You're assuming that people have both choice and knowledge. I'd venture to guess that most people using MySQL are doing so with things like phpBB on shared hosting, and that a significant portion of the remaining MySQL users are ones who began their RDBMS career working with MySQL on shared hosting. Of course we all know stories like Google using MySQL and that's great--I don't have nearly the problems with MySQL that some people here do--but I don't think it's the norm by any stretch of the imagination.
So what's the point of InnoDB? If you want transactions (primarily) but aren't in a position to simply use a different database server. Maybe you don't have physical access to the server (shared hosting, etc); maybe your applications are coded in such a way that they don't support it. Or, people simply don't know about Postgres and think the next leap up from MySQL is forking out cash for Oracle. (And please: I'm not trying to make any comment that if people simply knew what they were doing they'd use Postgres instead of MySQL. I'm simply offering rationale to "why would somebody use InnoDB on MySQL?")
InnoDB is your classic jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none: Not as fast as MyISAM, not as full-featured as something like Postgres. Sometimes, though, that's what the situation calls for.
Their "free market" means "free for us to rape anyone we want market" and alternatives be damned.
It always has, and always will. It's essentially based on the hope that if a Really Bad Company(tm) comes along, that somebody will rise up and compete and destroy them. Well, that's not going to happen with natural monopolies without government intervention. We have what should be ample examples of the fact that these bastards of a company not only tend to continue on, but to thrive. The reality is that the bigger you get, the less likely you are to ever be brought down.
Whether it was intentional or not, we made a mistake with our Internet infrastructure. These companies should never have been allowed to own the lines. Like roads, water, sewage and so many other services, the infrastructure should be owned by the government, and the government should be responsible for ensuring its continued upkeep and growth. What we should have opened up to competition is service on those lines.
I don't know, legally speaking, if we could simply decide to "take it back." It's probably past that point. If local government entering as competition is the best step we can take in that direction, then I applaud it whole-heartedly.
There are a lot of reasons that the Internet is going to be critical infrastructure going forward, but I don't think anybody denies it will be (and is). We need some entity to recognize that and commit itself to improvement for the greater good, not just for the greater profits. Government is perfect by no means, but at least they have the right bosses and concern for the economic well-being of the nation as a whole. (Insert quips about banking industry here.)
They don't know, don't pay attention, haven't had it be a problem for them, and don't care.
On the contrary, most of them just disagree. We spend hours on slashdot yelling over the semantics of calling it "theft," and ultimately we're probably right. But the average person doesn't really give a shit. You've taken something that wasn't being offered for free and you didn't pay for it; that's close enough to theft that they really don't care what the semantic argument is. You have the artist's product and they don't have your money. Call it what you will. So far as the ridiculous size of the judgments, most people would likely agree it's excessive... and then proceed not to care.
The US has become a society where we actively encourage harsh punishments for tiny crimes, in an effort to be "tough on crime." These same people will agree it's too much and then say "but it's their own damn fault." That's how we are as a society; you can see it refelcted in all sorts of laws, not just copyright infringement issues. Look at the penalties for pot, or just about any crime involving a child. Circumstances be damned, lock those fuckers up!
Yeah, so it turns out that absent any major concern on the part of the electorate, politicians listen to the people who talk to them the loudest - folks with money to lobby them.
On the other hand, we tend to oversimplify the issue here. Even if we're exactly right about all these ills of copyright terms and penalties, it's now the basis of our economy. Want to work in a factory here? You pretty well can't, and what few ones still exist are struggling bad. Those jobs have moved overseas. What we have left here in the US falls into two categories: 1) Service industries and 2) shit that involves copyright. Politicians are not going to write off half the economy on the hope that your ability to use Mickey Mouse in your films somehow makes more money than Disney using it. This is why we work so hard to force other countries around the world to adopt as similar a copyright scheme to us as possible; our own economy depends on strong copyright law, here and abroad.
In a lot of ways, the politicians are being more practical than us. We're arguing semantics or debating whether or not something technically meets the merits of "promot[ing] the progress of science and useful arts." They're talking about what happens to our economy if we release or ignore copyright protections. And while I come down more on/.'s side than politicians on copyright issues (hard to tell from this post, I know!) I'm compelled to admit that I have no good answer to that question. At best I have some idealist hopes of some new, sweeping and all-powerful creative movement swallowing up all that content and spitting out item after item of great alternatives, such that nobody ever misses a beat. But I have no particular reason to believe it would be so.
You're right: Money talks. It needn't be some ill-design of lobbying or bribes or corruption. In this case they're protecting economic value (and thus tax revenues). If anybody thought Obama would suddenly strike copyright down where it stood, they very seriously deluded themselves.
I think what we're seeing here, disturbingly to me, is the increased use of court papers as PR. The only parts of their response that may have any basis in law--which is what court questions are meant to be about--are the ones about pending sanctions. Even then, it's only tangentially related. A lawyer being sanctioned (which isn't even what they're saying) might put them under greater scrutiny, but so long as they are still able to practice law, it has no bearing on the particular legal argument they're making.
In other words, assume everything they said is true: The FSF wants to bring down copyright and the RIAA and that NYCL is an anti-RIAA blog. SO WHAT? None of that has any bearing on the legal arguments they're making in their briefs. It really can't be anything but theater for people who are watching, hoping that nobody noticed the RIAA doesn't seem capable of refuting the legal arguments their opponents are making. "But, your honor! The briefs against me were filed by people who disagree!?" Seriously? That kind of tripe has no place in a court of law. They're either incompetent or it's not actually for the court.
Assuming Sweden is similar to the US, the fundamental issue seems to be commercial intent (which TPB denies, but the judge ruled does exist). They're essentially saying that if you commit copyright infringement in a bid to get rich, it's a worse crime than committing copyright infringement because you want your friends to hear this great new song or what have you. They're saying that what TPB did was akin to selling bootleg DVDs on the street corner. (Personally I don't think a tracker should be liable for anything, but I admit that it's really a rather cute legal loophole.)
I think the comments about the investment bank executives was just ridiculous though. They were obviously staggeringly bad at their jobs, failing to see, essentially, that home prices would not enjoy permanent exponential growth, but even suggesting that sucking at your job should be a criminal act is disconcerting. They should be fired, not jailed. Not even comparatively.
You're right about the craziness of legal systems, though. I honestly can't think of any copyright infringement issue that should result in jail time; the huge, for-profit pirating operations should just be huge lawsuit targets, since everything we're talking about in these cases is money.
Any state? Not sure. But in Chicago, between the state, county and city sales taxes the effective sales tax is 10.25% (or more on a subset of items). If I'm not mistaken, Cook County is the only county in the nation that is permitted to levy its own sales tax.
Is it? I can't find the precise post, but in a similar thread a few days back a slashdotter dug through a cable company (Time Warner?)'s financial filings. For their broadband business, they brought in $4 billion dollars last year, and their costs for it were around $230 million*. Let's assume, just to be nice to them, that those costs don't include employees and such, and let's be super-dooper-extra-nice and say that brings their total broadband costs to $2 billion.
