If you create something it isn't unfair to expect people to pay for it!
If I create something and sell it to someone I expect them to pay for it. If they create a copy of what I sold them and they sell that further, I certainly have no right to expect them to pay me for that. They created the copy, I didn't, so why should I get paid for their work?
where we actually want to draw the line, indeed, where is it sensible to draw the line.
Complete repeal of all copyright. Ultimately, that's where we're going anyway, the attacks on information flow and social sharing has merely resulted in technological shifts towards less open forms, and the next stage is pretty much the end game; f2f darknets re-form the whole fabric of communications into untraceable undetectable anonymous networks.
You end up with a situation where you have no scale on which to draw the line, where it's impossible to tell communications apart, you end up with a binary choice: allow communications or not.
If you still want state support of content industries, just pay them out of the state budget, from a macroeconomic point of view there's no difference between taxes and monopoly rights anyway (except taxes tend to be more efficient). Legalize copying and pay them a premium per copy to emulate the current system if you want to do that.
it even has "Pirate" in the damn name!
Oddly enough, I haven't seen them selling speedboats or peg legs. Doesn't seem like they're out to aid any piracy. And they're not called 'the copyright infringement bay', are they...?
some sort of freedom fight or otherwise worthy cause.
You don't give up ethics just because the bully's whine more. Rather the opposite; with the actions of the content industries in situations such as ACTA, it has become a moral imperative to deny them any form of revenue. Their corrosive influence on democracy and corruption of politics has made it obvious that they are intolerable to civil society in their current form.
The only thing it *will* do is to slowly erode yet another form of legal freedom
Or it will simply erode even more respect for the law. I certainly don't regard IP laws as legitimate any more; perhaps we're going to get a more Italian attitude towards the law spread around.
That said one is hardly surprised by the Italian legal system bowing to the MAFIAA...
we'd all have to board planes naked... or even restrained
Ah, sorry, don't think that will get you far. Most people can probably carry an amount of explosives rectally, and I wouldn't put it outside the realm of possibility that they could learn to trigger it with sphincter muscles. Better sedate them and flood them with muscle relaxants... which, of course, could work as a dead (relaxed) man's switch for a trigger as well.
except that it gives people a feeling of security.
Sometimes it's hard to tell the feeling of 'security' apart from the feeling of an ass-probe.
Personally I've quit travelling by air since a long time ago. Not because I care about the infinitesimal change of getting blown up by some terrorist ass (which is less than dying in a freak bathtub accident), but because security has made a not entirely pleasant experience utterly intolerable.
So I certainly agree with Schneier. Junk the whole worthless security apparatus and live with the fact that shit very, very, very rarely and unavoidably does happen. Generate enough incentive for blow-back and you'll get it. But even the most spectacular show any terrorist can accomplish is simply dwarfed by the sheer inertia of civilized society. Without society handing them the leverage, they can't accomplish anything large enough to be more than noise in the sea of random death and destruction that happens all around us every day. Deal with them like any other such happening; police and emergency services. And, perhaps, require agencies and corporations engaging in operations that tend to generate very angry people to set aside a certain amount of budget to pay the eventual victims of the blow-back.
Offering cheaper overall inputs provide better value for all Americans to enjoy.
If done under the same rules.
you've got to be willing to accept that labour needs to move freely
Ah, but see, labour doesn't move freely, most labour is stuck where it is. The current state of affairs enables some brilliant exploitations of that fact; western labour is kept stuck in high-cost systems, exacting as much revenue as possible through means such as 'intellectual property' and similar systems that prevent the price reductions from reaching the market as far as possible, making the western labour utterly uncompetitive, while using what amounts to negative interest rates to further exact revenue and prevent price collapse as they move deep into debt.
The combination of low-cost parts and high-price parts of the global system and the regulations keeping them separate and competition tightly limited to what is 'approved' makes the exacting of wealth by middle men exceedingly simple, and possible to a much further extent than earlier.
and offers an apple to apple comparison of quality
It's rather hard to offer an apple to apple comparison in a global system where it's hard to trust even the currencies the trade is done in.
If somebody can do something cheaper than you can, and is willing to do it, then there is nothing wrong with it.
Well, unless it's movies. Or books. Or music. Or medicine. Or software or hardware or fashion or shoes or sports gear or...
Well, fortunately, that's easy to fix: repeal copyright completely and we're rid of piracy. The IP industry can play on the same playing field everyone else does with actual free market competition.
