No, he's right, and the circular reasoning you espouse, based on a spurious premise (external rules, and agencies such as police, governments, etc.are "necessary") is precisely what is holding back the advance of civilization.
I'll ignore for the moment that this sounds like flamebait, but are you really espousing anarchism as a political model for advancing civilization? Please explain how civilization would work WITHOUT rules. Even the most primitive civilizations have rules, typically lots of rules.
Because hundreds of years of experience with markets has shown it is. Read your history and economics textbooks.
Your analogy with policing is a false one.
No, it isn't, and you don't provide any justification whatsoever for saying it is false. You could at least try to convince me.
The best reason for policing is to stop people from interfering with my life, e.g., through theft and murder, whereas market regulation interferes with my life.
Market regulation also has its benefits, just as police can also restrict your freedoms. Large businesses depend on government setting marketplace regulations to ensure that all companies know the standards of behavior. Again, regulations aren't inherently bad.
Not only are these things different, they're opposed. One increases my freedom to live my life unhindered and the other actually decreases it.
Give me some examples. I can certainly come up with some good examples of how market regulation can benefit you and the marketplace. Again, just because some regulations aren't in your interest you have to avoid "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" and declaring them all to be bad.
This is just more commie market regulation.
Everyone knows Free Markets means Freedom!
Market regulation is bad right?
No, market regulation is neither bad nor good...it is simply a necessity, much as police are a necessity when large numbers of individuals are involved. Like civilized society, markets need rules too. When properly formulated and enforced, regulations ensure that everyone has a level playing field.
Regulations can be good or bad, or neither, or both simultaneously. It all depends on how well the regulations achieve their goals...and whether you agree with them.
The best solution is to drop all regulation, including regulating who can lay cable, fiber, copper, etc.
Visualize the street in front of your driveway being dug up every 6 months. Imagine the problems and lawsuits as cable, fiber, and copper installation contractors competing to lay new conduits quickly and cheaply do inadequate work. This would be a recipe for disaster. Consider the waste of resources and duplication of unneeded bandwidth. Consider what happened to the telecom industry just recently. Ask me about the endless trucks parked in front of my house as the ownership of my cable company changed three times...and ripped out the work of the last company three times.
Once the decision is made to legislate a monopoly, regulation is needed to maintain it fairly. At that point, it's essentially a govt run industry. With little incentive to improve in infrastructure due to lack of competition, this solution generally isn't very good.
Agreed.
In this particular instance deregulation is not a bad solution for DSL only since, even though the Bells have a govt mandated monopoly on copper, they still have competition from cable and satellite, giving them market competition to bring down costs and improve quality if they want to have any customers.
As others have noted the DSL boom was the result of deregulation requirements that allowed the competitive local exchange carriers access to the "local loop." Giving the Baby Bells/ILECs exclusive access to that infrastructure is not in the consumer's interests and simply restores the barriers to competition. Satellite can't compete with landline (cable/DSL/optical) services on a cost/performance basis and cable modem won't provide adequate competition as most markets are locked into a single (if any) cable provider.
The deregulation of the Bell monopoly was a positive move for the telecom industry. If it weren't for the competition from new providers and the products that were brought to market we'd still have ancient, outmoded technology and exorbitant prices. Giving exclusive access rights back to the same companies that had become so bloated, incompetant, and inefficient as to impede technology and innovation is just plain nuts.
I love it when people who don't understand the history of the present situation try to act like they know something.
Finally the bells can use their *property* without subsidising their competitors.
Property that was paid for via a government protected, anticompetitive monopoly with tariffed rates that kept costs high and federal laws that prevented competition. Line sharing simply recognized the reality of how those lines were paid for and how the law kept others from competing. We payed artificially high prices for decades to finance that property with the stated purpose of developing a public infrastructure...not as an act of "corporate welfare" for the Bell system.
This will be a good thing in the long term 3-5 years.
No better than what happened when the cable companies kept increasing rates and not improving service when THEY didn't have any competition. Think about how bad the cable is now...even WITH the competition from satellite services. With most consumers having only one, perhaps two broadband options left to them you can expect the costs to rise, bandwidth to get metered, and content to be prioritized via PPPoE. Fewer choices is NOT a good thing. Don't believe me? Ask any economist. And note that the non-Bell ISPs *consistently* beat the service ratings of Bell ISPs...see Broadband Reports.
As for comparing us to South Korea...? Do you really think our situation in the U.S. is even remotely similar to that of South Korea???:)
With previous rules there was no incentive to upgrade their systems because then their competitors would be able to use it too. Now we can have: cable, phone, satelite, wireless, and (perhaps) power line all competing.
With the previous rules the Bells simply followed the strategy of deliberately keeping their equipment primitive and broken to block competition long enough to put them out of business. They knew they were the choke point for the CLECs, and that if they could deny them revenue long enough they could put them out of business. And with most of the CLECs the strategy worked...most of the CLECs went under. Here in California Pacific Bell/SBC had a whole host of tricks to make it difficult for CLECs like Covad to get wire pairs for DSL installs...but remarkably had no problem at all when it came to handing out those same pairs to companies installing home alarms.
This is a good thing even if it is not the socialist position.
Drop the stupid rhetoric. The old, regulated Bell system was clearly more like socialism than what we have now. The US government protected them from competition for the better part of a century to allow them to build up their infrastructure. Ensuring competition by allowing competing providers to use the existing infrastructure just makes sense. Would you require each trucking company to build its own highway to transport your frozen chickens to market?
So does this mean that i386 compatible computers will continue to evolve into disposable consumer electronics rather than the upgradable systems based on standard, interchangeable components that we've become accustomed to?
