If you have directv, the Dtivos can't be beat. They are now $99, have two tuners, and have excellent guide integration. Oh, and they don't require a separate computer...
There are pretty simple answers to all of your questions.
Political and Non-profit callers were exempted because it would almost certainly fail a first ammendment challenge. Free speech trumps pretty much everything. Commercial speech does not however get the same protections as other speech so it is ok to regulate it.
As for you last set of questions: all telemarketer will have to scrub their lists every three months of face $11,000 fines for each illelgal call.
I was a graduate student with Pat Brown and I can shed a little light on a number of issues the chronicle didn't address well.
First, the web is just a vehicle, it is a cost saver. One of the most important scientific reasons for PLoS is that currently biological researchers with an informatics background cannot use computers to mine the scientific literature. Journals do not give their content for analysis. There are already pretty good symbolic algorithms for searching full text papers to figure out what they mean. If we had access to the text we could really get somewhere.
Second, there is an issue of fairness. Almost always, tax dollars pay for research in the biotech field. It is reasonable that everyone should have access to that knowledge.
Third, at least in some cases, journals make an outrageous profit. Reed Elsevier (NYSE RUK) has an annual profit (PROFIT, not revenue) of a half a billion dollars, much of that coming from journals paid for by tax dollars, for content generated by tax dollars.
Now we come to what keeps PLoS from working...
Publish or perish is real, but at least in biomedical research where you publish is much more important than how much you publish. Two good papers a year in the best journals would be worth twenty in the bottom journals. New journals are always at a disadvantage. People have to become convinced that they will be good journals.
So the twenty million dollars is to provide a marketing effort to prove that PLoS means business. That it will do a good job. It is chump change compared to the seven billion in revenue that Reed Elsevier brings in each year.
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If you have directv, the Dtivos can't be beat. They are now $99, have two tuners, and have excellent guide integration. Oh, and they don't require a separate computer...
There are pretty simple answers to all of your questions. Political and Non-profit callers were exempted because it would almost certainly fail a first ammendment challenge. Free speech trumps pretty much everything. Commercial speech does not however get the same protections as other speech so it is ok to regulate it. As for you last set of questions: all telemarketer will have to scrub their lists every three months of face $11,000 fines for each illelgal call.
I was a graduate student with Pat Brown and I can shed a little light on a number of issues the chronicle didn't address well. First, the web is just a vehicle, it is a cost saver. One of the most important scientific reasons for PLoS is that currently biological researchers with an informatics background cannot use computers to mine the scientific literature. Journals do not give their content for analysis. There are already pretty good symbolic algorithms for searching full text papers to figure out what they mean. If we had access to the text we could really get somewhere. Second, there is an issue of fairness. Almost always, tax dollars pay for research in the biotech field. It is reasonable that everyone should have access to that knowledge. Third, at least in some cases, journals make an outrageous profit. Reed Elsevier (NYSE RUK) has an annual profit (PROFIT, not revenue) of a half a billion dollars, much of that coming from journals paid for by tax dollars, for content generated by tax dollars. Now we come to what keeps PLoS from working... Publish or perish is real, but at least in biomedical research where you publish is much more important than how much you publish. Two good papers a year in the best journals would be worth twenty in the bottom journals. New journals are always at a disadvantage. People have to become convinced that they will be good journals. So the twenty million dollars is to provide a marketing effort to prove that PLoS means business. That it will do a good job. It is chump change compared to the seven billion in revenue that Reed Elsevier brings in each year.