Your points are extremely well-taken and you wrote some of what I would have written. I would mention though that more Mac users seem interested in the underlying technology of their systems than are Windoze users, either on the basis of an appreciation for how elegantly everything works or because they have an interest in development. Microsoft can drone on long and hard about how their code works well (though they tend not to because they don't like open source ideals) but Windoze users tend to not care and not develop.
Frankly, as Windoze is the operating system of everyman, who tends to not be as computer-literate as the/. reader, they wouldn't understand anyway. They're still trying to figure out why their computer is so slow now that they have opened that attachment that came to them in an e-mail from their colleague without realizing that it is a virus. They never did find where that JPEG of the naked lady went after they clicked on the attachment.
On another forum I noted the howls of indignation and protest when Mac users who were used to the old System software took the leap to OS X with Unix permissions and accesses.
A number of us did our best to try to dissuade users from operating in "root" or god mode because it is dangerous. I recall being flamed for having tried to tell one poor soul about how he had regularly and routinely messed up his system by doing that and that if he decided to simply create a user who could administrate the computer, he'd be fine.
"I realize you want the operating system to 'be good' and work that way, but it doesn't. Sorry about that."
And now Microsoft is going to adopt Unix permissions. How wonderful. Apple has a pretty smaller user-installed base. I believe it's growing due to their hardware, like the iPod and their new Mac Mini but it took some patience from Apple gurus as well as Apple to help people over that "permissions things" hump.
Compared to that little dustup, Microsoft's adoption of Unix permissions should be a lot like dropping a 20 gigaton thermonuclear device on the computing world. Apple released a "Repair Permissions" script which should be run regularly after updates to verify and change back any mangled permissions. I'd imagine Microsoft will do the same -- in about three years
I think it's admirable that AutoDesk is supporting Linux at all but I would hesitate to edit a film on standard definition if I could not up-rez to high definition on the same tool. AutoDesk would have you do a standard definition (perhaps letterboxed) "rough-cut" and then buy an SGI for full resolution. SGIs run Irix, which is a great operating system but hardly a derivation of Linux.
I do not usually reply to "anonymous" people here on Slashdot but I don't want anyone who might be reading this in the industry I work in to be fooled.
I do have a problem with the article in that it assumes that the color space between RGB and Y'CbCr formats are the same. I regularly use an editor that can work in both color spaces but if I work on a scene using tools based on RGB color space, I need to apply an effect over the rest of that shot (or scene) that limits the Y'CbCr to RGB color space.
The difference is subtle but noticeable, especially in film (or "digital film").
Additionally, the tools Rodriguez will use to edit his footage will run on Microsoft Windows or on Apple's OS X. Storage is great, folks but editors don't use Linux (yet).
They are not sales taxes per se because they may be charged on items (in this case cigarettes) purchased abroad, out of state and out of the city. Their law is written to cover a tax on the ownership and use of the cigarettes in city or State jurisdiction and they are suing on that basis in order to collect "unpaid usage fees."
The idea behind "no tax on the Internet" within the US Congress was to try to encourage growth and business as well as to try to attract Internet companies to build in the US, hiring American workers and basing the "brick and mortar" and "employee" part of the Internet at home.
Obviously this State system of taxation -- even on the "honor system" -- threatens this premise. It would, therefore, be just for Internet companies to leave that State (which may require that they collect revenues for the State) and, perhaps, cease from doing any business within that State (as cigarette sales websites are considering for New York State and City). I can imagine the public outcry were that to happen.
It's simple. Get experience in your chosen field. Then, go back to school after, say 6 to 10 years to keep your proficiency high on a Masters' degree level -- and in an area where you have a lot of passion.
Of if you think you have no immediate marketability, you might try going into law school for three years. The first year is really tough, the second to a little easier. That way you can get immediate job offers from the FBI. If you pass your bar exam you can quickly go to work for Comp-Sci companies with legal issues like Microsoft, SCO, Apple, etc...
Of course in-house lawyers aren't real lawyers in my opinion, but they are employed and usually with benefits.
And she would have been horrified to learn how risk-averse NASA has become, to the point of trying to justify the end of human space exploration. She and her crewmates all knew the risks. They accepted them at face value and went anyway.
I realize you were trying to make a tasteless joke, along the lines of the last thing she said to her husband, "Honey, you take care of the children, I'll feed the fish," but in all seriousness, she was doing what she wanted to do with her head held high and with full knowledge of the risks involved in space exploration.
Space junk has been a fact of life in low earth orbit for decades. There is everything up there from gloves to nuts and bolts, all merrily circling the earth. Then we go and send our highly-trained citizens up there who are totally unprepared for any eventuality that they might get so much as a sprained elbow. NOT!
NASA astronauts have been prepared to die for space exploration ever since NACA was reformed into NASA. It's a complete bunch of nonesense to suggest that missions to outer space in general, low earth orbit speficically, might not be dangerous. Spacesuits may leak, spacecraft (including the ISS) may leak or be hit by debris, solar flares can permanently sterilize humans in space, if not kill them outright from the radiation. One reason why we all don't live in space is because there's darn little to eat up there and it's kind of hard to breathe (pardon the sarcasm here).
Now NASA has become the Great Ball-less Wonder suddenly, all worried about "safety." Oh, we can't extend the life of Hubbel because it's dangerous; Oh we can't send up too many missions because some space debris could hit the Shuttle; Oh it's going to take decades to go to Mars or return to the moon because someone could wet their drawers and cause a short in their suit. Gods, what a bunch of absolute bull castings!
NASA hires test pilots to pilot the Shuttle. You think, maybe they're as lily-livered as all of this? No, they're test pilots. They do everything possible to minimize risks and then they take necessary risks to test planes and learn their performance characteristics -- either so that a faulty design may be grounded until it's fixed or so that the integrity of the aircraft checks out and new pilots (of the non-test variety) may be checked out with proper procedures to fly more safely within the aircraft's performance envelope.
