Access to money or resources in general changes the problem.
Apparently you are not familiar with the definitive research in this area. The Coleman Report (Equality of Educational Opportunity, 1966) contradicts your assertions and found:
"Using data from over 600,000 students and teachers across the country, the researchers found that academic achievement was less related to the quality of a student's school, and more related to the social composition of the school, the student's sense of control of his environment and future, the verbal skills of teachers, and the student's family background."
If you want to fix the slide in educational outcomes in the US, you need to stop spending on all the frills (no more monuments to technology and sports) and signifacntly raise the bar on educational expectations. Then we need to engage the parents and begin to educate them on their role in their child's education. Finally, we need to get rid of half of the administration staff in school districts. The upside to this approach is that we will free up a siginificant amount of money that can be used to hire more teachers and shrink classroom size.
Our problem is not the quality of our teachers, it is the low level of expectations that we have placed upon our students, their peer groups, and their parents.
Surely AT&T could fix up their own network for less than the cost of T-Mobile.
This acquisition isn't about subscribers or network equipment. AT&T is spending $39B to purchase T-Mobile's frequency spectrum in the US so that they can ensure that they have enough spectrum to roll out LTE and continue to upgrade their 3G HSPA+ network. Any subscribers that opt to stay with AT&T post merger is just an added benefit to them.
I think that it is more hypocritical to bestow both copyright and patent protection on software, then to say that software is only covered by patents (or, for arguements sake, copyrights). We have to decide once and for all what software really is; is it an invention that should be protected by patents, or is it an original work that should enjoy a very long lifespan through copyrights? It should not be considered both.
I agree with the premise that software should be covered by patents and not copyrights. Patents would provide protection for a limited timeframe and then allow unbridled competition (see the effect that generic drugs have had on the drug industry). Companies have to be given some protection to cover their investment, however, copyrights extend that protection for too long of a period of time.
Until we can all agree upon what software should be classified as, then we will continue to bicker over patent and copyright protection. It is time for the industry to step up and release its claim on one or the other.
However, I do agree that we will not see any changes to how software is protected under US patent and coyright law any time soon.
I too work for a Fortune 500 corporation and I can say with complete certainity that it would take at least 10+ years of proven success by Xorp before we would even consider using it out on the edge of our network, let alone the core. Cisco's IOS is cheap compared to its hardware, and I doubt that Xorp is going to build the chassis and cards to power their OSS routing platform. Plus, are they going to give me 356x24x4 hardware and software support almost anywhere on the face of the planet? I think not.
Routers used by large companies are very specialized pieces of equipmnet (Cisco 7200, 7500, 12000GSR, etc.) and can not be replicated using cheap off the shelf parts. I doubt that Cisco or Juniper is going to let you replace their bootloaders and operating systems and still provide you with a service contract. And service contracts are the life blood for Enterprise networking customers. Unless Cisco or Juniper come out and embrace Xorp like IBM did Linux, then Xorp will not find any Enterprise customers for their router software.
If this case was being heard in the US, then the Betamax precedent would apply, however, Supreme Court rulings in the US do not have any influence in foreign courts.
The US Supreme Court ruled in the "Betamax" case that while the product could be used to infringe on rights of copyright holders, it also has legitmate non-infringing uses. So they said that the product was legal (at least under the law at that time and they pointed out that Congress could reverse their decision by changing the law) and that use of the product did not dimish the rights of the Copyright holders since they are still free to bring legal action upon those who misuse Copyright protected material. US courts have already ruled that the Betamax precedent cover P2P software as long as there is not a central server involved.
Microsoft's most powerful tool against Asia would be to convince the US to threaten to impose a trade embargo on Asia in order to bring them to the table regarding IP rights. Shutting Asia out of parts of the US markets would be a devasting blow to their economies.
While this is probably a long shot, there are enough people in Washington D.C. concerned about the US's lead in technology fields and IP (due to offshoring and the lack of respect for patents and copyrights in developing nations) that MicroSoft could find enough sympathetic ears.
However, this issue will not be fully resolved until their is an International Treaty regarding Patents and Copyrights put in place through the WTO. The developed world needs to determine what the playing field for Patents and Copyrights should look like and then ensure that everyone plays by the same rules.
