What's worse is that a large part of the 'million' pages that SCO produced were scanned printouts of UNIX source code. Rather than burning a source code CD or DVD and mailing it to IBM, they went to enormous efforts to furnish the data in the least useful format possible. They did this even though they acknowledged that IBM would need to perform computer analysis of the code itself.
Oh, and though they had time to send the million pages to IBM, they didn't have the chance to include the code that they have been showing for months to financial analysts, columnists, and anyone who will sign an NDA. It must have slipped their minds.
LoTR the book is impressive because it indeed works on many levels. At the surface, it's a well-written adventure tale. Below the surface, it works at many other levels, including linguistics, history, and the nature of good and evil. Character dualities abound (indeed one could argue that they are the central theme of the book). Few of the major characters are presented in a completely unambivalent light, if one reads the text closely.
Having said that, the movies mostly gloss over the depths of the book, presenting just the adventure tale. Given the magnitute of the book, that's a daunting enough task. However, some character ambivalence does get through, such as the temptation of Galadriel. I would hope that the third movie manages to convey more, such as Gollum's remorse outside Cirith Ungol (Shelob's lair). We'll see.
We don't know, do we? They could easily have been getting cash payments from SCO for their ongoing work, and also have an agreement for additional fees contingent on winning the case.
This would allow SCO to claim that the Boies firm was working on 'contingency', and not be actually lying. If people assumed that the lawyers were going to get nothing at all if they lost (and therefore that they must have considered the case exceptionally strong), it's not SCO's fault if they jumped to conclusions.:-)
No, you don't really understand the Investment Banker's point. The point of an IPO is not, as is often believed, to raise capital for the company. The point of an IPO is to create a 'public market' where Investment Bankers can make big profits. The idea that a company could raise capital without paying a tithe to Wall Street is simply un-American.
The bill takes the definition of "Internet access service" from the Communications Act:
47 USC 231(e)(4) Internet access service
The term ''Internet access service'' means a service that
enables users to access content, information, electronic mail, or
other services offered over the Internet, and may also include
access to proprietary content, information, and other services as
part of a package of services offered to consumers. Such term
does not include telecommunications services.
Sounds to me like a private e-mail provider would qualify, as long as it is providing service to 'users'. If that's true, then the bill might not be as bad as I thought at first. It's still pretty bad, though, it limits statutory damages to $25 per message with forged 'From' lines or obfuscated routing info, and $100 per message for misleading subject lines and other violations.
The DMA is probably running scared after the passage of the new California spam law with its opt-in requirement, large statutory damages, and private right of action (meaning that unlike most spam laws, it has a legitimate chance of actually being enforced). The DMA may now be willing to accept some seemingly significant limitations on spam, as long as the restrictions don't actually apply to them in practice, and as long as the restrictions can't really be effectively enforced. Look for the limits on 'who can sue' to be tightened if and when this bill goes any further.
Step #4 is totally useless. The 999 users who ignore spam will be done in by the 1000th user who thinks s/he really does need bigger {breasts, genitalia, whatever}. You can tell the rational people "DO NOT BUY FROM SPAMMERS" till you're blue in the face, and it won't make a rat's ass of difference, since there are more than enough suckers that will never see, hear, or understand your warning in a million years.
The counterexample to this point is SCO. SCO is blatantly (one might say impudently) violating the GPL, and continuing to infringe FSF copyrights, yet the FSF is keeping its 'big stick' idle.
This is one weakness of the GPL: it is only effective when the copyright holders can and will defend their rights under it. The small-time software writer has no hope against a big corporate violator, and even the FSF has to balance expenditure of money on lawsuits vs. money for developers.
ATA and TiVo kernel confinements limit using at most 137GB (128GiB) of any drives installed in your TiVo. Larger drives may function but you are currently limited to a maximum of 2 drives x 137GB (128GiB) or 274GB (256GiB) of usable space.
I just re-upgraded my TiVo (after my original 80GB Maxtor expansion drive died), and ended up putting in two 120GB drives too, getting to 86% of the theoretical maximum capacity. I haven't noticed a big speed problem, but I haven't had a chance to use it much since the new upgrade.