This is absurd. They will produce cigarettes with virtually all the cancer-causing potential of regular cigarettes without the nicotine...the drug that people crave and is the major inducement to smoke. In other words, all the cancer and none of the pleasure.
Tobacco companies learned a long time ago that the nicotine was the key to smoking. They know that if you reduce the nicotine content in cigarettes the result is people smoke more cigarettes and keep the smoke in their lungs longer to compensate. This has the effect of 1) selling more cigarettes and 2) causing people to inhale more carcinogens. It seems to me the only ones to benefit from these effects are tobacco sellers and Oncologists.
The trademark holder does not have to send a C & D, they could have contacted Mr. Boemler and offered any number of resolutions, discussed the matter etc, etc.
As others have noted the C & D is a standard, normal legal recourse for a trademark defense. Although the trademark holder COULD have done any number of things, they shouldn't be criticized for doing exactly what any trademark attorney (or court) would tell them they should have done. It isn't the responsibility of the trademark holder to negotiate with someone who is presumptively violating their copyrights...that burden is on the other party. Doing anything else could be construed as ceding your rights away.
Defense of a trademark does not mean you auto-spam with C & D letters. Defense means that you actively ensure that there are no violations, the C & D is only one method of defense.
Methinks you doth protest the C & D too much. Don't overreact to it. Also:
The C & D is the legally accepted first step to mount a defense, and
Sending one C & D letter doesn't constitute "auto-spam" in my book.
Mr. Boemler and the rest of the public have good reason to feel an affront due to the fact that the trademark owner went straight to the C & D rather than exploring more civil methods of defending their trademark.
I disagree. Their affront is misplaced. If anything they ought to take issue with the system that makes trademark holders have to behave this way to defend their trademark rights, not with the people who just do what the law tells them they must do. Perhaps these people would be a bit more understanding if they were more cognizant of the law.
What you are suggesting would be like my having to get a restraining order against anyone I met, in case I didn't want to speak with them. Or better, like a previous poster mentioned, hiring someone to wake you up at 5:30 in the am screaming "YOU'RE WRONG!" instead of just replying here. (I really liked that one, my analogy wasn't so good.)
No, I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. Your analogy is wildly inaccurate and somewhat over the top. No legal restraints were adjudicated by a court, no yelling and screaming was done...just a short letter asking them to quit using their trademark, drafted by a person who has a license to practice law.
Anyone familiar with trademark and copyright laws understands the cease and desist letter for what it is...something the holders of PCI trademark MUST send to anyone who uses their trademark without first being granted the right to use it.
There is absolutely no reason to read malice into the C & D letter as Mr. Boemler has. The law is very clear on this point...if you don't *defend* your trademark vigorously as soon as you learn that others are using it without your authorization, you can lose your trademark rights. The C&D letter did NOT imply, in any way, that Mr. Boemler had to discontinue his website. The section requesting (note the lawyer's use of the word "request" rather than "demand") he work through IBM was only a suggestion. Its presence in the C&D letter obviously confused people who might be inclined to see its proximity to the previous demand to remove their trademark as an additional demand.
As other posters have indicated, all that Mr. Boemler needs to do is to stop using PCI in ways that violate their trademark.
[What I'd like to know is] whatever happened to Alta Vista. Remember when they ruled the search engine universe?
The relevant history can be found here. AltaVista was probably the single biggest casualty of Google...prior to Google it had the largest index of webpages. But Google did a better job of indexing and presenting the content for people's needs, then the index became the largest on the web. AltaVista lost the race, so much so that most people nowadays have never even heard of AltaVista.
Competition between search engines spawned Google. Google did a better job, so it became more popular. If someone else can do a better job...that's progress. Google has a lead and name recognition. If they are smart and keep making good decisions they can stay ahead. Otherwise they will fall into the shadows as AltaVista did years ago.
Sorry you misunderstood. This was a general "you" not directed at you as a person. In the sense of, "You can run around and shoot people in the game and it's fantastic" when talking to someone that doesn't own said video game.
Thanks for the clarification.
Everybody knows that commercials are what pay for the TV shows to be produced. There is no debate about this. By consisting skipping the commercials, you [in the everybody who does it, not you as a person] are causing financial loss to the network. No matter how you look at it, that's what happens.
Fine, that is consumers doing what consumers do...making choices. Again, the point was there is no implied commitment by the consumer. I believe you've said elsewhere that you've studied economics so I don't mean to patronize you by telling you this. Yes, if people choose not to do what the advertisers want them to do then there will be consequences. It's always that way. But that is by choice, not by commitment. Commitment implies duty; that's a fundimental principle of law. But is no duty to watch commercials, just as there is no duty to provide free entertainment.
Just about the cigarettes, I'm assuming you are talking about the Camel ads that made smoking look cool. There has never been an ad that said that they improved health.
Never? I think not. See this link for a TV ad from Phillip Morris that that made just that claim. You'll also see an ad where Flintstones cartoon characters were used to sell the butts. And how about that young, terrific looking Ronald Reagan selling Chesterfields? Ah, those were the good old days....
I did not imply everybody had an obligation to watch. I said that you have an obligation to not use technology to strip out every commercial on every show you watch. This is where you seem to be confused.
I'm not confused when I point out that, if you don't have an obligation to watch, then you don't have ANY obligation to watch, regardless of how you choose to avoid watching...by going to the bathroom, taking a nap, having your wife or child mute the volume, or employing a servant to do the same. Is your argument some crypto-elitist rant against cheap and popular ways *of doing things that huge numbers of people do, manually, all the time*? You seem to be hung up on the methods rather than the core principles. And you seem married to the idea that people are obligated to stick with the status quo, entrenched interests, and old methodologies. Well, they aren't. And that's a *good thing*. If they were we wouldn't have any new technology. Don't you believe in the marketplace? If commercials go away how do you know something better won't take their place? HBO charges money and does fine without commercials...and they seem to be going strong. The Market has spoken, end of story. Like you have spoken when you say you don't watch TV. Again, *no obligation*. That little box seems to have crossed a personal boundary for you. Well, some people like change and embrace it, others dislike change and fight it. But like it or not, change comes.