And the Shuttle pretty much happens to be a "permanent test platform" because of the nature of outer space and low earth orbit. In essence, NASA pilots are debriefed on the intimate details of Shuttle performance on every flight -- just as if that flight was the first one ever.
If we could somehow resurrect Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee or the crew of the Shuttle Challenger they'd look at this obvious NASA ploy to try to stop flying manned missions with the absolute disgust and derision it ought to receive. Space is dangerous to humans. No kidding! Now get over it and go back to what we ought to do: More manned missions.
I just said "goodbye" to a man hired in by my company (a national television network) who is going off to a subsidiary after getting his M.B.A. while on the job. His wife also had two children during his tenure.
I feel sorry for the guy in many ways. He was prevented from giving us the resources we truly needed to make a seamless transition into new technology; he was attending classes at a hard business school and he was doing the "new daddy routine" in being awakened every three hours by not one but two infants.
But I do have a problem with the concept of someone who has never actually made any television making judgements and purchase decisions on behalf of people who do make television for a living and whose jobs depend on continuing to crank out excellence. I do have a problem with him announcing: "There will be layoffs" in a meeting when the transition to new technology has not been started yet and there is absolutely no understanding of how many seats will have to be filled in order to make airtime on a daily basis with an absolutely inflexible deadline.
And now he will go to work in a medical field with absolutely no training in or understanding of medicine.
I suppose he can complain that he was ordered to cut costs by his superiors but he was too disinterested to really try to understand the business he was in and he was too yellow to push back when faced with orders that made no sense.
Only problem is that the people who gave him the order to cut staff will now be closer to the "production floor," which puts jobs in greater jeapordy. I wonder if this is what they're teaching in Business schools these days: You don't need to know the business; You don't need to be curious; You don't need to measure past performance in order to predict the future and you don't need to respond to the real needs of the situation. Oh, and you can best build a team by threatening everyone's job in order to set everyone against each other.
There are some managers who do pay attention who don't have any experience in actually making things work on the production level but, in my industry with large conglomerates owning media companies and trying to run them as if they were assembly lines making widgets, they seem to either not challenge the Corporate Line or get eased out.
I have heard that M.B.A. means "Mindless Brainless A-hole and in Corporate America today with no corporate interest in being a good citizen and no investment in employees, that seems to be borne out in experience.
Good point and I agree with you; there is an inherent morality issue. But I think that the morality issue of privacy ought to be considered as well. And that is what I was trying to point out.
In the infamous Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court did affirm that property does transcend State boundaries, which allows you to keep your car if you move from, say Kansas to Missouri, without needing to renew the purchase contract for the car in Missouri. It essentially affirms the full faith and credit provision in the Constitution.
The application had horrible potential until the passage of the 13th amendment, whereupon the affirmation of interstate ownership has a very positive usefulness today. Personally I would not like to see either federal (or State) law or constitutional law take away my right to privacy. And since that right is enshrined in Roe v Wade any threat to that bothers me.
Somehow, the issue of abortion has changed from the actual basis of the Supreme Court decision into something else entirely. The reasoning behind the decision in Roe v. Wade is that what happens between a Doctor and a patient is and ought to be a private matter.
Now, one could very easily argue that the Constitution of the United States does not guarantee one's privacy and I can agree that there is no privacy right enshrined in the Constitution or any of the Amendments, including the Bill of Rights. Certainly what the Supreme Court did in Roe v. Wade was to "make law" or legislate from the bench and this single decision is the reason why the right drones on in their rhetoric about "activist judges" and "strict interpretation" though I challenge anyone to find either in the decision handed down in 2000 in the case of Bush v Gore.
Both the left and the right are talking about things like the "sanctity of life" and "a woman's right to choose," when niether was considered by the Supreme Court in their decision and these issues were not discussed in the opinion and the dissenting opinion.
The use of stem cells, either adult or embryonic is blue sky science presently and the cures that may be effected are still theory. I wonder whether or not the child so treated will eventually develop a tumor at the site of the "treatment." Frankly, I would treat this patient as a potential cancer patient, not claiming any cure until five years (the standard for non reoccurance of cancer) after treatment.
Where did I say or even imply that [all municipalities are run by people who cannot provide any services without cost overruns and huge waste]?
From your original comment: Once the city gets involved it will be one big clusterfuck. How much money gets poured into this project? This is typical false rhetoric from the political right, there is an assumption that, if a program is run by the government, it is somehow going to be characterized by waste and excess. While there are some really spectacular examples of government excess (like how Tom DeLay had several ships built for the Navy that they never requested and cannot man and the infamous "Big Dig" project in Boston), the kind of service described here (the provision of a conduit for internet access patterned after the Public Library system, provided for by sales or property taxes by a municipality) is very similar to the type of service provided at low cost by municipalities today.
I said nothing of servers.
The kind of network service that one is "on" is a server, not a conduit and you said: What about controlling virii and trouble makers on the government-controlled network? How do you keep trouble makers off of the network? Further, you state that the governments would need to keep a log of users. Why? I don't log users on my wireless LAN. Why would a local government need to do that? If it's free to all, why log?
[Government has] since the beginning [built] roads in this country I recommend that you look at history on this one, Nick. Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill that would federally-fund a "corduroy road" (built of logs) from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, saying that the law would prefer those States through which it passed over the other States and that it would be unconstitutional for the Federal Government to build a road. Thomas Jefferson refused to consider several road projects.
