Re:From election official
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eLection '04
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· Score: 2
Slashdot aside, there are still large numbers of Americans who have little or no faith in computer systems - especially after this years' number of DOS attacks. The conspiracy theories regarding the "real winner" of a computer tabulated race would abound.
You're absolutely correct. Last night on CNN they had a group of voters from west palm beach discussing the situation at hand. One women stated that she now trusts computers/technology less than before, even though in theory some sort of fully computerized system would make the situation that occurred nearly impossible (ie if you had a display telling you who you're about to vote for).
The point is that most Americans can't keep pace with all the technological changes ocurring in the world. People see the word technology and try to assess it in a vacuum. People don't seem to understand that technology is designed and implemented by other people, and as such is limited by how well those two tasks are accomplished. The complexity level doesn't allow the average person to see it as anything more than the "black box", they only know what goes in, and not always what comes out. In the voting world, that is especially unacceptable to most Americans.
I think Jamie is forgetting this as well. Technology can't solve everything. It certainly can't solve this issue much better than anything else.
I've been tempted by devices like this since the empeg player that came out over a year ago. The problem is that I live in MN, where in the winter it gets damn cold, and I beleive HD's have to operate at above 32 degrees(?). Also I'm not sure at what temp HD's can be damaged when they're not on. When it can get down to -30 in MN once or twice a winter season, I'm not if I like that risk. Does anyone have operating temperature info for HD's?
Although with the price at 300 bucks, even without a HD, it starts to get tempting to use it in the home theatre...
You're close to correct, the Nader campaign ended up backfiring, at least structurally. Dubya will probably win, and Nader isn't going to get his 5% for the cashola.
But Nader has forced the democrats to now pay attention to his constituency, if they want these votes back next time. For Nader and his agenda, that is a win.
I think the problem is not the individuals involved, but the structure of our system. This is the point. We need several things to level the playing field, so that all candidates get a decent shot, and votes that don't backfire.
- President elected by popular mandate (no more electoral college)
- Proportional Representation. Party X gets y% of the vote, party X gets y% of the seats in the house/legislature. Many European countries have this model.
- Third party inclusion into the debates. One of the biggest barriers to entry for third parties in my opinion. Even if they don't win, they can keep it real by bringing up issues the corporate parties don't want to discuss.
- Campaign Finance limits. Limits on total $ allowed to be spent so it's harder to buy an election like Mark Dayton did in MN. Also soft money limits to curb special interests influence.
A few notes on Nader and how he factored in. It does look like he could have been the difference because of Florida.
It's not his fault. It's Gore's and the Democratic party.
Clinton brought the democratic party to the center in 92, esentially abandoning those on the farther left, that Nader now roughly represents. Times were (and still are) good (or getting there in 92). The typical left wing agenda and programs were seemingly unpopular to the white middle class, and this is who the dems were trying to appeal to. If Gore wanted those votes, he had to prove he was worthy of them. He did not. They are not his be default, and the dem idea that he deserved them is arrogant beyond description.
Keep in mind Buchanan on the FAR right could have done the same thing to Bush. I'm fairly sure Buchanan had even more money than Nader because of Federal funds for Perot's old party. But Bush appealed to voters who might have otherwise went for a bigot like Buchanan. He succeded on this point where Gore failed.
The democrats have been losing their core constituency in recent years. In the limited number of states I saw info on, Gore was only winning about 60% of union households!! If he can't get numbers much, much higher than that, he is going to have a very tough time. So don't blame it all on Nader.
The left wing mags I read are terrified of a Bush presidency. They have also shamefully recommended voting for Gore over Nader (and here I'm talking about mags getting out to the "far left"), mainly because of the possibility of abortion rights being overturned.
But if Bush wins, he hardly has a mandate. In fact, neither candidate can get over 50%. These are not the numbers needed for a "conservative revolution" similar to what Ginerich tried several years ago. We don't need to fear much, the status quo will prevail. Although, the status quo frightens me a bit. If he succeeds in overturning roe vs wade with possible supreme court appointments (if he even wants to try), watch the 60's social movements come back with a vengance. The people won't let him get away with it.
At this rate, DVD players will pass the $100 mark soon.
They have already broken this mark. I saw a DVD player yesterday at best buy for $99. The manufacturer was KLH, and at that price, I wouldn't expect much. Nonetheless, the fact that prices have dropped this far is fairly impressive.
Re:Tech vs. line, union vs. freelance.
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Me-Commerce
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· Score: 2
Today there is no company with the kind of power over employees to set their wages and working conditions with impunity.
The fact that they don't have that power is due to certain laws and the expectations of the citizens. For example, you can't shoot and kill your employees trying to form a union which happened more than a few times in the 20's and earlier.
However, the fact that certain employees are disposable (even more than in recent years) drops unskilled and semi-skilled laborers even farther down the economic ladder than before, even if no single corporation is driving this trend.
This will prevent unions from forming. So long as someone can go submit resumes to two other companies down the road and bargain for pay and working conditions with them, there is no need to have pay scales and contract negotiations.
This is part of my point: this will work great for people like us who are high demand, but this is not the case for most of the workforce, really. Even with the economy this good, the demand isn't sky high for regular office workers or manual laborers.
Many suppliers of electronic gear have moved their manufacturing operations to Mexico. They don't do any engineering in Mexico, just the dirty stuff.
Very true. This still bothers me, I mean, Mexicans are humans too.
In the current business climate, long before a company could be unionized all their tech people would have jumped ship for better pay elsewhere; they'd be out of business.
Also correct. Corporations found out they needed this flexibility when the information age started overtaking the industrial age. They realized rigid heirarchial employment structures no longer worked, therefore neither did traditional union representation. Now the temp workers absorb the hit when the economy bounces around.
Someone needs to come up with a new kind of union to represent these people that gives them some sort of saftey net in the wake of economic fluctuations. It will most likely require corporations to absorb more of the hit, but that's an issue having to do with how we allow capitalism to operate. That's another discussion.
Temporary work is great in this industry, for now. Or most industries, for that matter. When things start to dry up (probably not very soon in IT, however), things aren't going to be so pretty.
There is a theory out there that the increasing polarization of wealth in the world is due in large part to this phenomena. In high demand fields like this, and other professional, highly skilled areas, people are raking in the cash. In manufacturing, or semi-skilled office work, and others, the outlook often isn't so great, where demand is average and workers are a dime a dozen.
I believe that labor unions are the main reason that the middle class is where it is today. Traditional unions are having a hard time, however, organizing temp workers in most fields. In many cases, they aren't allowed, which is technically illegal, but we know that doesn't stop corporations all the time. I've seen a few projects here in Minneapolis that were put on hold due to te corporation wanting guarantees that unions would not be formed.
Tech compaines are highly profitable, but this is part of the downside. They can get away with WAY too much. This is a significant part of their profitability. Tax breaks, land deals, and union busting/preventing. Since they bring in high paying jobs, they can get away with this (and don't forget the increasing corporate influence in Washington). Environmentally tech companies are bad as well among manufacturers of circuitboards and microelectronics. These industries use some of the worst chemicals you'll find. Take a look at the article earlier. Making companies responsible for what they make when its useful life is over? In the US, that would take an amazing effort to get such a law into place. With such a focus on profits at the expense of everything else, it isn't likely.
and it hasn't always just been on the content side. HDTV standards were slow in being approved, since the FCC dragged it's feet and was a poor arbitrator as the set manufacturers (Hollywood MAY have been involved, I can't remember) couldn't agree on what they wanted. Therefore they ended up with 18 possibilities with different resolutions, interlaced / non-interlaced, and possibly frame rate.