They're still making $2 billion dollars a year profit on their broadband business. Even if their lines really are so taxed to the brim that they're about to buckle, this is not exactly the picture of a company that needs massive rate increases and overage fees to continue to provide service. And if you're bringing in $4 billion and expending $235 million, it doesn't even sound like a company that feels they NEED infrastructure improvements. Or at best, one who's certainly in no hurry to implement them.
More annoyingly, those same financial statements indicated that although they brought in significantly more money in 2008 than 2007, they spent only half as much money to provide those services. Again, this is not a picture of a company whose infrastructure is in dire straits.
Maybe they really are getting dangerously close to capacity; I sure as hell don't know. I do know they're not acting like it. They're acting like nothing but greedy corporate pigs, taking tax dollars, not improving infrastructure, then demanding you pay a higher fee because of seemingly phantom infrastructure issues.
How about a compromise: Let's pass a law establishing their rates right now, before any of these usage schemes or tiered pricing structures, as a baseline. Every few years we'll re-consider adjustments for inflationary purposes if they can justify it. Then they're free to do whatever scheme they want, with one caveat: Every single dime above those rates that they make must be used DIRECTLY, IMMEDIATELY and UNEQUIVOCALLY for broadband infrastructure improvements. Every dime. If they stick it in the bank, they have to use the interest for the same thing. If they fail to do that, they're fined that sum of money plus a nice little penalty on top, and their rates get locked back at the baseline we established, since obviously it was nothing but BS money-grubbing under the guise of needing to improve infrastructure.
I doubt they'd go for that, which in itself makes me believe something ain't quite right with their claims.
* These are off the top of my head and I'm being pessimistic. The best my memory serves me says it was just over $4 billion income last year on about $100 million expenditures, and they spent twice as much the previous year, which was the $200+ million number I ended up using to be on the safe side.
It depends on what you mean. If you're literally being beaten as you're falsely arrested--and can prove that--then yes, you can probably get away with it. On the other hand, you can be DAMN sure that if such a case actually happened that the officer would be sure to charge you with resisting arrest with violence and assaulting a police officer, both of which I believe are felonies. At which point any damage you've done to him by fighting back would actually help his inevitable claims that the injuries you sustained were in the course of him trying to arrest you and you taking a swing at him. Better hope there are witnesses or cameras or both someplace, or--as silly as it sounds--that you got the shit kicked out of you so much that nobody would ever believe his retort. It's a lot like lawsuits; you might win, but do you want to go through the ordeal with the possibility you lose?
Short of something like that, you'd probably best just keep your hands to yourself. Most courts won't be very sympathetic to you hitting a cop without some very extreme circumstances. Bad as it may sound, unless you're literally fearing for your life I'd think taking it is your best option from a legal standpoint.
I saw a great quote here on slashdot about this a few days ago, though I fear I'm not going to do it justice. It was from an Australian ISP, but along the same lines, where they said something like: "We'd be delighted if our highest-usage customers all went to our competition."
And why wouldn't they? If you run a business and everybody is paying (say) $50, if you could skim the 1% who's downloading 200 gigs a month off and give them to a competitor and be left with customers who use 20, that's not bad for you. I don't know enough about their numbers to know if that 1% is actually using more than they pay for in terms of cost to provide the service--though I doubt it--but it frees up a lot of your pipes, doesn't make you invest as heavily into infrastructure, and ultimately could allow you to undercut that competition you just basically sabotaged.
Granted, it's somewhat short-sighted. This Intermajig is only going to get bigger, and those infrastructure projects are all going to be necessary at some point -- they're just trying to turn back the tide with a spoon. Unfortunately US business is always most concerned with their short-term bottom lines, so it makes perfect sense to them. From their perspective, they ramp up the prices for those "high-end users" and either make more money from them (woohoo!) or lose them to the competition (woohoo!).
The bottom line is whether it's smart or dumb, many major ISPs just don't want these customers right now. Not at the prices they currently enjoy.
Either that, or we ARE surrounded by ignorant, illogical, paranoid, quasi-literate, parochial, xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, racist, anti-intellectual believers in UFOs and are all screwed.
We are surrounded by those people, and always have been. How much that means we're screwed is really up to your own interpretation. I suppose it's as much as you think we're screwed right now.
The uncommonly intelligent, the free-thinkers, the men who change the world have always been in the minority; whatever progress the world has made is owed largely to them. It reminds me of a quote, apparently from Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Another nice thing about gmail is the ability to use a plus sign and any random string. for example user+cnn@gmail.com will be delivered to user@gmail.com. Not only does that provide an easier way to filter and mark things as spam if they get nasty on you, but it becomes particularly clear who exactly was the problem. (It's not always them who sends the spam, after all; often they'll sell your address to somebody who does.)
The only real downside is that a lot of validation routines treat the plus sign as an invalid character and bounce you back, but I think that's a fairly small price to pay for all the times it works. Plus like you said, Gmail does a really nice job with spam all on its own, so being forced to take that extra piece out of those picky forms isn't a big deal.
I guess some people are too forgiving of Microsoft's failings... And I'm really not sure what the prevailing reason is, other than the comfort level.
Most people don't truly understand. You can tell them, and it might even stick in the back of their heads somewhere that "linux is typically more secure than Windows." But their understanding never proceeds beyond that sort of logical understanding of the words you said.
Most people have never known anything else. It's not abnormal for them to need to reboot after every installation*, that's just how computers work. Viruses? Yeah, there are bad people out there. It's the price of being connected to the network. I still have friends who are sort of surprised that their Windows machine actually slows down the longer they've used it, and while wiping the system and restoring back to factory image isn't really an option for most of them, those that have done it are shocked how much faster their system runs for a while. It's still not so much of a "stupid Microsoft" as it is a "stupid computers" for them, though.
That said--and I say this as a linux fan and somebody who uses it himself--linux is going to under-serve a lot of the market. I think it's great for the people who only browse the web and check email, maybe type up an occasional document, because those people aren't likely to be doing the sorts of things you run into problems with. It's great for the ultra high-enders, whose shell you can pry out of their cold, dead hands and who has no qualms about rutting around in config files. I don't think it's quite "there" for the middle segment though. Obviously it doesn't do a lot of games well, and once you get beyond the basics you start running into problems with (relatively) complicated procedures or just an all-out lack of driver support. It's becoming less and less often in my experience, but I can definitely understand why the average computer user who runs into a problem like that would pretty much immediately say "screw it" and want Windows back. If any point in getting support for something you've paid for has a step that reads "recompile your kernel," that's enough to send a lot of people running for the hills.
So netbooks? Yeah, it seems like on average that would fall nicely into that first uber-simple category, but peoples' general lack of experience with the system is going to either make them shy away or, if they don't, they probabaly ARE just going for the lower price.
