I'm a little surprised that they used SuSE 9.1 Personal and not NLD (Novell Linux Desktop) for this comparison. Now there's a "mum and dad" distro that will send the Linux faithful running for the hills. They don't even put Emacs in the distro, imagine the blasphemy. My mom can't live without Emacs:)
Seriously, it's a sweet distro for the non-techie user. It's probably a little more business than home oriented, but put the CD in a clean machine and let it do its thing and you'll get a pretty productive system on the first boot up.
I think the biggest thing that the VoIP providers can do to avoid regulation is open up their SIP networks. And the best thing people like AT&T can do to get upstart VoIP players regulated is to open up their SIP networks.
VoIP get's most of the emphasis, but SIP is the killer app that VoIP is riding on, IMHO. The most annoying thing is that the VoIP providers won't allow customers, other VoIP providers or CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) manufactures access to the really cool features of SIP.
What can you do with truly open SIP. For starters it help to understand that SIP is a signaling protocol (like SS7 in the POTS world), not a communication protocol, SIP doesn't bother with encoding, decoding, or routing of the actually bits being communicated. As the name implies Session Initiation Protocol initiates communication session between end-points, once initiated the communication occurs direct between the end-point devices using some other protocol negotiated by SIP when it initiated the connection. However, the word "initiation" is a bit misleading because the SIP server also maintains awareness of the connection once established and can be used to control the connection afterwards and that can include adding/subtracting end-points, add/subtracting layers of communication, re-connecting end-points, etc. Very powerful stuff.
So with open SIP, you could have your cell phone route calls to the ATA in your home when you're home, but directly to your cell phone when away (and visa versa) by having the SIP server of your home ATA tell the SIP server of your cell phone provider that the new end-point device for phone number xxx is here. Also, you could set up complex multi-media connection on the fly. You're chatting over IM with someone and decide you need to up the bandwidth to voice, click, both parties (2 or more actually) phones ring, need to add a data feed to that to send a file, click. Need to add video, click.
The possibilities of what can be done with SIP have just barely been explored because of the limitation imposed by the VoIP providers. If only they understood Metcalf's law: The power of the network increases proportionately with the square of the number of nodes on the network. So by artificially limiting the number of nodes on your VoIP network to only your customers you really do yourself a disservice.
So if AT&T opened up its SIP network first and allowed users to see the power of SIP then the public sentiment could very quickly tilt in favor of regulation on other VoIP providers to do the same. On the other hand, if Vonage opened up its SIP network first then it could maintain the regulatory high-ground that VoIP inherently creates a competitive marketplace without regulations.
I sort of have to agree (karma whore alert) of all the closed things to complain about today, the API specs for WiFi chips doesn't exactly make my top ten.
Now if he had written an article about all the VoIP providers who won't allow subscribers, other VoIP providers or CPE manufacturers to interoperate with their SIP servers that would have been interesting. I saw a presentation from Jeffrey Citron, CEO of Vonage, recently and when he started talking about their "proprietary SIP network" I almost laughed out loud at the oxymoron.
Ironically, the BJP party lost to the Congress party in the last Indian election because the BJP party's slogan of a "bright shining India" didn't resonate all that well with the rural Indians who haven't actually seen all that much benefit from the tech boom in India.
The vast majority of the tech jobs are in the cities in India for the same reason they are in the cities in the US. 1) The cities have better infrastructure by virtue of the simple fact that it's more cost effective to roll out new infrastructure where the population density is higher. 2) If you're a growing business and need to hire 3000 new employees you can't do that in a town of 10,000. 3) And if you need to hire for a very specific skill set you want to do that in an area that has a high concentration of that skill set. 4) If you're a technology professional and you're looking for a job, particularly in a slow economy, you go to where there are the most number of opportunities, the cities, less you find yourself relocating every time you change jobs.
The rural US does have significantly better infrastructure than rural India, but still the closer you are to a major city the better the infrastructure. But how do you hire technology workers by the thousands in rural Arkansas. So replace the "inconvenience" expense of distance, language and culture for India with the "inconvenience" expense of having to manage a highly distributed work force.
In retrospect, I'm not at all surprised the tech boom didn't help rural India that much. Most Indian tech companies completely ignore the Indian domestic market because there still isn't one to speak of. Compares to the US, European and Middle Eastern markets the Indian market is still insignificantly small and can't nearly support the pricing levels that the international markets can. $30/hr might seem cheap to a US CIO, but it's not at all cheap to an Indian CIO.
As a result there isn't a lot of innovation going on inside India to develop products and services at a price point appropriate to the domestic Indian consumer or business. WWII and the rebuilding of Europe helped the US a lot on its path to becoming an economic superpower, but for the most part the US economy was built to satisfy a strong US domestic market; the same was true for Japan. That's not a justification for protectionism; it's just a lot easier to break new ground with innovative products in your own backyard before you try to sell them to the rest of the world.
The US should really start worrying the day India figures out how to tap into its own domestic market of over a billion people and starts innovating. And at the same time the US need to remember that innovation is what made America strong not economics protectionism.