The first road project built with Federal funds, across State lines was signed by Lincoln and that was the Transcontinental Railroad. He felt that the reason for the need for Federal investment was that the trip around the horn to California was so long and dangerous that the Southern rebels could take over that state (or part of it) before the Federal government could have reacted. It was built for strategic reasons.
I shall assume you are using a microprocessor, a spin-off from NASA programs to land man on the moon, which undoubtedly "stifled innovation" according to your understanding of government.
I don't necessarily agree that municipalities ought to do this. This may be "Waste of Taxpayers' Money." This also may be a means by which a municipality may attract more high-technology industry and leverage its services to outcompete other municipalities for big business.
You seem to think that all would be lost if anyone other than private industry were to provide this service. 200 years ago, the only interstate roads were built by private enterprise and were funded by tolls. They were called "turnpikes," and one could argue that they prevented and stifled development and innovation in the West (which was just over the Alleghenies and Appalachian Mountain range). One could also argue that, because the nation of England in the early 1800s built roads, they had better development and were better-suited to take early advantage of the Industrial Revolution than we were because we only had private turnpikes.
What the government's role in these developments ought to be is a point that shall probably be discussed for all eternity. I would urge you to fashon arguments that are not based on dried up and dessicated rhetoric based on assumptions that are false but rather engage the actual issues.
Most on/. will be in favor of these municipalities offering this service. I'm on the fence but I am bothered when municipalities are forbidden to offer what a majority of their citizens may want by State or Federal laws that are based on an iconoclastic stance, rather than in tune with a local initiative. In other words, I tend to heavily favor local rule and local reward from that rule.
Firstly, you assume that all municipalities are run by people who cannot provide any services without cost overruns and huge waste. That is not true on its face. Municipalities do quite fine in providing services to their citizens in trash pickup, recycling, police, fire, drainage, water supply and sewage treatment with very little notice and none of the chaos you predict.
Content filters would probably be illegal, especially since the US Supreme Court forbids public libraries from doing that. If you download a virus, it's your fault, not that of an ISP, so in a similar manner, the municipality is also off the hook.
You are assuming that the government is running a network server, when all these governments are attempting to do is to provide a conduit. And governments seem to be able to provide a conduit for your water (unless you are on your own well) seven days weekly without any problems If they're not able to take your telephone call in the event of a water main break, there is someone to call and they do handle things quickly -- and often without any notification from the recipient of that service.
Let me ask you, should government construct highways? I can very happily cite how the construction of US Route 66 royally screwed lots of States that this highway did not pass through (FYI, it goes from Chicago to Los Angeles). But for some reason the US Congress passed a bill to build the highway over potential objections from the Senators and Congressmen from the States that highway did not serve. Ought we to have constructed the Interstate Highway system?
I can offer you a strong argument for how our highway system helped us win WW II and our Interstate Highway System helped us win the Cold War, as it increased our productivity, efficiency and competitiveness as a society.
Would universal public access to the Internet via WiFi be the same kind of "highway system" that would allow the United States to outcompete and outperform China, the Far East and other countries ten to twenty years hence? We certainly did not forsee the end of the Cold War based on an Interstate Superhighway system of efficient distribution when it was envisioned in the late 1940s and built, starting in the 1950s.
Frankly I don't know that municipalities, States or even the Federal Government should or should not be in the business of providing a WiFi on-ramp to the Information Superhighway. But it seems to me that profit-based corporations with lobbyists are staging a takeover on the State level that is unprecedented. And that is probably due to the fact that they see a loss of profit in municipalities providing a low-cost taxpayer-based service.
Actually, it may have been applied to electricity prior to the 1930s, which was the era of Big Government Projects, which built the TVA and started the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) projects that took electricity to over 95% of US households.
It was during the Great Depression that the electric companies told the government that they did not want to have to pay for building an infrastructure where they could not make a profit. They also told the government that, they would not build a huge electrification system (in the Tennessee Valley) without guarantees that they would be able to profitably sell the electricity (that area had low population and it would cost a whole lot of money to build the long lines to carry electricity from its source -- initially hydroelectric dams -- to large cities where one could sell the power).
The government, under the New Deal Democrats wanted large projects that would put hundreds and thousands to work during the Depression. So they made deals with big businesses and guaranteed profits, making electrical companies into highly-regulated monopilies that were guaranteed a steady income in exchange for taking on these risks. This worked. We now have a nationwide electrical grid that does work, more or less because government and business worked together back then. Also, many thousands of out-of-work Americans were employed.
So I think your rhetorical question is an apples-to-oranges issue, though a good one. Governments did create these cable and telephone monopolies and do regulate them. The difference here is that their profits are not regulated like the electrical utilities of yore, with guarantees of rate hikes only on the basis of maintaining specific profit ranges. I don't think that electrical companies, in the 1930s (the era that I'm covering in my comments) did anything to prevent municipalities from starting electrical companies, either for power generation, transmission or distribution.
One of the big issues here is that these monopolies want to prevent areas that are potential profit centers for these monopolies from developing a service that could compete with their offerings. In the case of electrification, rural areas that did not have electricity were wired up with the government guaranteeing loans and rate increases to cover the expense. With respect to the TVA, the risk was assumed by government in a similar way to help pay for a massive project that the utility companies could ill afford to start during a depression and to also guarantee rights-of-way and payment to construct transmission lines to areas where the electricity could be sold.
I note that the New Hampshire bills promote
the practice of community-based Wi-Fi. I would strongly suggest that this is due to the mostly rural nature of the State, even though their only major city, Manchester, is included. Obviously, the intent is to push the high-tech sector in New Hampshire, to the extent that the communities in question have taxpayers that want to foot the bill.
