The internet gives us all the ability to become journalists in a way. That being said, I'd rather read articles on technical issues written by an engineer who has a bit of journalistic knowledge rather than a journalist who has a bit of technical knowledge.
Would you agree with that, even though you yourself fit into the second category? Does the internet make journalism degrees obsolete, especially if the internet became the world's primary news source, as opposed to TV, radio, and newspapers?
Do you beleive that traditional media outlets are on their way out, and independant journalists on the internet will basically take over in the future? Or will corporate mega-mergers (like AOL/time warner) prevent this from occuring, even if people want it? And perhaps more importantly, will the average person ever come to accept the internet as a reliable news source, as opposed to the good looking news anchor on the television?
You're right, there is no consipiracy. Not directly, anyway. The media might cover some dissedent opinions, but in general they don't. The people who run the media are EXTREMELY smart, and know EXACTLY how people think. It's not that hard to manufacture public opinion.
Look at the WTO "riot" coverage...how fair was that? The general media interest is for the rich, if you deny this, you're ignoring the facts yourself.
The media tends to go with what the government wants as well. Not always, of course. In matters of international relations, however, they almost always go with government opinion. Iraq, Kosovo, you almost never hear any dissidents on these two situations.
One example is Indonesia and East Timor. This is a case of ignoring what is going on. The mainstream press didn't cover this until early last year. However, the massacre has been going on since 1975. The country that was holding East Timor (Portugal I think?) pulled out (government and military) in 1975, leaving the country defenseless. Indonesia invaded. The US knew about this, in fact they contacted secratary of state Henry Kissinger at the time, and told him they were going to occupy east timor. He didn't care. Last I read 25% of the population had been killed.
So why didn't we hear about this? Indonesia has a decent army, but the main reason is their natural resources. The US wants to maintain good relations with them so that we can have access to their resources. If that means turing our back on atrocities, the US will do it. With their leader Suharto, the US had someone in power who would allow US corporations access to resources and near-slave labor. So the media says nothing, anything that we don't hear about can't hurt us, I guess.
Suharto lost power, however, because of popular pressure, and the power structure there is still unsettled. So while the situation is unstable, our government doesn't care if the media reports on what is really going on, it won't hurn anything. Therefore, because their interests are the same, the media doesn't care either. Plus the situation was getting out of control, you can only ignore an event for so long before word gets out. East Timor was voting on independance and the killings/intimidation were reaching all time highs.
We've been in the old Yugoslavia for several years now, and we've always heard reports on the situation there. The US has no benefit in keeping things the way they are there, there aren't many natural resources and labor costs aren't as low. It's more a form of intimidation, they prefer to call it a "humanitarian mission", which somehow involves destroying civilian infrastructure and lives.
The government doesn't tell the media what to do, but those who control the media realize it is in their best interest to agree with them, because the government is protecting the same interests as those of the corporations.
The actual relationship is: information is a prerequisite to freedom. no information = no freedom
You forgot one thing. It should read like this:
Factual information is a prerequisite to freedom.
There is no lack of information in the US, or anywhere in the first world. Propeganda is information too, though it hardly helps the cause of freedom, indeed it works in the opposite direction. I think things would be a *bit* different in the US if the news were truly unbiased and factual.
If not more government, it has to be a highly organized (and large) entity of common people. Government is not inherently evil, if we make them do what we ask, and are truly accountable, they can work for us. Now, what I have just mentioned most certainly is not the case in the US and never has been. It requires levels of citizen participation that we don't have. As long as the media is controlled by those in power, it's pretty tough to get a large portion of the population to go against what they are spoon feeding you. Exceptions occur when they do something incredibly dumb (vietnam war) or start taking away a lot of our rights (WTO).
It's really too bad that since our government is so bad that many people here think that ANY government is bad. While getting rid of government COULD be good, it definatly WILL NOT BE as long as there are corporations. Most Libertarians here argue that corporations don't exist without a government, and they are right: they become totalitarian institutions. Not exactly any better.
Lets face it, we have to have some sort of power structure, it will always be this way. How much power it has is the question, which goes hand in hand with accountability. We simply can't allow a tiny group to make life and death decisions. Yet we still need a group of people who can act when needed to respond to any other highly organized group with power who threatens freedom. Acheiving that balance is what is so incredibly difficult in today's world.
I was at the Barber shop last night and a bunch of Ford union locals were there because the local plant was shut down due to a problem with one of the parts in the engine.
It sounded to me like they got the computers out of the last round of union negotiations (barber shop talk isn't always reliable). That would make sense to me, I doubt Ford would cough up that much money just to be Good Guys, even if it does benefit them to a degree. As a guy who is normally paranoid about anything related to corporations, I'm not worried about this at all. I think this was extracted by the union:)
When I say we need government, I say we need A government, not necessarily OUR government. I am aware of all the abuses our government commits (some of the worst in the world), don't misunderstand me. I'm against privitisation in the form of corporatization.
Your private school sounds good, because it wasn't run by a corporation. There are a number of companies out there now that are running schools as a for profit operation. I worry that they will cut corners in order to keep profits up. Most private schools are run by individuals or organizations like the catholic church which might make money but there isn't shareholder level pressure on them to do it.
Another fact is at this time there simply aren't enough private schools to go around, and if there was enough, will there guarantees that EVERY student will be able to go to one NO MATTER what?
Look, in my ideal world all schools would be run by the community, and it wouldn't be on a mind numbing schedle and the course work wouldn't be either, everyday citizens could come in and teach real life lessons, etc. Right now, this isn't possible. Therefore I take the best solution, public schools, which are bad, over corporate run school that have even less interest in students learning, your type of school not included in that category. In the long run I'd fight for my type of solution.
So say we take away the government. People always assert that corporations don't exist without government intervention. Whats to stop them from becoming totalitarian instituions when government controls stop? The government can give them enormous benefits (as they do) but they can stop them from commiting other acts as well like environmental damages, labor rights, etc.
In October 1999, an individual or group, believed to be in Europe, managed to "hack'' CSS2 and began offering, via the Internet, a software utility called DeCSS that enables users to break the CSS copy protection system and hence to make and distribute digital copies of DVD movies.
I don't think it's been "proven" that this is only to copy DVD's!! We know this isn't the only reason, therefore the use of the word "hence" really makes me uneasy. We can't even make copies for playback right now with a DVD-RAM, and you don't even need to break the encryption if you have a stamp machine. I can't beleive this was in the opinion, it sounds more like something the corporations would say.
