In a knowledge economy, programmers rank among our most valuable workers
Got a complex or what? Given the audience I'm probably gonna burn some Karma here but, There are a dozens of professions I would put before programmers, maybe even hundreds, as the most important professions in civilization, regardless of development level (Nomadic, Agrarian, Industrial, Information). Lets start with Doctors. I'd value my health far higher than a program to balance my checkbook. Next Nurses, as I value my health to have doctors, Nurses are a critical component to make that happen much more than a web browser. Next, Civil Engineers, as I value having a roof over my head (rather than living in cave), clean potable water in my pipes, sewage lines and treatment plants, roads to move myself and goods on and bridges to cross bodies of water and ravines much more than a value software for digital pictures. Next Mechanical Engineers, I'd value cars, planes, boats and machinery to make things, machines to move goods and people, machines to build things and simply to provide an industrial economy much more than a software of any kind. Next, pretty much the rest of the traditional engineering professions. Next Any military career, as I value the defenders that prevent others from taking my life, loved ones or lively hood much higher than software to play games.
I could go on, but I'd put software programmers near the bottom of the list as the most important professions in civilization. Anyone putting software developers near the top of most important professions frankly has a mental disease involving some sort of superiority complex. Personally I'd rank software developers right up there with Telephone Sanitizers, Hair dressers, salesmen, middle managers and Executives on the most important to civilization.
Why not simply require that any software in an automobile be OSS (not FOSS). In fact that requirement should seem to be an extension of mechanic laws that required car makers to provide parts and knowledge to service vehicles outside dealerships. All software in such a critical item should be OSS so it can be reviewed for errors and be reprogrammed by mechanics who wish to offer such services.
Regardless of the Toyota issue this is one clear example of one thing. That is if you get put on trial for anything in the US and you aren't "american" you will get convicted of it. There are exceptions to this and they are English speaking foreigners (British/Aussie/Canadian because their accents are "cute"). If you need a translator and hail from a different culture you will get convicted because of prejudices from the jury. It's an imperfection of the Jury system. The man that was convicted was Hmong (our allies during the vietnam war), the culture he comes from has a heavy dislike of eye contact (considered extremely impolite, the US equivalent would be something along the lines of picking your nose while talking to someone), something that the jury would have likely interpreted as guilt because eye contact is a fundamental aspect of US culture. Other cultural behavior he would have exhibited would have played equally as bad to the jury and it's probably the single reason he was convicted.
The most interesting thing is that the Judge commented that he showed no remorse during sentencing, exactly how the Judge would know this when the man in question is from a different culture is beyond me. Again the Judge in question applied his cultural norms without regard to the actual culture of the accused during sentencing, resulting in a massive 8 year sentence for something he has always claimed was out of his control. Why the jury didn't simply wonder why he would intentionally wreck his car at 80mph with his pregnant wife, infant child and elderly parents in the car is beyond me. Personally I couldn't have convicted him with that knowledge, there is simply no possible way it was intentional given the circumstances.
Herbalish is what medicine was before you added the modern. In modern medicine you take the herb, figure out what part of the herb actually causes the effect you want, do a study then create a drug from the active compound. This is the basis of every modern drug available except the most recent cancer treatments which are non-natural compounds.
Taking the herb will expose you to an unknown quantity of the active compound (as every plant produces differing amounts of compounds), it will also include all the toxins in the original herb. Some people claim this is a good thing. Of course some people think smoking is safer than a nicotine patch. Neither are right. In 99% of cases the natural herb is going to be more toxic than any modern drug. This doesn't even include the fact that your herbal remedy could have been sprayed with the most toxic pesticide known to man that doesn't wash off, not that they wash herbs because that would reduce profit margins. Herbal medicine is downright scary, people think it's natural and that means it's safe. The fact is it's not. There are no controls, they could dip the herb in formaldehyde and sprinkle it with mercury before selling it to you and no one would ever know because there are no safety checks.
There are many modern drugs that were developed from extremely poisonous plants (including foxglove, wormwood and other famous plants) where the interesting compound was separated from the poisonous ones, purified and put into measured and consistent doses. In fact there are several drugs based on snake venoms including some very common blood pressure drugs. So tell me having the snake biting you is better because it's "natural". I think all these people who promote and take herbs and end up with hypertension should be given a rattlesnake or cottonmouth and told to take one bite a day, it would certainly cut down the number of quacks.
Romania the modern nation draws it's name from the Roma. I can't comment on whether the Romans also created such a placed and called it such but the modern day Romania is based on the large number of Roma that occupied the area and their cultural influence on the people of Romania when the nation was born. The Roma are also referred to as Gypsies.
This article is about atomic weapons production. People of Jewish heritage made up a significant portion of the scientific community in Germany in the 30's. In fact many of the founders of the US nuclear program were German trained scientists. This is also true of the Soviet program where many of the best German scientists were exported to Russia after the war with the intent to develop Stalin a bomb. Germany before Hitler took power was the scientific powerhouse of the world and a significant portion of that community was Jewish. Not brining up Jew's while talking about WWII era Germany while discussing nuclear weapons would essentially gut the entire topic. For gods sake, Einstein was a Jew and the only reason he came to america was because of the death camps.
I think your above post admits that the placebo affect is a real documented effect. That the placebo effect can in fact remove pain completely. If such is true, is allowing scam artists to invoke the placebo effect in people and directly improve their lives a bad thing?
You might hate them and think their all scam artists but the reality is they dramatically improve some peoples lives, even if it's just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that's the result of the placebo effect I can't condemn them. They are making some peoples lives better. And for that reason alone there is very good reason to allow them to keep practicing as long as they can help some people. I've met people that were on daily narcotic therapy for pain that were able to completely stop use after seeing a chiropractic practicer. And that right there justifies their continued existence even if it was entirely placebo.
FYI, the $100,000 doesn't include legal fees, the agreement specifically includes that Katzer will pay the "reasonable" legal fees of Jacobsen. What this means is that if Katzer thinks the legal fees are too high he can complain to the judge and the judge will review but otherwise Katzer is going to pay the legal fee's separately from the $100,000 he's paying Jacobsen.
actually you can get copies of every MS product right back to DOS 3 via technet.
Technet subscriptions allow for testing not use. Personal or commercial use (outside as I said testing) of MSDOS from technet is a violation of your license agreement with Microsoft. Not only that but you obviously don't have a technet subscription (I do) as you would know that MSDOS 6.22 is the only DOS available via technet, in addition windows 95 and 98 aren't available via technet. Regardless of being able to acquire it you can't legally run it unless you can purchase a retail used copy. Those sources rapidly dwindle. In fact many commercial software packages have completely disappeared and software drivers for newer versions of software like windows are frequently not available. HP and Creative are prime examples of companies that simply don't provide drivers and force you to purchase newer hardware. It's not unreasonable to assume that at some future date Nvidia may decide to do the same, in fact something as simple as a change in management could cause it.
your whole premise is a big fail, because some FOSS project is FAR FAR more likely to stop producing updates and go offline (because they got a life/job/girlfriend) then a company like MS or nvidia which has actual funding. I'll say it again, your assumption is stupid and irrational and you've got nothing to back it up.
