It will help identify those who should be deported instead of paid for not working.
The fact is, identifying illegal immigrants is not currently difficult, and ID cards won't make it easier. At best it will help clear up the status of legal residents more effectively, but it will not eliminate the need to verify the status of people without IDs.
No it would be neither. It's perfectly moral to enforce national borders and to take care of citizens with priority over illegal aliens. There's nothing counterproductive about throwing the criminals out instead of paying them to stay illegally.
Welfare presumably makes things better for everyone by providing a basic standard of living. The theory goes that there will be less crime since all people will have what they need to survive. If you stop providing welfare for illegal immigrants, they won't just show up at the Welfare office without IDs so they can be deported; they'll just live in greater squalor and possibly commit more crimes to survive. That means more money spent on law enforcement, and more civil unrest. Conversely, if you don't believe welfare solves those problems, then address removing welfare. The bottom line is that withholding welfare may save a few dollars up front, but it will cost us more in other ways, and it won't help find illegal immigrants.
Your argument assumes those criminals we should educate are allowed to stay here. Kick them out and it's not a problem.
My argument is that a) most children probably didn't sneak over; they were probably born here and are legal citizens, and therefore entitled to benefits, but b) even if they aren't, education creates productive members of society. That benefits everyone, even people who sulk about it. As for identifying whether or not a child is a citizen, an ID card might help, but again it's a cost/benefit tradeoff. The choices are not "provide education or kick them out," the choices are "provide education or children grow up uneducated while their parents keep them below the radar to avoid deportation." Creating more laws will not change the behavior of people who already ignore the law.
IDs will not stop crime.
Kick them out.
Fine, kick them out. How will an ID help kick them out? It only proves, ostensibly, that you're a citizen; lack of an ID does not prove lack of citizenship.
Yep, and we've won arms races before. We just upgraded our paper money so North Korea couldn't counterfeit it as easily. We can make it very hard and very expensive to make a passable fake, and we can centralize authentication. On-line multiplayer game piracy levels show that's not hard.
It's already hard and expensive to make fake documents. A passport is not easy to make. The illegal immigrants with the money and means to obtain falsified documents are not the same ones living in squalor "wasting" our resources. You're still not solving a problem. The people who want to get in with fake papers will still get in with fake papers because they have the money and the power, and the ones who don't will continue to sneak in.
If you don't see how illegal immigration is a threat and a detriment to society then you're an idiot or you're purposely ignoring the facts that they cost us money,
They're going to cost us money regardless of what side of the border they're on; I'm just saying that a) they don't cost us as much as the politicians would have us believe, and b) the costs are currently balanced by the benefits. I won't call you an idiot for not seeing the benefits. The point is, ID cards will not stop illegal immigration.
increase crime
ID cards won't stop crime.
and get taken advantage of and horribly mistreated themselves.
ID cards won't prevent mistreatment.
You don't have to presume someone is guilty to check on their status. What does a cop do now if he catches you driving to the corner stored without your license? Im
(1) we waste billions of dollars on (a) welfare (b) healthcare (c) education (d) law enforcement for people who have no right to any of those services
Ok, that's a problem, arguably, but how -- specifically -- will an ID card do anything to remedy them? And keep in mind that "billions" is a trivially small (and very vague) number when compared to the US GDP.
Presumably you're inferring that the money "wasted" on these services is on illegal immigrants. Clearly it would be immoral and counterproductive to withhold a), b), or d) from anyone, regardless of their immigrant status. At least, if you believe in the programs to begin with -- namely welfare.
I don't believe people born outside of the US are any more or less deserving of welfare than someone born here, but there's a strong argument to be made that they're more deserving, especially if you believe in the principles behind welfare.
Requiring people to present an ID to be eligible to receive emergent medical services would open a very large can of worms, and it wouldn't take very many lawsuits to counter the cost savings. I won't even get into the public health ramifications of letting people with contagious conditions go untreated.