The huge dead-weight loss of value between marginal cost of production and the desired sales price of the IP industries creates a vast economic loss for society as is; most copyrighted material simply isn't worth many cents for many people, yet the artificial scarcity creates a mass aggregate damage of all those instances where value could have been created, yet wasn't due to the artificial pricing discrepancy.
But don't confuse this with a defense of piracy
The actions of the IP industries over the last few years have demonstrated that they are a clear danger to democracy and free speech. Denying them any form of revenue has become a moral imperative, and a civic duty in a democratic society. If anything, paying money where any part will go to the industry organizations is morally reprehensible.
That, of course, doesn't mean you can't pay for material from artists or organizations that do not take part in the lobbyist corruptive efforts. But it might be good to develop a safe-for-society mark or sticker to denote independent non-participation in the anti-democratic efforts of the industry organizations.
I believe quite strongly that people should be compensated for their work.
We all like to get compensated for our work, yet if we are to have any form of a free market system we can only get paid for work people want us to do in competition with others, and getting paid because the state forbids anyone else from doing the same work is fundamentally incompatible with that.
decrying piracy as "killing the industry"
And considering that copyright is fundamentally just yet another taxation and transfer scheme (and one whose efficiency levels makes most other government schemes look like marvels of efficiency) that causes higher costs in the economy as a whole, one might decry all the jobs lost due to that. One job lost in the copyright industry is one gained elsewhere, and vice versa; it's not random chance that makes the western economies less competitive all the time, and IP is one of the reasons that the west has lost competitive edge.
I wonder how many people are not flying at all now
I'm certainly not flying any more. The chance of getting stuck on a flight with some jackass wannabe terrorist has always been infinitesimal. The chance of getting stuck with some jackass functionary, significant. With the way things are going I'm beginning to doubt I'll ever go on vacation to the US again (or even on business).
Actually, XOR is theoretically unbreakable if used correctly. XOR a random one time pad of the same size as the data with the data and you have a bunch of random data that can't be cracked without the OTP. So in that case, both the secrecy and the nature of the key (random, non-repeating) would be essential.
Of course, as that requires that the key never be reused, it must be large enough to accommodate all data to be encrypted and that it must be communicated securely between the parties, it's not necessarily a practical encryption method for most cases, and less secure alternatives such as stream ciphers of pseudo-random numbers based on a smaller key are used. Or there are variants where short keys are simply reused, which certainly enters the realm of remarkably weak.
See, that's the thing, if it takes someone like Clarke two years in court to get whatever 'justice' he can, it's hardly a system that in any way protects anyone against libel.
Better to just get rid of the whole concept, including the veneer of legitimacy it gives the publishers of various lies (it must be true or they'd get sued!). Let them publish what they feel like and enjoy a reputation equivalent to a frothing madman in the street. Add some nice moderation system and watch Murdoch's empire get moderated -1 troll.
Some aspects may need disincentives tho, outright systematized stalking/terrorising campaigns on another level than random potshots is a different thing. But that should be within criminal law rather than civil law.
Still, trademark isn't something you can just claim out of the blue. Unless they've already had a trademark since the start and enforced it, those symbols will have lapsed into common use since a long time.
I'm not sure there (thankfully) exists any IP form appropriate for what they want to do. Even if they could claim trademark, they'd end up having to enforce it against ten year olds webpages which would make them look like (even bigger) asses.
Perhaps they could offer to sign anything they endorse with the official Papal Public Key instead.
However, you are correct that the problem was that EVERYBODY was acting stupid.
Fundamentally, the Fed was forcing everybody to act stupid. Central banking works by artificially changing rates outside actual market rate. That the function by which the Fed can dictate that, either you "invest" (speculate), or your money gets eaten by inflation (the actual which has little to do with normally reported numbers).
The thing is, it's not that investors are insulated from investment decisions, it's that they have no control over the game either way. They, or their representatives, do what they're told, invest in whatever bubble the Fed blows, or they get reamed anyway by funding the bill for the crash. There may not be an educated choice to make, everyone may know that it's a bubble that's gonna crash, but either you're in on it, or your money gets depreciated anyway.
Which usually contain COTS hardware. Which a thin client can also use today. Like the submitter said, slapping together a thin client is easy.
they have to sell them at a higher price to recoup development costs
There are basically no development costs in this case, nor are the components high margin enough that production volume can make a significant difference in purchasing price. We're not talking special hardware here, we're talking miniITX/laptop MB's which are produced in the bazillions range whether or not a thin client producer uses them.