If you are going to do a comparison, then atleast get the hardware right:
Dell Dimension 8400 ($1,411):
Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology (3GHz, 800 FSB)
Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition
FREE Dell 720 Color Printer with 1 Yr Advanced Exchange Service
Dell Black 10 Ft. USB Printer Cable
2 Year Limited Warranty plus 2 Year At-Home Service
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (2x512M
160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
No Floppy Drive Included
Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + FREE UPGRADE! 8x DVD+RW Drive
New 17 in E172FPb Flat Panel Display
128MB PCI Express(TM) x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon(TM) X300 SE
Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio
Dell A425 Speakers w/Subwoofer
Dell ® Quietkey ® Keyboard
Dell® 2-button scroll mouse
Integrated Gigabit Ethernet
56K PCI Data/Fax Modem
So the Dell is cheaper, has 4x more RAM, faster processor, faster FSB, gigabit Ethernet, a DVD & 8x DVD+RW drives, and it costs less than the comparable iMac. Boy were you right about Apple finally competing on price! What average computer user would not jump at the chance to throw away all of their software for a less powerful and flexible PC that costs more!?!
That said, I have a Blue & White G3 at home (which sits next to my XP Pro and SuSe boxes), so I am not a Mac hater. I rather like the new iMac from a design poiont of view, however, I detest all in one designs for my personal use. They lock you in to a fixed configuration and limit what you can upgrade/replace.
The iMac is aimed at computer newbies who want to be coddled and protected for the Windows or Linux experience. It is a happy land where "things just work", atleast most of the time, and they do not have to worry about device incompatibility. So they shell out the extra money to avoid the pitfalls of having choices.
You are trying to oversimplify the voting process. Most voters evaluate a candidate on a plethora of policy points, there ususally is no single overriding issue to steer them toward one candidate over another.
That is why US elections are referred to as "Beauty Contests". People vote for the candidate they find most appealling. So they are forced to make compromises when it comes to policy positions.
If your goal is to determine what the majority opinion of the populace truly is, then you would have to drop the "Beauty Contest" method and adopt preferential voting. Preferential voting requires that the voter rank the candidates in the order that the voter would like to see win (1st choice, 2nd choice, etc.).
The benefit of prefential voting is that you tally up all of the votes that a candidate receives (for example, 3 points for a 1st place vote, 2 points for 2nd, and 1 point for 3rd) and the person with the largest weighted vote total is the winner. The benefit is that you have quantified the preferences of the masses.
So in the 2000 US Presidential election for example, the average Ralph Nader voter would have ranked Al Gore 2nd and Goerge W Bush 3rd. This would mean that a vote for a 3rd Party candidate is no longer meaningless since they are now free to vote their conscious while still voicing their opinion on the mainstream candidates.
However, since most voters cannot grapple with a simple butterfly ballot, there is no way they could figure out a rank the candidates ballot.
Why not just turn ISPs providing broadband access into operators of managed networks? Would it not be easier to either have the ISPs provide managed Anti-virus and host based IDS software to their users or, if the user opted out, have them perform periodic scans of those PCs and shutdown any of their subscribers connection until they patched the hole? If the average user is too inept to secure their own PC as routine function of PC ownership, then a reasonable alternative could be a managed solution as a term of service.
As for corporate PCs, companies that refuse to secure their PCs should be held liable for the damage that those owned PCs unleash on other companies. The only way to get corporate America to take notice is to hit them where it hurts - their pocketbook. After enough of them are seen shelling out millions of dollars in damages; other companies will then fall into line and secure their networks.
I am not for more government regulation, but something has to be done to protect the rest of us from the ever increasing number of ignorant broadband users allowing all types of viruses and worms to spread.
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Access to money or resources in general changes the problem.
Apparently you are not familiar with the definitive research in this area. The Coleman Report (Equality of Educational Opportunity, 1966) contradicts your assertions and found:
"Using data from over 600,000 students and teachers across the country, the researchers found that academic achievement was less related to the quality of a student's school, and more related to the social composition of the school, the student's sense of control of his environment and future, the verbal skills of teachers, and the student's family background."