SGI has in no way adimiited a breach of its license agreement. It has identified about 200 lines of code SVR4 code that very likely has already released to the public. In an adundance of caution, SGI has excised that code from its Linux distributions.
I really don't know where this idea of "SGI admitting fault" got started, but I can guess.
It seems pretty unlikely that the SCO case will attract any enforcement interest from the federal government. Two facts:
1. The US Justice Department is now owned by Microsoft.
If you don't believe this, just look at the 'settlement' of the Microsoft antitrust case. It's basically window-dressing for a complete capitulation by the government.
2. SCO is Microsoft's sock puppet.
How much interest do you think there will be in prosecuting SCO and its executives after the word goes out from Redmond that they are to left alone?
No? While your technical point is valid, the original point is also true. It's quite fair for the proprietor of a toll-free number to see who's calling it. This is why there has been no effort to change the technical limitation you describe.
But one of those 'licensees' is Microsoft, which can afford to bankroll SCO's legal expenses as long as it cares to.
Microsoft has already discovered a need for 'enhanced' licenses from SCO (for which it will probably pay just enough to ensure that SCO makes a nice profit next quarter), and it will likely need more and more SCO licenses as long as SCO delivers the goods (i.e, Linux FUD).
Most of the ten reasons make sense, but they don't really address the two most critical issues facing the space program today:
Why do we need a manned space program today?
If we have a manned program, why use the Shuttle?
Manned missions are great PR, and in the future we must have them, but I fail to see why we need them now, with the current state of space propulsion technology (i.e., large rockets to propel a small payload into orbit). Other than congressional pork-barrel spending, why should we continue to use the Shuttle, a technology that is now well past its prime? Why not start with a fresh sheet of paper and exploit what we have learned in the decades since the Shuttle was conceived?
In fact, when we retire the Shuttle, why do we need to rush into a new manned-space transportation system? Why not wait a few decades for a much more revolutionary system, such as a space elevator? What critical missions in the next few decades will really require humans in space?
I can report first-hand on a recent pure-electric vehicle: the Think Neighbor. For some specialized applications, it's a great solution, but as a general-purpose vehicle it comes up short.
The Think Neighbor is a small, two or four-person vehicle slightly larger than a golf cart. While street-legal, the one I drove is largely driven off-street, between buildings and other areas, with occasional short stints on the public streets (which is why the Think is used instead of a golf cart, which would not be street legal). The Think has a top speed (governor-limited) of 25 MPH, but it can't even maintain that uphill: more like 20 or even 15 MPH up a steep hill. It is supposed to have a range of up to 80 miles. While we never ran the battery completely down, my guess at the range would be more like 20-25 miles. With these limitations, driving on anything other than low-speed, low-traffic streets is an unpleasant experience.
While I have never driven any other pure electric vehicle, my experience with the Think leads me to belive that the zero-emission vehicle (as opposed to various types of low-emission vehicle, such as the hybrid) is not yet ready for use as a general-purpose vehicle, and probably won't be ready for some time to come.
But we have legitimate cause to wonder at Sun's motivations in the SCO mess, since Sun and Microsoft are paying "license fees" that are keeping the SCO FUD machine going. It's obvious that Microsoft is just buying anti-Linux propaganda. What is Sun buying?
How is "thinking about" reducing ones Linux deployment a "concrete decsion"? From this survey, we don't know that any such "concrete decisions" have been made.
What the survey does indicate is that 91% of respondents aren't even thinking about reducing Linux deployment, much less deciding to do so.
Chacun a son gout, so far be it from me to say you are wrong. However, the thing that distinguishes LOTR from Tolkien's shorter works (and even more from writers such as Feist) is that it works on many different levels, each satisfying and valuable to the reader who can percieve and appreciate them.
The first level is as a really good advanture story. On first reading, this is the level most people perceive, and LOTR doesn't disappoint. This is the only level that most other fantasy writers (such as Feist) achieve.
