100mpg (was Re:Prior art intentionally buried?)
on
Losing the War on Patents
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It's worth pointing out that the 100mpg carbeurator did actually "exist" on paper, but that it "worked" by ignoring the laws of physics. That is to say, it/didn't/ work, reducing the myth of the greedy auto companies stifling fuel economy to just that, a myth.
The only people that send me Word attachments are co-workers. More specifically, supervisors. If I were to send them even a polite mail (as opposed to RMS' suggested "secret, proprietary format" diatribe) I would just a get reply saying, "You don't have Word? Call the Help Desk so your machine can be re-imaged," or "You can't read it because you're running Linux? Clyde will be right over to confiscate your computer."
It's against college policy to possess a Linux computer (I'm not kidding), and to a lesser zeal of enforcement, against policy to have a computer with MS Office installed. I imagine there are hundreds of other large institutions out there with similar policies.
Unless I can convince the President of the college to talk to the VP of IT about appointing a committee to consider instituting a policy restricting the use of Word attachments, they're not going away, no matter how many nice e-mails I send out.
(It's also interesting that the worst case of cross-platform non-interoperability I've encountered is a Windows user who received an.hqx attachment from a Mac user. Trying to explain the concept of file formats to this man was, as they say, like teaching a pig to sing.)
Frankly, I don't see how network security is any of Congress' business.
And regardless of whether it's a good idea or not, I don't see anything in the Constitution that would grant them authority to take any action in this arena.
I'd also like to note that none of my inbound ports have been blocked, as some others had reported. Point a browser at http://12.252.112.238/~cortega to see my girlfriend's Photoshop site;)
I'm sure no one cares, but while I was at work AT&T Broadband service in Denver, CO came back online, yay! My ip is under 12.x.x.x, in case anyone cares. About to test the download cap by hammering the news server...
[gets some music videos]
Yup, it's capped:(, probably at the same 1.5M everyone's reporting, though I maxed out at 1.1M. Pretty disappointing since I used to top out at 4M, and even got up to 7M a few times, but it would be unreasonable to expect that level of performance for $46/m. Oh well, beats the sh1t out of dial-up;)
If you actually READ the press release, you'll see it says the exact same thing quoted in a/. story yesterday. That is, that they've moved/some/ customers, and the transition is expected to be completed in "2 to 10 days". In the meantime, I'd make a stronger statement than the press release, and say that everyone else WILL (not "may") experience a "service interruption".
Ironically, as the dateline on the press release indicated, AT&T Broadband is based in Englewood, CO, but most of @Home's Colorado customers are still without service (I live in Denver).
...State of Maine wastes $38,600,000 of taxpayers' money.
But seriously, does anyone really, REALLY think that $38.6M couldn't POSSIBLY have found better uses than buying laptops? Like, some textbooks maybe? Or hiring teachers that made better than a C average in college?
Though I suppose Maine may not have these problems to the extent Colorado does. In that case, I suppose the money is better spent buying iBooks than building prisons or installing street surveillance cameras... (though I contend the best use of any "government money" is to refund it to its rightful owners)
...plus Jet Grind Radio, Chu-Chu Rocket, and whatever other games you can snag for $10.
I've bought more games for my $50 DC in the last two weeks than I have for my $150 PSX in the last, what, 3 or 4 years?
I live in Denver, CO.
The first time I tried to use the net saturday, I determined that I still had IP connectivity (I could ping the gateway, at the least), but no DNS, as many others have reported. After spending an embarrassingly small amount of time trying to work around that, I rebooted the modem.
that = BIG MISTAKE
Because now the modem is stuck in an endless cycle of trying to get back on the network, (ie: "online" light never goes solid). dhclient successfully(?) retrieves the addy 192.168.100.11, which is what it does when the real DHCP servers aren't responding. It's been doing that since saturday, no change.
Right now I'm on campus downloading the NetZero installer:(
Actually, my experience with AT&T@Home tech support was marvelous. Even one of the Tier 1 guys understood that my getting a 192.168.x.x from the DHCP server was a Bad Thing(tm). The Tier 2 guy figured out what the problem was pretty quickly, and spoke to me like he realized I knew what I was doing.
Much better than the "support" I got from USWest back in dial-up days...
(BTW, there's no point in telling the support guy you're using a non-Windows system, as it makes NO difference. After all, all your cable modem speaks is Ethernet.)
I agree completely. One point needs adding, though...
"By becoming a monopoly - or close to it -..."