* For the record, I know this is becoming less true with successive versions of Windows and that bad things can happen on any system.
people who produce information simply cannot wrap their minds around the idea that information is now cheaply and easily reproducible and their old business models are defunct
I'm not disagreeing with you, and not trying to troll, but from the perspective of the people running news agencies or the AP, what is the new business model they should shift to?
Whether we like it or not, it takes money to cover the news and more money--though less and less lately--to deliver it. Turning it over to bloggers won't help; the majority of blogs are only commentary on news posted by other entities, and the occasional investigative blog entry, while important, is so far in the minority as to preclude them from being viable alternatives. Plus there's even less accountability for a blogger than there is for a reporter at a mainstream news outlet; at least they have to worry about their job if they really screw the pooch on their work.
In this particular case for example, I think it's essentially greed on the AP's part (and for the record I think their campaigns against Google News are IDIOTIC). However, for the sake of argument let's assume that they're actually reacting to profits lowering enough that it's going to impact their ability to cover and report on news. How do they change their business model? Increasing prices might work for a little while, except that if anybody is hurting more than the AP itself it would be the news agencies buying AP feeds. There's only so much more money you can extract from them before their "new business model" of ad-supported content fails them, they go down and you have even less revenue than you started with.
They could try to change to a subscription model. Then again, most people aren't going to go for it after they've had such a long period of essentially free news now. Plus, it's basically the model that customers are moving AWAY from by ditching their subscriptions to get their news online.
Consolidation seems like a viable option, but I personally feel there's already been far too much consolidation in news agencies. Is this really an area we wanted even as much consolidation as we have, much less more? And more to the point, if you're telling any individual business owner that his business model no longer works and his only choice is to go out of business, you're not going to get a very good reaction--even if it's ultimately good for his industry.
So yes, right now they're probably just being greedy fucks; they can probably absorb less revenues for quite some time without it having to impact their services. But not forever--so what IS the business model they should be advancing?
I don't like the way this is going any more than you do, but it's easy to comment from the sidelines and a much tougher situation if you're actually faced with it.
This has nothing to do with Obama (other than that his DOJ is making the argument), and it is not a bullshit argument from a legal standpoint.
It's called sovereign immunity, and we brought it over to our legal system from the British system when we declared independence. To put it shortly, it's exactly what you quoted: Congress has to waive its immunity in order for you to sue the federal government. There are a few laws on the books outlining cases in which they automatically waive that right. I don't know if this would be one of them, except to say that the DOJ obviously feels there's at least an argument to be made that it isn't.
I agree with what somebody else said in another thread earlier: Sovereign immunity has no place in a democratic society. That said, though, it's here and as frightening as it may be, it's far from a bullshit legal argument to have a lawsuit dismissed. It's a good one.
IANAL, but this sounds like "you have NO RIGHT to sue us, GTFO" - and it's obvious even to a layman. Subtlety isn't their strong suit, is it?
It isn't supposed to be subtle. They're not trying to tap dance around what their legal reasoning for the motion is; they're stating it flat out: "We have sovereign immunity and we haven't waived it." I agree with the OP that sovereign immunity has no place in a democratic government, but that doesn't change the fact that as it stands now, it is a part of our legal system. It's one of those things we brought over from the British system.
Yes, as stupid as it sounds, the government has to agree to let you sue them. (I think from a practical standpoint they're are some laws outlining a lot of areas in which they automatically waive that right, but I'm not sure.)
So far as state secrets (from the GP) are concerned, of course they should exist--but they shouldn't be a defense. The judges should review the material and rule one of three ways:
1. Yes, it involves state secrets and it's vital to making your case. In this circumstnace I guess the case needs to just be tossed, depending on what the person is asking for I guess. (I don't see a particular reason why the judge shouldn't be able to rule that it involves state secrets but it also proves the case, and award money to the petitioner. Obviously this depends on the particular case, the relief requested, etc though.)
2. Yes, it involves state secrets but you can still make your case without it. The information that falls under the state secret's act is unavailable in discovery or at any point during the trial, but you're free to make your case without it.
3. No state secrets, suck it up and defend the case with this in evidence.
That seems like a reasonable way to balance the need for secrecy in some cases against an unbridled government power to just go "no no, it's important, trust us."
That we should disregard what people actually said and slaughter kittens is exactly what I would expect a guy who's really bad at analogies to do.
Hrm. Yeah, fitting whatever words I want in your mouth is satisfying but ultimately stupid. He never said we should accept any particular idea. He simply said we should be less concerned with the label and more concerned with whether or not it's a good idea. I fail to see how that justifies your attitude, much less your tone of superiority. It's perfectly reasonable.
So far as "once you start out [. ..] there's no turning back," you'll have to do better than that. That's nothing but a worthless slippery slope argument (no pun intended). If supporting a particular initiative will inevitably lead to the end of our, uh, tulip beds, "trust me, it will" comes nowhere near the mark of evidence, nor of intelligent debate. But then again since you start out slinging insults at somebody for a perverted interpretation of what they said, I would expect little else.
If I make money by sending people to you, which makes you money, I think that's the definition of a win-win situation. It doesn't entitle you to any portion of the profits I make from the activity.
As others have pointed out, if the newspapers really had such a problem with what was happening they could simply use a robots.txt or otherwise have themselves removed from Google News. That way everybody who visits would have to come directly through their own website and increase their own page views and thus ad impressions. They also know that's suicide. Services like Google bring them far more money in increased traffic than they would get with greatly reduced traffic and marginally increased profit from impressions, or they would have made that change long ago.
They just want to have it both ways. "Yes, continue to send us business please. And oh yeah, pay us for that honor." Google should tell them to go fuck themselves. If anything, the newspapers should be paying a "finder's fee" for Google sending them business, not the other way around. As it stands, Google's "finder's fee" is coming indirectly from a third party
Unfortunately, they're also competing against themselves. Take my story from just today:
I had heard a song and decided I wanted it. I poked around a little bit but couldn't find the song; I didn't see it in iTunes, not on Amazon mP3, not on Walmart's MP3 service. I could get the whole CD from Amazon, but apparently it was only released on a Canadian label in Canada, and I wasn't inclined to pay $25 to buy an import--particularly when I had never heard the other songs on the CD and only wanted that one.
Eventually I went to the artist's website. "Ah HA!" I said to myself. There was a "buy this on iTunes" link. I had no idea how I missed it on iTunes the first time, but no matter. Click the link, iTunes pops up dutifully. And--what's this? "This item is not available in the US version of iTunes. Click here to switch stores." Okay, no problem. Except that apparently it is a problem, since as a US customer I'm not special enough to buy anything from the iTunes Canadian store.
So I pirated the damn song.
I literally tried to give these people my money. I went out of my way to do so, I registered with iTunes and was about to buy the first song I've ever bought from them (I don't care for it or Apple very much) just to give them my money--and they refused it. There's certainly no TECHNICAL reason they couldn't have given me the song; in fact, they had to go out of their way to impose the technical limitation that I couldn't get it. But for whatever reason, that was the choice they made. So I walked away.