Well I think for now the main goal of scramjet technology is a better stage one boost to space. I've always felt that space travel will remain impractical as long as the main way of getting there is to strap a bomb to yourself and hope it explodes slowly. And solving the boost to space problem will go a long way towards making space commercially viable.
Logitech actually makes two different wireless keybroad and mouse combo. I use the deNovo.
The nice thing about having a bluetooth keybroad and mouse is that all wireless devices talk to my PC through the one bluetooth adapter, no need for separate adapters for my phone and palm. I have a bluetooth mouse for my laptop that doesn't require any adapter at all because bluetooth is built into my laptop, no wires and no dongles.
Now if I could just hack up a way to quickly switch my keyboard and mouse between two different PCs I'd have a pretty nice bluetooth KVM switch (or at least KM).
If you have money (over a few thousand in the bank, which almost everyone can achieve), you can walk into any hospital and they will (figuratively) roll out the red carpet.
Oh please! Do you have any clue what healthcare actually costs in this country? And please don't give me the argument that market forces will reduce heath care costs if we only let them. I grant that some reduction would be possible, but given that healthcare in America is basically a resource for which the demand seems to always out strip the supply I wouldn't expect significant cost reductions due to market forces.
Besides the laws of supply and demand there is also the issue of sophistication of the consumer. In health care even the professionals are not all that sophisticated. I've worked in managed care and the basic idea was fairly sound: The insurance companies negotiate with providers to accept a flat fee for a given patient, e.g. $100 to treat a broken arm, $200 to treat a broken leg. The problem was that no one on either side of the negotiating table had any good estimate of what it actually costs to treat a broken arm on average. So if a whole company that makes its business understanding the real cost of health care has that much trouble what chance does the average consumer have making good buying decisions based on cost.
RedHat was founded in 1993. SuSE was founded in 1992. Novell was founded in 1983.
The point is that from a technical prospective the differences between SuSE and RedHat are minor except to the most sophisticated of users. From the angle of experience in the Linux business again RedHat and SuSE are about the same. From the angle of experience supporting a very large customer base ranging from small to large businesses Novell trumps RedHat hands down.
In the end the battle for Linux (and OSS in general) is going to be won or lost based on quality of support.
That's not saying Novell doesn't have alot to learn and change, but as long as enough people at Novell recognize what is was about Novell that made it survive all these years and what it is about Novell that has to change with the switch from NetWare to Linux, they'll do pretty well.
Also, Novell has no choice but to stay the course, I don't think anyone there is stupid enough to think they can go back to NetWare.
I haven't had a multi-layer PCB made in over a decade, back then it was totally outside the hobbiest price range. Anyone got some current pricing data on this?
I love this merger if only because finally the single largest wireless carrier in the US is a GSM carrier. After years of GSM being a second citizen in the US wireless market finally it has a real chance at the mainstream.
Say what you want about the technical advatages/diasadvantages of GSM vs CDMA. I know CDMA is technically superior in quality and bandwidth utilization, which is why 3rd generation GSM will be based on CDMA instead of TDMA. But, GSM has two huge advatages:
1) The idea of putting all the customer information, including phonebook, on a smart card was just brilliant. I've shopped for GSM phones in Europe and India and the selection of phones is mind boggling. And to try out a phone you just slip your SIM into the phone and give it a try. Of course, they don't play these locking games outside the US, hopefully Cingular will continue its unlocked policy.
2) GSM phone support real international roaming. My wife once asked a cell phone saleperson about international roaming and was told how her phone would work in Canada. Now international roaming charges are outrageous everywhere in the world, although the US carriers are by far the worse, but still it's nice to be able to use your phone while transiting through one country on the way to the other. When you get to your final destination just pop a pre-paid SIM card into your phone.
There are certainly some other numbers I'd like to see. Such as percentage of grads getting jobs in their field. I presume this figure is just of those that got jobs.
Or median salary (The average US family income is $57,000, but the median is only $43,000). I wonder if like US income as a whole if there are a few really well paid grads in very in-demand specialties pulling up the average.
It would be interesting to contrast these numbers with the general population as well as workers at various years of experience. I suspent that in our current economy where skill sets change over so quickly anyone just coming out of some sort of significant training / degree program is getting a premium for having latest and great skills. I'm sure experience get's a premium too, but I wonder which one get's the bigger premium.
For a good definition of what liberalism has been and should be at least read "Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America" by Robert Reich.
And you're right, the current administration is anything but conservative, but I thought "fascist, right-wing nut job administration" would have been a bit too inflammatory.
And whereas I do agree that Kerry is moving to the middle along with all the other Democrats, I don't agree that Bush or the Republicans are moving towards the middle in any significant way. In my view, today the Democrats are generally talking liberal, but acting towards the middle; where as the Republicans are talking towards the middle, but acting radical right. Thus I still see a significant difference between the parties, more so than I saw in 2000, and my hope is that a Kerry administration can be pulled back towards true liberalism. A second Bush term will likely be even more radical and cause the fence pole to lodge even more firmly in the ass of the Democratic party.
