The big difference I see between Amazon's DRM and most other schemes is the number of devices that you can read their e-books on.
Ipods, Ipads, Android devices, your PC, your laptop, and of course your Kindle. I'm sure by next year they'll have a reader out for the dashboard in your car!
Many of the things that Congress does fall under Amendment 10. Unfortunately they've used the Interstate Commerce Clause to short-circuit the 10th and somehow they got the Supreme Court to go along with it.
Here's a fun thought exercise. With the Constitution in mind think about specific things that the Federal Government does, either through agencies or law making.
Now try and find justification for those things according to a black letter reading of the Constitution.
Here is an example to get you started. Most of the agencies involved in the "War on Drugs" owe their existence to the torturing of the I.C.C., as does the legal status of the drugs themselves.
There's about 1 million more examples I could give but it would grow tiresome and the point is better served if the reader does their own work.
There are two online graduate degree seekers in my house and a boy with a penchant for online games. When all three of us are doing are thing at the same time even our 15 Mb/s line starts to have issues.
Try and think about how it might be if you moved out of your parents place and met a girl. I know that's difficult for you but try.
I'm not the OP but Population Density doesn't tell the whole story. Consider two scenarios, each involving an area of one square mile:
In our first scenario there are 100 users living in that square mile but each user is spaced equidistant from one another. If you want to provide Internet service to those users you are going to have to cable an area equal to that one square mile.
In our second scenario there are 100 users living in a typical neighborhood which is the only thing in that square mile. If you want to provide Internet service to those users you need to cable an area equal to the size of the neighborhood.
It's clear that they both have a population density of 100 people per square mile but it's equally clear that wiring the first scenario will be far more work, far more expensive, and provide a much lower rate of return on the investment.
Now remember that the size of a neighborhood in America is much larger than the size of a neighborhood in other parts of the world with the U.S. having larger homes and larger lot sizes so even "urbanization" doesn't accurately tell the story. An "urban" area in America can still be more "suburban" than an urban area of Europe.
In general I agree with you though, it's shameful and ridiculous that the U.S. won't get this solved and frankly the idea that we are too big is just a poor excuse.
You should really consider doing research before you offer your opinion on things you don't understand. I know plenty of city dwellers with crappy Internet. I also know plenty of country dwellers with reasonable Internet. The issue isn't solely one of your geographical location.
You're asking us to risk unknowable amounts of damage to the digital freedom of the entire nation for who knows how long on the _hope_ that Mr. Verrilli won't continue to assist his former industry if he becomes Solicitor General. I'm sure it's a sweet deal for Mr. Verrilli but what's the American public getting that makes this risk worthwhile to us?
Frankly, and please don't take this personally, your profession suffers from an image problem and for a variety of very good reasons people don't trust Attorney's. Why should Mr. Verrilli be any different?
No, Mr. Verrilli should be rejected and someone else should be found. Preferably someone without such strong ties to such a litigious and morally corrupt industry.
I can't read it but I'm informed by some who can that Al-Jazeera in Arabic is a far different critter than the Al-Jazeera in English. This may have something to do with their reputation.
If you do this then you're actually the opposite of "venerable".
Also, welcome to business! Any time you work with a "partner" or hire a contractor that works in your name you expose yourself to risk. It's YOUR JOB to make sure that the risk is acceptable to you. It's tot our, meaning a generic customers, problem if you hire some scummy "fly by night LLC" to do your online marketing and they expose you to a lawsuit with the way they conduct themselves in your name.
Ever make one of those posts where you just want to bang your head on the desk? Obviously I have the Sun / Oracle names backwards and I apologize for that glaring error.
See, this is how the Apple RDF works. You think that this is a new service and that Apple is offering it first when neither are true. There has been a multitude of hardware vendors offering network and internet boot appliances for a long, long time now.
Have you ever heard the phrase "The network is the computer."? If you don't know it's Oracle's slogan. Oracle released a diskless network booted workstation in 1996, the same year that Apple only started offering online storage.