Remember that the only way to become a true monopoly (in the economic, not "legal" sense) is to acquire government protection from competitors. Here, this takes the form of the DMCA, and at a more fundamental level, copyright law.
And though we must certainly lay blame at the feet of the RIAA etc for seeking such protection, we must identify government as ultimately at fault. If the RIAA, MPAA, etc didn't seek out passage of the DMCA, yes, it would not exist. On the other hand, if the government did not have the/authority/ to pass laws such as the DMCA, then it could not/possibly/ exist.
If "SDMI Compliant" means "can't copy from player to PC", then this is a 100% non-issue. Even the original Rio 300 (which I have) doesn't let you do this. Furthermore, I can't really think of a reason you'd *want* to. Why would I want to move only 64MB of mp3's over a slow-ass parallel port connection, when I can download all 6GB of my mp3's from home at 128Kbps? Or just burn some favorites to a CD and bring that to work?
The only way player-to-PC-copy would be really useful is if you had a hard-drive player, and I believe some of them (Archos Jukebox?) can do that.
OTOH, if "SDMI Compliant" means something else, then it might be a bigger problem. But if the thing plays standard MP3's, I don't see how there's much to worry about, as there's no way to "trust" an mp3, and thus no way to restrict the player, IF in fact it plays standard files.
A software license is simply a contract. If the contract says, "in exchange for the use of this software, I agree not to give copies of it away" or whatever, that's not fundamentally different from a contract that says, "in exchange for the use of this software and source code, I agree to publish any changes I make to it".
In no case are you coerced into agreeing to a software license (and if you were, then the crime against freedom would be the coercion, not the license). If RMS says he's opposed to the freedom to choose a "restrictive" license (as if the GPL weren't restrictive...), then what he means to say is that he's opposed to unlimited freedom of contract.
I won't even expound on my personal feelings on the matter, I just think RMS should say what he means.
I'm not going to couch this discussion in terms of "freedom", because it has little to do with (it. Anti-spam laws are indeed an infringement on our freedoms, as I will show, but that's not the most productive way to think about the issue.)
The arguments against spam mainly consist in the fact that spammers are ostensibly using the resources of end users and ISP's without their permission. This is simply false.
When you set up an internet MX, you are implicitly agreeing to a certain set of unwritten rules. Essentially, the rules are that you must relay any and all mail from and to your customers, except as specified in their user agreements. If they agreed to have every e-mail with the word "sex" in it blocked, then you can go ahead and do that. But if the user agreement the both of you are bound by includes no specification of what types of mail are and are not acceptable, then you must relay EVERYTHING your customers send and receive.
Why?
Because this is how the internet works. *I* control who I hand my e-mail address to, and thus who can send to me. It is not my ISP's business to arbitrarily block inbound e-mails for me. Rather, it is my resonsibility to control the availability of my address, and to deal with any and all mail I receive, regardless of source or desirability.
Imagine the consequences if these rules were discarded wholesale. If intermediary mail relays blocked transmission based on arbitrary whim, the entire structure of e-mail communication could collapse. Remember also that "spam" is not an objective label. I get e-mail adverts that I don't really want, but occiasionally I find something very interesting in them. Here, I'm speaking of mails from vendors I've done business with who are sending my "specials" and whatnot evevn though I didn't ask for it. Fundamentally, these are every bit as much "unsolicited commercial e-mail" as those ridiculous offers for cheap toner! If one is outlawed, so is the other, and the two "perpetrators" would be subject to the same penalties.
If you want to get rid of spam, replace SMTP. Create a system where addresses can be "authorized-only", similar to how ICQ can work: to receive mail from someone, you must authorize them to send to you. Under the current system, however, any attempt to stem the flow of spam will harm the proper operation of internet communication more than it will help. You can't run a mail relay that's selective, that's not how it's supposed to work, and things will break down if that's not how things DO work. Putting people in jail for sending mail over a system DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED FOR THE PURPOSE OF SENDING MAIL is absolutely ridiculous. It would be like arresting people for driving on the road because the locals didn't like the paintjob on your car.
I ripped the Playstation Descent soundtrack to.wav, and proceeded to encode it to mp3. Problem was, there was one track with a particular instrumental arrangement that my normal 160K MP3 (LAME) just mangled. I tried various mp3 codecs, all the way up to the max of 320Kbps, and couldn't get it to sound correct. Then I tried Ogg Vorbis just for fun. Even 96K Ogg reproduces it correctly.
