That's a bit simplistic. Contracts are tested in court all the time and some of them are found to be unenforceable, often on the basis of "well established . . . contract law."
Here are a few examples:
(1) Who gets to enforce the GPL? I don't know much about the GPL-Violations group, but if they didn't write any of the code then (at least in the US), they wouldn't have standing to enforce the GPL.
(2) While we're at it, what is the ownership status of a work with one original author that has been modified by a half dozen more? What happens when you're only copying the work added and not the original work?
(3) What methods can you use to fence off GPL'd code from your own code? Is it sufficient to make it into a daemon with a socket interface? Are there other methods that also work?
Well, that's just a bit inflammatory. Apart from arguing that the poll does not appear to have been well-constructed (apparently polling about 33 people in the US to achieve this result), I'd argue that your statement true of your country, whatever it is, as well. In fact, that's one of the reasons that representative governments exist -- to allow some people to specialize in policy-making while others specialize in other things. I happen to know a lot about Net Neutrality, but not much about farm subsidies, port security, what helicopters the army needs or highway construction.
In any case, knowing something's exact location is often not critically necessary to supporting or opposing a related policy. Take international restrictions on Pacific whaling -- how many people around the world feel one way or another about the subject when they have no idea where in the Pacific the whaling happens?
(1) Somebody gets your account information. (Possibly through phishing, possibly just by rummaging through your mail). (2) They wire money out of your account. (3) They move the money someplace where it cannot be retrieved.
The problem is in step 2. The banks make absolutely no verification that a transfer is authorized. When I walk into a branch, I can't just pull money out of my account without first verifying who I am. When I write a check, the bank (at least in theory) is supposed to verify that the signature on the check matches the one they have on file. But, there is no similar verification when my account is electronically drafted.
The banks are basically betting that they'll lose less money through fraud than it would cost them to implement security on the back end. It's a calculated risk on their end. If their customers had to pay for the fraud, there would be NO incentive for them to improve security.
Incidently, the comment that "the customers pay for it anyway" is only partially right -- customers pay for part of it through reduced interest rates and so on, but some of it also comes out of the bank's profits. Banks are generally in a competitive market and as long as there are alternatives for savings (e.g. brokerage houses), the market dictates the interest rates paid by the bank.
Not many details in the article, but I think that they may be claiming defamation -- along the lines of "You're going around telling everybody that we're spammers. We're not and your statements are hurting our business."
It's the same sort of thing as if somebody had said "Accountant Bob stole some client money," and Bob's business was hurt as a result.
You're getting mixed up between the copyright on the expression and the underlying information. There is an old case involving a book describing double-entry accounting, where the author wanted to prevent people from using his system. In the end, the court found that the author could keep people from copying his book, but could not prevent them from using his system described in the book.
It's the same thing here -- the professor can keep people from copying their expression (ie the lectures and handout material), but not the underlying ideas. The expression is copyrightable, but the ideas are not.
There is one way in which the professor could be wrong, though. Copyright "subsists... in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." The key word here is "fixed" -- if the professor comes in and just taught off-the-cuff without prepared lecture notes, then there is no copyright in his lecture. The lecture notes provide the necessary fixation.
The elephant in the room here actually isn't voice, but video -- most broadband companies either deliver television (the cable companies) or plan to do so soon (the phone companies). This business of theirs will be destroyed if anybody can deliver video over the Internet.
Nobody is going to demote google's search in favor of yahoo -- can you imagine the backlash if they did so? This is targetted at future services, not existing ones.
The government already can't ask hackers to get into your system -- that makes the hacker a government agent, and the fourth amendment applies.
You're right that such a rule would probably deter people from hacking into your computer if their sole purpose was to turn kiddie porn over to the cops. But, hackers have other purposes. Plus, if they wanted to get you, there are alternate ways of doing so.
If you read through the cases mentioned in the article (especially the second), you'll find that the actual facts are a bit different than the article and the slashdot story would have you believe. For example, the letter saying that he would not be prosecuted was sent to convince him to come to the US to testify, not to suggest that he should continue his hacking. Once the police hinted that he should continue, anything further was inadmissible.