I say all that just to get to this: They still don't understand the Internet. They want to have their cake and eat it too*; to have their exclusivity and licensing deals, to continue selling music at frankly inflated prices and only pay lip service to the way the Internet has and WILL change their industry. Well, so be it. They're the copyright owners. But so long as they go out of their way to gouge us on prices (it seriously costs as much to buy the CD online as get it from the store now?!), prevent "undesirables" from buying their music and otherwise make the legal route the most unreasonable, largest pain in the ass way of getting music... they'll never stand any chance against piracy. I don't feel the slightest bit bad about what I did today. I would have paid the $1.29 even though I think it's too expensive. I would have paid the $0.99 feeling the same way. I couldn't. Until this sort of nonsense changes, they have little chance of actually getting any number of fence-sitters to their side. So long as piracy remains both the cheapest and the easiest way of acquiring things, it will remain the biggest.
This is my annoyance as a US customer, and in reality I have access to the majority of things I might want. Imagine how many would-be customers they're shutting out even from US operations by no doubt excluding the rest of the world as I was excluded from the Canadian offering. Think they'll learn?
You might be right that the law has become too complex, but the defense having a right to see ALL evidence and interview all witnesses that are brought to the attention of the prosecution is hardly new or complex. Lawyers don't get to hide evidence just because it doesn't suit their case, and I'd call that considerably more than a procedural mistake--they violated this man's fifth and sixth amendment Constitutional rights.
Personally I'd start hearings to sanction or disbar these prosecutors. If there's even a whiff that this was intentional rather than an outrageously huge oversight, they should lose the ability to practice criminal law. Period.
The problem with your logic is that "search engines" aren't one homogeneous entity. If suddenly people can't find the news they're looking for through Search Engine A, it won't be long before they begin trying Search Engine B instead. This instantly becomes a simple means of differentiation between engines. To use a real-world example, don't you think MSN or Yahoo would be absolutely dying for Google to stop listing sites with AP news articles?
I also think you're underestimating the reach of the AP. The majority of news (in the US) comes from the AP or use the AP reporting as a basis, and as such they do carry a heavy influence. Other outlets might be able to get away without paying the AP, but I think search engines will pay up long before they start trying to blacklist it.
What else could explain political families like the Bushes, Kennedys etc?
Money.
Whether we like it or not, it costs a ton of money to run for major political office. Most of us have heard that line about a congressman needing to raise about $10,000 a month from the day he is elected to mount a re-election campaign. And that's "only" $240,000, to be one of 435. Imagine how much it costs to run for the Senate and be 1 of 100; imagine how much to be president, where you're the only one and at the top of the political food chain. (Or don't imagine: I didn't see, at quick glance, a definitive number for how much he spent, but according to Wikipedia, Obama alone raised $650 million dollars for his presidential campaign.)
These political families have one (or both) of two things going for them: Money, or the ability to quickly raise it. They also have a pseudo-celebrity status that allows them to get some free advertisement, particularly early on, just because of who their family members were. I don't begrudge them that or blame the media; I think it's a story worth mentioning, even if it should die quickly after.
That said, the two examples you gave really are the only two in national politics; there is no "etc." And I wouldn't say that the Bushes were American royalty (I'd argue even more strenuously the suggestion that they ARE). The Kennedy's certainly are, and I think for good reason; whatever you think of their politics, you can't deny the effect that their stories have on the country. From poor immigrant to political power. Two of them assassinated. One crazy and given a lobotomy. Plane explosions, plane crashes, stillborn babies, leg cancer in twelve year old children. I'm not a superstitious type, but check out a book or a show on History channel about the Kennedy Curse; it really is fascinating. For accuracy's sake, though, even after all of that and all of their successes, it wasn't enough to get Caroline Kennedy appointed to Hillary Clinton's senate seat in New York.
Or the Exact Server that Wolverine was uploaded to?
It would still be retarded. According to the article, over 50 businesses' sites are down, and some people can't dial 911 because several of the biggest companies are telephone companies--all because of this raid. Even if they do happen to find exactly what they're looking for on one of these machines, they've grossly overstepped their bounds or what any reasonable person would find an accept breadth to their search.
If they've done all of this over a case of COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, that doesn't make it better. It makes it much, much worse. They damn well BETTER find terrorism or kiddie porn just to save face, and I'd still be pissed off even then. This is supposed to be a land of laws and process. You don't get to seize everybody's server because you think one of them might house something wrong.
Completely logical. But are we really talking about a situation where the IT directors for the state are going to suggest upgrading to an OS where all of those things are true, but a state lawmaker with no particular technical knowledge (that we know of anyway) gets it right?
If all those things are true, the IT guys should know that better and faster than a politician. No law should be necessary essentially saying "so uh, in case you don't know how to do your job we're not letting you upgrade." I do particularly agree with you on Vista vs. Win7, and I'm sure the IT directors would agree with you as well. NO point in upgrading to Vista right now with Win7 coming very soon.
If they're not true, again, the IT directors should be making those evaluations and if they truly believe the upgrade is worthwhile, they shouldn't be handcuffed by a budget maker. (I'd PERSONALLY consider it ridiculously stupid and start looking into whether or not that person is qualified, but if we have these IT managers we need to let them do their jobs or replace them with somebody we're confident can do so.)
Of course it is. Nothing you said is incorrect on its merits, but if, for whatever reason, the various IT leaders/system administrators decided that there's value in migration and the guy writing the checks says no, what is that but micromanaging? The boss doesn't have any particular expertise; he's not even directly responsible for hiring those who do, but somewhere in there system there ARE users whose entire job it is to determine what IT purchases are worthwhile and which aren't. Why isn't it those peoples' decision? Presumably, based on the existence of this rider, they used to have the unilateral authority to make that decision (obviously within the constraints of their own budgets). What's so special now that we need a new law forbidding it?
I'm no lover of Microsoft, and all in all the rider amuses me. What bothers me, though, is the possibility (probability!) that this senator is making this decision based on Vista's bad press. Does he have any particular idea what he's talking about, or has he just read the business section an awful lot? The former is at least a moderate reason to get involved in management at that level; the latter is not.
Or in favor... because for sure, there are no scientific studies regarding the issue (at least of my knowledge).
A few years ago, I was required to read such a study for a Telecommunications Economics course at my university. The main conclusions of that study were thus (all are direct quotes from the study):
1. "Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero."
2. "Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale."
3. "The business model of major labels relies heavily on a limited number of superstar albums. For these albums, we find that the impact of file sharing on sales is likely to be positive."
4. "Our estimates indicate that less popular artists who sell few albums are most likely to be negatively affected by file sharing."