BTW: You're right that monopolies are basically a failure in democracy. Kings and Queens used to reward supporters with land grants, but as trade and business became more valuable than land, the smart ones started asking for royal monopolies instead of land. "No thanks, your majesty, you can keep the lordship and the land, but can I have all trade in sugar cane instead."
Corporations and business people have been lobbying politicians for as long as they both have existed. Fortunately there is usually some form of political resistance to keep the corporations from getting too outlandish with there lobbying efforts. There have been times in US history when the political resistance to corporations has been extremely weak, the last time it happened was a period now known as the gilded age or the period of the robber barons.
Under the current administration political resistance to corporate lobbying has almost disappeared. Witness the Enron execs getting no less than six audiences with the White House to discuss about energy policy; the government handing out no-bid contracts in Iraq; the Justice Department settlement with Microsoft; the Airline industry bailout; the protective tariffs on steel; the INDICE Act.
These examples are most egregious because they not only represent business as a whole influencing government, but single industries and corporations influencing government for very specific and opportunistic purposes. It's turning into a feeding frenzy out there.
When sufficient political resistance does exist single corporations and even single industries often lack sufficient political capital to act on their own. As such they must pool their forces with other businesses and industry sectors, but in the process they must also set priorities and compromise with each other. In a system with sufficient political resistance the auto industry and construction industry would not have supported the steel industry in its request for protective tariffs. If the steel industry really needed help it would have to come up with something that would be truly beneficial to all business in order to gain sufficient support for its efforts. Political resistence encourages moderation.
As much as I would love to see liberals controlling both Congress and the White House, this last four years of conservative controlling both is a pretty strong argument in favor of divided government. God help us if conservatives get 4 more years, because they'll probably get control of the Judiciary as well. And as must as I loath centrist, poll-based governing typical of the Clinton administration; when the balance of power tips too much one way or they other, the party in power loses all incentive to moderate itself.
The system you are describing is flex-time. Flex-time is practically taken for granted in the tech sector, but many jobs, salaried as well as hourly have strict working hours. Also, some companies offer hourly workers flex-time; it's not just reserved for salaried workers.
Interestingly most companies that offer flex-time find that absenteeism decreases and workers are generally more productive. If you know you're going to get docked for that 2 hours your late because you have to take the kid to the doctor you might as well call in sick, assuming you have sick pay benefits. My father was an hourly worker his whole life and in the summer time his company let them work 9-hours a day Monday-Thursday and half a day on Friday. To my father that was one of the best perks he got.
Also, implicit in your statement is the concept of balance. You work ~40 each week, even though you might work 12 hours on a single given day. That's part of flex-time. The main point is that your effective hourly wage has not been compromised. On the other hand if you noticed in 6 months you were averaging 45 hours a week and 6 months after that 50 hours a week, but you don't get a raise in that time then your effective hourly rate has declined significantly. The question at this point is did you have a choice or did your employer coerce you into working the extra hours without more pay.
Another thing you're mixing up is the difference between working 50 hours and getting paid for 50 hours vs. working 50 hours and getting paid a premium for the last 10 hours (time and a half). The overtime rules in question not only elminate the need to pay time and a hlaf they also eliminate the need to pay for the extra 10 hours at all.
Well democracy can be though of as the ultimate union. The people of this country, through their elected representatives, voted themselves certain minimum requirements in their employment contracts with all employers. Among some of these requirements are minimum wage, unemployment insurance, overtime, family and medical leave, etc.
Even in the most union freindly environment, which certainly does not describe the current state of employment law or the enforcement there of, is it not possible for all workers to belong to a unions; the growing number of self-employed are a good example. Thus the government needs to set some levels of protection for these workers who do not have sufficient bargining power by themselves or through collective bargining organizations.
Except, IBM never licensed the BIOS, or even offered it for license as far as I know. And in fact IBM got out of the PC business all together for a few years when it realized it had hopelessly lost the monopoly to the likes of Compaq, et al. But that was when IBM was a hardware company. Today IBM, the services company, is much more amenable to open standards.
We can only hope though that the Cingular policies on phones are used going forward and not the AT&T policies. Locking GSM to one provider, like AT&T does, makes Verizon look good.
It would seem that the same rule would apply to radio broadcasts. Therefore, your argument is that a stated more restrictive license would overrule this fair use right. That is completely untested in court and there are no legal authorities which support that specific position.
You're right this hasn't been tested, which means it could be ok or maybe not. When a judge decides we'll know. I for one wouldn't bet on which will trump the other "fair use" or contract law.
This does bring up an interesting point though. Many of these new services are for the most part un-regulated and are governed more by a service agreement than government rules and regulations. There are lots of rights that are generally agreed cannot be contracted away, but the number of things for which we agree to specific written contract terms for today is enoromous compared to even 25 years ago. How many licenses and service agreements did you agree to last week. I don't think the courts have even come close to catching up.