The difference is whether it's a violation of the 4th amendment or not.
Here's an analogy: Let's say that your neighbor trespasses through your backyard and, in doing so, happens to look through your window and sees you molesting a child. If he goes to the police and says what he saw, should they be able to act on it?
Is it different if he silently broke into your house to steal some silver and happened to look into a room where you were doing the molesting? What if he happened to have a camera and took pictures?
My point is that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your house, and the GOVERNMENT generally can't invade on that privacy without a warrant. If they do, then evidence they get can't be used against you. This is the "exclusionary rule," and it's intended to prevent the government from conducting searched and seizures in violation of the 4th Amendment. The rule itself, though, is not actually constitutionally required -- there would just need to be an alternate way of handling with 4th amendment violations that provided enough of a disincentive.
In this case, the government's not doing anything wrong -- somebody just dropped this in their laps. Telling them "sorry, you can't use that" doesn't deter ANY behavior -- it doesn't keep the government from invading your computer AGAIN, because they didn't do it in the first place. This Turkish guy would probably continue to do it, possibly choosing instead to publish the guy's information on-line. Heck, if he had that much control of the pedophile's computer, he could just send an email from the pedophile to the FBI saying "I just wanted to show you what I have stored on my computer" and attaching a picture. Should the FBI ignore leads like that as well?
I concur. But, most people are limited by low upstream bandwidth. For example, my computer has about 400GB on it. At an upspeed rate of 512 kb/s, this will take 72 days to transmit, excluding network overhead, errors and so on.
In the mid 1990's, Newt Gingrich worried about people having an "Information Superhighway" in, but a footpath out. Thanks to today's asymmetric providers, this prediction has come true.
In fact, a switch to higher upstream bandwidth now has a new opponent: the content industry -- low upstream bandwidth also means that pirated movies can't transmit as fast.
Backdating means that the strike price on your option is less than it should be. The 'strike price' of stock options is generally the price on the date the option was granted. If the option is backdated to a date when the stock price was lower, then that extra money comes out of the company's profit, and, thus, out of the shareholders' pockets. Instead of rewarding execs for increasing the stock price in the future, backdating rewards them for increasing it in the past. You can argue that they may deserve the extra. However, hiding the compensation in a stock option intentionally misleads investors.
Actually, if you look at the mp3.com case, you'd see that the court found that *none* of the 4 fair use factors went in mp3.com's favor. Whether the use is commercial goes to the first factor -- "the purpose and character of the use." But, the court also found against mp3.com on factor 1 because the use was non-transformative. So, even if the use were non-commercial, you'd still have factors 2-4 against, and half of factor 1. That doesn't sound like a good case for fair use to me.
In addition, other courts have looked at the mp3.com decision and decided that it stand for what I suggested. Look, for example, at BMG v. Gonzalez, 430 F.3d 888, 890, where the court cites to the mp3.com case as "holding that downloads are not fair use even if the downloader already owns one purchased copy." BMG itself said that downloading a song is still infringement even if you then buy the song.
You're right about the mp3.com users -- until the RIAA's recent suits, copyright owners have been reticent to go after individuals, prefering to go after those with money and control. Their goal was to shut down mp3.com, not to go after all the mp3.com users. But, that just means that they decided not to pursue those cases, not that the cases themselves were invalid. Heck, the RIAA only turned to suing peer-to-peer users because there is no central server to sue, as there was with napster.
So, first thing is to pay off credit-card debts. You don't get a deduction on the interest and it's hard to beat a sure 9%-21% return on your money. If you take care of your credit score, then you will be able to borrow the money back later when you need it.
Second, recognize that an investment's risk is proportional to its expected return. You can make just a little bit in a savings account (check out ING direct, which is paying around 5% right now), with no risk to your principal. Or, you may make a lot by speculating in stock options, but you stand an enormous risk that you'll lose everything. You can solve mucch of the risk problem by diversifying, but you cannot completely cure it. It's hard to diversify without a lot to invest.