The second level is that of language, as has been mentioned. Tolkien worked out grammar, vocabulary, and orthography for multiple languages of his own invention (and one language, that of the Rohirrim, that's based from Old English). He also relied on his vast knowledge of Anglo-Saxon linguistics to invent names that resonate with English speakers (and speakers of related languages) for reasons that they themselves may not realize. Also, he uses a form of writing that conveys an air of antiquity without being too difficult to understand. To my mind, Tolkien could really turn a phrase, and just reading (or hearing) some of Tolkein's phrases is itself a pleasure. (BTW, I have found that listening to LOTR being read gives a new perspective on the language, one I can highly recommend.)
The third level is that of spirituality. Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and the Catholic influence is at once absent and ubiquitous in LOTR. Absent because he consciously omitted any overt religiosity, but ubiquitous because the fundamental concepts of good and evil in LOTR arise from his faith.
You may not appreciate any of these things in LOTR, but it is perhaps unique in being a written work of such length that so many people have not only read from beginning to end, but have re-read multiple times.
That's as may be. It still doesn't give SCO permission to distribute GNU/Linux code without a license. The only available license is the GPL, which requires the distributor to license the whole work under the GPL.
Whether or not someone else put SCO code into GNU/Linux does not prevent an infringement suit brought against SCO by an innocent GNU/Linux copyright holder (such as the FSF). The bad act by some hypothetical infringer does not vitiate the copyrights of other GNU/Linux contributors.
They didn't 'give away rights to code'. They exchanged rights to their code for rights to other people's code. (Or they didn't, but distributed other people's code anyway.)
If you are going to distribute other people's copyrighted code (GPL or not), it behooves you to carefully consider your legal rights to distribute that code. There is no 'oops' exception in the GPL, allowing you a free license to distribute other people's code on your own terms just because you didn't pay attention to what you were doing.
If you want the GPL's protection, you must follow its terms. Those terms don't allow you to pick and choose which parts of a work are to be licensed and which are to be proprietary.
While it's true that I can't release SCO's code and suddenly make its copyright disappear, SCO can release that code and make its copyright disappear (mostly).
Since no one is required to sign the GPL, the analysis of any violation must take a two-pronged approach, either:
1. SCO did not accept the GPL, or
2. SCO did accept the GPL.
1. If SCO did not accept the GPL, then all of its IP rights in the Linux code (if any) are still intact. It is free to sue anyone who distributed that code without a SCO license. Unfortunately for SCO, every holder of copyright in the Linux code (and there are a lot of them) has the right to sue SCO for copyright infringement. SCO cannot very well claim that it didn't know that Linux was copyrighted, since the copyright and GPL notices are quite clear. So, option (1.) doesn't look like a winner for SCO.
2. If SCO did accept the GPL, then it's immune from lawsuits from the Linux copyright holders. However, this means that it licensed all the Linux code that it distributed. The GPL applies to the "work as a whole". If SCO wishes to avail itself of the GPL, it must abide by its requirements, first and foremost of which is that it must GPL the whole work it distributes. So, option (2.) doen't bode well for SCO's lawsuit. [If SCO wants to argue that the GPL doesn't apply in this case, then we're back at option (1.).]
Even if a theoretical (and probably non-existent) Linux hacker included SCO code without authority to do so, SCO granted that authority the moment it released the code under the GPL. (Or, alternatively, it did not release the code under the GPL, and is now vulnerable to infringement suits from the Linux copyright holders).
Either way you look at it, SCO's position in its lawsuit looks pretty untenable.
The point is that e-mail recipients are the real beneficiaries of the tax, and they are therefore motivated to ensure its payment. One simple approach would be to have the taxing authority issue 'e-stamps'. The receiving e-mail program would check the e-stamp for validity and non-reuse (the stamp would be keyed to the particular sender, recipient, and timestamp of the message).
If the e-stamp was invalid, the recipient's program could either just throw the message away, or forward it to the tax authorities for enforcement action. Either way, the tax achieves its purpose.
The complexity in US taxes is solely due to political considerations in Congress. The Internal Revenue Code (the US federal tax law) is HUGE, taking up many large tomes of closely-printed text.
The reason for this (and why it will always be so) is that every one of the unnecessary provisions in the tax code benefits someone, usually quite a bit. It's true that each of those provisions also hurts all the other tax-paying Americans by requiring them to pay more tax, but each provision makes only a tiny difference to the tax-paying public in general, while making a big difference to those who benefit from their special tax advantage.