As for 1.c, education benefits everyone, not merely the recipient. It's likely that the children receiving that education are legal citizens anyway, since they were probably born here. Even if the children are illegal immigrants, I find it hard to believe that the immediate cost savings would outweigh the long term effects. Ignorance benefits no one.
I'm not really sure where you're going with 1.d, but whether you mean protecting illegal immigrant victims, or prosecuting illegal immigrant offenders, an ID wouldn't change either of those, nor would it benefit society to create a group of unprotected residents, or to turn criminals loose across the border so that they can slip back in. Crime is its own problem, regardless of the migrant status of the criminal. IDs will not stop crime.
(2) a national ID could be made more secure and harder to forge than the varied state ID's used now
Anticounterfeiting, as with any anti-crime technology, is just an arms race. Shifting the reponsibility to the Federal government does nothing to counter that. The Federal government doesn't have any access to some special ID-making technology that isn't available to states, but even if they did, it would not change the nature of the arms race; it would merely be an incremental change. Additionally, if there is only one system, we would lose the benefit of "trial grounds," if you will, wherein one state can experiment with a system which, if successful, can be adopted by other states. State programs are also more versatile and flexible than their Federal counterparts, and usually run with a greater measure of efficiency.
(3) it would aid immigration control and law enforcement.
Because illegal immigrants are coming through the borders passing as citizens? Or because law enforcement is failing to recognize whether or not people are citizens when they are arrested? AFAIK, fake IDs aren't the primary means of illegal immigration, and I don't expect that would change simply because US citizens were issued national IDs, let alone more secure ones. Moreover, state and local law enforcement doesn't traditionally enforce immigration issues. Changing that could be done with or without national IDs, but it's going to cost money, which would again counter point 1. In fact, I don't see that illegal immigrants are either a threat or detriment to society in general.
As for law enforcement with regards to legal residents/citizens, an ID alone would not make things easier. Should someone without an ID be presumed guilty? If not, then what's the benefit of having IDs at all, from a law enforcement perspective? If so, then that runs counter to one of the foundations of our society.
It is far from clear that national IDs would provide any real benefit. The possible benefits are, in every case, marginal and uncertain.
having real, well-argued, reasons to be against them will go a lot further in preventing them than simply stating that we will lose our rights and that they are bad.
I would think the burden of providing real, well-argued reasons would lie with the party interested in imposing a new system, but that's just me.
In any other language/country, ebonics would be considered a dialect, and knowing how to speak it would be an advantage. In the US, it's just another thing to have counterproductive arguments over.
Yeah.. I remember back in '96 or '97 when I first found out about MP3. I was perusing IRC after a long, long break, and somebody's fserve was offering.MP3s. After getting flamed for asking what they were, I figured I'd check one out. A mere half hour later on my 56k dialup, I had a copy of WinAMP and my first MP3. Since the only thing I knew was that it was compressed audio, I was expecting something along the lines of RealAudio. The sound quality that came out of my speakers was quite simply jaw dropping. Admittedly they were crappy computer speakers, so I wired the output to my home theater instead. While artifacts were clearly audible in the 128kbps-encoded song, it was leaps and bounds better than any other audio "compression" at the time. As you mentioned, there really was no such thing as compression -- just lower sampling rates and smaller sample sizes, and the perceptible audio quality degraded in almost direct proportion. I don't think it took more than a few weeks before my enormous 2GB HD filled up. Never thought I'd use even half of that.
The pad is just an electronic component, like a transistor or a switch or a button. Apple may have a patent on their specific implementation (the iPod wheel), but touchpads have been around for over 20 years, probably longer, so I doubt there's even an existing patent on the engineering part of it. Nokia has the resources to defend its designs in court, although with the recent judicial conservatism regarding IP in general it may still be risky. Part of me is repulsed by all the IP regulations, but the other part thinks a career in law would be very interesting.