Your belief and assertion that the Linux kernel (after all the entire article is about FOSS drivers for Nvidia cards for the Linux Kernel) is more likely to be abandoned than Nvidia's production of drivers for Legacy hardware is laughably stupid. Such a statement is the height of folly and irrationality and frankly makes you look like an idiot in need of professional help. The Linux Kernel is supported by far more companies with far more resources (apparently the basis of your argument) and in fact was developed even without those resources. It's use in everything from MP3 players to televisions to large mainframe computers and it's nearly 25% market share in all computers guarantees it will survive far longer than Nvidia ever will. Working to develop FOSS drivers for nVidia hardware so future Linux kernels can use such hardware is only logical.
There is no doubt in my mind that at some point in the future nvidia will abandon production of drivers for legacy hardware. It will likely come in a few short years as then current hardware begins to differ so substantially from the legacy hardware as to make driver production excessively costly. Up until the Fermi architecture, even 10 year old hardware still functioned substantially similar to legacy hardware. That advantage will fade very rapidly as the processors nvidia produces move towards general use and likely in a few short years they will abandon legacy hardware as driver production costs escalate. To do otherwise would likely elicit a shareholder lawsuit.
I don't expect any of this to convince you of course, in fact I expect a reply with more silly childish aggressiveness probably with some name calling. With that in mind lets deal with the only premise here is your original assertion and give you an avenue to everyone you know anything at all. You premise was that someone is irrational and stupid to believe that Nvidia could some day stop providing drivers. Rather than asking me to prove a negative why don't you simply present evidence that Nvidia drivers will always be available thereby proving your statement.
So have at it, prove that Nvidia will always provide drivers for every product they have ever made. While your at, show me where I can get (full) 3dfx drivers for windows 7, after all Nvidia owns 3dfx and 3dfx's former products are Nvidias products now. After you prove Nvidia will always produce legacy hardware drivers for the rest of eternity I will happily admit you are right and that there is nothing at all to worry about. Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath. Cheers!
And what happens if tomorrow Nvidia decides it doesn't want to provide those drivers any more and removes all but the latest cards drivers? You can't distribute their binary drivers without their permission (and they don't give it btw). The problem with not using FOSS software is that if the commercial vendor decides to stop selling it there is nothing you can do about it other than offer them lots of money and hope they change their mind. Take windows XP, the day Microsoft decides to stop selling it you won't be able to purchase a new version of it (once existing stock already purchased is exhausted) and then your only option is to buy the newest version with X bad feature.
There is nothing at all stupid and irrational about being prepared for the inevitable with commercial software. Although there are likely very few people still using 3dfx cards you can't get drivers for them anymore. Companies go out of business, change management or simply decide it's in their interest to stop providing legacy drivers all the time. The past is no predictor of the future, as the first rule of stock investing applies almost universally and is "Past performance is not an indicator of future performance".
In fact assuming that nothing will ever change is actually the irrational, stupid and childish behavior.
Maybe in Grandma's basement Email is going away but not in the real business environment. In the basement twitter and RSS and IM are all valuable communication tools in the business world they are toys and email is the only really valid tool with a little bit of IM possibly as outlook now has that ability if companies enable it. People like you that make such comments simply make me laugh as it's obvious you have no real world experience where business is concerned. Email isn't going anywhere, it's a barely valid tool thats at least partially traceable, IM, twitter and other social networking has no valid business purpose and most of the protocols have no way to validate either the content or the author and as a result will just be toys in the business world.
People aren't starving because they can't buy food, there is plenty of food aid in the world, hell the US spends billions subsidizing US wheat producers so they can export it as US AID, the problem isn't production or even money, starvation is ALWAYS the result of political issues mostly dealing with war. Somalia doesn't starve because of no money, they starve because droughts dry up local production and food can't be imported because it's not safe to do so, not because they can't pay for it. This has been true of almost every famine in the 20th century.
Don't blame the economy for food shortages because the western governments are more than happy to hand out billions of tons of wheat and other staples just to get rid of it. It's one of the prime benefits of the wheat subsidies in the US is that the federal government buys all the surplus then gives it away to those that need it worldwide. I don't like the subsidy on principle and many nations complain about it (Australia is the biggest complainer) but the mostly unknown fact of the US wheat subsidies is that the excess production is purchased by the Federal government at market rates then given away as US food aid. It costs the US citizen a couple bucks a year and feeds millions. Eliminate of the subsidy would likely lead to less food aid but nothing is certain.
There are literally billions of acres of farmland in the US that aren't in production. The US farm bank (subsidies paid to farmers to NOT grow anything) is several million acres alone. There are states in the west such as Utah and Wyoming that used to have more than half the state in farm production where now most of the land is fallow or in the US farm bank. Wheat farmers in the US can barely break even at current prices so much of the sub-prime growing land in the west has been moved to non production through either bankruptcy or admittance to the federal farm bank. Taking this land and turning it back into bio-energy producing farm land would be relatively easy and selection of a species that requires little water would be a godsend to the farmers that remain in the western states. Not only that but rather than send several hundred billion dollars outside the US for oil we would be spending that money on local production. It's a win-win for everyone but the oil sheiks.
The documentation for Jesus' life is better than the documentation for that of Alexander the Great.
This documentation you speak of was written 90 years after this supposed person died. There are TWO references to this person you call Jesus in literature of the time that are believed to have not been altered by early Christians. (it was a fad in 300-600AD to rewrite history to insert religious dogma, it was actually supported and encouraged by the early Christian church mostly due to Constantine's "control everything" influence) In fact this documentation you speak of wouldn't be admissible in any modern court because it's heresay that's gone through at least 3 generations before it was written down. That is if it wasn't all concocted later by someone by the name of Paul (who used to be called Saul) seeking to exert his domination of this new religion. And it certainly would be suspect if Constantine had adopted a favored sect of Christianity and used his power as Emperor to destroy all the other sects of Christianity and burn all the conflicting teachings. And questions wouldn't be raised if someone found all those older teachings stored in some cave by the dead sea (maybe call them the dead sea scrolls) to hide them from the Romans searching out all conflicting dogma to destroy it.
The council of Trent compiled the Bible in 300A.D. in the village of Trent Italy. This council was tasked with taking over 1300 religious letters and teachings and compiling them into a single text. Controlled by the Sect of early Christians that Constantine adopted they selected the works and teachings familiar and supported by them and destroyed all the rest. The dead sea scrolls discovered several decades ago point to the vast collection of works which were scoured to gain the works of the bible. Later in the middle ages King James commissioned a translation of the Bible. Taking the Catholic work they removed 13 books, mostly by uncredited authors (which is silly as Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are pen names where the author was unknown and at least two of the books have multiple authors) and issued this as the King James Bible. As a modern translation of the Bible (at the time) the King James version was highly successful and adopted by most English speaking Christian sects as the "Bible", ignoring the existence of the original Catholic bible.