If you want to fix the slide in educational outcomes in the US, you need to stop spending on all the frills (no more monuments to technology and sports) and signifacntly raise the bar on educational expectations. Then we need to engage the parents and begin to educate them on their role in their child's education. Finally, we need to get rid of half of the administration staff in school districts. The upside to this approach is that we will free up a siginificant amount of money that can be used to hire more teachers and shrink classroom size.
Our problem is not the quality of our teachers, it is the low level of expectations that we have placed upon our students, their peer groups, and their parents.
Surely AT&T could fix up their own network for less than the cost of T-Mobile.
This acquisition isn't about subscribers or network equipment. AT&T is spending $39B to purchase T-Mobile's frequency spectrum in the US so that they can ensure that they have enough spectrum to roll out LTE and continue to upgrade their 3G HSPA+ network. Any subscribers that opt to stay with AT&T post merger is just an added benefit to them.
I know that everyone is just having fun at Dell's expense, however, the problem is with the Sony manufactured Li-ion batteries. There have been reports of Apple MacBooks suffering the same fate (Apple also procurs its batteries from Sony http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/laptops/who-else-beside s-dell-used-the-sony-batteries-apple-194728.php), however, since they ship far fewer laptops per year than Dell, they have had fewer laptops burst into flames. And then there were the cell phone batteries that were catching fire a few years ago -- http://news.com.com/Cell+phone+batteries+Avoid+get ting+burned/2100-1041_3-5420061.html.
The problem also extends to the shipment of Li-ion batteries. A shipment caught fire on a UPS plane a few months ago - http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/ 17/1857232&from=rss.
The problem is linked to poor quality control and flawed designs.
I know this is off topic, however, this is becoming a serious problem and may lead to further restrictions when traveling on commercial aircraft.
I think that it is more hypocritical to bestow both copyright and patent protection on software, then to say that software is only covered by patents (or, for arguements sake, copyrights). We have to decide once and for all what software really is; is it an invention that should be protected by patents, or is it an original work that should enjoy a very long lifespan through copyrights? It should not be considered both.
I agree with the premise that software should be covered by patents and not copyrights. Patents would provide protection for a limited timeframe and then allow unbridled competition (see the effect that generic drugs have had on the drug industry). Companies have to be given some protection to cover their investment, however, copyrights extend that protection for too long of a period of time.
Until we can all agree upon what software should be classified as, then we will continue to bicker over patent and copyright protection. It is time for the industry to step up and release its claim on one or the other.
However, I do agree that we will not see any changes to how software is protected under US patent and coyright law any time soon.
I too work for a Fortune 500 corporation and I can say with complete certainity that it would take at least 10+ years of proven success by Xorp before we would even consider using it out on the edge of our network, let alone the core. Cisco's IOS is cheap compared to its hardware, and I doubt that Xorp is going to build the chassis and cards to power their OSS routing platform. Plus, are they going to give me 356x24x4 hardware and software support almost anywhere on the face of the planet? I think not.
Routers used by large companies are very specialized pieces of equipmnet (Cisco 7200, 7500, 12000GSR, etc.) and can not be replicated using cheap off the shelf parts. I doubt that Cisco or Juniper is going to let you replace their bootloaders and operating systems and still provide you with a service contract. And service contracts are the life blood for Enterprise networking customers. Unless Cisco or Juniper come out and embrace Xorp like IBM did Linux, then Xorp will not find any Enterprise customers for their router software.
If this case was being heard in the US, then the Betamax precedent would apply, however, Supreme Court rulings in the US do not have any influence in foreign courts.
The US Supreme Court ruled in the "Betamax" case that while the product could be used to infringe on rights of copyright holders, it also has legitmate non-infringing uses. So they said that the product was legal (at least under the law at that time and they pointed out that Congress could reverse their decision by changing the law) and that use of the product did not dimish the rights of the Copyright holders since they are still free to bring legal action upon those who misuse Copyright protected material. US courts have already ruled that the Betamax precedent cover P2P software as long as there is not a central server involved.
Hope this helps.
Microsoft's most powerful tool against Asia would be to convince the US to threaten to impose a trade embargo on Asia in order to bring them to the table regarding IP rights. Shutting Asia out of parts of the US markets would be a devasting blow to their economies.
