Too bad mainstream appears to also mean 'cheap, unreliable parts' too...
I can't say I disagree with you, but as I work for a semiconductor manufacturer, I would like to expand on what 'unreliable' means in this case.
Actually, most consumer electronics devices are 'unreliable' in the sense that they experience relatively high failure rates (compared to, say, telecommunications infrastructure devices). This is a result of the (lack of) burn in done before the parts are deployed. Simply stated, it is cheaper to have consumer electronics fail in the field than to burn in all of the parts before-hand. This is not unique to Linksys.
Consumer devices are generally 250 FIT or higher for early failure rate [first year]. A FIT (failure in time) is the ratio of failed devices (in parts per million) to running time (in thousands of power on hours [kpoh])... so 250 FITS translates into 2500 parts per million (ppm) failing after 10 kpoh. That's really reasonable for consumer devices (0.25% failure in the first year). The average failure rate over the life of the consumer semiconductor (probably rated for 100K or 200K poh) is around 100 FITS.
As a side note, telecommunications devices are generally a higher standard, with early failure rate below 65 FIT and average failure rate below 25 FIT. The burn-in required to reduce the failure rate (since most of the failures occur early in the lifecycle, stress testing a part early on can trigger many of the early failures) costs a bundle of money, and can add enough expense to a part to eliminate the entire profit margin on a consumer device. Of course, for more important applications (telecom, brake systems in vehicles, medical equipment), higher reliability parts are used.
So yes, 'mainstream' (actually 'low margin and low risk in case of failure') does mean lower quality, but please don't bash the manufacturers too hard for it. Economics forces their hand, and the result is the system that is set up to take the returns, as you experienced.
Not your fault, given the summary; however, calling WiMax "high speed wifi" is not correct.
Wi-Fi is a trademark owned by the Wi-Fi Alliance, and is based on various parts of 802.11. It is a wireless local area network standard.
WiMax is a trademark owned by the WiMax forum, and is 802.16d (Fixed WiMax) and 802.16e (Mobile WiMax) [.16e is not yet ratified by IEEE]. These are wireless metro or wide area network standards (depending on where you feel that difference lies)
The two network technologies will likely co-exist in the future. See this article for how their interaction might work out (in the first few paragraphs) [the article refers to fixed WiMax].
The DMV is a bit rediculous. They have different letters for different services, because their people are skilled at different things at different "windows". I get the intent, but I wonder about the value. Every time I've gone in, my number rings on the device immediately, and I spend less than 5 minutes there.
There really aren't that many people up here. The supermarkets are up to 14 items in the express lanes because they didn't get enough business at 7 or 10 items. Some of you think I'm kidding. I'm not.
As far as technical support, you might be surprised at what Burlington can do. This describes what has already been done. They ran fiber around downtown (for all the government buildings) and offered it to local businesses as well. They already have some experience, and this is now the second stage of the project. I just wish I hadn't moved out to the 'burbs.:)
As far as those who think Verizon will complain, don't count on them getting very far. The Burlington area only saw DSL about two years ago (I only got the offer in mid-2004), so it's a joke. Between that and the fact that "Capitalist" could be a natsy word up here (we're approaching socialized health care for those who haven't noticed), Burlington will continue forward without any resistance.
There is precedent in Burlington, as the power is also run by the government (Burlington Electric). It has some of the lower rates in the state, as they avoided locking themselves into nasty contracts with Quebec Power, as did others (e.g. Green Mountain Electric).
On the surface, it says nothing new... but read in between the lines and follow the thoughts to their conclusion. He proposes there will be increased purchasing of companies who develop products after a short period of time and never have revenue. While this does happen today, increased occurrance would signal a change.
First, the more it happens, the faster ROI a venture capital organization can get out of the business. Shorter time horizons mean lower risk, because the discount rate used when analyzing startups is VERY high (high uncertainty of future value).
Second, the more it happens, the less capital a VC fund needs to hold back for 2nd and 3rd round funding... therefore freeing more money for 1st round investments... it feeds back to produce significantly more startup companies.
Third, the more it happens, the less business experience you need. If all you are is a risk-development shop for a large corporation, you don't need the business experience, you just need to be able to identify a problem and build a portion of a solution for it. The purchasing company injects the business experience before going to market.
VCs are actually desperate to find a way to produce superior returns. There is a tremendous amount of money floating around for them to invest, and part of the reason for the bubble (one of many) was that the VC funds had to put that money to work (thus some less than stellar ideas were chased).
So, this may signify a change of behavior - not in terms of what would actually make a successful corporation, but in what it takes for a new company to produce positive value for those who own/start it - and those are distinct concepts.