"The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source" by Martin Fink provides a much better prospective on the subject.
So here's my problem with Open Source from a business prospective. The same issue applies to a variety of industries, not just software, but open source software is a particularly good example.
I've heard claims that the best developers are as much as a thousand times more productive than the worse developers. Open Source might actually prove that contention; all of open source seems to be the contribution of a relatively small group of highly productive developers.
I also believe it because I've seen for myself the difficulty of scaling up a successful development organization. It's usually a case of diminishing returns as you add more staff.
This applies to any industries where a small group of highly skilled super-contributors can add a tremendous amount of value to a company.
So what is the long-term value of a company if the reality is that there is a relatively small group of super-contributors that actually add most of the value? What happens to the value of the company if that group leaves?
This is not an argument for close source. Unless you're an uber-profitable company that can afford to use nuisance tactics to protect your market share, some group of super-contributors will clone your success eventually even without violating your IP rights. Particularly given the relatively low capital requirements of a software start-up.
I've heard concerns that Google will suffer when many of its long-term super-contributors find themselves suddenly able to cash out and retire. How many dot-coms seem to have evaporated overnight shortly after their super-contributors were able to cash out?
So given that indentured servitude is still illegal in most developed countries. How do companies build long-term value of the form that venture capitalists and long-term shareholders are willing to invest in?
The FCC did exactly what it's supposed to do when it specified the new digital TV broadcast standard; it created a national broadcast standard where clearly one is beneficial to the public. No jurisdiction question here.
The MPAA successfully lobbied for the inclusion of the "broadcast flag" in the DTV standard, which when present in the broadcast signal requires the receiving device to provide appropriate copy protection to the program being broadcast. The FCC had no intent to disallow the recording, off-line storage or even limited sharing of high quality digital broadcasts, it simply intended to limit widespread re-distribution of high quality recordings.
The FCC very wisely decided that there was no need to limit the set of appropriate copy protection mechanisms, so it established a procedure by which to certify a copy protection mechanisms. It's that procedure which TiVo availed themselves of (and you could too if you want).
So given that the FCC has jurisdiction and that TiVo has satisfied the FCC that their copy protection mechanism provides reasonable protection against widespread re-distribution there's nothing for anyone to sue about except to claim that the FCC somehow violated its own procedures in certifying the TiVo mechanism.
DCMA doesn't apply here either, since the TiVo software isn't circumventing a copy protection mechanism it's actually enforcing one. If you found a way to break the TiVo protection, that would violate the DCMA.
I only have cordless phones in my house. I know lots of people who only have cordless phones. Guess what, when the power goes out the phone doesn't work. I've thought about putting a UPS on my base, but you know what, it's not a big deal.
I know the POTS system is incredibly reliable, a century of production deployment will do that to any technology. And that level of reliability is great for the fire department and the hospitals, but I'm not so convinced that we actually need that level of reliability in every single home.
I don't think VoIP needs to be held to the same level of service. For now their customer base can and probably does provide its own fault tolerance in the form of cell phones, UPSes and multiple lines. If reliability becomes an issue the market will push it upon them. I hope they'll get the 911 issues worked out sooner rather than later, but when I grew up they taught us to dial "0" in case of an emergency; that probably still works.
Meant 915MHz, which is in what is known as an ISM (Instrument, Scientific and Medical) band. There are a few ISM bands, but 900MHz is used a lot in medical monitoring devices today.
All these devices share the same band by talking as little as possible, using as little power as possible when they do, both to conserve spectrum and battery life. RFID readers send out a continuous signal using as strong a signal as allowed because that's where the RDIF tag draws its power from. And they aren't equipped with narrow band comb filters either.
Ten people can carry on conservations at once in the same room if they all whisper to the person next to them or wait for breaks in the other conversations to talk. If one persons decided to yell continuously the whole system falls apart.
Well if you do build a devise to fry RFID tags keep it away from your own wireless devices you'll probably fry them too.
One of the biggest implementation problems that exist with RFID today is not other wireless technology interfering with the readers, but rather the readers interfering with other wireless technology. The readers are very bad wireless spectrum hogs. The most common ones work at 915MHz and others use the 2.4GHz range. The readers will effectively jam any other devices in the same band for a range of about 10ft, making a 2.4GHz RFID reader with a built in WiFi link to the corporate database practically impossible. And you don't want a 915KHz reader anywhere near your hospital room.
The FCC has for its entire history put most of the burden on transmitters to avoid interfering with other devices and 50 years ago that might have made sense, today it does not.
The idea was that 50 years ago most use of the airways was broascast and requiring smart transmitters enabled receivers to be dumb (and thus cheaper). Today as more and more use of the airways is bi-directional there is no particular cost advantage to putting the burden of interference solely on either the receiver or the transmitter.
And if you think it's your right to own a cheap TV that can't handle interference because the airways are a public trust, think again. The airways are a public trust and as such each of us have a responsibility to use it wisely and efficiently.