The only phone company where I live with GSM service requires a two-year contract, regardless of where you get your phone. Also they don't subsidize phones, except to give away the bottom-end model that they're trying to get rid of. Since they're the only GSM game in town, nobody else sells GSM phones, so you're pretty much SOL unless you want to order one online. Which I will do.. to replace the freebie I got. At least I can swap out the SIM card and there's nothing they can do about it.
I don't own a flat panel TV, or have a $200k mortgage. In fact, for the first 3 out of the past 7 years, my income was below the poverty line. I'm not condescending; I'm speaking from experience. Besides that, generalizations are just that.. they don't apply to every person, and there's no real reason to get riled up about it.
The mortgage payment was just an illustration about how a slight increase in payment can have large dividends. One doesn't have to be rich to have maxed out credit cards, a car payment, etc., and how much of that is necessary? Sure, some people get in dire straits and they have to live off of credit, but that's rare and can usually be traced back to poor planning. Sure, some people get wiped out from healthcare costs -- my dad had a quad bipass with no insurance nearly 20 years ago, and as a result he didn't retire until he was 75 (just last year). But in general, there's a lot that most people can do to keep from staying poor. You can pick out exceptions all day long, but plenty of people make themselves poor, and that's why there will never be an end to poverty, if for no other reason.
Well, if you can invest with a return that outperforms your interest rate sure.. it's risky, but it works for some people. Many people, however, don't invest their money -- they spend it.
Because they spend too much of their disposable income rather than saving what they can and taking advantage of opportunities to purchase assets instead of taking on more debt to finance depreciating liabilities like that Disney vacation or that new flat panel television.
Exactly. That's the real problem in the US -- people buy debt faster than Big Macs. Debt is okay to some extent, but it should always be paid off as soon as possible. And really, when you think about it, it's much more satisfying to look back and say "Man, I have my house paid off after only 10 years," than "Remember that new TV we bought 10 years ago, and all those DVDs, and those new rims.. Damn.. they ain't spinnin' no mo!" That's why there will always be poor people; because some people will always be lured into buying comsumables and depreciable assets, racking up debt, etc. It doesn't take much to save serious money on debts either. Pay half your monthly mortgage payment every 2 weeks instead of the full payment once a month and you'll shave 6 years off a 30 year mortgage, and save almost $70k in interest on a $200k mortgage. Throw an extra $100 at the principle instead of buying new shoes and it'll be paid even sooner. Same thing for car payments, credit cards, etc.
Actually most laws are like that. Run into the street to pull a kid out of harms way? Too bad you just jaywalked. That's why we have courts to interpret the law and juries to, theoretically, apply them sanely.
I'd imagine that pollen is accounted for just as dust, and outside of a specific radius the concentration is likely to be safe. Even if an irradiated pollen yielded a plant far from Chernobyl, the concentration of radiation would still be very low throughout the plant as a whole.
I don't think the concerns are overestimated per se, it's simply that nobody cares when a 3 year old boar dies from radiation-induced pancreatic cancer, whereas a similar event in a toddler would cause widespread outrage. It's likely that humans could have survived just as well, but the consequences would have made many people, at the very least, uncomfortable. Nobody would have pointed out that the majority of pregnancies were carried to term without ill effects, rather there would have been much ado about the "unprecedented" 25% (or whatever) rate of miscarriage. That doesn't mean that we couldn't have survived, just that we have a greater awareness of, and thereby a lower tolerance for, unnessecary risk.
I don't think animals particularly care. Anthropomorphizing them may help in the sense that it may serve to motivate people to preserve animals -- which in turn helps to preserve ourselves -- but to be honest I doubt the animals either enjoy or dislike being irradiated. It's simply the way things are for them, and the environment appears to be otherwise suitable.
How am I trolling? Because I pointed out that MS is large enough to do what it wants? Business decisions are rarely made out of consideration for moral obligations. Should it be different? Perhaps. But that's the way things stand right now, and I don't expect it to change anytime soon.