The plain fact in business is that changes in management and changes in staff make it VERY difficult to hold people accountable for forecasts. If the forecast from a year ago is wrong, but I joined the team 6 months ago, am I responsible for it? I hope not. Am I responsible for improving the forecast? Sure. Will I be around in 3 years to hold me accountable for the latest strategic forecast (once you can measure whether it was more accurate than the one produced by my predecessor)? Probably not... reorganizations, promotions, and job changes probably get in the way.
Regardless of whether you're talking internal to IBM or the analysts, it's a very difficult proposition to have accountability and thus drive measurable (and statistically significant) improvement in the forecasting system(s).
I agree with your conclusion, but take issue with how you define "instantly". From a practical perspective, the tipping point is likely where you can reliably (99.9% of the time) download a movie reasonably faster than you can watch it (1.5X to 2X real speed). This allows you to pause, even fast forward to a degree without a problem.
From a deployment perspective, this is already happening with optical networks in some communitites. This is a problem in communities without pre-deployed fiber, as some companies have been adept at striking sewer lines when trying to bury the fiber. It's also really expensive to dig a ditch (think of SBC as a legal team adept at public permitting and policy that happens to sell voice services)... As you point out, it is this constraint on the speed which controls the deployment of fiber.
The solution in those areas is VDSL or some derivative that will support a very high speed connection over copper. Fiber is then run into the community, and the copper used over the last few hundred feet. (In a community like mine, there are lots of green cabinets all over the place to facilitate this - all the wires are buried)
So realistically, you need between 8Mb/s and 40Mb/s (depending on quality and compression) to stream an HD channel. Assuming deployment rate at the same pace that ADSL rolled out (not unreasonable), that means it will be about 2012 before 50% of US homes have this bandwidth... and that's over a WIRED connection. I still can't stream that into a plane, bus, or other area where carrying a small CD/DVD-sized object is trivial.
It is highly likely that there will be a significant market for "HD DVD" (whichever format wins) at least through the beginning to middle of the next decade. The challenge after that is whether quality improvement can even be perceived by people (note how monitors really slowed in development after XGA was pervasive). Of course, if you're into speculation, anything 3D could eat up a huge quantity of bandwidth and storage REALLY fast.
Ill? Then don't read that an article suggesting that part of the resolution to secuity problems on the Internet is to pry PCs from our cold dead hands.
Or at least read Ars Technica's response to help you feel better.
If you read the thread referred to in the article you will find this post:
For everyone's information, I am speaking with a law firm, which was recommended by the EFF, and am looking into what options I have available. _________________ Daniel Foesch AltiVec Developer for PearPC
...there is no hard evidence that a crime was actually committed.... The fact that they couldn't prove a crime had occurred...
While I understand the concern that many have with the decision that has been made, the analysis you make is insufficient to stand up to scrutiny (even when IANAL).
For example, there is little to no hard evidence a crime has been committed if someone steals something from your house. After all (assuming no broken windows) is your word that something is missing better than Apple's word that information was leaked? So what power do you have to have an investigation performed to determine who took the item(s)? Thus, your 'hard evidence' standard is very high. I would note that neither the federal rules of criminal procedure (which, barring PATRIOT, require a warrant and reasonable suspicion) nor the federal rules of civil procedure (which requires very little in the way of proof before you file and get to perform discovery) provide the privacy protection you desire.
In addition, by the laws and procedures of the United States, many of which are derived from English common law, juries are finders of fact. It is absolutely impossible to 'prove' a crime has occurred until the jury finds that the crime has been committed by an individual. So your argument that they were unable to "prove a crime had occurred _unless_ they knew the identities of the sources" also presents fundamental problems in implementation. Even toned down, the court will balance the right to move the case forward vs. the damage to the parties IF they are _innocent_. (which - simply being identified - is [for better or worse] relatively minor).
Lastly, the person they are asking for the information is not the party that will be charged. Therefore, any protection of "innocent until proven guilty" cannot protect the individual from testifying as to what they know. It also should not give privacy to those who exposed trade secrets. The actual phrase, as it first appeared in the US (Supreme Court decision of 1894, Coffin vs. U.S.): is "The law presumes that persons charged with crime are innocent until they are proven by competent evidence to be guilty". The key words here are 'charged with a crime' and 'innocent' not 'private' or 'anonymous'. Such a privacy standard as you suggest is impossible to achieve and is not part of "due process" (the constitutional phrase that provides us - under certain circumstances - the "innocent until proven guilty" standard).
Overall, if the bloggers witnessed a crime (such as receiving a trade secret from a person who was under a confidential disclosure agreement), absolutely nothing can prevent them from testifying unless they themselves were involved in the crime (in which case they are protected by the 5th amendment). The protection for journalists that exists is in protecting other sources of information (NOT what they have personally witnessed). The Supreme Court of the US has explicitly stated that no protection (to avoid testimony) exists for a journalist that actually witnessed a crime to prevent them from testifying (note in the particular case by the SCOTUS it was before a grand jury).