I always get a kick out of the face that, in India at least, everyone seems to use A4 paper in their printer but set their print margins to Letter. There's a good.5 inches wasted at the botton of every page. That's 5% more trees needlessly killed.
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I'm a little surprised that they used SuSE 9.1 Personal and not NLD (Novell Linux Desktop) for this comparison. Now there's a "mum and dad" distro that will send the Linux faithful running for the hills. They don't even put Emacs in the distro, imagine the blasphemy. My mom can't live without Emacs :)
Seriously, it's a sweet distro for the non-techie user. It's probably a little more business than home oriented, but put the CD in a clean machine and let it do its thing and you'll get a pretty productive system on the first boot up.
I think the biggest thing that the VoIP providers can do to avoid regulation is open up their SIP networks. And the best thing people like AT&T can do to get upstart VoIP players regulated is to open up their SIP networks.
VoIP get's most of the emphasis, but SIP is the killer app that VoIP is riding on, IMHO. The most annoying thing is that the VoIP providers won't allow customers, other VoIP providers or CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) manufactures access to the really cool features of SIP.
What can you do with truly open SIP. For starters it help to understand that SIP is a signaling protocol (like SS7 in the POTS world), not a communication protocol, SIP doesn't bother with encoding, decoding, or routing of the actually bits being communicated. As the name implies Session Initiation Protocol initiates communication session between end-points, once initiated the communication occurs direct between the end-point devices using some other protocol negotiated by SIP when it initiated the connection. However, the word "initiation" is a bit misleading because the SIP server also maintains awareness of the connection once established and can be used to control the connection afterwards and that can include adding/subtracting end-points, add/subtracting layers of communication, re-connecting end-points, etc. Very powerful stuff.
So with open SIP, you could have your cell phone route calls to the ATA in your home when you're home, but directly to your cell phone when away (and visa versa) by having the SIP server of your home ATA tell the SIP server of your cell phone provider that the new end-point device for phone number xxx is here. Also, you could set up complex multi-media connection on the fly. You're chatting over IM with someone and decide you need to up the bandwidth to voice, click, both parties (2 or more actually) phones ring, need to add a data feed to that to send a file, click. Need to add video, click.
The possibilities of what can be done with SIP have just barely been explored because of the limitation imposed by the VoIP providers. If only they understood Metcalf's law: The power of the network increases proportionately with the square of the number of nodes on the network. So by artificially limiting the number of nodes on your VoIP network to only your customers you really do yourself a disservice.
So if AT&T opened up its SIP network first and allowed users to see the power of SIP then the public sentiment could very quickly tilt in favor of regulation on other VoIP providers to do the same. On the other hand, if Vonage opened up its SIP network first then it could maintain the regulatory high-ground that VoIP inherently creates a competitive marketplace without regulations.
I sort of have to agree (karma whore alert) of all the closed things to complain about today, the API specs for WiFi chips doesn't exactly make my top ten.
Now if he had written an article about all the VoIP providers who won't allow subscribers, other VoIP providers or CPE manufacturers to interoperate with their SIP servers that would have been interesting. I saw a presentation from Jeffrey Citron, CEO of Vonage, recently and when he started talking about their "proprietary SIP network" I almost laughed out loud at the oxymoron.
Ironically, the BJP party lost to the Congress party in the last Indian election because the BJP party's slogan of a "bright shining India" didn't resonate all that well with the rural Indians who haven't actually seen all that much benefit from the tech boom in India.
The vast majority of the tech jobs are in the cities in India for the same reason they are in the cities in the US. 1) The cities have better infrastructure by virtue of the simple fact that it's more cost effective to roll out new infrastructure where the population density is higher. 2) If you're a growing business and need to hire 3000 new employees you can't do that in a town of 10,000. 3) And if you need to hire for a very specific skill set you want to do that in an area that has a high concentration of that skill set. 4) If you're a technology professional and you're looking for a job, particularly in a slow economy, you go to where there are the most number of opportunities, the cities, less you find yourself relocating every time you change jobs.
The rural US does have significantly better infrastructure than rural India, but still the closer you are to a major city the better the infrastructure. But how do you hire technology workers by the thousands in rural Arkansas. So replace the "inconvenience" expense of distance, language and culture for India with the "inconvenience" expense of having to manage a highly distributed work force.
In retrospect, I'm not at all surprised the tech boom didn't help rural India that much. Most Indian tech companies completely ignore the Indian domestic market because there still isn't one to speak of. Compares to the US, European and Middle Eastern markets the Indian market is still insignificantly small and can't nearly support the pricing levels that the international markets can. $30/hr might seem cheap to a US CIO, but it's not at all cheap to an Indian CIO.
As a result there isn't a lot of innovation going on inside India to develop products and services at a price point appropriate to the domestic Indian consumer or business. WWII and the rebuilding of Europe helped the US a lot on its path to becoming an economic superpower, but for the most part the US economy was built to satisfy a strong US domestic market; the same was true for Japan. That's not a justification for protectionism; it's just a lot easier to break new ground with innovative products in your own backyard before you try to sell them to the rest of the world.