Somehow in the Apple world this means that what Oracle did 14 years ago, and that other hardware manufacturers have been doing all along, somehow magically didn't happen.
You may not have noticed but many others have and that includes me. I still use Google and will likely continue to do so but their search is getting increasingly unreliable.
Yes, it IS fair. I don't mean to come across as a partisan animal but we spent years and year hearing about the "Bush Administration" whenever any government agency did any little thing. I find it interesting that it's now the FCC or the FDA that takes action and not the "Obama Administration".
It IS fair to say the "Obama Administration" or the "Bush Administration" these guys are, after all, in charge of their Governments and ultimately responsible for what they do. This idea that the guy at the top gets a free pass on what his underlings do is ludicrous and it needs to stop.
If they don't like what's happening in their name then they should take the time to change it lest the people are supposed to be in charge change them!
I wouldn't recommend it as a common practice for all children but when your 5 year old starts self teaching celestial mechanics you need to get them checked.
You need to have them checked because you need to have it on record if they're at least two standard deviations up from normal. This is an education thing. If you go to the school district and say your child is G&T and thus has special education needs they're going to ask you to prove it.
They also need to be checked because so you know the level of their intelligence. My son at 130 barely makes two standard deviations so I know roughly what he can handle. Had he tested at 150 or up then I would know that he needed to be pushed harder.
Had he tested above 160ish then I would know to invest in a road-runner as I'm dealing with a Wile E Coyote. xD
That's why I did it, I'm sure that other parents of G&T children have similar reasons.
I can't speak for anyone else but I was a gifted child as is my son. The reason he isn't grade skipping is the same reason that I didn't; Socialization.
My son is already one of the youngest in his grade, making the bottom of the "cutoff" by only 5 days. If he was a year, or even two, younger than his classmates it would be very difficult for him to do anything besides academics.
For instance he has a love of athletics and has played club soccer since age 5, he also started tackle football this fall. It's more fun for him because some of the kids he is playing with are in his class. This would not be true if he grade skipped.
Aside from socialization and athletics there's another consideration. My son is not a genius, he's just smarter than average and very talented with certain things. For instance while he grasps mathematics and science very easily he does have to put in some work for English classes. Going from 5th to 6th, or even 7th, could cause him to struggle in those subjects.
Unlike a lot of gifted and talented kids he has a work ethic so I think that he could rise to the challenge and maybe I'll consider it after 8th grade but for right now it's working okay where he's at.
I logged on for the sole purpose of replying to your post as our situations are so similar I couldn't let it pass without comment.
I realized in 1st grade that my son was the same as yours. His IQ doesn't test quite as high, somewhere around 130, but he has an intuitive grasp of certain things that's almost breathtaking. I remember when he, at 5, described to me the mechanics behind a lunar eclipse! It wasn't even a topic of conversation, just out the blue. Apparently he had been mulling it over and had worked it out. Anyway, back to the subject.
Let me say you rock as a dad, not only for noticing the problem but working with your son. My son has also been subjected to the "spiral curriculum" and it's alternately made me want to rage or laugh. Far too much time is spent teaching different ways to accomplish the same tasks and there is no way to speed it up for those who are bored. I solved this problem by advancing the curriculum at home. When my son got bored with addition and subtraction I made the numbers bigger, when that became trivial I made them harder by including decimals, then harder again by using fractions. When he became bored with multiplication and division I started teaching him Algebra. When his class moved on to kiddie Geometry and he grew bored with it I started him on Geometry I. You get the idea. It was in Geometry this year where the teacher caught on to me.
His teacher and I had a major blowout when one of his Geometry papers was returned with a score of zero. My son was freaked and so was I. What did I do wrong? I went back and forth through that paper for two hours looking for what had happened and couldn't find it. I called in the wife who has a Degree in Math and she couldn't find anything. I called in the Grandpa with dual Masters (Chemistry and Physics) and 45 years experience as a High School teacher and he didn't find anything. I went to the school the next day and had his teacher explain why and you know what the answer was? He forgot the damn degree symbols. Yes, that's right a 10 year old doing math work years ahead of his level received a zero with a page full of correct answers and a companion page showing all of the work because he FORGOT THE DAMN DEGREE SYMBOLS.
