The dotcom era saw a lot of network buildout so our incumbents don't have all the network capacity even after the bankruptcy wave that followed. What's keeping Australian competitors from building out their own networks?
In other news, IBM announces that it will be offering free licenses of Mac OS X for all its Power 4/5 customers who wish to switch out of AIX because of the fearsome SCO legal team.
I'm sure in some alternate universe this really happens.
The highlift people are using that figure (130GPa) in their calculations. Since the previous record on strength was achieved fairly recently at 3.6 GPa, anything over 20 GPa means a tremendous jump in the state of the art. Not only is it stronger but it's made faster.
We're not at elevator strength yet but we're getting there.
That's an interesting thought but the lawyer isn't the boss. What happens if the lawyer wants to settle based on a low probability of winning and the client doesn't? There is no settlement and with $0 of the client's money at risk due to loser pays, you have little incentive towards reasonableness. Add in the fact that it is not possible in many circumstances for a lawyer to drop a client and you have a difficult rule to make work.
Actually, they probably negotiated a certain number of 'suing' hours per month so their lawsuit costs are fixed. If they don't sue, they still pay. This *does* set up a perverse incentive to sue the small fry every time there's a lull in big fish.
It's not the contributions that are the problem. It's the fact that the government claims it can interfere so much more in the ordinary lives of the people than before. If the government didn't think that the DMCA was sustainable under an explicit grant of authority under the Constitution, then no amount of contributions would matter. It's just outside the scope of the enterprise.
There is no judicial precedent because there is no judgment. There was a suit, the parties settled, the defendent admits no wrongdoing so where's the harmful precedent as regards common law?
Loser pays applies to both sides and it generally makes people think twice about wasting the court's time. Unlike contingency fee cases where the lawyer essentially acts as a bank (loan shark?), loaning the money to fight the case and then taking it all back at settlement, loser pays means that what you get in judgment is yours to keep just as if your lawyer were prepaid. You tend not to sue frivolously nor hold out if you don't have a chance to win. Suing poor defendents is just as futile as you can only push them into bankruptcy once.
Given a loser pays rule and a good case, more people would fight the RIAA and end up no worse off financially if they win. The rule heavily penalizes BS positions. We could do with a lot less BS suits in our courts.
I just wish those getting cease and desist orders would respond on the lines of "The OS code we are using is a compilation of separately licensed products, collectively using multiple licenses (GPL, BSD, etc). Here is a list of our OS software. Please pick out which one of our products you claim is infringing and we will take appropriate measures regarding the matter."
At least that might get SCO on the record w/regard to what part of Linux is infringing. If they blanket claim all of it is infringing, every honest contributor can claim they were libeled by SCO. SCO would be legally raidoactive at that point with potential judgments against them in the inevitable class action suit.
Actually, the final words will likely be issued by the Supreme Court, either in a judgment or in a denial of cert.
As a theoretical matter, Congress can override and so can the President but the last time the President did it, it was Andrew Jackson and Congress has *never* exercised its override powers.
Whatever the module in question, I'm sure that SCO has access to the changelogs. What's going to hurt their campaign to go after end users will be that the community would be more than happy to scrap and recode any offending code. The BSD lawsuit years ago proved that to be the case. So instead of minimizing damages and going after the bad actors here, SCO is trying to maximize claimed damages and go after the widest net of infringers.
Michael Powell's been demoted to a consultative role in this process, which is a bit strange if the scenario you're hinting at is the goal. The Commerce Dept., not the FCC is in charge of this.
You can depend on one thing in politicians, a lust for power. In this case, the Republican's lust for power is likely to play out pretty well for the general public.
We're heading for a govt. financial train wreck around 2019. If we have spectrum reform in the 2004-2006 time frame and it pumps up baseline US economic growth the fiscal train wreck gets pushed out a few years. If the Republicans can actually move us through the crisis years (SS going broke, Medicare going broke, etc) the prize they get is generational dominance in US politics similar to FDR's New Deal coalition.
That's the prize, and don't think the Republican strategists don't know it. The price for that prize is to pass up some corporate bribe money right now and pump up efficiency and economic growth to get past the crisis years.
It's not that Republicans are somehow an honest party, it's just that they're not that stupid.
The elephant in the room is that we're running smack into a major fiscal crisis with SS, Medicare, and all those other political bribes politicians used to buy our parents votes. For spectrum use, this is actually a hopeful sign because no telecom has the money to bribe enough politician in this case.