The requirement of immediate and irreparable injury is satisfied in this case. Copyright infringement is presumed to give rise to such harm. In this case, plaintiffs do not allege that defendants have infringed their copyrights, but rather that defendants offer technology that circumvents their copyright protection system and thus facilitates infringement. For purposes of the irreparable injury inquiry, this is a distinction without a difference. If plaintiffs are correct on the merits, they face substantially the same immediate and irreparable injury from defendants' posting of DeCSS as they would if defendants were infringing directly. Moreover, just as in the case of direct copyright infringement, the extent of the harm plaintiffs will suffer as a result of defendants' alleged activities cannot readily be measured, suggesting that the injury truly would be irreparable.
So, if I read this right, just the fact that it makes circumventing it possible, this is exactly what is being done. This absurd statement makes me want to grab a bat and start breaking things. The last statement is incredible as well, equating "umeasureable activities" with "irreparable injury"? Am i missing something here? Someone tell me PLEASE....
One of his arguments for not accepting the reverse engineering argument bothers me as well:
Finally, and most important, the legislative history makes it abundantly clear that Section 1201(f) permits reverse engineering of copyrighted computer programs only and does not authorize circumvention of technological systems that control access to other copyrighted works, such as movies.21 In consequence, the reverse engineering exception does not apply.
So is he saying the copyright software/system is not a copyrighted piece of software? Is he saying the situation is different for hardware? Doesn't that seem to be a contradicion? Anyone care to expand on this?
I haven't even read the rest of the opinion, because his opinion is plainly clear. His idea of a "level playing field" is this:
Corporations have all the rights and tell you what to do, and you can't do anything about it.
I'm not a big fan of capitalism, but the fact that he doesn't support reverse engineering takes things one step worse: without the ability to compete, we've gone from capitalism to a sort of corporate-totalitarianism.
This lack of respect for people's rights is unacceptable. Furtunatly, they can't do anything about it, short of throwing me in jail. When I pay my 20 bucks for a DVD, I'll do what I want with it short of redistribution.
Lets face it, in 3-5 years we WILL be able to copy DVD's, most likely for playback in DVD players (hopefully).
There might be no recourse for Hollywood, the cat is out of the bag, as many have said. Trying to stop technology that people like with artificial controls is tough, just look at the mp3s. Copyright holders will have to find a real, technology based way to prevent this, which might be impossible in today's world. I sure hope it is.
I wasn't speaking about his proposal, just the idea of socialism vs. libertarianism.
Taxation can be extorsion (and with our governement it often is) but we DO need it, otherwise we don't have schools, roads, libraries, etc. Turning these institutions over to corporate interests is far worse than having them run by the gov't. At least the gov't has a shred of interest in our rights, corporations have none. They just want money.
Don't let the majority's political views get you down. You don't need to qualify yourself like that. My comments are always "socialist" (as people here would define it) and thats fine with me. I get flamed sometimes but not usually. My karma is pretty high. Whats wrong with socialism anyway? Isn't that like a libertarian with a heart? hehe....well, I'm opening myself to flaming with that comment.:)
The command line interface might be simplest as far as implementation and looks, however, most people cannot think at this abstract level (or at least, they never learned it, the newer generation, who has grown up with computers, might have an easier time at it). The "innovative, flashy looks" might be excessive, but at least the GUI provides you with a symbolic interface, something above the abstract level, a visual representation. The average computer illiterate guy can't memorize a bunch of - switches. He wants to see his files represented as a picture of paper, file name underneath, with a visible "directory tree", and if he wants to delete a file, he wants to be able to "drag" the file to the "trash/recycle bin".
This begins to become a moot point however (as others have pointed out here) with all the advances in gnome/KDE. They're almost ready for prime time. Nice look for the average user, without the commercialized "bells and whistles" feel.
You're absolutely on the right track. They can't have it both ways. The soviet union collapsed under similar pressure. The soviet union fell far behind technologically starting roughly in the 60's. The "information revolution" has been going since about this time, which includes print media, television, etc. Free flow of information is necessary to keep up in today's economy, and the USSR's paranoia controls simply prevented this from happening. I once read that an average worker had to obtain 3 signatures just to make one photocopy.
They tried to apply some capialistic features to their economy in the early 80's but it wasn't enough, you know the rest. Of course the whole situation is much more complex, for a good analysis try reading "End of Millenium" by Manuel Castells, most online booksellers have it. His style is very "academic" but I thought it was very interesting since I'm interested in the interplay between government, society, and technology.
So China has survived the first 30 years or so of the information revolution while allowing a capitalist development model (I really don't know how extensive) but they still lack a lot economically, much of their population is in poverty. They also rely on a lot of "technology transfer" (stealing from the US mostly. much of what you hear on this is US media/gov't propeganda, but it does happen.) The Soviet Union did a lot of this as well, especially in the computer industry, with a lot of reverse engineering. Unfortunatly, after a while they just fell too far behind and couldn't recreate western technology. So China might be in trouble.
However, what is the threat really? That Chinese will find out "the truth" by looking at American websites? I think a form of that already happened at tiennaman square 11 years ago. No matter how bad the situtation is for the majority of the population, if the government can indoctrinate the population well enough, they most likely won't rebel. Even our government practices this, with a few layers of plausable deniability. Infromation control is the key here, and they ARE playing with fire if they really want to use the internet for eceonomic gain. Capitalism and thus materialism is an powerful apathy producing drug (just look at it in our society) and the chinese seem to be applying it as well. The poor are probably the best hope for some type of revolution.
The chinese government's ruthless nature can prevent change as well, they have shown that they are very much willing to kill their citizens who disagree with them, on a level far beyond what the US practices.
It's unfortunate, if they developed a government similar to ours (which is corrupt as well but it's still better than communism) they could easily be the economic powerhouse of this century.
why don't we all ask for unlimited bandwidth, world peace, and the end to all diseases.
These things you mention we cannot control or create because of the laws of physics, world peace might be an exception someday. The RIAA is an organization exerting artificial control over a technology. This technology is egalitarian, it levels the playing field (removes their distribution channels), and that is unacceptable to them.
I don't know about you, but I like any technology that puts me on the same level as anyone else.
On some levels, we actually need associations like the RIAA to keep the really bad people (not us poor intellectuals (hehe)) from harming the industry.
1. Why can't I pay the artists a few bucks directly instead of paying 18 to a corporation who markets shitty music and spoon feeds it to the masses? Why can't we develop this model? All the terchnology is there, we just need to implement it.
2. The RIAA is a corporate representative. Corporations are fascist. You have no rights within a corporation. They'd control us externally as well if they could, the only thing that stops them is our government (which vaguely represents us). At least our government has some resemblance of democracy. I'd rather let them do the "protecting".
We can get rid of anything we want in society including the RIAA. All we have to do is say so. The only problem is getting everyone organized to do it, and prevent everyone from getting indoctrinated by the media. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
1) Unaccountable institutions; 2) Unaccountable corporations, becoming more of a issue today; 3) The only value of #2 is money, no human or environmental interests are considered unless we make them consider them.
