I think the parent's point was along the lines of, "If they are broadcasting what is *supposed* to be publicly-available content, but are restricting it in some way that isn't in the public interest, why should I, as a member of said public, have to permit them to use my living space as a broadcast path?"
IOW, adding a "copy protection" flag goes against the spirit of the Communications Act, and as such, ought to void the broadcasters' rights under said act (such as, their current right to pass their signal through my personal space).
As to encrypted broadcasts, those are essentially private, since they are aimed at paying subscribers, and are not free broadcasts to the public at large. The root question is (and you seem to be familiar with the Act, so maybe you know if there's something in there about this): If a broadcast is restricted in some way, including by a "copy protection flag", is it still "public" (meaning freely available to anyone who cares to listen)?
Speaking of Garageband... wtf is it with their site now? Last time I tried to fetch a tune offered by an artist I fancy, I was presented with this "you gotta install our flash-based music player first" thing, rather than an MP3 that I could download and actually listen to. (Streaming media is useless to me, since my only available connection maxes out at 26k -- anything over 24kbit skips.)
That was my thought too. There's no longer anything on the radio that I care enough to buy, record, keep, pirate, or otherwise inflict on my hapless ears. The only real problem here is that this legislation sets a bad precedent for all manner of "limiting flags" for just about anything that could be digitized then transmitted or archived.
BTW, back when Al and Kemmer were the Angels' voice on the radio, I always listened to them while watching the game on TV. Fortunately, it was always in sync, but it wasn't going thru a satellite either.
Speaking of Konqueror, whatever happened to the Konqueror-for-Win32 project? Of interest to me, because of all the browsers out there, Konq is the most like (interface, speed, general operation) my beloved NS3, suitably updated without screwing up the things I like.
I know what you mean. I used to read the old mozdev newsgroups, and... arrogant is the kind and gentle description. I vividly recall the huge argument over whether the context menu, when invoked with the pointer over an image, should include the "Back" option. By actual count, newsgroup sentiment ran 700+ for, and only 2 against. But the developer in charge of that area didn't like the "clutter" on the context menu, and HE never used "Back, so "Back" was by-damn NOT going to be available over images, and if the overwhelming majority of lusers didn't like it, tough shit.
My sincere hope is that coders with this attitude all went down the Firefox path, leaving Mozilla/Seamonkey to developers who actually give a shit what the users want. We'll see.....
Personally, I dislike Mozilla and only use it when a site won't speak to my preferred ancient Netscape -- but I found that I *hate* Firefox. There were just too many things that weren't available or didn't work, and did so in some way that was much more annoying than Mozilla at its worst. And on my poor old P3-550 with a mere gig of RAM, Moz is sluggish and refuses to gracefully multitask its own windows (this is actually what I dislike MOST about it -- it behaves like it was never intended for use on dialup, nor by anyone who routinely uses more than one window at a time), but FF is downright painful.
About 15 years ago, a friend who is a mathematician dressed up in street-bum clothes and had a picture taken of himself holding a sign that reads, "Will solve partial differential equations for food".
At max zoom I can see the white topper on my truck. (Tho the only reason I know what I'm seeing is because of where it was parked at the time the image was made.)
A consistent oddity: despite being "too small to see" compared to other objects, striping down the middle of two-lane roads is often clearly visible. You can even tell whether it's a passing zone or not.
Oh, the blurry thing in your back yard is a UFO.;)
How about we take tax money away from pork-barrel projects and sheer waste -- then there'd be more than enough to support all the decrepit, deficient, or absent infrastructure!
[I've read that as much as 80% of the LAUSD budget goes to admin costs, and only 20% to actual teaching and classrooms. How is this a well-budgeted use of tax dollars to support the ideal of quality education for all?? And one is lead to suspect that this is hardly unusual.]