The study was done by Felix Oberholzer from Harvard Business School and Koleman Stumpf from UNC Chapel Hill. It was written in 2004 and I believe the actual study was done in 2002. I can't share the PDF myself because I don't think I have any server capable of withstanding a slashdotting, but a quick Google search turns up this link which appears to be the same: http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf
Like most slashdotters suppose, their basic conclusion is that the majority of file downloaders would not have become paying customers. I think anybody being reasonable would agree that that is true; even if you may have bought a handful of the albums of songs you downloaded, you're very highly unlikely to have bought even a majority of albums from which you download songs.
I'll leave it up to others to determine the study's validity, but there it is and those are its conclusions.
Slashdot Mirror
You're assuming that people have both choice and knowledge. I'd venture to guess that most people using MySQL are doing so with things like phpBB on shared hosting, and that a significant portion of the remaining MySQL users are ones who began their RDBMS career working with MySQL on shared hosting. Of course we all know stories like Google using MySQL and that's great--I don't have nearly the problems with MySQL that some people here do--but I don't think it's the norm by any stretch of the imagination.
So what's the point of InnoDB? If you want transactions (primarily) but aren't in a position to simply use a different database server. Maybe you don't have physical access to the server (shared hosting, etc); maybe your applications are coded in such a way that they don't support it. Or, people simply don't know about Postgres and think the next leap up from MySQL is forking out cash for Oracle. (And please: I'm not trying to make any comment that if people simply knew what they were doing they'd use Postgres instead of MySQL. I'm simply offering rationale to "why would somebody use InnoDB on MySQL?")
InnoDB is your classic jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none: Not as fast as MyISAM, not as full-featured as something like Postgres. Sometimes, though, that's what the situation calls for.
It always has, and always will. It's essentially based on the hope that if a Really Bad Company(tm) comes along, that somebody will rise up and compete and destroy them. Well, that's not going to happen with natural monopolies without government intervention. We have what should be ample examples of the fact that these bastards of a company not only tend to continue on, but to thrive. The reality is that the bigger you get, the less likely you are to ever be brought down.
Whether it was intentional or not, we made a mistake with our Internet infrastructure. These companies should never have been allowed to own the lines. Like roads, water, sewage and so many other services, the infrastructure should be owned by the government, and the government should be responsible for ensuring its continued upkeep and growth. What we should have opened up to competition is service on those lines.
I don't know, legally speaking, if we could simply decide to "take it back." It's probably past that point. If local government entering as competition is the best step we can take in that direction, then I applaud it whole-heartedly.
There are a lot of reasons that the Internet is going to be critical infrastructure going forward, but I don't think anybody denies it will be (and is). We need some entity to recognize that and commit itself to improvement for the greater good, not just for the greater profits. Government is perfect by no means, but at least they have the right bosses and concern for the economic well-being of the nation as a whole. (Insert quips about banking industry here.)
On the contrary, most of them just disagree. We spend hours on slashdot yelling over the semantics of calling it "theft," and ultimately we're probably right. But the average person doesn't really give a shit. You've taken something that wasn't being offered for free and you didn't pay for it; that's close enough to theft that they really don't care what the semantic argument is. You have the artist's product and they don't have your money. Call it what you will. So far as the ridiculous size of the judgments, most people would likely agree it's excessive... and then proceed not to care.
The US has become a society where we actively encourage harsh punishments for tiny crimes, in an effort to be "tough on crime." These same people will agree it's too much and then say "but it's their own damn fault." That's how we are as a society; you can see it refelcted in all sorts of laws, not just copyright infringement issues. Look at the penalties for pot, or just about any crime involving a child. Circumstances be damned, lock those fuckers up!
On the other hand, we tend to oversimplify the issue here. Even if we're exactly right about all these ills of copyright terms and penalties, it's now the basis of our economy. Want to work in a factory here? You pretty well can't, and what few ones still exist are struggling bad. Those jobs have moved overseas. What we have left here in the US falls into two categories: 1) Service industries and 2) shit that involves copyright. Politicians are not going to write off half the economy on the hope that your ability to use Mickey Mouse in your films somehow makes more money than Disney using it. This is why we work so hard to force other countries around the world to adopt as similar a copyright scheme to us as possible; our own economy depends on strong copyright law, here and abroad.
In a lot of ways, the politicians are being more practical than us. We're arguing semantics or debating whether or not something technically meets the merits of "promot[ing] the progress of science and useful arts." They're talking about what happens to our economy if we release or ignore copyright protections. And while I come down more on /.'s side than politicians on copyright issues (hard to tell from this post, I know!) I'm compelled to admit that I have no good answer to that question. At best I have some idealist hopes of some new, sweeping and all-powerful creative movement swallowing up all that content and spitting out item after item of great alternatives, such that nobody ever misses a beat. But I have no particular reason to believe it would be so.
You're right: Money talks. It needn't be some ill-design of lobbying or bribes or corruption. In this case they're protecting economic value (and thus tax revenues). If anybody thought Obama would suddenly strike copyright down where it stood, they very seriously deluded themselves.
I think what we're seeing here, disturbingly to me, is the increased use of court papers as PR. The only parts of their response that may have any basis in law--which is what court questions are meant to be about--are the ones about pending sanctions. Even then, it's only tangentially related. A lawyer being sanctioned (which isn't even what they're saying) might put them under greater scrutiny, but so long as they are still able to practice law, it has no bearing on the particular legal argument they're making.
In other words, assume everything they said is true: The FSF wants to bring down copyright and the RIAA and that NYCL is an anti-RIAA blog. SO WHAT? None of that has any bearing on the legal arguments they're making in their briefs. It really can't be anything but theater for people who are watching, hoping that nobody noticed the RIAA doesn't seem capable of refuting the legal arguments their opponents are making. "But, your honor! The briefs against me were filed by people who disagree!?" Seriously? That kind of tripe has no place in a court of law. They're either incompetent or it's not actually for the court.
Assuming Sweden is similar to the US, the fundamental issue seems to be commercial intent (which TPB denies, but the judge ruled does exist). They're essentially saying that if you commit copyright infringement in a bid to get rich, it's a worse crime than committing copyright infringement because you want your friends to hear this great new song or what have you. They're saying that what TPB did was akin to selling bootleg DVDs on the street corner. (Personally I don't think a tracker should be liable for anything, but I admit that it's really a rather cute legal loophole.)
I think the comments about the investment bank executives was just ridiculous though. They were obviously staggeringly bad at their jobs, failing to see, essentially, that home prices would not enjoy permanent exponential growth, but even suggesting that sucking at your job should be a criminal act is disconcerting. They should be fired, not jailed. Not even comparatively.
You're right about the craziness of legal systems, though. I honestly can't think of any copyright infringement issue that should result in jail time; the huge, for-profit pirating operations should just be huge lawsuit targets, since everything we're talking about in these cases is money.
Any state? Not sure. But in Chicago, between the state, county and city sales taxes the effective sales tax is 10.25% (or more on a subset of items). If I'm not mistaken, Cook County is the only county in the nation that is permitted to levy its own sales tax.