An easy example is the mortgage tax deduction. In the US, homeowners who carry a mortgage loan on their home can deduct the loan interest from their taxable income. This really runs counter to the whole idea of income taxation, which is to tax people according to their ability to pay. Those who rent their homes have no more (and probably less) ability to pay than those who own, but they must pay more tax. Despite this, since the mortgage deduction is in the tax code now, it is utterly impossible to remove it due to opposition from the people who benefit from it.
Another example is the municipal bond exemption. All interest income is subject to income tax, unless the interest is on a bond issued by a state or local government. Again, this runs against the fundamental rationale for an income tax, and is probably even worse than the mortgage deduction, since the municipal bond exemption has no maximum limit. Yet this too is impossible to eliminate, due to support from both investors and local governments, since this means that such governments can borrow money for significantly less than the normal rate of interest.
Take these examples and multiply them many thousandfold, and you get an idea of the magnitude of the problem. The tax forms are impossibly complex because the tax code is impossibly complex.
It really depends on your planning timescale. For the next few years, you are correct. However, in the future you will see the price of really high-rate connectivity drop, and then fiber will come into its own. At that point, your "chunk of coax" will have to be replaced.
But, you may ask, is now the right time to install that fiber leading into your home?
If you believe (as many do) that a financially viable FTTH system is impossible at this time, check out Fastweb, a FTTH provider in Italy. They are currently providing all-optical broadband service in Milan, Rome, Turin, Bologna, and Genoa. In the USA, things are happening much more slowly, but there are already 70 communities with FTTH service, and lots more considering or planning it.
If you want to hold onto your "chunk of coax" based on today's pricing of telecommunications equipment and services, go right ahead. However, be aware that a full life-cycle cost comparison might already come out in favor of fiber, and the long-term trends are clearly in favor of fiber.
Unfortunately, making a particular type of speech illegal has constitutional difficulties. I much better approach is like this:
Non-Bulk or Opt-In: Legitimate Bulk and Non-Opt-In: Legitimate if labeled, illegal otherwise
Requiring an automatically-recognizable label such as "ADV:" in the subject line will allow recipients to accept all of it, reject all of it, or apply their own filters to it. The DMA should have a hard time defending the 'right' to deceive people about the kind of e-mail they are getting.
Slashdot Mirror
What's worse is that a large part of the 'million' pages that SCO produced were scanned printouts of UNIX source code. Rather than burning a source code CD or DVD and mailing it to IBM, they went to enormous efforts to furnish the data in the least useful format possible. They did this even though they acknowledged that IBM would need to perform computer analysis of the code itself.
Oh, and though they had time to send the million pages to IBM, they didn't have the chance to include the code that they have been showing for months to financial analysts, columnists, and anyone who will sign an NDA. It must have slipped their minds.
LoTR the book is impressive because it indeed works on many levels. At the surface, it's a well-written adventure tale. Below the surface, it works at many other levels, including linguistics, history, and the nature of good and evil. Character dualities abound (indeed one could argue that they are the central theme of the book). Few of the major characters are presented in a completely unambivalent light, if one reads the text closely.
Having said that, the movies mostly gloss over the depths of the book, presenting just the adventure tale. Given the magnitute of the book, that's a daunting enough task. However, some character ambivalence does get through, such as the temptation of Galadriel. I would hope that the third movie manages to convey more, such as Gollum's remorse outside Cirith Ungol (Shelob's lair). We'll see.
We don't know, do we? They could easily have been getting cash payments from SCO for their ongoing work, and also have an agreement for additional fees contingent on winning the case.
:-)
This would allow SCO to claim that the Boies firm was working on 'contingency', and not be actually lying. If people assumed that the lawyers were going to get nothing at all if they lost (and therefore that they must have considered the case exceptionally strong), it's not SCO's fault if they jumped to conclusions.
No, you don't really understand the Investment Banker's point. The point of an IPO is not, as is often believed, to raise capital for the company. The point of an IPO is to create a 'public market' where Investment Bankers can make big profits. The idea that a company could raise capital without paying a tithe to Wall Street is simply un-American.
