The entire design of patents is to prevent someone from bulding something you claim as yours
Perhaps so, but in the case of blocking patents you are esentially patenting the "obvious", and then burning your competitors with royalties and such. This practice seems to stifle inovation, which is of course contrary to the intent of patent law.
Ok, I agree with you. But the point of my original post is that AS THINGS ARE TODAY, ensuring that every child has internet access in schol is not nearly so worthwhile as originally suggested. AS THINGS ARE, the internet is more of a marketing tool than an educational tool. This has been the case for roughly four years.
Take back the internet. Make it "good" (tm) again. Get rid of the spam. yadda yadda. Let's do this AND THEN talk about taxing everyone to put it in schools.
granted. But the signal to noise ratio in email is sooo low. I get upwards of 50 spams (read marketing) per day... and I know I am not alone in this. If I got an email from my father odds are good I'd miss it for the spam.
I dont believe that the 'net is useless by any means, but it is no longer the world's greatest educational tool. For the AVERAGE USER it simply a new source of junkmail.
Yeah, what use could children possibly have for the most powerful educational tool in the history of Man?
Sex Educational tool you mean.
Four years ago the internet might have been a valueable educational tool. Today it is more correctly viewed as a marketing tool. No kid NEEDS spam and pop-up adverts and pirated music. And really what else is there to the internet today?
Let's not let our idealism get in the way of our seeing things as they really are.
Actually, air resistance and the additional acceleration of the shuttle both have to be taken into account... although even then the 500MPh is still an odd result.
The common thread in the problems all of us report with our communications (phone) services is that whether the service is government run or a private monopoly or deregulated competition (or psudo competition) is that in every case, all of the land lines in a given area (or in a nation) end up, by necessity, in the hands of a single owner/company. If Verizon or TelMex, or whoever controls the lines is slow or unresponsive, then "customer service" will suffer.
Even if the all-powerful government owns the lines, the problem will persist. Imagine having to wait for your local public works agency yo get around to hooking you up. Imagine having to wait for congress to appropriate the money to lay down fiber.
If you want speedy service, you need two+ directly competing providers everywhere. Two companies, two networks, two instances of the necessary physical infrastructure. Anything else is the same song with a different name.
The "American" argument is not that the Constitution always represents "right", but rather that the constitution is the nation's highest law. When a government violates or ignores the laws that define and limit it, then you no longer have a constitutional government. If such a government still pretends to democracy, at best you are left with mob rule. And no matter how you look at it, unconstitutional governments of any type represent tyranny and are to be AVOIDED.
I oppose any such tyranny.
Now with that said, it is still possible to CHANGE the (us) constitution, and this may represent a compelling reason to do so (though I think not). Changing the constitution is however a difficult process, so many legislators ignore this possibility and create the "law of the day" to appease the mobs. Those of us that know better quickly point out the foul, and in due course the courts point it out as well.
Observers that point out that the PA law is probably unconstitutional are simply stating the obvious. A more interesting discussion would be along the lines: Should we change the constitution so that we can restrict X. As an American, I am frustrated that our legislators so rarely explore this option.
In Most (actually all that I am aware of), knowingly downloading and viewing child porn is illegal.
How then can an ISP verify that a site contains such material without violating the law? Must they block all sites they receive tips on without verification? If they verify then -they- are violating the law. And since ISP employees are not law enforcement officers, there appears to be no legitimate work around to this.
I thought I'd take this opportunity to inform the inhabitabitants of PA that microsoft.com is a kiddyporn site. Block it now. NOW. If you check and I am right then YOU will be a criminal...
And let us not forget that the squatters would be first in with the servers. Odds are that even if Pepsico managed to get.pepsi, without some governing authority, somebody would beat Coke to coke...
Pick Option 3, except add:
"unnecessarily" complex. Modern compilers and, for that matter programmers simply dont know how to write efficient code. They call this lack of knowledge "computer science". Bill Gates calls it ".net"
Slashdot Mirror
No, but I got whiplash when I saw the $899.95 pricetag!
I'll trade you 5 SOJs for it!