Power structures will always try to slide back the basic rights for the common man, at best they'll let them stagnate. Libertarian ideas of a free market won't solve anything, as long as #3 exists we will have all sorts of unnessary problems. I don't have any obvious solutions to #3, but we can do a lot better than capitalism, or even improve on the current implementation. Without some sort of regulation it's also difficult to fight corporations on your own, I don't exactly have time to study river water to see if nearby companies are polluting, nor do I have the power to fight a company who is paying me too little, which is why we need unions and collective action.
The solution is simple as well, we protest. This is the way it has always been done. This IS a social change issue, a fight between the "man" and the average joe who wants his freedoms, and his ability to express himself to be enhanced by new technology. You cannot rely upon the political system to create new laws, you have to get out there and demand what you want for yourself and your fellow man. They will listen. I rail on our government and corporations a lot for being oppressive, but they WILL do anything you say if you take away your business (corporations) or march a million people up to capitol hill on a regular basis (government).
Protesting the system and unionizing is how we got the labor rights we have today. The US has a very violent labor history, unfortunatly you don't learn this in High school. People formed unions so the owners couldn't ignore them. This is how we got minimum wages, 40 hour work weeks, minimum standards for working conditions, and so on. Schools and the media would have you beleive that all our material wealth and technological gains over the past century or two have led to the "prosperity" we have today. This is a total joke. There is a slashdot poster whose sig file has this quote: "Machines didn't free men, it only allowed men with machines to enslave other men." (this is off the top of my head, I can't remember the exact wording). I couldn't have said it better.
We simply need to keep our institutions accountable. The letter writing campaign due to the DVD situtation is a step in the right direction. Hopefully in the future we'll have some very organized protests in whatever form, now that so many people are becoming disapointed with the status quo.
The idea of taking responsibility for one's words has not taken hold.
Real life isn't much different, and I think most people would agree. The anonymous factor drops it to another level, but being insulted online isn't *always* as bad as real life insults, arguments, etc. As we are all humans, flames, trolls, and irrational comments are going to be part of any "online community". Thats just the way it is. We simply need to learn how to deal with them, and not let them affect the good discussions that are going on.
It makes no sense to construct and maintain commercial websites that exclude most of humanity
I'd agree, but that is exactly the way things are. You mentioned commercial sites here, which I don't consider online communities. Most of the earth's population is excluded from internet use, most of the continent of Africa doesn't even have enough money for food, much less education, transporation, electricity, or computers. Why would web sites be targeted at people who don't even have computers? They don't have money to buy your products.
Don't get me wrong, the internet is great, but in the present it helps exasperates the have's and the have not's as far as education, which polarizes opportunity, and polarizes wealth concentration as well. There are plenty of other factors as well, the internet is a minor one.
In the off-line world, mutual benefit is the core of community. Real people provide help, entertainment, commerce, religion, companionship - the concrete benefits of which keep the community going and sustain its members. Online, especially on technical sites, the primary benefit is information - news, software, hardware, cultural trends and information. Since there is no physical proximity (although gatherings of members often do meet in different cities), it's possible for members to benefit from this information without reciprocating - or even communicating.
Again, I don't think real life is all that different. Simply extracting information from an online site without reciprocating doesn't harm the community. There are plenty of websites with people who help each other, and even if the communication is mostly one-way, at least the information can help those that need it. The internet is still new, people are still learning how to configure web sites for online communities. It takes time.
the John Rocker Syndrome
This is a cultural problem. It shows itself as it does any other place when working with a site such as slashdot. I'd have to say things have improved greatly in this country over the past 100 years. If "online communities" take the lead in this (tolerance/understanding) that would be great, but I don't expect it.
Do the people running websites have any responsibility for creating environments which are truly free, and not dominated by the most hostile members? Should we be concerned that entire social groups - women, newcomers - don't feel welcome here?
Most people on this site would call me a socialist (in favor of a welfare state) but I don't want to call for politically correct measures online, because that means regulation. I don't want the internet to be regulated unless people have a serious ability to impede my personal freedom, and I don't see the internet as much of a threat compared to "real life". The internet is too new for anyone to take control now.
You're right...it can be like a drug. I mean exactly like a drug. When you go off on your own to college, the "real you" begins to emerge. Your parents have little influence on you at that point, they can't push you where they want you to go anymore. So people that simply aren't motivated for college work tend to wander off into other activities...a regular job, drugs, video games, whatever.
So for the type of person that reads slashdot, it tends to be internet related, video games, porn, irc, whatever. That happened to one of my friends and it was happening to me. I moved into an apartment in fall '96 on campus that had a new t1. My friends and I were playing quake all day. My grades were suffering. After a year of this, I simply cleaned up my act. Studied harder. Started reading books. Got out of the apartment more. Ate better. Got exercise.
My friend didn't change and he still hasn't, currently he's addicted to ultima online and has no hope of gradauting from college anytime soon, and no hope at all if he doesn't change.
My point is this: the fact that high bandwidth connects are available isn't a problem for society. This is the way people are whether it's genetic or cultural. The drug issue is similar. It's not a supply/demand problem. If you want people to stop, you have to give them a reason to. I found one, I simply didn't want to be a loser with no job, no interests, and no life.
They could work, in theory. Of course, theory is never directly applicable. They could only approach being workable if the following conditions are met:
1) The list of sites censored must be public. Currently I don't know of any censorware that does this.
2) There needs to be someone (in the public) checking all these sites to make sure they are indeed porn and not, say, information for women about their bodies or some anti-establishment political site, and said person(s) must have the power to remove sites that are not porn-related. This leads directly to 3:
3) The definition of porn needs to be be described VERY specifically, something that hasn't been done to date as far as I know, and it will always be somewhat subjective. It wasn't dealt with well at all in the CDA.
Those conditions being listed, it should be obvious that I don't support filters in their proposed form. Condition two requires some sort of beauracracy whether it's public run or not, which is enough to turn off a lot of people to the idea altogether.
Condition three is also a reason a lot of people don't support any type of censoring. Getting to define what is and isn't porn is a big chunck of power. Usually its a small group that gets to define it as well.
It all boils down to accountability. If the government gets to control the list, or even some small software company, and the censor list is not public, the means for asserting indiviual interests is too high. Without accountability, corruption results. Always.
The other question is how dangerous is porn in the first place. I like comparisons of porn to depictions of violence. Parents often say "I don't want my kids to see porn because it will hurt their minds, and it degrades and objectifies women." Well, violence degrades and objectifies life, which is even worse. Yet ask parents what they think about it, they'll usually say "well, I can't do much about it, I can't stop my kids from seeing it...", yet, this is exactly what they are attempting with porn. So if anything, I see this as a manipulation of public opinion, by the media, or other institutions which shall remain nameless. I don't know how else to explain this paradox.
Re:Media monopoly time ...