The point is that the FCC was not willing to put it's foot down and force a smaller number of standards...keep in mind the more standards used, the more the hardware tends to cost. The FCC allowed the corporations to do what they wanted, and as profit mongering crybabies, they couldn't agree on anything.
The digital TV spectrum giveaway was another fiasco, as the bandwidth was given away for free by uncle sam. It could have been sold for billions. You can thank the industry's lobbyists for that.
Which brings us to today's news. I don't think the government has any reason to give a damn, I think this is clearly a corporate move to "preserve" profits, even though it will hurt corporations in the long run, just like any other copy control strategy.
I read up quite a bit on current TV/stereo info/issues, and I have to say for me this is the final straw. I was looking at getting some sort of digital TV in the next year or so, now, it might be years, if I ever get one. Hollywood and content makers have been dragging their heels on this because of this issue, broadcasters have been slow to upgrade their facilities to HDTV probably for the same reasons. It's truly sad.
We all know where this is going. Anti-piracy controls might be legitimate for, say, movies on HBO. However, I think we all know we won't be allowed to record anything, except for a "small fee", I'm sure.
The fundamental problem from a corporate / consumer standpoint is this: corporations view new technology as a way to extract more money from the public, once they finally understand it, whereas the public sees it as a way to drive down costs, and will only pay more if the new technology is vastly superior.
Digital technology is not worth the price of pay per play. I think we've reached the point of true robbery....pay per play, of every damn thing. This is exactly what hollywood wants, and the exact opposite of what consumers want.
now being applied to the internet. Wonderful. "Hacking" crimes should charged based on the actual damage done. Creating a law that states any "hacking" is automatically a felony is not a good implementation. Sounds a lot like the drug laws where you can be put away for a good long time just for possestion.
It probably won't be too many years now before some "hacking" task force has a budget along the lines on the drug war. I've seen more than a few "between the lines" suggestions by politicians that this is exactly what we need. With a mostly ignoranat public, the politicians will probably get what they want.
I wonder how much it will take to piss off the public though. Seeing a 13 year old skinny white kid from the suburbs being hauled off to jail for "hacking" might have a different effect on the public than some poor hippie or black pot smoker being thrown into jail on drug charges.
Please. It's not a double standard. It's pretty clear that microsoft has broken certain laws, the courts can decide which ones and the penalties.
On the other side we have rambus, which has proven to be inferior in not only price/performance, but in performance as well. There is also a good amount of evidence that their patents are going to be hard to hold up.
Given the situations of both cases, I don't find this to be a double standard.
While this article is a bit short on opinions I think he has it right. Not a new insight, but I've thought for several years now that the internet is a threat to capitalism and the established order. I think everyone here agrees with that, to an extent.
The corporations / government better be careful about how much they tread on citizens or they might end up reigniting the 60's. Signs of this have already begun, with WTO protests, sweatshop protests on college campuses, and others that have occured over the last year or so.
These are interesting times (if you ignore the parts that are frightening) for a couple of reasons:
* There are many companies that directly profit from the internet (ecommerce) and pretty much every company uses it for increased efficiency of data flow resulting in cost savings. Therefore it is a needed tool. However, in order to censor information, I've come to the conclusion that the internet would have to be made illegal to truly stop info (or even enough to stem the tide).
Look at the 2600 case. Joe Average will find a way around any rulings forever. You've seen what they've done already. Plus our government can't bully everyone in the world. Offshore servers are unstopable. Since corporations need the internet, it will be interesting to see how this is worked out.
* Corporations are 100% about making money, but more than that, they are about maximizing short term profit, sometimes at the expense of long term profit. Look at the DMCA: limits on reverse engineering. What will that do to long term innovation, and therefore profits? I've always felt that corpoations were as much of a threat to themselves as anyone else, because of this need for short term profits.
The government keeps things in check a bit with laws and regulations to prevent stuff like this (clearly I'm not a libertarian, if you didn't figure that out yet), but what happens with increasing corporate control of our government? You get laws that stifle innovation and ruin corporions in the long run, and therefore our economy. Not that I'd mind seeing capitalism crumble, or change into something more humane, but thats another story:)
So in this case it will be interesting to see how corporations, as rabid dogs, fight with people like Mr. Hatch who seems to understand the need to keep certain freedoms available.
So now, of course, I have to insert the mandatory "support the EFF" statement. It's a good idea though. Help effect the way these issues turn out.
After all, we've seen on/. a thousand times how disillusioned the technically skilled population is with many, many aspects of the law. Many people here advocate "civil disobediance" or even outright flouting of the law as a means of voicing their protests. Are these the people you want as judges in cases like 2600?
You mean people who understand the needs of the common person and not just those with money? Sounds good to me. But your scenario would never happen, they aren't go to hire the average slashdot reader to be a judge. These people will have to have law degrees and experience, just like any other judge.
It also smacks of elitism that certain cases should only be allowed to be judged by an elite cabal of "tech judges". Why should a case which involves technical concepts merit its own special type of judge, one which is likely to be biased by dint of their interests and knowledge?
Because there is no such thing as being impartial. If there was, supreme court judges would all rule in the same direction. Your biases and experiences affect how you think. On top of that, the complete ingnorance displayed by some judges in this area *is* a problem. Having to think in terms of analogies isn't good, as it seemed judge Jackson did.
Sorry, but this wouldn't solve any problems - no judge could keep up with all of the advances in the various fields of computing unless they worked in them. And if they did, you could never be sure that they were unbiased. I say we keep this elitism out of the judicial system, and stick with what we know works.
I think it might help a bit, but I worry about something different than you: that the judges chosen would be "corporate whores" worse than any that are already out there. The effectiveness of a seperate court like this depends completely on the judges chosen.
Tech companies tend to think that it's ok to get around regulations and often they do. This is because tech companies bring in high paying jobs to the community, and can get away with more than the average company. I'm afriad that in this case microsoft is just saying something like "we want a judge who will side with us, because we know we're right because we are". There is no reason to believe other tech companies would be different.
Corporate influence in the schools has been covered here on slashdot before and this is a good example of the crap that is going on.
A lot of the problem is with bloated Universities who have no financial feedback mechanism (much like the government) so while the school might be making good money, the budget is streched thin anyway with uneeded high level management types, etc. Not that mass privatising is a good solution (I would never recommend it myself).
These days it's easier to get funding for new prisons than it is for education. I think California is a good example. I beleive they are now putting more money into law enforcement than education. Not a good sign, and not a good way to improve the world.
Years ago I think programs like this would have been rejected out of hand. In today's world colleges and universities are run more as corporations. By this I'm not referring to the increasing corporate control, but as in being bottom line money driven. Therefore money saving schemes like this often look attractive to college administrators at the expense of their students.
This companies business model is also suspect, it's the typical.com model that has been failing pretty badly as a whole. I would never invest in such companies.
It just goes to prove that copyright protection in the modern era is an oxymoron. I suppose they could do some big brother thing like divx did, but that failed too...