Except you (and, to be fair, the 300 people who posted the same thing above) seem to be under the impression that they won't license their patent, the same way they don't license their patent for CDs, DVDs, DTS, AC-3, etc.
Don't worry, the mail-order-bride market will rebound once the potential suitors realize their new match is Gladys, 64, unemployed, with terminal hypochondria, who frequents Pogo.com.
What do you mean, are we footing the bill? If you mean does AMD generate revenue by selling things, and then use a portion of that revenue for the lawsuits, then, well.. duh. There's no AMD Legal Offense fund accepting donations that I'm aware of. I doubt their attorneys are working pro bono.
If you meant is AMD jacking up prices to subsidize their legal campaign, well, perhaps, but that question is equally meaningless. You'd really need to do a study of price including past and present depreciation, and then compare that to inflation and the past and present depreciation of competitive products. Even that wouldn't tell the whole story, and you'd end up doing some speculation. The bottom line is that if you need to to that much work to figure out if the prices have "increased" to support litigation, then they essentially haven't. Even if you're paying a few cents/bucks more per processor, you're still likely saving money over Intel. Additionally, they're working in the best interest of the company to help level the playing field thereby, theoretically, increasing distribution which, through economies of scale, would mean you might pay less for your next processor. Assuming they didn't just keep prices roughly the same and realize a greater profit. Also assuming they don't lose, or fail to capitalize on a win, and subsequently go bust, in which case you'll definately be paying for it, although your money will be going to the only competitor left -- Intel.
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It will help identify those who should be deported instead of paid for not working.
The fact is, identifying illegal immigrants is not currently difficult, and ID cards won't make it easier. At best it will help clear up the status of legal residents more effectively, but it will not eliminate the need to verify the status of people without IDs.
No it would be neither. It's perfectly moral to enforce national borders and to take care of citizens with priority over illegal aliens. There's nothing counterproductive about throwing the criminals out instead of paying them to stay illegally.
Welfare presumably makes things better for everyone by providing a basic standard of living. The theory goes that there will be less crime since all people will have what they need to survive. If you stop providing welfare for illegal immigrants, they won't just show up at the Welfare office without IDs so they can be deported; they'll just live in greater squalor and possibly commit more crimes to survive. That means more money spent on law enforcement, and more civil unrest. Conversely, if you don't believe welfare solves those problems, then address removing welfare. The bottom line is that withholding welfare may save a few dollars up front, but it will cost us more in other ways, and it won't help find illegal immigrants.
Your argument assumes those criminals we should educate are allowed to stay here. Kick them out and it's not a problem.
My argument is that a) most children probably didn't sneak over; they were probably born here and are legal citizens, and therefore entitled to benefits, but b) even if they aren't, education creates productive members of society. That benefits everyone, even people who sulk about it. As for identifying whether or not a child is a citizen, an ID card might help, but again it's a cost/benefit tradeoff. The choices are not "provide education or kick them out," the choices are "provide education or children grow up uneducated while their parents keep them below the radar to avoid deportation." Creating more laws will not change the behavior of people who already ignore the law.
IDs will not stop crime.
Kick them out.
Fine, kick them out. How will an ID help kick them out? It only proves, ostensibly, that you're a citizen; lack of an ID does not prove lack of citizenship.
Yep, and we've won arms races before. We just upgraded our paper money so North Korea couldn't counterfeit it as easily. We can make it very hard and very expensive to make a passable fake, and we can centralize authentication. On-line multiplayer game piracy levels show that's not hard.
It's already hard and expensive to make fake documents. A passport is not easy to make. The illegal immigrants with the money and means to obtain falsified documents are not the same ones living in squalor "wasting" our resources. You're still not solving a problem. The people who want to get in with fake papers will still get in with fake papers because they have the money and the power, and the ones who don't will continue to sneak in.