Further she told me that she didn't like me teaching him this stuff because my way was different than hers which made it difficult for her to grade his papers and he confused other children when he tried to help them! I didn't know whether to cry or murder her. The depth of willful stupidity on display at that moment still staggers me. In the end I politely told her that I wasn't going to stop doing it because his education was more important than her classroom. I left shaking my head and wondering how our education system got this screwed up.
So you keep rocking on Dad, you keep pushing his curriculum and teaching him. What the idiots at the school won't do for him is your privilege, and responsibility, to provide. When he grows bored you up the ante and make it more challenging by showing him the "Big Boy" way and giving him something new to explore. Someday when he outgrows your ability you can sit back and proudly tell him "Son, I don't have anything left to teach you." and then watch him start learning it for himself.
All of the Batman movies and series. All of the Spiderman movies and series. All of the Star Trek movies and series. All of the Star Wars movies and series. All of the Stargate movies and series.
Yes some of those are comic superhero series but you're delusional if you think there isn't a majority crossover between the audiences.
Sorry, but reality says that you have it wrong.
There *IS* money to be made with a fanbase of Geeks, you just have to do it RIGHT. You can't throw your typical half assed TV schlock at it and expect it to work.
Slashdot Mirror
The big difference I see between Amazon's DRM and most other schemes is the number of devices that you can read their e-books on.
Ipods, Ipads, Android devices, your PC, your laptop, and of course your Kindle. I'm sure by next year they'll have a reader out for the dashboard in your car!
How is this any different than buying books from Apple that use Apple's (Fairplay) DRM scheme?
Your argument cuts Apple as much as it cuts Amazon.
Many of the things that Congress does fall under Amendment 10. Unfortunately they've used the Interstate Commerce Clause to short-circuit the 10th and somehow they got the Supreme Court to go along with it.
Here's a fun thought exercise. With the Constitution in mind think about specific things that the Federal Government does, either through agencies or law making.
Now try and find justification for those things according to a black letter reading of the Constitution.
Here is an example to get you started. Most of the agencies involved in the "War on Drugs" owe their existence to the torturing of the I.C.C., as does the legal status of the drugs themselves.
There's about 1 million more examples I could give but it would grow tiresome and the point is better served if the reader does their own work.
Okay, first off why is a "Muslim" government necessarily a bad one?
Second, why can a "Muslim" government inherently not be Democratic?
Third, how is the rest of the world worse off if Egyptians choose a Muslim government for their country?
That too although the distance in between population centers would affect population density somewhat.
Your imagination fails.
There are two online graduate degree seekers in my house and a boy with a penchant for online games. When all three of us are doing are thing at the same time even our 15 Mb/s line starts to have issues.
Try and think about how it might be if you moved out of your parents place and met a girl. I know that's difficult for you but try.
I'm not the OP but Population Density doesn't tell the whole story. Consider two scenarios, each involving an area of one square mile:
In our first scenario there are 100 users living in that square mile but each user is spaced equidistant from one another. If you want to provide Internet service to those users you are going to have to cable an area equal to that one square mile.
In our second scenario there are 100 users living in a typical neighborhood which is the only thing in that square mile. If you want to provide Internet service to those users you need to cable an area equal to the size of the neighborhood.
It's clear that they both have a population density of 100 people per square mile but it's equally clear that wiring the first scenario will be far more work, far more expensive, and provide a much lower rate of return on the investment.
Now remember that the size of a neighborhood in America is much larger than the size of a neighborhood in other parts of the world with the U.S. having larger homes and larger lot sizes so even "urbanization" doesn't accurately tell the story. An "urban" area in America can still be more "suburban" than an urban area of Europe.
In general I agree with you though, it's shameful and ridiculous that the U.S. won't get this solved and frankly the idea that we are too big is just a poor excuse.
You should really consider doing research before you offer your opinion on things you don't understand. I know plenty of city dwellers with crappy Internet. I also know plenty of country dwellers with reasonable Internet. The issue isn't solely one of your geographical location.