By that analysis, I'm not sure any precedent was set at all by the judge.
...you don't just get to choose standards, you get to write 'em.
As lighthearted as your comment is... that's the scary part of all this. I imagine it terrifies the large communcations and networking firms.
The catch-22 that so many vendors are facing is to not participate in such a huge market (bad idea) or be forced to partner with a company in China to produce the product locally for China [because WAPI won't be licensed to foreign firms] (also a bad idea). It's worse than a prisoner's dilemma, because you already KNOW that Huawei and others will provide equipment that is "legal" in China... so the ability to "win" by refusing to play (both prisoners remaining silent) is not dependent on your competitors. It is - precisely - zero. Refusing to enter the Chinese market also reduces competition and price pressure in China, allowing local firms an even better base with which to compete with firms in the US and EU.
This just stinks, in my opinion. It goes right along with China selecting the EVD standard for DVDs. It's playing a market power game... and while it's effective (and just might work in this case), it doesn't make the 'game' any less dangerous for US and EU firms.
And [Microsoft's] mobile phone products suck - they've even crashed. That is something mobile users aren't to accept, because other key players seem to have it worked out better.
Linux gets slowly but steadily adopted into more and more mobiles...
That's quite an assumption to how things will play out. I'm not so certain the first statement leads to the second.
While I understand that some companies (Nokia, due to its ownership stake in Symbian, being the most significant) have a vested interest in Microsoft not being the OS of choice in a phone or smart phone, I wasn't aware that the consumer had much choice in what ends up in the phone. My understanding is that the relationship between the software supplier and the phone maker (and the phone maker and the carrier) is more significant than what the user is interested in. The challenge is that the consumer criteria for purchasing a phone are the brand name of the phone, the design (straight vs. clam shell), the camera (or lack thereof), cost, ringtones, SMS capability, games, and other features; the OS is mostly (if not completely) transparent to those decision criteria [remember Marketing 102: people buy solutions to problems, needs & wants; they do not buy products]. If I got a new phone, I would ask what OS the phone is running; however, I bet most people don't care. As a side note, I don't actually know if Microsoft-based phones display a MS logo on boot; however, you should consider that people might associate failure (e.g. crashing) to the brand name of the phone as much as the OS it is running.
There may be long-term damage if the systems do not work properly, but it will take a long time to play out (The replacement time for phones is 18+ months in the US last I checked). This (along with the lack of major press on the issue) is probably enough of a reprieve that Microsoft can fix its problems. This is a much better place (from their point of view) for Microsoft to get itself entrenched - because it only needs to maintain the corporate relationships with the manufacturers (and to a lesser degree the carriers)... Then, with "good enough" products, they can survive.
The same goes for Microsoft's push into IPTV and its deals with SBC and others. There isn't a need for a consumer to make a choice - if you subscribe, you're using Microsoft's products; your only non-Microsoft choice is to not receive the service. While some staunch anti-Microsoft individuals may be willing to take that step, many others (I would argue most people) would just as well have the service, even if it means dealing with a Microsoft product. If Microsoft wins any cable companies, some consumers may have no choice at all if they want to have on-demand services.
It is, in truth, a brilliant play by Microsoft into areas where it is harder to make a consumer choice to remove a specific type of software. I highly doubt we will see the day where the software has to be independent of the phone or set top box, as was the case with mainframe computers when IBM got itself into anti-trust problems. So Microsoft is here to stay, even if they have to share the desktop.
The term "protected computer" means a computer--(B) which is used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication...
Which confuses me, given your conclusion that this only protects financial institutions and the government.
When I log into Amazon.com's server--wherever it is (I guarantee you it's not in the state I live in, because I don't pay sales tax on the purchase), that isn't "interstate commerce"? So isn't my computer a "protected computer" (due to the use of "OR" at the end of 18 USC 1030(e)(2)(A)?) Or am I missing something?
I was under the impression (B) was present only to protect the law from violating Article 1, Section 8 "...To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states..." and Amendment 10 of the Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
Many laws and actions performed by the federal government (including many fair labor laws - see the definition of commerce in 17 USC 203(b)) are written in such a way to impact only those companies which have government contracts or do business in multiple states or across state lines. It's up to the states to regulate the small businesses that do not operate across state lines.
Keep in mind that the lasers you are working with are not very precise (the CD player, DVD player), or even only have to be coherent (the laser pointer) and not pulsing.
Even with the encoding, the DVD is only transmitting a few Mb/s of information as it encounters pits and lands on a CD/DVD. (4.7GB/2 hours = ~6Mb/s)
The long-haul optical systems and optical switches are transmitting over multi-kilometer fiber optic cable that is transmitting at Gb/s rates. That requires a MUCH better laser, in terms of power, coherency and switching speed. I actually don't know what the lasers cost, but some of the receivers can be in the hundreds for a single receiver at the very high end. The optical systems themselves are rather expensive, being thousands of dollars for a single mid-range board that has a pair of optical receiver/transmitters (2 ports).