Not exactly a scientific comparison, but a valuable example none the less. I've found that mp3's biggest problem is that it will mangle certain patterns in certain songs. Chances are, if you picked a random song out of my 1000+ playlist, it would sound reasonbly good at 128, or even 112 or 96. But there's a few in there, just a handful, that require 160 to sound ok, and a few (as above) that even 320 can't save. Try encoding Metallica's (heh, irony) "Until It Sleeps" at 128 or lower. When the main riff kicks in, you should be moved to vomit by how awful it sounds. Try again at 160 and it should be ok. If you can't hear it, consider yourself VERY lucky;)
For all those who believe democracy precludes tyranny, wake up and smell the police state. Government and liberty are mutually exclusive. Any doubters, open a history book.
massive layoffs != fluidity, and a note on ethics
on
Morals and Layoffs
·
· Score: 2
Katz is right, in today's economy a company does have to have a fluid structure to respond to rapidly changing market conditions. But laying off 4,000 workers is a sign that your company is about as fluid as granite.
At no time in American history that I'm aware of, not even at the start of the Great Depression, did the market go so sour so fast that a thousand workers that were earning the company profit yesterday were so much dead weight today. If you as an executive ever reach the conclusion that you need to lay off a gigantic chunk of your workforce, then either
1. You're just wrong, ie: you DO still need those workers
2. You should have been laying them off gradually for the last year or two
"Fluidity" is rapid structural change to meet the conditions of the environment. If that environment changes gradually, so must you. And no matter what the newspaper analysts spout about the significance of stock prices and what-all, the economy DOES NOT experience massive structural change over the course of a day, week, or month. No exogenous economic factors could rightly justify a mammoth sloughing of labor in such a short time.
I realize I'm just repeating myself. That's because the point is very simple. If sales slump a bit, shrinking profits, some staff should probably get the pink slip. Keeping them on (or worse, hiring more) will just worsen the company's situation if sales get still worse. Stayin in denial over the need to lay off a few hundred workers now, will only result in the need to lay off a few thousand later.
And NO, the company does NOT have any "moral obligation" to its employees. Employment is not a personal relationship, it is a business relationship. If I'm in a business relationship with someone, I expect them to be looking out for one thing: their own interests. Anyone who expects different needs to pause and remember what the PURPOSE of business is.
"Entitling" workers to benefits from their employers after being let go is preposterous, an aboslutely intolerable invasion of property rights. Requiring the extension of benefits involves the government re-writing nearly every employment contract in the nation. Further, it WILL increase the cost of employment. In a large company, the cost of maintaining the health benefits for a large number of layed-off workers will easily equal the salaries of several more workers. Thus the company will likely lay off more workers than it would without this requirement, in order to cover the costs of complying with it. So as we would expect from a short-sighted government policy, a regulation intended to help the problem of unemployment in one way, worsens it in another. Way to go, Feds.
I've been using SO since 3.1 (back when it was, *gasp*, seperate programs!). Now I use it on Windows, and I don't even have MS Office installed. My college has even installed SO on all the lab computers because it handles foreign languages better.
All that and the fact that it's FREAKING FREE, yeah I'd say it's "ready";)
Price caps cause shortages, this is Econ 101 here.
I'd say more, but it really is a cut&dry issue. Want an example? Think 1970's, America, gasoline, do the math.
I saw this movie basically the same as michael did. Even with the obligatory suspension-of-disbelief, I couldn't fathom why these robots weren't hard-wired to do, or not do, the very basic things named in the 3 laws of robotics (of which I was previously unaware). It pretty well ruined the movie for me, because nearly ever significant plot event is absolutely preposterous.
As for Katz's perspective... Well, you'd think this movie made him go out and join the neo-Luddites. I can see him hanging framed copies of Bill Joy essays right now.
My original thoughts...
Geez, isn't that little kid IRRITATING or what?! After seeing this, and Sixth Sense, I'm likely to avoid any future movies with this kid in a starring role. In fact, every character in this movie was largely a reprehensible fellow except Joe (who anti-freedom types might not have appreciated either, being that he/was/ a prostitute), and Teddy, who I felt was the real hero of the story, and to me represented the only success of this mechanized future.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worth pointing out that the 100mpg carbeurator did actually "exist" on paper, but that it "worked" by ignoring the laws of physics. That is to say, it /didn't/ work, reducing the myth of the greedy auto companies stifling fuel economy to just that, a myth.