Sounds to me like a private e-mail provider would qualify, as long as it is providing service to 'users'. If that's true, then the bill might not be as bad as I thought at first. It's still pretty bad, though, it limits statutory damages to $25 per message with forged 'From' lines or obfuscated routing info, and $100 per message for misleading subject lines and other violations.
The DMA is probably running scared after the passage of the new California spam law with its opt-in requirement, large statutory damages, and private right of action (meaning that unlike most spam laws, it has a legitimate chance of actually being enforced). The DMA may now be willing to accept some seemingly significant limitations on spam, as long as the restrictions don't actually apply to them in practice, and as long as the restrictions can't really be effectively enforced. Look for the limits on 'who can sue' to be tightened if and when this bill goes any further.
Step #4 is totally useless. The 999 users who ignore spam will be done in by the 1000th user who thinks s/he really does need bigger {breasts, genitalia, whatever}. You can tell the rational people "DO NOT BUY FROM SPAMMERS" till you're blue in the face, and it won't make a rat's ass of difference, since there are more than enough suckers that will never see, hear, or understand your warning in a million years.
The counterexample to this point is SCO. SCO is blatantly (one might say impudently) violating the GPL, and continuing to infringe FSF copyrights, yet the FSF is keeping its 'big stick' idle.
This is one weakness of the GPL: it is only effective when the copyright holders can and will defend their rights under it. The small-time software writer has no hope against a big corporate violator, and even the FSF has to balance expenditure of money on lawsuits vs. money for developers.
I just re-upgraded my TiVo (after my original 80GB Maxtor expansion drive died), and ended up putting in two 120GB drives too, getting to 86% of the theoretical maximum capacity. I haven't noticed a big speed problem, but I haven't had a chance to use it much since the new upgrade.
SGI has in no way adimiited a breach of its license agreement. It has identified about 200 lines of code SVR4 code that very likely has already released to the public. In an adundance of caution, SGI has excised that code from its Linux distributions.
I really don't know where this idea of "SGI admitting fault" got started, but I can guess.
It seems pretty unlikely that the SCO case will attract any enforcement interest from the federal government. Two facts:
1. The US Justice Department is now owned by Microsoft.
If you don't believe this, just look at the 'settlement' of the Microsoft antitrust case. It's basically window-dressing for a complete capitulation by the government.
2. SCO is Microsoft's sock puppet.
How much interest do you think there will be in prosecuting SCO and its executives after the word goes out from Redmond that they are to left alone?
No? While your technical point is valid, the original point is also true. It's quite fair for the proprietor of a toll-free number to see who's calling it. This is why there has been no effort to change the technical limitation you describe.
But one of those 'licensees' is Microsoft, which can afford to bankroll SCO's legal expenses as long as it cares to.
Microsoft has already discovered a need for 'enhanced' licenses from SCO (for which it will probably pay just enough to ensure that SCO makes a nice profit next quarter), and it will likely need more and more SCO licenses as long as SCO delivers the goods (i.e, Linux FUD).
But that's exactly the point. Indemnification is absolutely the best way to demonstrate that you don't believe one word that SCO is saying.
Slashdotters can rant all day long and it won't amount to anything. HP is putting its money where its mouth is; that's the real way to dis SCO.
Manned missions are great PR, and in the future we must have them, but I fail to see why we need them now, with the current state of space propulsion technology (i.e., large rockets to propel a small payload into orbit). Other than congressional pork-barrel spending, why should we continue to use the Shuttle, a technology that is now well past its prime? Why not start with a fresh sheet of paper and exploit what we have learned in the decades since the Shuttle was conceived?
In fact, when we retire the Shuttle, why do we need to rush into a new manned-space transportation system? Why not wait a few decades for a much more revolutionary system, such as a space elevator? What critical missions in the next few decades will really require humans in space?
I can report first-hand on a recent pure-electric vehicle: the Think Neighbor. For some specialized applications, it's a great solution, but as a general-purpose vehicle it comes up short.
