all lost TONS of money, and Shareholder value. Just like you should always invest in what Buffet buys, you should always short whatever Allen buys...
About the only thing he does reasonably well on is RE. But that is because he constantly bullies the local governments to fund huge portions of his property and infrastructure. And if he doesn't get his way, he sells and moves on.
If he hadn't had the right friend at the right time, he would have been a very average person in the world.
But I hate interstitials (the ones that interrupt shows)...
TIVO already sells a commercial space, and I reguarly watch them. They tend to have high production value and are usually entertaining. And I can CHOOSE to watch them or not... And most importantly WHEN I feel like watching them.
I like commercials in my newspaper and magazines. I am introduced to all sorts of stuff that I ultimately purchase that way.
I hate them during TV shows, but the TIVO method is better. I am INTERESTED in the commercial. I am paying attention to the message. And I have been sold by some (especially for movies, trailers and some supporting marketing stuff). This is very good for the marketers.
But, that said, there is still a problem. Commercials pay for most of the TV I watch (I watch alot of NICHE channels TLC Discovery, Travel, Food,SciFi, etc), and I have watched damned few commercials in the last 3 years. If everyone went to TIVO, I am not sure I would like TV as much, or that there would be the things that I like on TV, or it would be MUCH more expensive than it is currently.
I don't think this is the answer, as I am not sure how the shows benefit from TIVO based commercial sales. And TIVO is really only valuable to me, if there is TV I want to watch. So, 5 percent of you, buy a TIVO, for the other other 95 percent, TIVO sucks, just watch regular TV...
Cross platform with the mac is NOT the primary selling point of the product. It hardly sells at all on the mac.
First the difference between FrameMaker, InDesign, and PageMaker.
PageMaker was created to provide reasonable desktop publishing primarally in B&W for simple books, light magazine work, and newsletters. It was a design with content type application.
InDesign, was created to compete directly with Quark, and is meant for design first and content later design. It utilizes AGM and CoolType (which are based on the PostScript Imaging model, and much more advanced than display PS), and the Photoshop Imaging model, which allows direct manipulation of Photoshop images. It is also truly OOP. It is by far the largest and most successful OOP program ever created.
FrameMaker, is a structured content oriented layout tool. The SGML model has been largely replaced by HTML, CSS and XML. The market is for very specific types of documents, that are largely created on UNIX and Windows platforms (mostly technical documentation, which benefits most from being able to re-layout the document).
The Mac platform, which is largely used in design oriented layout vs structure oriented.
Losing the Mac Platform is NOT that big of a deal. If you *NEED* this application, purchasing an appropriate platform to run it, is not unreasonable.
The truth is, FrameMaker is very important for a narrow application. It is still available for those platforms where that narrow need exists. And if there exists any sort of competitive need for structured layout on the mac, InDesign is flexible enough to build that on top of the InDesign imaging and layout engine.
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I started on Dish, and moved to DTV because they supported TiVo, and the Dish compression had gotten out of hand.
DTV was better, but it had gotten worse, and it is better now. But, yes it is really bad. (In that it is really noticeable). I have seen HD on my SD set, and it saddens me to see how glorious SD can actually be.
I use all 4 tuners... (Not at the same time but all 4 have been used). You can record 2 streams at a time, 2 of the choices are OTA, two are satellite.
It can only do Digital OTA, and it can record any Satellite.
I have three wires coming into the house, two satellite wires, and one wire for an OTA antenna.
It records the raw digital stream, so there is no setting about how to record various resolutions....
I have recorded to a recordable DVD. It only uses svideo in, but the quality is what I would expect.
And I forked out the cash, because, I simply cannot watch tv without TiVo, and now that I have HD too, I am very happy.
First TiVo just works better with satellite than over the air, because it just copies the satellites digital signal rather than recompressing the stream.
Second, HD looks GREAT on a SD TV. I have been a satellite subscriber since day one because local cable was aweful. It used to have a great picture, but the channel squeeze forced bit rates down so low it was like watching a good streaming internet image (crappy).