Third, look at your time-horizon: how soon do you need the money? Over the long-haul, the stock market will out-perform "safer" investments. A broad-based stock mutual fund with minimal expenses will allow you to at least track the market. The Vanguard S&P 500 index is very low-cost and tracks the S&P 500.
Ignore advice about whether the market is in a "Bubble" or not -- if there was a general consensus that it was true, it would cease to be true because everybody would sell.
Fourth, DON'T, whatever you do, DON'T buy an insurance product like whole-term life insurance, universal life insurance or annuities. Insurance sales people take massive commissions straight out of your payments. And insurance companies, by law, are very limited in what they can invest in. As a result, you throw away a big chunk of money and then don't get a great return. If you need life insurance, buy a level term life policy from a financially sound company and invest the remainder. Doing that will give you the same insurance benefits, but a better return.
Uh, no. That's a popular misconception. In the US at least, whether you own a copy of a work has no impact on whether you infringe its copyright by downloading it. MP3.com, for example, got into trouble for their service that allowed you to download mp3s after proving you had the CD.
That's an excellent point -- traditional publishing is a multi-step process designed to pick marketable books, refine them, get them into the market and get them sold. Print-on-Demand allows people to get to print faster, but does so by bypassing the publishing process and the value it adds. It seems to me that your concern is not so much publishing on demand, but self-publishing because it avoids all the filters and product refinement of traditional publishing.
Publishing-on-demand has the potential to solve two problems in the publishing industry: meeting the relatively low demand for out-of-print books and inventory. The first problem is that books go out-of-print because low demand makes traditional volume publishing economically infeasible. But, a publisher that is able to economically meet that demand has an additional source of revenue. Inventory, the second problem, is the perpetual beast of industry -- it drains cash flow, consumes storage space and increases the cost of failure. There's nothing like making 100,000 of something, only to have it sit on store shelves for 2 months before the stores pull it from the shelves. Publishing on demand avoids that risk.
The maximum frequency that can be carried is proportional to the sampling rate -- if I recall correctly, the highest frequency that can be carried is half the sample rate. Sample 8000 times per second and you can carry up to 4 kHz. At 16000, it's 8 kHz. People can hear up to about 20 kHz, so this does increase the frequency range. Since 'going up an octave' means doubling the frequency, the previous poster was correct. The end result is only to raise the maximum frequency by an Octave.
The bigger problem, though, is the sample size. The traditional phone system uses an exponential 8-bit sample size. The result of this is that the softer the audio, the finer the reproduction. For example, say that the signal level were linearly measured from 0 to 1000 and mapped to the numbers 0-127. Under this sort of encoding, 1 might map to 1, 2 to 2, 3-4 to 3, 5-7 to 4 . . . 630-800 to 126 and 800-1000 to 127.
The end result is that loud sounds are more distorted by the telephone system than soft sounds.
This decision is based on the prohibition against making unauthorized derivative works. In order to be a derivative work, there must be enough copyrightable original expression involved in creating the derivative work. Ripping a pages out of a book is probably insufficient. But (for example), cutting out words and sentences to make an abridged version or cutting out particular scenes to edit a movie for television is adding copyrightable expression.
The derivative work right is also implicated by fair use -- the more transformative a use is, the more likely it is to be a fair use. For example, I recently saw a mash-up of the most recent Harry Potter movie that took individual shots and rearranged them so it appeared that Harry and Ron were having a gay affair. None of the original story was retold and although copyrighted expression was used (the individual shots), it was much more likely to be considered a fair use than, say, the original movie being overdubbed in Spanish.
This decision is actually quite narrow -- you are not allowed to create a derivative work as a separate copy. But, you are allowed by statute to have a scenes list that you program into your computer and it removes the offensive scenes automatically.
Theses guys want to use the latest greatest version of Windows to convince people that they need to buy new hardware. Microsoft's delays have actually hurt the equipment vendors because people are holding off on buying new machines, waiting for Vista.
The main thing that Vista is supposed to help with is security. In theory, they've redesigned for security and that will mean a lot fewer patches. And, that's something that large customers want -- the few patches, the less manpower and expense required. In practice, though, there are going to be tons of bugs just because of the sheer volume of changes, which will mean a lot more patching, more manpower and greater expense. Vista might be the thing that utterly destroys the legitimacy of any Microsoft TCO claims.