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Ventura won because Minnesotans were sick of the same old thing. On the republican side we had a politcal actor who thinks he's todays version of Kennedy, on the democratic side we had the son of a famous politician who's worried that he isn't enough of a man.
Jesse got the young to get out and vote. He's a celebrity with a good personality. No one really gave him a chance, and he didn't win by much. His victory wasn't due to media manipulation (how many of you not from Minnesota even knew he was running?) or because Minnesotans are dumb.
Life really hasn't changed much since he became govenor. He's also Libertarian (my interpretation based on what he's done) which I think most/. readers would like.
The libertarian ethos of the Net resists government control or oversight, but that philosophy will be sorely tested by mergers like this one, which could make many nostalgic for the old Microsoft. The corporate move to acquire information, online and off, is a civic and an Internet menace. There hardly exists a free and independent journalistic culture off-line anymore. Time-Warner, Disney, GE, News America, Microsoft and Westinghouse have devoured too many of the country's most powerful media organizations.
I have to agree with Katz here. What do Libertarians think about this? The typical argument I see is that oligopolies and monopolies can't exist with government control (or making them legal, etc), and competition should increase without market controls, but I don't think that is true. If we really did have zero government control/regulation, what would stop a giant slug fest with the result being a few corporations basically owning and/or running the world?
I don't like a lot of what our government does but I think we need one to prevent exactly this type of scenario far before it reaches that point (think of sci-fi movies that look 25-50 to years into the future like Freejack).
I think our government has been moving twords the Libetarian ideal for a number of years now anyway, with deregulation. But look at the telecom industry, competition is decreasing, not increasing, and the industry is consolidating. Even in markets that have been opened up to competitors (such as mine) for the baby bells, not much has changed, DSL access is still spotty, etc. How do Libertarians respond to this?
How many years will it be before we have decent political candidates who know anything about technology? 10? 15? Obviously McCain has little knowledge of the issue. He can say anything he wants like "I advocate full disclosure", but that won't get me to approve of him. The republican line on this is well known, censorship with the excuse being that it is to protect children. He's not going to deviate from that, and don't trick yourself into thinking he might. I doubt that Bush will deviate much from the party line either. The Democrats haven't shown to be much better either. Clinton hasn't exactly tried to stop any of the freedom-choking bills related to the internet we've seen over the past several years.
I've always felt that when grade schools try to introduce students to the news paper in grade four or so they should also teach them the power of critical thinking. This would of course go against the normal school systems agenda, so I doubt it'll ever happen.
I totally agree. I think in Canadian high schools, you are required to take some sort of class on "reading media" (any Canadians care to comment?). We could really use something like this is the US. That really goes into the category of learning to think for yourself, which our school system most definatly does not support. Those in power certainly don't want a bunch of young people becoming politically concious.
It's too bad that most people think we truly have a free press. That in itself really helps those who run the media to be able to control public opinion.
I indirectly place most of the blame for this on our government. Long rant, semi-offtopic.
The supply/demand argument works here, I think. Cable broadcasters aren't going to want to support (supply) digital TV (I assume they are referring to HDTV) until a lot of people have HDTV's (demand). As I remember it was a similar situation when CD-Roms came out. Software was pretty limited until computers started shipping standard with a CDROM drive.
On the cosumer (demand) side: The obvious problem is that HDTV's are very expensive, around $3000 minimum. I've seen studies that have shown that very few consumers are willing to shell out more than 200 dollars more than today's analog/NTSC TV's for HDTV quality. Numbers can be distorted of course, but knowing the average American consumer, I'd have to agree.
So where did the government screw up? There are three areas I can think of. One is the hardware in HDTV's, two is the current situation in the communications industry as influenced by the tele-communications act, and third are the timetables from converting all broadcasts in the country to digital.
HDTV Hardware:
The HDTV spec supports 18 different formats (different resolutions, progressive or interlaced, etc) and thus all HDTV's have to be able to run these 18 formats. More formats = higher hardware costs. Now, on the big TV's this cost can get absorbed easily, but what % of the population has big screens? All the people who have small TV's will have to pay just as much for that hardware. That's big money and helps to prevent the prices on small sets to drop below a certain point. In analog sets today, almost all of the cost is in the picture tube. Now, there is a large chuck in just the hardware.
How did this happen? The leading electronics companies couldn't agree on what formats to include, and the FCC simply caved in to corporate big brother, and included them all. Almost as pathetic as the giveaway of the frequency spectrum for digital broadcasting. Gotta love those lobbyists.
Communications industry:
Deregulation has hurt a lot more than it has helped. Service and contend providers are increasingly concetrated in a few companies, to the point where we nearly have an oligopoly. Many areas still have legalized monoplies (the exact opposite of what should be happening in a market controlled partially by the government). So when you have a legalized monopoly, there is no incentive to upgrade the infrastructure when you can make plenty of money with what you have now. I've posted this same argument before in the form of "why is high speed internet access so expensive or unavailable." You can apply the same argument as to why most cable companies aren't exactly moving fast on digital TV.
Timetables to 100% digital broadcasting:
The year for 100% conversion (plus or minus a few years, don't have my reference handy) is 2006. Six years is not enough time. Billions upon billions of dollars of equipment and infastructure have to be replaced. New sets have to be bought. Some people cimply can't afford them. The FCC is trying to push this too quickly. Why they are doing this I don't know. Prices are falling but even in 2006 I think they'll still be more expensive than today's analog equivalents.
In summary the FCC has simply caved into industry pressure and the results aren't good for the consumer. It's really unfortunate.
I saw a few, they weren't too bad. The quality isn't that great of course since you have to take a camcorder into a theatre and record it. The real threat is several years down the road when we have star wars on DVD (if Lucas gets his shit in order) and cheap DVD-RAM drives/media. But even then sales won't drop by much.
Does this change much? Not really. As far as I can tell, he's upset about public release of the patent after 18 months. It reads like xenophobic propeganda. How will this give an edge to Japan? Don't other US companies get to see it as well?
Why didn't the patent system save US corporations from Japan in the 70's and 80s? As I recall TV's, VCR's and other similar technology were developed mainly in the US, but Japan got a hold of the technology and created a better consumer product, and blew away US corporations in the consumer electronics market. There is a lot more to the issue than patents. One piece of legislation, destroying our entire economy? He gets the instat label of crackpot with that line.
From Joe Average's point of view nothing is really happening here. This isn't going to stop patent abuses. Patents still benefit individuals, for good or bad. Usually bad as far as the current system is set up. They're not changing the application or approval process (as far as I can tell...I couldn't get much of any real information out of his site, other than a lot of ranting). If there is anything of true substance to this bill, he hasn't told me what it is.
Slashdot Mirror
The internet gives us all the ability to become journalists in a way. That being said, I'd rather read articles on technical issues written by an engineer who has a bit of journalistic knowledge rather than a journalist who has a bit of technical knowledge.