Excellent explanation. Sad to say you're entirely correct. -- I've about decided the stock market is [hyperbole] the root of all evil [/hyperbole] because of its influence on corporate behaviour... and I say that as a small stockholder in several major corporations. I'd prefer to have lower stock value and better products, but my piddly votes don't count for much against the will of the megaholders (not to mention some CEOs' greed).
Sorry about the double reply, but an AC responded to me with this, which I thought might be of interest:
"Remember: Novell owns a large piece of Unix. When you hear Novell nowadays, forget the horrid beast that was Netware, and think "Unix" - remember, Novell is the company which is going to be executing SCO and SCO's executives for fraud, breach of contract, libel, and so forth."
So maybe Novell has a barrelful of UNIX customers we don't normally think of or know about? I have no idea. LIS, next time I see 'em I'll have to ask 'em to be more specific.
I don't know one way or the other. But I found it very interesting regardless, and indicative of Novell's motivation in embracing linux.
I would have thought the major non-x86 server OSs might be Solaris and the like as well. [scratching head] Next time I see the Novell dudes, I'll ask 'em.
Oh, I believe you... but $300k won't buy you a garage in Silicon Valley. No, I'm not kidding either. An average condo or townhouse (not even a real house) starts at around $700k, and that's just the starting BID. Put your house on the market at that price, and it'll be bid up another $100k within a week. -- Five years ago, the lowest priced property in the entire Livermore area was $80k -- for a 400 square foot LOT. The "house" was maybe 250 sq.ft. (apparently a converted garage that was grandfathered from back before there was a minimum size on houses). Today, that same property would go for somewhere on the high side of $300k.... for a living space comparable to a travel trailer.
Thanks to the influx of California yuppies, an average house in Boise ID now starts at $300k -- triple the price for the same property only a couple years ago. Oh, and that's without broadband.
How are ordinary people supposed to be able to afford that?? most people never break $20/hour in their entire working lives.
I had the same thought. To my understanding, ZENworks and Groupwise are among their major cash cows. One has to question the motivation behind the list of stuff these investors want Novell to ditch -- it sounds more like an exit strategy, or even corporate raiding to me.
Same here, and I'm only 50 miles from Los Angeles, and 15 miles from a population center of half a million people. There is *nothing* available here but dialup (half-speed dialup at that -- 26k on a good day). While cell phones do work here, cell internet does not. Satellite is prohibitively expensive and would still have the 26k-max uplink, so isn't really a good solution even if a person has the cash to throw at it.
"Move!" Yeah, great. I'd have to give up my business that I've built up over the past 20 years, and start over from scratch in some other industry. Then how am I going to pay for that broadband access -- go on welfare??
(Yes, I know people on "public assistance" who have cable internet.)
BTW I've lived in rural areas 29 years and metro areas 21 years, so I think I have a clue about both.;)
(Too bad you posted AC, I'd be pleased to "meet" you. Oh well.)
Exactly. It's not as easy as people who've had these urban services (and urban wage levels) all their lives would like to believe. That house in rural Kansas costs $30,000 because that's what the market will bear, given the average rural income level. It's not that cheap (by urban standards) just because rural folk are generous at heart. Someone who owns their house free and clear in Kansas can sell everything they own and still not have enough to make a down payment on half the house in a metro area.
And with galloping growth, what's "affordable" in town is shrinking rapidly. Right now an "average" house in Boise ID or Bozeman MT will run you $300k -- which is WAY beyond what local folks can pay on local wages. Hence home ownership is becoming something only those fleeing major metros can afford, and the number of local people doomed to rentals their entire lives is growing.
I make that point elsewhere too, that in-house R&D is probably a lot more cost-effective in the long run.
That's a point, tho -- what if that stocholder money *had* to be partly invested in R&D?? might lead to more successful startups, without the irresponsible cash-flinging of venture capital.
If you pay taxes, you already subsidize "other people's misfortune". It's called welfare.
