I personally don't care, because I have about 10 devices hooked up to my TV and receiver.
But people not into that kind of stuff simply don't want another box... if they're not a gamer, and not into electronics, and they're on the fence about getting a gaming system, having to buy another box on top of it will often make them decide not to buy it. My aunt put off buying a DVD player for years because it was "another box". Eventually I bought her a combination DVD/VCR to replace the VCR, which was OK with her because it was not "another box".
Similarly, people on the fence will be OK with a gaming system if it can replace their DVD player (thus no net extra boxes)... but not if it means having the gaming system plus a switch box plus the old DVD player. That's just their preference and you're not going to convince them otherwise with any logical argument.
I think they realized they weren't going to last long by competing in the same market segment with the Xbox 360 and PS3, so they targeted a different market segment.
Doesn't matter if it's free. It's another box to worry about, and another item of clutter, which is too much of a hassle for people who aren't into audio/video.
"Many IT shops are in financial institutions or other businesses where systems are handling millions or billions of dollars. In that situation you don't want a whole lot of creativity. Every time you change code you introduce risk, and the more money at stake, the more risk-averse you are."
Creativity is still important even in stodgy places like financial institutions. A lack of creativity can cause excessive complexity and risk. People write 1000 lines of code to solve a problem when it could have been done in 150 if they were more creative. And they write code that requires modification every time a slightly new variation of the same old problem turns up, instead of coming up with something more flexible that doesn't need the code to be changed every time.
"People who don't exercise are often the way they are because exercise makes them feel HORRIBLE. Personally, I've tried to get into shape a number of times. But after three or four weeks of working out, I just can't take it anymore -- the pain, the exhaustion, the depression, the undirected feelings of anger, none of it."
That's usually because they go into it too hard too soon, like what you described with your pain and exhaustion.
When I start working out after several months with no exercise, I go into it really gradually. For the first few weeks my workouts will have no more than 5-10 minutes of cardio, and 15-20 minutes of moderate weights. In and out of the gym in less than half an hour, just enough to break a sweat and just enough to have a tiny bit of soreness the next day. And no more than 3 workouts per week. Then I gradually increase the duration and intensity over the next 3-4 months so I'm doing 30-45 minutes of cardio and 60-90 of weights, 4-5 times per week... no injury, no pain other than occasional mild soreness, no exhaustion or frustration.
Similarly, my mother who almost never exercised in her whole life decided she finally had to get active. Her first workout was a quarter-mile walk. That's it. Then she built up to a brisk 3 miles over the following six months. No horror or exhaustion.
"yup - and that's the free market, competition and capitalism at work for you."
It's not a free market, because H1B workers have less rights than American workers. Constraints on changing jobs, and the need to leave the country after losing their job (unless they find another job almost immediately), means employers can treat the H1B workers worse and pay them less.
To have a more level playing field for competition, the H1B workers should have full freedom to change jobs during the validity of their visa (i.e. without having to have the next employer file all the crazy paperwork and pay the application fees again), and they should not have to leave the country immediately upon losing their job (otherwise employers can hold that over their head).
"If the market would stand that higher price, why wasn't it being charged to start with?"
Competition. If one seller raises prices, the seller gets outsold by others who don't raise their prices. But if something happens to all the sellers, like taxes or fraud, they can all raise their prices without worrying much about being undercut by others. However, even though all sellers raise their prices when hit by a common expense, they still lose out somewhat because of decreased volume.
"But then if I can't afford to produce the product, I'm not going to be offered what it is worth, because anyone can copy the product and I cannot retaliate."
If the product is worthwhile, a company that can produce the product will be glad to pay for an exclusive license from you, rather than letting everybody copy from you.
More money in people's hands does not lead to higher prices if the supply of goods also increases to match it, or if the demand does not increase much from the increased amount of money.
Now what happens is that there are certain classes of goods that do not increase much (if at all) in supply when people get richer, such as land. So real estate in areas that get wealthy tend to skyrocket.
Other things like food (except certain gourmet foods) don't have a big increase in demand when people get richer, so their prices increase much more moderately, such that even poor people in America have problems with obesity.
"So get a satellite dish - what's the difference?"