Is it? I can't find the precise post, but in a similar thread a few days back a slashdotter dug through a cable company (Time Warner?)'s financial filings. For their broadband business, they brought in $4 billion dollars last year, and their costs for it were around $230 million*. Let's assume, just to be nice to them, that those costs don't include employees and such, and let's be super-dooper-extra-nice and say that brings their total broadband costs to $2 billion.
They're still making $2 billion dollars a year profit on their broadband business. Even if their lines really are so taxed to the brim that they're about to buckle, this is not exactly the picture of a company that needs massive rate increases and overage fees to continue to provide service. And if you're bringing in $4 billion and expending $235 million, it doesn't even sound like a company that feels they NEED infrastructure improvements. Or at best, one who's certainly in no hurry to implement them.
More annoyingly, those same financial statements indicated that although they brought in significantly more money in 2008 than 2007, they spent only half as much money to provide those services. Again, this is not a picture of a company whose infrastructure is in dire straits.
Maybe they really are getting dangerously close to capacity; I sure as hell don't know. I do know they're not acting like it. They're acting like nothing but greedy corporate pigs, taking tax dollars, not improving infrastructure, then demanding you pay a higher fee because of seemingly phantom infrastructure issues.
How about a compromise: Let's pass a law establishing their rates right now, before any of these usage schemes or tiered pricing structures, as a baseline. Every few years we'll re-consider adjustments for inflationary purposes if they can justify it. Then they're free to do whatever scheme they want, with one caveat: Every single dime above those rates that they make must be used DIRECTLY, IMMEDIATELY and UNEQUIVOCALLY for broadband infrastructure improvements. Every dime. If they stick it in the bank, they have to use the interest for the same thing. If they fail to do that, they're fined that sum of money plus a nice little penalty on top, and their rates get locked back at the baseline we established, since obviously it was nothing but BS money-grubbing under the guise of needing to improve infrastructure.
I doubt they'd go for that, which in itself makes me believe something ain't quite right with their claims.
* These are off the top of my head and I'm being pessimistic. The best my memory serves me says it was just over $4 billion income last year on about $100 million expenditures, and they spent twice as much the previous year, which was the $200+ million number I ended up using to be on the safe side.
It depends on what you mean. If you're literally being beaten as you're falsely arrested--and can prove that--then yes, you can probably get away with it. On the other hand, you can be DAMN sure that if such a case actually happened that the officer would be sure to charge you with resisting arrest with violence and assaulting a police officer, both of which I believe are felonies. At which point any damage you've done to him by fighting back would actually help his inevitable claims that the injuries you sustained were in the course of him trying to arrest you and you taking a swing at him. Better hope there are witnesses or cameras or both someplace, or--as silly as it sounds--that you got the shit kicked out of you so much that nobody would ever believe his retort. It's a lot like lawsuits; you might win, but do you want to go through the ordeal with the possibility you lose?
Short of something like that, you'd probably best just keep your hands to yourself. Most courts won't be very sympathetic to you hitting a cop without some very extreme circumstances. Bad as it may sound, unless you're literally fearing for your life I'd think taking it is your best option from a legal standpoint.
I saw a great quote here on slashdot about this a few days ago, though I fear I'm not going to do it justice. It was from an Australian ISP, but along the same lines, where they said something like: "We'd be delighted if our highest-usage customers all went to our competition."
And why wouldn't they? If you run a business and everybody is paying (say) $50, if you could skim the 1% who's downloading 200 gigs a month off and give them to a competitor and be left with customers who use 20, that's not bad for you. I don't know enough about their numbers to know if that 1% is actually using more than they pay for in terms of cost to provide the service--though I doubt it--but it frees up a lot of your pipes, doesn't make you invest as heavily into infrastructure, and ultimately could allow you to undercut that competition you just basically sabotaged.
Granted, it's somewhat short-sighted. This Intermajig is only going to get bigger, and those infrastructure projects are all going to be necessary at some point -- they're just trying to turn back the tide with a spoon. Unfortunately US business is always most concerned with their short-term bottom lines, so it makes perfect sense to them. From their perspective, they ramp up the prices for those "high-end users" and either make more money from them (woohoo!) or lose them to the competition (woohoo!).
The bottom line is whether it's smart or dumb, many major ISPs just don't want these customers right now. Not at the prices they currently enjoy.
We are surrounded by those people, and always have been. How much that means we're screwed is really up to your own interpretation. I suppose it's as much as you think we're screwed right now.
The uncommonly intelligent, the free-thinkers, the men who change the world have always been in the minority; whatever progress the world has made is owed largely to them. It reminds me of a quote, apparently from Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
Another nice thing about gmail is the ability to use a plus sign and any random string. for example user+cnn@gmail.com will be delivered to user@gmail.com. Not only does that provide an easier way to filter and mark things as spam if they get nasty on you, but it becomes particularly clear who exactly was the problem. (It's not always them who sends the spam, after all; often they'll sell your address to somebody who does.)
The only real downside is that a lot of validation routines treat the plus sign as an invalid character and bounce you back, but I think that's a fairly small price to pay for all the times it works. Plus like you said, Gmail does a really nice job with spam all on its own, so being forced to take that extra piece out of those picky forms isn't a big deal.
Most people don't truly understand. You can tell them, and it might even stick in the back of their heads somewhere that "linux is typically more secure than Windows." But their understanding never proceeds beyond that sort of logical understanding of the words you said.
Most people have never known anything else. It's not abnormal for them to need to reboot after every installation*, that's just how computers work. Viruses? Yeah, there are bad people out there. It's the price of being connected to the network. I still have friends who are sort of surprised that their Windows machine actually slows down the longer they've used it, and while wiping the system and restoring back to factory image isn't really an option for most of them, those that have done it are shocked how much faster their system runs for a while. It's still not so much of a "stupid Microsoft" as it is a "stupid computers" for them, though.
That said--and I say this as a linux fan and somebody who uses it himself--linux is going to under-serve a lot of the market. I think it's great for the people who only browse the web and check email, maybe type up an occasional document, because those people aren't likely to be doing the sorts of things you run into problems with. It's great for the ultra high-enders, whose shell you can pry out of their cold, dead hands and who has no qualms about rutting around in config files. I don't think it's quite "there" for the middle segment though. Obviously it doesn't do a lot of games well, and once you get beyond the basics you start running into problems with (relatively) complicated procedures or just an all-out lack of driver support. It's becoming less and less often in my experience, but I can definitely understand why the average computer user who runs into a problem like that would pretty much immediately say "screw it" and want Windows back. If any point in getting support for something you've paid for has a step that reads "recompile your kernel," that's enough to send a lot of people running for the hills.
So netbooks? Yeah, it seems like on average that would fall nicely into that first uber-simple category, but peoples' general lack of experience with the system is going to either make them shy away or, if they don't, they probabaly ARE just going for the lower price.
* For the record, I know this is becoming less true with successive versions of Windows and that bad things can happen on any system.
I'm not disagreeing with you, and not trying to troll, but from the perspective of the people running news agencies or the AP, what is the new business model they should shift to?