Another "oddity" about New Hampshire is that many of the towns in that State have "absolute Democracy" in government, where one goes to a Town Meeting and votes measures up or down. All persons of voting age are welcome to attend (in the town I lived in, one did not even have to be registered to vote in the elections). While Manchester does have a representative form of government, and not all towns in that State are governed that way, the tradition of strong local elective in governance is a big factor in New Hampshire politics and in New England in general.
Look carefully at where these big corporations want this law. You will see big cities where sewing up a monopoly on WiFi will be very profitable. In areas that are largely rural, where the pie is not so tasty, you won't find this kind of lobbying going on.
I note with no amusement that the very same Republicans who were calling for limits on Federal power and arguing for States Rights are now of the opinion that the various States cannot manage the business of identifying drivers any more.
Shortly after September 11, 2001, I wrote a friend of mine in Panama, saying that he should watch what we, as the foundation of liberty, do once attacked. I theorized at the time that we would not declare martial law and we would not proceed to limit the rights of persons dwelling in the US.
I have since written him to apologize. I am ashamed of what our lawmakers have done in the face of a pretty desperate attack by a bunch of nut-jobs hijacking a religion as an "excuse." The United States can take no pride in what we have done as a result of September 11, 2001.
Based on my reading of the documents everything is, of course, up for grabs in the actual trial. Some judges will tongue-lash one side or another when they don't think they have done their duty as either plaintiff or defendant. This has everything to so with the quality of motions filed as well as the "homework" lawyers are supposed to do "before the Court" which means the judge wants to see them work up a sweat.
But this is beginning to look more and more to me like a "Sue first and use the discovery process as a fishing expedition to see if they did do what we suspect" case. In the case of Paula Jones v William Jefferson Clinton, Ms. Jones lost her case but Mr. Clinton lost more.
I think this happens more than one might think -- especially in corporate suits where one corporation wants another to spill its guts and make its secrets public record.
I have been banking at a large institution for many years now and, since they don't directly support Macintosh computers, I have downloaded the equivilent of a backup file to do online banking. The bank also allows me to do electronic bill-pay from their interface, so to have Quicken do it (as opposed to just record it) is not necessary.
I have no need to upgrade to Intuit's current application because of that, unless or until they change the format of their backup file (the extension is.QIF).
So for banks that allow you to download.QIF files instead of using the Quicken electronic transfer interface, the old versions may continue to be quite useful.
Obviously, they are suing a "press agency" for the name of their source. And in the present climate where TV reporter Jim Taricanti gets jail time for protecting his source for a videotape that showed a Rhode Island official taming a bribe, Apple may have a strong case.
In Taricanti's case, he works for a television station and their broadcast spectrum, being held "in public trust" may limit his rights under the Constitution where freedom of the press is concerned. But the US Supreme Court found in its examination of the CDA that, due to the diversity of thought found on the Internet, there is "no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to this medium."
This may offer more protection from such a demand from Apple than Taricanti had, even though this is a civil suit and not a contempt-of-court issue.
Um, CBS broadcast Janet's "wardrobe malfunction." Clear Channel decided to quit airing Howard Stern in many areas. And it's not necessarily American parents who are doing the writing, it's right-wing organizations who take credit for most of the organizing.
Howard is (and I am) still waiting for the FCC to treat Oprah Winfrey the same way his show has been treated by Michael Powell (the chairman of the FCC). I regularly do not tune in Mr. Stern's broadcasts but I know that many do and I believe the increased attempts at "regulation" (read doling out fines) have nothing to do with decency on the airwaves -- something the FCC got out of the business of being concerned with during the Reagan Administration.
After all, according to Republican rhetoric, the market ought to decide what should be aired. It was the Reagan FCC that decided that market pressures should decide what the vertical and horizontal blanking intervals should be like (if you do not work in television, you probably don't know what these are for -- but you are the market making these decisions).
I had thought that the FTC ought to regulate spammers.
This is precisely what happened in the United States when railroads were being developed. The government "gave away" rights of way and the millionaires who were developing the rails did not have to deal with pesky land purchases.
Now, they're able to charge the government (Amtrak) back for the same land they got free from the government.
Frankly, were I a lawyer, as soon as these things started being sold to the channel, I'd try to put together a class-action lawsuit claiming harm to the class of people who previously purchased recording devices that were being legally used that now had to go out and purchase new units.
Also, the fact that these new units would cost more due to the implimentation of this copy-protection scheme creates additional actionable harm.
I would add, for the benefit of karlandtanya that the term fair use also refers to the permission to exhibit or broadcast copyrighted material due to a news event, like the death of a person connected with the material, a photograph of a person and so on. Fair use in the United States exists for a period of 48 hours and then it expires. In that event, one might be able to use one's home-digitized material on a blog as long as the link was removed in 48 hours, though this has certianly not been tested.
What he is referring to is home copying, which is legal as a result of the Sony Betamax Case that specifically allows home recording and copying and storing of material for personal use.
"Access-like" is not a selling point for me. I have recommended Filemaker Pro to people who wanted a database and their current version is truly a step beyond anything that anyone can do in Access.
I used to work at a facility that had a tape library in an Access database. At the same time, I was freelencing at a place that had a Filemaker Pro database of their material. Filemaker worked. As long as material on the tapes were correctly classified, you could search for keywords and always find the tape. With Access, even tapes where I knew 80% of the keywords, the database refused to come up with a tape number. And when I searched by tape number it would frequently not find it, even though it was visible in the datafile.
For me, any application that can take data files from Access (or an exportable data file) is superior to Access. People have told me it's powerful and wonderful but I have not actually seen it being powerful or wonderful, just a PITA.
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Your points are extremely well-taken and you wrote some of what I would have written. I would mention though that more Mac users seem interested in the underlying technology of their systems than are Windoze users, either on the basis of an appreciation for how elegantly everything works or because they have an interest in development. Microsoft can drone on long and hard about how their code works well (though they tend not to because they don't like open source ideals) but Windoze users tend to not care and not develop.
