Why are $COMPANY and $PRODUCT both in the global namespace?
Because it would be a major PITA if "Cell architecture" meant a different thing within each company.
And because the "Cell architecture" has a ton of patents on it, which means that it is indeed a global value, as far as most IP law is concerned; ditto for the trademarked IBM.
I see a worldwide market for 5 or six of these "supercompute on a chip" systems, tops.
I know that's an "it's funny, laugh" comment, but note that the Cell architecture is used on the PS3[1], and Toshiba has stated that every HDTV they produce will use Cell architecture.
[1] Of course, IMO, the market for the PS3 should be for about 5 or 6 units... but that's just because of how I feel about Sony.
True, it was a collaborative effort from STI. However, IBM is the chief patent-holder, and stands the most to gain from promoting developent for Cell architecture.
IBM is not the only company releasing multi-core processors.
It's not about multi-core processors, it's about the Cell architecture, for parts of which IBM holds many patents and makes a lot of money on licensing.
WHAT are you downloading or looking up that is so bad that the FBI will look at your case and not the person they are mainly looking for?
Civil disobedience? Political activity such as information relating to organized demonstrations that run counter to the interests of the ruling party?
Keep in mind that the FBI has consistently overstepped its bounds in monitoring civil political activity -- just recently we saw that they've been keeping illegal files oin political activists.
The "problem" the article refers to is that most programs are not targetted toward massive SIMD architectures. Which means that Cell is just a pretty piece of silicon to most customers. Articles like this are trying to change that by convincing customers that they'd be better served by targetting Cell rather than a more general purpose architecture.
In other words, a spokesperson from $COMPANY is trying to convince the market that they'll soon need to use $PRODUCT if they want best results, conveniently which is sold by the $COMPANY?
It doesn't seem fair for that evidence to be admissible in court, and I think they should require a new warrant to search for that evidence in a separate investigation.
Furthermore, they cannot use evidence gathered in the inadmissible investigation as justification for the warranted search of your property, unless that evidence was in plain sight from a public area.
I think the quasi-legal (IANAL) argument for justifying the admissibility of incidentally garnered evidence of a crime not covered by the original warrant in a full-pipe search is that the evidence is the technological equivalent of being in plain sight.
In that case, the investigators actually lose because I would have a chance to destroy the evidence before the second warrant is produced.
Not really in a case like this, since the data they are analyzing is not held by you, it's held by your ISP.
I totally agree with you re: the OP and their claim that it's fair if you're incidentally caught doing something wrong during the course of another investigation. It's not just about doing something "wrong," it's about doing something "criminal". What I fear is some kind of political activity being defined as a criminal act (you know, like protesting outside of a "free speech zone" during election season).
While I agree that collecting "side evidence" from a "full pipe" exam is wrong, and probably inadmissible in court, it is NOT "Unconstitutional".
How is that? All Federal law in the US is derived from the Constitution by interpretation; if something is inadmissible in court, it is because it runs contrary to the modern interpretation of the Constitution.
If it's inadmissible in court, it is Unconstitutional by definition.
There's this thing called the Bill of Rights, which enumerates specifically some of the rights that the Federal government cannot violate. Included in these is the fourth amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits such activity, as has been previously ruled on by the US Supreme Court (who happens to have the responsibility to do so, as defined by, again, the Constitution).
Sorry for the sarcasm, but unwarranted search is indeed Unconstitutional.
Frantically clicking the zap buttons for 20-30 minutes straight will actually wear out your hand, so while it may be possible to "beat" the game in a theoretical five hours...
I think you underestimate the hand endurance of the average slashdotter.
few individuals will be able to actually do it that quickly without stopping to rest the hands.
"Hands"? As in plural? It appears I have much to learn, master, and I must say that I'm very intrigued.
I'd bet that many, many people who will be gullible enough to buy a new TV due to the analog shutoff will buy a TV with HD capability; and of those, a large percentage will want to make sure they have media playback capabilities to match their screen resolution.
Military tests apparently show that even the tiniest gap in the clothing will give you basically the full effect. Anyway, what are you going to do about the eyes, nose, mouth . . .
The source you identified states a few square inches... not the 'tiniest gap'.