Personally I'd say the higher price is because the target market is almost fully corporate and corporate purchasers usually have difficulty comparing prices with anything that's not explicitly listed as equivalent. Which gets you the old triple-the-list-price and then let them negotiate a 50% discount and the customer will feel good about his leet bargaining skillz.
how many people would buy the iphone or Droid at $600?
As many as buy cars, TV's, or any other consumer item on credit? It wouldn't be much different for cable networks to offer TV's with their subscriptions, or, to have a car analogy, gas companies that give you a car and require you to pay for an amount of gas each month.
But either way it's pretty much a scam; financing baked into the price which makes it easier to trick consumers into non-competitive rates for both the consumable and the financing.
Of course, as long as most storylines are low def, having a lot of channels might not be a bad idea; don't assume they'll necessarily kill off the channels you consider excess junk.
Personally I can't say I care much about resolution. As long as the format is progressive, digital and anywhere near SD increases in resolution are about the last thing I'll notice in any normal viewing situation. Improved contrast, lack of compression artifacts, sound, content, basically anything is more important than actual resolution. Having run a couple of blind-tests on myself when deciding on what quality to use when ripping my DVD's I could barely tell the difference between 720p and lower progressive resolutions, and lowering resolution in exchange for bitrate usable for artifact reduction was a positive tradeoff down to the ranges of 360p, as long as we're talking actual moving pictures and normal viewing (paused frames and 3 inch viewing distance are another thing, of course).
I can live with the trade-off. For the Borg with high quality ocular implants, or those with extra eagle in their ancestry (or dashboard), and for the half dozen movies worth the extra space per century, there's non-spectrum-limited media like blu-ray. But given the choice between very high definition crap, or twice the amount of crap, I'll take the extra helping of crap.
I agree that they certainly should tell their users tho, and preferably be required to demonstrate carefully and repeatedly the exact differences in quality so people can decide for themselves. Perhaps they could even be required to make available lower-quality broadcasts in higher quality under non-prime-time when bandwidth might be available.
As I understand, there will be a fee associated fo lodging and infringement notice, so it won't be a free for all for the MPAA or RIAA (or their NZ counterparts).
Ensuring that it's mainly useful for large corporations rather than any smaller artists.
at least this legislation has judicial oversight
With fundamentally unethical laws like this judicial oversight doesn't make up for it, and the lack of democratic and social foundation for the laws invalidates their existence.
It's become obvious that the disastrous abomination of a legal experiment called 'copyright' needs to be completely abolished to protect a free and open society. The corrupting influence it has on courts and politics simply isn't possible to tolerate in a civilized society.
Freenet, I2P and gnunet can probably be counted as secure enough, as well as most darknet variants like oneswarm. The rash of communications privacy violations has pretty much ensured that's where we're heading; widespread untraceable heavily encrypted utterly opaque communications.
this bad stuff happens.... far more rarely than freak bathtub accidents with deadly outcome (which are actually several hundreds in the US alone per year).
it can be prevented?... most effectively by not engaging in mass hysteria. The media coverage and guaranteed instant stardom of rampagers has certainly created an attractive platform for unhinged attention seekers.
I would much rather a student be banned from 1 school for Emo behavior
Right, people become much more stable by being required to consistently bottle any emotions up. It's all the rage in counselling these days, therapists are taught to start up with 'please stfu about your feelings'.
1 Person is inconvenienced.... and a couple of dozen others learn not to vent anger or any other emotions and go on a rampage out of the blue instead.
Perhaps, but not as many as there may seem. The GPL only applies if you're doing things that copyright law would otherwise prevent.
Does BestBuy...
Not unless they're making copies of or modifying the software on it. As long as they're merely reselling devices copyright isn't involved.
If I make a router...
If you modify the software or make copies, rather than just shipping the same code that was on it from the start, yes.
What if I OEM
Again, if you copy the software or modify it... If you re-brand it by just exchanging some non-GPL files on each router you re-brand you don't really have to.
What if I sell...
If you've modified the software, you should probably stick a copy of the source in the package as well, but that would be getting fairly unrealistic. If you're just re-selling it, then again, copyright doesn't really apply (first sale doctrine, etc...).
making yet another copy of unmodified code available.