They don't take any of my rights. I don't watch TV.
Just because you don't choose to exercise your rights doesn't mean they aren't being taken away from you...it just means that you won't miss them. Big difference. You might not care, but others certainly do. People ought to be less cavalier about giving up their rights...it can be a real bitch to get them back. We've really become too complacent about protecting our rights...regardless of whether we give them up to government or business or whatnot.
I decide to get riled up about music, the PVR folks are wrong.
You are entitled to your feelings and beliefs. God bless America.
So are people who trade music without paying a dime.
This isn't germane...you may share similar feelings on both matters, but they aren't the same issue. Your PVR concerns seem to revolve around a personal sense of obligation to support a pre-existing marketing model, while the pirating of copyrighted music is a clear violation of the law. There is a big difference. Using a PVR to skip commercials isn't illegal...the uses you object to are protected as "fair use" by federal law going back over two decades.
I didn't realize that people had a right to strip adverts out of a show though. I didn't admit to changing the definition, I merely commented that to the rest of the world depriving someone of something, even if it's tertiary financial damage, but taking a non-tangible digital copy of something, is theft.
Yes, you have rights you didn't realize. You have the right to "time shift" TV programs on VCRs (or PVRs) to view later (Supreme Court, 1984) *even though the industry fought it*. You have the right to make copies *for your personal use*. In fact, a 1992 law allows you to make limited digital copies of music...believe it or not every time you buy a blank tape or blank audio CD *you are paying music royalties; they included in the price of blank tape or disc. Did you know that?
Most people say, "Copying mp3s over the internet without buying the CD is theft." Definitions are what the masses say they are, not what you think to satisfy your agenda or your opinions on what is and is not ethical.
You just won't drop your use of this legally inapplicable argument. Let me make it painfully clear: Skipping over ads isn't giving away someone else's intellectual property. Skipping over something you recorded for your own personal use is not copyright infringement. IT IS NOT THEFT. Period. End of discussion. I know you may feel this isn't right, you may feel powerfully that it SHOULD be theft, but that doesn't make it so.
Beliefs create laws, in case you missed that.
No, I didn't miss that either. But beliefs aren't laws until they're codified. Laws help resolve conflicting beliefs.
As I said before, soon you will have to enter a special code in, or pay per show, and everyone will complain because they were too fucking stupid to just get up and take a piss instead of cutting out all the commercials.
Well, presumably *you* won't complain because you don't watch anyway. Most people didn't complain...they "spoke with their feet" and took their business elsewhere, first to cable, then to satellite. Some of the most highly acclaimed programming now comes from premium channels like HBO and Cinemax. Broadcast television has been lame for a very long time, well before Newton Minnow called it "a vast wasteland" in 1961.
It's legal now, but soon it probably won't be. At least not civilly. Wait for agreements before you watch a show, or at the bottom of every show.
Man, I thought you'd NEVER concede this simple point...yes, it IS legal now. And let me say, unequivocally, that I understand your legitimate concerns. Your feelings on the matter are completely reasonable. You feel people are taking advantage of freely given entertainment without paying anything, even their eyeballs, in return. Perhaps you feel this is selfish and shortsighted. If so you're probably right. But being selfish and shortsighted isn't illegal, per se, although we frequently wish it were. When we feel strongly enough about it sometimes we pass a law. If you are so inclined you can send a message to Senators Hollings, Hatch, and Biden...I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.
It's an implied commitment. If you don't like commercials, fine, don't watch them. But then you are going to bitch when they cancel all the shows you like because advert dollars don't work. Or they'll make you enter in a special code that gets displayed through the adverts and you will bitch about that.
Your logic is still flawed. There is absolutely no "implied commitment" by the viewer to watch commercials, as there is equally no "implied commitment" by the advertiser to provide you anything of value. It's a case of "take it or leave it"...on both sides of the tube. You clearly aren't a lawyer.
But then you are going to bitch when they cancel all the shows you like because advert dollars don't work.
I've watched MOST of the shows I've liked get cancelled prematurely *regardless of how many commercials I watched*. I can't begin to name them all...NBC's original Star Trek, NBC News Overnight, ABC's Police Squad!, Fox's Action...the list goes on and on. The cancellation of most of the shows I liked had nothing to do with skipping commercials and everything to do with the fact that THERE WEREN'T ENOUGH GULLIBLE CONSUMERS WATCHING THEM TO SATISFY THE ADVERTISER'S MARKETING OBJECTIVES. Does that mean that if I want to watch these shows I have an "implied commitment" to lobotomize myself to meet the target demographic? I think not.
Not thinking you are screwing over the networks by deliberately circumventing all adverts with PVRs is like trying to say smoking is healthy.
This is TRULY IRONIC. *I'm old enough to remember advertisements that said that smoking WAS healthy.* Your argument is just as perverse as those advertisements were, advertisements that marketed cigarettes to young people--advertisements that you imply we all had an obligation to watch.
You are try to excuse your own bad behavior.
Now you're just name calling...an ad hominem attack. This is even MORE ironic because I don't even own a PVR! Just because I've refuted the logic of your argument against those who do use PVRs you now think you have the right to recklessly accuse me of bad behavior. That's pretty weak. Believe it or not, I use my 7 year old videocassette recorder almost exclusively to view videotapes I rent; I only own one blank videotape and have only used the VCR TWICE to record a TV program. This underlines how desperate you are to make your ill-conceived point.