But I now have HDTiVo hooked up to a very nice SD set (XBR2) and a very nice HD projector (NEC HT1000). The projector is great for movies, but is just too big for watching TV. But HD channels on the SD set are some of the best quality TV around.
This will benefit all subscribers by getting high enough bandwidth for all stations, and more HD than will be provided by my local provider. I am just disappointed it is going to take 3 years to get up and running.
Ok, first, this has to get to the floor. This does not get to the floor without Republican support in a lot of places. Because, the house is currently Republican control.
So why, would this happen? It would be a win for the Dems,Right?
Well, Presidential politics is more about the threat, than the actuality. The President can be peeved for his core that the Congress wouldn't let him have this, and just look how unfair this is for business etc... He gets to have the issue in his camp as unsettled. A plus for him in motivating the base.
On the Dem side, they've won. The issue for them doesn't exist anymore. As this issue had been gaining traction which results in momentum which results in votes, they have to mo pulled out.
Sometimes in winning a war, not only do you not fight all battles, sometimes it is the battles that you chose to lose that makes all the difference.
Karl Rove runs elections on innuendo, bluster, bluffing, and boasting. And it is not important whether anything is true or not, the more unverifiable the better. And if there is a pesky verifiable truth that is getting in the way, make the truth go away, give it up without much fight, make the issue go away. Then continue with the fantasy.
Karl makes Maitlin and Carville look like playground punks when it comes to methodology for winning an election.
This is about presidential politics. The new overtime rules was a target for the dems, and was gaining some sorts of traction. Republican house all of the sudden gets a vote to roll back the rules.
Problem solved. There is always after the election to bring the rules back...
The chairman of China, pointing out the obvious Chernobylesque failures of the US Capitalism system, has vowed to only use "safe" power adapters in all its laptops...
The discovery of a single collision is not a big deal. Discovery of an algorithm to create a collision WOULD be a very big deal.
The greatest weakness would be in password systems where only hashes are stored. If you could create an arbitrary password that had the same hash as one stored on the system (and there have been attacks on the password generation side, but none successfully on the side of specifically creating a password *based* on a hash), then you can get in.
There may yet be discovered a formula for creating that collision, now that we have discovered one, we can determine if there is a relationship between the two plaintexts that can be exploited if we know either the plaintext, or the hash, and can generate an arbitrary collision.
Document signatures are much less problematic. You would have to create a *sensible* document to replace the hashed document. This is way less likely to occur, to the point that would be attacking by far the strongest link in the chain.
The recordings exist. Just because you will somehow post process them, I don't think you have really met your standard of not recording the whole day.
Would you submit them under subpeona? Will they be destroyed? When? How?
I think anybody in the CS dept could write the program you require. But I am pretty sure you are going to have to keep coming up with a way to do this "pre-record". And exactly why is it so hard to just buy *enough* recorders?
Um... Because they did...
XP is built on the NT kernal, NOT the DOS kernal of ME and previous.
There is alot of emulation code to support, um arguably buggy or unsupported methods going forward.
The problem is really NOT in the operating system, but in default security functionality, overly "functional" common applications, (outlook and IE), an ignorant user base (Really, a FREE kournakova JPG? How did they know?), and an extraordinarily malicious mal-ware community.
SP2 changes default security functionality, and reduces the "functionality" of common apps, even adds some new clever code to prevent buffer overflows if the hardware supports it, because you can't do too much about the user base and the bastards...
The Blue Screen Of Death...
(brought to you by the Microsoft the makers of Personal Area Netwoks, and Pfizer the maker of Viagra. They both ask "Where in the hell do you want to go today..."
No a drawer is not the same. As the tool bars and window widgets are not in the correct place. They are relative to the main window and not the drawer. So if you close the drawer then the window is too far to the right, if the drawer is open then the the controls are too far to the right...