Several companies make cotton fabric with a flexible metal mesh covering the entire exterior surface -- ever see modern sabre fencing? It would be trivial to make entire uniforms of this material, and a fencing-equivalent mask could be used for the eyes, nose, mouth etc.
The biggest concern would be heat exhaustion, IMO.
You seem to think the problems must obviously be technical
Not at all. My point was that if there was an easy, fool-proof technical solution, it would be in place. But even when the technical aspects are rock-solid, the system isn't necessarily secure -- which is why we don't have a uniform system.
Why would you think that security relies on one or a few people "pulling an inside job" to screw everyone?
I don't. It was just the first easy example I though of, of what can go wrong when you implement an industry-wide security method. There are plenty of others. The fact still remains, though, that someone who's cracked one bank's system will have a huge leg up on cracking other banks' systems. Why expose yourself to the extra risk when you can use a proprietary system without that risk?
1. Probes sent by extraterrestials cannot travel faster than our probes. 2. The ET search is not targeted. 3. The ETs are not much closer to Earth and found us by luck, early in their search.
At any rate, while the math is interesting, it just shows that we're not likely, as in snowball's-chance-in-hell likely, to have been found already. From a logical point of view, though, one cannot say that we haven't been found yet.
As far as we know for certain, the Vogon construction fleet could be circling our system as we type these responses... though the chance of that being the truth is small enough that we could very well see an Improbability-driven ship come in for a landing at JFK or LAX.
Please cite an example of "the bills come due". US Treasury bonds aren't bills that "come due and we have to pay for everything". They are just like any other bond.
Just like any bond, they come due and need to be paid off out of current funds at the date of maturation. How did you think bonds work, that they don't need to be paid off? Or do you imagine that we'll just issue more bonds to cover the t-bills that come due? As long as inflation and GDP growth exceed the interest rate paid on the bonds, that works... but that's a gamble, and can't support the deficit growth rate we're seeing now.
It's not going to happen and "other nations" know it.
Other nations assume it won't happen because they assume action will be taken to prevent it. The actions of other nations is in now way indicative of the actions the US needs to take -- they are dependent on the actions the US needs to take. There is no way that the US can continue it's borrow-and-spend policies without making serious inroads against future liabilities, including financed operating costs (the deficit), Medicare, and Social Security. The tax burden necessary to pay for those 40-50 years from now would severely affect people's ability to spend, and therfore the economy.
Design it in such a way that if one component fails, the whole thing isn't compromised. I'm not a crypto/security expert, but from what I know all these requirements aren't even very technically challenging.
Ah, yes, the old "but it seems so simple to my admittedly uneducated self." Really, isn't it common sense that if it were that easy it would have been done already?
They need to get together and find someone they all trust to lead development of a technology to secure transactions.
Do you think it's a good idea to put everyone's eggs all in one basket, so that if an inside job compromises the single system, everyone's screwed?
No studio in their right minds would dare to have this kind of thing become publicly known (or worse, proven so that all the people they have defrauded out of royalties be able to sue them over it).
You hit the nail on the head there -- it'd be a dangerous precedent.
The other issues would be the forthcoming fraud and income tax evasion charges. Those dodgy practices would probably land a lot of movie execs in a federal golf resort.
Yes. It's also inevitable. People have differing levels of productivity increase, so they'll get differing benefits.
Yet, in a perfect system, the benefit would be proportional to productivity -- which isn't close to reality.
Is it acceptable that the sun rises and sets?
Inane.
And yet we have hugely increased productivity in the US "over the past couple of decades". And there's little sign of widespread social unrest. Hmmmm.
Did you bother to think before you responded? We're discussing the impact of greater inequal income distribution, of things being worse than they are now, like they are in Brazil. The only reason we're not seeing widespread social unrest now is that we're funding our bread and circus by borrowing. It helps that the US has had so far unlimited credit with other nations. What happens when the bills come due and we have to pay for everything? When there are millions of desitute elderly, or taxes double in order to continue paying benefits?
When you're looking at a moment of analysis, economics IS zero-sum... there was no time variable in what we were discussing, which was a momentary system. The system that we were discussing is a zero-sum system; I used it to model (at a very, very basic level) the effect of what he stated, which is patently false.