You will lose.
Yeah, right. Resistance is futile!:^)
Maybe it's not the old school definition of thievery, but that's the ironic thing about the "Give Me Everything I want for Free" geeks.
Don't you find it the least bit ironic that you have just admitted to changing the definition of thievery...just as the big media have attempted to do? How much more of your freedom do you wish to give away simply by allowing others to redefine your "old school" rights for you? You seem desperate to justify all this by vaguely equating it to blatant copyright infringement, a comparison that simply isn't valid.
They use new technology, and when someone says it's wrong with old words, they say, "Nope, because it's digital it can't be theft!"
No, what they are doing was always perfectly legal using the old technology (editing out or skipping over commercials), so doing it with newer, more efficient technology isn't any less legal, no matter how much the advertisers yammer about it. You seem to think that improvements in technology that collide with certain business perogatives ought to be illegal and that laws ought to be reinterpreted to give advertisers rights they never had to begin with. You're entitled to your personal beliefs, but regardless of how strongly you feel them they aren't equivalent to law.
You are depriving them of something that belongs to them. Advertising dollars. I don't buy into the music piracy shit, but you are stealing free programming when you strip out all the adverts from every show you watch.
No, your logic is flawed. The viewer who declines to view the advertising is not a thief as there is no commitment by the viewer to watch the commercial, just as there is no requirement that your read your junk mail--even though junk mail may subsidize our mail system. The advertizer isn't guaranteed by the distributor that you'll watch their ads...they cannot legitimately make such a representation. They are selling the OPPORTUNITY to present their ad to you. What you do when the ad is presented is up to you. It is a matter of personal choice. There is no obligation to watch. If you don't watch, then the opportunity for marketing goes away and the distributor has nothing of value to sell to the advertizer.
Of course, if ads no longer have value to the advertizer then in the long run the current advertising model will become outmoded. But this will not be subversion or anything illegal or immoral...it will simply be the public exercising their right of choice. It is then up to the advertizer to figure out that his chosen marketing methodology had become ineffective and that a different technique must be employed.
You know what, this guy brought the very Internet that we have all grown to know and love to the homes of millions of Americans.
That's like saying that $5 a gallon generic Burgundy introduced the masses to the appreciation of fine wines. What it really did was funnel an enormous number of proudly technophobic newbies onto the Internet.
I think it's possible that somebody wildly overestimated the scope of the project. Or wildly underestimated the resources that could be applied to it. Or both.
Many different factors caused the project to take less time than initially planned, not the least of which was clever algorythmic techniques to speed up the decoding process. All of them combined led to a quicker result.
As I understand it, the vast majority of pure research is being funded by private companies now. So even if that research is being done at universities-- which it is, largely-- it's being paid for with corporate dollars. Which, some people's opinions to the contrary, is not inherently a bad thing.
I believe you meant "basic" research rather than "pure" research. Basic research (as opposed to "applied" research) is "experimental and theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge without a specific application in view". There has been a general decline in spending on basic research by corporations in recent years due to the high cost and uncertainty of return on the investment, leading to the shift of basic research to universities. This has had good and bad effects on universities, who have benefited from the funds but have also found increasing limitations and restrictions placed upon them by their corporate sponsors. For example, there have been well documented reports of drug companies putting restrictions in grant contracts to public researchers preventing them from telling the public of any hazardous effects of their drugs, even when those same drugs are in current use by the public.
So their is no black or white answer to which is better, public or private research. Perhaps it is good to have both, just as it is good to have a multiplicity of competitors in a market economy. It may just help to keep everyone honest.
The myth that the rich are all conservative is an old lie.
And the message you are replying to said nothing of the sort, so your comment is irrelevant. Re-read it...it said the gatekeepers, by and large, are not liberals. You jumped to a conclusion and read something into the message that wasn't there. Nice straw man you created....
Warren Buffet (The second richest man in the U.S and prime funder of the Washington Post) and Ted Turner (CNN) are well know liberals.
Here you go on to use *exactly two examples* to justify your irrelevant point.
Rich people are for the most part not conservative.
...and, continuing on with your irrelevancy, you provide this absolutely meaningless statement.
George Bush lost almost half the vote of those making more than $100,000 a year in the last election.
Again, completely irrelevant to the discussion of the media...a red herring.
This whole story is actually a really great look at the liberal bias of American media, arising not as part of some conspiracy, but rather from the simple fact that a number of journalists are in fact liberals and thus see policies of the Democratic Party as "normal" or expected and only Republican policies as obtuse or idiotic.
Your facts are a bit TOO simple, as they ignore a critical reality. By and large journalists have their work edited and reviewed by editors and managers...gatekeepers who were carefully selected by ownership/management to reflect the editorial desires of those who control the business. These gatekeepers, by and large, are NOT liberals. And they control what gets published/aired. It has always been this way and this reality won't change anytime soon.
BTW, can anyone tell me why the Denon [denon.com] amplifier has different Watt ratings? This PDF [denon.jp] states 110w at 6 ohms, 110w at 8 ohm, (I'm OK up to here) but also at 8 ohms 70w but with 0.08% THD. 70w should be enough for what I want but it still puzzles me.
Just a guess, but perhaps the higher output rating assumes a higher distortion figure? The lower figure would be the number you would use if you didn't want to exceed that 0.08% THD figure.
You know, when I submitted the story last night, I could have sworn the original article did say something about it being illegal. My mistake. But it's immoral and that's equivalent.
As much as I might agree with your sentiment, immoral is NOT equivalent to illegal. That makes TWO mistakes.:^)
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No, he's right, and the circular reasoning you espouse, based on a spurious premise (external rules, and agencies such as police, governments, etc.are "necessary") is precisely what is holding back the advance of civilization.