The stakes are political generational dominance for the party that successfully manages the transition. Compared to 20 years of having uninterrupted access to steer contracts all across the govt. a few million to this or that party is chicken feed.
If you can up the baseline growth of the US from 3% to 3.1% that's an extra 10 billion in in compounded growth in the first year (and growing of course). That ups the income tax receipts (which are going to have to pay for a transition to a sustainable program) and can up payroll taxes due to new job creation.
Both these tax revenue increases are important to the reform effort. And the reform effort is vital to keeping our parents/grandparents out of the gutter when their retirement income gets radically changed (the later the change, the more radical it will be). That's what this, and other efforts to enhance growth are all about. The Republicans don't want you to panic and the Democrats want you to panic and kill reform.
If that's all they do, they won't be valued at more than any property management company out there. Telecom as REIT? That's possible but the shareholders won't like it.
Actually, current license holders would likely make a mint selling off pieces of their current licenses to new players. Progress is most likely when *all* players win by it, even the nogoodniks who were best at holding it back in the past.
Perhaps a hopeful sign is that the FCC is not in charge of this process, Commerce is. You'd think that spectrum, being the FCC's specialty, would come under their oversight.
It's not to say that the end of the process won't be tragic but that based on what's available there's room for a smidgen of hope.
All 7 minute + tracks are only available in albums. Read the article reposts on the thread. I think their profit margin gets too thin at the 7 minute point to support single track sales at $0.99 per track.
If they want to keep one price for tracks (key to their advertising positioning) they'd have to raise the price everywhere or take a loss on some tracks.
The release explicitly says that Powell is not running this as he isn't head of Commerce. Commerce is running it and Powell gets the figleaf of a 'consultative' role so he isn't too humiliated. You know, the UN has a consultative role in Iraq right now so keep things in perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
The dotcom era saw a lot of network buildout so our incumbents don't have all the network capacity even after the bankruptcy wave that followed. What's keeping Australian competitors from building out their own networks?
Hey, I found a penny!
Yahoo!
Don't forget the sharks so you can put the laser cannons on their heads
In other news, IBM announces that it will be offering free licenses of Mac OS X for all its Power 4/5 customers who wish to switch out of AIX because of the fearsome SCO legal team.
I'm sure in some alternate universe this really happens.
The highlift people are using that figure (130GPa) in their calculations. Since the previous record on strength was achieved fairly recently at 3.6 GPa, anything over 20 GPa means a tremendous jump in the state of the art. Not only is it stronger but it's made faster.
We're not at elevator strength yet but we're getting there.
That's an interesting thought but the lawyer isn't the boss. What happens if the lawyer wants to settle based on a low probability of winning and the client doesn't? There is no settlement and with $0 of the client's money at risk due to loser pays, you have little incentive towards reasonableness. Add in the fact that it is not possible in many circumstances for a lawyer to drop a client and you have a difficult rule to make work.
Beware of letting managers control your donation dollar. Look at the Ford Foundation and you'll see how badly it can all turn out.
Actually, they probably negotiated a certain number of 'suing' hours per month so their lawsuit costs are fixed. If they don't sue, they still pay. This *does* set up a perverse incentive to sue the small fry every time there's a lull in big fish.
It's not the contributions that are the problem. It's the fact that the government claims it can interfere so much more in the ordinary lives of the people than before. If the government didn't think that the DMCA was sustainable under an explicit grant of authority under the Constitution, then no amount of contributions would matter. It's just outside the scope of the enterprise.
There is no judicial precedent because there is no judgment. There was a suit, the parties settled, the defendent admits no wrongdoing so where's the harmful precedent as regards common law?
Loser pays applies to both sides and it generally makes people think twice about wasting the court's time. Unlike contingency fee cases where the lawyer essentially acts as a bank (loan shark?), loaning the money to fight the case and then taking it all back at settlement, loser pays means that what you get in judgment is yours to keep just as if your lawyer were prepaid. You tend not to sue frivolously nor hold out if you don't have a chance to win. Suing poor defendents is just as futile as you can only push them into bankruptcy once.
Given a loser pays rule and a good case, more people would fight the RIAA and end up no worse off financially if they win. The rule heavily penalizes BS positions. We could do with a lot less BS suits in our courts.