Would you agree with that, even though you yourself fit into the second category? Does the internet make journalism degrees obsolete, especially if the internet became the world's primary news source, as opposed to TV, radio, and newspapers?
Do you beleive that traditional media outlets are on their way out, and independant journalists on the internet will basically take over in the future? Or will corporate mega-mergers (like AOL/time warner) prevent this from occuring, even if people want it? And perhaps more importantly, will the average person ever come to accept the internet as a reliable news source, as opposed to the good looking news anchor on the television?
You're right, there is no consipiracy. Not directly, anyway. The media might cover some dissedent opinions, but in general they don't. The people who run the media are EXTREMELY smart, and know EXACTLY how people think. It's not that hard to manufacture public opinion.
Look at the WTO "riot" coverage...how fair was that? The general media interest is for the rich, if you deny this, you're ignoring the facts yourself.
The media tends to go with what the government wants as well. Not always, of course. In matters of international relations, however, they almost always go with government opinion. Iraq, Kosovo, you almost never hear any dissidents on these two situations.
One example is Indonesia and East Timor. This is a case of ignoring what is going on. The mainstream press didn't cover this until early last year. However, the massacre has been going on since 1975. The country that was holding East Timor (Portugal I think?) pulled out (government and military) in 1975, leaving the country defenseless. Indonesia invaded. The US knew about this, in fact they contacted secratary of state Henry Kissinger at the time, and told him they were going to occupy east timor. He didn't care. Last I read 25% of the population had been killed.
So why didn't we hear about this? Indonesia has a decent army, but the main reason is their natural resources. The US wants to maintain good relations with them so that we can have access to their resources. If that means turing our back on atrocities, the US will do it. With their leader Suharto, the US had someone in power who would allow US corporations access to resources and near-slave labor. So the media says nothing, anything that we don't hear about can't hurt us, I guess.
Suharto lost power, however, because of popular pressure, and the power structure there is still unsettled. So while the situation is unstable, our government doesn't care if the media reports on what is really going on, it won't hurn anything. Therefore, because their interests are the same, the media doesn't care either. Plus the situation was getting out of control, you can only ignore an event for so long before word gets out. East Timor was voting on independance and the killings/intimidation were reaching all time highs.
We've been in the old Yugoslavia for several years now, and we've always heard reports on the situation there. The US has no benefit in keeping things the way they are there, there aren't many natural resources and labor costs aren't as low. It's more a form of intimidation, they prefer to call it a "humanitarian mission", which somehow involves destroying civilian infrastructure and lives.
The government doesn't tell the media what to do, but those who control the media realize it is in their best interest to agree with them, because the government is protecting the same interests as those of the corporations.
The actual relationship is: information is a prerequisite to freedom. no information = no freedom
You forgot one thing. It should read like this:
Factual information is a prerequisite to freedom.
There is no lack of information in the US, or anywhere in the first world. Propeganda is information too, though it hardly helps the cause of freedom, indeed it works in the opposite direction. I think things would be a *bit* different in the US if the news were truly unbiased and factual.
because I can't beat the government alone. Try it by yourself if you'd like.
If not more government, it has to be a highly organized (and large) entity of common people. Government is not inherently evil, if we make them do what we ask, and are truly accountable, they can work for us. Now, what I have just mentioned most certainly is not the case in the US and never has been. It requires levels of citizen participation that we don't have. As long as the media is controlled by those in power, it's pretty tough to get a large portion of the population to go against what they are spoon feeding you. Exceptions occur when they do something incredibly dumb (vietnam war) or start taking away a lot of our rights (WTO).
It's really too bad that since our government is so bad that many people here think that ANY government is bad. While getting rid of government COULD be good, it definatly WILL NOT BE as long as there are corporations. Most Libertarians here argue that corporations don't exist without a government, and they are right: they become totalitarian institutions. Not exactly any better.
Lets face it, we have to have some sort of power structure, it will always be this way. How much power it has is the question, which goes hand in hand with accountability. We simply can't allow a tiny group to make life and death decisions. Yet we still need a group of people who can act when needed to respond to any other highly organized group with power who threatens freedom. Acheiving that balance is what is so incredibly difficult in today's world.
I was at the Barber shop last night and a bunch of Ford union locals were there because the local plant was shut down due to a problem with one of the parts in the engine.
:)
It sounded to me like they got the computers out of the last round of union negotiations (barber shop talk isn't always reliable). That would make sense to me, I doubt Ford would cough up that much money just to be Good Guys, even if it does benefit them to a degree. As a guy who is normally paranoid about anything related to corporations, I'm not worried about this at all. I think this was extracted by the union
When I say we need government, I say we need A government, not necessarily OUR government. I am aware of all the abuses our government commits (some of the worst in the world), don't misunderstand me. I'm against privitisation in the form of corporatization.
Your private school sounds good, because it wasn't run by a corporation. There are a number of companies out there now that are running schools as a for profit operation. I worry that they will cut corners in order to keep profits up. Most private schools are run by individuals or organizations like the catholic church which might make money but there isn't shareholder level pressure on them to do it.
Another fact is at this time there simply aren't enough private schools to go around, and if there was enough, will there guarantees that EVERY student will be able to go to one NO MATTER what?
Look, in my ideal world all schools would be run by the community, and it wouldn't be on a mind numbing schedle and the course work wouldn't be either, everyday citizens could come in and teach real life lessons, etc. Right now, this isn't possible. Therefore I take the best solution, public schools, which are bad, over corporate run school that have even less interest in students learning, your type of school not included in that category. In the long run I'd fight for my type of solution.
So say we take away the government. People always assert that corporations don't exist without government intervention. Whats to stop them from becoming totalitarian instituions when government controls stop? The government can give them enormous benefits (as they do) but they can stop them from commiting other acts as well like environmental damages, labor rights, etc.
But lets take a look at what the ruling says:
In October 1999, an individual or group, believed to be in Europe, managed to "hack'' CSS2 and began offering, via the Internet, a software utility called DeCSS that enables users to break the CSS copy protection system and hence to make and distribute digital copies of DVD movies.
I don't think it's been "proven" that this is only to copy DVD's!! We know this isn't the only reason, therefore the use of the word "hence" really makes me uneasy. We can't even make copies for playback right now with a DVD-RAM, and you don't even need to break the encryption if you have a stamp machine. I can't beleive this was in the opinion, it sounds more like something the corporations would say.