The US should really start worrying the day India figures out how to tap into its own domestic market of over a billion people and starts innovating. And at the same time the US need to remember that innovation is what made America strong not economics protectionism.
Well I think for now the main goal of scramjet technology is a better stage one boost to space. I've always felt that space travel will remain impractical as long as the main way of getting there is to strap a bomb to yourself and hope it explodes slowly. And solving the boost to space problem will go a long way towards making space commercially viable.
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But there is hope for over-land super sonic flight some day. http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Education/Educator/Resea
Logitech actually makes two different wireless keybroad and mouse combo. I use the deNovo.
The nice thing about having a bluetooth keybroad and mouse is that all wireless devices talk to my PC through the one bluetooth adapter, no need for separate adapters for my phone and palm. I have a bluetooth mouse for my laptop that doesn't require any adapter at all because bluetooth is built into my laptop, no wires and no dongles.
Now if I could just hack up a way to quickly switch my keyboard and mouse between two different PCs I'd have a pretty nice bluetooth KVM switch (or at least KM).
Oh please! Do you have any clue what healthcare actually costs in this country? And please don't give me the argument that market forces will reduce heath care costs if we only let them. I grant that some reduction would be possible, but given that healthcare in America is basically a resource for which the demand seems to always out strip the supply I wouldn't expect significant cost reductions due to market forces.
Besides the laws of supply and demand there is also the issue of sophistication of the consumer. In health care even the professionals are not all that sophisticated. I've worked in managed care and the basic idea was fairly sound: The insurance companies negotiate with providers to accept a flat fee for a given patient, e.g. $100 to treat a broken arm, $200 to treat a broken leg. The problem was that no one on either side of the negotiating table had any good estimate of what it actually costs to treat a broken arm on average. So if a whole company that makes its business understanding the real cost of health care has that much trouble what chance does the average consumer have making good buying decisions based on cost.
RedHat was founded in 1993. SuSE was founded in 1992. Novell was founded in 1983.
The point is that from a technical prospective the differences between SuSE and RedHat are minor except to the most sophisticated of users. From the angle of experience in the Linux business again RedHat and SuSE are about the same. From the angle of experience supporting a very large customer base ranging from small to large businesses Novell trumps RedHat hands down.
In the end the battle for Linux (and OSS in general) is going to be won or lost based on quality of support.
That's not saying Novell doesn't have alot to learn and change, but as long as enough people at Novell recognize what is was about Novell that made it survive all these years and what it is about Novell that has to change with the switch from NetWare to Linux, they'll do pretty well.
Also, Novell has no choice but to stay the course, I don't think anyone there is stupid enough to think they can go back to NetWare.
I haven't had a multi-layer PCB made in over a decade, back then it was totally outside the hobbiest price range. Anyone got some current pricing data on this?
I love this merger if only because finally the single largest wireless carrier in the US is a GSM carrier. After years of GSM being a second citizen in the US wireless market finally it has a real chance at the mainstream.
Say what you want about the technical advatages/diasadvantages of GSM vs CDMA. I know CDMA is technically superior in quality and bandwidth utilization, which is why 3rd generation GSM will be based on CDMA instead of TDMA. But, GSM has two huge advatages:
1) The idea of putting all the customer information, including phonebook, on a smart card was just brilliant. I've shopped for GSM phones in Europe and India and the selection of phones is mind boggling. And to try out a phone you just slip your SIM into the phone and give it a try. Of course, they don't play these locking games outside the US, hopefully Cingular will continue its unlocked policy.
2) GSM phone support real international roaming. My wife once asked a cell phone saleperson about international roaming and was told how her phone would work in Canada. Now international roaming charges are outrageous everywhere in the world, although the US carriers are by far the worse, but still it's nice to be able to use your phone while transiting through one country on the way to the other. When you get to your final destination just pop a pre-paid SIM card into your phone.
There are certainly some other numbers I'd like to see. Such as percentage of grads getting jobs in their field. I presume this figure is just of those that got jobs.
Or median salary (The average US family income is $57,000, but the median is only $43,000). I wonder if like US income as a whole if there are a few really well paid grads in very in-demand specialties pulling up the average.
It would be interesting to contrast these numbers with the general population as well as workers at various years of experience. I suspent that in our current economy where skill sets change over so quickly anyone just coming out of some sort of significant training / degree program is getting a premium for having latest and great skills. I'm sure experience get's a premium too, but I wonder which one get's the bigger premium.
For a good definition of what liberalism has been and should be at least read "Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America" by Robert Reich.
And you're right, the current administration is anything but conservative, but I thought "fascist, right-wing nut job administration" would have been a bit too inflammatory.
And whereas I do agree that Kerry is moving to the middle along with all the other Democrats, I don't agree that Bush or the Republicans are moving towards the middle in any significant way. In my view, today the Democrats are generally talking liberal, but acting towards the middle; where as the Republicans are talking towards the middle, but acting radical right. Thus I still see a significant difference between the parties, more so than I saw in 2000, and my hope is that a Kerry administration can be pulled back towards true liberalism. A second Bush term will likely be even more radical and cause the fence pole to lodge even more firmly in the ass of the Democratic party.