If you don't see how illegal immigration is a threat and a detriment to society then you're an idiot or you're purposely ignoring the facts that they cost us money,
They're going to cost us money regardless of what side of the border they're on; I'm just saying that a) they don't cost us as much as the politicians would have us believe, and b) the costs are currently balanced by the benefits. I won't call you an idiot for not seeing the benefits. The point is, ID cards will not stop illegal immigration.
increase crime
ID cards won't stop crime.
and get taken advantage of and horribly mistreated themselves.
ID cards won't prevent mistreatment.
You don't have to presume someone is guilty to check on their status. What does a cop do now if he catches you driving to the corner stored without your license? Im
"For x equals two two to"
FOR X = 2 to 2
"Erase word, erase word, erase word"
FOR X =
"Twentytwo to"
FOR X = 222
"Erase word"
FOR X =
"Open parenthesis eleven times two close parenthesis"
FOR X = ((((((((((())
"Son of a.."
(1) we waste billions of dollars on (a) welfare (b) healthcare (c) education (d) law enforcement for people who have no right to any of those services
Ok, that's a problem, arguably, but how -- specifically -- will an ID card do anything to remedy them? And keep in mind that "billions" is a trivially small (and very vague) number when compared to the US GDP.
Presumably you're inferring that the money "wasted" on these services is on illegal immigrants. Clearly it would be immoral and counterproductive to withhold a), b), or d) from anyone, regardless of their immigrant status. At least, if you believe in the programs to begin with -- namely welfare.
I don't believe people born outside of the US are any more or less deserving of welfare than someone born here, but there's a strong argument to be made that they're more deserving, especially if you believe in the principles behind welfare.
Requiring people to present an ID to be eligible to receive emergent medical services would open a very large can of worms, and it wouldn't take very many lawsuits to counter the cost savings. I won't even get into the public health ramifications of letting people with contagious conditions go untreated.
As for 1.c, education benefits everyone, not merely the recipient. It's likely that the children receiving that education are legal citizens anyway, since they were probably born here. Even if the children are illegal immigrants, I find it hard to believe that the immediate cost savings would outweigh the long term effects. Ignorance benefits no one.
I'm not really sure where you're going with 1.d, but whether you mean protecting illegal immigrant victims, or prosecuting illegal immigrant offenders, an ID wouldn't change either of those, nor would it benefit society to create a group of unprotected residents, or to turn criminals loose across the border so that they can slip back in. Crime is its own problem, regardless of the migrant status of the criminal. IDs will not stop crime.
(2) a national ID could be made more secure and harder to forge than the varied state ID's used now
Anticounterfeiting, as with any anti-crime technology, is just an arms race. Shifting the reponsibility to the Federal government does nothing to counter that. The Federal government doesn't have any access to some special ID-making technology that isn't available to states, but even if they did, it would not change the nature of the arms race; it would merely be an incremental change. Additionally, if there is only one system, we would lose the benefit of "trial grounds," if you will, wherein one state can experiment with a system which, if successful, can be adopted by other states. State programs are also more versatile and flexible than their Federal counterparts, and usually run with a greater measure of efficiency.
(3) it would aid immigration control and law enforcement.
Because illegal immigrants are coming through the borders passing as citizens? Or because law enforcement is failing to recognize whether or not people are citizens when they are arrested? AFAIK, fake IDs aren't the primary means of illegal immigration, and I don't expect that would change simply because US citizens were issued national IDs, let alone more secure ones. Moreover, state and local law enforcement doesn't traditionally enforce immigration issues. Changing that could be done with or without national IDs, but it's going to cost money, which would again counter point 1. In fact, I don't see that illegal immigrants are either a threat or detriment to society in general.
As for law enforcement with regards to legal residents/citizens, an ID alone would not make things easier. Should someone without an ID be presumed guilty? If not, then what's the benefit of having IDs at all, from a law enforcement perspective? If so, then that runs counter to one of the foundations of our society.
It is far from clear that national IDs would provide any real benefit. The possible benefits are, in every case, marginal and uncertain.
having real, well-argued, reasons to be against them will go a lot further in preventing them than simply stating that we will lose our rights and that they are bad.