As long as it's unmodified code it may be entirely possible to set it up in such a way that someone else is actually making the copies and avoid the issue that way (ie, if you were manufacturing a router and either got the binaries pre-loaded with your chips, or flashed them directly off someone elses ftp site). You could conceivably even do that with modified code if you provide it upstream, wait until it's merged and then load your devices directly off the upstream.
Still, even if that might technically put you outside the GPL's influence, the appearance might not be so and merely being technically right does not mean you cant get sued anyway. Especially as such exceptions would enter the murkier areas of copyright law.
So ultimately what it comes down to is that the GPL requirements are easy and cheap to follow if you're in any kind of situation where you may seem to be copying and distributing GPL code. Often much easier than alternatives like trying to get code merged, or happening onto even one irate copyright holder or customer who might take offence at the lack of apparent compliance.
While I tend to agree with your conclusion, it's not quite that easy. The methods by which inequality is maintained is also to a certain extent tied to the regulatory powers. Concepts ranging from anticompetitive artificial scarcity such as intellectual 'property' to the more insidious systems like fractional reserve banking are essentially taxation systems set up to transport wealth upwards.
while it promotes a society where the middle class is eroded as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Frankly I'm beginning to doubt that there are other types of societies; it's not that power corrupts, but that power and wealth attracts the corruptible, with the result that any stable society will lead to the same kind of transfer systems, with the difference mainly being in how well they're hidden from public view.
Perhaps the only way to keep the system from becoming unbalanced is a thorough a regular watering of Thomas Jefferson's tree of liberty.
The only reason they have to buy MySQL is that it is part and parcel of the Sun purchase.
Yes, that was the appearance at the start. By now it seems that if MySQL was just something tagging along for the ride with the Sun purchase, Oracle would have offered to spin it off as soon as the EC sounded like it was going to do anything but a cursory rubber stamping of the deal. With the way Ellison is behaving it's looking more like the rest of Sun is the disposable tag along and that MySQL was the meat of the deal all along. And if MySQL actually was the main target of the acquisition, then I can't see that sitting well with the future development of MySQL in directions that would compete with Oracles more central products.
Monty Widenius wants to use MySQL code without having to distribute his modifications
Well, it's business, the eternal struggle of evil versus evil, and sometimes it's hard to say which side is evil and which side is evil. And considering nobody even cares about war crimes or the convention against torture any more, things being illegal under a treaty only seems to apply to low-mid income citizens, not to corporations or governments.
Still, your point is valid, and Widenius desires are not something that the EC should care about. So while I think the EC should require that Oracle divest MySQL for the acquisition to be approved, I see no reason why any other public or private owner of MySQL should be affected in such a way unless they had other specific competitive issues.
The trouble with most moderation systems is that they tend to be based on the fundamentally flawed idea of objective values on subjective criteria. Correctness is one thing, but one persons significant might not be another persons significant. As fields grow and diverge you'll end up with significance for the divergent branches being subjective and depending on which branch you are pursuing. Eventually you end up with either too much significant material, too heavy culling, patchwork meta-fixes or being forced to split off into somewhat arbitrary groupings.
A more scalable model would build upon a social networking model of moderation; anyone and everyone can assign moderation values as they like, but the weight of a moderation value that the viewer sees is dependent upon how closely a specific moderator follows the viewers own moderation. That way, if someone rates an article 'significant' and you and they often have the same idea of what's 'significant', that article will be moderated as 'significant' for you.
Such a system would sidestep the whole problem of quid-pro-quo politics and, in fact, most other political problems tied to hierarchial system views. Of course, it may also result in some level of fracturing of fields that may or may not be entirely postive; it's hard to tell, I have yet to see such a system implemented in reality outside certain small subfields (last.fm neighbours and music recommendations seems to work with a somewhat similar concept, but is still fairly far away).
To be fair, copyright has nothing to do with a free market; it's state sanctioned monopolies and fundamentally incompatible with a free market.
In an actual free market every book ever written would be available in any format desired; it's not as if it's a hard problem to solve technically. So frankly, just revoke copyright already, it's screwing everything from the economy to the handicapped and it needs to be put down like the diseased abomination of an experiment that it's turned out to be.
Slashdot Mirror
Same with Icariin, which has apparently been scientifically demonstrated to be a PDE5 inhibitor.
If you create something it isn't unfair to expect people to pay for it!
If I create something and sell it to someone I expect them to pay for it. If they create a copy of what I sold them and they sell that further, I certainly have no right to expect them to pay me for that. They created the copy, I didn't, so why should I get paid for their work?
where we actually want to draw the line, indeed, where is it sensible to draw the line.