BTW: You're right that monopolies are basically a failure in democracy. Kings and Queens used to reward supporters with land grants, but as trade and business became more valuable than land, the smart ones started asking for royal monopolies instead of land. "No thanks, your majesty, you can keep the lordship and the land, but can I have all trade in sugar cane instead."
Corporations and business people have been lobbying politicians for as long as they both have existed. Fortunately there is usually some form of political resistance to keep the corporations from getting too outlandish with there lobbying efforts. There have been times in US history when the political resistance to corporations has been extremely weak, the last time it happened was a period now known as the gilded age or the period of the robber barons.
Under the current administration political resistance to corporate lobbying has almost disappeared. Witness the Enron execs getting no less than six audiences with the White House to discuss about energy policy; the government handing out no-bid contracts in Iraq; the Justice Department settlement with Microsoft; the Airline industry bailout; the protective tariffs on steel; the INDICE Act.
These examples are most egregious because they not only represent business as a whole influencing government, but single industries and corporations influencing government for very specific and opportunistic purposes. It's turning into a feeding frenzy out there.
When sufficient political resistance does exist single corporations and even single industries often lack sufficient political capital to act on their own. As such they must pool their forces with other businesses and industry sectors, but in the process they must also set priorities and compromise with each other. In a system with sufficient political resistance the auto industry and construction industry would not have supported the steel industry in its request for protective tariffs. If the steel industry really needed help it would have to come up with something that would be truly beneficial to all business in order to gain sufficient support for its efforts. Political resistence encourages moderation.
As much as I would love to see liberals controlling both Congress and the White House, this last four years of conservative controlling both is a pretty strong argument in favor of divided government. God help us if conservatives get 4 more years, because they'll probably get control of the Judiciary as well. And as must as I loath centrist, poll-based governing typical of the Clinton administration; when the balance of power tips too much one way or they other, the party in power loses all incentive to moderate itself.
The system you are describing is flex-time. Flex-time is practically taken for granted in the tech sector, but many jobs, salaried as well as hourly have strict working hours. Also, some companies offer hourly workers flex-time; it's not just reserved for salaried workers.
Interestingly most companies that offer flex-time find that absenteeism decreases and workers are generally more productive. If you know you're going to get docked for that 2 hours your late because you have to take the kid to the doctor you might as well call in sick, assuming you have sick pay benefits. My father was an hourly worker his whole life and in the summer time his company let them work 9-hours a day Monday-Thursday and half a day on Friday. To my father that was one of the best perks he got.
Also, implicit in your statement is the concept of balance. You work ~40 each week, even though you might work 12 hours on a single given day. That's part of flex-time. The main point is that your effective hourly wage has not been compromised. On the other hand if you noticed in 6 months you were averaging 45 hours a week and 6 months after that 50 hours a week, but you don't get a raise in that time then your effective hourly rate has declined significantly. The question at this point is did you have a choice or did your employer coerce you into working the extra hours without more pay.
Another thing you're mixing up is the difference between working 50 hours and getting paid for 50 hours vs. working 50 hours and getting paid a premium for the last 10 hours (time and a half). The overtime rules in question not only elminate the need to pay time and a hlaf they also eliminate the need to pay for the extra 10 hours at all.
Well democracy can be though of as the ultimate union. The people of this country, through their elected representatives, voted themselves certain minimum requirements in their employment contracts with all employers. Among some of these requirements are minimum wage, unemployment insurance, overtime, family and medical leave, etc.
Even in the most union freindly environment, which certainly does not describe the current state of employment law or the enforcement there of, is it not possible for all workers to belong to a unions; the growing number of self-employed are a good example. Thus the government needs to set some levels of protection for these workers who do not have sufficient bargining power by themselves or through collective bargining organizations.
Except, IBM never licensed the BIOS, or even offered it for license as far as I know. And in fact IBM got out of the PC business all together for a few years when it realized it had hopelessly lost the monopoly to the likes of Compaq, et al. But that was when IBM was a hardware company. Today IBM, the services company, is much more amenable to open standards.
We can only hope though that the Cingular policies on phones are used going forward and not the AT&T policies. Locking GSM to one provider, like AT&T does, makes Verizon look good.
You're right this hasn't been tested, which means it could be ok or maybe not. When a judge decides we'll know. I for one wouldn't bet on which will trump the other "fair use" or contract law.
This does bring up an interesting point though. Many of these new services are for the most part un-regulated and are governed more by a service agreement than government rules and regulations. There are lots of rights that are generally agreed cannot be contracted away, but the number of things for which we agree to specific written contract terms for today is enoromous compared to even 25 years ago. How many licenses and service agreements did you agree to last week. I don't think the courts have even come close to catching up.
"The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source" by Martin Fink provides a much better prospective on the subject.
So here's my problem with Open Source from a business prospective. The same issue applies to a variety of industries, not just software, but open source software is a particularly good example.