Frankly, as Windoze is the operating system of everyman, who tends to not be as computer-literate as the /. reader, they wouldn't understand anyway. They're still trying to figure out why their computer is so slow now that they have opened that attachment that came to them in an e-mail from their colleague without realizing that it is a virus. They never did find where that JPEG of the naked lady went after they clicked on the attachment.
On another forum I noted the howls of indignation and protest when Mac users who were used to the old System software took the leap to OS X with Unix permissions and accesses.
A number of us did our best to try to dissuade users from operating in "root" or god mode because it is dangerous. I recall being flamed for having tried to tell one poor soul about how he had regularly and routinely messed up his system by doing that and that if he decided to simply create a user who could administrate the computer, he'd be fine.
"I realize you want the operating system to 'be good' and work that way, but it doesn't. Sorry about that."
And now Microsoft is going to adopt Unix permissions. How wonderful. Apple has a pretty smaller user-installed base. I believe it's growing due to their hardware, like the iPod and their new Mac Mini but it took some patience from Apple gurus as well as Apple to help people over that "permissions things" hump.
Compared to that little dustup, Microsoft's adoption of Unix permissions should be a lot like dropping a 20 gigaton thermonuclear device on the computing world. Apple released a "Repair Permissions" script which should be run regularly after updates to verify and change back any mangled permissions. I'd imagine Microsoft will do the same -- in about three years
Um ... available for standard definition (television) only.
I think it's admirable that AutoDesk is supporting Linux at all but I would hesitate to edit a film on standard definition if I could not up-rez to high definition on the same tool. AutoDesk would have you do a standard definition (perhaps letterboxed) "rough-cut" and then buy an SGI for full resolution. SGIs run Irix, which is a great operating system but hardly a derivation of Linux.
I do not usually reply to "anonymous" people here on Slashdot but I don't want anyone who might be reading this in the industry I work in to be fooled.
I do have a problem with the article in that it assumes that the color space between RGB and Y'CbCr formats are the same. I regularly use an editor that can work in both color spaces but if I work on a scene using tools based on RGB color space, I need to apply an effect over the rest of that shot (or scene) that limits the Y'CbCr to RGB color space.
The difference is subtle but noticeable, especially in film (or "digital film").
Additionally, the tools Rodriguez will use to edit his footage will run on Microsoft Windows or on Apple's OS X. Storage is great, folks but editors don't use Linux (yet).
New York State and New York City are both attempting to collect so-called "usage" taxes on cigarettes.
They are not sales taxes per se because they may be charged on items (in this case cigarettes) purchased abroad, out of state and out of the city. Their law is written to cover a tax on the ownership and use of the cigarettes in city or State jurisdiction and they are suing on that basis in order to collect "unpaid usage fees."
The idea behind "no tax on the Internet" within the US Congress was to try to encourage growth and business as well as to try to attract Internet companies to build in the US, hiring American workers and basing the "brick and mortar" and "employee" part of the Internet at home.
Obviously this State system of taxation -- even on the "honor system" -- threatens this premise. It would, therefore, be just for Internet companies to leave that State (which may require that they collect revenues for the State) and, perhaps, cease from doing any business within that State (as cigarette sales websites are considering for New York State and City). I can imagine the public outcry were that to happen.
It's simple. Get experience in your chosen field. Then, go back to school after, say 6 to 10 years to keep your proficiency high on a Masters' degree level -- and in an area where you have a lot of passion.
Of if you think you have no immediate marketability, you might try going into law school for three years. The first year is really tough, the second to a little easier. That way you can get immediate job offers from the FBI. If you pass your bar exam you can quickly go to work for Comp-Sci companies with legal issues like Microsoft, SCO, Apple, etc...
Of course in-house lawyers aren't real lawyers in my opinion, but they are employed and usually with benefits.
And she would have been horrified to learn how risk-averse NASA has become, to the point of trying to justify the end of human space exploration. She and her crewmates all knew the risks. They accepted them at face value and went anyway.
I realize you were trying to make a tasteless joke, along the lines of the last thing she said to her husband, "Honey, you take care of the children, I'll feed the fish," but in all seriousness, she was doing what she wanted to do with her head held high and with full knowledge of the risks involved in space exploration.
/rant mode on
Space junk has been a fact of life in low earth orbit for decades. There is everything up there from gloves to nuts and bolts, all merrily circling the earth. Then we go and send our highly-trained citizens up there who are totally unprepared for any eventuality that they might get so much as a sprained elbow. NOT!
NASA astronauts have been prepared to die for space exploration ever since NACA was reformed into NASA. It's a complete bunch of nonesense to suggest that missions to outer space in general, low earth orbit speficically, might not be dangerous. Spacesuits may leak, spacecraft (including the ISS) may leak or be hit by debris, solar flares can permanently sterilize humans in space, if not kill them outright from the radiation. One reason why we all don't live in space is because there's darn little to eat up there and it's kind of hard to breathe (pardon the sarcasm here).
Now NASA has become the Great Ball-less Wonder suddenly, all worried about "safety." Oh, we can't extend the life of Hubbel because it's dangerous; Oh we can't send up too many missions because some space debris could hit the Shuttle; Oh it's going to take decades to go to Mars or return to the moon because someone could wet their drawers and cause a short in their suit. Gods, what a bunch of absolute bull castings!
NASA hires test pilots to pilot the Shuttle. You think, maybe they're as lily-livered as all of this? No, they're test pilots. They do everything possible to minimize risks and then they take necessary risks to test planes and learn their performance characteristics -- either so that a faulty design may be grounded until it's fixed or so that the integrity of the aircraft checks out and new pilots (of the non-test variety) may be checked out with proper procedures to fly more safely within the aircraft's performance envelope.