So your wonderful documentation is heresay that's been edited at LEAST 2 times by various parties not including the changes in translation. This doesn't even include the changes the Catholic church made in the book from 300A.D to the King James translation or any of the subsequent revisions. Your documentation isn't documentation, it's fiction with a historical setting. Jesus wasn't the son of god, he was a Jewish separatist that spoke out about the separation of the Jewish state from the Roman Empire (something Rome took very seriously and that got entire ethnic groups nailed to crosses). Saul/Paul created the entire virgin birth/resurrection myth single handily more than 70 years after Jesus was nailed to a cross for speaking out about leaving the roman empire. He never knew Jesus, never met him, never even met anyone that had met Jesus but his tale of virgin birth and life story is the basis of the new testament. Had he lived in a modern era he would have been committed to a mental institution along with many of the early Christians. In fact John the Revelator would have been that scary homeless dude preaching about the end of the world that exists in every major city. These are the people you idiolize if you are Christian, they are your prophets and they are no different than Joseph Smith other than that some of them were clearly eating the wrong kind of mushrooms.
Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain are the worst but not the least. Most of the countries in Europe have spending and Debt levels that (as a percentage of GDP) are double the US level everyone is worried about. What the PIGS are is a test, because if the PIGS collapse the entire Eurozone is going to go down. Greece is the first action and how the EU reacts will dictate how the financial community values things going forward. If Greece isn't fixed your probably going to see a BIG drop in the Euro as everyone runs away in fear of a Eurozone collapse. In fact that fear may cause the collapse as a self fulling myth as the currency devalues. Things are stable right now, but if the public backlash in Greece against the public spending cuts that are being implemented goes badly you better move all your money out of Euro's.
If you don't think this is a big deal you are foolish (not responding to the OP, clarifying what you said). The account deficits and debt levels in the EU make the US look like we are fiscally frugal. All that spending is going to catch up some day, and the scary thing is the budgets in the EU don't have flexibility. 90% of EU spending is entitlements. Those are brutally hard to cut with massive public protests but at some point the rest of the world is going to stop loaning money for this spending and if it happens abruptly it could cause an economic collapse and run on the banks. The Euro is a fiat currency like the rest in the world, that basis of it's existence is trust that it's worth something. Economic collapse in the PIGS could trigger a massive run of devaluation on the Euro which would wipe out trillions in value overnight and destroy the economies of many of the EU nations. Ironically if such a collapse happens Germany and England are likely the only ones to survive it.
Reminds me so much of 1984... back when the book was written, most of what went on was considered so absurd no one could possibly have tolerated it to let it get that far, but now look here at how governments can get away with it and even manage to make it grow.
NO NO NO NO NO. 1984 and Animal Farm were DIRECT commentary on Lenin/Stalin Communism.
Having fought in the Spanish Revolution as a socialist trying to establish a socialist country in Spain George Orwell (I know it's his pen name not his real name which eludes me at the moment) was confronted with the reality of Soviet Communism and how greatly it differed from what he considered real socialism. Orwell went to Spain to support a workers revolution and implement a socialistic government and learned that the socialism of the Soviets wasn't socialism at all, but totalitarianism dressed up as a social cause.
Animal Farm was the direct result of his involvement and a social satire on the mentality of Soviet Communism (and the origination of the comment about being a sheep). Later he wrote 1984 as a warning, something he didn't see as fanciful or far out, something he saw as inevitable if things continued on the path they were on. Orwell didn't consider the ideas or actions in 1984 absurd in the least and most of his contemporaries didn't either. 1984 was and is a warning, a warning on what can happen and will happen if we aren't diligent about protecting freedom. The entire reason the novel is a date is because he was warning that if action wasn't taken immediately, by that date what happened in the Novel would be reality. The scariest part of it is that his home country (the UK) has already begun putting in place the infrastructure for it to become a reality. The massive network of public surveillance is a necessity for an Orwellian government to survive, the UK is in the process of building that network under the guise of crime fighting (even though it's never prevented a single crime).
Although you make allusions to Iran implementing some of the Orwellian government what you don't acknowledge is that the western governments are FAR ahead of Iran. The US and EU governments already monitor all communications (governments that are prohibited to do so have a foreign government do it for them, for example the UK monitors US communications and the US monitors UK communications and they cross share the intelligence gained through an agreement between the US/UK/AU/Canada). 9/11 only expanded the monitoring and the massive surveillance networks have been expanded greatly since. Of course governments like China make the rest look like they are amateurs but the reality is that 1984 is far closer to reality, not because technology has made it possible, but because we are allowing it to happen.
And you beat me to the punch line. The real "Trust" being built here is government trust that you aren't a "terrorist"/"zionist"/"Westerner"/"Anti-islamic"/"Western stooge" because as we all know, only those people who are one of the above don't want the government reading their email. As the adage goes, if you aren't up to no good you don't have to worry.
Let's be honest, Iran moved to the next step of just killing protesters a several months ago. And started executing those that have opposed them, charging them as enemies of god. They are DEATHLY afraid of a revolution that will put them all in the same trials they put the people that supported the Shah. They are willing to blatantly execute people, shoot them in the back, run them over with government vehicles to punish them for protesting the rigged elections because they know if they have to publicly face their crimes against the people they will be hanged and all the people they abused over the years will get justice. In particular the security services know they can't flee anywhere like the Shah's people did so they have no option but to kill anyone in their way.
The only thing I wonder is why Iran's leaders don't simply just go to the next step and make sure only approved voters can vote or simply do away with elections. Afterall, there is no need to rig the election if you only let those who vote the way you want vote.
I don't have my source in front of me, but the Kaiser confronted a man (who is named in my source, IIRC it was the equivalent of something like the Secretary of the Army) about why the army was mobilizing to invade France, he was told that the plan called for the invasion and it couldn't possible be stopped. According to the source the Kaiser then made an attempt to get his staff to explain why they were invading France and to put a stop to it, the Kaiser eventually gave up after no one in his staff knew how to stop the portion of the plan that called for invading France and opening the western front. The key thing here, is that contrary to your assertion that it was impossible to stop, it wasn't impossible. Had the Kaiser actually exercised his authority and fired anyone that refused to stop the western mobilization and put himself in the middle of the process he could have prevented it. He was probably the only person in Germany that could have done it but his own failings prevented him from taking the authority he had and using it to stop something incredibly dumb from happening. The single greatest failing in WWI was Germany's belief that they couldn't stop the plan once it started, you appear to be of that school, other school's don't agree and actually blame the significant human toll of the war on that view. It was not a given, it was not impossible to stop and the German view that it was is extremely scary.
If my story is improbable yours is revisionist. We don't know what France would have done because they were never given the chance, Germany mobilized and rolled armed forces into France before France was ever given the option to decide for itself what it would do. The UK only became involved because they had a treaty obligation with France. From my reading France and the UK cared little about Russia, the UK did care about France but not the Tzar's empire because at the time Russia was utterly broke and considered nearly worthless territory. And given the lessons of Waterloo to go by I sincerely question whether the French would have bothered because they knew without a doubt in anyones mind that Germany might beat Russia's Army on the eastern front, but they weren't going to invade Russia and take territory. Regardless, what they would have done IF Germany hadn't invaded France is immaterial at best and utter speculation at worst.