Until you have read Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, Fredrick Hayek, etc., you cannot expect to take serious part in an adult discussion of economics.
I've done so, but it doesn't mean I agree with all they say, particularly when it comes to income distribution. The optimal economic solution does not always correlate with the optimal political and societal solutions.
Besides, even the strictest Austrian-school theorists will admit that there model implies that some kind of adjustment (typically governmental) is needed to regulate monopolies and oligopolies.
But obviously you don't feel that people should have to work at it. If you want some examples of how well that works, look at the former Soviet Union, or Cuba, or Brazil. Keep your eyes peeled on Venezuela in the next couple of years, and you will see just how well using government to "raise the bar" works to help people out of poverty.
First, you're putting words onto my page. Never did I say that people shouldn't need to work at it. But assuming the precept that all should have equitable opportunity (which you may or may not agree with, but it's one of the foundations of US politicoeconomic theory), then severely inequitable income distribution won't allow for equitable (not necessarily equal) opportunity.
If you want to look at examples, perhaps you should look to Canada, Sweden, or other successful somewhat-socialist states? We could both cherry-pick examples of failed states on either side. But really, picking the Soviet Union as an example? And Cuba? Complete red herrings, we're discussing income distribution in capitalist states, not communist states.
Furthermore, I wasn't referring to government raising the bar, I was pointing out the individual's view (like Kohath) that as long as everyone benefits a little, it's OK if a select few benefit enormously. From a greatest good standpoint, that makes little sense.
I'm not going to go through your post item-by-item, since it's obvious we're not going to see eye-to-eye, and that we're discussing two slightly different things from different perspectives. The gist is this:
If productivity increases (and thus net wealth, but this was immaterial to my earlier points) is it acceptable when one portion of the population reaps the benefits while another does not?
Inflation is like 3 percent. Why are you pretending it's a huge factor in the economy? In theory, inflation can be a big problem. But it isn't in the US economy (with all our huge income disparities) so stop trying to tell people it is.
Umm, not to be crass, but bullshit. Inflation by itself is no biggie, since we're becoming less of a cash society. The problem is when inflation is higher than wage growth, and adjusted income declines. 3% is nothing. 3% over 25 years is huge... you can do compounding interest calculations, right? This is not trivial, for the large majority of people in the US, their inflation-adjusted income has decreased over the past couple decades -- and the rate of decrease is increasing.
Regardless of are-you-better-off-now-than-twenty-years-ago rationales like yours, the net result of this (as can be seen in almost all societies with inequitable distribution) is social unrest and decreased productivity, which is good for no one. People compare themselves to contemporaries, not to how their parents were -- and this leads to the social unrest being discussed.
You're trying to trick people into thinking they're poorer when they're better off.
No. You're ascribing motives to me that don't exist... nice try. It's not about intergenerational comparisons, it's about intragenerational comparisons. Why should a select few reap the benefits of the increased productivity of the many? It's not just about people being poor, it's about them being poorer than they could be. Why set the bar so low as to say that as long as people are a tiny bit more comfortable, that should be enough? Why not raise the standard of living higher across the board? It's possible. It can be done while preserving the motiviation to perform better than your competitors.
At any rate, I'm sure I'm wasting my time with a free-market idealogue who is stuck in the Austrian model.
While in principle I agree with the gist of what you're saying, in practice the tax effect is much lower.
After taxes, he could give approximately $6000 to 100 people
If the giveaway was done properly (via 501(c)3 scholarship funds), he wouldn't pay taxes on it.
who in turn would only receive $4000 each (after taxes again).
And college tuition is tax-deductible, so that money would not be taxed.
What it boils down to, though, is equality of opportunity, which super-expensive colleges reduce. The average education available to those with money is better than the education available to those without. By "better," I mean more likely to result in financial rewards, since we're talking about incomes here.
I'd take it one step further. Using a credit card responsibly is beneficial. You earn interest on your cash, but get short-term interest-free loans by paying via credit card and then paying it off in full every month. I've gotten my credit card transactions up to about 70% of my expenditures... the money I make on the float + cash-back programs yields around 4% a year net. Not a bad little free raise, huh?