I'll ignore for the moment that this sounds like flamebait, but are you really espousing anarchism as a political model for advancing civilization? Please explain how civilization would work WITHOUT rules. Even the most primitive civilizations have rules, typically lots of rules.
Why is market regulation a necessity?
Because hundreds of years of experience with markets has shown it is. Read your history and economics textbooks.
Your analogy with policing is a false one.
No, it isn't, and you don't provide any justification whatsoever for saying it is false. You could at least try to convince me.
The best reason for policing is to stop people from interfering with my life, e.g., through theft and murder, whereas market regulation interferes with my life.
Market regulation also has its benefits, just as police can also restrict your freedoms. Large businesses depend on government setting marketplace regulations to ensure that all companies know the standards of behavior. Again, regulations aren't inherently bad.
Not only are these things different, they're opposed. One increases my freedom to live my life unhindered and the other actually decreases it.
Give me some examples. I can certainly come up with some good examples of how market regulation can benefit you and the marketplace. Again, just because some regulations aren't in your interest you have to avoid "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" and declaring them all to be bad.
This is just more commie market regulation.
Everyone knows Free Markets means Freedom!
Market regulation is bad right?
No, market regulation is neither bad nor good...it is simply a necessity, much as police are a necessity when large numbers of individuals are involved. Like civilized society, markets need rules too. When properly formulated and enforced, regulations ensure that everyone has a level playing field.
Regulations can be good or bad, or neither, or both simultaneously. It all depends on how well the regulations achieve their goals...and whether you agree with them.
The best solution is to drop all regulation, including regulating who can lay cable, fiber, copper, etc.
Visualize the street in front of your driveway being dug up every 6 months. Imagine the problems and lawsuits as cable, fiber, and copper installation contractors competing to lay new conduits quickly and cheaply do inadequate work. This would be a recipe for disaster. Consider the waste of resources and duplication of unneeded bandwidth. Consider what happened to the telecom industry just recently. Ask me about the endless trucks parked in front of my house as the ownership of my cable company changed three times...and ripped out the work of the last company three times.
Once the decision is made to legislate a monopoly, regulation is needed to maintain it fairly. At that point, it's essentially a govt run industry. With little incentive to improve in infrastructure due to lack of competition, this solution generally isn't very good.
Agreed.
In this particular instance deregulation is not a bad solution for DSL only since, even though the Bells have a govt mandated monopoly on copper, they still have competition from cable and satellite, giving them market competition to bring down costs and improve quality if they want to have any customers.
As others have noted the DSL boom was the result of deregulation requirements that allowed the competitive local exchange carriers access to the "local loop." Giving the Baby Bells/ILECs exclusive access to that infrastructure is not in the consumer's interests and simply restores the barriers to competition. Satellite can't compete with landline (cable/DSL/optical) services on a cost/performance basis and cable modem won't provide adequate competition as most markets are locked into a single (if any) cable provider.
The deregulation of the Bell monopoly was a positive move for the telecom industry. If it weren't for the competition from new providers and the products that were brought to market we'd still have ancient, outmoded technology and exorbitant prices. Giving exclusive access rights back to the same companies that had become so bloated, incompetant, and inefficient as to impede technology and innovation is just plain nuts.
I love it when people who don't understand the history of the present situation try to act like they know something.
:)
Finally the bells can use their *property* without subsidising their competitors.
Property that was paid for via a government protected, anticompetitive monopoly with tariffed rates that kept costs high and federal laws that prevented competition. Line sharing simply recognized the reality of how those lines were paid for and how the law kept others from competing. We payed artificially high prices for decades to finance that property with the stated purpose of developing a public infrastructure...not as an act of "corporate welfare" for the Bell system.
This will be a good thing in the long term 3-5 years.
No better than what happened when the cable companies kept increasing rates and not improving service when THEY didn't have any competition. Think about how bad the cable is now...even WITH the competition from satellite services. With most consumers having only one, perhaps two broadband options left to them you can expect the costs to rise, bandwidth to get metered, and content to be prioritized via PPPoE. Fewer choices is NOT a good thing. Don't believe me? Ask any economist. And note that the non-Bell ISPs *consistently* beat the service ratings of Bell ISPs...see Broadband Reports.
As for comparing us to South Korea...? Do you really think our situation in the U.S. is even remotely similar to that of South Korea???
With previous rules there was no incentive to upgrade their systems because then their competitors would be able to use it too. Now we can have: cable, phone, satelite, wireless, and (perhaps) power line all competing.
With the previous rules the Bells simply followed the strategy of deliberately keeping their equipment primitive and broken to block competition long enough to put them out of business. They knew they were the choke point for the CLECs, and that if they could deny them revenue long enough they could put them out of business. And with most of the CLECs the strategy worked...most of the CLECs went under. Here in California Pacific Bell/SBC had a whole host of tricks to make it difficult for CLECs like Covad to get wire pairs for DSL installs...but remarkably had no problem at all when it came to handing out those same pairs to companies installing home alarms.
This is a good thing even if it is not the socialist position.
Drop the stupid rhetoric. The old, regulated Bell system was clearly more like socialism than what we have now. The US government protected them from competition for the better part of a century to allow them to build up their infrastructure. Ensuring competition by allowing competing providers to use the existing infrastructure just makes sense. Would you require each trucking company to build its own highway to transport your frozen chickens to market?
So does this mean that i386 compatible computers will continue to evolve into disposable consumer electronics rather than the upgradable systems based on standard, interchangeable components that we've become accustomed to?
The only problem is that his beer tastes like laundry detergent.
This is absurd. They will produce cigarettes with virtually all the cancer-causing potential of regular cigarettes without the nicotine...the drug that people crave and is the major inducement to smoke. In other words, all the cancer and none of the pleasure.