A large percentage of the population cannot get a dish because of buildings or natural obstructions, or they don't have a place to mount the dish (especially apartment dwellers with no balcony or patio).
"This is a classic case of throwing the baby out along with the bath water as this will also prohibit FCC to enforce mandatory interoperability and adherence to standards."
Wrong. They can continue to set transmission standards. Then it is up to the market for devices on the receiving end to choose the extent to which they will interact with those standards. The delivering of the broadcast flag is a transmission standard that the FCC can control, but the way the devices on the receiving end handle the flag should be left up to the market.
The FCC should only be in the business of setting standards on what is *transmitted*, and should not be in the business of dictating what end-user devices *must* do. It is then up to manufacturers to implement devices that interoperate with one or more (or none) of those transmission standards, and the market will decide their fate.
So it would be appropriate for the FCC to set a standard on how the broadcast flag is delivered in the signal, but not for them to force end-user devices to interpret it.
Dictating what is transmitted is not the same as dictating what features manufacturers must put in their devices. It is not entirely unrelated, but it isn't the same thing.
It's fine for them to require or allow the broadcast flag to be transmitted, but not to dictate that the flag must be interpreted by end-user devices in the way the content makers want.
Patents on obvious ideas are more profitable to a patent holder with a large army of lawyers than those on truly innovative ideas, because the obvious ones will be accidentally infringed by numerous parties and thus will provide more revenue from lawsuits and settlements.
If something is innovative enough that people won't infringe it accidentally, but not super-innovative enough to make a profitable product out of it, it won't be worth patenting to them. Your idea probably was in that unprofitable middle ground.
"But what happens if his/her funding fell through? With no money to market and sell the idea, all of his/her hard work and dedication would be for nothing! But of course finding investors is also a form of marketing, so this would cause the patent 'lease' to be extended. In that case, a company could easily shelve it and 'look' for investors (ie say they are looking), there-by keeping their patent lease."
They should license it to somebody who produces the item if they can't produce it themselves. If the licensee does not produce it within a given time frame, the patent should expires. No patent should be allowed to exist for the only purpose of locking up ideas.
"The patent system exists to benefit all people, not just inventors, nor just lawyers."
That's true in theory. However, as currently implemented it strays from the "To promote the progress of science and useful arts" and mainly benefits lawyers.
Hopefully using light instead of electrons would cut down on the amount of heat that is dissipated. Otherwise, a 256-core processor could serve double duty as a furnace for a 3000 sq foot home in winter.
"It's up to me as a business to decide whether I wanna sell you christmas lights, or I don't wanna sell you christmas lights. If my shop is in New York and my profits are just fine, it's not up to some regulatory institution to insist I open a clone shop in every single little village in the country."
With your Christmas lights shop you aren't digging up miles of public property to create the means for selling your lights. If you ever do start to do that, it becomes the public's business to say under what conditions you can dig up their property. People in a town may not want to deal with road closings and jackhammer noises and other disruptions if their block isn't going to be able to make use of the infrastructure buildout that is causing that disruption.
"If you want my service, move to a place where I offer it, or use someone else's service. Simple as that."
If you want to disrupt my days to build out something for your service in my town, you better make it available to me, or go to another town. Simple as that.
So would you mind posting a link to where someone can download the ISO for a Live CD of Freespire? The Freespire.org site doesn't have anything about Live CDs, only installable CDs (unless it's there somewhere and I couldn't find it).
In the US, individual health insurance is more like US$400 PER MONTH. And if you have a history with a severe illness or injury, it could be double or triple that or they just won't insure you at all.
And then even if you have insurance, if you have a huge bill the insurance companies will bring out their lawyers and try to find a loophole in the contract to claim your condition isn't covered. So then you have fight them in court, or settle out of court for an amount less than what is needed to pay your medical bill. That leaves people with tens or hundreds of thousands to pay, driving them into bankruptcy.
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I personally don't care, because I have about 10 devices hooked up to my TV and receiver.
... if they're not a gamer, and not into electronics, and they're on the fence about getting a gaming system, having to buy another box on top of it will often make them decide not to buy it. My aunt put off buying a DVD player for years because it was "another box". Eventually I bought her a combination DVD/VCR to replace the VCR, which was OK with her because it was not "another box".