I have yet to see any application that is better suited to drawers than a multipaned representation.
I live in mail preview. So that works best for me..
As to the list view problem... Set your inbox so that last mail is on the top...
Now go three mails down and delete a message.
Do this in mail and do this in thunderbird.
The thunderbird method is correct, the behavior of what happens after delete, and which item gets focused should not change based on sort order of the list. This is true in all operating systems, and UI's but is different in mail. This makes mail extremely difficult for me to use.
But as you do not use preview, I do not use vcards. So I don't miss the feature, though I agree it needs to be fixed.
And configuration doesn't bother me, though I find it odd to have to wait until getting mail the first time to enter in my password rather than at account creation time.
The stupid drawer, and the fact that delete does not work correctly in the mail view.
I have used mail.app because there was nothing really better on osx, and the mail app is pretty good. But it has now been regulated away. I much prefer the three-pane view over the drawer view, which for mail seems just kinda clunky. Drawers are good, if they are not OPEN all the time.
Actually strike that, I think drawers are a bad UI concept.
And the fact that the list widget doesn't work properly just drives me crazy, and the fact that thunderbirds DOES work properly is enough!
The cost increase will be nearly non-existent. Implementations are not one off. All it will mean is more code in the firmware, at a near-zero marginal cost.
The reason for having two codecs is that it allows competition between *encoder* manufacturers. And this is where the real money is made/spent.
Electronic voting machines need to make human readable paper ballots that *can* be hand-counted. Anything short of that opens up the elections to all sorts of tampering that can be undiscoverable, even if the code is "open source."
You can collect the votes, in a variety of electronic methods, that will meet the needs of quick reporting, but ultimately the votes need to be auditable, which means being able to recount by some manual method.
The ballots need to be human readable so that they can be verified by the voter AND the auditor.
If the protocol is secure, then it doesn't matter if the code is open source, or closed source. Whatever. As a taxpayer, I would hope that they choose something that is as inexpensive as possible that provides a secure and auditable voting record.
Yeah except this was created on a mac... /Producer (Mac OS X 10.3.3 Quartz PDFContext)
And judging from feature sets that were used, it was likely created in Adobe InDesign...
No no no... The problem with the current model is microsoft is stuck making the boxes.
Microsoft, can do better... That is let your OEM's MAKE the boxes. This allows the market to come up with packages to sell into the living room. They will be able to decide whether or not to include media edition, xbox, and other things.
There are many ways to include the xbox, likely for content control it would be a daughter card in the box.
And I for one would want one. I want a PC on my HDTV, and there are no decent solutions yet.
Because of the "original physicality of the disc".
You are borrowing the actual disc, not a copy of the disc or its content.
However, your argument has been tried in court in a manner of speaking. It has been a tenant of fair use, that I can make a copy and give it or lend it to a friend.
The problem with the internet is the scope of the distribution, both geographically and numerically. And the total result, that the distribution method is better, cheaper, and audially just as good as official distribution. This is what moves it from fair use, to copyright violation, and the DMCA is what moves it from civil law to criminal law.
NEC has one of the best home theater projectors in the sub 10's of thousand dollar range the HT1000. It has been replaced by the HT1100.
This projector has been on the top of most folks most recommended list for the past year or so. You can look it up on the avs forums.
They listed for 4995 originally (and that was a blow out price for the performance of the projector). But it is currently being phased out, and can be purchased at really good prices but they are extremely limited. Many home theater providers are out of them, but they can still be had... You can get one for 2625 at triocomputers.com, which was a good enough deal I just bought one.
But... The 1100 is out, and can be purchased in the 3800 dollar range and has a few nice features, but also has a 200 dollar upgrade for an anamorphic lens (which goes for 1100-1800 bucks ordinarally). This allows you to show a wide screen display, but still use all of the pixels in the projector. This results in about a 20% improvment in brightness, better sharpness, and much less visibility of individual pixels.