You know, this is probably somewhat offtopic, but whenever I see these stories on AI and nanotech, interesting as they are, I have to laugh.
Scientists, even if they are more rational than the average person, need to make money, some want to make a lot, and getting people's attention is a good way to do it.
Tell people they are going to be replaced by machines, that will get their attention. And perhaps some of their money will be spent on the books written about the subject.
The American public is a good target. America doesn't have much to worry about, not the majority in the suburbs, anyway (or at least nothing anyone cares to see, in reality we have plenty of problems). The Russians are no longer a threat. We have all the material goods we need. There isn't much to worry about in day to day life. So we need to come up with some sci-fi scenario to scare the masses. Realistically, at this point these theories hold no more water than UFO's abducting women and impregnating them. Interesting to read and think about, but come on, we've hardly got even the basic building blocks of nanotech, same goes for AI.
This wasn't the point of the article, but come on, we have bigger things to worry about if we're even going to live long enough to invent our
"evolutionary successors".
Saying intel isn't innovating anymore is more of a bad choice of words than it is incorrect. Obviously you've seen intel is working on some intersting things, however, the original poster is referring to what they actually bring to market. In the end, thats all that matters.
It's easy to say this now, but you could see intel starting to falter a few years ago. What wasn't so easy to see was the emergance of AMD.
Intel has been around a long time. They made good stuff for a long time. They made huge dough. The shareholders were happy. But shareholders always want more. Profit margins have to keep increasing. They can only increase to a point until the rubber band snaps. Their high prices, the RAMBUS fiasco, and others point to this. Eventually you really piss off the customer.
There are other reasons too. The older a company gets, the more bureaucratic it becomes. A Very Bad Thing in this industry. Intel is also very engineering "top heavy". Too many engineers who have been around for too long, all thinking they know exactly how it should be done. This can stifle innovation very badly.
Intel will have to go through some sort of rebirth eventually, something like what IBM went through. They haven't hit bottom yet, though. I love to see intel suffer, but I don't ant them to go away: AMD needs competition. There is no reason AMD can't turn into intel in a few short years. They're just another corporation, who have to answer to a group of shareholders who are no different than any other.
While this will be good for the satellite business, I don't think it will help drive down costs that much, beyond satellite technology. Beyond that you basically move up to space stations or planetary exploration.
Neither of these are particularly profitable, and even if they were, the investment needed would be far too high to outweigh the risk. I'm not sure what money could be made off a space station. Tourism is a possibility, but the market for it is too small, even if you could make a lot of money per person. Medical research is a possibility, but again I don't think there is much of a safe investment there either.
Planetary exploration stands to make no profit, until you have ships big and fast enough that could fly out and start mining the asteroid belt. Current technology levels for exploring mars or other planets is far better suited for scientific discovery than for a corporations bottom line.
So the conclusion is this: while privitization is sometimes good, it's not a blanket solution. The government still needs to pump money into it's own programs (space station, mars programs) until there is enough technology that can be transfered to private corporations that will allow for profitability. Most emerging markets followed a similar path, with most of the modern tech industry being a good example, after military technology was transfered to private corporations.
The main question that has never been answered is what security system out there can actually work. All these dumb startups can proclaim to have some system that does x, y, and z, but really once the encryption is broken it doesn't matter.
A DIVX type system, even without circumvention, won't succeed because consumers have rejected it, and will reject any other pay per play system that is released.
Therefore I beleive that in the end, any business model will have to rely on some level of trust with the consumer, for these additional reasons:
* You can't throw everyone in jail for copyright infringement. We already have the highest incarceration rate in the world, which is under increasing scrutiny as it is. Seeing a 13 year old that was running napster being hauled off to jail on the 5 o'clock news will turn into a PR nightmare for all parties involved.
* The government is inefficient, and increasingly under corporate control, but I think they still understand (I beleive this more so after Hatch's comments a few days ago) that if the US is to maintain technological leadership, it can't allow "old world" copyright laws to continue to dominate. The longer they do, the more any new technologies will get sucked directly into the legal system from where they will not return, while China, Japan, Europe, etc goes along with the new technology and finds a way to make it profitable.
* Capitalism in general. American consumers have been trained to have very little morality when it comes to how they spend their money, and simply buy the lowest price product if possible (of course advertising/marketing can change that, but this basically holds true here). They don't care about what affect those purchases might have on the world and others (fuel inefficiet SUV's for example). Now the corporations get to reap what they sow. Mp3's cost nothing more than the bandwidth you need to get them, and the risk of being punished is near zero.
* Bandwidth. This is a legitimate issue today when napster use might clog up an entire university's bandwidth, but the day will come when downloading mp3s doesn't bog down the network, and limit the number of mp3s that can be passed around day to day.
* The internet as a consumer/social force. This is highly debateable as to how much of an effect it has but the internet is obviously suited well for consumer empowerment. I think a lot of the reason DIVX failed was because of all the websites that proclaimed how pathetic it really was. These websites are all run by regular consumers, and therefore gave a fairly unbiased debate. Magazines and other corporate controlled sources tended to give DIVX a lot more credit than it deserved (although even they were fairly rough on it). Now I'm not claiming this will eventually lead to the end of capitalism and some sort of marxist revolution, but I think I see a consumer attitude forming of "we're not going to take this BS anymore."
Based on this I think at best record companies could get a monthly flat rate pricing model for unlimited unrestricted music access, similar to how ISP's charge for their service. With the unrestricted (no copyright) measures comes the trust. It might be able to work. All media have had to deal with piracy for some time now, granted today's issues make it tougher to deal with. In the past, oh 20 years maybe, piracy was kept low by making the barrier to piracy fairly high, keeping the number of people involved low. Today that barrier is near 0, making it very hard for this to work. Consumer "morals" might be the only hope.
Personally I don't care if it works or not. If it doesn't, I think we end up with copyright anarchy, after all the blood has been shed and the dust has settled. I'd love to see copyright go away and artists live on small donations from whoever likes them enough. That way you get artists who are in it for the music, not the money, something sorely lacking today.
Since technology is today's driving force for the economy, I think it wins be default. For once the headless monster might inadvertantly work in favor of the average guy.
People might think microsoft is evil, but I think the media portrays them as a kind of necessary evil. The same thing goes for anything else the media covers, like corporations, the government, taxes, or whatever.
So it shouldn't be suprising. People aren't calling for microsoft to be removed from existance, I don't think people that frequent this site would go even that far.
Our society is business and money oriented. I think most people believe microsoft has a right to pursue profit. Believing they should be broken up in some fashion doesn't go against that, either.
Any computer manufacturer who relies on, tries to obtain, or pushes for recognition on the basis of a novel looking CASE is in trouble. Do you know why? Because it's what's inside the case that matters.
The hardware matters, sure, but the case does too. A lot. Or at least, it probably will in the future. There aren't many other ways for computer companies to differentiate their products especially in the home PC market. The only one I can really think of is service plans and software doo-dads that you don't really need anyway.
The hardware in PC's is pretty much set, anything that goes into it is rarely made or controlled by a PC manufacturer. Motherboards are one exception, made by some of the larger PC manufacturers, but these are largely transparent to the user and have to conform to given standards anyway (intel/AMD chips, PCI, current RAM standards, etc).
