There is a very well hidden non sequitur on your argument. The fact that piracy is increasing doesn't mean that more people are listenning to music. Piracy was almost nonexistent a few years ago, it can (proportionaly) increase a lot and not reach the same amount of people that used to buy CDs.
Brazilian ethanol yelds 10 times more energy than it needs to be produced and taken to the cars. It yelds 18 times the energy it needs to be produced.
Brazilian biodiesel outputs 4 to 5 times more energy than it needs to be produced and taken to the cars. But brazilian production of biodiesel is very low tech yet and will probably inprove a lot on the next years.
If you are talking about brazilian ethanol, yes, it was subsidized (is it right?), and yes, lots of stations were out of it when the subside was canceled. But it is not subsidized anymore, and even so it is cheapper than gas. Brazil is suffering from lack of ethanol mostly due to the fast increase on consumption, but nothing that can't be fixed on 2 years if the govrnment stays out of it (what it won't).
I'd like to see how much of the brazilian cars are powered with ethanol. Is it viable to power all of them?
Well, for me it (and the recent history) reflects a profund missunderstanding of the meaning of "collaboration" by the part of Linus. The he'll not put Linux at GPLv3 is understandable. That he puts the license away just because it comes from FSF (based on FUD!? how come this being?) is a very annoying lack of leadership.
He has made lots of great work, but nobody can live out of the past. I hope he actualy start learning from his mistakes, instead of becomming angry with them.
Basic economics: Work is valuable, people get paid for it. Money is aso valuable, so people also get paid for putting their money on a business. There is a lot of work and money out there, and offer versus demand determines their value.
Initiative and risk taking are also valuable. Know how is also valuable. Alsmot all people don't have the combination of initiative, risk taking and know how. Thus this combination worths a lot.
If you have all requisites for oppening a company, go ahead, you may get a lot of money. But if you don't, there is nothing worng on living on work + investiments.
I am not defending the extinction of patents. But you did get 3 wrong out of 4. I formed this oppinion based on facts, but I don't have them now to show you. If you look for the average duration of patents at chemistry and medicines (hint, they patent the same substance several times) and the number of small business that colaborate based on patents, you'd see my point. I never saw any statistics that sopport my oposition to number 1, since it would be hard to gather them. On this case, my evidence is entirely annedontal. I simply don't see lots of small business sucessfuly defending their patents, most of them run away from legal fights.
Anyway, number 4 is very, very important, and makes patents usefull (but not for software) by itself.
"- Protect the investment of innovators, allowing them to market a product at a markup required to recoup their initial investment before cheap 'me-too' alternatives are released on the market"
Patents don't do that either. Patents protect big companies, it doesn't matter if they are the innovators (and they almost never are).
"- Protect the interests of other businesses by providing a legal framework for licensing ideas to other entities"
Patents are also not very usefull here, unless on the extremely rare case of two big companies at the same size cooperating. But on that case, you'd prefer having them competing.
"- Protect the interests of the public by ensuring that free market competition would eventually take place"
Well, on software that happens. But "eventually" is 4 or 5 technological generations ahead. On electronics (you got this one) it used to work well, but nowadays, patents or not patents, there is no free marketing on eletronics. On chemistry and medicines, it seems that "eventualy" have the same sense that it have on "copyrights end, eventualy".
"- Protect the interests of humanity and the sciences by ensuring that the details of ideas are stored in a large public archive"
That is a valid one. In fact, that is the only valid one. But it is only usefull if the patents are worth something and the texts are clear.
That is not what the article is proposing. But even if you underpower your processor so much that you need to underclock it, you still save power. Power consuption increases with the square of the voltage, while speed increases linearly.
I have MS accountable on most spam I receive. That doesn't mean that I want MS legally accountable with the government by spam. I don't have police power, so I can safely have subjectve measures. That means that I'll tell everyone around me that MS is gulty of most spam they receive, I'll never take a deal with it seriously, etc.
And, since we are discussing that, I think that MS should be accountable of making a so flawed OS. But I don't know how, since it should be done on a way that makes it hard to abuse the system. MS should be punished by negligent behaviour.
"Considering that most SMTP servers are not Exchange and the majority of internet traffic doesn't run through their servers the idea that they can, and should, stop all that traffic pertaining to unsolicited emails is rather ridiculous."
Considering that almost all this traffic is generated by computers running Windows... Yes, I really make MS accounteble from the spam I receive. Even not runnig their products.
I am not an economist, but have read a bit about it. As far as I understand it, there is only one phylosophy that is supported by evidences. And this phylosophy doesn't seem to have a name around here, as it is different from left and right views, it is not completely liberal, nor completely authoritarian and so on.