Tobacco companies learned a long time ago that the nicotine was the key to smoking. They know that if you reduce the nicotine content in cigarettes the result is people smoke more cigarettes and keep the smoke in their lungs longer to compensate. This has the effect of 1) selling more cigarettes and 2) causing people to inhale more carcinogens. It seems to me the only ones to benefit from these effects are tobacco sellers and Oncologists.
Damn...sometimes life seems like nothing more than a perverse source of material for episodes of "The Simpsons."
As others have noted the C & D is a standard, normal legal recourse for a trademark defense. Although the trademark holder COULD have done any number of things, they shouldn't be criticized for doing exactly what any trademark attorney (or court) would tell them they should have done. It isn't the responsibility of the trademark holder to negotiate with someone who is presumptively violating their copyrights...that burden is on the other party. Doing anything else could be construed as ceding your rights away.
Defense of a trademark does not mean you auto-spam with C & D letters. Defense means that you actively ensure that there are no violations, the C & D is only one method of defense.
Methinks you doth protest the C & D too much. Don't overreact to it. Also:
- The C & D is the legally accepted first step to mount a defense, and
- Sending one C & D letter doesn't constitute "auto-spam" in my book.
Mr. Boemler and the rest of the public have good reason to feel an affront due to the fact that the trademark owner went straight to the C & D rather than exploring more civil methods of defending their trademark.I disagree. Their affront is misplaced. If anything they ought to take issue with the system that makes trademark holders have to behave this way to defend their trademark rights, not with the people who just do what the law tells them they must do. Perhaps these people would be a bit more understanding if they were more cognizant of the law.
What you are suggesting would be like my having to get a restraining order against anyone I met, in case I didn't want to speak with them. Or better, like a previous poster mentioned, hiring someone to wake you up at 5:30 in the am screaming "YOU'RE WRONG!" instead of just replying here. (I really liked that one, my analogy wasn't so good.)
No, I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. Your analogy is wildly inaccurate and somewhat over the top. No legal restraints were adjudicated by a court, no yelling and screaming was done...just a short letter asking them to quit using their trademark, drafted by a person who has a license to practice law.
(Stack Overflow..)
:^)
Ahh...nothing like a good overflow every now and then.
- divide overflow
Anyone familiar with trademark and copyright laws understands the cease and desist letter for what it is...something the holders of PCI trademark MUST send to anyone who uses their trademark without first being granted the right to use it.
There is absolutely no reason to read malice into the C & D letter as Mr. Boemler has. The law is very clear on this point...if you don't *defend* your trademark vigorously as soon as you learn that others are using it without your authorization, you can lose your trademark rights. The C&D letter did NOT imply, in any way, that Mr. Boemler had to discontinue his website. The section requesting (note the lawyer's use of the word "request" rather than "demand") he work through IBM was only a suggestion. Its presence in the C&D letter obviously confused people who might be inclined to see its proximity to the previous demand to remove their trademark as an additional demand.
As other posters have indicated, all that Mr. Boemler needs to do is to stop using PCI in ways that violate their trademark.
[What I'd like to know is] whatever happened to Alta Vista. Remember when they ruled the search engine universe?
The relevant history can be found here. AltaVista was probably the single biggest casualty of Google...prior to Google it had the largest index of webpages. But Google did a better job of indexing and presenting the content for people's needs, then the index became the largest on the web. AltaVista lost the race, so much so that most people nowadays have never even heard of AltaVista.
Competition between search engines spawned Google. Google did a better job, so it became more popular. If someone else can do a better job...that's progress. Google has a lead and name recognition. If they are smart and keep making good decisions they can stay ahead. Otherwise they will fall into the shadows as AltaVista did years ago.
Sorry you misunderstood. This was a general "you" not directed at you as a person. In the sense of, "You can run around and shoot people in the game and it's fantastic" when talking to someone that doesn't own said video game.
Thanks for the clarification.
Everybody knows that commercials are what pay for the TV shows to be produced. There is no debate about this. By consisting skipping the commercials, you [in the everybody who does it, not you as a person] are causing financial loss to the network. No matter how you look at it, that's what happens.
Fine, that is consumers doing what consumers do...making choices. Again, the point was there is no implied commitment by the consumer. I believe you've said elsewhere that you've studied economics so I don't mean to patronize you by telling you this. Yes, if people choose not to do what the advertisers want them to do then there will be consequences. It's always that way. But that is by choice, not by commitment. Commitment implies duty; that's a fundimental principle of law. But is no duty to watch commercials, just as there is no duty to provide free entertainment.
Just about the cigarettes, I'm assuming you are talking about the Camel ads that made smoking look cool. There has never been an ad that said that they improved health.
Never? I think not. See this link for a TV ad from Phillip Morris that that made just that claim. You'll also see an ad where Flintstones cartoon characters were used to sell the butts. And how about that young, terrific looking Ronald Reagan selling Chesterfields? Ah, those were the good old days....
I did not imply everybody had an obligation to watch. I said that you have an obligation to not use technology to strip out every commercial on every show you watch. This is where you seem to be confused.
I'm not confused when I point out that, if you don't have an obligation to watch, then you don't have ANY obligation to watch, regardless of how you choose to avoid watching...by going to the bathroom, taking a nap, having your wife or child mute the volume, or employing a servant to do the same. Is your argument some crypto-elitist rant against cheap and popular ways *of doing things that huge numbers of people do, manually, all the time*? You seem to be hung up on the methods rather than the core principles. And you seem married to the idea that people are obligated to stick with the status quo, entrenched interests, and old methodologies. Well, they aren't. And that's a *good thing*. If they were we wouldn't have any new technology. Don't you believe in the marketplace? If commercials go away how do you know something better won't take their place? HBO charges money and does fine without commercials...and they seem to be going strong. The Market has spoken, end of story. Like you have spoken when you say you don't watch TV. Again, *no obligation*. That little box seems to have crossed a personal boundary for you. Well, some people like change and embrace it, others dislike change and fight it. But like it or not, change comes.