Personally I don't see any parallel with GW. Bush, he had planned to invade Iraq from the day he took office (on his sixth day in office he setup a committee to explore how to invade Iraq), 9/11 simply provided the excuse. He wanted to punish Saddam for trying to kill his father and hell or high water he was going to find a reason to invade even if he had to fabricate it. Contrast this with the Kaiser who actually tried to stop the invasion of France, but apparently didn't comprehend his power as Kaiser to tell them not to even if the plan said to. I simply do not see a parallel, on one hand you have a devious evil manipulator and on the other an incompetent feudal ruler.
The ultimate hinge point in WWI was when Germany executed a war plan that called for a two front war when their treaty obligations only called for a one front war. Simply because the plans called for them to invade Russia and France simultaneously they did so even though Russia was the only one that had declared war (and France wasn't even involved). The generals at the time in Germany couldn't even imagine diverging from the war plan and the war plan called for invading France. Rather than stand up to his Generals the Kaiser caved and allowed the invasion of France (I believe he uttered the phrase "rolling the iron dice").
This is the entire reason France and the UK blamed Germany for the war and imposed all the war's costs on Germany (thereby causing WWII). The mindset in WWI Germany is incomprehensible today but the reason WWI happened (a much smaller war could have happened) is because there was a plan that wasn't applicable but the people in charge couldn't imagine deviating from the plan and the guy in ultimate charge wouldn't stand up to the ones tasked with fighting the war. The German/Russian/Austrian front of the war was minuscule in comparison to what happened on the French/German/Dutch border where entire armies (and two generations of French/German/English) were ground into hamburger in modern warfare. The greatest lesson of WWI is plans are great to have but they aren't the blueprint for the war that must be followed, iron adherence to a plan regardless of situation is suicide.
I thought everyone knew what happened in 2008. At the 2008 CES dozens of ARM "netbooks" running Linux were displayed and a big hit at the show. They were produced on ARM and Linux because Intel didn't have Atom yet so no cheap x86 processor with any horsepower, and Microsoft charged $89 for XP. The Linux netbook was heavily hyped at CES that year and MS took notice. They went to the netbook makers and asked what they needed to do to make sure every netbook came with windows. The Netbook makers said give us windows for $10 and we won't produce the Linux Netbooks. As a result MS priced windows for netbooks at $8 (ask for a windows refund on a netbook, they will offer $8, this has been documented). Intel at the same time produced the atom because they didn't want mass market ARM netbooks hitting the streets and eroding the x86 monopoly. They were able to produce it so quickly because all they did was basically die shrink the original pentium processor (didn't want it to be fast or it could erode regular notebook sales).
So you ask what killed the Arm Netbook? The answer is the WinTel duopoly got involved and killed it to prevent it from eroding the X86 Windows monopoly. MS and Intel work VERY hard to make sure ARM/Linux Netbooks aren't produced in volume or at prices that will hurt them. Cash incentives, marketing help and all sorts of bad behavior is going on to prevent this market from developing because they KNOW everyone wants a $100 cheap little web tablet/netbook that doesn't weigh much and gets great battery life and that the first one to market will set sales records. Hell the half-assed netbook that has crappy performance set sales records because of price, weight and battery life. The first person to hit good performance, under $200 and with at least 8 hours of battery is going to sell hundreds of millions of them. MS and Intel will do almost anything to make sure that it's not an ARM netbook (MS because the only OS they have that runs on ARM is windowsCE and Mobile, which are both very dated and very crappy compared to Android or Moblin) that's the first one to that goal.
Mark my words, you won't see mass market ARM netbooks produced unless a large government gets involved in an Anti-Trust action against both MS and Intel at the same time.
I agree with you but with one exception. US taxpayers shouldn't be funding software development in other countries. Although Software produced by the US government should be public domain inside the US I don't support the idea that it should be so outside the US. I would support treaties that allowed sharing of government produced software between countries as long as it's an equal arrangement and I would support code being GPL as that would force foreign entities to share (at least in theory).
Personally I think the best solution is that all taxpayer developed code be licensed as GPL and US businesses have a granted exception to use the code under a BSD license.
Hey, I don't like Roberts either but to uphold the damages in this case they have to throw out nearly 50 years of work saying punitive damages in Civil cases can't exceed 10 times the damages (effectively setting the max at 9x damages). There were cases as recent as the LAST session of the SOCOTUS where they upheld the 9X rule in civil cases without government involvement. I wouldn't put it past Roberts to issue a verdict that completely contradicts other verdicts but he's gonna have to work hard to say more than 10X is reasonable, the last case I remember which was the class action lawsuit by businesses affected by the Alaska Oil Spill (notice this was a private civil suit) locked punitive damages at no more than 9X actual documented losses with a verdict of 6-3 or 7-2 (can't remember). Even with the new justices in court voting for the damages at least 2 other justices would have to turn all their previous votes on their head to vote in support.
The most reasonable situation that would put it in the RIAA's favor without overturning precedent would be for the appeals court to refuse to review and the SOCOTUS to refuse to review. That way they wouldn't have to vote against constitutional policy they have been working towards for more than half a century. If the court reviews this case I simply don't believe Roberts could convince all the others to throw out the 9X rule. You have to understand that in all the other cases, they have argued with a large majority in the court that it's simply unconstitutional for Congress to allow punitive damages that are more than 9X damages and for Judges to allow those damages to stand. Any other verdict would simply increase their case load as all the Class actions appeal to be exempted from the 9x limit they have established.
This is the result of more than 20 people watching a minor (15) year old girl being gang raped during a school dance and not a single one calling 911 to report it. Unfortunately a law like this needs to be enacted so that such people can be punished. It's a shame that such basic morality is lacking in society these days but it's come to this point. We have to legislate that if someone is so devoid of such basic morality, that they can't call the police when witnessing a gang rape, that we need to start putting people in jail for not doing such basic acts of humanity, so that there is at least a threat of jail to inspire people to do the right thing if their conscious is devoid of inspiration to do so voluntarily.
And now what they want is the higher courts to adjudicate whether other cases where the supreme court has ruled that 10 times actual damages in the constitutional limit for punitive damages applies. If the higher courts rule that the limits congress set aren't legitimate in cases like these and that the 10X limit applies then her damages could be reduced by another couple factors. Assuming the 10X rule the actual damages in this case would need to be more than $5000 to justify even the lowered award. You would have a hard time proving uploading 24 songs is worth $5k in actual damages. At a dollar a song it would have had to have been shared more than 200 times. Even if you take into account the original 1000+ song shared, which the RIAA only proved 24 were theirs, then you still need more than 5 shares per song. Given this all happened on a modem I doubt she shared the songs more than once.
There is no question in my mind that she's liable for damages, but those damages should be reasonable, at most a few thousand if you throw in the full punitive damages for someone that saw no economic benefit from the copying. It's simply insane for someone that did this for no profit to be hit with millions of dollars in penalties. Those were the penalties congress enacted to stop mass copying by manufacturers. Damages sufficient to prevent large enterprises from hoping to sell more than the damages would be. Those laws simply are excessive when dealing with casual sharing. This would be no different in my mind that going after someone who made a mix tape for someone with $2million in damages. It's excessive and it should be unconstitutional under the equal protection clause.