I have similar complaints with the Imac's because they are a lot of packaging hype, but i can't help but think they'd be more affordable and more servicable if they came in a standard gray box
You don't seem to understand why the iMac is so successful...it looks cool. To the non-geek anyway, who make up the majority of computer users. The price doesn't matter, people want things that look nice, or even better, cool. The beige box is ok with me, but I'd still like a box that has better access. And I'm not the average computer user either.
We haven't seen any remarkable changes in the way computers look for one main reason, IMO: there is no room for error in the computer world. Margins are thin as it is, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Apple had to take a risk because they were on their death bed, and it paid off, bigtime.
Since hardware hardly gets even your average geek excited anymore, I think we'll start to see more "stylish" computer cases out there. Especially when sales start to drop since the upgrade cycle time is increasing, and prices are so low.
Perhaps they're just slowly removing their ties from RAMBUS. Coming straight out and saying "we didnt know what the f*ck we were doing, we just wanted the stock options" doesn't make them look very good.
The fact that intel decided to use SDRAM and/or DDR SDRAM in its next generation of chipsets instead of RDRAM outright shows that intel knows a bit better than to push technology that is at best marginally better at 5x the cost. The conspiracy really isn't much, I quote from Tom's hardware:
When Intel 'decided' to go for Rambus technology some three years ago, it wasn't out of pure believe into technology and certainly not just 'for the good of its customers', but simply because they got an offer they couldn't refuse. Back then Rambus authorized a contingency warrant for 1 million shares of its stock to Intel, exercisable at only $10 a share, in case Chipzilla ships at least 20% of its chipsets with RDRAM-support in back-to-back quarters. As of today Intel could make some nifty 158 million Dollars once it fulfills the goal.
20% os the market is quite a bit, but intel doesn't have to be a RAMBUS zealot to pull this off. If RAMBUS really does work better, for, say, the server market, this is acheivable without incredible loads of propeganda that we've seen from them last year and much of this year.
The fact that intel itself would come out and say DDR SDRAM is better than RDRAM pretty much ends the conspiracy theory. But that doesn't mean they're still not biased twords it.
Yes, I think they are still trying to kill napster. They aren't going to let their profit margins go away without a fight, not when they have stockholders to answer to. Of course, everyone here knows that trying to supress mp3s will fail.
If record companies (or something like napster, gnutella on the other side) wake up someday to create some online distribution system, there are still two glaring questions that haven't been answered, one for record companies, and one for those who oppose them.
For record companies, how can you create a secure system of distribution? Most people here would agree, I think, that you can't. The economist article conveniently ignored this fact. Any n-bit encryption or whatever else they come up with will either be cracked, or rejected, if they go for some DIVX type service. Any system they come up with won't make unencrypted mp3s go away either. I think this is why they are still trying to defeat mp3s in the court, since there is simply no way they can maintain the level of control over copyright that they've had in the past. They recognize this after the DVD debacle.
The other issue is this. For those who would like to see record companies dead, how can bands flourish without megabuck promotion that record companies provide? This is more of a social issue than a technical one. To succeed you need a much more proactive populace, which is hard to get in todays pacified, seen one-commercial-too-many society. Americans seem to simply go for whats popular so they can fit in, rather than explore other options. Still, this can always change.
Personally I see the second issue having a better chance than the first, since the first is almost impossible to implement in the way corporations need it to in order to even make money. Perhaps in the future no bands will have a huge fan base, instead there might be a large number of bands with a decent size cult following. i think this is ore likely.
These issues are still very new, and a long, long way from being resolved. Whatever happens in the courts won't change the situation. It doesn't matter if napster sells out or if the RIAA wins ever suit it files, consumers will go with what they want.
The oscars don't necessarily have any real impact on the average viewer, once a year people simply get to see their favorite stars on TV, and Hollywood gets to feel important about itself.
So frankly I don't care, and it doesn't suprise me much that an elitist institution like this would be afraid of the internet. You know how the movie industry views the internet. Their fears only go to show that they'll be much less powerful someday anyway, but not quite as bad as record companies will probably fair 15 or 20 years down the road (ie they'll be gone) unless they really change.
It's much more arrogant for them to be "afraid" of the internet than the record industry for one reason: people will always go to see movies (well, as long as ticket prices don't increase 1000% faster than inflation). People can't afford extravagent theaters in their own home, and it's always more fun to watch a movie with a bunch of people. Music is more of a personal experience with the exception of concerts, which don't make up much of the record companies revenue.
So like you said, who cares, let them obsolete themselves. The internet doesn't need them. This whole story sounds like the control over distribution issue (somehow it always ends up being that way). So let them ignore the problem, let them think it will just go away.
Most comments here point out why the digital revolution has been important, and I'm inclined to agree with most. But the article itself and everyone here has seemed to miss a point of the internet/information revolution: the fact that many people on this planet are becoming obsolete by market logic or even more obsolete than they were before. The result, of course, is lack of access to a modern lifestyle and thus a life of poverty in general.
Whenever the technological complexity of the word/economy increases, the "cost of entry" goes up; as in the amount of education you need to be able to do work in such an economy, as well as the monetary cost of providing you with that education.
So lets take a look at Africa. Africa has never been modernized in general, and has basically been in ruins since around WW2 (when I beleive colonialism ended). In the 80's, a lot of African countries decided they wanted to start modernizing. Loans were granted, projects were run, and it pretty much failed. Loans couldn't be paid. SO the IMF and the world bank stepped in. One of their main points in their fiscal restructuring for these countries was to make sure than "social spending" was kept to a minimum, which includes education, medical care, social well being in general. So at precisely the time that education has become even more important, it gets thrown out the window.
To get Africa back on track, we can't just donate computers to them and expect the problem to be solved. 150 years ago it would have been much simpler, but look what needs to be put in place today: stable political structures, transporation and electric infastructure, social institutions (also for stability) and educational infastructure. That's no easy task.
The market certainly won't correct this problem. Whats the incentive? Today Africa is used mainly for its natural resources, with corporations usally getting an unfair price while the heads of state are paid off. Even if it got a fair price for its resources, basing your economy off of this hasn't worked for probably 150 years: today you need advanced manufactured goods, and services. Now the market can't correct political issues in Africa, but it would be silly to ignore the fact that large corporations have a stake in this corruption, with nearly free labor and resources. There is no toher profit to be made, and thus no investment back into the community.
The situation at home is similar. While everyone is talking about how its such a workers market, people have lots of money, etc, is only partially true, in reality the population is becoming highly polarized. So while myself with my EE degree can make pretty good money, that kid in the ghetto, even if he has computers at his/her school, has a low chance of making it this far.
Social spending in the US has been cut quite a bit in recent years, in relation to defense and law enforement, anyway. People though cutting welfare would help, but it hasn't. It just makes poor people poorer, even if they have a job. So at exactly the time when education spending needs to go up significantly (especially for those who have poor schools to begin with) it hasn't.
Now, you might be saying by now that I'm just a bleeding heart liberal, and I pretty much am. Fixing social issues isn't directly related to technology issues. I understand that. But you can't deny the higher cost of entry into today's economy, and how many people simply don't have it.
The worlds governments and institutions simply haven't figured out a way to realign themselves to give equal access and opportunity to all.