They don't take any of my rights. I don't watch TV.
Just because you don't choose to exercise your rights doesn't mean they aren't being taken away from you...it just means that you won't miss them. Big difference. You might not care, but others certainly do. People ought to be less cavalier about giving up their rights...it can be a real bitch to get them back. We've really become too complacent about protecting our rights...regardless of whether we give them up to government or business or whatnot.
I decide to get riled up about music, the PVR folks are wrong.
You are entitled to your feelings and beliefs. God bless America.
So are people who trade music without paying a dime.
This isn't germane...you may share similar feelings on both matters, but they aren't the same issue. Your PVR concerns seem to revolve around a personal sense of obligation to support a pre-existing marketing model, while the pirating of copyrighted music is a clear violation of the law. There is a big difference. Using a PVR to skip commercials isn't illegal...the uses you object to are protected as "fair use" by federal law going back over two decades.
I didn't realize that people had a right to strip adverts out of a show though. I didn't admit to changing the definition, I merely commented that to the rest of the world depriving someone of something, even if it's tertiary financial damage, but taking a non-tangible digital copy of something, is theft.
Yes, you have rights you didn't realize. You have the right to "time shift" TV programs on VCRs (or PVRs) to view later (Supreme Court, 1984) *even though the industry fought it*. You have the right to make copies *for your personal use*. In fact, a 1992 law allows you to make limited digital copies of music...believe it or not every time you buy a blank tape or blank audio CD *you are paying music royalties; they included in the price of blank tape or disc. Did you know that?
Most people say, "Copying mp3s over the internet without buying the CD is theft." Definitions are what the masses say they are, not what you think to satisfy your agenda or your opinions on what is and is not ethical.
You just won't drop your use of this legally inapplicable argument. Let me make it painfully clear: Skipping over ads isn't giving away someone else's intellectual property. Skipping over something you recorded for your own personal use is not copyright infringement. IT IS NOT THEFT. Period. End of discussion. I know you may feel this isn't right, you may feel powerfully that it SHOULD be theft, but that doesn't make it so.
Beliefs create laws, in case you missed that.
No, I didn't miss that either. But beliefs aren't laws until they're codified. Laws help resolve conflicting beliefs.
As I said before, soon you will have to enter a special code in, or pay per show, and everyone will complain because they were too fucking stupid to just get up and take a piss instead of cutting out all the commercials.
Well, presumably *you* won't complain because you don't watch anyway. Most people didn't complain...they "spoke with their feet" and took their business elsewhere, first to cable, then to satellite. Some of the most highly acclaimed programming now comes from premium channels like HBO and Cinemax. Broadcast television has been lame for a very long time, well before Newton Minnow called it "a vast wasteland" in 1961.
It's legal now, but soon it probably won't be. At least not civilly. Wait for agreements before you watch a show, or at the bottom of every show.
Man, I thought you'd NEVER concede this simple point...yes, it IS legal now. And let me say, unequivocally, that I understand your legitimate concerns. Your feelings on the matter are completely reasonable. You feel people are taking advantage of freely given entertainment without paying anything, even their eyeballs, in return. Perhaps you feel this is selfish and shortsighted. If so you're probably right. But being selfish and shortsighted isn't illegal, per se, although we frequently wish it were. When we feel strongly enough about it sometimes we pass a law. If you are so inclined you can send a message to Senators Hollings, Hatch, and Biden...I'm sure they'd love to hear from you.
It's an implied commitment. If you don't like commercials, fine, don't watch them. But then you are going to bitch when they cancel all the shows you like because advert dollars don't work. Or they'll make you enter in a special code that gets displayed through the adverts and you will bitch about that.
:^)
Your logic is still flawed. There is absolutely no "implied commitment" by the viewer to watch commercials, as there is equally no "implied commitment" by the advertiser to provide you anything of value. It's a case of "take it or leave it"...on both sides of the tube. You clearly aren't a lawyer.
But then you are going to bitch when they cancel all the shows you like because advert dollars don't work.
I've watched MOST of the shows I've liked get cancelled prematurely *regardless of how many commercials I watched*. I can't begin to name them all...NBC's original Star Trek, NBC News Overnight, ABC's Police Squad!, Fox's Action...the list goes on and on. The cancellation of most of the shows I liked had nothing to do with skipping commercials and everything to do with the fact that THERE WEREN'T ENOUGH GULLIBLE CONSUMERS WATCHING THEM TO SATISFY THE ADVERTISER'S MARKETING OBJECTIVES. Does that mean that if I want to watch these shows I have an "implied commitment" to lobotomize myself to meet the target demographic? I think not.
Not thinking you are screwing over the networks by deliberately circumventing all adverts with PVRs is like trying to say smoking is healthy.
This is TRULY IRONIC. *I'm old enough to remember advertisements that said that smoking WAS healthy.* Your argument is just as perverse as those advertisements were, advertisements that marketed cigarettes to young people--advertisements that you imply we all had an obligation to watch.
You are try to excuse your own bad behavior.
Now you're just name calling...an ad hominem attack. This is even MORE ironic because I don't even own a PVR! Just because I've refuted the logic of your argument against those who do use PVRs you now think you have the right to recklessly accuse me of bad behavior. That's pretty weak. Believe it or not, I use my 7 year old videocassette recorder almost exclusively to view videotapes I rent; I only own one blank videotape and have only used the VCR TWICE to record a TV program. This underlines how desperate you are to make your ill-conceived point.