There are probably two major uses. The first is in an optical switch. Traditionally, switches were OEO (optical-electrical-optical) until the all-optical craze hit in 2000. OOO (all optical) are (in theory) able to switch the light faster, which reduces latency, power usage, and lots of other things in the optical core of the network. However, if you eliminate the separate optics devices and can run the optics directly onto the semiconductor, OEO may be a lot more competitive (meaning cheaper). Go search LightReading for "OEO" or "OOO" to follow that debate (of whether there is benefit to all-optical and the current state of the art. [Infinera is a rather interesting startup driving OEO into the future to compete with OOO]
The second major use would be chip-to-chip interconnect. However, this becomes a challenge, as you try to keep a ribbon of fiber-optics (think 200-2000 strands) perfectly lined up with the lasers on the die. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is one of the hurdles to face before it could be used that way in mass-produced systems like a PC. The theory goes that at about 1 foot per second, electrical propagation between chips is causing us lots of headaches. HyperTransport and other technologies make some advances to get around the plain limits, but there are still major problems with sending high-speed signals on circuit boards. Even if this can't help speed up absolute memory access time, it could help to improve throughput between memory and the processor, helping to avoid some of the single-threaded bottlenecks that led IBM and its partners to develop Cell
Think about it - what is one of the greatest weaknesses of Wikipedia? It is not used in schools because it's not a paper encyclopedia, and doesn't have the reputation to overcome that hurdle. If Google lends its name to Wikipedia (since this relationship is already public), then will it provide enough respect to Wikipedia that searching for an item in Google and ensuring you use the Wikipedia entry (as well as other results) qualify as 'good enough' research?
After all, if that's what happens, Google sells a lot of search (which is ad revenue to them). For the investment (small relative to what Google has available), it's a heck of a good bet to make.
So given that ChoicePoint recognizes that 3 of its subsidiaries are subject to the FACT act passed in 2003, does anyone have a comprehensive list of companies that are subject to the act?
I know the big 3 (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion) and being able to use annualcreditreport.com, but didn't know ChoicePoint was subject to the law (but after this, will be sure to get a copy when September rolls around). Any others people are aware of?
The board is responsible for adding value for their shareholders, not the acquirer's shareholders. Because the transaction is going to be done in stock, some consideration needs to be made of the partner, and the existing valuation of that company's stock (and the future survival of the combined company)
Qwest - a company that already has more than $14B of debt, yet zero free cash flow, a financial loss, decreasing revenue, negative book value, and negative return on assets, is not as stable of a partner as Verizon ($9B of free cash flow and net income of $7B last year, even though it carries more debt).
So how do you judge a vendor who fills GPLed software full of trademarks they intend to enforce later on?
First of all, trademarks can't be "enforced later on". Either you enforce from day 1, or you never enforce, and lose trademark status. This actually changes the result of such attempts to use trademarks to control GPLed software. In fact, the trademarked name would probably be somewhat useless, because (1) they will be unique to that distribution, and (2) can't match the name the program had previously, due to common-law trademark that program would have... thus (3) few would ever recognize the trademarked name.
Specifically on the judgement question, it depends on the trademark. If they rename a bazillion GPLed pieces of software for the purposes of trademarking the names, then I judge them idiots. I am happy they have spent the filing fees to support the USPTO.
If they are protecting their corporate name, such as what Red Hat is doing, then I judge them
the same way I judge the FSF for
protecting its own name if someone wants to modify the GPL.
I believe they have the full right to do that under trademark law (without restriction because the software they distribute happens to be GPLed).
I'm not a GPL fanatic but I think they ought to lose the right to enforce those trademarks if they're included in a GPLed srpm.
The GPL is a COPYRIGHT license. In the USA it gets its power from 17 USC 106 (Copyright law) and since it makes no mention of patents or trademark, it has no power over those (in granting or restricting rights).
It is a rather interesting study to trace the history of our 'friends' in the Asia Pacific region.
Taiwan: For 5 decades from 1949, the ruling authorities gradually democratized. In 1995, the first direct presidential election was held.
South Korea: In 1987, South Korean voters elected ROH Tae-woo to the presidency, ending 26 years of military dictatorships.
This from our capitalistic 'friends' we've had from the Nineteen Fifties.
The Chinese government has recently allowed local areas to elect their town and village leaders; and has been broadcasting that local regions can't depend on the national government to completely support them.
The 'danger' the Chinese government faces is how to do capitalistic reforms (which require personal property rights, among other things) yet avoid people asking for more power. That is quite a fence to walk... especially as a population turns over to a new generation (also look at the cultural changes regarding work occurring in Japan). I'm not saying I like the Chinese government, but I also think they are simply taking every effort at slowing the inevitable. I believe they will succeed at slowing the change, but not stopping it.