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot aside, there are still large numbers of Americans who have little or no faith in computer systems - especially after this years' number of DOS attacks. The conspiracy theories regarding the "real winner" of a computer tabulated race would abound.
You're absolutely correct. Last night on CNN they had a group of voters from west palm beach discussing the situation at hand. One women stated that she now trusts computers/technology less than before, even though in theory some sort of fully computerized system would make the situation that occurred nearly impossible (ie if you had a display telling you who you're about to vote for).
The point is that most Americans can't keep pace with all the technological changes ocurring in the world. People see the word technology and try to assess it in a vacuum. People don't seem to understand that technology is designed and implemented by other people, and as such is limited by how well those two tasks are accomplished. The complexity level doesn't allow the average person to see it as anything more than the "black box", they only know what goes in, and not always what comes out. In the voting world, that is especially unacceptable to most Americans.
I think Jamie is forgetting this as well. Technology can't solve everything. It certainly can't solve this issue much better than anything else.
I've been tempted by devices like this since the empeg player that came out over a year ago. The problem is that I live in MN, where in the winter it gets damn cold, and I beleive HD's have to operate at above 32 degrees(?). Also I'm not sure at what temp HD's can be damaged when they're not on. When it can get down to -30 in MN once or twice a winter season, I'm not if I like that risk. Does anyone have operating temperature info for HD's?
Although with the price at 300 bucks, even without a HD, it starts to get tempting to use it in the home theatre...
You're close to correct, the Nader campaign ended up backfiring, at least structurally. Dubya will probably win, and Nader isn't going to get his 5% for the cashola.
But Nader has forced the democrats to now pay attention to his constituency, if they want these votes back next time. For Nader and his agenda, that is a win.
I think the problem is not the individuals involved, but the structure of our system. This is the point. We need several things to level the playing field, so that all candidates get a decent shot, and votes that don't backfire.
- President elected by popular mandate (no more electoral college)
- Proportional Representation. Party X gets y% of the vote, party X gets y% of the seats in the house/legislature. Many European countries have this model.
- Third party inclusion into the debates. One of the biggest barriers to entry for third parties in my opinion. Even if they don't win, they can keep it real by bringing up issues the corporate parties don't want to discuss.
- Campaign Finance limits. Limits on total $ allowed to be spent so it's harder to buy an election like Mark Dayton did in MN. Also soft money limits to curb special interests influence.
A few notes on Nader and how he factored in. It does look like he could have been the difference because of Florida.
It's not his fault. It's Gore's and the Democratic party.
Clinton brought the democratic party to the center in 92, esentially abandoning those on the farther left, that Nader now roughly represents. Times were (and still are) good (or getting there in 92). The typical left wing agenda and programs were seemingly unpopular to the white middle class, and this is who the dems were trying to appeal to. If Gore wanted those votes, he had to prove he was worthy of them. He did not. They are not his be default, and the dem idea that he deserved them is arrogant beyond description.
Keep in mind Buchanan on the FAR right could have done the same thing to Bush. I'm fairly sure Buchanan had even more money than Nader because of Federal funds for Perot's old party. But Bush appealed to voters who might have otherwise went for a bigot like Buchanan. He succeded on this point where Gore failed.
The democrats have been losing their core constituency in recent years. In the limited number of states I saw info on, Gore was only winning about 60% of union households!! If he can't get numbers much, much higher than that, he is going to have a very tough time. So don't blame it all on Nader.
The left wing mags I read are terrified of a Bush presidency. They have also shamefully recommended voting for Gore over Nader (and here I'm talking about mags getting out to the "far left"), mainly because of the possibility of abortion rights being overturned.
But if Bush wins, he hardly has a mandate. In fact, neither candidate can get over 50%. These are not the numbers needed for a "conservative revolution" similar to what Ginerich tried several years ago. We don't need to fear much, the status quo will prevail. Although, the status quo frightens me a bit. If he succeeds in overturning roe vs wade with possible supreme court appointments (if he even wants to try), watch the 60's social movements come back with a vengance. The people won't let him get away with it.
At this rate, DVD players will pass the $100 mark soon.
They have already broken this mark. I saw a DVD player yesterday at best buy for $99. The manufacturer was KLH, and at that price, I wouldn't expect much. Nonetheless, the fact that prices have dropped this far is fairly impressive.
Today there is no company with the kind of power over employees to set their wages and working conditions with impunity.
The fact that they don't have that power is due to certain laws and the expectations of the citizens. For example, you can't shoot and kill your employees trying to form a union which happened more than a few times in the 20's and earlier.
However, the fact that certain employees are disposable (even more than in recent years) drops unskilled and semi-skilled laborers even farther down the economic ladder than before, even if no single corporation is driving this trend.
This will prevent unions from forming. So long as someone can go submit resumes to two other companies down the road and bargain for pay and working conditions with them, there is no need to have pay scales and contract negotiations.
This is part of my point: this will work great for people like us who are high demand, but this is not the case for most of the workforce, really. Even with the economy this good, the demand isn't sky high for regular office workers or manual laborers.
Many suppliers of electronic gear have moved their manufacturing operations to Mexico. They don't do any engineering in Mexico, just the dirty stuff.
Very true. This still bothers me, I mean, Mexicans are humans too.
In the current business climate, long before a company could be unionized all their tech people would have jumped ship for better pay elsewhere; they'd be out of business.
Also correct. Corporations found out they needed this flexibility when the information age started overtaking the industrial age. They realized rigid heirarchial employment structures no longer worked, therefore neither did traditional union representation. Now the temp workers absorb the hit when the economy bounces around.
Someone needs to come up with a new kind of union to represent these people that gives them some sort of saftey net in the wake of economic fluctuations. It will most likely require corporations to absorb more of the hit, but that's an issue having to do with how we allow capitalism to operate. That's another discussion.
Temporary work is great in this industry, for now. Or most industries, for that matter. When things start to dry up (probably not very soon in IT, however), things aren't going to be so pretty.
There is a theory out there that the increasing polarization of wealth in the world is due in large part to this phenomena. In high demand fields like this, and other professional, highly skilled areas, people are raking in the cash. In manufacturing, or semi-skilled office work, and others, the outlook often isn't so great, where demand is average and workers are a dime a dozen.
I believe that labor unions are the main reason that the middle class is where it is today. Traditional unions are having a hard time, however, organizing temp workers in most fields. In many cases, they aren't allowed, which is technically illegal, but we know that doesn't stop corporations all the time. I've seen a few projects here in Minneapolis that were put on hold due to te corporation wanting guarantees that unions would not be formed.
Tech compaines are highly profitable, but this is part of the downside. They can get away with WAY too much. This is a significant part of their profitability. Tax breaks, land deals, and union busting/preventing. Since they bring in high paying jobs, they can get away with this (and don't forget the increasing corporate influence in Washington). Environmentally tech companies are bad as well among manufacturers of circuitboards and microelectronics. These industries use some of the worst chemicals you'll find. Take a look at the article earlier. Making companies responsible for what they make when its useful life is over? In the US, that would take an amazing effort to get such a law into place. With such a focus on profits at the expense of everything else, it isn't likely.
and it hasn't always just been on the content side. HDTV standards were slow in being approved, since the FCC dragged it's feet and was a poor arbitrator as the set manufacturers (Hollywood MAY have been involved, I can't remember) couldn't agree on what they wanted. Therefore they ended up with 18 possibilities with different resolutions, interlaced / non-interlaced, and possibly frame rate.