Get your Google on if you want confirmation.
that should be "computer WITHOUT MS Office installed"
;)
if only it were the other way
The only people that send me Word attachments are co-workers. More specifically, supervisors. If I were to send them even a polite mail (as opposed to RMS' suggested "secret, proprietary format" diatribe) I would just a get reply saying, "You don't have Word? Call the Help Desk so your machine can be re-imaged," or "You can't read it because you're running Linux? Clyde will be right over to confiscate your computer."
.hqx attachment from a Mac user. Trying to explain the concept of file formats to this man was, as they say, like teaching a pig to sing.)
It's against college policy to possess a Linux computer (I'm not kidding), and to a lesser zeal of enforcement, against policy to have a computer with MS Office installed. I imagine there are hundreds of other large institutions out there with similar policies.
Unless I can convince the President of the college to talk to the VP of IT about appointing a committee to consider instituting a policy restricting the use of Word attachments, they're not going away, no matter how many nice e-mails I send out.
(It's also interesting that the worst case of cross-platform non-interoperability I've encountered is a Windows user who received an
The US Gov't owns about 67% of the US' total land area. Not quite "total" market share, but I doubt any other party owns more than 1-2% by themselves.
I do own 5 consoles (NES, SNES, PSX, N64, DC), but the rest is made up ;)
I only have 5 game consoles, and I only upgrade my computer once every 6 months! I mean, it's not like I have more games than books or anything...
I'm in control, I can quit whenever I want! Y.. You don't think I have a problem, right?
...
/Right?/
Frankly, I don't see how network security is any of Congress' business.
And regardless of whether it's a good idea or not, I don't see anything in the Constitution that would grant them authority to take any action in this arena.
I'd also like to note that none of my inbound ports have been blocked, as some others had reported. Point a browser at http://12.252.112.238/~cortega to see my girlfriend's Photoshop site ;)
I'm sure no one cares, but while I was at work AT&T Broadband service in Denver, CO came back online, yay! My ip is under 12.x.x.x, in case anyone cares. About to test the download cap by hammering the news server...
:(, probably at the same 1.5M everyone's reporting, though I maxed out at 1.1M. Pretty disappointing since I used to top out at 4M, and even got up to 7M a few times, but it would be unreasonable to expect that level of performance for $46/m. Oh well, beats the sh1t out of dial-up ;)
[gets some music videos]
Yup, it's capped
If you actually READ the press release, you'll see it says the exact same thing quoted in a /. story yesterday. That is, that they've moved /some/ customers, and the transition is expected to be completed in "2 to 10 days". In the meantime, I'd make a stronger statement than the press release, and say that everyone else WILL (not "may") experience a "service interruption".
Ironically, as the dateline on the press release indicated, AT&T Broadband is based in Englewood, CO, but most of @Home's Colorado customers are still without service (I live in Denver).
...State of Maine wastes $38,600,000 of taxpayers' money.
But seriously, does anyone really, REALLY think that $38.6M couldn't POSSIBLY have found better uses than buying laptops? Like, some textbooks maybe? Or hiring teachers that made better than a C average in college?
Though I suppose Maine may not have these problems to the extent Colorado does. In that case, I suppose the money is better spent buying iBooks than building prisons or installing street surveillance cameras... (though I contend the best use of any "government money" is to refund it to its rightful owners)
...plus Jet Grind Radio, Chu-Chu Rocket, and whatever other games you can snag for $10.
I've bought more games for my $50 DC in the last two weeks than I have for my $150 PSX in the last, what, 3 or 4 years?
I live in Denver, CO.
:(
The first time I tried to use the net saturday, I determined that I still had IP connectivity (I could ping the gateway, at the least), but no DNS, as many others have reported. After spending an embarrassingly small amount of time trying to work around that, I rebooted the modem.
that = BIG MISTAKE
Because now the modem is stuck in an endless cycle of trying to get back on the network, (ie: "online" light never goes solid). dhclient successfully(?) retrieves the addy 192.168.100.11, which is what it does when the real DHCP servers aren't responding. It's been doing that since saturday, no change.
Right now I'm on campus downloading the NetZero installer
Actually, my experience with AT&T@Home tech support was marvelous. Even one of the Tier 1 guys understood that my getting a 192.168.x.x from the DHCP server was a Bad Thing(tm). The Tier 2 guy figured out what the problem was pretty quickly, and spoke to me like he realized I knew what I was doing.
Much better than the "support" I got from USWest back in dial-up days...