The hard part is the discipline to let your cash accumulate in your investments rather than treat it as extra spending money the first time you defer your payments to your credit card.
No. I don't pay my bills with a "proportion of purchasing power". I use cash. More cash buys more in our system, regardless of what proportion it is of the total amount of "purchasing power".
Do you understand the concept of monetary supply and inflation? More cash does NOT buy more in our system; more cash merely dilutes the value of cash. The only way to get more purchasing power (which is a real term, and doesn't need quotes) is to have proportionately more cash in relation to everyone else.
In your example, everyone gets a raise. The company must be doing fairly well. Good for everyone.
No, not good for everyone. It is a zero-sum game. What happens if everyone gets a raise in the system? Goods get more expensive, and that raise is wiped out. If your raise was smaller than the average, it means that you, net, lost income.
Stop trying to trick people. Economics is simple and logical unless you're trying to warp the arguments to support a non-free economic system.
I'm not trying to trick people. I'm explaining the truth. I'm sorry that your narrow understanding of the concepts involved prevents you from truly understanding how the system works. I suggest a couple courses in economics to help you out... and until then, stop trying to mislead people by spouting uninformed nonsense in support of a potentially catastrophic inequitable system.
This has nothing to do with supporting "free" or "non-free" systems... it has to do with explaining how things work. Any judgments about what system is fair is left to each person. The simple truth is that you wrote a factually untrue statement that, while appealing to uninformed common sense, fails to account for macroeconomic truths.
This is why I used simple algebra to demonstrate my point... it's easy to understand.
A final note -- the example I used is not a company, it's a system. There's a difference.
If a CEO gets an extra $100 and his employee gets an extra $1, is the employee worse off? No, he's better off by $1.
That's an extremely oversimplified view.
How many workers are there in your hypothetical system? How many CEOs? A little math for you:
Say that there are 100 workers and one CEO in the system. Assume all income is spent on goods[1]. Let A represent the total value of the goods in the system. If each worker is paid $5, and the CEO is paid $100, then each worker can purchase.01A ($5 / (100*$5 + 1*$100)). Now give each employee a raise to $6, and the CEO a raise to $200. Now each worker can afford .0075A ($6 / (100*$6 + 1*$200)).
See what happened? The increased inequity resulted in each workig having a smaller proportion of purchasing power. This effect is magnified when the ratio of CEOs to workers decreases... see why the income disparity can be a problem?
Algebra. It's useful.
[1] In reality, this isn't true. A lot of the income on the high end is invested, which results in an even greater income disparity, since those at the bottom of the chain don't have residual cash to earn for them.
I think your accusations of being them selecting products exclusively based on who advertises in their magazine arent well founded.
Well, nowhere did I say that would be the exclusive selection criteria. But it most definitely is A selection criteria. It would absolutely shock me if it weren't, as every publication I've worked for (closing in on double-digits) has done the same. Major print publications.
Slashdot Mirror
And because the "Cell architecture" has a ton of patents on it, which means that it is indeed a global value, as far as most IP law is concerned; ditto for the trademarked IBM.
[1] Of course, IMO, the market for the PS3 should be for about 5 or 6 units... but that's just because of how I feel about Sony.
True, it was a collaborative effort from STI. However, IBM is the chief patent-holder, and stands the most to gain from promoting developent for Cell architecture.
Yes, the logical step of RTFA.
Sounds like someone should heed their own advice.
Either that, or go post on Fark where that comment belongs.
Civil disobedience? Political activity such as information relating to organized demonstrations that run counter to the interests of the ruling party?
Keep in mind that the FBI has consistently overstepped its bounds in monitoring civil political activity -- just recently we saw that they've been keeping illegal files oin political activists.
In other words, a spokesperson from $COMPANY is trying to convince the market that they'll soon need to use $PRODUCT if they want best results, conveniently which is sold by the $COMPANY?
Imagine that.
Sorry, cynical today.
Furthermore, they cannot use evidence gathered in the inadmissible investigation as justification for the warranted search of your property, unless that evidence was in plain sight from a public area.
I think the quasi-legal (IANAL) argument for justifying the admissibility of incidentally garnered evidence of a crime not covered by the original warrant in a full-pipe search is that the evidence is the technological equivalent of being in plain sight.