Whether we like it or not, it takes money to cover the news and more money--though less and less lately--to deliver it. Turning it over to bloggers won't help; the majority of blogs are only commentary on news posted by other entities, and the occasional investigative blog entry, while important, is so far in the minority as to preclude them from being viable alternatives. Plus there's even less accountability for a blogger than there is for a reporter at a mainstream news outlet; at least they have to worry about their job if they really screw the pooch on their work.
In this particular case for example, I think it's essentially greed on the AP's part (and for the record I think their campaigns against Google News are IDIOTIC). However, for the sake of argument let's assume that they're actually reacting to profits lowering enough that it's going to impact their ability to cover and report on news. How do they change their business model? Increasing prices might work for a little while, except that if anybody is hurting more than the AP itself it would be the news agencies buying AP feeds. There's only so much more money you can extract from them before their "new business model" of ad-supported content fails them, they go down and you have even less revenue than you started with.
They could try to change to a subscription model. Then again, most people aren't going to go for it after they've had such a long period of essentially free news now. Plus, it's basically the model that customers are moving AWAY from by ditching their subscriptions to get their news online.
Consolidation seems like a viable option, but I personally feel there's already been far too much consolidation in news agencies. Is this really an area we wanted even as much consolidation as we have, much less more? And more to the point, if you're telling any individual business owner that his business model no longer works and his only choice is to go out of business, you're not going to get a very good reaction--even if it's ultimately good for his industry.
So yes, right now they're probably just being greedy fucks; they can probably absorb less revenues for quite some time without it having to impact their services. But not forever--so what IS the business model they should be advancing?
I don't like the way this is going any more than you do, but it's easy to comment from the sidelines and a much tougher situation if you're actually faced with it.
This has nothing to do with Obama (other than that his DOJ is making the argument), and it is not a bullshit argument from a legal standpoint.
It's called sovereign immunity, and we brought it over to our legal system from the British system when we declared independence. To put it shortly, it's exactly what you quoted: Congress has to waive its immunity in order for you to sue the federal government. There are a few laws on the books outlining cases in which they automatically waive that right. I don't know if this would be one of them, except to say that the DOJ obviously feels there's at least an argument to be made that it isn't.
I agree with what somebody else said in another thread earlier: Sovereign immunity has no place in a democratic society. That said, though, it's here and as frightening as it may be, it's far from a bullshit legal argument to have a lawsuit dismissed. It's a good one.
It isn't supposed to be subtle. They're not trying to tap dance around what their legal reasoning for the motion is; they're stating it flat out: "We have sovereign immunity and we haven't waived it." I agree with the OP that sovereign immunity has no place in a democratic government, but that doesn't change the fact that as it stands now, it is a part of our legal system. It's one of those things we brought over from the British system.
Yes, as stupid as it sounds, the government has to agree to let you sue them. (I think from a practical standpoint they're are some laws outlining a lot of areas in which they automatically waive that right, but I'm not sure.)
So far as state secrets (from the GP) are concerned, of course they should exist--but they shouldn't be a defense. The judges should review the material and rule one of three ways:
1. Yes, it involves state secrets and it's vital to making your case. In this circumstnace I guess the case needs to just be tossed, depending on what the person is asking for I guess. (I don't see a particular reason why the judge shouldn't be able to rule that it involves state secrets but it also proves the case, and award money to the petitioner. Obviously this depends on the particular case, the relief requested, etc though.)
2. Yes, it involves state secrets but you can still make your case without it. The information that falls under the state secret's act is unavailable in discovery or at any point during the trial, but you're free to make your case without it.
3. No state secrets, suck it up and defend the case with this in evidence.
That seems like a reasonable way to balance the need for secrecy in some cases against an unbridled government power to just go "no no, it's important, trust us."
That we should disregard what people actually said and slaughter kittens is exactly what I would expect a guy who's really bad at analogies to do.
Hrm. Yeah, fitting whatever words I want in your mouth is satisfying but ultimately stupid. He never said we should accept any particular idea. He simply said we should be less concerned with the label and more concerned with whether or not it's a good idea. I fail to see how that justifies your attitude, much less your tone of superiority. It's perfectly reasonable.
So far as "once you start out [. . .] there's no turning back," you'll have to do better than that. That's nothing but a worthless slippery slope argument (no pun intended). If supporting a particular initiative will inevitably lead to the end of our, uh, tulip beds, "trust me, it will" comes nowhere near the mark of evidence, nor of intelligent debate. But then again since you start out slinging insults at somebody for a perverted interpretation of what they said, I would expect little else.
If I make money by sending people to you, which makes you money, I think that's the definition of a win-win situation. It doesn't entitle you to any portion of the profits I make from the activity.
As others have pointed out, if the newspapers really had such a problem with what was happening they could simply use a robots.txt or otherwise have themselves removed from Google News. That way everybody who visits would have to come directly through their own website and increase their own page views and thus ad impressions. They also know that's suicide. Services like Google bring them far more money in increased traffic than they would get with greatly reduced traffic and marginally increased profit from impressions, or they would have made that change long ago.
They just want to have it both ways. "Yes, continue to send us business please. And oh yeah, pay us for that honor." Google should tell them to go fuck themselves. If anything, the newspapers should be paying a "finder's fee" for Google sending them business, not the other way around. As it stands, Google's "finder's fee" is coming indirectly from a third party
Unfortunately, they're also competing against themselves. Take my story from just today:
I had heard a song and decided I wanted it. I poked around a little bit but couldn't find the song; I didn't see it in iTunes, not on Amazon mP3, not on Walmart's MP3 service. I could get the whole CD from Amazon, but apparently it was only released on a Canadian label in Canada, and I wasn't inclined to pay $25 to buy an import--particularly when I had never heard the other songs on the CD and only wanted that one.
Eventually I went to the artist's website. "Ah HA!" I said to myself. There was a "buy this on iTunes" link. I had no idea how I missed it on iTunes the first time, but no matter. Click the link, iTunes pops up dutifully. And--what's this? "This item is not available in the US version of iTunes. Click here to switch stores." Okay, no problem. Except that apparently it is a problem, since as a US customer I'm not special enough to buy anything from the iTunes Canadian store.
So I pirated the damn song.
I literally tried to give these people my money. I went out of my way to do so, I registered with iTunes and was about to buy the first song I've ever bought from them (I don't care for it or Apple very much) just to give them my money--and they refused it. There's certainly no TECHNICAL reason they couldn't have given me the song; in fact, they had to go out of their way to impose the technical limitation that I couldn't get it. But for whatever reason, that was the choice they made. So I walked away.