And while I generally don't support subsidies, there is a difference between subsidizing business, and subsidizing basic infrastructure. (That businesses like Verizon have been allowed to take over something they didn't actually build is another issue. I remember when Verizon was poor little GTE who "needed" protected monopoly service areas to survive. Now they have 90% of the market yet they still have GTE's old protected monopoly service areas.)
Okay, let's see where that goes at its logical extreme... Let's not subsidize telephone service to rural areas. Let's stop subsidizing roads there too; after all, most people never drive out there in their whole lives. And no more public schools either... after all, there aren't many kids in farm country.
[That latter actually happened about 40 years ago, which is why my cousins had a 100 mile daily round trip to attend public school, half of that over unmaintained county roads that the school bus pretty much had to plow snow from for itself. And before you suggest home schooling, remember that their parents actually WORK the full day just to keep the farm running.]
What the market will bear: bend over! anyone seen the lube?
I did once see a writeup on the problem, with numbers, and it said that on average the telcos tack about $4 (*per fee*) on top of the mandated fees.
Side note: my LD service is thru Costco's contract with an MCI reseller called "TTI National". I pay about 5 cents a minute (sometimes it's less) for LD, an additional 2% or so in tax, and NO add-on or access fees whatsoever.
At their recent seminar, Novell said that they plan to kill the existing Netware line and replace it with a linux core, so you're dead-on there -- especially since most of those services you mention *already* run on linux. Personally I think killing Netware as we know it today is a mistake, but Novell's objective is to wind up with only one core technology to have to support, and they felt that they were best off with an end-to-end product line that offers everything from server OS to workstation desktop -- hence the move to linux and SuSE. Also, as I mention in another post, this move is intended to recapture the x86 server market. (They said that they already have 90% of the non-x86 server market, which is why they're not hurting for business.)
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I think the parent's point was along the lines of, "If they are broadcasting what is *supposed* to be publicly-available content, but are restricting it in some way that isn't in the public interest, why should I, as a member of said public, have to permit them to use my living space as a broadcast path?"
:)
IOW, adding a "copy protection" flag goes against the spirit of the Communications Act, and as such, ought to void the broadcasters' rights under said act (such as, their current right to pass their signal through my personal space).
As to encrypted broadcasts, those are essentially private, since they are aimed at paying subscribers, and are not free broadcasts to the public at large. The root question is (and you seem to be familiar with the Act, so maybe you know if there's something in there about this): If a broadcast is restricted in some way, including by a "copy protection flag", is it still "public" (meaning freely available to anyone who cares to listen)?
(Fuzzily expressed, but you get what I mean
Speaking of Garageband... wtf is it with their site now? Last time I tried to fetch a tune offered by an artist I fancy, I was presented with this "you gotta install our flash-based music player first" thing, rather than an MP3 that I could download and actually listen to. (Streaming media is useless to me, since my only available connection maxes out at 26k -- anything over 24kbit skips.)
That was my thought too. There's no longer anything on the radio that I care enough to buy, record, keep, pirate, or otherwise inflict on my hapless ears. The only real problem here is that this legislation sets a bad precedent for all manner of "limiting flags" for just about anything that could be digitized then transmitted or archived.
BTW, back when Al and Kemmer were the Angels' voice on the radio, I always listened to them while watching the game on TV. Fortunately, it was always in sync, but it wasn't going thru a satellite either.
Speaking of Konqueror, whatever happened to the Konqueror-for-Win32 project? Of interest to me, because of all the browsers out there, Konq is the most like (interface, speed, general operation) my beloved NS3, suitably updated without screwing up the things I like.
Nonsense, they're aliens pretending to be cows. Fooled you, tho, huh? :)
I know what you mean. I used to read the old mozdev newsgroups, and ... arrogant is the kind and gentle description. I vividly recall the huge argument over whether the context menu, when invoked with the pointer over an image, should include the "Back" option. By actual count, newsgroup sentiment ran 700+ for, and only 2 against. But the developer in charge of that area didn't like the "clutter" on the context menu, and HE never used "Back, so "Back" was by-damn NOT going to be available over images, and if the overwhelming majority of lusers didn't like it, tough shit.