Complete repeal of all copyright. Ultimately, that's where we're going anyway, the attacks on information flow and social sharing has merely resulted in technological shifts towards less open forms, and the next stage is pretty much the end game; f2f darknets re-form the whole fabric of communications into untraceable undetectable anonymous networks.
You end up with a situation where you have no scale on which to draw the line, where it's impossible to tell communications apart, you end up with a binary choice: allow communications or not.
If you still want state support of content industries, just pay them out of the state budget, from a macroeconomic point of view there's no difference between taxes and monopoly rights anyway (except taxes tend to be more efficient). Legalize copying and pay them a premium per copy to emulate the current system if you want to do that.
it even has "Pirate" in the damn name!
Oddly enough, I haven't seen them selling speedboats or peg legs. Doesn't seem like they're out to aid any piracy. And they're not called 'the copyright infringement bay', are they...?
some sort of freedom fight or otherwise worthy cause.
You don't give up ethics just because the bully's whine more. Rather the opposite; with the actions of the content industries in situations such as ACTA, it has become a moral imperative to deny them any form of revenue. Their corrosive influence on democracy and corruption of politics has made it obvious that they are intolerable to civil society in their current form.
The only thing it *will* do is to slowly erode yet another form of legal freedom
Or it will simply erode even more respect for the law. I certainly don't regard IP laws as legitimate any more; perhaps we're going to get a more Italian attitude towards the law spread around.
That said one is hardly surprised by the Italian legal system bowing to the MAFIAA...
we'd all have to board planes naked ... or even restrained
Ah, sorry, don't think that will get you far. Most people can probably carry an amount of explosives rectally, and I wouldn't put it outside the realm of possibility that they could learn to trigger it with sphincter muscles. Better sedate them and flood them with muscle relaxants... which, of course, could work as a dead (relaxed) man's switch for a trigger as well.
except that it gives people a feeling of security.
Sometimes it's hard to tell the feeling of 'security' apart from the feeling of an ass-probe.
Personally I've quit travelling by air since a long time ago. Not because I care about the infinitesimal change of getting blown up by some terrorist ass (which is less than dying in a freak bathtub accident), but because security has made a not entirely pleasant experience utterly intolerable.
So I certainly agree with Schneier. Junk the whole worthless security apparatus and live with the fact that shit very, very, very rarely and unavoidably does happen. Generate enough incentive for blow-back and you'll get it. But even the most spectacular show any terrorist can accomplish is simply dwarfed by the sheer inertia of civilized society. Without society handing them the leverage, they can't accomplish anything large enough to be more than noise in the sea of random death and destruction that happens all around us every day. Deal with them like any other such happening; police and emergency services. And, perhaps, require agencies and corporations engaging in operations that tend to generate very angry people to set aside a certain amount of budget to pay the eventual victims of the blow-back.
Offering cheaper overall inputs provide better value for all Americans to enjoy.
If done under the same rules.
you've got to be willing to accept that labour needs to move freely
Ah, but see, labour doesn't move freely, most labour is stuck where it is. The current state of affairs enables some brilliant exploitations of that fact; western labour is kept stuck in high-cost systems, exacting as much revenue as possible through means such as 'intellectual property' and similar systems that prevent the price reductions from reaching the market as far as possible, making the western labour utterly uncompetitive, while using what amounts to negative interest rates to further exact revenue and prevent price collapse as they move deep into debt.
The combination of low-cost parts and high-price parts of the global system and the regulations keeping them separate and competition tightly limited to what is 'approved' makes the exacting of wealth by middle men exceedingly simple, and possible to a much further extent than earlier.
and offers an apple to apple comparison of quality
It's rather hard to offer an apple to apple comparison in a global system where it's hard to trust even the currencies the trade is done in.
If somebody can do something cheaper than you can, and is willing to do it, then there is nothing wrong with it.
Well, unless it's movies. Or books. Or music. Or medicine. Or software or hardware or fashion or shoes or sports gear or...
if piracy did not exist at all
Well, fortunately, that's easy to fix: repeal copyright completely and we're rid of piracy. The IP industry can play on the same playing field everyone else does with actual free market competition.