Those labels you use at the US really make my head spin. But I'm quite confident that this phylosophy doesn't have a name there either.
The fact that the government failed to punish Microsoft doesn't lead to the conclusion that with no government, Microsoft would be punished. If anything, it just demonstrate the need of a (competent) government.
1% fluctuation is what you get when trying to forsee scarcity. When the prices start to increase 100 times in a week, that means that you are late for the game and lost money, because everyone but you alread knows that the reserves are almost finished. If the material is vital, when the price start to skyrocket, you are dommed. There is not enough time to fix things, you should have made some long term planning before...
And about your discovery that the market always regulate itself at the long term, try explanning it to Microsoft.
Why botter? Energy consuption is aditive, that means that local savings will sum up to global savings. So, if you want to reduce global consuption, you can simply optimize the sub-networks.
Doing it locally saves the trouble of creating a complex protocol, gathering useless measurements, and requiring changes that has no economical counterpart (we see how hard is it with IPv6). The (semi) hierarchical nature of the internet also makes it easier to break it apart and optimize it localy, and localy we know who pays the eletricity bill.
You don't need to strip the chips, you can probe them with x-rays. That is expensive now, so it is done more on a corporate spionage basis, but if more people becomes interested on it, we may be able to get it cheap.
We also don't have to take all our chips to the lab. We can break only one code, and use it to break lots of others. Remember that a trusted network has lots of failure points.
There are projects that tries to create an x-ray detector capable of destroying the chip the first time it is powered after it being subjected to x-rays. Well, this is a security flaw by itself, but for the consumer, not for the content owners. Anyway, those are useless, since we only need to read a chip, not to use it. We can always emulate a trusted computer on a general use one (even more because a network destroys all timing measurements).
The only stuf I can't think on how to deal with is EPROM, and consequently FLASH. One can't read its content with x-rays, althoug one can overwrite it.
The problem of this argument is that the government may not forgive. And it is not subjected to (almost) any economical pressure, just political ones. That makes it increadibly hard to see in advance how it will react to your act.
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There is a very well hidden non sequitur on your argument. The fact that piracy is increasing doesn't mean that more people are listenning to music. Piracy was almost nonexistent a few years ago, it can (proportionaly) increase a lot and not reach the same amount of people that used to buy CDs.
Yes, the cars are subsidized. But not the fuel.
Thanks for the info. I've read some very confusing numbers on the net.
Brazilian ethanol yelds 10 times more energy than it needs to be produced and taken to the cars. It yelds 18 times the energy it needs to be produced.
Brazilian biodiesel outputs 4 to 5 times more energy than it needs to be produced and taken to the cars. But brazilian production of biodiesel is very low tech yet and will probably inprove a lot on the next years.
As you see, both can yeld net positive energy.
If you are talking about brazilian ethanol, yes, it was subsidized (is it right?), and yes, lots of stations were out of it when the subside was canceled. But it is not subsidized anymore, and even so it is cheapper than gas. Brazil is suffering from lack of ethanol mostly due to the fast increase on consumption, but nothing that can't be fixed on 2 years if the govrnment stays out of it (what it won't).
I'd like to see how much of the brazilian cars are powered with ethanol. Is it viable to power all of them?
Well, for me it (and the recent history) reflects a profund missunderstanding of the meaning of "collaboration" by the part of Linus. The he'll not put Linux at GPLv3 is understandable. That he puts the license away just because it comes from FSF (based on FUD!? how come this being?) is a very annoying lack of leadership.
He has made lots of great work, but nobody can live out of the past. I hope he actualy start learning from his mistakes, instead of becomming angry with them.
But on the Linux x Microsoft debate, I already know the facts! Really. Microsoft told me them.
Basic economics: Work is valuable, people get paid for it. Money is aso valuable, so people also get paid for putting their money on a business. There is a lot of work and money out there, and offer versus demand determines their value.
Initiative and risk taking are also valuable. Know how is also valuable. Alsmot all people don't have the combination of initiative, risk taking and know how. Thus this combination worths a lot.
If you have all requisites for oppening a company, go ahead, you may get a lot of money. But if you don't, there is nothing worng on living on work + investiments.
I am not defending the extinction of patents. But you did get 3 wrong out of 4. I formed this oppinion based on facts, but I don't have them now to show you. If you look for the average duration of patents at chemistry and medicines (hint, they patent the same substance several times) and the number of small business that colaborate based on patents, you'd see my point. I never saw any statistics that sopport my oposition to number 1, since it would be hard to gather them. On this case, my evidence is entirely annedontal. I simply don't see lots of small business sucessfuly defending their patents, most of them run away from legal fights.
Anyway, number 4 is very, very important, and makes patents usefull (but not for software) by itself.