You will lose.
Yeah, right. Resistance is futile!
Maybe it's not the old school definition of thievery, but that's the ironic thing about the "Give Me Everything I want for Free" geeks.
Don't you find it the least bit ironic that you have just admitted to changing the definition of thievery...just as the big media have attempted to do? How much more of your freedom do you wish to give away simply by allowing others to redefine your "old school" rights for you? You seem desperate to justify all this by vaguely equating it to blatant copyright infringement, a comparison that simply isn't valid.
They use new technology, and when someone says it's wrong with old words, they say, "Nope, because it's digital it can't be theft!"
No, what they are doing was always perfectly legal using the old technology (editing out or skipping over commercials), so doing it with newer, more efficient technology isn't any less legal, no matter how much the advertisers yammer about it. You seem to think that improvements in technology that collide with certain business perogatives ought to be illegal and that laws ought to be reinterpreted to give advertisers rights they never had to begin with. You're entitled to your personal beliefs, but regardless of how strongly you feel them they aren't equivalent to law.
You are depriving them of something that belongs to them. Advertising dollars. I don't buy into the music piracy shit, but you are stealing free programming when you strip out all the adverts from every show you watch.
No, your logic is flawed. The viewer who declines to view the advertising is not a thief as there is no commitment by the viewer to watch the commercial, just as there is no requirement that your read your junk mail--even though junk mail may subsidize our mail system. The advertizer isn't guaranteed by the distributor that you'll watch their ads...they cannot legitimately make such a representation. They are selling the OPPORTUNITY to present their ad to you. What you do when the ad is presented is up to you. It is a matter of personal choice. There is no obligation to watch. If you don't watch, then the opportunity for marketing goes away and the distributor has nothing of value to sell to the advertizer.
Of course, if ads no longer have value to the advertizer then in the long run the current advertising model will become outmoded. But this will not be subversion or anything illegal or immoral...it will simply be the public exercising their right of choice. It is then up to the advertizer to figure out that his chosen marketing methodology had become ineffective and that a different technique must be employed.
You know what, this guy brought the very Internet that we have all grown to know and love to the homes of millions of Americans.
That's like saying that $5 a gallon generic Burgundy introduced the masses to the appreciation of fine wines. What it really did was funnel an enormous number of proudly technophobic newbies onto the Internet.
You'll excuse me if I withhold my applause.
I think it's possible that somebody wildly overestimated the scope of the project. Or wildly underestimated the resources that could be applied to it. Or both.
Many different factors caused the project to take less time than initially planned, not the least of which was clever algorythmic techniques to speed up the decoding process. All of them combined led to a quicker result.
As I understand it, the vast majority of pure research is being funded by private companies now. So even if that research is being done at universities-- which it is, largely-- it's being paid for with corporate dollars. Which, some people's opinions to the contrary, is not inherently a bad thing.
I believe you meant "basic" research rather than "pure" research. Basic research (as opposed to "applied" research) is "experimental and theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge without a specific application in view". There has been a general decline in spending on basic research by corporations in recent years due to the high cost and uncertainty of return on the investment, leading to the shift of basic research to universities. This has had good and bad effects on universities, who have benefited from the funds but have also found increasing limitations and restrictions placed upon them by their corporate sponsors. For example, there have been well documented reports of drug companies putting restrictions in grant contracts to public researchers preventing them from telling the public of any hazardous effects of their drugs, even when those same drugs are in current use by the public.
So their is no black or white answer to which is better, public or private research. Perhaps it is good to have both, just as it is good to have a multiplicity of competitors in a market economy. It may just help to keep everyone honest.
I'm *SO* happy Microsoft is dropping the
"Well, let's see...I can confuse him, anger him, or put him to sleep. Maybe I should fake a heart attack right now...."
The myth that the rich are all conservative is an old lie.
And the message you are replying to said nothing of the sort, so your comment is irrelevant. Re-read it...it said the gatekeepers, by and large, are not liberals. You jumped to a conclusion and read something into the message that wasn't there. Nice straw man you created....
Warren Buffet (The second richest man in the U.S and prime funder of the Washington Post) and Ted Turner (CNN) are well know liberals.
Here you go on to use *exactly two examples* to justify your irrelevant point.
Rich people are for the most part not conservative.
George Bush lost almost half the vote of those making more than $100,000 a year in the last election.
Again, completely irrelevant to the discussion of the media...a red herring.
This whole story is actually a really great look at the liberal bias of American media, arising not as part of some conspiracy, but rather from the simple fact that a number of journalists are in fact liberals and thus see policies of the Democratic Party as "normal" or expected and only Republican policies as obtuse or idiotic.
Your facts are a bit TOO simple, as they ignore a critical reality. By and large journalists have their work edited and reviewed by editors and managers...gatekeepers who were carefully selected by ownership/management to reflect the editorial desires of those who control the business. These gatekeepers, by and large, are NOT liberals. And they control what gets published/aired. It has always been this way and this reality won't change anytime soon.
It isn't ethernet, but what the heck:
A little birdseed goes a long way....
BTW, can anyone tell me why the Denon [denon.com] amplifier has different Watt ratings? This PDF [denon.jp] states 110w at 6 ohms, 110w at 8 ohm, (I'm OK up to here) but also at 8 ohms 70w but with 0.08% THD. 70w should be enough for what I want but it still puzzles me.
Just a guess, but perhaps the higher output rating assumes a higher distortion figure? The lower figure would be the number you would use if you didn't want to exceed that 0.08% THD figure.
You know, when I submitted the story last night, I could have sworn the original article did say something about it being illegal. My mistake. But it's immoral and that's equivalent.
As much as I might agree with your sentiment, immoral is NOT equivalent to illegal. That makes TWO mistakes.