Slashdot Mirror
Got a complex or what? Given the audience I'm probably gonna burn some Karma here but, There are a dozens of professions I would put before programmers, maybe even hundreds, as the most important professions in civilization, regardless of development level (Nomadic, Agrarian, Industrial, Information). Lets start with Doctors. I'd value my health far higher than a program to balance my checkbook. Next Nurses, as I value my health to have doctors, Nurses are a critical component to make that happen much more than a web browser. Next, Civil Engineers, as I value having a roof over my head (rather than living in cave), clean potable water in my pipes, sewage lines and treatment plants, roads to move myself and goods on and bridges to cross bodies of water and ravines much more than a value software for digital pictures. Next Mechanical Engineers, I'd value cars, planes, boats and machinery to make things, machines to move goods and people, machines to build things and simply to provide an industrial economy much more than a software of any kind. Next, pretty much the rest of the traditional engineering professions. Next Any military career, as I value the defenders that prevent others from taking my life, loved ones or lively hood much higher than software to play games.
I could go on, but I'd put software programmers near the bottom of the list as the most important professions in civilization. Anyone putting software developers near the top of most important professions frankly has a mental disease involving some sort of superiority complex. Personally I'd rank software developers right up there with Telephone Sanitizers, Hair dressers, salesmen, middle managers and Executives on the most important to civilization.
Why not simply require that any software in an automobile be OSS (not FOSS). In fact that requirement should seem to be an extension of mechanic laws that required car makers to provide parts and knowledge to service vehicles outside dealerships. All software in such a critical item should be OSS so it can be reviewed for errors and be reprogrammed by mechanics who wish to offer such services.
Regardless of the Toyota issue this is one clear example of one thing. That is if you get put on trial for anything in the US and you aren't "american" you will get convicted of it. There are exceptions to this and they are English speaking foreigners (British/Aussie/Canadian because their accents are "cute"). If you need a translator and hail from a different culture you will get convicted because of prejudices from the jury. It's an imperfection of the Jury system. The man that was convicted was Hmong (our allies during the vietnam war), the culture he comes from has a heavy dislike of eye contact (considered extremely impolite, the US equivalent would be something along the lines of picking your nose while talking to someone), something that the jury would have likely interpreted as guilt because eye contact is a fundamental aspect of US culture. Other cultural behavior he would have exhibited would have played equally as bad to the jury and it's probably the single reason he was convicted.
The most interesting thing is that the Judge commented that he showed no remorse during sentencing, exactly how the Judge would know this when the man in question is from a different culture is beyond me. Again the Judge in question applied his cultural norms without regard to the actual culture of the accused during sentencing, resulting in a massive 8 year sentence for something he has always claimed was out of his control. Why the jury didn't simply wonder why he would intentionally wreck his car at 80mph with his pregnant wife, infant child and elderly parents in the car is beyond me. Personally I couldn't have convicted him with that knowledge, there is simply no possible way it was intentional given the circumstances.
Herbalish is what medicine was before you added the modern. In modern medicine you take the herb, figure out what part of the herb actually causes the effect you want, do a study then create a drug from the active compound. This is the basis of every modern drug available except the most recent cancer treatments which are non-natural compounds.
Taking the herb will expose you to an unknown quantity of the active compound (as every plant produces differing amounts of compounds), it will also include all the toxins in the original herb. Some people claim this is a good thing. Of course some people think smoking is safer than a nicotine patch. Neither are right. In 99% of cases the natural herb is going to be more toxic than any modern drug. This doesn't even include the fact that your herbal remedy could have been sprayed with the most toxic pesticide known to man that doesn't wash off, not that they wash herbs because that would reduce profit margins. Herbal medicine is downright scary, people think it's natural and that means it's safe. The fact is it's not. There are no controls, they could dip the herb in formaldehyde and sprinkle it with mercury before selling it to you and no one would ever know because there are no safety checks.
There are many modern drugs that were developed from extremely poisonous plants (including foxglove, wormwood and other famous plants) where the interesting compound was separated from the poisonous ones, purified and put into measured and consistent doses. In fact there are several drugs based on snake venoms including some very common blood pressure drugs. So tell me having the snake biting you is better because it's "natural". I think all these people who promote and take herbs and end up with hypertension should be given a rattlesnake or cottonmouth and told to take one bite a day, it would certainly cut down the number of quacks.
Romania the modern nation draws it's name from the Roma. I can't comment on whether the Romans also created such a placed and called it such but the modern day Romania is based on the large number of Roma that occupied the area and their cultural influence on the people of Romania when the nation was born. The Roma are also referred to as Gypsies.
This article is about atomic weapons production. People of Jewish heritage made up a significant portion of the scientific community in Germany in the 30's. In fact many of the founders of the US nuclear program were German trained scientists. This is also true of the Soviet program where many of the best German scientists were exported to Russia after the war with the intent to develop Stalin a bomb. Germany before Hitler took power was the scientific powerhouse of the world and a significant portion of that community was Jewish. Not brining up Jew's while talking about WWII era Germany while discussing nuclear weapons would essentially gut the entire topic. For gods sake, Einstein was a Jew and the only reason he came to america was because of the death camps.
I think your above post admits that the placebo affect is a real documented effect. That the placebo effect can in fact remove pain completely. If such is true, is allowing scam artists to invoke the placebo effect in people and directly improve their lives a bad thing?
You might hate them and think their all scam artists but the reality is they dramatically improve some peoples lives, even if it's just a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that's the result of the placebo effect I can't condemn them. They are making some peoples lives better. And for that reason alone there is very good reason to allow them to keep practicing as long as they can help some people. I've met people that were on daily narcotic therapy for pain that were able to completely stop use after seeing a chiropractic practicer. And that right there justifies their continued existence even if it was entirely placebo.
FYI, the $100,000 doesn't include legal fees, the agreement specifically includes that Katzer will pay the "reasonable" legal fees of Jacobsen. What this means is that if Katzer thinks the legal fees are too high he can complain to the judge and the judge will review but otherwise Katzer is going to pay the legal fee's separately from the $100,000 he's paying Jacobsen.
Technet subscriptions allow for testing not use. Personal or commercial use (outside as I said testing) of MSDOS from technet is a violation of your license agreement with Microsoft. Not only that but you obviously don't have a technet subscription (I do) as you would know that MSDOS 6.22 is the only DOS available via technet, in addition windows 95 and 98 aren't available via technet. Regardless of being able to acquire it you can't legally run it unless you can purchase a retail used copy. Those sources rapidly dwindle. In fact many commercial software packages have completely disappeared and software drivers for newer versions of software like windows are frequently not available. HP and Creative are prime examples of companies that simply don't provide drivers and force you to purchase newer hardware. It's not unreasonable to assume that at some future date Nvidia may decide to do the same, in fact something as simple as a change in management could cause it.