You're asking us to risk unknowable amounts of damage to the digital freedom of the entire nation for who knows how long on the _hope_ that Mr. Verrilli won't continue to assist his former industry if he becomes Solicitor General. I'm sure it's a sweet deal for Mr. Verrilli but what's the American public getting that makes this risk worthwhile to us?
Frankly, and please don't take this personally, your profession suffers from an image problem and for a variety of very good reasons people don't trust Attorney's. Why should Mr. Verrilli be any different?
No, Mr. Verrilli should be rejected and someone else should be found. Preferably someone without such strong ties to such a litigious and morally corrupt industry.
I can't read it but I'm informed by some who can that Al-Jazeera in Arabic is a far different critter than the Al-Jazeera in English. This may have something to do with their reputation.
If you do this then you're actually the opposite of "venerable".
Also, welcome to business! Any time you work with a "partner" or hire a contractor that works in your name you expose yourself to risk. It's YOUR JOB to make sure that the risk is acceptable to you. It's tot our, meaning a generic customers, problem if you hire some scummy "fly by night LLC" to do your online marketing and they expose you to a lawsuit with the way they conduct themselves in your name.
Is the company going to own the town as well as force you to purchase from the company store?
I hate to come off as ridiculous but this is eerily close to the situation behind Ernie Ford's song.
As others have pointed out, you're an idiot who is not fact checking what they've been told.
Those emails didn't prove anything like what you're claiming and the fact that you're STILL claiming it is slander.
Doesn't matter whether you like Mrs. Palin or not, THE TRUTH SHOULD BE IMPORTANT.
Please post a link to some. I'd like to read them.
Congratulations, I can't decide if you should be modded funny, insightful, or troll!
Ever make one of those posts where you just want to bang your head on the desk? Obviously I have the Sun / Oracle names backwards and I apologize for that glaring error.
See, this is how the Apple RDF works. You think that this is a new service and that Apple is offering it first when neither are true. There has been a multitude of hardware vendors offering network and internet boot appliances for a long, long time now.
Have you ever heard the phrase "The network is the computer."? If you don't know it's Oracle's slogan. Oracle released a diskless network booted workstation in 1996, the same year that Apple only started offering online storage.
Somehow in the Apple world this means that what Oracle did 14 years ago, and that other hardware manufacturers have been doing all along, somehow magically didn't happen.
You may not have noticed but many others have and that includes me. I still use Google and will likely continue to do so but their search is getting increasingly unreliable.
Yes, it IS fair. I don't mean to come across as a partisan animal but we spent years and year hearing about the "Bush Administration" whenever any government agency did any little thing. I find it interesting that it's now the FCC or the FDA that takes action and not the "Obama Administration".
It IS fair to say the "Obama Administration" or the "Bush Administration" these guys are, after all, in charge of their Governments and ultimately responsible for what they do. This idea that the guy at the top gets a free pass on what his underlings do is ludicrous and it needs to stop.
If they don't like what's happening in their name then they should take the time to change it lest the people are supposed to be in charge change them!
We just did that a couple of centuries back. We need something more effective.
I wouldn't recommend it as a common practice for all children but when your 5 year old starts self teaching celestial mechanics you need to get them checked.
You need to have them checked because you need to have it on record if they're at least two standard deviations up from normal. This is an education thing. If you go to the school district and say your child is G&T and thus has special education needs they're going to ask you to prove it.
They also need to be checked because so you know the level of their intelligence. My son at 130 barely makes two standard deviations so I know roughly what he can handle. Had he tested at 150 or up then I would know that he needed to be pushed harder.
Had he tested above 160ish then I would know to invest in a road-runner as I'm dealing with a Wile E Coyote. xD
That's why I did it, I'm sure that other parents of G&T children have similar reasons.
I can't speak for anyone else but I was a gifted child as is my son. The reason he isn't grade skipping is the same reason that I didn't; Socialization.