The point is that the FCC was not willing to put it's foot down and force a smaller number of standards...keep in mind the more standards used, the more the hardware tends to cost. The FCC allowed the corporations to do what they wanted, and as profit mongering crybabies, they couldn't agree on anything.
The digital TV spectrum giveaway was another fiasco, as the bandwidth was given away for free by uncle sam. It could have been sold for billions. You can thank the industry's lobbyists for that.
Which brings us to today's news. I don't think the government has any reason to give a damn, I think this is clearly a corporate move to "preserve" profits, even though it will hurt corporations in the long run, just like any other copy control strategy.
I read up quite a bit on current TV/stereo info/issues, and I have to say for me this is the final straw. I was looking at getting some sort of digital TV in the next year or so, now, it might be years, if I ever get one. Hollywood and content makers have been dragging their heels on this because of this issue, broadcasters have been slow to upgrade their facilities to HDTV probably for the same reasons. It's truly sad.
We all know where this is going. Anti-piracy controls might be legitimate for, say, movies on HBO. However, I think we all know we won't be allowed to record anything, except for a "small fee", I'm sure.
The fundamental problem from a corporate / consumer standpoint is this: corporations view new technology as a way to extract more money from the public, once they finally understand it, whereas the public sees it as a way to drive down costs, and will only pay more if the new technology is vastly superior.
Digital technology is not worth the price of pay per play. I think we've reached the point of true robbery....pay per play, of every damn thing. This is exactly what hollywood wants, and the exact opposite of what consumers want.
now being applied to the internet. Wonderful. "Hacking" crimes should charged based on the actual damage done. Creating a law that states any "hacking" is automatically a felony is not a good implementation. Sounds a lot like the drug laws where you can be put away for a good long time just for possestion.
It probably won't be too many years now before some "hacking" task force has a budget along the lines on the drug war. I've seen more than a few "between the lines" suggestions by politicians that this is exactly what we need. With a mostly ignoranat public, the politicians will probably get what they want.
I wonder how much it will take to piss off the public though. Seeing a 13 year old skinny white kid from the suburbs being hauled off to jail for "hacking" might have a different effect on the public than some poor hippie or black pot smoker being thrown into jail on drug charges.
Please. It's not a double standard. It's pretty clear that microsoft has broken certain laws, the courts can decide which ones and the penalties.
On the other side we have rambus, which has proven to be inferior in not only price/performance, but in performance as well. There is also a good amount of evidence that their patents are going to be hard to hold up.
Given the situations of both cases, I don't find this to be a double standard.
While this article is a bit short on opinions I think he has it right. Not a new insight, but I've thought for several years now that the internet is a threat to capitalism and the established order. I think everyone here agrees with that, to an extent.
:)
The corporations / government better be careful about how much they tread on citizens or they might end up reigniting the 60's. Signs of this have already begun, with WTO protests, sweatshop protests on college campuses, and others that have occured over the last year or so.
These are interesting times (if you ignore the parts that are frightening) for a couple of reasons:
* There are many companies that directly profit from the internet (ecommerce) and pretty much every company uses it for increased efficiency of data flow resulting in cost savings. Therefore it is a needed tool. However, in order to censor information, I've come to the conclusion that the internet would have to be made illegal to truly stop info (or even enough to stem the tide).
Look at the 2600 case. Joe Average will find a way around any rulings forever. You've seen what they've done already. Plus our government can't bully everyone in the world. Offshore servers are unstopable. Since corporations need the internet, it will be interesting to see how this is worked out.
* Corporations are 100% about making money, but more than that, they are about maximizing short term profit, sometimes at the expense of long term profit. Look at the DMCA: limits on reverse engineering. What will that do to long term innovation, and therefore profits? I've always felt that corpoations were as much of a threat to themselves as anyone else, because of this need for short term profits.
The government keeps things in check a bit with laws and regulations to prevent stuff like this (clearly I'm not a libertarian, if you didn't figure that out yet), but what happens with increasing corporate control of our government? You get laws that stifle innovation and ruin corporions in the long run, and therefore our economy. Not that I'd mind seeing capitalism crumble, or change into something more humane, but thats another story
So in this case it will be interesting to see how corporations, as rabid dogs, fight with people like Mr. Hatch who seems to understand the need to keep certain freedoms available.
So now, of course, I have to insert the mandatory "support the EFF" statement. It's a good idea though. Help effect the way these issues turn out.
After all, we've seen on /. a thousand times how disillusioned the technically skilled population is with many, many aspects of the law. Many people here advocate "civil disobediance" or even outright flouting of the law as a means of voicing their protests. Are these the people you want as judges in cases like 2600?
You mean people who understand the needs of the common person and not just those with money? Sounds good to me. But your scenario would never happen, they aren't go to hire the average slashdot reader to be a judge. These people will have to have law degrees and experience, just like any other judge.
It also smacks of elitism that certain cases should only be allowed to be judged by an elite cabal of "tech judges". Why should a case which involves technical concepts merit its own special type of judge, one which is likely to be biased by dint of their interests and knowledge?
Because there is no such thing as being impartial. If there was, supreme court judges would all rule in the same direction. Your biases and experiences affect how you think. On top of that, the complete ingnorance displayed by some judges in this area *is* a problem. Having to think in terms of analogies isn't good, as it seemed judge Jackson did.
Sorry, but this wouldn't solve any problems - no judge could keep up with all of the advances in the various fields of computing unless they worked in them. And if they did, you could never be sure that they were unbiased. I say we keep this elitism out of the judicial system, and stick with what we know works.
I think it might help a bit, but I worry about something different than you: that the judges chosen would be "corporate whores" worse than any that are already out there. The effectiveness of a seperate court like this depends completely on the judges chosen.
Tech companies tend to think that it's ok to get around regulations and often they do. This is because tech companies bring in high paying jobs to the community, and can get away with more than the average company. I'm afriad that in this case microsoft is just saying something like "we want a judge who will side with us, because we know we're right because we are". There is no reason to believe other tech companies would be different.
Corporate influence in the schools has been covered here on slashdot before and this is a good example of the crap that is going on.
.com model that has been failing pretty badly as a whole. I would never invest in such companies.
A lot of the problem is with bloated Universities who have no financial feedback mechanism (much like the government) so while the school might be making good money, the budget is streched thin anyway with uneeded high level management types, etc. Not that mass privatising is a good solution (I would never recommend it myself).
These days it's easier to get funding for new prisons than it is for education. I think California is a good example. I beleive they are now putting more money into law enforcement than education. Not a good sign, and not a good way to improve the world.
Years ago I think programs like this would have been rejected out of hand. In today's world colleges and universities are run more as corporations. By this I'm not referring to the increasing corporate control, but as in being bottom line money driven. Therefore money saving schemes like this often look attractive to college administrators at the expense of their students.
This companies business model is also suspect, it's the typical
It just goes to prove that copyright protection in the modern era is an oxymoron. I suppose they could do some big brother thing like divx did, but that failed too...
Bummer, I feel so bad for the big corporations...
You know, this is probably somewhat offtopic, but whenever I see these stories on AI and nanotech, interesting as they are, I have to laugh.