I just wish those getting cease and desist orders would respond on the lines of "The OS code we are using is a compilation of separately licensed products, collectively using multiple licenses (GPL, BSD, etc). Here is a list of our OS software. Please pick out which one of our products you claim is infringing and we will take appropriate measures regarding the matter."
At least that might get SCO on the record w/regard to what part of Linux is infringing. If they blanket claim all of it is infringing, every honest contributor can claim they were libeled by SCO. SCO would be legally raidoactive at that point with potential judgments against them in the inevitable class action suit.
Actually, the final words will likely be issued by the Supreme Court, either in a judgment or in a denial of cert.
As a theoretical matter, Congress can override and so can the President but the last time the President did it, it was Andrew Jackson and Congress has *never* exercised its override powers.
I'm guessing it's someone who just got fired after assuring the board of directors that Linux wasn't going to cause legal problems.
Whatever the module in question, I'm sure that SCO has access to the changelogs. What's going to hurt their campaign to go after end users will be that the community would be more than happy to scrap and recode any offending code. The BSD lawsuit years ago proved that to be the case. So instead of minimizing damages and going after the bad actors here, SCO is trying to maximize claimed damages and go after the widest net of infringers.
That's not going to sit well with most juries.
Michael Powell's been demoted to a consultative role in this process, which is a bit strange if the scenario you're hinting at is the goal. The Commerce Dept., not the FCC is in charge of this.
You can depend on one thing in politicians, a lust for power. In this case, the Republican's lust for power is likely to play out pretty well for the general public.
We're heading for a govt. financial train wreck around 2019. If we have spectrum reform in the 2004-2006 time frame and it pumps up baseline US economic growth the fiscal train wreck gets pushed out a few years. If the Republicans can actually move us through the crisis years (SS going broke, Medicare going broke, etc) the prize they get is generational dominance in US politics similar to FDR's New Deal coalition.
That's the prize, and don't think the Republican strategists don't know it. The price for that prize is to pass up some corporate bribe money right now and pump up efficiency and economic growth to get past the crisis years.
It's not that Republicans are somehow an honest party, it's just that they're not that stupid.
The elephant in the room is that we're running smack into a major fiscal crisis with SS, Medicare, and all those other political bribes politicians used to buy our parents votes. For spectrum use, this is actually a hopeful sign because no telecom has the money to bribe enough politician in this case.
The stakes are political generational dominance for the party that successfully manages the transition. Compared to 20 years of having uninterrupted access to steer contracts all across the govt. a few million to this or that party is chicken feed.
If you can up the baseline growth of the US from 3% to 3.1% that's an extra 10 billion in in compounded growth in the first year (and growing of course). That ups the income tax receipts (which are going to have to pay for a transition to a sustainable program) and can up payroll taxes due to new job creation.
Both these tax revenue increases are important to the reform effort. And the reform effort is vital to keeping our parents/grandparents out of the gutter when their retirement income gets radically changed (the later the change, the more radical it will be). That's what this, and other efforts to enhance growth are all about. The Republicans don't want you to panic and the Democrats want you to panic and kill reform.
If that's all they do, they won't be valued at more than any property management company out there. Telecom as REIT? That's possible but the shareholders won't like it.
Actually, current license holders would likely make a mint selling off pieces of their current licenses to new players. Progress is most likely when *all* players win by it, even the nogoodniks who were best at holding it back in the past.
Perhaps a hopeful sign is that the FCC is not in charge of this process, Commerce is. You'd think that spectrum, being the FCC's specialty, would come under their oversight.
It's not to say that the end of the process won't be tragic but that based on what's available there's room for a smidgen of hope.
All 7 minute + tracks are only available in albums. Read the article reposts on the thread. I think their profit margin gets too thin at the 7 minute point to support single track sales at $0.99 per track.
If they want to keep one price for tracks (key to their advertising positioning) they'd have to raise the price everywhere or take a loss on some tracks.
A lot of 'unlicensed' spectrum usage is also used by industry and government (802.11b for instance). They'll have their organized paid defenders.
The release explicitly says that Powell is not running this as he isn't head of Commerce. Commerce is running it and Powell gets the figleaf of a 'consultative' role so he isn't too humiliated. You know, the UN has a consultative role in Iraq right now so keep things in perspective.
Sure it counts but contrary to the conspiracy theorists GWB only runs *this* country.