Actually, in the U.S., antitrust law is quite broad -- its foundation, the Sherman Antitrust Act, lays out broad policy and leaves much of the implementation to the courts.
In the U.S., tying arrangements are illegal per se if they result from significant market power in the tying product. So, for example, suppose that there is a network with two alternatives for broadband internet -- DSL and Cable. But, the DSL provider also wants to sell video over its wires. It seems to me that a good example of tying would be if the cable provider uses its market power in broadband Internet to keep Google's video service from competing with the cable TV service and thus keep its TV customers.
There are also other antitrust doctrines that may be applicable, such as the essential facilities doctrine.
In fact, the antitrust case would be stronger if Congress decided NOT to pass network neutrality. If Congress is heavily regulating an industry, the courts are much more reticent to apply generic antitrust law to that industry. But, when Congress leaves an industry to the free market, that's when courts will use antitrust law to remedy anticompetitive behavior.
In theory you're right. In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they're different.
I currently have three computers all running XP, all in the same workgroup and they can only access each other by IP address. It's a PITA to share files and printers. I'm very computer literate and could probably do some research to figure out what's going wrong. Iit's not exactly on the top of my list, and it might be worth the price for network magic to solve the problem for me.
However, I don't understand why they use a subscription model. If you don't pay $30 every year, their service cuts off. When I'm dealing with a company that may not be around in a year, I want a flat price.
Well, it isn't a question of whether it could happen in a corporation -- such things do happen occasionally. However, they are much less likely to because the people involved rely on their jobs to do things like pay for food. You don't just decide to quit your job immediately because you're unhappy with somebody else's decisions -- that's just the time that you start looking for another position.
In a well-run for-profit software development group, there is nobody who is indispensible -- companies don't want to throw away millions of dollars and years of effort just because "Dude. We're screwed. Joe got a better job at Google. He's the only guy who understood how all this stuff worked."
Take a native american in the 1700s. Is he descended from some greek guy 3000 years earlier? I have my doubts -- if I recall my anthropology, the natives came here long before Greece was a major power. If there are any purebred native americans around today, then you'd have to go back a lot more than 3000 years to find an ancestor that he has in common with, say, a bushman in Africa.
So, industry claims that H1-B visas are needed because there are some skills which are just not available in the U.S. job market. The other side is that (1) yes, those skills are; and (2) even if they weren't, companies could hire Americans and train them.
The visas are obviously in high demand -- they disappear in an astonishingly short time after they become available every year.
IMO, the best way to approach this is to auction the H1-B visas off: If you have a position that you need filled, bid for an H1-B visa. If somebody else needs it more, they'll bid more and they'll win. Otherwise, if you need it more, you'll bid more and win.
The interesting thing is the feedback mechanism -- if the visas are going for $200,000 each, that's a pretty good indication that the job isn't availble in the US and it's really hard to train Americans to do it. But, on the other hand, if companies are just trying to save a few bucks, then the visas will go for a lot less, maybe $20,000. That would indicate that there are too many H1-B visas, and companies are just using them to get cheap labor. If the price is too high, that would indicate the need to raise the cap. Otherwise, it would indicate a need to lower it.+
You make an excellent point. The problem is that ISPs don't have any choice in who to buy from -- that choice is made by their customers. The end result might be "You want to buy our IPTV service? That's be $5/month if you're on Time Warner, $8.50/month on Comcast, $11/month on Verizon and so on...."
I think that the better argument in favor of network neutrality is that it forces ISPs to charge THEIR CUSTOMERs for the increase in bandwidth. That lets the laws of supply and demand set the price and quantity for broadband service. Allowing the ISPs to charge service providers splits the decisions: those who pay are the service providers (think google), and those who chose are the consumers. In the end, you could end up with an ISP making so much from the providers that broadband Internet service is free to consumers.
Slashdot Mirror
I dispute the second half of your premise -- I haven't found anybody who is both (1) familiar with the term and (2) associates it with Apple.