Scientists, even if they are more rational than the average person, need to make money, some want to make a lot, and getting people's attention is a good way to do it.
Tell people they are going to be replaced by machines, that will get their attention. And perhaps some of their money will be spent on the books written about the subject.
The American public is a good target. America doesn't have much to worry about, not the majority in the suburbs, anyway (or at least nothing anyone cares to see, in reality we have plenty of problems). The Russians are no longer a threat. We have all the material goods we need. There isn't much to worry about in day to day life. So we need to come up with some sci-fi scenario to scare the masses. Realistically, at this point these theories hold no more water than UFO's abducting women and impregnating them. Interesting to read and think about, but come on, we've hardly got even the basic building blocks of nanotech, same goes for AI.
This wasn't the point of the article, but come on, we have bigger things to worry about if we're even going to live long enough to invent our
"evolutionary successors".
Saying intel isn't innovating anymore is more of a bad choice of words than it is incorrect. Obviously you've seen intel is working on some intersting things, however, the original poster is referring to what they actually bring to market. In the end, thats all that matters.
It's easy to say this now, but you could see intel starting to falter a few years ago. What wasn't so easy to see was the emergance of AMD.
Intel has been around a long time. They made good stuff for a long time. They made huge dough. The shareholders were happy. But shareholders always want more. Profit margins have to keep increasing. They can only increase to a point until the rubber band snaps. Their high prices, the RAMBUS fiasco, and others point to this. Eventually you really piss off the customer.
There are other reasons too. The older a company gets, the more bureaucratic it becomes. A Very Bad Thing in this industry. Intel is also very engineering "top heavy". Too many engineers who have been around for too long, all thinking they know exactly how it should be done. This can stifle innovation very badly.
Intel will have to go through some sort of rebirth eventually, something like what IBM went through. They haven't hit bottom yet, though. I love to see intel suffer, but I don't ant them to go away: AMD needs competition. There is no reason AMD can't turn into intel in a few short years. They're just another corporation, who have to answer to a group of shareholders who are no different than any other.
While this will be good for the satellite business, I don't think it will help drive down costs that much, beyond satellite technology. Beyond that you basically move up to space stations or planetary exploration.
Neither of these are particularly profitable, and even if they were, the investment needed would be far too high to outweigh the risk. I'm not sure what money could be made off a space station. Tourism is a possibility, but the market for it is too small, even if you could make a lot of money per person. Medical research is a possibility, but again I don't think there is much of a safe investment there either.
Planetary exploration stands to make no profit, until you have ships big and fast enough that could fly out and start mining the asteroid belt. Current technology levels for exploring mars or other planets is far better suited for scientific discovery than for a corporations bottom line.
So the conclusion is this: while privitization is sometimes good, it's not a blanket solution. The government still needs to pump money into it's own programs (space station, mars programs) until there is enough technology that can be transfered to private corporations that will allow for profitability. Most emerging markets followed a similar path, with most of the modern tech industry being a good example, after military technology was transfered to private corporations.
The main question that has never been answered is what security system out there can actually work. All these dumb startups can proclaim to have some system that does x, y, and z, but really once the encryption is broken it doesn't matter.
A DIVX type system, even without circumvention, won't succeed because consumers have rejected it, and will reject any other pay per play system that is released.
Therefore I beleive that in the end, any business model will have to rely on some level of trust with the consumer, for these additional reasons:
* You can't throw everyone in jail for copyright infringement. We already have the highest incarceration rate in the world, which is under increasing scrutiny as it is. Seeing a 13 year old that was running napster being hauled off to jail on the 5 o'clock news will turn into a PR nightmare for all parties involved.
* The government is inefficient, and increasingly under corporate control, but I think they still understand (I beleive this more so after Hatch's comments a few days ago) that if the US is to maintain technological leadership, it can't allow "old world" copyright laws to continue to dominate. The longer they do, the more any new technologies will get sucked directly into the legal system from where they will not return, while China, Japan, Europe, etc goes along with the new technology and finds a way to make it profitable.
* Capitalism in general. American consumers have been trained to have very little morality when it comes to how they spend their money, and simply buy the lowest price product if possible (of course advertising/marketing can change that, but this basically holds true here). They don't care about what affect those purchases might have on the world and others (fuel inefficiet SUV's for example). Now the corporations get to reap what they sow. Mp3's cost nothing more than the bandwidth you need to get them, and the risk of being punished is near zero.
* Bandwidth. This is a legitimate issue today when napster use might clog up an entire university's bandwidth, but the day will come when downloading mp3s doesn't bog down the network, and limit the number of mp3s that can be passed around day to day.
* The internet as a consumer/social force. This is highly debateable as to how much of an effect it has but the internet is obviously suited well for consumer empowerment. I think a lot of the reason DIVX failed was because of all the websites that proclaimed how pathetic it really was. These websites are all run by regular consumers, and therefore gave a fairly unbiased debate. Magazines and other corporate controlled sources tended to give DIVX a lot more credit than it deserved (although even they were fairly rough on it). Now I'm not claiming this will eventually lead to the end of capitalism and some sort of marxist revolution, but I think I see a consumer attitude forming of "we're not going to take this BS anymore."
Based on this I think at best record companies could get a monthly flat rate pricing model for unlimited unrestricted music access, similar to how ISP's charge for their service. With the unrestricted (no copyright) measures comes the trust. It might be able to work. All media have had to deal with piracy for some time now, granted today's issues make it tougher to deal with. In the past, oh 20 years maybe, piracy was kept low by making the barrier to piracy fairly high, keeping the number of people involved low. Today that barrier is near 0, making it very hard for this to work. Consumer "morals" might be the only hope.
Personally I don't care if it works or not. If it doesn't, I think we end up with copyright anarchy, after all the blood has been shed and the dust has settled. I'd love to see copyright go away and artists live on small donations from whoever likes them enough. That way you get artists who are in it for the music, not the money, something sorely lacking today.
Since technology is today's driving force for the economy, I think it wins be default. For once the headless monster might inadvertantly work in favor of the average guy.
Sorry to say, but the only news source for many Americans is the tabloid rack next to a grocery store's checkout counter.
Well, that and the fact that the entire media is now one big tabloid....
People might think microsoft is evil, but I think the media portrays them as a kind of necessary evil. The same thing goes for anything else the media covers, like corporations, the government, taxes, or whatever.
So it shouldn't be suprising. People aren't calling for microsoft to be removed from existance, I don't think people that frequent this site would go even that far.
Our society is business and money oriented. I think most people believe microsoft has a right to pursue profit. Believing they should be broken up in some fashion doesn't go against that, either.
Any computer manufacturer who relies on, tries to obtain, or pushes for recognition on the basis of a novel looking CASE is in trouble. Do you know why? Because it's what's inside the case that matters.
The hardware matters, sure, but the case does too. A lot. Or at least, it probably will in the future. There aren't many other ways for computer companies to differentiate their products especially in the home PC market. The only one I can really think of is service plans and software doo-dads that you don't really need anyway.
The hardware in PC's is pretty much set, anything that goes into it is rarely made or controlled by a PC manufacturer. Motherboards are one exception, made by some of the larger PC manufacturers, but these are largely transparent to the user and have to conform to given standards anyway (intel/AMD chips, PCI, current RAM standards, etc).