I say all that just to get to this: They still don't understand the Internet. They want to have their cake and eat it too*; to have their exclusivity and licensing deals, to continue selling music at frankly inflated prices and only pay lip service to the way the Internet has and WILL change their industry. Well, so be it. They're the copyright owners. But so long as they go out of their way to gouge us on prices (it seriously costs as much to buy the CD online as get it from the store now?!), prevent "undesirables" from buying their music and otherwise make the legal route the most unreasonable, largest pain in the ass way of getting music... they'll never stand any chance against piracy. I don't feel the slightest bit bad about what I did today. I would have paid the $1.29 even though I think it's too expensive. I would have paid the $0.99 feeling the same way. I couldn't. Until this sort of nonsense changes, they have little chance of actually getting any number of fence-sitters to their side. So long as piracy remains both the cheapest and the easiest way of acquiring things, it will remain the biggest.
This is my annoyance as a US customer, and in reality I have access to the majority of things I might want. Imagine how many would-be customers they're shutting out even from US operations by no doubt excluding the rest of the world as I was excluded from the Canadian offering. Think they'll learn?
* Stupidest expression ever? I think so.
You might be right that the law has become too complex, but the defense having a right to see ALL evidence and interview all witnesses that are brought to the attention of the prosecution is hardly new or complex. Lawyers don't get to hide evidence just because it doesn't suit their case, and I'd call that considerably more than a procedural mistake--they violated this man's fifth and sixth amendment Constitutional rights.
Personally I'd start hearings to sanction or disbar these prosecutors. If there's even a whiff that this was intentional rather than an outrageously huge oversight, they should lose the ability to practice criminal law. Period.
The process matters much more than the outcome.
The problem with your logic is that "search engines" aren't one homogeneous entity. If suddenly people can't find the news they're looking for through Search Engine A, it won't be long before they begin trying Search Engine B instead. This instantly becomes a simple means of differentiation between engines. To use a real-world example, don't you think MSN or Yahoo would be absolutely dying for Google to stop listing sites with AP news articles?
I also think you're underestimating the reach of the AP. The majority of news (in the US) comes from the AP or use the AP reporting as a basis, and as such they do carry a heavy influence. Other outlets might be able to get away without paying the AP, but I think search engines will pay up long before they start trying to blacklist it.
Money.
Whether we like it or not, it costs a ton of money to run for major political office. Most of us have heard that line about a congressman needing to raise about $10,000 a month from the day he is elected to mount a re-election campaign. And that's "only" $240,000, to be one of 435. Imagine how much it costs to run for the Senate and be 1 of 100; imagine how much to be president, where you're the only one and at the top of the political food chain. (Or don't imagine: I didn't see, at quick glance, a definitive number for how much he spent, but according to Wikipedia, Obama alone raised $650 million dollars for his presidential campaign.)
These political families have one (or both) of two things going for them: Money, or the ability to quickly raise it. They also have a pseudo-celebrity status that allows them to get some free advertisement, particularly early on, just because of who their family members were. I don't begrudge them that or blame the media; I think it's a story worth mentioning, even if it should die quickly after.
That said, the two examples you gave really are the only two in national politics; there is no "etc." And I wouldn't say that the Bushes were American royalty (I'd argue even more strenuously the suggestion that they ARE). The Kennedy's certainly are, and I think for good reason; whatever you think of their politics, you can't deny the effect that their stories have on the country. From poor immigrant to political power. Two of them assassinated. One crazy and given a lobotomy. Plane explosions, plane crashes, stillborn babies, leg cancer in twelve year old children. I'm not a superstitious type, but check out a book or a show on History channel about the Kennedy Curse; it really is fascinating. For accuracy's sake, though, even after all of that and all of their successes, it wasn't enough to get Caroline Kennedy appointed to Hillary Clinton's senate seat in New York.
It would still be retarded. According to the article, over 50 businesses' sites are down, and some people can't dial 911 because several of the biggest companies are telephone companies--all because of this raid. Even if they do happen to find exactly what they're looking for on one of these machines, they've grossly overstepped their bounds or what any reasonable person would find an accept breadth to their search.
If they've done all of this over a case of COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT, that doesn't make it better. It makes it much, much worse. They damn well BETTER find terrorism or kiddie porn just to save face, and I'd still be pissed off even then. This is supposed to be a land of laws and process. You don't get to seize everybody's server because you think one of them might house something wrong.
Completely logical. But are we really talking about a situation where the IT directors for the state are going to suggest upgrading to an OS where all of those things are true, but a state lawmaker with no particular technical knowledge (that we know of anyway) gets it right?
If all those things are true, the IT guys should know that better and faster than a politician. No law should be necessary essentially saying "so uh, in case you don't know how to do your job we're not letting you upgrade." I do particularly agree with you on Vista vs. Win7, and I'm sure the IT directors would agree with you as well. NO point in upgrading to Vista right now with Win7 coming very soon.
If they're not true, again, the IT directors should be making those evaluations and if they truly believe the upgrade is worthwhile, they shouldn't be handcuffed by a budget maker. (I'd PERSONALLY consider it ridiculously stupid and start looking into whether or not that person is qualified, but if we have these IT managers we need to let them do their jobs or replace them with somebody we're confident can do so.)
Of course it is. Nothing you said is incorrect on its merits, but if, for whatever reason, the various IT leaders/system administrators decided that there's value in migration and the guy writing the checks says no, what is that but micromanaging? The boss doesn't have any particular expertise; he's not even directly responsible for hiring those who do, but somewhere in there system there ARE users whose entire job it is to determine what IT purchases are worthwhile and which aren't. Why isn't it those peoples' decision? Presumably, based on the existence of this rider, they used to have the unilateral authority to make that decision (obviously within the constraints of their own budgets). What's so special now that we need a new law forbidding it?
I'm no lover of Microsoft, and all in all the rider amuses me. What bothers me, though, is the possibility (probability!) that this senator is making this decision based on Vista's bad press. Does he have any particular idea what he's talking about, or has he just read the business section an awful lot? The former is at least a moderate reason to get involved in management at that level; the latter is not.
A few years ago, I was required to read such a study for a Telecommunications Economics course at my university. The main conclusions of that study were thus (all are direct quotes from the study):
1. "Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero."
2. "Even in the most pessimistic specification, five thousand downloads are needed to displace a single album sale."
3. "The business model of major labels relies heavily on a limited number of superstar albums. For these albums, we find that the impact of file sharing on sales is likely to be positive."
4. "Our estimates indicate that less popular artists who sell few albums are most likely to be negatively affected by file sharing."
The study was done by Felix Oberholzer from Harvard Business School and Koleman Stumpf from UNC Chapel Hill. It was written in 2004 and I believe the actual study was done in 2002. I can't share the PDF myself because I don't think I have any server capable of withstanding a slashdotting, but a quick Google search turns up this link which appears to be the same: http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_March2004.pdf
Like most slashdotters suppose, their basic conclusion is that the majority of file downloaders would not have become paying customers. I think anybody being reasonable would agree that that is true; even if you may have bought a handful of the albums of songs you downloaded, you're very highly unlikely to have bought even a majority of albums from which you download songs.
I'll leave it up to others to determine the study's validity, but there it is and those are its conclusions.