I'd argue that the word "podcast" is already generic -- are there any audio blogs that don't call themselves podcasts?
That's a bit simplistic. Contracts are tested in court all the time and some of them are found to be unenforceable, often on the basis of "well established . . . contract law."
Here are a few examples:
(1) Who gets to enforce the GPL? I don't know much about the GPL-Violations group, but if they didn't write any of the code then (at least in the US), they wouldn't have standing to enforce the GPL.
(2) While we're at it, what is the ownership status of a work with one original author that has been modified by a half dozen more? What happens when you're only copying the work added and not the original work?
(3) What methods can you use to fence off GPL'd code from your own code? Is it sufficient to make it into a daemon with a socket interface? Are there other methods that also work?
Well, that's just a bit inflammatory. Apart from arguing that the poll does not appear to have been well-constructed (apparently polling about 33 people in the US to achieve this result), I'd argue that your statement true of your country, whatever it is, as well. In fact, that's one of the reasons that representative governments exist -- to allow some people to specialize in policy-making while others specialize in other things. I happen to know a lot about Net Neutrality, but not much about farm subsidies, port security, what helicopters the army needs or highway construction.
In any case, knowing something's exact location is often not critically necessary to supporting or opposing a related policy. Take international restrictions on Pacific whaling -- how many people around the world feel one way or another about the subject when they have no idea where in the Pacific the whaling happens?
The basic way money is stolen is this:
(1) Somebody gets your account information. (Possibly through phishing, possibly just by rummaging through your mail).
(2) They wire money out of your account.
(3) They move the money someplace where it cannot be retrieved.
The problem is in step 2. The banks make absolutely no verification that a transfer is authorized. When I walk into a branch, I can't just pull money out of my account without first verifying who I am. When I write a check, the bank (at least in theory) is supposed to verify that the signature on the check matches the one they have on file. But, there is no similar verification when my account is electronically drafted.
The banks are basically betting that they'll lose less money through fraud than it would cost them to implement security on the back end. It's a calculated risk on their end. If their customers had to pay for the fraud, there would be NO incentive for them to improve security.
Incidently, the comment that "the customers pay for it anyway" is only partially right -- customers pay for part of it through reduced interest rates and so on, but some of it also comes out of the bank's profits. Banks are generally in a competitive market and as long as there are alternatives for savings (e.g. brokerage houses), the market dictates the interest rates paid by the bank.
Not many details in the article, but I think that they may be claiming defamation -- along the lines of "You're going around telling everybody that we're spammers. We're not and your statements are hurting our business."
It's the same sort of thing as if somebody had said "Accountant Bob stole some client money," and Bob's business was hurt as a result.
You're getting mixed up between the copyright on the expression and the underlying information. There is an old case involving a book describing double-entry accounting, where the author wanted to prevent people from using his system. In the end, the court found that the author could keep people from copying his book, but could not prevent them from using his system described in the book.
... in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." The key word here is "fixed" -- if the professor comes in and just taught off-the-cuff without prepared lecture notes, then there is no copyright in his lecture. The lecture notes provide the necessary fixation.
It's the same thing here -- the professor can keep people from copying their expression (ie the lectures and handout material), but not the underlying ideas. The expression is copyrightable, but the ideas are not.
There is one way in which the professor could be wrong, though. Copyright "subsists
The elephant in the room here actually isn't voice, but video -- most broadband companies either deliver television (the cable companies) or plan to do so soon (the phone companies). This business of theirs will be destroyed if anybody can deliver video over the Internet.
Nobody is going to demote google's search in favor of yahoo -- can you imagine the backlash if they did so? This is targetted at future services, not existing ones.
The government already can't ask hackers to get into your system -- that makes the hacker a government agent, and the fourth amendment applies.
You're right that such a rule would probably deter people from hacking into your computer if their sole purpose was to turn kiddie porn over to the cops. But, hackers have other purposes. Plus, if they wanted to get you, there are alternate ways of doing so.
If you read through the cases mentioned in the article (especially the second), you'll find that the actual facts are a bit different than the article and the slashdot story would have you believe. For example, the letter saying that he would not be prosecuted was sent to convince him to come to the US to testify, not to suggest that he should continue his hacking. Once the police hinted that he should continue, anything further was inadmissible.