Not really in a case like this, since the data they are analyzing is not held by you, it's held by your ISP.
I totally agree with you re: the OP and their claim that it's fair if you're incidentally caught doing something wrong during the course of another investigation. It's not just about doing something "wrong," it's about doing something "criminal". What I fear is some kind of political activity being defined as a criminal act (you know, like protesting outside of a "free speech zone" during election season).
If it's inadmissible in court, it is Unconstitutional by definition.
There's this thing called the Bill of Rights, which enumerates specifically some of the rights that the Federal government cannot violate. Included in these is the fourth amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits such activity, as has been previously ruled on by the US Supreme Court (who happens to have the responsibility to do so, as defined by, again, the Constitution).
Sorry for the sarcasm, but unwarranted search is indeed Unconstitutional.
I think you underestimate the hand endurance of the average slashdotter.
"Hands"? As in plural? It appears I have much to learn, master, and I must say that I'm very intrigued.
Because the analog shutoff is only a year away?
I'd bet that many, many people who will be gullible enough to buy a new TV due to the analog shutoff will buy a TV with HD capability; and of those, a large percentage will want to make sure they have media playback capabilities to match their screen resolution.
The source you identified states a few square inches... not the 'tiniest gap'.
Several companies make cotton fabric with a flexible metal mesh covering the entire exterior surface -- ever see modern sabre fencing? It would be trivial to make entire uniforms of this material, and a fencing-equivalent mask could be used for the eyes, nose, mouth etc.
The biggest concern would be heat exhaustion, IMO.
I don't. It was just the first easy example I though of, of what can go wrong when you implement an industry-wide security method. There are plenty of others. The fact still remains, though, that someone who's cracked one bank's system will have a huge leg up on cracking other banks' systems. Why expose yourself to the extra risk when you can use a proprietary system without that risk?
1. Probes sent by extraterrestials cannot travel faster than our probes.
2. The ET search is not targeted.
3. The ETs are not much closer to Earth and found us by luck, early in their search.
At any rate, while the math is interesting, it just shows that we're not likely, as in snowball's-chance-in-hell likely, to have been found already. From a logical point of view, though, one cannot say that we haven't been found yet.
As far as we know for certain, the Vogon construction fleet could be circling our system as we type these responses... though the chance of that being the truth is small enough that we could very well see an Improbability-driven ship come in for a landing at JFK or LAX.
Just like any bond, they come due and need to be paid off out of current funds at the date of maturation. How did you think bonds work, that they don't need to be paid off? Or do you imagine that we'll just issue more bonds to cover the t-bills that come due? As long as inflation and GDP growth exceed the interest rate paid on the bonds, that works... but that's a gamble, and can't support the deficit growth rate we're seeing now.
Other nations assume it won't happen because they assume action will be taken to prevent it. The actions of other nations is in now way indicative of the actions the US needs to take -- they are dependent on the actions the US needs to take. There is no way that the US can continue it's borrow-and-spend policies without making serious inroads against future liabilities, including financed operating costs (the deficit), Medicare, and Social Security. The tax burden necessary to pay for those 40-50 years from now would severely affect people's ability to spend, and therfore the economy.
Ah, yes, the old "but it seems so simple to my admittedly uneducated self." Really, isn't it common sense that if it were that easy it would have been done already?
Do you think it's a good idea to put everyone's eggs all in one basket, so that if an inside job compromises the single system, everyone's screwed?
The other issues would be the forthcoming fraud and income tax evasion charges. Those dodgy practices would probably land a lot of movie execs in a federal golf resort.
Yet, in a perfect system, the benefit would be proportional to productivity -- which isn't close to reality.
Inane.
I've done so, but it doesn't mean I agree with all they say, particularly when it comes to income distribution. The optimal economic solution does not always correlate with the optimal political and societal solutions.
Besides, even the strictest Austrian-school theorists will admit that there model implies that some kind of adjustment (typically governmental) is needed to regulate monopolies and oligopolies.
First, you're putting words onto my page. Never did I say that people shouldn't need to work at it. But assuming the precept that all should have equitable opportunity (which you may or may not agree with, but it's one of the foundations of US politicoeconomic theory), then severely inequitable income distribution won't allow for equitable (not necessarily equal) opportunity.