The entire design of patents is to prevent someone from bulding something you claim as yours
Perhaps so, but in the case of blocking patents you are esentially patenting the "obvious", and then burning your competitors with royalties and such. This practice seems to stifle inovation, which is of course contrary to the intent of patent law.
Ok, I agree with you. But the point of my original post is that AS THINGS ARE TODAY, ensuring that every child has internet access in schol is not nearly so worthwhile as originally suggested. AS THINGS ARE, the internet is more of a marketing tool than an educational tool. This has been the case for roughly four years.
Take back the internet. Make it "good" (tm) again. Get rid of the spam. yadda yadda. Let's do this AND THEN talk about taxing everyone to put it in schools.
Emails from their father, for one.
granted. But the signal to noise ratio in email is sooo low. I get upwards of 50 spams (read marketing) per day... and I know I am not alone in this. If I got an email from my father odds are good I'd miss it for the spam.
I dont believe that the 'net is useless by any means, but it is no longer the world's greatest educational tool. For the AVERAGE USER it simply a new source of junkmail.
Yeah, what use could children possibly have for the most powerful educational tool in the history of Man?
Sex Educational tool you mean.
Four years ago the internet might have been a valueable educational tool. Today it is more correctly viewed as a marketing tool. No kid NEEDS spam and pop-up adverts and pirated music. And really what else is there to the internet today?
Let's not let our idealism get in the way of our seeing things as they really are.
Actually, air resistance and the additional acceleration of the shuttle both have to be taken into account... although even then the 500MPh is still an odd result.
Dawgone GPS thingy musta felled offa my car onta my garage floor here. err... I mean nope I haven't driven this car at all this year...
The common thread in the problems all of us report with our communications (phone) services is that whether the service is government run or a private monopoly or deregulated competition (or psudo competition) is that in every case, all of the land lines in a given area (or in a nation) end up, by necessity, in the hands of a single owner/company. If Verizon or TelMex, or whoever controls the lines is slow or unresponsive, then "customer service" will suffer. Even if the all-powerful government owns the lines, the problem will persist. Imagine having to wait for your local public works agency yo get around to hooking you up. Imagine having to wait for congress to appropriate the money to lay down fiber. If you want speedy service, you need two+ directly competing providers everywhere. Two companies, two networks, two instances of the necessary physical infrastructure. Anything else is the same song with a different name.
The "American" argument is not that the Constitution always represents "right", but rather that the constitution is the nation's highest law. When a government violates or ignores the laws that define and limit it, then you no longer have a constitutional government. If such a government still pretends to democracy, at best you are left with mob rule. And no matter how you look at it, unconstitutional governments of any type represent tyranny and are to be AVOIDED.
I oppose any such tyranny.
Now with that said, it is still possible to CHANGE the (us) constitution, and this may represent a compelling reason to do so (though I think not). Changing the constitution is however a difficult process, so many legislators ignore this possibility and create the "law of the day" to appease the mobs. Those of us that know better quickly point out the foul, and in due course the courts point it out as well.
Observers that point out that the PA law is probably unconstitutional are simply stating the obvious. A more interesting discussion would be along the lines: Should we change the constitution so that we can restrict X.
As an American, I am frustrated that our legislators so rarely explore this option.
In Most (actually all that I am aware of), knowingly downloading and viewing child porn is illegal. How then can an ISP verify that a site contains such material without violating the law? Must they block all sites they receive tips on without verification? If they verify then -they- are violating the law. And since ISP employees are not law enforcement officers, there appears to be no legitimate work around to this. I thought I'd take this opportunity to inform the inhabitabitants of PA that microsoft.com is a kiddyporn site. Block it now. NOW. If you check and I am right then YOU will be a criminal...
And let us not forget that the squatters would be first in with the servers. Odds are that even if Pepsico managed to get .pepsi, without some governing authority, somebody would beat Coke to coke...
Pick Option 3, except add: "unnecessarily" complex. Modern compilers and, for that matter programmers simply dont know how to write efficient code. They call this lack of knowledge "computer science". Bill Gates calls it ".net"