The difference is whether it's a violation of the 4th amendment or not.
Here's an analogy: Let's say that your neighbor trespasses through your backyard and, in doing so, happens to look through your window and sees you molesting a child. If he goes to the police and says what he saw, should they be able to act on it?
Is it different if he silently broke into your house to steal some silver and happened to look into a room where you were doing the molesting? What if he happened to have a camera and took pictures?
My point is that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your house, and the GOVERNMENT generally can't invade on that privacy without a warrant. If they do, then evidence they get can't be used against you. This is the "exclusionary rule," and it's intended to prevent the government from conducting searched and seizures in violation of the 4th Amendment. The rule itself, though, is not actually constitutionally required -- there would just need to be an alternate way of handling with 4th amendment violations that provided enough of a disincentive.
In this case, the government's not doing anything wrong -- somebody just dropped this in their laps. Telling them "sorry, you can't use that" doesn't deter ANY behavior -- it doesn't keep the government from invading your computer AGAIN, because they didn't do it in the first place. This Turkish guy would probably continue to do it, possibly choosing instead to publish the guy's information on-line. Heck, if he had that much control of the pedophile's computer, he could just send an email from the pedophile to the FBI saying "I just wanted to show you what I have stored on my computer" and attaching a picture. Should the FBI ignore leads like that as well?
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of computer tapes hurtling down the highway.
I concur. But, most people are limited by low upstream bandwidth. For example, my computer has about 400GB on it. At an upspeed rate of 512 kb/s, this will take 72 days to transmit, excluding network overhead, errors and so on.
In the mid 1990's, Newt Gingrich worried about people having an "Information Superhighway" in, but a footpath out. Thanks to today's asymmetric providers, this prediction has come true.
In fact, a switch to higher upstream bandwidth now has a new opponent: the content industry -- low upstream bandwidth also means that pirated movies can't transmit as fast.
This guy is an executive?!
Backdating means that the strike price on your option is less than it should be. The 'strike price' of stock options is generally the price on the date the option was granted. If the option is backdated to a date when the stock price was lower, then that extra money comes out of the company's profit, and, thus, out of the shareholders' pockets. Instead of rewarding execs for increasing the stock price in the future, backdating rewards them for increasing it in the past. You can argue that they may deserve the extra. However, hiding the compensation in a stock option intentionally misleads investors.
Actually, if you look at the mp3.com case, you'd see that the court found that *none* of the 4 fair use factors went in mp3.com's favor. Whether the use is commercial goes to the first factor -- "the purpose and character of the use." But, the court also found against mp3.com on factor 1 because the use was non-transformative. So, even if the use were non-commercial, you'd still have factors 2-4 against, and half of factor 1. That doesn't sound like a good case for fair use to me.
In addition, other courts have looked at the mp3.com decision and decided that it stand for what I suggested. Look, for example, at BMG v. Gonzalez, 430 F.3d 888, 890, where the court cites to the mp3.com case as "holding that downloads are not fair use even if the downloader already owns one purchased copy." BMG itself said that downloading a song is still infringement even if you then buy the song.
You're right about the mp3.com users -- until the RIAA's recent suits, copyright owners have been reticent to go after individuals, prefering to go after those with money and control. Their goal was to shut down mp3.com, not to go after all the mp3.com users. But, that just means that they decided not to pursue those cases, not that the cases themselves were invalid. Heck, the RIAA only turned to suing peer-to-peer users because there is no central server to sue, as there was with napster.
So, first thing is to pay off credit-card debts. You don't get a deduction on the interest and it's hard to beat a sure 9%-21% return on your money. If you take care of your credit score, then you will be able to borrow the money back later when you need it.
Second, recognize that an investment's risk is proportional to its expected return. You can make just a little bit in a savings account (check out ING direct, which is paying around 5% right now), with no risk to your principal. Or, you may make a lot by speculating in stock options, but you stand an enormous risk that you'll lose everything. You can solve mucch of the risk problem by diversifying, but you cannot completely cure it. It's hard to diversify without a lot to invest.