The huge dead-weight loss of value between marginal cost of production and the desired sales price of the IP industries creates a vast economic loss for society as is; most copyrighted material simply isn't worth many cents for many people, yet the artificial scarcity creates a mass aggregate damage of all those instances where value could have been created, yet wasn't due to the artificial pricing discrepancy.
But don't confuse this with a defense of piracy
The actions of the IP industries over the last few years have demonstrated that they are a clear danger to democracy and free speech. Denying them any form of revenue has become a moral imperative, and a civic duty in a democratic society. If anything, paying money where any part will go to the industry organizations is morally reprehensible.
That, of course, doesn't mean you can't pay for material from artists or organizations that do not take part in the lobbyist corruptive efforts. But it might be good to develop a safe-for-society mark or sticker to denote independent non-participation in the anti-democratic efforts of the industry organizations.
I believe quite strongly that people should be compensated for their work.
We all like to get compensated for our work, yet if we are to have any form of a free market system we can only get paid for work people want us to do in competition with others, and getting paid because the state forbids anyone else from doing the same work is fundamentally incompatible with that.
decrying piracy as "killing the industry"
And considering that copyright is fundamentally just yet another taxation and transfer scheme (and one whose efficiency levels makes most other government schemes look like marvels of efficiency) that causes higher costs in the economy as a whole, one might decry all the jobs lost due to that. One job lost in the copyright industry is one gained elsewhere, and vice versa; it's not random chance that makes the western economies less competitive all the time, and IP is one of the reasons that the west has lost competitive edge.
I wonder how many people are not flying at all now
I'm certainly not flying any more. The chance of getting stuck on a flight with some jackass wannabe terrorist has always been infinitesimal. The chance of getting stuck with some jackass functionary, significant. With the way things are going I'm beginning to doubt I'll ever go on vacation to the US again (or even on business).
Actually, XOR is theoretically unbreakable if used correctly. XOR a random one time pad of the same size as the data with the data and you have a bunch of random data that can't be cracked without the OTP. So in that case, both the secrecy and the nature of the key (random, non-repeating) would be essential.
Of course, as that requires that the key never be reused, it must be large enough to accommodate all data to be encrypted and that it must be communicated securely between the parties, it's not necessarily a practical encryption method for most cases, and less secure alternatives such as stream ciphers of pseudo-random numbers based on a smaller key are used. Or there are variants where short keys are simply reused, which certainly enters the realm of remarkably weak.
it took 2yrs but he got justice in the end.
See, that's the thing, if it takes someone like Clarke two years in court to get whatever 'justice' he can, it's hardly a system that in any way protects anyone against libel.
Better to just get rid of the whole concept, including the veneer of legitimacy it gives the publishers of various lies (it must be true or they'd get sued!). Let them publish what they feel like and enjoy a reputation equivalent to a frothing madman in the street. Add some nice moderation system and watch Murdoch's empire get moderated -1 troll.
Some aspects may need disincentives tho, outright systematized stalking/terrorising campaigns on another level than random potshots is a different thing. But that should be within criminal law rather than civil law.
you will be stuck in a small cube writing code
You mean the Indian guy will be stuck in a small cube writing code. "You" will be stuck on the street writing code for food (or a ticket to India).
Still, trademark isn't something you can just claim out of the blue. Unless they've already had a trademark since the start and enforced it, those symbols will have lapsed into common use since a long time.
I'm not sure there (thankfully) exists any IP form appropriate for what they want to do. Even if they could claim trademark, they'd end up having to enforce it against ten year olds webpages which would make them look like (even bigger) asses.
Perhaps they could offer to sign anything they endorse with the official Papal Public Key instead.
However, you are correct that the problem was that EVERYBODY was acting stupid.
Fundamentally, the Fed was forcing everybody to act stupid. Central banking works by artificially changing rates outside actual market rate. That the function by which the Fed can dictate that, either you "invest" (speculate), or your money gets eaten by inflation (the actual which has little to do with normally reported numbers).
The thing is, it's not that investors are insulated from investment decisions, it's that they have no control over the game either way. They, or their representatives, do what they're told, invest in whatever bubble the Fed blows, or they get reamed anyway by funding the bill for the crash. There may not be an educated choice to make, everyone may know that it's a bubble that's gonna crash, but either you're in on it, or your money gets depreciated anyway.
"development" also has one.
Not to mention clients. 20K servers is nothing compared to the millions of clients drawing higher power due to running looping flash commercials.