If you want to look at examples, perhaps you should look to Canada, Sweden, or other successful somewhat-socialist states? We could both cherry-pick examples of failed states on either side. But really, picking the Soviet Union as an example? And Cuba? Complete red herrings, we're discussing income distribution in capitalist states, not communist states.
Furthermore, I wasn't referring to government raising the bar, I was pointing out the individual's view (like Kohath) that as long as everyone benefits a little, it's OK if a select few benefit enormously. From a greatest good standpoint, that makes little sense.
If productivity increases (and thus net wealth, but this was immaterial to my earlier points) is it acceptable when one portion of the population reaps the benefits while another does not?
Umm, not to be crass, but bullshit. Inflation by itself is no biggie, since we're becoming less of a cash society. The problem is when inflation is higher than wage growth, and adjusted income declines. 3% is nothing. 3% over 25 years is huge... you can do compounding interest calculations, right? This is not trivial, for the large majority of people in the US, their inflation-adjusted income has decreased over the past couple decades -- and the rate of decrease is increasing.
Regardless of are-you-better-off-now-than-twenty-years-ago rationales like yours, the net result of this (as can be seen in almost all societies with inequitable distribution) is social unrest and decreased productivity, which is good for no one. People compare themselves to contemporaries, not to how their parents were -- and this leads to the social unrest being discussed.
No. You're ascribing motives to me that don't exist... nice try. It's not about intergenerational comparisons, it's about intragenerational comparisons. Why should a select few reap the benefits of the increased productivity of the many? It's not just about people being poor, it's about them being poorer than they could be. Why set the bar so low as to say that as long as people are a tiny bit more comfortable, that should be enough? Why not raise the standard of living higher across the board? It's possible. It can be done while preserving the motiviation to perform better than your competitors.
At any rate, I'm sure I'm wasting my time with a free-market idealogue who is stuck in the Austrian model.
If the giveaway was done properly (via 501(c)3 scholarship funds), he wouldn't pay taxes on it.
And college tuition is tax-deductible, so that money would not be taxed.
What it boils down to, though, is equality of opportunity, which super-expensive colleges reduce. The average education available to those with money is better than the education available to those without. By "better," I mean more likely to result in financial rewards, since we're talking about incomes here.
The hard part is the discipline to let your cash accumulate in your investments rather than treat it as extra spending money the first time you defer your payments to your credit card.
No, not good for everyone. It is a zero-sum game. What happens if everyone gets a raise in the system? Goods get more expensive, and that raise is wiped out. If your raise was smaller than the average, it means that you, net, lost income.
I'm not trying to trick people. I'm explaining the truth. I'm sorry that your narrow understanding of the concepts involved prevents you from truly understanding how the system works. I suggest a couple courses in economics to help you out... and until then, stop trying to mislead people by spouting uninformed nonsense in support of a potentially catastrophic inequitable system.
This has nothing to do with supporting "free" or "non-free" systems... it has to do with explaining how things work. Any judgments about what system is fair is left to each person. The simple truth is that you wrote a factually untrue statement that, while appealing to uninformed common sense, fails to account for macroeconomic truths.
This is why I used simple algebra to demonstrate my point... it's easy to understand.
A final note -- the example I used is not a company, it's a system. There's a difference.
How many workers are there in your hypothetical system? How many CEOs? A little math for you:
Say that there are 100 workers and one CEO in the system. Assume all income is spent on goods[1]. Let A represent the total value of the goods in the system. If each worker is paid $5, and the CEO is paid $100, then each worker can purchase
($5 / (100*$5 + 1*$100)). Now give each employee a raise to $6, and the CEO a raise to $200. Now each worker can afford
.0075A ($6 / (100*$6 + 1*$200)).
See what happened? The increased inequity resulted in each workig having a smaller proportion of purchasing power. This effect is magnified when the ratio of CEOs to workers decreases... see why the income disparity can be a problem?
Algebra. It's useful.
[1] In reality, this isn't true. A lot of the income on the high end is invested, which results in an even greater income disparity, since those at the bottom of the chain don't have residual cash to earn for them.