The Think Neighbor is a small, two or four-person vehicle slightly larger than a golf cart. While street-legal, the one I drove is largely driven off-street, between buildings and other areas, with occasional short stints on the public streets (which is why the Think is used instead of a golf cart, which would not be street legal). The Think has a top speed (governor-limited) of 25 MPH, but it can't even maintain that uphill: more like 20 or even 15 MPH up a steep hill. It is supposed to have a range of up to 80 miles. While we never ran the battery completely down, my guess at the range would be more like 20-25 miles. With these limitations, driving on anything other than low-speed, low-traffic streets is an unpleasant experience.
While I have never driven any other pure electric vehicle, my experience with the Think leads me to belive that the zero-emission vehicle (as opposed to various types of low-emission vehicle, such as the hybrid) is not yet ready for use as a general-purpose vehicle, and probably won't be ready for some time to come.
But we have legitimate cause to wonder at Sun's motivations in the SCO mess, since Sun and Microsoft are paying "license fees" that are keeping the SCO FUD machine going. It's obvious that Microsoft is just buying anti-Linux propaganda. What is Sun buying?
How is "thinking about" reducing ones Linux deployment a "concrete decsion"? From this survey, we don't know that any such "concrete decisions" have been made.
What the survey does indicate is that 91% of respondents aren't even thinking about reducing Linux deployment, much less deciding to do so.
Chacun a son gout, so far be it from me to say you are wrong. However, the thing that distinguishes LOTR from Tolkien's shorter works (and even more from writers such as Feist) is that it works on many different levels, each satisfying and valuable to the reader who can percieve and appreciate them.
The first level is as a really good advanture story. On first reading, this is the level most people perceive, and LOTR doesn't disappoint. This is the only level that most other fantasy writers (such as Feist) achieve.
The second level is that of language, as has been mentioned. Tolkien worked out grammar, vocabulary, and orthography for multiple languages of his own invention (and one language, that of the Rohirrim, that's based from Old English). He also relied on his vast knowledge of Anglo-Saxon linguistics to invent names that resonate with English speakers (and speakers of related languages) for reasons that they themselves may not realize. Also, he uses a form of writing that conveys an air of antiquity without being too difficult to understand. To my mind, Tolkien could really turn a phrase, and just reading (or hearing) some of Tolkein's phrases is itself a pleasure. (BTW, I have found that listening to LOTR being read gives a new perspective on the language, one I can highly recommend.)
The third level is that of spirituality. Tolkien was a devout Catholic, and the Catholic influence is at once absent and ubiquitous in LOTR. Absent because he consciously omitted any overt religiosity, but ubiquitous because the fundamental concepts of good and evil in LOTR arise from his faith.
You may not appreciate any of these things in LOTR, but it is perhaps unique in being a written work of such length that so many people have not only read from beginning to end, but have re-read multiple times.
That's as may be. It still doesn't give SCO permission to distribute GNU/Linux code without a license. The only available license is the GPL, which requires the distributor to license the whole work under the GPL.
Whether or not someone else put SCO code into GNU/Linux does not prevent an infringement suit brought against SCO by an innocent GNU/Linux copyright holder (such as the FSF). The bad act by some hypothetical infringer does not vitiate the copyrights of other GNU/Linux contributors.
They didn't 'give away rights to code'. They exchanged rights to their code for rights to other people's code. (Or they didn't, but distributed other people's code anyway.)
If you are going to distribute other people's copyrighted code (GPL or not), it behooves you to carefully consider your legal rights to distribute that code. There is no 'oops' exception in the GPL, allowing you a free license to distribute other people's code on your own terms just because you didn't pay attention to what you were doing.
If you want the GPL's protection, you must follow its terms. Those terms don't allow you to pick and choose which parts of a work are to be licensed and which are to be proprietary.
While it's true that I can't release SCO's code and suddenly make its copyright disappear, SCO can release that code and make its copyright disappear (mostly).
Since no one is required to sign the GPL, the analysis of any violation must take a two-pronged approach, either:
1. SCO did not accept the GPL, or
2. SCO did accept the GPL.
1. If SCO did not accept the GPL, then all of its IP rights in the Linux code (if any) are still intact. It is free to sue anyone who distributed that code without a SCO license. Unfortunately for SCO, every holder of copyright in the Linux code (and there are a lot of them) has the right to sue SCO for copyright infringement. SCO cannot very well claim that it didn't know that Linux was copyrighted, since the copyright and GPL notices are quite clear. So, option (1.) doesn't look like a winner for SCO.