Referring back to the history above, it took South Korea 30 years from the end of the Korean War to go from a military dictatorship to Democracy. So what will China look like 30 years after its ascention to the WTO?
Let me answer it this way: Alcatel designed it's next generation DSL systems (likely the VDSL systems SBC will actually deploy) to handle about 20Mb/home (48 homes equally share 1Gb/s). They figure this allows something on the order of 1 HD, 2 Non-HD, 2 telephone call, and data all traveling on the line without interference (I may be off a tiny bit there, but it's close to what a VP at Alcatel was talking about at Next Generation Networks in September).
Specifically, I think the HDTV comes out to 6-12MB depending on the encoding (they are 30-40MB uncompressed, thus the interest in 802.11n, 802.11j, and lots of other things to allow them to someday be transmitted in a wireless fashion, if they can only solve the latency and interference problems!)
To your other question: In SBC's system, you will only receive the channel you are watching, because the VDSL doesn't have the bandwidth to support all channels at once. In the Verizon system, they will be multicasting, because the fiber gives them the bandwidth to do it.
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I can't say I disagree with you, but as I work for a semiconductor manufacturer, I would like to expand on what 'unreliable' means in this case.
Actually, most consumer electronics devices are 'unreliable' in the sense that they experience relatively high failure rates (compared to, say, telecommunications infrastructure devices). This is a result of the (lack of) burn in done before the parts are deployed. Simply stated, it is cheaper to have consumer electronics fail in the field than to burn in all of the parts before-hand. This is not unique to Linksys.
Consumer devices are generally 250 FIT or higher for early failure rate [first year]. A FIT (failure in time) is the ratio of failed devices (in parts per million) to running time (in thousands of power on hours [kpoh])... so 250 FITS translates into 2500 parts per million (ppm) failing after 10 kpoh. That's really reasonable for consumer devices (0.25% failure in the first year). The average failure rate over the life of the consumer semiconductor (probably rated for 100K or 200K poh) is around 100 FITS.
As a side note, telecommunications devices are generally a higher standard, with early failure rate below 65 FIT and average failure rate below 25 FIT. The burn-in required to reduce the failure rate (since most of the failures occur early in the lifecycle, stress testing a part early on can trigger many of the early failures) costs a bundle of money, and can add enough expense to a part to eliminate the entire profit margin on a consumer device. Of course, for more important applications (telecom, brake systems in vehicles, medical equipment), higher reliability parts are used.
So yes, 'mainstream' (actually 'low margin and low risk in case of failure') does mean lower quality, but please don't bash the manufacturers too hard for it. Economics forces their hand, and the result is the system that is set up to take the returns, as you experienced.
Wi-Fi is a trademark owned by the Wi-Fi Alliance, and is based on various parts of 802.11. It is a wireless local area network standard.
WiMax is a trademark owned by the WiMax forum, and is 802.16d (Fixed WiMax) and 802.16e (Mobile WiMax) [.16e is not yet ratified by IEEE]. These are wireless metro or wide area network standards (depending on where you feel that difference lies)
The two network technologies will likely co-exist in the future. See this article for how their interaction might work out (in the first few paragraphs) [the article refers to fixed WiMax].
The DMV is a bit rediculous. They have different letters for different services, because their people are skilled at different things at different "windows". I get the intent, but I wonder about the value. Every time I've gone in, my number rings on the device immediately, and I spend less than 5 minutes there.
There really aren't that many people up here. The supermarkets are up to 14 items in the express lanes because they didn't get enough business at 7 or 10 items. Some of you think I'm kidding. I'm not.
As far as technical support, you might be surprised at what Burlington can do. This describes what has already been done. They ran fiber around downtown (for all the government buildings) and offered it to local businesses as well. They already have some experience, and this is now the second stage of the project. I just wish I hadn't moved out to the 'burbs. :)
As far as those who think Verizon will complain, don't count on them getting very far. The Burlington area only saw DSL about two years ago (I only got the offer in mid-2004), so it's a joke. Between that and the fact that "Capitalist" could be a natsy word up here (we're approaching socialized health care for those who haven't noticed), Burlington will continue forward without any resistance.
There is precedent in Burlington, as the power is also run by the government (Burlington Electric). It has some of the lower rates in the state, as they avoided locking themselves into nasty contracts with Quebec Power, as did others (e.g. Green Mountain Electric).
First, the more it happens, the faster ROI a venture capital organization can get out of the business. Shorter time horizons mean lower risk, because the discount rate used when analyzing startups is VERY high (high uncertainty of future value).