It is with the bottom end desktop boxes
Which usually contain COTS hardware. Which a thin client can also use today. Like the submitter said, slapping together a thin client is easy.
they have to sell them at a higher price to recoup development costs
There are basically no development costs in this case, nor are the components high margin enough that production volume can make a significant difference in purchasing price. We're not talking special hardware here, we're talking miniITX/laptop MB's which are produced in the bazillions range whether or not a thin client producer uses them.
Personally I'd say the higher price is because the target market is almost fully corporate and corporate purchasers usually have difficulty comparing prices with anything that's not explicitly listed as equivalent. Which gets you the old triple-the-list-price and then let them negotiate a 50% discount and the customer will feel good about his leet bargaining skillz.
how many people would buy the iphone or Droid at $600?
As many as buy cars, TV's, or any other consumer item on credit? It wouldn't be much different for cable networks to offer TV's with their subscriptions, or, to have a car analogy, gas companies that give you a car and require you to pay for an amount of gas each month.
But either way it's pretty much a scam; financing baked into the price which makes it easier to trick consumers into non-competitive rates for both the consumable and the financing.
to limit the number of channels supported
Of course, as long as most storylines are low def, having a lot of channels might not be a bad idea; don't assume they'll necessarily kill off the channels you consider excess junk.
Personally I can't say I care much about resolution. As long as the format is progressive, digital and anywhere near SD increases in resolution are about the last thing I'll notice in any normal viewing situation. Improved contrast, lack of compression artifacts, sound, content, basically anything is more important than actual resolution. Having run a couple of blind-tests on myself when deciding on what quality to use when ripping my DVD's I could barely tell the difference between 720p and lower progressive resolutions, and lowering resolution in exchange for bitrate usable for artifact reduction was a positive tradeoff down to the ranges of 360p, as long as we're talking actual moving pictures and normal viewing (paused frames and 3 inch viewing distance are another thing, of course).
I can live with the trade-off. For the Borg with high quality ocular implants, or those with extra eagle in their ancestry (or dashboard), and for the half dozen movies worth the extra space per century, there's non-spectrum-limited media like blu-ray. But given the choice between very high definition crap, or twice the amount of crap, I'll take the extra helping of crap.
I agree that they certainly should tell their users tho, and preferably be required to demonstrate carefully and repeatedly the exact differences in quality so people can decide for themselves. Perhaps they could even be required to make available lower-quality broadcasts in higher quality under non-prime-time when bandwidth might be available.
As I understand, there will be a fee associated fo lodging and infringement notice, so it won't be a free for all for the MPAA or RIAA (or their NZ counterparts).
Ensuring that it's mainly useful for large corporations rather than any smaller artists.
at least this legislation has judicial oversight
With fundamentally unethical laws like this judicial oversight doesn't make up for it, and the lack of democratic and social foundation for the laws invalidates their existence.
It's become obvious that the disastrous abomination of a legal experiment called 'copyright' needs to be completely abolished to protect a free and open society. The corrupting influence it has on courts and politics simply isn't possible to tolerate in a civilized society.
Freenet, I2P and gnunet can probably be counted as secure enough, as well as most darknet variants like oneswarm. The rash of communications privacy violations has pretty much ensured that's where we're heading; widespread untraceable heavily encrypted utterly opaque communications.
this bad stuff happens. ... far more rarely than freak bathtub accidents with deadly outcome (which are actually several hundreds in the US alone per year).
it can be prevented? ... most effectively by not engaging in mass hysteria. The media coverage and guaranteed instant stardom of rampagers has certainly created an attractive platform for unhinged attention seekers.
I would much rather a student be banned from 1 school for Emo behavior
Right, people become much more stable by being required to consistently bottle any emotions up. It's all the rage in counselling these days, therapists are taught to start up with 'please stfu about your feelings'.
1 Person is inconvenienced. ... and a couple of dozen others learn not to vent anger or any other emotions and go on a rampage out of the blue instead.
There are gray areas
Perhaps, but not as many as there may seem. The GPL only applies if you're doing things that copyright law would otherwise prevent.
Does BestBuy...
Not unless they're making copies of or modifying the software on it. As long as they're merely reselling devices copyright isn't involved.
If I make a router...
If you modify the software or make copies, rather than just shipping the same code that was on it from the start, yes.
What if I OEM
Again, if you copy the software or modify it... If you re-brand it by just exchanging some non-GPL files on each router you re-brand you don't really have to.
What if I sell...