And the Shuttle pretty much happens to be a "permanent test platform" because of the nature of outer space and low earth orbit. In essence, NASA pilots are debriefed on the intimate details of Shuttle performance on every flight -- just as if that flight was the first one ever.
If we could somehow resurrect Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee or the crew of the Shuttle Challenger they'd look at this obvious NASA ploy to try to stop flying manned missions with the absolute disgust and derision it ought to receive. Space is dangerous to humans. No kidding! Now get over it and go back to what we ought to do: More manned missions.
/rant mode off
One could say that lotteries are a tax on persons that cannot calculate odds.
$15,000 is hardly a significant threat to a telco, it's more like a "warning ticket" given to a speeder that the cop is good buddies with.
When I think of the fines imposed on Howard Stern, it convinces me that they're not all that serious about limiting challenges to VOIP.
I just said "goodbye" to a man hired in by my company (a national television network) who is going off to a subsidiary after getting his M.B.A. while on the job. His wife also had two children during his tenure.
I feel sorry for the guy in many ways. He was prevented from giving us the resources we truly needed to make a seamless transition into new technology; he was attending classes at a hard business school and he was doing the "new daddy routine" in being awakened every three hours by not one but two infants.
But I do have a problem with the concept of someone who has never actually made any television making judgements and purchase decisions on behalf of people who do make television for a living and whose jobs depend on continuing to crank out excellence. I do have a problem with him announcing: "There will be layoffs" in a meeting when the transition to new technology has not been started yet and there is absolutely no understanding of how many seats will have to be filled in order to make airtime on a daily basis with an absolutely inflexible deadline.
And now he will go to work in a medical field with absolutely no training in or understanding of medicine.
I suppose he can complain that he was ordered to cut costs by his superiors but he was too disinterested to really try to understand the business he was in and he was too yellow to push back when faced with orders that made no sense.
Only problem is that the people who gave him the order to cut staff will now be closer to the "production floor," which puts jobs in greater jeapordy. I wonder if this is what they're teaching in Business schools these days: You don't need to know the business; You don't need to be curious; You don't need to measure past performance in order to predict the future and you don't need to respond to the real needs of the situation. Oh, and you can best build a team by threatening everyone's job in order to set everyone against each other.
There are some managers who do pay attention who don't have any experience in actually making things work on the production level but, in my industry with large conglomerates owning media companies and trying to run them as if they were assembly lines making widgets, they seem to either not challenge the Corporate Line or get eased out.
I have heard that M.B.A. means "Mindless Brainless A-hole and in Corporate America today with no corporate interest in being a good citizen and no investment in employees, that seems to be borne out in experience.
Good point and I agree with you; there is an inherent morality issue. But I think that the morality issue of privacy ought to be considered as well. And that is what I was trying to point out.
In the infamous Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court did affirm that property does transcend State boundaries, which allows you to keep your car if you move from, say Kansas to Missouri, without needing to renew the purchase contract for the car in Missouri. It essentially affirms the full faith and credit provision in the Constitution.
The application had horrible potential until the passage of the 13th amendment, whereupon the affirmation of interstate ownership has a very positive usefulness today. Personally I would not like to see either federal (or State) law or constitutional law take away my right to privacy. And since that right is enshrined in Roe v Wade any threat to that bothers me.
Somehow, the issue of abortion has changed from the actual basis of the Supreme Court decision into something else entirely. The reasoning behind the decision in Roe v. Wade is that what happens between a Doctor and a patient is and ought to be a private matter.
Now, one could very easily argue that the Constitution of the United States does not guarantee one's privacy and I can agree that there is no privacy right enshrined in the Constitution or any of the Amendments, including the Bill of Rights. Certainly what the Supreme Court did in Roe v. Wade was to "make law" or legislate from the bench and this single decision is the reason why the right drones on in their rhetoric about "activist judges" and "strict interpretation" though I challenge anyone to find either in the decision handed down in 2000 in the case of Bush v Gore.
Both the left and the right are talking about things like the "sanctity of life" and "a woman's right to choose," when niether was considered by the Supreme Court in their decision and these issues were not discussed in the opinion and the dissenting opinion.
The use of stem cells, either adult or embryonic is blue sky science presently and the cures that may be effected are still theory. I wonder whether or not the child so treated will eventually develop a tumor at the site of the "treatment." Frankly, I would treat this patient as a potential cancer patient, not claiming any cure until five years (the standard for non reoccurance of cancer) after treatment.
Where did I say or even imply that [all municipalities are run by people who cannot provide any services without cost overruns and huge waste]?
From your original comment: Once the city gets involved it will be one big clusterfuck. How much money gets poured into this project? This is typical false rhetoric from the political right, there is an assumption that, if a program is run by the government, it is somehow going to be characterized by waste and excess. While there are some really spectacular examples of government excess (like how Tom DeLay had several ships built for the Navy that they never requested and cannot man and the infamous "Big Dig" project in Boston), the kind of service described here (the provision of a conduit for internet access patterned after the Public Library system, provided for by sales or property taxes by a municipality) is very similar to the type of service provided at low cost by municipalities today.
I said nothing of servers.
The kind of network service that one is "on" is a server, not a conduit and you said: What about controlling virii and trouble makers on the government-controlled network? How do you keep trouble makers off of the network? Further, you state that the governments would need to keep a log of users. Why? I don't log users on my wireless LAN. Why would a local government need to do that? If it's free to all, why log?
[Government has] since the beginning [built] roads in this country I recommend that you look at history on this one, Nick. Andrew Jackson vetoed a bill that would federally-fund a "corduroy road" (built of logs) from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, saying that the law would prefer those States through which it passed over the other States and that it would be unconstitutional for the Federal Government to build a road. Thomas Jefferson refused to consider several road projects.