Your belief and assertion that the Linux kernel (after all the entire article is about FOSS drivers for Nvidia cards for the Linux Kernel) is more likely to be abandoned than Nvidia's production of drivers for Legacy hardware is laughably stupid. Such a statement is the height of folly and irrationality and frankly makes you look like an idiot in need of professional help. The Linux Kernel is supported by far more companies with far more resources (apparently the basis of your argument) and in fact was developed even without those resources. It's use in everything from MP3 players to televisions to large mainframe computers and it's nearly 25% market share in all computers guarantees it will survive far longer than Nvidia ever will. Working to develop FOSS drivers for nVidia hardware so future Linux kernels can use such hardware is only logical.
There is no doubt in my mind that at some point in the future nvidia will abandon production of drivers for legacy hardware. It will likely come in a few short years as then current hardware begins to differ so substantially from the legacy hardware as to make driver production excessively costly. Up until the Fermi architecture, even 10 year old hardware still functioned substantially similar to legacy hardware. That advantage will fade very rapidly as the processors nvidia produces move towards general use and likely in a few short years they will abandon legacy hardware as driver production costs escalate. To do otherwise would likely elicit a shareholder lawsuit.
I don't expect any of this to convince you of course, in fact I expect a reply with more silly childish aggressiveness probably with some name calling. With that in mind lets deal with the only premise here is your original assertion and give you an avenue to everyone you know anything at all. You premise was that someone is irrational and stupid to believe that Nvidia could some day stop providing drivers. Rather than asking me to prove a negative why don't you simply present evidence that Nvidia drivers will always be available thereby proving your statement.
So have at it, prove that Nvidia will always provide drivers for every product they have ever made. While your at, show me where I can get (full) 3dfx drivers for windows 7, after all Nvidia owns 3dfx and 3dfx's former products are Nvidias products now. After you prove Nvidia will always produce legacy hardware drivers for the rest of eternity I will happily admit you are right and that there is nothing at all to worry about. Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath. Cheers!
And what happens if tomorrow Nvidia decides it doesn't want to provide those drivers any more and removes all but the latest cards drivers? You can't distribute their binary drivers without their permission (and they don't give it btw). The problem with not using FOSS software is that if the commercial vendor decides to stop selling it there is nothing you can do about it other than offer them lots of money and hope they change their mind. Take windows XP, the day Microsoft decides to stop selling it you won't be able to purchase a new version of it (once existing stock already purchased is exhausted) and then your only option is to buy the newest version with X bad feature.
There is nothing at all stupid and irrational about being prepared for the inevitable with commercial software. Although there are likely very few people still using 3dfx cards you can't get drivers for them anymore. Companies go out of business, change management or simply decide it's in their interest to stop providing legacy drivers all the time. The past is no predictor of the future, as the first rule of stock investing applies almost universally and is "Past performance is not an indicator of future performance".
In fact assuming that nothing will ever change is actually the irrational, stupid and childish behavior.
Maybe in Grandma's basement Email is going away but not in the real business environment. In the basement twitter and RSS and IM are all valuable communication tools in the business world they are toys and email is the only really valid tool with a little bit of IM possibly as outlook now has that ability if companies enable it. People like you that make such comments simply make me laugh as it's obvious you have no real world experience where business is concerned. Email isn't going anywhere, it's a barely valid tool thats at least partially traceable, IM, twitter and other social networking has no valid business purpose and most of the protocols have no way to validate either the content or the author and as a result will just be toys in the business world.
People aren't starving because they can't buy food, there is plenty of food aid in the world, hell the US spends billions subsidizing US wheat producers so they can export it as US AID, the problem isn't production or even money, starvation is ALWAYS the result of political issues mostly dealing with war. Somalia doesn't starve because of no money, they starve because droughts dry up local production and food can't be imported because it's not safe to do so, not because they can't pay for it. This has been true of almost every famine in the 20th century.
Don't blame the economy for food shortages because the western governments are more than happy to hand out billions of tons of wheat and other staples just to get rid of it. It's one of the prime benefits of the wheat subsidies in the US is that the federal government buys all the surplus then gives it away to those that need it worldwide. I don't like the subsidy on principle and many nations complain about it (Australia is the biggest complainer) but the mostly unknown fact of the US wheat subsidies is that the excess production is purchased by the Federal government at market rates then given away as US food aid. It costs the US citizen a couple bucks a year and feeds millions. Eliminate of the subsidy would likely lead to less food aid but nothing is certain.
There are literally billions of acres of farmland in the US that aren't in production. The US farm bank (subsidies paid to farmers to NOT grow anything) is several million acres alone. There are states in the west such as Utah and Wyoming that used to have more than half the state in farm production where now most of the land is fallow or in the US farm bank. Wheat farmers in the US can barely break even at current prices so much of the sub-prime growing land in the west has been moved to non production through either bankruptcy or admittance to the federal farm bank. Taking this land and turning it back into bio-energy producing farm land would be relatively easy and selection of a species that requires little water would be a godsend to the farmers that remain in the western states. Not only that but rather than send several hundred billion dollars outside the US for oil we would be spending that money on local production. It's a win-win for everyone but the oil sheiks.
This documentation you speak of was written 90 years after this supposed person died. There are TWO references to this person you call Jesus in literature of the time that are believed to have not been altered by early Christians. (it was a fad in 300-600AD to rewrite history to insert religious dogma, it was actually supported and encouraged by the early Christian church mostly due to Constantine's "control everything" influence) In fact this documentation you speak of wouldn't be admissible in any modern court because it's heresay that's gone through at least 3 generations before it was written down. That is if it wasn't all concocted later by someone by the name of Paul (who used to be called Saul) seeking to exert his domination of this new religion. And it certainly would be suspect if Constantine had adopted a favored sect of Christianity and used his power as Emperor to destroy all the other sects of Christianity and burn all the conflicting teachings. And questions wouldn't be raised if someone found all those older teachings stored in some cave by the dead sea (maybe call them the dead sea scrolls) to hide them from the Romans searching out all conflicting dogma to destroy it.
The council of Trent compiled the Bible in 300A.D. in the village of Trent Italy. This council was tasked with taking over 1300 religious letters and teachings and compiling them into a single text. Controlled by the Sect of early Christians that Constantine adopted they selected the works and teachings familiar and supported by them and destroyed all the rest. The dead sea scrolls discovered several decades ago point to the vast collection of works which were scoured to gain the works of the bible. Later in the middle ages King James commissioned a translation of the Bible. Taking the Catholic work they removed 13 books, mostly by uncredited authors (which is silly as Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are pen names where the author was unknown and at least two of the books have multiple authors) and issued this as the King James Bible. As a modern translation of the Bible (at the time) the King James version was highly successful and adopted by most English speaking Christian sects as the "Bible", ignoring the existence of the original Catholic bible.