If you've modified the software, you should probably stick a copy of the source in the package as well, but that would be getting fairly unrealistic. If you're just re-selling it, then again, copyright doesn't really apply (first sale doctrine, etc...).
making yet another copy of unmodified code available.
As long as it's unmodified code it may be entirely possible to set it up in such a way that someone else is actually making the copies and avoid the issue that way (ie, if you were manufacturing a router and either got the binaries pre-loaded with your chips, or flashed them directly off someone elses ftp site). You could conceivably even do that with modified code if you provide it upstream, wait until it's merged and then load your devices directly off the upstream.
Still, even if that might technically put you outside the GPL's influence, the appearance might not be so and merely being technically right does not mean you cant get sued anyway. Especially as such exceptions would enter the murkier areas of copyright law.
So ultimately what it comes down to is that the GPL requirements are easy and cheap to follow if you're in any kind of situation where you may seem to be copying and distributing GPL code. Often much easier than alternatives like trying to get code merged, or happening onto even one irate copyright holder or customer who might take offence at the lack of apparent compliance.
The fundamental mistake most Libertarians make,
While I tend to agree with your conclusion, it's not quite that easy. The methods by which inequality is maintained is also to a certain extent tied to the regulatory powers. Concepts ranging from anticompetitive artificial scarcity such as intellectual 'property' to the more insidious systems like fractional reserve banking are essentially taxation systems set up to transport wealth upwards.
while it promotes a society where the middle class is eroded as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Frankly I'm beginning to doubt that there are other types of societies; it's not that power corrupts, but that power and wealth attracts the corruptible, with the result that any stable society will lead to the same kind of transfer systems, with the difference mainly being in how well they're hidden from public view.
Perhaps the only way to keep the system from becoming unbalanced is a thorough a regular watering of Thomas Jefferson's tree of liberty.
The only reason they have to buy MySQL is that it is part and parcel of the Sun purchase.
Yes, that was the appearance at the start. By now it seems that if MySQL was just something tagging along for the ride with the Sun purchase, Oracle would have offered to spin it off as soon as the EC sounded like it was going to do anything but a cursory rubber stamping of the deal. With the way Ellison is behaving it's looking more like the rest of Sun is the disposable tag along and that MySQL was the meat of the deal all along. And if MySQL actually was the main target of the acquisition, then I can't see that sitting well with the future development of MySQL in directions that would compete with Oracles more central products.
Monty Widenius wants to use MySQL code without having to distribute his modifications
Well, it's business, the eternal struggle of evil versus evil, and sometimes it's hard to say which side is evil and which side is evil. And considering nobody even cares about war crimes or the convention against torture any more, things being illegal under a treaty only seems to apply to low-mid income citizens, not to corporations or governments.
Still, your point is valid, and Widenius desires are not something that the EC should care about. So while I think the EC should require that Oracle divest MySQL for the acquisition to be approved, I see no reason why any other public or private owner of MySQL should be affected in such a way unless they had other specific competitive issues.
The trouble with most moderation systems is that they tend to be based on the fundamentally flawed idea of objective values on subjective criteria. Correctness is one thing, but one persons significant might not be another persons significant. As fields grow and diverge you'll end up with significance for the divergent branches being subjective and depending on which branch you are pursuing. Eventually you end up with either too much significant material, too heavy culling, patchwork meta-fixes or being forced to split off into somewhat arbitrary groupings.
A more scalable model would build upon a social networking model of moderation; anyone and everyone can assign moderation values as they like, but the weight of a moderation value that the viewer sees is dependent upon how closely a specific moderator follows the viewers own moderation. That way, if someone rates an article 'significant' and you and they often have the same idea of what's 'significant', that article will be moderated as 'significant' for you.
Such a system would sidestep the whole problem of quid-pro-quo politics and, in fact, most other political problems tied to hierarchial system views. Of course, it may also result in some level of fracturing of fields that may or may not be entirely postive; it's hard to tell, I have yet to see such a system implemented in reality outside certain small subfields (last.fm neighbours and music recommendations seems to work with a somewhat similar concept, but is still fairly far away).
The free market hasn't solved this
To be fair, copyright has nothing to do with a free market; it's state sanctioned monopolies and fundamentally incompatible with a free market.
In an actual free market every book ever written would be available in any format desired; it's not as if it's a hard problem to solve technically. So frankly, just revoke copyright already, it's screwing everything from the economy to the handicapped and it needs to be put down like the diseased abomination of an experiment that it's turned out to be.