2. If SCO did accept the GPL, then it's immune from lawsuits from the Linux copyright holders. However, this means that it licensed all the Linux code that it distributed. The GPL applies to the "work as a whole". If SCO wishes to avail itself of the GPL, it must abide by its requirements, first and foremost of which is that it must GPL the whole work it distributes.
So, option (2.) doen't bode well for SCO's lawsuit. [If SCO wants to argue that the GPL doesn't apply in this case, then we're back at option (1.).]
Even if a theoretical (and probably non-existent) Linux hacker included SCO code without authority to do so, SCO granted that authority the moment it released the code under the GPL. (Or, alternatively, it did not release the code under the GPL, and is now vulnerable to infringement suits from the Linux copyright holders).
Either way you look at it, SCO's position in its lawsuit looks pretty untenable.
The point is that e-mail recipients are the real beneficiaries of the tax, and they are therefore motivated to ensure its payment. One simple approach would be to have the taxing authority issue 'e-stamps'. The receiving e-mail program would check the e-stamp for validity and non-reuse (the stamp would be keyed to the particular sender, recipient, and timestamp of the message).
If the e-stamp was invalid, the recipient's program could either just throw the message away, or forward it to the tax authorities for enforcement action. Either way, the tax achieves its purpose.
The complexity in US taxes is solely due to political considerations in Congress. The Internal Revenue Code (the US federal tax law) is HUGE, taking up many large tomes of closely-printed text.
The reason for this (and why it will always be so) is that every one of the unnecessary provisions in the tax code benefits someone, usually quite a bit. It's true that each of those provisions also hurts all the other tax-paying Americans by requiring them to pay more tax, but each provision makes only a tiny difference to the tax-paying public in general, while making a big difference to those who benefit from their special tax advantage.
An easy example is the mortgage tax deduction. In the US, homeowners who carry a mortgage loan on their home can deduct the loan interest from their taxable income. This really runs counter to the whole idea of income taxation, which is to tax people according to their ability to pay. Those who rent their homes have no more (and probably less) ability to pay than those who own, but they must pay more tax. Despite this, since the mortgage deduction is in the tax code now, it is utterly impossible to remove it due to opposition from the people who benefit from it.
Another example is the municipal bond exemption. All interest income is subject to income tax, unless the interest is on a bond issued by a state or local government. Again, this runs against the fundamental rationale for an income tax, and is probably even worse than the mortgage deduction, since the municipal bond exemption has no maximum limit. Yet this too is impossible to eliminate, due to support from both investors and local governments, since this means that such governments can borrow money for significantly less than the normal rate of interest.
Take these examples and multiply them many thousandfold, and you get an idea of the magnitude of the problem. The tax forms are impossibly complex because the tax code is impossibly complex.
It really depends on your planning timescale. For the next few years, you are correct. However, in the future you will see the price of really high-rate connectivity drop, and then fiber will come into its own. At that point, your "chunk of coax" will have to be replaced.
But, you may ask, is now the right time to install that fiber leading into your home?
If you believe (as many do) that a financially viable FTTH system is impossible at this time, check out
Fastweb, a FTTH provider in Italy. They are currently providing all-optical broadband service in Milan, Rome, Turin, Bologna, and Genoa. In the USA, things are happening much more slowly, but there are already
70 communities with FTTH service, and lots more considering or planning it.
If you want to hold onto your "chunk of coax" based on today's pricing of telecommunications equipment and services, go right ahead. However, be aware that a full life-cycle cost comparison might already come out in favor of fiber, and the long-term trends are clearly in favor of fiber.
Requiring an automatically-recognizable label such as "ADV:" in the subject line will allow recipients to accept all of it, reject all of it, or apply their own filters to it. The DMA should have a hard time defending the 'right' to deceive people about the kind of e-mail they are getting.
Ecco Ping! Ecco Pang! Ecco Pong!