Second, the more it happens, the less capital a VC fund needs to hold back for 2nd and 3rd round funding... therefore freeing more money for 1st round investments... it feeds back to produce significantly more startup companies.
Third, the more it happens, the less business experience you need. If all you are is a risk-development shop for a large corporation, you don't need the business experience, you just need to be able to identify a problem and build a portion of a solution for it. The purchasing company injects the business experience before going to market.
VCs are actually desperate to find a way to produce superior returns. There is a tremendous amount of money floating around for them to invest, and part of the reason for the bubble (one of many) was that the VC funds had to put that money to work (thus some less than stellar ideas were chased).
So, this may signify a change of behavior - not in terms of what would actually make a successful corporation, but in what it takes for a new company to produce positive value for those who own/start it - and those are distinct concepts.
The plain fact in business is that changes in management and changes in staff make it VERY difficult to hold people accountable for forecasts. If the forecast from a year ago is wrong, but I joined the team 6 months ago, am I responsible for it? I hope not. Am I responsible for improving the forecast? Sure. Will I be around in 3 years to hold me accountable for the latest strategic forecast (once you can measure whether it was more accurate than the one produced by my predecessor)? Probably not... reorganizations, promotions, and job changes probably get in the way.
Regardless of whether you're talking internal to IBM or the analysts, it's a very difficult proposition to have accountability and thus drive measurable (and statistically significant) improvement in the forecasting system(s).
From a deployment perspective, this is already happening with optical networks in some communitites. This is a problem in communities without pre-deployed fiber, as some companies have been adept at striking sewer lines when trying to bury the fiber. It's also really expensive to dig a ditch (think of SBC as a legal team adept at public permitting and policy that happens to sell voice services)... As you point out, it is this constraint on the speed which controls the deployment of fiber.
The solution in those areas is VDSL or some derivative that will support a very high speed connection over copper. Fiber is then run into the community, and the copper used over the last few hundred feet. (In a community like mine, there are lots of green cabinets all over the place to facilitate this - all the wires are buried)
So realistically, you need between 8Mb/s and 40Mb/s (depending on quality and compression) to stream an HD channel. Assuming deployment rate at the same pace that ADSL rolled out (not unreasonable), that means it will be about 2012 before 50% of US homes have this bandwidth... and that's over a WIRED connection. I still can't stream that into a plane, bus, or other area where carrying a small CD/DVD-sized object is trivial.
It is highly likely that there will be a significant market for "HD DVD" (whichever format wins) at least through the beginning to middle of the next decade. The challenge after that is whether quality improvement can even be perceived by people (note how monitors really slowed in development after XGA was pervasive). Of course, if you're into speculation, anything 3D could eat up a huge quantity of bandwidth and storage REALLY fast.
Geez. Call Discover (or almost any other credit card company) and they will never send them again.
Ill? Then don't read that an article suggesting that part of the resolution to secuity problems on the Internet is to pry PCs from our cold dead hands.
Or at least read Ars Technica's response to help you feel better.
While I understand the concern that many have with the decision that has been made, the analysis you make is insufficient to stand up to scrutiny (even when IANAL).
For example, there is little to no hard evidence a crime has been committed if someone steals something from your house. After all (assuming no broken windows) is your word that something is missing better than Apple's word that information was leaked? So what power do you have to have an investigation performed to determine who took the item(s)? Thus, your 'hard evidence' standard is very high. I would note that neither the federal rules of criminal procedure (which, barring PATRIOT, require a warrant and reasonable suspicion) nor the federal rules of civil procedure (which requires very little in the way of proof before you file and get to perform discovery) provide the privacy protection you desire.
In addition, by the laws and procedures of the United States, many of which are derived from English common law, juries are finders of fact. It is absolutely impossible to 'prove' a crime has occurred until the jury finds that the crime has been committed by an individual. So your argument that they were unable to "prove a crime had occurred _unless_ they knew the identities of the sources" also presents fundamental problems in implementation. Even toned down, the court will balance the right to move the case forward vs. the damage to the parties IF they are _innocent_. (which - simply being identified - is [for better or worse] relatively minor).
Lastly, the person they are asking for the information is not the party that will be charged. Therefore, any protection of "innocent until proven guilty" cannot protect the individual from testifying as to what they know. It also should not give privacy to those who exposed trade secrets. The actual phrase, as it first appeared in the US (Supreme Court decision of 1894, Coffin vs. U.S.): is "The law presumes that persons charged with crime are innocent until they are proven by competent evidence to be guilty". The key words here are 'charged with a crime' and 'innocent' not 'private' or 'anonymous'. Such a privacy standard as you suggest is impossible to achieve and is not part of "due process" (the constitutional phrase that provides us - under certain circumstances - the "innocent until proven guilty" standard).