Third, look at your time-horizon: how soon do you need the money? Over the long-haul, the stock market will out-perform "safer" investments. A broad-based stock mutual fund with minimal expenses will allow you to at least track the market. The Vanguard S&P 500 index is very low-cost and tracks the S&P 500.
Ignore advice about whether the market is in a "Bubble" or not -- if there was a general consensus that it was true, it would cease to be true because everybody would sell.
Fourth, DON'T, whatever you do, DON'T buy an insurance product like whole-term life insurance, universal life insurance or annuities. Insurance sales people take massive commissions straight out of your payments. And insurance companies, by law, are very limited in what they can invest in. As a result, you throw away a big chunk of money and then don't get a great return. If you need life insurance, buy a level term life policy from a financially sound company and invest the remainder. Doing that will give you the same insurance benefits, but a better return.
Uh, no. That's a popular misconception. In the US at least, whether you own a copy of a work has no impact on whether you infringe its copyright by downloading it. MP3.com, for example, got into trouble for their service that allowed you to download mp3s after proving you had the CD.
That's an excellent point -- traditional publishing is a multi-step process designed to pick marketable books, refine them, get them into the market and get them sold. Print-on-Demand allows people to get to print faster, but does so by bypassing the publishing process and the value it adds. It seems to me that your concern is not so much publishing on demand, but self-publishing because it avoids all the filters and product refinement of traditional publishing.
Publishing-on-demand has the potential to solve two problems in the publishing industry: meeting the relatively low demand for out-of-print books and inventory. The first problem is that books go out-of-print because low demand makes traditional volume publishing economically infeasible. But, a publisher that is able to economically meet that demand has an additional source of revenue. Inventory, the second problem, is the perpetual beast of industry -- it drains cash flow, consumes storage space and increases the cost of failure. There's nothing like making 100,000 of something, only to have it sit on store shelves for 2 months before the stores pull it from the shelves. Publishing on demand avoids that risk.
The maximum frequency that can be carried is proportional to the sampling rate -- if I recall correctly, the highest frequency that can be carried is half the sample rate. Sample 8000 times per second and you can carry up to 4 kHz. At 16000, it's 8 kHz. People can hear up to about 20 kHz, so this does increase the frequency range. Since 'going up an octave' means doubling the frequency, the previous poster was correct. The end result is only to raise the maximum frequency by an Octave.
The bigger problem, though, is the sample size. The traditional phone system uses an exponential 8-bit sample size. The result of this is that the softer the audio, the finer the reproduction. For example, say that the signal level were linearly measured from 0 to 1000 and mapped to the numbers 0-127. Under this sort of encoding, 1 might map to 1, 2 to 2, 3-4 to 3, 5-7 to 4 . . . 630-800 to 126 and 800-1000 to 127.
The end result is that loud sounds are more distorted by the telephone system than soft sounds.
This decision is based on the prohibition against making unauthorized derivative works. In order to be a derivative work, there must be enough copyrightable original expression involved in creating the derivative work. Ripping a pages out of a book is probably insufficient. But (for example), cutting out words and sentences to make an abridged version or cutting out particular scenes to edit a movie for television is adding copyrightable expression.
The derivative work right is also implicated by fair use -- the more transformative a use is, the more likely it is to be a fair use. For example, I recently saw a mash-up of the most recent Harry Potter movie that took individual shots and rearranged them so it appeared that Harry and Ron were having a gay affair. None of the original story was retold and although copyrighted expression was used (the individual shots), it was much more likely to be considered a fair use than, say, the original movie being overdubbed in Spanish.
This decision is actually quite narrow -- you are not allowed to create a derivative work as a separate copy. But, you are allowed by statute to have a scenes list that you program into your computer and it removes the offensive scenes automatically.
Um... Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, HP.
Theses guys want to use the latest greatest version of Windows to convince people that they need to buy new hardware. Microsoft's delays have actually hurt the equipment vendors because people are holding off on buying new machines, waiting for Vista.