I have similar complaints with the Imac's because they are a lot of packaging hype, but i can't help but think they'd be more affordable and
more servicable if they came in a standard gray box
You don't seem to understand why the iMac is so successful...it looks cool. To the non-geek anyway, who make up the majority of computer users. The price doesn't matter, people want things that look nice, or even better, cool. The beige box is ok with me, but I'd still like a box that has better access. And I'm not the average computer user either.
We haven't seen any remarkable changes in the way computers look for one main reason, IMO: there is no room for error in the computer world. Margins are thin as it is, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Apple had to take a risk because they were on their death bed, and it paid off, bigtime.
Since hardware hardly gets even your average geek excited anymore, I think we'll start to see more "stylish" computer cases out there. Especially when sales start to drop since the upgrade cycle time is increasing, and prices are so low.
Perhaps they're just slowly removing their ties from RAMBUS. Coming straight out and saying "we didnt know what the f*ck we were doing, we just wanted the stock options" doesn't make them look very good.
The fact that intel decided to use SDRAM and/or DDR SDRAM in its next generation of chipsets instead of RDRAM outright shows that intel knows a bit better than to push technology that is at best marginally better at 5x the cost. The conspiracy really isn't much, I quote from Tom's hardware:
When Intel 'decided' to go for Rambus technology some three years ago, it wasn't out of pure believe into technology and certainly not just 'for the good of its customers', but simply because they got an offer they couldn't refuse. Back then Rambus authorized a contingency warrant for 1 million shares of its stock to Intel, exercisable at only $10 a share, in case Chipzilla ships at least 20% of its chipsets with RDRAM-support in back-to-back quarters. As of today Intel could make some nifty 158 million Dollars once it fulfills the goal.
20% os the market is quite a bit, but intel doesn't have to be a RAMBUS zealot to pull this off. If RAMBUS really does work better, for, say, the server market, this is acheivable without incredible loads of propeganda that we've seen from them last year and much of this year.
The fact that intel itself would come out and say DDR SDRAM is better than RDRAM pretty much ends the conspiracy theory. But that doesn't mean they're still not biased twords it.
Yes, I think they are still trying to kill napster. They aren't going to let their profit margins go away without a fight, not when they have stockholders to answer to. Of course, everyone here knows that trying to supress mp3s will fail.
If record companies (or something like napster, gnutella on the other side) wake up someday to create some online distribution system, there are still two glaring questions that haven't been answered, one for record companies, and one for those who oppose them.
For record companies, how can you create a secure system of distribution? Most people here would agree, I think, that you can't. The economist article conveniently ignored this fact. Any n-bit encryption or whatever else they come up with will either be cracked, or rejected, if they go for some DIVX type service. Any system they come up with won't make unencrypted mp3s go away either. I think this is why they are still trying to defeat mp3s in the court, since there is simply no way they can maintain the level of control over copyright that they've had in the past. They recognize this after the DVD debacle.
The other issue is this. For those who would like to see record companies dead, how can bands flourish without megabuck promotion that record companies provide? This is more of a social issue than a technical one. To succeed you need a much more proactive populace, which is hard to get in todays pacified, seen one-commercial-too-many society. Americans seem to simply go for whats popular so they can fit in, rather than explore other options. Still, this can always change.
Personally I see the second issue having a better chance than the first, since the first is almost impossible to implement in the way corporations need it to in order to even make money. Perhaps in the future no bands will have a huge fan base, instead there might be a large number of bands with a decent size cult following. i think this is ore likely.
These issues are still very new, and a long, long way from being resolved. Whatever happens in the courts won't change the situation. It doesn't matter if napster sells out or if the RIAA wins ever suit it files, consumers will go with what they want.
The oscars don't necessarily have any real impact on the average viewer, once a year people simply get to see their favorite stars on TV, and Hollywood gets to feel important about itself.
So frankly I don't care, and it doesn't suprise me much that an elitist institution like this would be afraid of the internet. You know how the movie industry views the internet. Their fears only go to show that they'll be much less powerful someday anyway, but not quite as bad as record companies will probably fair 15 or 20 years down the road (ie they'll be gone) unless they really change.
It's much more arrogant for them to be "afraid" of the internet than the record industry for one reason: people will always go to see movies (well, as long as ticket prices don't increase 1000% faster than inflation). People can't afford extravagent theaters in their own home, and it's always more fun to watch a movie with a bunch of people. Music is more of a personal experience with the exception of concerts, which don't make up much of the record companies revenue.
So like you said, who cares, let them obsolete themselves. The internet doesn't need them. This whole story sounds like the control over distribution issue (somehow it always ends up being that way). So let them ignore the problem, let them think it will just go away.
Most comments here point out why the digital revolution has been important, and I'm inclined to agree with most. But the article itself and everyone here has seemed to miss a point of the internet/information revolution: the fact that many people on this planet are becoming obsolete by market logic or even more obsolete than they were before. The result, of course, is lack of access to a modern lifestyle and thus a life of poverty in general.
Whenever the technological complexity of the word/economy increases, the "cost of entry" goes up; as in the amount of education you need to be able to do work in such an economy, as well as the monetary cost of providing you with that education.
So lets take a look at Africa. Africa has never been modernized in general, and has basically been in ruins since around WW2 (when I beleive colonialism ended). In the 80's, a lot of African countries decided they wanted to start modernizing. Loans were granted, projects were run, and it pretty much failed. Loans couldn't be paid. SO the IMF and the world bank stepped in. One of their main points in their fiscal restructuring for these countries was to make sure than "social spending" was kept to a minimum, which includes education, medical care, social well being in general. So at precisely the time that education has become even more important, it gets thrown out the window.
To get Africa back on track, we can't just donate computers to them and expect the problem to be solved. 150 years ago it would have been much simpler, but look what needs to be put in place today: stable political structures, transporation and electric infastructure, social institutions (also for stability) and educational infastructure. That's no easy task.
The market certainly won't correct this problem. Whats the incentive? Today Africa is used mainly for its natural resources, with corporations usally getting an unfair price while the heads of state are paid off. Even if it got a fair price for its resources, basing your economy off of this hasn't worked for probably 150 years: today you need advanced manufactured goods, and services. Now the market can't correct political issues in Africa, but it would be silly to ignore the fact that large corporations have a stake in this corruption, with nearly free labor and resources. There is no toher profit to be made, and thus no investment back into the community.
The situation at home is similar. While everyone is talking about how its such a workers market, people have lots of money, etc, is only partially true, in reality the population is becoming highly polarized. So while myself with my EE degree can make pretty good money, that kid in the ghetto, even if he has computers at his/her school, has a low chance of making it this far.
Social spending in the US has been cut quite a bit in recent years, in relation to defense and law enforement, anyway. People though cutting welfare would help, but it hasn't. It just makes poor people poorer, even if they have a job. So at exactly the time when education spending needs to go up significantly (especially for those who have poor schools to begin with) it hasn't.
Now, you might be saying by now that I'm just a bleeding heart liberal, and I pretty much am. Fixing social issues isn't directly related to technology issues. I understand that. But you can't deny the higher cost of entry into today's economy, and how many people simply don't have it.
The worlds governments and institutions simply haven't figured out a way to realign themselves to give equal access and opportunity to all.