But the HT1000, is a more than satisfactory projector, indeed it is one of the best home theater projectors available in the below 10k price range, and at 2625 is a steal.
Nope...
You are required by law, to pay the use tax (there isn't really anything called a "sales tax") for the state where it is used.
Normally this tax is collected by the person selling it to you.
There is a supreme court ruling on this, but it has to do with the burden of collection, not on the burden of payment. Basically it states that if the business has a nexus (A legal term meaning legal presence) in the state that has a use tax, they are required to collect the tax, but that a state cannot place that burden on a state that does not have a nexus in it. (Basically the supreme court ruling is that a catalog delivered into a state, is NOT enough to create nexus).
Practically, this means if the item is big enough they can come for the tax. Happens all the time with cars purchased in Oregon and then brought into Washington state. They will come for you for the tax. It also has practicalities for businesses, who have to report all types of expenses and have to report use tax to the state for things that were purchased and not collected at point of sale.
It also means, that for certain types of purchases, especially when the item is NOT USED in the state where purchased, that you can claim a refund from that state (or even claim at the point of sale that you are not required to pay that tax), and then pay that tax in the state where it is used.
But ultimately, in practice, most private purchases are not tracked therefor even though the tax is owed, it is impossible to track.
However, it is a really bad idea to put zero on the line, because you are essentially making a fradulent statement, and that does open you to tax evasion, and fradulent tax return charges that will certainly outweigh the benefits of lying.
There is alot in the JVM that does not "belong" to Sun, so it isn't thiers to open source. Most of the imaging and type model comes from Adobe for instance... I am sure that there is other stuff that isn't "thiers" as well.
You don't get it.
The primary goal is to not allow perfect digital copies. IE the copy is exactly the same as the original. DAD (Digital-Analog-Digital), will always happen with some form of comprimise of the material.
This provides value for the original, and that value has been why even though I can make VHS copies of things I rent etc, there is enough value in the original, that people are willing to pay for that value.
What worries the distributors, is when the value they provide, and what people are paying for, is no longer value enough that people buy their product.
Napster, and Kazaa dramatically changed the value proposition. Now there is a reasonable argument, that they have in fact not changed the value proposition enough. That poorly created MP3 files are not good enough for people that buy CD's. And that in fact, exposure to music through these services actually increase the need for high quality distribution.
However, it is also equally reasonable to state, that this is mearly an interim state. That bandwidth and storage and software solutions will get to the point that pristine digital copies will be easy to make, easy to distribute, and easy to get, moving the tipping point that the distributor is in fact completely devalued.
Currently, it is believed that the current economics of IP distribution, are critical to the creation of IP. That if IP distirbution is completely devalued than, the quality of IP creation will go down, because the economic incentives to create high quality IP will not be there.
Whether this is true or not I think remains to be seen.
My personal belief, is that there is benefit for keeping a viable commercial market place based on control of distribution. Because it allows the continuance of the market that has provided us everything from the Beatles to Blink 182.
But, I also believe that there are equally valid alternate economic models that allow distribution of music, and some will be very successful. The Grateful Dead probably being the epitome if that kind of altenate model.
I believe that the consumer is best served, not by destroying the controlled distribution model, but competing against it. Linux is better because windows exists. Windows is better because Linux exists. The same is true of the GIMP and Photoshop, Open Office and Word.
There is no reason to believe that this isn't true of music. There is no reason to believe that thisn't also true of all sorts of IP.
The constricted model is by it's nature exclusive and means that certain IP will never get into the hands of the consumer. And occasionally this will mean something worthwhile and important will not see the time of day... This is bad. But as a consumer, I get on average a better product. It has better editorial control, production value, marketing of the product etc...
The unconstricted model is like the raw diamond mind. A few gems amongst the coal. Lack of editorial control leads to the expansion of crap. However, there is talent that exists there that would be unexposed in the constricted model. And that talent will shine and be presented to the consumer. Meaning the consumer is better served by having that option.