So your wonderful documentation is heresay that's been edited at LEAST 2 times by various parties not including the changes in translation. This doesn't even include the changes the Catholic church made in the book from 300A.D to the King James translation or any of the subsequent revisions. Your documentation isn't documentation, it's fiction with a historical setting. Jesus wasn't the son of god, he was a Jewish separatist that spoke out about the separation of the Jewish state from the Roman Empire (something Rome took very seriously and that got entire ethnic groups nailed to crosses). Saul/Paul created the entire virgin birth/resurrection myth single handily more than 70 years after Jesus was nailed to a cross for speaking out about leaving the roman empire. He never knew Jesus, never met him, never even met anyone that had met Jesus but his tale of virgin birth and life story is the basis of the new testament. Had he lived in a modern era he would have been committed to a mental institution along with many of the early Christians. In fact John the Revelator would have been that scary homeless dude preaching about the end of the world that exists in every major city. These are the people you idiolize if you are Christian, they are your prophets and they are no different than Joseph Smith other than that some of them were clearly eating the wrong kind of mushrooms.
Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain are the worst but not the least. Most of the countries in Europe have spending and Debt levels that (as a percentage of GDP) are double the US level everyone is worried about. What the PIGS are is a test, because if the PIGS collapse the entire Eurozone is going to go down. Greece is the first action and how the EU reacts will dictate how the financial community values things going forward. If Greece isn't fixed your probably going to see a BIG drop in the Euro as everyone runs away in fear of a Eurozone collapse. In fact that fear may cause the collapse as a self fulling myth as the currency devalues. Things are stable right now, but if the public backlash in Greece against the public spending cuts that are being implemented goes badly you better move all your money out of Euro's.
If you don't think this is a big deal you are foolish (not responding to the OP, clarifying what you said). The account deficits and debt levels in the EU make the US look like we are fiscally frugal. All that spending is going to catch up some day, and the scary thing is the budgets in the EU don't have flexibility. 90% of EU spending is entitlements. Those are brutally hard to cut with massive public protests but at some point the rest of the world is going to stop loaning money for this spending and if it happens abruptly it could cause an economic collapse and run on the banks. The Euro is a fiat currency like the rest in the world, that basis of it's existence is trust that it's worth something. Economic collapse in the PIGS could trigger a massive run of devaluation on the Euro which would wipe out trillions in value overnight and destroy the economies of many of the EU nations. Ironically if such a collapse happens Germany and England are likely the only ones to survive it.
NO NO NO NO NO. 1984 and Animal Farm were DIRECT commentary on Lenin/Stalin Communism.
Having fought in the Spanish Revolution as a socialist trying to establish a socialist country in Spain George Orwell (I know it's his pen name not his real name which eludes me at the moment) was confronted with the reality of Soviet Communism and how greatly it differed from what he considered real socialism. Orwell went to Spain to support a workers revolution and implement a socialistic government and learned that the socialism of the Soviets wasn't socialism at all, but totalitarianism dressed up as a social cause.
Animal Farm was the direct result of his involvement and a social satire on the mentality of Soviet Communism (and the origination of the comment about being a sheep). Later he wrote 1984 as a warning, something he didn't see as fanciful or far out, something he saw as inevitable if things continued on the path they were on. Orwell didn't consider the ideas or actions in 1984 absurd in the least and most of his contemporaries didn't either. 1984 was and is a warning, a warning on what can happen and will happen if we aren't diligent about protecting freedom. The entire reason the novel is a date is because he was warning that if action wasn't taken immediately, by that date what happened in the Novel would be reality. The scariest part of it is that his home country (the UK) has already begun putting in place the infrastructure for it to become a reality. The massive network of public surveillance is a necessity for an Orwellian government to survive, the UK is in the process of building that network under the guise of crime fighting (even though it's never prevented a single crime).
Although you make allusions to Iran implementing some of the Orwellian government what you don't acknowledge is that the western governments are FAR ahead of Iran. The US and EU governments already monitor all communications (governments that are prohibited to do so have a foreign government do it for them, for example the UK monitors US communications and the US monitors UK communications and they cross share the intelligence gained through an agreement between the US/UK/AU/Canada). 9/11 only expanded the monitoring and the massive surveillance networks have been expanded greatly since. Of course governments like China make the rest look like they are amateurs but the reality is that 1984 is far closer to reality, not because technology has made it possible, but because we are allowing it to happen.
And you beat me to the punch line. The real "Trust" being built here is government trust that you aren't a "terrorist"/"zionist"/"Westerner"/"Anti-islamic"/"Western stooge" because as we all know, only those people who are one of the above don't want the government reading their email. As the adage goes, if you aren't up to no good you don't have to worry.
Let's be honest, Iran moved to the next step of just killing protesters a several months ago. And started executing those that have opposed them, charging them as enemies of god. They are DEATHLY afraid of a revolution that will put them all in the same trials they put the people that supported the Shah. They are willing to blatantly execute people, shoot them in the back, run them over with government vehicles to punish them for protesting the rigged elections because they know if they have to publicly face their crimes against the people they will be hanged and all the people they abused over the years will get justice. In particular the security services know they can't flee anywhere like the Shah's people did so they have no option but to kill anyone in their way.
The only thing I wonder is why Iran's leaders don't simply just go to the next step and make sure only approved voters can vote or simply do away with elections. Afterall, there is no need to rig the election if you only let those who vote the way you want vote.
The "netbook" price MS charges for XP is $8 in volume. At that price it's inclusion or not doesn't mean much to the price.
I don't have my source in front of me, but the Kaiser confronted a man (who is named in my source, IIRC it was the equivalent of something like the Secretary of the Army) about why the army was mobilizing to invade France, he was told that the plan called for the invasion and it couldn't possible be stopped. According to the source the Kaiser then made an attempt to get his staff to explain why they were invading France and to put a stop to it, the Kaiser eventually gave up after no one in his staff knew how to stop the portion of the plan that called for invading France and opening the western front. The key thing here, is that contrary to your assertion that it was impossible to stop, it wasn't impossible. Had the Kaiser actually exercised his authority and fired anyone that refused to stop the western mobilization and put himself in the middle of the process he could have prevented it. He was probably the only person in Germany that could have done it but his own failings prevented him from taking the authority he had and using it to stop something incredibly dumb from happening. The single greatest failing in WWI was Germany's belief that they couldn't stop the plan once it started, you appear to be of that school, other school's don't agree and actually blame the significant human toll of the war on that view. It was not a given, it was not impossible to stop and the German view that it was is extremely scary.
If my story is improbable yours is revisionist. We don't know what France would have done because they were never given the chance, Germany mobilized and rolled armed forces into France before France was ever given the option to decide for itself what it would do. The UK only became involved because they had a treaty obligation with France. From my reading France and the UK cared little about Russia, the UK did care about France but not the Tzar's empire because at the time Russia was utterly broke and considered nearly worthless territory. And given the lessons of Waterloo to go by I sincerely question whether the French would have bothered because they knew without a doubt in anyones mind that Germany might beat Russia's Army on the eastern front, but they weren't going to invade Russia and take territory. Regardless, what they would have done IF Germany hadn't invaded France is immaterial at best and utter speculation at worst.