The first road project built with Federal funds, across State lines was signed by Lincoln and that was the Transcontinental Railroad. He felt that the reason for the need for Federal investment was that the trip around the horn to California was so long and dangerous that the Southern rebels could take over that state (or part of it) before the Federal government could have reacted. It was built for strategic reasons.
I shall assume you are using a microprocessor, a spin-off from NASA programs to land man on the moon, which undoubtedly "stifled innovation" according to your understanding of government.
I don't necessarily agree that municipalities ought to do this. This may be "Waste of Taxpayers' Money." This also may be a means by which a municipality may attract more high-technology industry and leverage its services to outcompete other municipalities for big business.
You seem to think that all would be lost if anyone other than private industry were to provide this service. 200 years ago, the only interstate roads were built by private enterprise and were funded by tolls. They were called "turnpikes," and one could argue that they prevented and stifled development and innovation in the West (which was just over the Alleghenies and Appalachian Mountain range). One could also argue that, because the nation of England in the early 1800s built roads, they had better development and were better-suited to take early advantage of the Industrial Revolution than we were because we only had private turnpikes.
What the government's role in these developments ought to be is a point that shall probably be discussed for all eternity. I would urge you to fashon arguments that are not based on dried up and dessicated rhetoric based on assumptions that are false but rather engage the actual issues.
Most on /. will be in favor of these municipalities offering this service. I'm on the fence but I am bothered when municipalities are forbidden to offer what a majority of their citizens may want by State or Federal laws that are based on an iconoclastic stance, rather than in tune with a local initiative. In other words, I tend to heavily favor local rule and local reward from that rule.
Firstly, you assume that all municipalities are run by people who cannot provide any services without cost overruns and huge waste. That is not true on its face. Municipalities do quite fine in providing services to their citizens in trash pickup, recycling, police, fire, drainage, water supply and sewage treatment with very little notice and none of the chaos you predict.
Content filters would probably be illegal, especially since the US Supreme Court forbids public libraries from doing that. If you download a virus, it's your fault, not that of an ISP, so in a similar manner, the municipality is also off the hook.
You are assuming that the government is running a network server, when all these governments are attempting to do is to provide a conduit. And governments seem to be able to provide a conduit for your water (unless you are on your own well) seven days weekly without any problems If they're not able to take your telephone call in the event of a water main break, there is someone to call and they do handle things quickly -- and often without any notification from the recipient of that service.
Let me ask you, should government construct highways? I can very happily cite how the construction of US Route 66 royally screwed lots of States that this highway did not pass through (FYI, it goes from Chicago to Los Angeles). But for some reason the US Congress passed a bill to build the highway over potential objections from the Senators and Congressmen from the States that highway did not serve. Ought we to have constructed the Interstate Highway system?
I can offer you a strong argument for how our highway system helped us win WW II and our Interstate Highway System helped us win the Cold War, as it increased our productivity, efficiency and competitiveness as a society.
Would universal public access to the Internet via WiFi be the same kind of "highway system" that would allow the United States to outcompete and outperform China, the Far East and other countries ten to twenty years hence? We certainly did not forsee the end of the Cold War based on an Interstate Superhighway system of efficient distribution when it was envisioned in the late 1940s and built, starting in the 1950s.
Frankly I don't know that municipalities, States or even the Federal Government should or should not be in the business of providing a WiFi on-ramp to the Information Superhighway. But it seems to me that profit-based corporations with lobbyists are staging a takeover on the State level that is unprecedented. And that is probably due to the fact that they see a loss of profit in municipalities providing a low-cost taxpayer-based service.
Actually, it may have been applied to electricity prior to the 1930s, which was the era of Big Government Projects, which built the TVA and started the REA (Rural Electrification Administration) projects that took electricity to over 95% of US households.
It was during the Great Depression that the electric companies told the government that they did not want to have to pay for building an infrastructure where they could not make a profit. They also told the government that, they would not build a huge electrification system (in the Tennessee Valley) without guarantees that they would be able to profitably sell the electricity (that area had low population and it would cost a whole lot of money to build the long lines to carry electricity from its source -- initially hydroelectric dams -- to large cities where one could sell the power).
The government, under the New Deal Democrats wanted large projects that would put hundreds and thousands to work during the Depression. So they made deals with big businesses and guaranteed profits, making electrical companies into highly-regulated monopilies that were guaranteed a steady income in exchange for taking on these risks. This worked. We now have a nationwide electrical grid that does work, more or less because government and business worked together back then. Also, many thousands of out-of-work Americans were employed.
So I think your rhetorical question is an apples-to-oranges issue, though a good one. Governments did create these cable and telephone monopolies and do regulate them. The difference here is that their profits are not regulated like the electrical utilities of yore, with guarantees of rate hikes only on the basis of maintaining specific profit ranges. I don't think that electrical companies, in the 1930s (the era that I'm covering in my comments) did anything to prevent municipalities from starting electrical companies, either for power generation, transmission or distribution.
One of the big issues here is that these monopolies want to prevent areas that are potential profit centers for these monopolies from developing a service that could compete with their offerings. In the case of electrification, rural areas that did not have electricity were wired up with the government guaranteeing loans and rate increases to cover the expense. With respect to the TVA, the risk was assumed by government in a similar way to help pay for a massive project that the utility companies could ill afford to start during a depression and to also guarantee rights-of-way and payment to construct transmission lines to areas where the electricity could be sold.