... but not if it means having the gaming system plus a switch box plus the old DVD player. That's just their preference and you're not going to convince them otherwise with any logical argument.
But people not into that kind of stuff simply don't want another box
Similarly, people on the fence will be OK with a gaming system if it can replace their DVD player (thus no net extra boxes)
I think they realized they weren't going to last long by competing in the same market segment with the Xbox 360 and PS3, so they targeted a different market segment.
"And a cable splitter/switch is what, $5?"
Doesn't matter if it's free. It's another box to worry about, and another item of clutter, which is too much of a hassle for people who aren't into audio/video.
"Many IT shops are in financial institutions or other businesses where systems are handling millions or billions of dollars. In that situation you don't want a whole lot of creativity. Every time you change code you introduce risk, and the more money at stake, the more risk-averse you are."
Creativity is still important even in stodgy places like financial institutions. A lack of creativity can cause excessive complexity and risk. People write 1000 lines of code to solve a problem when it could have been done in 150 if they were more creative. And they write code that requires modification every time a slightly new variation of the same old problem turns up, instead of coming up with something more flexible that doesn't need the code to be changed every time.
"People who don't exercise are often the way they are because exercise makes them feel HORRIBLE. Personally, I've tried to get into shape a number of times. But after three or four weeks of working out, I just can't take it anymore -- the pain, the exhaustion, the depression, the undirected feelings of anger, none of it."
... no injury, no pain other than occasional mild soreness, no exhaustion or frustration.
That's usually because they go into it too hard too soon, like what you described with your pain and exhaustion.
When I start working out after several months with no exercise, I go into it really gradually. For the first few weeks my workouts will have no more than 5-10 minutes of cardio, and 15-20 minutes of moderate weights. In and out of the gym in less than half an hour, just enough to break a sweat and just enough to have a tiny bit of soreness the next day. And no more than 3 workouts per week. Then I gradually increase the duration and intensity over the next 3-4 months so I'm doing 30-45 minutes of cardio and 60-90 of weights, 4-5 times per week
Similarly, my mother who almost never exercised in her whole life decided she finally had to get active. Her first workout was a quarter-mile walk. That's it. Then she built up to a brisk 3 miles over the following six months. No horror or exhaustion.
Most programmers aren't interested enough in technology to even know what Design By Contract is.
"yup - and that's the free market, competition and capitalism at work for you."
It's not a free market, because H1B workers have less rights than American workers. Constraints on changing jobs, and the need to leave the country after losing their job (unless they find another job almost immediately), means employers can treat the H1B workers worse and pay them less.
To have a more level playing field for competition, the H1B workers should have full freedom to change jobs during the validity of their visa (i.e. without having to have the next employer file all the crazy paperwork and pay the application fees again), and they should not have to leave the country immediately upon losing their job (otherwise employers can hold that over their head).
"If the market would stand that higher price, why wasn't it being charged to start with?"
Competition. If one seller raises prices, the seller gets outsold by others who don't raise their prices. But if something happens to all the sellers, like taxes or fraud, they can all raise their prices without worrying much about being undercut by others. However, even though all sellers raise their prices when hit by a common expense, they still lose out somewhat because of decreased volume.
"But then if I can't afford to produce the product, I'm not going to be offered what it is worth, because anyone can copy the product and I cannot retaliate."
If the product is worthwhile, a company that can produce the product will be glad to pay for an exclusive license from you, rather than letting everybody copy from you.
In Soviet Russia, the motherboards set a new standard for YOU!
More money in people's hands does not lead to higher prices if the supply of goods also increases to match it, or if the demand does not increase much from the increased amount of money.
Now what happens is that there are certain classes of goods that do not increase much (if at all) in supply when people get richer, such as land. So real estate in areas that get wealthy tend to skyrocket.
Other things like food (except certain gourmet foods) don't have a big increase in demand when people get richer, so their prices increase much more moderately, such that even poor people in America have problems with obesity.
"So get a satellite dish - what's the difference?"
A large percentage of the population cannot get a dish because of buildings or natural obstructions, or they don't have a place to mount the dish (especially apartment dwellers with no balcony or patio).