Personally I don't see any parallel with GW. Bush, he had planned to invade Iraq from the day he took office (on his sixth day in office he setup a committee to explore how to invade Iraq), 9/11 simply provided the excuse. He wanted to punish Saddam for trying to kill his father and hell or high water he was going to find a reason to invade even if he had to fabricate it. Contrast this with the Kaiser who actually tried to stop the invasion of France, but apparently didn't comprehend his power as Kaiser to tell them not to even if the plan said to. I simply do not see a parallel, on one hand you have a devious evil manipulator and on the other an incompetent feudal ruler.
The ultimate hinge point in WWI was when Germany executed a war plan that called for a two front war when their treaty obligations only called for a one front war. Simply because the plans called for them to invade Russia and France simultaneously they did so even though Russia was the only one that had declared war (and France wasn't even involved). The generals at the time in Germany couldn't even imagine diverging from the war plan and the war plan called for invading France. Rather than stand up to his Generals the Kaiser caved and allowed the invasion of France (I believe he uttered the phrase "rolling the iron dice").
This is the entire reason France and the UK blamed Germany for the war and imposed all the war's costs on Germany (thereby causing WWII). The mindset in WWI Germany is incomprehensible today but the reason WWI happened (a much smaller war could have happened) is because there was a plan that wasn't applicable but the people in charge couldn't imagine deviating from the plan and the guy in ultimate charge wouldn't stand up to the ones tasked with fighting the war. The German/Russian/Austrian front of the war was minuscule in comparison to what happened on the French/German/Dutch border where entire armies (and two generations of French/German/English) were ground into hamburger in modern warfare. The greatest lesson of WWI is plans are great to have but they aren't the blueprint for the war that must be followed, iron adherence to a plan regardless of situation is suicide.
I thought everyone knew what happened in 2008. At the 2008 CES dozens of ARM "netbooks" running Linux were displayed and a big hit at the show. They were produced on ARM and Linux because Intel didn't have Atom yet so no cheap x86 processor with any horsepower, and Microsoft charged $89 for XP. The Linux netbook was heavily hyped at CES that year and MS took notice. They went to the netbook makers and asked what they needed to do to make sure every netbook came with windows. The Netbook makers said give us windows for $10 and we won't produce the Linux Netbooks. As a result MS priced windows for netbooks at $8 (ask for a windows refund on a netbook, they will offer $8, this has been documented). Intel at the same time produced the atom because they didn't want mass market ARM netbooks hitting the streets and eroding the x86 monopoly. They were able to produce it so quickly because all they did was basically die shrink the original pentium processor (didn't want it to be fast or it could erode regular notebook sales).
So you ask what killed the Arm Netbook? The answer is the WinTel duopoly got involved and killed it to prevent it from eroding the X86 Windows monopoly. MS and Intel work VERY hard to make sure ARM/Linux Netbooks aren't produced in volume or at prices that will hurt them. Cash incentives, marketing help and all sorts of bad behavior is going on to prevent this market from developing because they KNOW everyone wants a $100 cheap little web tablet/netbook that doesn't weigh much and gets great battery life and that the first one to market will set sales records. Hell the half-assed netbook that has crappy performance set sales records because of price, weight and battery life. The first person to hit good performance, under $200 and with at least 8 hours of battery is going to sell hundreds of millions of them. MS and Intel will do almost anything to make sure that it's not an ARM netbook (MS because the only OS they have that runs on ARM is windowsCE and Mobile, which are both very dated and very crappy compared to Android or Moblin) that's the first one to that goal.
Mark my words, you won't see mass market ARM netbooks produced unless a large government gets involved in an Anti-Trust action against both MS and Intel at the same time.
I agree with you but with one exception. US taxpayers shouldn't be funding software development in other countries. Although Software produced by the US government should be public domain inside the US I don't support the idea that it should be so outside the US. I would support treaties that allowed sharing of government produced software between countries as long as it's an equal arrangement and I would support code being GPL as that would force foreign entities to share (at least in theory).
Personally I think the best solution is that all taxpayer developed code be licensed as GPL and US businesses have a granted exception to use the code under a BSD license.
Hey, I don't like Roberts either but to uphold the damages in this case they have to throw out nearly 50 years of work saying punitive damages in Civil cases can't exceed 10 times the damages (effectively setting the max at 9x damages). There were cases as recent as the LAST session of the SOCOTUS where they upheld the 9X rule in civil cases without government involvement. I wouldn't put it past Roberts to issue a verdict that completely contradicts other verdicts but he's gonna have to work hard to say more than 10X is reasonable, the last case I remember which was the class action lawsuit by businesses affected by the Alaska Oil Spill (notice this was a private civil suit) locked punitive damages at no more than 9X actual documented losses with a verdict of 6-3 or 7-2 (can't remember). Even with the new justices in court voting for the damages at least 2 other justices would have to turn all their previous votes on their head to vote in support.
The most reasonable situation that would put it in the RIAA's favor without overturning precedent would be for the appeals court to refuse to review and the SOCOTUS to refuse to review. That way they wouldn't have to vote against constitutional policy they have been working towards for more than half a century. If the court reviews this case I simply don't believe Roberts could convince all the others to throw out the 9X rule. You have to understand that in all the other cases, they have argued with a large majority in the court that it's simply unconstitutional for Congress to allow punitive damages that are more than 9X damages and for Judges to allow those damages to stand. Any other verdict would simply increase their case load as all the Class actions appeal to be exempted from the 9x limit they have established.
This is the result of more than 20 people watching a minor (15) year old girl being gang raped during a school dance and not a single one calling 911 to report it. Unfortunately a law like this needs to be enacted so that such people can be punished. It's a shame that such basic morality is lacking in society these days but it's come to this point. We have to legislate that if someone is so devoid of such basic morality, that they can't call the police when witnessing a gang rape, that we need to start putting people in jail for not doing such basic acts of humanity, so that there is at least a threat of jail to inspire people to do the right thing if their conscious is devoid of inspiration to do so voluntarily.
And now what they want is the higher courts to adjudicate whether other cases where the supreme court has ruled that 10 times actual damages in the constitutional limit for punitive damages applies. If the higher courts rule that the limits congress set aren't legitimate in cases like these and that the 10X limit applies then her damages could be reduced by another couple factors. Assuming the 10X rule the actual damages in this case would need to be more than $5000 to justify even the lowered award. You would have a hard time proving uploading 24 songs is worth $5k in actual damages. At a dollar a song it would have had to have been shared more than 200 times. Even if you take into account the original 1000+ song shared, which the RIAA only proved 24 were theirs, then you still need more than 5 shares per song. Given this all happened on a modem I doubt she shared the songs more than once.
There is no question in my mind that she's liable for damages, but those damages should be reasonable, at most a few thousand if you throw in the full punitive damages for someone that saw no economic benefit from the copying. It's simply insane for someone that did this for no profit to be hit with millions of dollars in penalties. Those were the penalties congress enacted to stop mass copying by manufacturers. Damages sufficient to prevent large enterprises from hoping to sell more than the damages would be. Those laws simply are excessive when dealing with casual sharing. This would be no different in my mind that going after someone who made a mix tape for someone with $2million in damages. It's excessive and it should be unconstitutional under the equal protection clause.