I note that the New Hampshire bills promote
the practice of community-based Wi-Fi. I would strongly suggest that this is due to the mostly rural nature of the State, even though their only major city, Manchester, is included. Obviously, the intent is to push the high-tech sector in New Hampshire, to the extent that the communities in question have taxpayers that want to foot the bill.Another "oddity" about New Hampshire is that many of the towns in that State have "absolute Democracy" in government, where one goes to a Town Meeting and votes measures up or down. All persons of voting age are welcome to attend (in the town I lived in, one did not even have to be registered to vote in the elections). While Manchester does have a representative form of government, and not all towns in that State are governed that way, the tradition of strong local elective in governance is a big factor in New Hampshire politics and in New England in general.
Look carefully at where these big corporations want this law. You will see big cities where sewing up a monopoly on WiFi will be very profitable. In areas that are largely rural, where the pie is not so tasty, you won't find this kind of lobbying going on.
I note with no amusement that the very same Republicans who were calling for limits on Federal power and arguing for States Rights are now of the opinion that the various States cannot manage the business of identifying drivers any more.
Shortly after September 11, 2001, I wrote a friend of mine in Panama, saying that he should watch what we, as the foundation of liberty, do once attacked. I theorized at the time that we would not declare martial law and we would not proceed to limit the rights of persons dwelling in the US.
I have since written him to apologize. I am ashamed of what our lawmakers have done in the face of a pretty desperate attack by a bunch of nut-jobs hijacking a religion as an "excuse." The United States can take no pride in what we have done as a result of September 11, 2001.
Based on my reading of the documents everything is, of course, up for grabs in the actual trial. Some judges will tongue-lash one side or another when they don't think they have done their duty as either plaintiff or defendant. This has everything to so with the quality of motions filed as well as the "homework" lawyers are supposed to do "before the Court" which means the judge wants to see them work up a sweat.
But this is beginning to look more and more to me like a "Sue first and use the discovery process as a fishing expedition to see if they did do what we suspect" case. In the case of Paula Jones v William Jefferson Clinton, Ms. Jones lost her case but Mr. Clinton lost more.
I think this happens more than one might think -- especially in corporate suits where one corporation wants another to spill its guts and make its secrets public record.
I have been banking at a large institution for many years now and, since they don't directly support Macintosh computers, I have downloaded the equivilent of a backup file to do online banking. The bank also allows me to do electronic bill-pay from their interface, so to have Quicken do it (as opposed to just record it) is not necessary.
I have no need to upgrade to Intuit's current application because of that, unless or until they change the format of their backup file (the extension is .QIF).
So for banks that allow you to download .QIF files instead of using the Quicken electronic transfer interface, the old versions may continue to be quite useful.
Obviously, they are suing a "press agency" for the name of their source. And in the present climate where TV reporter Jim Taricanti gets jail time for protecting his source for a videotape that showed a Rhode Island official taming a bribe, Apple may have a strong case.
In Taricanti's case, he works for a television station and their broadcast spectrum, being held "in public trust" may limit his rights under the Constitution where freedom of the press is concerned. But the US Supreme Court found in its examination of the CDA that, due to the diversity of thought found on the Internet, there is "no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to this medium."
This may offer more protection from such a demand from Apple than Taricanti had, even though this is a civil suit and not a contempt-of-court issue.
Um, CBS broadcast Janet's "wardrobe malfunction." Clear Channel decided to quit airing Howard Stern in many areas. And it's not necessarily American parents who are doing the writing, it's right-wing organizations who take credit for most of the organizing.
Howard is (and I am) still waiting for the FCC to treat Oprah Winfrey the same way his show has been treated by Michael Powell (the chairman of the FCC). I regularly do not tune in Mr. Stern's broadcasts but I know that many do and I believe the increased attempts at "regulation" (read doling out fines) have nothing to do with decency on the airwaves -- something the FCC got out of the business of being concerned with during the Reagan Administration.
After all, according to Republican rhetoric, the market ought to decide what should be aired. It was the Reagan FCC that decided that market pressures should decide what the vertical and horizontal blanking intervals should be like (if you do not work in television, you probably don't know what these are for -- but you are the market making these decisions).
I had thought that the FTC ought to regulate spammers.
This is precisely what happened in the United States when railroads were being developed. The government "gave away" rights of way and the millionaires who were developing the rails did not have to deal with pesky land purchases.
Now, they're able to charge the government (Amtrak) back for the same land they got free from the government.
Wait -- how can I get in on this deal?
Frankly, were I a lawyer, as soon as these things started being sold to the channel, I'd try to put together a class-action lawsuit claiming harm to the class of people who previously purchased recording devices that were being legally used that now had to go out and purchase new units.
Also, the fact that these new units would cost more due to the implimentation of this copy-protection scheme creates additional actionable harm.
I would add, for the benefit of karlandtanya that the term fair use also refers to the permission to exhibit or broadcast copyrighted material due to a news event, like the death of a person connected with the material, a photograph of a person and so on. Fair use in the United States exists for a period of 48 hours and then it expires. In that event, one might be able to use one's home-digitized material on a blog as long as the link was removed in 48 hours, though this has certianly not been tested.
What he is referring to is home copying, which is legal as a result of the Sony Betamax Case that specifically allows home recording and copying and storing of material for personal use.
"Access-like" is not a selling point for me. I have recommended Filemaker Pro to people who wanted a database and their current version is truly a step beyond anything that anyone can do in Access.
I used to work at a facility that had a tape library in an Access database. At the same time, I was freelencing at a place that had a Filemaker Pro database of their material. Filemaker worked. As long as material on the tapes were correctly classified, you could search for keywords and always find the tape. With Access, even tapes where I knew 80% of the keywords, the database refused to come up with a tape number. And when I searched by tape number it would frequently not find it, even though it was visible in the datafile.
For me, any application that can take data files from Access (or an exportable data file) is superior to Access. People have told me it's powerful and wonderful but I have not actually seen it being powerful or wonderful, just a PITA.