The requirement of immediate and irreparable injury is satisfied in this case. Copyright infringement is presumed to give rise to such harm. In this case, plaintiffs do not allege that defendants have infringed their copyrights, but rather that defendants offer technology that circumvents their copyright protection system and thus facilitates infringement. For purposes of the irreparable injury inquiry, this is a distinction
without a difference. If plaintiffs are correct on the merits, they face substantially the same immediate and irreparable injury from defendants' posting of DeCSS as they would if defendants were infringing directly. Moreover, just as in the case of direct copyright infringement, the extent of the harm plaintiffs will suffer as a result of defendants' alleged activities cannot readily be measured, suggesting that the injury
truly would be irreparable.
So, if I read this right, just the fact that it makes circumventing it possible, this is exactly what is being done. This absurd statement makes me want to grab a bat and start breaking things. The last statement is incredible as well, equating "umeasureable activities" with "irreparable injury"? Am i missing something here? Someone tell me PLEASE....
One of his arguments for not accepting the reverse engineering argument bothers me as well:
Finally, and most important, the legislative history makes it abundantly clear that Section 1201(f) permits reverse engineering of copyrighted computer programs only and does not authorize circumvention of technological systems that control access to other copyrighted works, such as movies.21 In consequence, the reverse engineering exception does not apply.
So is he saying the copyright software/system is not a copyrighted piece of software? Is he saying the situation is different for hardware? Doesn't that seem to be a contradicion? Anyone care to expand on this?
I haven't even read the rest of the opinion, because his opinion is plainly clear. His idea of a "level playing field" is this:
Corporations have all the rights and tell you what to do, and you can't do anything about it.
I'm not a big fan of capitalism, but the fact that he doesn't support reverse engineering takes things one step worse: without the ability to compete, we've gone from capitalism to a sort of corporate-totalitarianism.
This lack of respect for people's rights is unacceptable. Furtunatly, they can't do anything about it, short of throwing me in jail. When I pay my 20 bucks for a DVD, I'll do what I want with it short of redistribution.
Lets face it, in 3-5 years we WILL be able to copy DVD's, most likely for playback in DVD players (hopefully).
There might be no recourse for Hollywood, the cat is out of the bag, as many have said. Trying to stop technology that people like with artificial controls is tough, just look at the mp3s. Copyright holders will have to find a real, technology based way to prevent this, which might be impossible in today's world. I sure hope it is.
I wasn't speaking about his proposal, just the idea of socialism vs. libertarianism.
Taxation can be extorsion (and with our governement it often is) but we DO need it, otherwise we don't have schools, roads, libraries, etc. Turning these institutions over to corporate interests is far worse than having them run by the gov't. At least the gov't has a shred of interest in our rights, corporations have none. They just want money.
I know this sounds socialist...
:)
Don't let the majority's political views get you down. You don't need to qualify yourself like that. My comments are always "socialist" (as people here would define it) and thats fine with me. I get flamed sometimes but not usually. My karma is pretty high. Whats wrong with socialism anyway? Isn't that like a libertarian with a heart? hehe....well, I'm opening myself to flaming with that comment.
The command line interface might be simplest as far as implementation and looks, however, most people cannot think at this abstract level (or at least, they never learned it, the newer generation, who has grown up with computers, might have an easier time at it). The "innovative, flashy looks" might be excessive, but at least the GUI provides you with a symbolic interface, something above the abstract level, a visual representation. The average computer illiterate guy can't memorize a bunch of - switches. He wants to see his files represented as a picture of paper, file name underneath, with a visible "directory tree", and if he wants to delete a file, he wants to be able to "drag" the file to the "trash/recycle bin".
This begins to become a moot point however (as others have pointed out here) with all the advances in gnome/KDE. They're almost ready for prime time. Nice look for the average user, without the commercialized "bells and whistles" feel.
You're absolutely on the right track. They can't have it both ways. The soviet union collapsed under similar pressure. The soviet union fell far behind technologically starting roughly in the 60's. The "information revolution" has been going since about this time, which includes print media, television, etc. Free flow of information is necessary to keep up in today's economy, and the USSR's paranoia controls simply prevented this from happening. I once read that an average worker had to obtain 3 signatures just to make one photocopy.
They tried to apply some capialistic features to their economy in the early 80's but it wasn't enough, you know the rest. Of course the whole situation is much more complex, for a good analysis try reading "End of Millenium" by Manuel Castells, most online booksellers have it. His style is very "academic" but I thought it was very interesting since I'm interested in the interplay between government, society, and technology.
So China has survived the first 30 years or so of the information revolution while allowing a capitalist development model (I really don't know how extensive) but they still lack a lot economically, much of their population is in poverty. They also rely on a lot of "technology transfer" (stealing from the US mostly. much of what you hear on this is US media/gov't propeganda, but it does happen.) The Soviet Union did a lot of this as well, especially in the computer industry, with a lot of reverse engineering. Unfortunatly, after a while they just fell too far behind and couldn't recreate western technology. So China might be in trouble.
However, what is the threat really? That Chinese will find out "the truth" by looking at American websites? I think a form of that already happened at tiennaman square 11 years ago. No matter how bad the situtation is for the majority of the population, if the government can indoctrinate the population well enough, they most likely won't rebel. Even our government practices this, with a few layers of plausable deniability. Infromation control is the key here, and they ARE playing with fire if they really want to use the internet for eceonomic gain. Capitalism and thus materialism is an powerful apathy producing drug (just look at it in our society) and the chinese seem to be applying it as well. The poor are probably the best hope for some type of revolution.
The chinese government's ruthless nature can prevent change as well, they have shown that they are very much willing to kill their citizens who disagree with them, on a level far beyond what the US practices.
It's unfortunate, if they developed a government similar to ours (which is corrupt as well but it's still better than communism) they could easily be the economic powerhouse of this century.
Wow, short sighted and bitter.
why don't we all ask for unlimited bandwidth, world peace, and the end to all diseases.
These things you mention we cannot control or create because of the laws of physics, world peace might be an exception someday. The RIAA is an organization exerting artificial control over a technology. This technology is egalitarian, it levels the playing field (removes their distribution channels), and that is unacceptable to them.
I don't know about you, but I like any technology that puts me on the same level as anyone else.
On some levels, we actually need associations like the RIAA to keep the really bad people (not us poor intellectuals (hehe)) from harming the industry.
1. Why can't I pay the artists a few bucks directly instead of paying 18 to a corporation who markets shitty music and spoon feeds it to the masses? Why can't we develop this model? All the terchnology is there, we just need to implement it.
2. The RIAA is a corporate representative. Corporations are fascist. You have no rights within a corporation. They'd control us externally as well if they could, the only thing that stops them is our government (which vaguely represents us). At least our government has some resemblance of democracy. I'd rather let them do the "protecting".
We can get rid of anything we want in society including the RIAA. All we have to do is say so. The only problem is getting everyone organized to do it, and prevent everyone from getting indoctrinated by the media. You know exactly what I'm talking about.
1) Unaccountable institutions;
2) Unaccountable corporations, becoming more of a issue today;
3) The only value of #2 is money, no human or environmental interests are considered unless we make them consider them.