My sincere hope is that coders with this attitude all went down the Firefox path, leaving Mozilla/Seamonkey to developers who actually give a shit what the users want. We'll see.....
Personally, I dislike Mozilla and only use it when a site won't speak to my preferred ancient Netscape -- but I found that I *hate* Firefox. There were just too many things that weren't available or didn't work, and did so in some way that was much more annoying than Mozilla at its worst. And on my poor old P3-550 with a mere gig of RAM, Moz is sluggish and refuses to gracefully multitask its own windows (this is actually what I dislike MOST about it -- it behaves like it was never intended for use on dialup, nor by anyone who routinely uses more than one window at a time), but FF is downright painful.
About 15 years ago, a friend who is a mathematician dressed up in street-bum clothes and had a picture taken of himself holding a sign that reads, "Will solve partial differential equations for food".
You MOW your lawn? I just invite the aliens over for lunch.
Ah, so it's more of a partnership firmly rooted in Saudi Arabia. Thanks for the link.
At max zoom I can see the white topper on my truck. (Tho the only reason I know what I'm seeing is because of where it was parked at the time the image was made.)
;)
A consistent oddity: despite being "too small to see" compared to other objects, striping down the middle of two-lane roads is often clearly visible. You can even tell whether it's a passing zone or not.
Oh, the blurry thing in your back yard is a UFO.
I used Google to look at my backyard, and all I found was my septic tank!!
How about we take tax money away from pork-barrel projects and sheer waste -- then there'd be more than enough to support all the decrepit, deficient, or absent infrastructure!
[I've read that as much as 80% of the LAUSD budget goes to admin costs, and only 20% to actual teaching and classrooms. How is this a well-budgeted use of tax dollars to support the ideal of quality education for all?? And one is lead to suspect that this is hardly unusual.]
Excellent explanation. Sad to say you're entirely correct. -- I've about decided the stock market is [hyperbole] the root of all evil [/hyperbole] because of its influence on corporate behaviour... and I say that as a small stockholder in several major corporations. I'd prefer to have lower stock value and better products, but my piddly votes don't count for much against the will of the megaholders (not to mention some CEOs' greed).
I was under the (admittedly vague) impression that Exxon-Mobil was Saudi-owned?? (I'm a flippin' shareholder, you'd think I'd know these things :)
Sorry about the double reply, but an AC responded to me with this, which I thought might be of interest:
"Remember: Novell owns a large piece of Unix. When you hear Novell nowadays, forget the horrid beast that was Netware, and think "Unix" - remember, Novell is the company which is going to be executing SCO and SCO's executives for fraud, breach of contract, libel, and so forth."
So maybe Novell has a barrelful of UNIX customers we don't normally think of or know about? I have no idea. LIS, next time I see 'em I'll have to ask 'em to be more specific.
Ah, THAT would explain Novell's statement.
Also means linux is hardly an unknown environment for their engineers, given that UNIX and linux are kissing cousins.
I don't know one way or the other. But I found it very interesting regardless, and indicative of Novell's motivation in embracing linux.
I would have thought the major non-x86 server OSs might be Solaris and the like as well. [scratching head] Next time I see the Novell dudes, I'll ask 'em.
Oh, I believe you... but $300k won't buy you a garage in Silicon Valley. No, I'm not kidding either. An average condo or townhouse (not even a real house) starts at around $700k, and that's just the starting BID. Put your house on the market at that price, and it'll be bid up another $100k within a week. -- Five years ago, the lowest priced property in the entire Livermore area was $80k -- for a 400 square foot LOT. The "house" was maybe 250 sq.ft. (apparently a converted garage that was grandfathered from back before there was a minimum size on houses). Today, that same property would go for somewhere on the high side of $300k.... for a living space comparable to a travel trailer.
Thanks to the influx of California yuppies, an average house in Boise ID now starts at $300k -- triple the price for the same property only a couple years ago. Oh, and that's without broadband.