While this is probably a long shot, there are enough people in Washington D.C. concerned about the US's lead in technology fields and IP (due to offshoring and the lack of respect for patents and copyrights in developing nations) that MicroSoft could find enough sympathetic ears.
However, this issue will not be fully resolved until their is an International Treaty regarding Patents and Copyrights put in place through the WTO. The developed world needs to determine what the playing field for Patents and Copyrights should look like and then ensure that everyone plays by the same rules.
If you are going to do a comparison, then atleast get the hardware right: Dell Dimension 8400 ($1,411): Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT Technology (3GHz, 800 FSB) Microsoft® Windows® XP Home Edition FREE Dell 720 Color Printer with 1 Yr Advanced Exchange Service Dell Black 10 Ft. USB Printer Cable 2 Year Limited Warranty plus 2 Year At-Home Service 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (2x512M 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) No Floppy Drive Included Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + FREE UPGRADE! 8x DVD+RW Drive New 17 in E172FPb Flat Panel Display 128MB PCI Express(TM) x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon(TM) X300 SE Integrated 5.1 Channel Audio Dell A425 Speakers w/Subwoofer Dell ® Quietkey ® Keyboard Dell® 2-button scroll mouse Integrated Gigabit Ethernet 56K PCI Data/Fax Modem So the Dell is cheaper, has 4x more RAM, faster processor, faster FSB, gigabit Ethernet, a DVD & 8x DVD+RW drives, and it costs less than the comparable iMac. Boy were you right about Apple finally competing on price! What average computer user would not jump at the chance to throw away all of their software for a less powerful and flexible PC that costs more!?! That said, I have a Blue & White G3 at home (which sits next to my XP Pro and SuSe boxes), so I am not a Mac hater. I rather like the new iMac from a design poiont of view, however, I detest all in one designs for my personal use. They lock you in to a fixed configuration and limit what you can upgrade/replace. The iMac is aimed at computer newbies who want to be coddled and protected for the Windows or Linux experience. It is a happy land where "things just work", atleast most of the time, and they do not have to worry about device incompatibility. So they shell out the extra money to avoid the pitfalls of having choices.
You are trying to oversimplify the voting process. Most voters evaluate a candidate on a plethora of policy points, there ususally is no single overriding issue to steer them toward one candidate over another.
That is why US elections are referred to as "Beauty Contests". People vote for the candidate they find most appealling. So they are forced to make compromises when it comes to policy positions.
If your goal is to determine what the majority opinion of the populace truly is, then you would have to drop the "Beauty Contest" method and adopt preferential voting. Preferential voting requires that the voter rank the candidates in the order that the voter would like to see win (1st choice, 2nd choice, etc.).
The benefit of prefential voting is that you tally up all of the votes that a candidate receives (for example, 3 points for a 1st place vote, 2 points for 2nd, and 1 point for 3rd) and the person with the largest weighted vote total is the winner. The benefit is that you have quantified the preferences of the masses.
So in the 2000 US Presidential election for example, the average Ralph Nader voter would have ranked Al Gore 2nd and Goerge W Bush 3rd. This would mean that a vote for a 3rd Party candidate is no longer meaningless since they are now free to vote their conscious while still voicing their opinion on the mainstream candidates.
However, since most voters cannot grapple with a simple butterfly ballot, there is no way they could figure out a rank the candidates ballot.
Why not just turn ISPs providing broadband access into operators of managed networks? Would it not be easier to either have the ISPs provide managed Anti-virus and host based IDS software to their users or, if the user opted out, have them perform periodic scans of those PCs and shutdown any of their subscribers connection until they patched the hole? If the average user is too inept to secure their own PC as routine function of PC ownership, then a reasonable alternative could be a managed solution as a term of service. As for corporate PCs, companies that refuse to secure their PCs should be held liable for the damage that those owned PCs unleash on other companies. The only way to get corporate America to take notice is to hit them where it hurts - their pocketbook. After enough of them are seen shelling out millions of dollars in damages; other companies will then fall into line and secure their networks. I am not for more government regulation, but something has to be done to protect the rest of us from the ever increasing number of ignorant broadband users allowing all types of viruses and worms to spread.