I've heard of everything from the cards being free all the way up to $15/month, plus a monthly "additional outlet fee" if you have more than one card.
"This is a classic case of throwing the baby out along with the bath water as this will also prohibit FCC to enforce mandatory interoperability and adherence to standards."
Wrong. They can continue to set transmission standards. Then it is up to the market for devices on the receiving end to choose the extent to which they will interact with those standards. The delivering of the broadcast flag is a transmission standard that the FCC can control, but the way the devices on the receiving end handle the flag should be left up to the market.
The FCC should only be in the business of setting standards on what is *transmitted*, and should not be in the business of dictating what end-user devices *must* do. It is then up to manufacturers to implement devices that interoperate with one or more (or none) of those transmission standards, and the market will decide their fate.
So it would be appropriate for the FCC to set a standard on how the broadcast flag is delivered in the signal, but not for them to force end-user devices to interpret it.
Dictating what is transmitted is not the same as dictating what features manufacturers must put in their devices. It is not entirely unrelated, but it isn't the same thing.
It's fine for them to require or allow the broadcast flag to be transmitted, but not to dictate that the flag must be interpreted by end-user devices in the way the content makers want.
"Yes but if the timeframe is too short the companies will just wait until it expires and then use it without having to pay royalties."
That's a good thing. That gives the patent holder an incentive to have reasonable licensing fees if they can't produce it themselves.
Patents on obvious ideas are more profitable to a patent holder with a large army of lawyers than those on truly innovative ideas, because the obvious ones will be accidentally infringed by numerous parties and thus will provide more revenue from lawsuits and settlements.
If something is innovative enough that people won't infringe it accidentally, but not super-innovative enough to make a profitable product out of it, it won't be worth patenting to them. Your idea probably was in that unprofitable middle ground.
"But what happens if his/her funding fell through? With no money to market and sell the idea, all of his/her hard work and dedication would be for nothing! But of course finding investors is also a form of marketing, so this would cause the patent 'lease' to be extended. In that case, a company could easily shelve it and 'look' for investors (ie say they are looking), there-by keeping their patent lease."
They should license it to somebody who produces the item if they can't produce it themselves. If the licensee does not produce it within a given time frame, the patent should expires. No patent should be allowed to exist for the only purpose of locking up ideas.
"The patent system exists to benefit all people, not just inventors, nor just lawyers."
That's true in theory. However, as currently implemented it strays from the "To promote the progress of science and useful arts" and mainly benefits lawyers.
Capped at $2/month? Do you have a source for that? I've heard of people being charged as much as $15/month per card.
Hopefully using light instead of electrons would cut down on the amount of heat that is dissipated. Otherwise, a 256-core processor could serve double duty as a furnace for a 3000 sq foot home in winter.
"It's up to me as a business to decide whether I wanna sell you christmas lights, or I don't wanna sell you christmas lights. If my shop is in New York and my profits are just fine, it's not up to some regulatory institution to insist I open a clone shop in every single little village in the country."
With your Christmas lights shop you aren't digging up miles of public property to create the means for selling your lights. If you ever do start to do that, it becomes the public's business to say under what conditions you can dig up their property. People in a town may not want to deal with road closings and jackhammer noises and other disruptions if their block isn't going to be able to make use of the infrastructure buildout that is causing that disruption.
"If you want my service, move to a place where I offer it, or use someone else's service. Simple as that."
If you want to disrupt my days to build out something for your service in my town, you better make it available to me, or go to another town. Simple as that.
So would you mind posting a link to where someone can download the ISO for a Live CD of Freespire? The Freespire.org site doesn't have anything about Live CDs, only installable CDs (unless it's there somewhere and I couldn't find it).
$400AUD/quarter?
In the US, individual health insurance is more like US$400 PER MONTH. And if you have a history with a severe illness or injury, it could be double or triple that or they just won't insure you at all.
And then even if you have insurance, if you have a huge bill the insurance companies will bring out their lawyers and try to find a loophole in the contract to claim your condition isn't covered. So then you have fight them in court, or settle out of court for an amount less than what is needed to pay your medical bill. That leaves people with tens or hundreds of thousands to pay, driving them into bankruptcy.