(BTW, there's no point in telling the support guy you're using a non-Windows system, as it makes NO difference. After all, all your cable modem speaks is Ethernet.)
I agree completely. One point needs adding, though...
/authority/ to pass laws such as the DMCA, then it could not /possibly/ exist.
"By becoming a monopoly - or close to it -..."
Remember that the only way to become a true monopoly (in the economic, not "legal" sense) is to acquire government protection from competitors. Here, this takes the form of the DMCA, and at a more fundamental level, copyright law.
And though we must certainly lay blame at the feet of the RIAA etc for seeking such protection, we must identify government as ultimately at fault. If the RIAA, MPAA, etc didn't seek out passage of the DMCA, yes, it would not exist. On the other hand, if the government did not have the
If "SDMI Compliant" means "can't copy from player to PC", then this is a 100% non-issue. Even the original Rio 300 (which I have) doesn't let you do this. Furthermore, I can't really think of a reason you'd *want* to. Why would I want to move only 64MB of mp3's over a slow-ass parallel port connection, when I can download all 6GB of my mp3's from home at 128Kbps? Or just burn some favorites to a CD and bring that to work?
The only way player-to-PC-copy would be really useful is if you had a hard-drive player, and I believe some of them (Archos Jukebox?) can do that.
OTOH, if "SDMI Compliant" means something else, then it might be a bigger problem. But if the thing plays standard MP3's, I don't see how there's much to worry about, as there's no way to "trust" an mp3, and thus no way to restrict the player, IF in fact it plays standard files.
A software license is simply a contract. If the contract says, "in exchange for the use of this software, I agree not to give copies of it away" or whatever, that's not fundamentally different from a contract that says, "in exchange for the use of this software and source code, I agree to publish any changes I make to it".
In no case are you coerced into agreeing to a software license (and if you were, then the crime against freedom would be the coercion, not the license). If RMS says he's opposed to the freedom to choose a "restrictive" license (as if the GPL weren't restrictive...), then what he means to say is that he's opposed to unlimited freedom of contract.
I won't even expound on my personal feelings on the matter, I just think RMS should say what he means.
I'm not going to couch this discussion in terms of "freedom", because it has little to do with (it. Anti-spam laws are indeed an infringement on our freedoms, as I will show, but that's not the most productive way to think about the issue.)
The arguments against spam mainly consist in the fact that spammers are ostensibly using the resources of end users and ISP's without their permission. This is simply false.
When you set up an internet MX, you are implicitly agreeing to a certain set of unwritten rules. Essentially, the rules are that you must relay any and all mail from and to your customers, except as specified in their user agreements. If they agreed to have every e-mail with the word "sex" in it blocked, then you can go ahead and do that. But if the user agreement the both of you are bound by includes no specification of what types of mail are and are not acceptable, then you must relay EVERYTHING your customers send and receive.
Why?
Because this is how the internet works. *I* control who I hand my e-mail address to, and thus who can send to me. It is not my ISP's business to arbitrarily block inbound e-mails for me. Rather, it is my resonsibility to control the availability of my address, and to deal with any and all mail I receive, regardless of source or desirability.
Imagine the consequences if these rules were discarded wholesale. If intermediary mail relays blocked transmission based on arbitrary whim, the entire structure of e-mail communication could collapse. Remember also that "spam" is not an objective label. I get e-mail adverts that I don't really want, but occiasionally I find something very interesting in them. Here, I'm speaking of mails from vendors I've done business with who are sending my "specials" and whatnot evevn though I didn't ask for it. Fundamentally, these are every bit as much "unsolicited commercial e-mail" as those ridiculous offers for cheap toner! If one is outlawed, so is the other, and the two "perpetrators" would be subject to the same penalties.
If you want to get rid of spam, replace SMTP. Create a system where addresses can be "authorized-only", similar to how ICQ can work: to receive mail from someone, you must authorize them to send to you. Under the current system, however, any attempt to stem the flow of spam will harm the proper operation of internet communication more than it will help. You can't run a mail relay that's selective, that's not how it's supposed to work, and things will break down if that's not how things DO work. Putting people in jail for sending mail over a system DESIGNED AND IMPLEMENTED FOR THE PURPOSE OF SENDING MAIL is absolutely ridiculous. It would be like arresting people for driving on the road because the locals didn't like the paintjob on your car.
I hope I made some sense here.