Overall, if the bloggers witnessed a crime (such as receiving a trade secret from a person who was under a confidential disclosure agreement), absolutely nothing can prevent them from testifying unless they themselves were involved in the crime (in which case they are protected by the 5th amendment). The protection for journalists that exists is in protecting other sources of information (NOT what they have personally witnessed). The Supreme Court of the US has explicitly stated that no protection (to avoid testimony) exists for a journalist that actually witnessed a crime to prevent them from testifying (note in the particular case by the SCOTUS it was before a grand jury).
By that analysis, I'm not sure any precedent was set at all by the judge.
As lighthearted as your comment is... that's the scary part of all this. I imagine it terrifies the large communcations and networking firms.
The catch-22 that so many vendors are facing is to not participate in such a huge market (bad idea) or be forced to partner with a company in China to produce the product locally for China [because WAPI won't be licensed to foreign firms] (also a bad idea). It's worse than a prisoner's dilemma, because you already KNOW that Huawei and others will provide equipment that is "legal" in China... so the ability to "win" by refusing to play (both prisoners remaining silent) is not dependent on your competitors. It is - precisely - zero. Refusing to enter the Chinese market also reduces competition and price pressure in China, allowing local firms an even better base with which to compete with firms in the US and EU.
This just stinks, in my opinion. It goes right along with China selecting the EVD standard for DVDs. It's playing a market power game... and while it's effective (and just might work in this case), it doesn't make the 'game' any less dangerous for US and EU firms.
Linux gets slowly but steadily adopted into more and more mobiles...
That's quite an assumption to how things will play out. I'm not so certain the first statement leads to the second.
While I understand that some companies (Nokia, due to its ownership stake in Symbian, being the most significant) have a vested interest in Microsoft not being the OS of choice in a phone or smart phone, I wasn't aware that the consumer had much choice in what ends up in the phone. My understanding is that the relationship between the software supplier and the phone maker (and the phone maker and the carrier) is more significant than what the user is interested in. The challenge is that the consumer criteria for purchasing a phone are the brand name of the phone, the design (straight vs. clam shell), the camera (or lack thereof), cost, ringtones, SMS capability, games, and other features; the OS is mostly (if not completely) transparent to those decision criteria [remember Marketing 102: people buy solutions to problems, needs & wants; they do not buy products]. If I got a new phone, I would ask what OS the phone is running; however, I bet most people don't care. As a side note, I don't actually know if Microsoft-based phones display a MS logo on boot; however, you should consider that people might associate failure (e.g. crashing) to the brand name of the phone as much as the OS it is running.
There may be long-term damage if the systems do not work properly, but it will take a long time to play out (The replacement time for phones is 18+ months in the US last I checked). This (along with the lack of major press on the issue) is probably enough of a reprieve that Microsoft can fix its problems. This is a much better place (from their point of view) for Microsoft to get itself entrenched - because it only needs to maintain the corporate relationships with the manufacturers (and to a lesser degree the carriers)... Then, with "good enough" products, they can survive.
The same goes for Microsoft's push into IPTV and its deals with SBC and others. There isn't a need for a consumer to make a choice - if you subscribe, you're using Microsoft's products; your only non-Microsoft choice is to not receive the service. While some staunch anti-Microsoft individuals may be willing to take that step, many others (I would argue most people) would just as well have the service, even if it means dealing with a Microsoft product. If Microsoft wins any cable companies, some consumers may have no choice at all if they want to have on-demand services.
It is, in truth, a brilliant play by Microsoft into areas where it is harder to make a consumer choice to remove a specific type of software. I highly doubt we will see the day where the software has to be independent of the phone or set top box, as was the case with mainframe computers when IBM got itself into anti-trust problems. So Microsoft is here to stay, even if they have to share the desktop.
Which confuses me, given your conclusion that this only protects financial institutions and the government.
When I log into Amazon.com's server--wherever it is (I guarantee you it's not in the state I live in, because I don't pay sales tax on the purchase), that isn't "interstate commerce"? So isn't my computer a "protected computer" (due to the use of "OR" at the end of 18 USC 1030(e)(2)(A)?) Or am I missing something?
I was under the impression (B) was present only to protect the law from violating Article 1, Section 8 "...To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states..." and Amendment 10 of the Constitution: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
Many laws and actions performed by the federal government (including many fair labor laws - see the definition of commerce in 17 USC 203(b)) are written in such a way to impact only those companies which have government contracts or do business in multiple states or across state lines. It's up to the states to regulate the small businesses that do not operate across state lines.
...is when AMD purchased Alchemy Semiconductor....
Doh! Thanks for the catch. Fat fingers today, I guess.