How are ordinary people supposed to be able to afford that?? most people never break $20/hour in their entire working lives.
I had the same thought. To my understanding, ZENworks and Groupwise are among their major cash cows. One has to question the motivation behind the list of stuff these investors want Novell to ditch -- it sounds more like an exit strategy, or even corporate raiding to me.
Same here, and I'm only 50 miles from Los Angeles, and 15 miles from a population center of half a million people. There is *nothing* available here but dialup (half-speed dialup at that -- 26k on a good day). While cell phones do work here, cell internet does not. Satellite is prohibitively expensive and would still have the 26k-max uplink, so isn't really a good solution even if a person has the cash to throw at it.
;)
"Move!" Yeah, great. I'd have to give up my business that I've built up over the past 20 years, and start over from scratch in some other industry. Then how am I going to pay for that broadband access -- go on welfare??
(Yes, I know people on "public assistance" who have cable internet.)
BTW I've lived in rural areas 29 years and metro areas 21 years, so I think I have a clue about both.
(Too bad you posted AC, I'd be pleased to "meet" you. Oh well.)
Exactly. It's not as easy as people who've had these urban services (and urban wage levels) all their lives would like to believe. That house in rural Kansas costs $30,000 because that's what the market will bear, given the average rural income level. It's not that cheap (by urban standards) just because rural folk are generous at heart.
Someone who owns their house free and clear in Kansas can sell everything they own and still not have enough to make a down payment on half the house in a metro area.
And with galloping growth, what's "affordable" in town is shrinking rapidly. Right now an "average" house in Boise ID or Bozeman MT will run you $300k -- which is WAY beyond what local folks can pay on local wages. Hence home ownership is becoming something only those fleeing major metros can afford, and the number of local people doomed to rentals their entire lives is growing.
I make that point elsewhere too, that in-house R&D is probably a lot more cost-effective in the long run.
That's a point, tho -- what if that stocholder money *had* to be partly invested in R&D?? might lead to more successful startups, without the irresponsible cash-flinging of venture capital.
If you pay taxes, you already subsidize "other people's misfortune". It's called welfare.
And while I generally don't support subsidies, there is a difference between subsidizing business, and subsidizing basic infrastructure. (That businesses like Verizon have been allowed to take over something they didn't actually build is another issue. I remember when Verizon was poor little GTE who "needed" protected monopoly service areas to survive. Now they have 90% of the market yet they still have GTE's old protected monopoly service areas.)
Okay, let's see where that goes at its logical extreme... Let's not subsidize telephone service to rural areas. Let's stop subsidizing roads there too; after all, most people never drive out there in their whole lives. And no more public schools either... after all, there aren't many kids in farm country.
[That latter actually happened about 40 years ago, which is why my cousins had a 100 mile daily round trip to attend public school, half of that over unmaintained county roads that the school bus pretty much had to plow snow from for itself. And before you suggest home schooling, remember that their parents actually WORK the full day just to keep the farm running.]
What the market will bear: bend over! anyone seen the lube?
I did once see a writeup on the problem, with numbers, and it said that on average the telcos tack about $4 (*per fee*) on top of the mandated fees.
Side note: my LD service is thru Costco's contract with an MCI reseller called "TTI National". I pay about 5 cents a minute (sometimes it's less) for LD, an additional 2% or so in tax, and NO add-on or access fees whatsoever.
At their recent seminar, Novell said that they plan to kill the existing Netware line and replace it with a linux core, so you're dead-on there -- especially since most of those services you mention *already* run on linux. Personally I think killing Netware as we know it today is a mistake, but Novell's objective is to wind up with only one core technology to have to support, and they felt that they were best off with an end-to-end product line that offers everything from server OS to workstation desktop -- hence the move to linux and SuSE. Also, as I mention in another post, this move is intended to recapture the x86 server market. (They said that they already have 90% of the non-x86 server market, which is why they're not hurting for business.)