I would think the burden of providing real, well-argued reasons would lie with the party interested in imposing a new system, but that's just me.
In any other language/country, ebonics would be considered a dialect, and knowing how to speak it would be an advantage. In the US, it's just another thing to have counterproductive arguments over.
Yeah.. I remember back in '96 or '97 when I first found out about MP3. I was perusing IRC after a long, long break, and somebody's fserve was offering .MP3s. After getting flamed for asking what they were, I figured I'd check one out. A mere half hour later on my 56k dialup, I had a copy of WinAMP and my first MP3. Since the only thing I knew was that it was compressed audio, I was expecting something along the lines of RealAudio. The sound quality that came out of my speakers was quite simply jaw dropping. Admittedly they were crappy computer speakers, so I wired the output to my home theater instead. While artifacts were clearly audible in the 128kbps-encoded song, it was leaps and bounds better than any other audio "compression" at the time. As you mentioned, there really was no such thing as compression -- just lower sampling rates and smaller sample sizes, and the perceptible audio quality degraded in almost direct proportion. I don't think it took more than a few weeks before my enormous 2GB HD filled up. Never thought I'd use even half of that.
The pad is just an electronic component, like a transistor or a switch or a button. Apple may have a patent on their specific implementation (the iPod wheel), but touchpads have been around for over 20 years, probably longer, so I doubt there's even an existing patent on the engineering part of it. Nokia has the resources to defend its designs in court, although with the recent judicial conservatism regarding IP in general it may still be risky. Part of me is repulsed by all the IP regulations, but the other part thinks a career in law would be very interesting.
The only phone company where I live with GSM service requires a two-year contract, regardless of where you get your phone. Also they don't subsidize phones, except to give away the bottom-end model that they're trying to get rid of. Since they're the only GSM game in town, nobody else sells GSM phones, so you're pretty much SOL unless you want to order one online. Which I will do.. to replace the freebie I got. At least I can swap out the SIM card and there's nothing they can do about it.
Stress much?
I don't own a flat panel TV, or have a $200k mortgage. In fact, for the first 3 out of the past 7 years, my income was below the poverty line. I'm not condescending; I'm speaking from experience. Besides that, generalizations are just that.. they don't apply to every person, and there's no real reason to get riled up about it.
The mortgage payment was just an illustration about how a slight increase in payment can have large dividends. One doesn't have to be rich to have maxed out credit cards, a car payment, etc., and how much of that is necessary? Sure, some people get in dire straits and they have to live off of credit, but that's rare and can usually be traced back to poor planning. Sure, some people get wiped out from healthcare costs -- my dad had a quad bipass with no insurance nearly 20 years ago, and as a result he didn't retire until he was 75 (just last year). But in general, there's a lot that most people can do to keep from staying poor. You can pick out exceptions all day long, but plenty of people make themselves poor, and that's why there will never be an end to poverty, if for no other reason.
Well, if you can invest with a return that outperforms your interest rate sure.. it's risky, but it works for some people. Many people, however, don't invest their money -- they spend it.
What's a newspaper?
Because they spend too much of their disposable income rather than saving what they can and taking advantage of opportunities to purchase assets instead of taking on more debt to finance depreciating liabilities like that Disney vacation or that new flat panel television.
Exactly. That's the real problem in the US -- people buy debt faster than Big Macs. Debt is okay to some extent, but it should always be paid off as soon as possible. And really, when you think about it, it's much more satisfying to look back and say "Man, I have my house paid off after only 10 years," than "Remember that new TV we bought 10 years ago, and all those DVDs, and those new rims.. Damn.. they ain't spinnin' no mo!" That's why there will always be poor people; because some people will always be lured into buying comsumables and depreciable assets, racking up debt, etc. It doesn't take much to save serious money on debts either. Pay half your monthly mortgage payment every 2 weeks instead of the full payment once a month and you'll shave 6 years off a 30 year mortgage, and save almost $70k in interest on a $200k mortgage. Throw an extra $100 at the principle instead of buying new shoes and it'll be paid even sooner. Same thing for car payments, credit cards, etc.