Power structures will always try to slide back the basic rights for the common man, at best they'll let them stagnate. Libertarian ideas of a free market won't solve anything, as long as #3 exists we will have all sorts of unnessary problems. I don't have any obvious solutions to #3, but we can do a lot better than capitalism, or even improve on the current implementation. Without some sort of regulation it's also difficult to fight corporations on your own, I don't exactly have time to study river water to see if nearby companies are polluting, nor do I have the power to fight a company who is paying me too little, which is why we need unions and collective action.
The solution is simple as well, we protest. This is the way it has always been done. This IS a social change issue, a fight between the "man" and the average joe who wants his freedoms, and his ability to express himself to be enhanced by new technology. You cannot rely upon the political system to create new laws, you have to get out there and demand what you want for yourself and your fellow man. They will listen. I rail on our government and corporations a lot for being oppressive, but they WILL do anything you say if you take away your business (corporations) or march a million people up to capitol hill on a regular basis (government).
Protesting the system and unionizing is how we got the labor rights we have today. The US has a very violent labor history, unfortunatly you don't learn this in High school. People formed unions so the owners couldn't ignore them. This is how we got minimum wages, 40 hour work weeks, minimum standards for working conditions, and so on. Schools and the media would have you beleive that all our material wealth and technological gains over the past century or two have led to the "prosperity" we have today. This is a total joke. There is a slashdot poster whose sig file has this quote: "Machines didn't free men, it only allowed men with machines to enslave other men." (this is off the top of my head, I can't remember the exact wording). I couldn't have said it better.
We simply need to keep our institutions accountable. The letter writing campaign due to the DVD situtation is a step in the right direction. Hopefully in the future we'll have some very organized protests in whatever form, now that so many people are becoming disapointed with the status quo.
The idea of taking responsibility for one's words has not taken hold.
Real life isn't much different, and I think most people would agree. The anonymous factor drops it to another level, but being insulted online isn't *always* as bad as real life insults, arguments, etc. As we are all humans, flames, trolls, and irrational comments are going to be part of any "online community". Thats just the way it is. We simply need to learn how to deal with them, and not let them affect the good discussions that are going on.
It makes no sense to construct and maintain commercial websites that exclude most of humanity
I'd agree, but that is exactly the way things are. You mentioned commercial sites here, which I don't consider online communities. Most of the earth's population is excluded from internet use, most of the continent of Africa doesn't even have enough money for food, much less education, transporation, electricity, or computers. Why would web sites be targeted at people who don't even have computers? They don't have money to buy your products.
Don't get me wrong, the internet is great, but in the present it helps exasperates the have's and the have not's as far as education, which polarizes opportunity, and polarizes wealth concentration as well. There are plenty of other factors as well, the internet is a minor one.
In the off-line world, mutual benefit is the core of community. Real people provide help, entertainment, commerce, religion, companionship - the concrete benefits of which keep the community going and sustain its members. Online, especially on technical sites, the primary benefit is information - news, software, hardware, cultural trends and information. Since there is no physical proximity (although gatherings of members often do meet in different cities), it's possible for members to benefit from this information without reciprocating - or even communicating.
Again, I don't think real life is all that different. Simply extracting information from an online site without reciprocating doesn't harm the community. There are plenty of websites with people who help each other, and even if the communication is mostly one-way, at least the information can help those that need it. The internet is still new, people are still learning how to configure web sites for online communities. It takes time.
the John Rocker Syndrome
This is a cultural problem. It shows itself as it does any other place when working with a site such as slashdot. I'd have to say things have improved greatly in this country over the past 100 years. If "online communities" take the lead in this (tolerance/understanding) that would be great, but I don't expect it.
Do the people running websites have any responsibility for creating environments which are truly free, and not dominated by the most hostile members? Should we be concerned that entire social groups - women, newcomers - don't feel welcome here?
Most people on this site would call me a socialist (in favor of a welfare state) but I don't want to call for politically correct measures online, because that means regulation. I don't want the internet to be regulated unless people have a serious ability to impede my personal freedom, and I don't see the internet as much of a threat compared to "real life". The internet is too new for anyone to take control now.
You're right...it can be like a drug. I mean exactly like a drug. When you go off on your own to college, the "real you" begins to emerge. Your parents have little influence on you at that point, they can't push you where they want you to go anymore. So people that simply aren't motivated for college work tend to wander off into other activities...a regular job, drugs, video games, whatever.
So for the type of person that reads slashdot, it tends to be internet related, video games, porn, irc, whatever. That happened to one of my friends and it was happening to me. I moved into an apartment in fall '96 on campus that had a new t1. My friends and I were playing quake all day. My grades were suffering. After a year of this, I simply cleaned up my act. Studied harder. Started reading books. Got out of the apartment more. Ate better. Got exercise.
My friend didn't change and he still hasn't, currently he's addicted to ultima online and has no hope of gradauting from college anytime soon, and no hope at all if he doesn't change.
My point is this: the fact that high bandwidth connects are available isn't a problem for society. This is the way people are whether it's genetic or cultural. The drug issue is similar. It's not a supply/demand problem. If you want people to stop, you have to give them a reason to. I found one, I simply didn't want to be a loser with no job, no interests, and no life.
They could work, in theory. Of course, theory is never directly applicable. They could only approach being workable if the following conditions are met:
1) The list of sites censored must be public. Currently I don't know of any censorware that does this.
2) There needs to be someone (in the public) checking all these sites to make sure they are indeed porn and not, say, information for women about their bodies or some anti-establishment political site, and said person(s) must have the power to remove sites that are not porn-related. This leads directly to 3:
3) The definition of porn needs to be be described VERY specifically, something that hasn't been done to date as far as I know, and it will always be somewhat subjective. It wasn't dealt with well at all in the CDA.
Those conditions being listed, it should be obvious that I don't support filters in their proposed form. Condition two requires some sort of beauracracy whether it's public run or not, which is enough to turn off a lot of people to the idea altogether.
Condition three is also a reason a lot of people don't support any type of censoring. Getting to define what is and isn't porn is a big chunck of power. Usually its a small group that gets to define it as well.
It all boils down to accountability. If the government gets to control the list, or even some small software company, and the censor list is not public, the means for asserting indiviual interests is too high. Without accountability, corruption results. Always.
The other question is how dangerous is porn in the first place. I like comparisons of porn to depictions of violence. Parents often say "I don't want my kids to see porn because it will hurt their minds, and it degrades and objectifies women." Well, violence degrades and objectifies life, which is even worse. Yet ask parents what they think about it, they'll usually say "well, I can't do much about it, I can't stop my kids from seeing it...", yet, this is exactly what they are attempting with porn. So if anything, I see this as a manipulation of public opinion, by the media, or other institutions which shall remain nameless. I don't know how else to explain this paradox.