I've heard claims that the best developers are as much as a thousand times more productive than the worse developers. Open Source might actually prove that contention; all of open source seems to be the contribution of a relatively small group of highly productive developers.
I also believe it because I've seen for myself the difficulty of scaling up a successful development organization. It's usually a case of diminishing returns as you add more staff.
This applies to any industries where a small group of highly skilled super-contributors can add a tremendous amount of value to a company.
So what is the long-term value of a company if the reality is that there is a relatively small group of super-contributors that actually add most of the value? What happens to the value of the company if that group leaves?
This is not an argument for close source. Unless you're an uber-profitable company that can afford to use nuisance tactics to protect your market share, some group of super-contributors will clone your success eventually even without violating your IP rights. Particularly given the relatively low capital requirements of a software start-up.
I've heard concerns that Google will suffer when many of its long-term super-contributors find themselves suddenly able to cash out and retire. How many dot-coms seem to have evaporated overnight shortly after their super-contributors were able to cash out?
So given that indentured servitude is still illegal in most developed countries. How do companies build long-term value of the form that venture capitalists and long-term shareholders are willing to invest in?
The FCC did exactly what it's supposed to do when it specified the new digital TV broadcast standard; it created a national broadcast standard where clearly one is beneficial to the public. No jurisdiction question here.
The MPAA successfully lobbied for the inclusion of the "broadcast flag" in the DTV standard, which when present in the broadcast signal requires the receiving device to provide appropriate copy protection to the program being broadcast. The FCC had no intent to disallow the recording, off-line storage or even limited sharing of high quality digital broadcasts, it simply intended to limit widespread re-distribution of high quality recordings.
The FCC very wisely decided that there was no need to limit the set of appropriate copy protection mechanisms, so it established a procedure by which to certify a copy protection mechanisms. It's that procedure which TiVo availed themselves of (and you could too if you want).
So given that the FCC has jurisdiction and that TiVo has satisfied the FCC that their copy protection mechanism provides reasonable protection against widespread re-distribution there's nothing for anyone to sue about except to claim that the FCC somehow violated its own procedures in certifying the TiVo mechanism.
DCMA doesn't apply here either, since the TiVo software isn't circumventing a copy protection mechanism it's actually enforcing one. If you found a way to break the TiVo protection, that would violate the DCMA.
I only have cordless phones in my house. I know lots of people who only have cordless phones. Guess what, when the power goes out the phone doesn't work. I've thought about putting a UPS on my base, but you know what, it's not a big deal.
I know the POTS system is incredibly reliable, a century of production deployment will do that to any technology. And that level of reliability is great for the fire department and the hospitals, but I'm not so convinced that we actually need that level of reliability in every single home.
I don't think VoIP needs to be held to the same level of service. For now their customer base can and probably does provide its own fault tolerance in the form of cell phones, UPSes and multiple lines. If reliability becomes an issue the market will push it upon them. I hope they'll get the 911 issues worked out sooner rather than later, but when I grew up they taught us to dial "0" in case of an emergency; that probably still works.
Meant 915MHz, which is in what is known as an ISM (Instrument, Scientific and Medical) band. There are a few ISM bands, but 900MHz is used a lot in medical monitoring devices today.
All these devices share the same band by talking as little as possible, using as little power as possible when they do, both to conserve spectrum and battery life. RFID readers send out a continuous signal using as strong a signal as allowed because that's where the RDIF tag draws its power from. And they aren't equipped with narrow band comb filters either.
Ten people can carry on conservations at once in the same room if they all whisper to the person next to them or wait for breaks in the other conversations to talk. If one persons decided to yell continuously the whole system falls apart.
Well if you do build a devise to fry RFID tags keep it away from your own wireless devices you'll probably fry them too.
One of the biggest implementation problems that exist with RFID today is not other wireless technology interfering with the readers, but rather the readers interfering with other wireless technology. The readers are very bad wireless spectrum hogs. The most common ones work at 915MHz and others use the 2.4GHz range. The readers will effectively jam any other devices in the same band for a range of about 10ft, making a 2.4GHz RFID reader with a built in WiFi link to the corporate database practically impossible. And you don't want a 915KHz reader anywhere near your hospital room.
The FCC has for its entire history put most of the burden on transmitters to avoid interfering with other devices and 50 years ago that might have made sense, today it does not.
The idea was that 50 years ago most use of the airways was broascast and requiring smart transmitters enabled receivers to be dumb (and thus cheaper). Today as more and more use of the airways is bi-directional there is no particular cost advantage to putting the burden of interference solely on either the receiver or the transmitter.
And if you think it's your right to own a cheap TV that can't handle interference because the airways are a public trust, think again. The airways are a public trust and as such each of us have a responsibility to use it wisely and efficiently.
I always get a kick out of the face that, in India at least, everyone seems to use A4 paper in their printer but set their print margins to Letter. There's a good .5 inches wasted at the botton of every page. That's 5% more trees needlessly killed.