My son is already one of the youngest in his grade, making the bottom of the "cutoff" by only 5 days. If he was a year, or even two, younger than his classmates it would be very difficult for him to do anything besides academics.
For instance he has a love of athletics and has played club soccer since age 5, he also started tackle football this fall. It's more fun for him because some of the kids he is playing with are in his class. This would not be true if he grade skipped.
Aside from socialization and athletics there's another consideration. My son is not a genius, he's just smarter than average and very talented with certain things. For instance while he grasps mathematics and science very easily he does have to put in some work for English classes. Going from 5th to 6th, or even 7th, could cause him to struggle in those subjects.
Unlike a lot of gifted and talented kids he has a work ethic so I think that he could rise to the challenge and maybe I'll consider it after 8th grade but for right now it's working okay where he's at.
I logged on for the sole purpose of replying to your post as our situations are so similar I couldn't let it pass without comment.
I realized in 1st grade that my son was the same as yours. His IQ doesn't test quite as high, somewhere around 130, but he has an intuitive grasp of certain things that's almost breathtaking. I remember when he, at 5, described to me the mechanics behind a lunar eclipse! It wasn't even a topic of conversation, just out the blue. Apparently he had been mulling it over and had worked it out. Anyway, back to the subject.
Let me say you rock as a dad, not only for noticing the problem but working with your son. My son has also been subjected to the "spiral curriculum" and it's alternately made me want to rage or laugh. Far too much time is spent teaching different ways to accomplish the same tasks and there is no way to speed it up for those who are bored. I solved this problem by advancing the curriculum at home. When my son got bored with addition and subtraction I made the numbers bigger, when that became trivial I made them harder by including decimals, then harder again by using fractions. When he became bored with multiplication and division I started teaching him Algebra. When his class moved on to kiddie Geometry and he grew bored with it I started him on Geometry I. You get the idea. It was in Geometry this year where the teacher caught on to me.
His teacher and I had a major blowout when one of his Geometry papers was returned with a score of zero. My son was freaked and so was I. What did I do wrong? I went back and forth through that paper for two hours looking for what had happened and couldn't find it. I called in the wife who has a Degree in Math and she couldn't find anything. I called in the Grandpa with dual Masters (Chemistry and Physics) and 45 years experience as a High School teacher and he didn't find anything. I went to the school the next day and had his teacher explain why and you know what the answer was? He forgot the damn degree symbols. Yes, that's right a 10 year old doing math work years ahead of his level received a zero with a page full of correct answers and a companion page showing all of the work because he FORGOT THE DAMN DEGREE SYMBOLS.
Further she told me that she didn't like me teaching him this stuff because my way was different than hers which made it difficult for her to grade his papers and he confused other children when he tried to help them! I didn't know whether to cry or murder her. The depth of willful stupidity on display at that moment still staggers me. In the end I politely told her that I wasn't going to stop doing it because his education was more important than her classroom. I left shaking my head and wondering how our education system got this screwed up.
So you keep rocking on Dad, you keep pushing his curriculum and teaching him. What the idiots at the school won't do for him is your privilege, and responsibility, to provide. When he grows bored you up the ante and make it more challenging by showing him the "Big Boy" way and giving him something new to explore. Someday when he outgrows your ability you can sit back and proudly tell him "Son, I don't have anything left to teach you." and then watch him start learning it for himself.
You obviously have a far more intimate knowledge than I do so I'm not going to argue with you.
I am going to point out though that the poster I was replying to said "There is no money in producing a genre..."
There obviously is money to be made in the SciFi Genre, if there wasn't studios wouldn't keep trying it. :-D
No money, hmmmm.
So please explain:
All of the Batman movies and series.
All of the Spiderman movies and series.
All of the Star Trek movies and series.
All of the Star Wars movies and series.
All of the Stargate movies and series.
Yes some of those are comic superhero series but you're delusional if you think there isn't a majority crossover between the audiences.
Sorry, but reality says that you have it wrong.
There *IS* money to be made with a fanbase of Geeks, you just have to do it RIGHT. You can't throw your typical half assed TV schlock at it and expect it to work.