Ventura won because Minnesotans were sick of the same old thing. On the republican side we had a politcal actor who thinks he's todays version of Kennedy, on the democratic side we had the son of a famous politician who's worried that he isn't enough of a man.
/. readers would like.
Jesse got the young to get out and vote. He's a celebrity with a good personality. No one really gave him a chance, and he didn't win by much. His victory wasn't due to media manipulation (how many of you not from Minnesota even knew he was running?) or because Minnesotans are dumb.
Life really hasn't changed much since he became govenor. He's also Libertarian (my interpretation based on what he's done) which I think most
The libertarian ethos of the Net resists government control or oversight, but that philosophy will be sorely tested by mergers like this one, which could make many nostalgic for the old Microsoft. The corporate move to acquire information, online and off, is a civic and an Internet menace. There hardly exists a free and independent journalistic culture off-line anymore. Time-Warner, Disney, GE, News America, Microsoft and Westinghouse have devoured too many of the country's most powerful media organizations.
I have to agree with Katz here. What do Libertarians think about this? The typical argument I see is that oligopolies and monopolies can't exist with government control (or making them legal, etc), and competition should increase without market controls, but I don't think that is true. If we really did have zero government control/regulation, what would stop a giant slug fest with the result being a few corporations basically owning and/or running the world?
I don't like a lot of what our government does but I think we need one to prevent exactly this type of scenario far before it reaches that point (think of sci-fi movies that look 25-50 to years into the future like Freejack).
I think our government has been moving twords the Libetarian ideal for a number of years now anyway, with deregulation. But look at the telecom industry, competition is decreasing, not increasing, and the industry is consolidating. Even in markets that have been opened up to competitors (such as mine) for the baby bells, not much has changed, DSL access is still spotty, etc. How do Libertarians respond to this?
How many years will it be before we have decent political candidates who know anything about technology? 10? 15? Obviously McCain has little knowledge of the issue. He can say anything he wants like "I advocate full disclosure", but that won't get me to approve of him. The republican line on this is well known, censorship with the excuse being that it is to protect children. He's not going to deviate from that, and don't trick yourself into thinking he might. I doubt that Bush will deviate much from the party line either. The Democrats haven't shown to be much better either. Clinton hasn't exactly tried to stop any of the freedom-choking bills related to the internet we've seen over the past several years.
I've always felt that when grade schools try to introduce students to the news paper in grade four or so they should also teach them the power of critical thinking. This would of course go against the normal school systems agenda, so I doubt it'll ever happen.
I totally agree. I think in Canadian high schools, you are required to take some sort of class on "reading media" (any Canadians care to comment?). We could really use something like this is the US. That really goes into the category of learning to think for yourself, which our school system most definatly does not support. Those in power certainly don't want a bunch of young people becoming politically concious.
It's too bad that most people think we truly have a free press. That in itself really helps those who run the media to be able to control public opinion.
I indirectly place most of the blame for this on our government. Long rant, semi-offtopic.
The supply/demand argument works here, I think. Cable broadcasters aren't going to want to support (supply) digital TV (I assume they are referring to HDTV) until a lot of people have HDTV's (demand). As I remember it was a similar situation when CD-Roms came out. Software was pretty limited until computers started shipping standard with a CDROM drive.
On the cosumer (demand) side: The obvious problem is that HDTV's are very expensive, around $3000 minimum. I've seen studies that have shown that very few consumers are willing to shell out more than 200 dollars more than today's analog/NTSC TV's for HDTV quality. Numbers can be distorted of course, but knowing the average American consumer, I'd have to agree.
So where did the government screw up? There are three areas I can think of. One is the hardware in HDTV's, two is the current situation in the communications industry as influenced by the tele-communications act, and third are the timetables from converting all broadcasts in the country to digital.
HDTV Hardware:
The HDTV spec supports 18 different formats (different resolutions, progressive or interlaced, etc) and thus all HDTV's have to be able to run these 18 formats. More formats = higher hardware costs. Now, on the big TV's this cost can get absorbed easily, but what % of the population has big screens? All the people who have small TV's will have to pay just as much for that hardware. That's big money and helps to prevent the prices on small sets to drop below a certain point. In analog sets today, almost all of the cost is in the picture tube. Now, there is a large chuck in just the hardware.
How did this happen? The leading electronics companies couldn't agree on what formats to include, and the FCC simply caved in to corporate big brother, and included them all. Almost as pathetic as the giveaway of the frequency spectrum for digital broadcasting. Gotta love those lobbyists.
Communications industry:
Deregulation has hurt a lot more than it has helped. Service and contend providers are increasingly concetrated in a few companies, to the point where we nearly have an oligopoly. Many areas still have legalized monoplies (the exact opposite of what should be happening in a market controlled partially by the government). So when you have a legalized monopoly, there is no incentive to upgrade the infrastructure when you can make plenty of money with what you have now. I've posted this same argument before in the form of "why is high speed internet access so expensive or unavailable." You can apply the same argument as to why most cable companies aren't exactly moving fast on digital TV.
Timetables to 100% digital broadcasting:
The year for 100% conversion (plus or minus a few years, don't have my reference handy) is 2006. Six years is not enough time. Billions upon billions of dollars of equipment and infastructure have to be replaced. New sets have to be bought. Some people cimply can't afford them. The FCC is trying to push this too quickly. Why they are doing this I don't know. Prices are falling but even in 2006 I think they'll still be more expensive than today's analog equivalents.
In summary the FCC has simply caved into industry pressure and the results aren't good for the consumer. It's really unfortunate.
I saw a few, they weren't too bad. The quality isn't that great of course since you have to take a camcorder into a theatre and record it. The real threat is several years down the road when we have star wars on DVD (if Lucas gets his shit in order) and cheap DVD-RAM drives/media. But even then sales won't drop by much.
Does this change much? Not really. As far as I can tell, he's upset about public release of the patent after 18 months. It reads like xenophobic propeganda. How will this give an edge to Japan? Don't other US companies get to see it as well?
Why didn't the patent system save US corporations from Japan in the 70's and 80s? As I recall TV's, VCR's and other similar technology were developed mainly in the US, but Japan got a hold of the technology and created a better consumer product, and blew away US corporations in the consumer electronics market. There is a lot more to the issue than patents. One piece of legislation, destroying our entire economy? He gets the instat label of crackpot with that line.
From Joe Average's point of view nothing is really happening here. This isn't going to stop patent abuses. Patents still benefit individuals, for good or bad. Usually bad as far as the current system is set up. They're not changing the application or approval process (as far as I can tell...I couldn't get much of any real information out of his site, other than a lot of ranting). If there is anything of true substance to this bill, he hasn't told me what it is.
Horrible web page design as well.