Keep in mind that the lasers you are working with are not very precise (the CD player, DVD player), or even only have to be coherent (the laser pointer) and not pulsing. Even with the encoding, the DVD is only transmitting a few Mb/s of information as it encounters pits and lands on a CD/DVD. (4.7GB/2 hours = ~6Mb/s)
The long-haul optical systems and optical switches are transmitting over multi-kilometer fiber optic cable that is transmitting at Gb/s rates. That requires a MUCH better laser, in terms of power, coherency and switching speed. I actually don't know what the lasers cost, but some of the receivers can be in the hundreds for a single receiver at the very high end. The optical systems themselves are rather expensive, being thousands of dollars for a single mid-range board that has a pair of optical receiver/transmitters (2 ports).
The second major use would be chip-to-chip interconnect. However, this becomes a challenge, as you try to keep a ribbon of fiber-optics (think 200-2000 strands) perfectly lined up with the lasers on the die. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is one of the hurdles to face before it could be used that way in mass-produced systems like a PC. The theory goes that at about 1 foot per second, electrical propagation between chips is causing us lots of headaches. HyperTransport and other technologies make some advances to get around the plain limits, but there are still major problems with sending high-speed signals on circuit boards. Even if this can't help speed up absolute memory access time, it could help to improve throughput between memory and the processor, helping to avoid some of the single-threaded bottlenecks that led IBM and its partners to develop Cell
My only thought is: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Since this doesn't seem to qualify as excessive, crual, or unusual (at least in this context), I don't see what the problem is.
Think about it - what is one of the greatest weaknesses of Wikipedia? It is not used in schools because it's not a paper encyclopedia, and doesn't have the reputation to overcome that hurdle. If Google lends its name to Wikipedia (since this relationship is already public), then will it provide enough respect to Wikipedia that searching for an item in Google and ensuring you use the Wikipedia entry (as well as other results) qualify as 'good enough' research?
After all, if that's what happens, Google sells a lot of search (which is ad revenue to them). For the investment (small relative to what Google has available), it's a heck of a good bet to make.
I know the big 3 (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion) and being able to use annualcreditreport.com, but didn't know ChoicePoint was subject to the law (but after this, will be sure to get a copy when September rolls around). Any others people are aware of?
Qwest - a company that already has more than $14B of debt, yet zero free cash flow, a financial loss, decreasing revenue, negative book value, and negative return on assets, is not as stable of a partner as Verizon ($9B of free cash flow and net income of $7B last year, even though it carries more debt).
First of all, trademarks can't be "enforced later on". Either you enforce from day 1, or you never enforce, and lose trademark status. This actually changes the result of such attempts to use trademarks to control GPLed software. In fact, the trademarked name would probably be somewhat useless, because (1) they will be unique to that distribution, and (2) can't match the name the program had previously, due to common-law trademark that program would have... thus (3) few would ever recognize the trademarked name.
Specifically on the judgement question, it depends on the trademark. If they rename a bazillion GPLed pieces of software for the purposes of trademarking the names, then I judge them idiots. I am happy they have spent the filing fees to support the USPTO.
If they are protecting their corporate name, such as what Red Hat is doing, then I judge them the same way I judge the FSF for protecting its own name if someone wants to modify the GPL. I believe they have the full right to do that under trademark law (without restriction because the software they distribute happens to be GPLed).
The GPL is a COPYRIGHT license. In the USA it gets its power from 17 USC 106 (Copyright law) and since it makes no mention of patents or trademark, it has no power over those (in granting or restricting rights).
In at least one case, it was explicitly determined that the GPL license is not a trademark license.
Taiwan: For 5 decades from 1949, the ruling authorities gradually democratized. In 1995, the first direct presidential election was held.
South Korea: In 1987, South Korean voters elected ROH Tae-woo to the presidency, ending 26 years of military dictatorships.
This from our capitalistic 'friends' we've had from the Nineteen Fifties.
The Chinese government has recently allowed local areas to elect their town and village leaders; and has been broadcasting that local regions can't depend on the national government to completely support them.
The 'danger' the Chinese government faces is how to do capitalistic reforms (which require personal property rights, among other things) yet avoid people asking for more power. That is quite a fence to walk... especially as a population turns over to a new generation (also look at the cultural changes regarding work occurring in Japan). I'm not saying I like the Chinese government, but I also think they are simply taking every effort at slowing the inevitable. I believe they will succeed at slowing the change, but not stopping it.
Referring back to the history above, it took South Korea 30 years from the end of the Korean War to go from a military dictatorship to Democracy. So what will China look like 30 years after its ascention to the WTO?
Specifically, I think the HDTV comes out to 6-12MB depending on the encoding (they are 30-40MB uncompressed, thus the interest in 802.11n, 802.11j, and lots of other things to allow them to someday be transmitted in a wireless fashion, if they can only solve the latency and interference problems!)
To your other question: In SBC's system, you will only receive the channel you are watching, because the VDSL doesn't have the bandwidth to support all channels at once. In the Verizon system, they will be multicasting, because the fiber gives them the bandwidth to do it.