However, there has historically always been practical impediments to "IP piracy." The technology to duplicate has been expensive, but more importantly, the physical distribution (movement) of the product from the IP duplicator to the IP consumer. Enough so that markets for the IPCreator/Distributor remains unharmed, and that indeed below a certain point that it is cost effective form of marketing. If it is worth stealing, it is worth buying...)
Removing the A from DAD, and removing physical (both in human interaction, distance, and presentation) costs from the process, and we have really for the first time, historically, the ability to do so, and to remove the economic incentives to IP Distribution, and therefor to IP Creation...
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Is not are they pirates, but are they "customers?"
The truth is that the vast majority probably do use them to pirate games. But, that is not necessarily lost revenue or signficantly revenue, as they are probably not customers either...
But that probably shouldn't mean that it should be "easy", because then customers DO become pirates.
Founder's Shares of Microsoft... yummm...
Paul Allen is about the worst business man and biggest loser of money the world has ever known. From Asymetrix, His Dot.com ventures, Cable Companies, TV shows, and Sports teams, have just about all lost TONS of money, and Shareholder value. Just like you should always invest in what Buffet buys, you should always short whatever Allen buys...
About the only thing he does reasonably well on is RE. But that is because he constantly bullies the local governments to fund huge portions of his property and infrastructure. And if he doesn't get his way, he sells and moves on.
If he hadn't had the right friend at the right time, he would have been a very average person in the world.
But I hate interstitials (the ones that interrupt shows)...
TIVO already sells a commercial space, and I reguarly watch them. They tend to have high production value and are usually entertaining. And I can CHOOSE to watch them or not... And most importantly WHEN I feel like watching them.
I like commercials in my newspaper and magazines. I am introduced to all sorts of stuff that I ultimately purchase that way.
I hate them during TV shows, but the TIVO method is better. I am INTERESTED in the commercial. I am paying attention to the message. And I have been sold by some (especially for movies, trailers and some supporting marketing stuff). This is very good for the marketers.
But, that said, there is still a problem. Commercials pay for most of the TV I watch (I watch alot of NICHE channels TLC Discovery, Travel, Food,SciFi, etc), and I have watched damned few commercials in the last 3 years. If everyone went to TIVO, I am not sure I would like TV as much, or that there would be the things that I like on TV, or it would be MUCH more expensive than it is currently.
I don't think this is the answer, as I am not sure how the shows benefit from TIVO based commercial sales. And TIVO is really only valuable to me, if there is TV I want to watch. So, 5 percent of you, buy a TIVO, for the other other 95 percent, TIVO sucks, just watch regular TV...
That should work out best for me...
Cross platform with the mac is NOT the primary selling point of the product. It hardly sells at all on the mac.
First the difference between FrameMaker, InDesign, and PageMaker.
PageMaker was created to provide reasonable desktop publishing primarally in B&W for simple books, light magazine work, and newsletters. It was a design with content type application.
InDesign, was created to compete directly with Quark, and is meant for design first and content later design. It utilizes AGM and CoolType (which are based on the PostScript Imaging model, and much more advanced than display PS), and the Photoshop Imaging model, which allows direct manipulation of Photoshop images. It is also truly OOP. It is by far the largest and most successful OOP program ever created.
FrameMaker, is a structured content oriented layout tool. The SGML model has been largely replaced by HTML, CSS and XML. The market is for very specific types of documents, that are largely created on UNIX and Windows platforms (mostly technical documentation, which benefits most from being able to re-layout the document).
The Mac platform, which is largely used in design oriented layout vs structure oriented.
Losing the Mac Platform is NOT that big of a deal. If you *NEED* this application, purchasing an appropriate platform to run it, is not unreasonable.
The truth is, FrameMaker is very important for a narrow application. It is still available for those platforms where that narrow need exists. And if there exists any sort of competitive need for structured layout on the mac, InDesign is flexible enough to build that on top of the InDesign imaging and layout engine.