MoNsTeR
I ripped the Playstation Descent soundtrack to .wav, and proceeded to encode it to mp3. Problem was, there was one track with a particular instrumental arrangement that my normal 160K MP3 (LAME) just mangled. I tried various mp3 codecs, all the way up to the max of 320Kbps, and couldn't get it to sound correct. Then I tried Ogg Vorbis just for fun. Even 96K Ogg reproduces it correctly.
;)
Not exactly a scientific comparison, but a valuable example none the less. I've found that mp3's biggest problem is that it will mangle certain patterns in certain songs. Chances are, if you picked a random song out of my 1000+ playlist, it would sound reasonbly good at 128, or even 112 or 96. But there's a few in there, just a handful, that require 160 to sound ok, and a few (as above) that even 320 can't save. Try encoding Metallica's (heh, irony) "Until It Sleeps" at 128 or lower. When the main riff kicks in, you should be moved to vomit by how awful it sounds. Try again at 160 and it should be ok. If you can't hear it, consider yourself VERY lucky
..."May I see your papers, sir?"
For all those who believe democracy precludes tyranny, wake up and smell the police state. Government and liberty are mutually exclusive. Any doubters, open a history book.
Katz is right, in today's economy a company does have to have a fluid structure to respond to rapidly changing market conditions. But laying off 4,000 workers is a sign that your company is about as fluid as granite.
At no time in American history that I'm aware of, not even at the start of the Great Depression, did the market go so sour so fast that a thousand workers that were earning the company profit yesterday were so much dead weight today. If you as an executive ever reach the conclusion that you need to lay off a gigantic chunk of your workforce, then either
1. You're just wrong, ie: you DO still need those workers
2. You should have been laying them off gradually for the last year or two
"Fluidity" is rapid structural change to meet the conditions of the environment. If that environment changes gradually, so must you. And no matter what the newspaper analysts spout about the significance of stock prices and what-all, the economy DOES NOT experience massive structural change over the course of a day, week, or month. No exogenous economic factors could rightly justify a mammoth sloughing of labor in such a short time.
I realize I'm just repeating myself. That's because the point is very simple. If sales slump a bit, shrinking profits, some staff should probably get the pink slip. Keeping them on (or worse, hiring more) will just worsen the company's situation if sales get still worse. Stayin in denial over the need to lay off a few hundred workers now, will only result in the need to lay off a few thousand later.
And NO, the company does NOT have any "moral obligation" to its employees. Employment is not a personal relationship, it is a business relationship. If I'm in a business relationship with someone, I expect them to be looking out for one thing: their own interests. Anyone who expects different needs to pause and remember what the PURPOSE of business is.
"Entitling" workers to benefits from their employers after being let go is preposterous, an aboslutely intolerable invasion of property rights. Requiring the extension of benefits involves the government re-writing nearly every employment contract in the nation. Further, it WILL increase the cost of employment. In a large company, the cost of maintaining the health benefits for a large number of layed-off workers will easily equal the salaries of several more workers. Thus the company will likely lay off more workers than it would without this requirement, in order to cover the costs of complying with it. So as we would expect from a short-sighted government policy, a regulation intended to help the problem of unemployment in one way, worsens it in another. Way to go, Feds.
MoNsTeR
Welcome to the United Socialist States of America.
I've been using SO since 3.1 (back when it was, *gasp*, seperate programs!). Now I use it on Windows, and I don't even have MS Office installed. My college has even installed SO on all the lab computers because it handles foreign languages better.
;)
All that and the fact that it's FREAKING FREE, yeah I'd say it's "ready"
Price caps cause shortages, this is Econ 101 here.
I'd say more, but it really is a cut&dry issue. Want an example? Think 1970's, America, gasoline, do the math.
I saw this movie basically the same as michael did. Even with the obligatory suspension-of-disbelief, I couldn't fathom why these robots weren't hard-wired to do, or not do, the very basic things named in the 3 laws of robotics (of which I was previously unaware). It pretty well ruined the movie for me, because nearly ever significant plot event is absolutely preposterous.
/was/ a prostitute), and Teddy, who I felt was the real hero of the story, and to me represented the only success of this mechanized future.
As for Katz's perspective... Well, you'd think this movie made him go out and join the neo-Luddites. I can see him hanging framed copies of Bill Joy essays right now.
My original thoughts...
Geez, isn't that little kid IRRITATING or what?! After seeing this, and Sixth Sense, I'm likely to avoid any future movies with this kid in a starring role. In fact, every character in this movie was largely a reprehensible fellow except Joe (who anti-freedom types might not have appreciated either, being that he
MoNsTeR