Ok, I'll bite it...
Patents don't do that either. Patents protect big companies, it doesn't matter if they are the innovators (and they almost never are).
Patents are also not very usefull here, unless on the extremely rare case of two big companies at the same size cooperating. But on that case, you'd prefer having them competing.
Well, on software that happens. But "eventually" is 4 or 5 technological generations ahead. On electronics (you got this one) it used to work well, but nowadays, patents or not patents, there is no free marketing on eletronics. On chemistry and medicines, it seems that "eventualy" have the same sense that it have on "copyrights end, eventualy".
That is a valid one. In fact, that is the only valid one. But it is only usefull if the patents are worth something and the texts are clear.
That is not what the article is proposing. But even if you underpower your processor so much that you need to underclock it, you still save power. Power consuption increases with the square of the voltage, while speed increases linearly.
I have MS accountable on most spam I receive. That doesn't mean that I want MS legally accountable with the government by spam. I don't have police power, so I can safely have subjectve measures. That means that I'll tell everyone around me that MS is gulty of most spam they receive, I'll never take a deal with it seriously, etc.
And, since we are discussing that, I think that MS should be accountable of making a so flawed OS. But I don't know how, since it should be done on a way that makes it hard to abuse the system. MS should be punished by negligent behaviour.
Considering that almost all this traffic is generated by computers running Windows... Yes, I really make MS accounteble from the spam I receive. Even not runnig their products.
You know... Your argument would make more sense if banks were really more robbed than homeless people.
I am not an economist, but have read a bit about it. As far as I understand it, there is only one phylosophy that is supported by evidences. And this phylosophy doesn't seem to have a name around here, as it is different from left and right views, it is not completely liberal, nor completely authoritarian and so on.
Those labels you use at the US really make my head spin. But I'm quite confident that this phylosophy doesn't have a name there either.
So, we only need a way to throw each one of those objects against another going the oposite way. Then, you don't listen a big BOOM, and they fall.
The fact that the government failed to punish Microsoft doesn't lead to the conclusion that with no government, Microsoft would be punished. If anything, it just demonstrate the need of a (competent) government.
1% fluctuation is what you get when trying to forsee scarcity. When the prices start to increase 100 times in a week, that means that you are late for the game and lost money, because everyone but you alread knows that the reserves are almost finished. If the material is vital, when the price start to skyrocket, you are dommed. There is not enough time to fix things, you should have made some long term planning before...
And about your discovery that the market always regulate itself at the long term, try explanning it to Microsoft.
Why botter? Energy consuption is aditive, that means that local savings will sum up to global savings. So, if you want to reduce global consuption, you can simply optimize the sub-networks.
Doing it locally saves the trouble of creating a complex protocol, gathering useless measurements, and requiring changes that has no economical counterpart (we see how hard is it with IPv6). The (semi) hierarchical nature of the internet also makes it easier to break it apart and optimize it localy, and localy we know who pays the eletricity bill.
I was hit 3 times on the 2 last years. Parked! All the times, I was even out of the car.
Annedotal evidence. It is kind of stupid to get conclusions from that.
You don't need to strip the chips, you can probe them with x-rays. That is expensive now, so it is done more on a corporate spionage basis, but if more people becomes interested on it, we may be able to get it cheap.
We also don't have to take all our chips to the lab. We can break only one code, and use it to break lots of others. Remember that a trusted network has lots of failure points.
There are projects that tries to create an x-ray detector capable of destroying the chip the first time it is powered after it being subjected to x-rays. Well, this is a security flaw by itself, but for the consumer, not for the content owners. Anyway, those are useless, since we only need to read a chip, not to use it. We can always emulate a trusted computer on a general use one (even more because a network destroys all timing measurements).
The only stuf I can't think on how to deal with is EPROM, and consequently FLASH. One can't read its content with x-rays, althoug one can overwrite it.
And how do you measure piracy? Byt the amount of products that people don't buy (like is done now)? There is a problem here.
There is no way to measure the demand of music. All what those tax will do is create a new aristocratic class.
Ms will probably do that untill they ship Vista. Those will be some very hard 5 years...
The problem of this argument is that the government may not forgive. And it is not subjected to (almost) any economical pressure, just political ones. That makes it increadibly hard to see in advance how it will react to your act.
I know you are serious, and have reasonable calculations, but I can't stop thinking about "64KB ought to be enough for everybody".
Yet, I don't think we'll have kiloparsecs wide computers. But who knows if we'll be able to build some memmory smaller than atoms.
Sorry to upset you, but there are several quantum computers out there. And none of them are able to break any used criptography process yet.
But you can always wait for (if) large enough quantum computers.