Bad laws are often like that.
Actually most laws are like that. Run into the street to pull a kid out of harms way? Too bad you just jaywalked. That's why we have courts to interpret the law and juries to, theoretically, apply them sanely.
I'd imagine that pollen is accounted for just as dust, and outside of a specific radius the concentration is likely to be safe. Even if an irradiated pollen yielded a plant far from Chernobyl, the concentration of radiation would still be very low throughout the plant as a whole.
I don't think the concerns are overestimated per se, it's simply that nobody cares when a 3 year old boar dies from radiation-induced pancreatic cancer, whereas a similar event in a toddler would cause widespread outrage. It's likely that humans could have survived just as well, but the consequences would have made many people, at the very least, uncomfortable. Nobody would have pointed out that the majority of pregnancies were carried to term without ill effects, rather there would have been much ado about the "unprecedented" 25% (or whatever) rate of miscarriage. That doesn't mean that we couldn't have survived, just that we have a greater awareness of, and thereby a lower tolerance for, unnessecary risk.
I don't think animals particularly care. Anthropomorphizing them may help in the sense that it may serve to motivate people to preserve animals -- which in turn helps to preserve ourselves -- but to be honest I doubt the animals either enjoy or dislike being irradiated. It's simply the way things are for them, and the environment appears to be otherwise suitable.
stop sending them their old hi-fi speakers
Speaking of typos, you spelled low wrong..
Shame on you, Microsoft. Shame on you...Windows Vista is a disappointment. There is no way to sugarcoat that very real truth.
Maybe not, but you gave it a valliant effort Fland^h^h^h^h^h^h Paul.
If you want rational, effective government, elect engineers rather than lawyers to Congress!
The problem is that engineers are too smart to do something like run for office, otherwise they'd already be lawyers.
To be fair, it's hard to backup an entire town, let alone insure it.
How am I trolling? Because I pointed out that MS is large enough to do what it wants? Business decisions are rarely made out of consideration for moral obligations. Should it be different? Perhaps. But that's the way things stand right now, and I don't expect it to change anytime soon.
Except you (and, to be fair, the 300 people who posted the same thing above) seem to be under the impression that they won't license their patent, the same way they don't license their patent for CDs, DVDs, DTS, AC-3, etc.
Oh wait...
Not a concern -- I have a dual layer DVD+/-RW drive in my PowerMac.
The drive is the cheap part; it's the dual layer media that hurts.
Hell yeah. Pogo.com is hardcore.
Don't worry, the mail-order-bride market will rebound once the potential suitors realize their new match is Gladys, 64, unemployed, with terminal hypochondria, who frequents Pogo.com.
What do you mean, are we footing the bill? If you mean does AMD generate revenue by selling things, and then use a portion of that revenue for the lawsuits, then, well.. duh. There's no AMD Legal Offense fund accepting donations that I'm aware of. I doubt their attorneys are working pro bono.
If you meant is AMD jacking up prices to subsidize their legal campaign, well, perhaps, but that question is equally meaningless. You'd really need to do a study of price including past and present depreciation, and then compare that to inflation and the past and present depreciation of competitive products. Even that wouldn't tell the whole story, and you'd end up doing some speculation. The bottom line is that if you need to to that much work to figure out if the prices have "increased" to support litigation, then they essentially haven't. Even if you're paying a few cents/bucks more per processor, you're still likely saving money over Intel. Additionally, they're working in the best interest of the company to help level the playing field thereby, theoretically, increasing distribution which, through economies of scale, would mean you might pay less for your next processor. Assuming they didn't just keep prices roughly the same and realize a greater profit. Also assuming they don't lose, or fail to capitalize on a win, and subsequently go bust, in which case you'll definately be paying for it, although your money will be going to the only competitor left -- Intel.