The main thing that Vista is supposed to help with is security. In theory, they've redesigned for security and that will mean a lot fewer patches. And, that's something that large customers want -- the few patches, the less manpower and expense required. In practice, though, there are going to be tons of bugs just because of the sheer volume of changes, which will mean a lot more patching, more manpower and greater expense. Vista might be the thing that utterly destroys the legitimacy of any Microsoft TCO claims.
Actually, in the U.S., antitrust law is quite broad -- its foundation, the Sherman Antitrust Act, lays out broad policy and leaves much of the implementation to the courts.
In the U.S., tying arrangements are illegal per se if they result from significant market power in the tying product. So, for example, suppose that there is a network with two alternatives for broadband internet -- DSL and Cable. But, the DSL provider also wants to sell video over its wires. It seems to me that a good example of tying would be if the cable provider uses its market power in broadband Internet to keep Google's video service from competing with the cable TV service and thus keep its TV customers.
There are also other antitrust doctrines that may be applicable, such as the essential facilities doctrine.
In fact, the antitrust case would be stronger if Congress decided NOT to pass network neutrality. If Congress is heavily regulating an industry, the courts are much more reticent to apply generic antitrust law to that industry. But, when Congress leaves an industry to the free market, that's when courts will use antitrust law to remedy anticompetitive behavior.
In theory you're right. In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they're different.
I currently have three computers all running XP, all in the same workgroup and they can only access each other by IP address. It's a PITA to share files and printers. I'm very computer literate and could probably do some research to figure out what's going wrong. Iit's not exactly on the top of my list, and it might be worth the price for network magic to solve the problem for me.
However, I don't understand why they use a subscription model. If you don't pay $30 every year, their service cuts off. When I'm dealing with a company that may not be around in a year, I want a flat price.
Well, it isn't a question of whether it could happen in a corporation -- such things do happen occasionally. However, they are much less likely to because the people involved rely on their jobs to do things like pay for food. You don't just decide to quit your job immediately because you're unhappy with somebody else's decisions -- that's just the time that you start looking for another position.
In a well-run for-profit software development group, there is nobody who is indispensible -- companies don't want to throw away millions of dollars and years of effort just because "Dude. We're screwed. Joe got a better job at Google. He's the only guy who understood how all this stuff worked."
Take a native american in the 1700s. Is he descended from some greek guy 3000 years earlier? I have my doubts -- if I recall my anthropology, the natives came here long before Greece was a major power. If there are any purebred native americans around today, then you'd have to go back a lot more than 3000 years to find an ancestor that he has in common with, say, a bushman in Africa.
So, industry claims that H1-B visas are needed because there are some skills which are just not available in the U.S. job market. The other side is that (1) yes, those skills are; and (2) even if they weren't, companies could hire Americans and train them.
The visas are obviously in high demand -- they disappear in an astonishingly short time after they become available every year.
IMO, the best way to approach this is to auction the H1-B visas off: If you have a position that you need filled, bid for an H1-B visa. If somebody else needs it more, they'll bid more and they'll win. Otherwise, if you need it more, you'll bid more and win.
The interesting thing is the feedback mechanism -- if the visas are going for $200,000 each, that's a pretty good indication that the job isn't availble in the US and it's really hard to train Americans to do it. But, on the other hand, if companies are just trying to save a few bucks, then the visas will go for a lot less, maybe $20,000. That would indicate that there are too many H1-B visas, and companies are just using them to get cheap labor. If the price is too high, that would indicate the need to raise the cap. Otherwise, it would indicate a need to lower it.+
You make an excellent point. The problem is that ISPs don't have any choice in who to buy from -- that choice is made by their customers. The end result might be "You want to buy our IPTV service? That's be $5/month if you're on Time Warner, $8.50/month on Comcast, $11/month on Verizon and so on...."
I think that the better argument in favor of network neutrality is that it forces ISPs to charge THEIR CUSTOMERs for the increase in bandwidth. That lets the laws of supply and demand set the price and quantity for broadband service. Allowing the ISPs to charge service providers splits the decisions: those who pay are the service providers (think google), and those who chose are the consumers. In the end, you could end up with an ISP making so much from the providers that broadband Internet service is free to consumers.