Youtube is the main one that would need to be dislodged, the other providers will likely go that route if Youtube is doing it. Given that Youtube is now owned and controlled by Google, it's a pretty good bet that H.264 is going to be yanked before long. Which is legitimate, Google has to pay a royalty to be able to reencode files in H.264 and as such would almost certainly be free of any antitrust claims that might result.
My money is on Google using its own patent portfolio to bash them back into the last century. I'd be very surprised if between offensive patents and patents covering the technology that they aren't quite well covered.
More likely it's a scheme to ensure that H.264 continues to be the codec of choice so as to make it harder for free OSes and browsers to compete with them. H.264 isn't free despite the claims that a lot of people make. It's free if you've got a small number of licenses or to stream, but as soon as your user base grows beyond the threshold you have to pay for all the licenses and streaming isn't typically very useful, they do charge for encoding and decoding the streams.
Which is one of the reasons that Google and Mozilla aren't so keen on it.
If it's being funded or run by the product owner or retailer then it should be. It's an easy way to fraudulently pass a product marketing off as an unbiased community review.
And, that explains why ebooks are barred as well? I can see that as an argument against laptops, but ebooks? They're books in a more convenient format. I can cruise the web on mine, but it's a frustrating enough proposition that I don't do it ever.
It's not a 700% markup, that's the general cost for that sort of coffee around here. Sure it's a lot more expensive than when people order black coffee elsewhere, but there's a lot more work involved. If it's not your thing you're entitled to your opinion, but it's asinine to suggest that something that takes 5 minutes tops to prepare at the beginning of the day is going to cost as much as something which requires several minutes per cup to produce.
This is somehow different than dead tree books? I get the logic, around here it's not likely to be much of a problem during most of the day, but I do understand that it could be a problem in more dense areas. But, at the end of the day, there's really very little reason to bar people from reading their Nook or Kindle when books are allowed. I can sort of see barring the iPad as it is more computer than book.
The problem is that President Bush stacked SCOTUS with jurists that weren't likely to say no to that sort of thing so that he could do as he pleased. The problem is that there aren't enough other jurists on the court that disagree to provide for the more reasoned approach. Additionally SCOTUS tends to be pretty deferential to the President in times of war anyways, Bush just fucked up royally by antagonizing them. Had he shown due respect, it's a pretty good bet that a lot more decisions would've gone his way.
I think you didn't type what you meant to type. An international call wouldn't be solely within the borders of the US. A domestic call would be and presumably not subject to border patrol taps.
The thing is that the voters reward that kind of behavior. If he wasn't doing it and something did happen, do you really think he'd get any credit for adhering to the constitution? Which is really unfortunate, at this point one really has to hand it to him, while it's not easy to avoid this, it is his problem at this point.
But by the same token, no President would be able to get away with it if there weren't a significant number of voters that are scared by their own shadows and willing to throw everybody else under the bus to get a modicum of safety.
One of the issues with the best sellers lists is that it's subject to manipulation, nobody really knows how many copies of a given book are out there at any given times. Ebooks for the portion they make up, should be a lot more accurate in that respect.
It's the way the system is set up. If more states would take the lead of IA and WA and take away the power to district from the majority party you'd start to see some change. If you switched the state primary system to a top two system you'd see that those deep red and deep blue districts moving a bit towards purple, and towards more moderate politicians.
If the Egyptians and Tunisians can effect that amount of change, I see no reason why we in the US can't effect a more modest change in terms of implementing what I mentioned in some form in each state.
Exactly, they could cut DoD spending significantly and still be providing for the common defense. There's no reason why the DoD needs an operational budget of over $400bn before figuring in for the operational costs involved with Afghanistan. It's particularly bad when you consider that the money is being spent despite the DoD not requesting it.
Probably because people who say that are full of it. With the possible exception of international trade law you're completely wrong on all counts. Nice hedging on "unreasonable liability laws" it's bad form to use a phrase like that without any hint as to the actual meaning.
The issue is that those things don't bar innovation, in fact most of those things you list are powerful tools of innovation. Imagine how much innovation would have happened if you looked at all the innovations that have been contributed by various minority groups. Sure most of that would've come about eventually, but it would've taken a longer time, sometimes diversity is invaluable when trying to innovate.
We don't have to ditch patents or copyright to fix the problem, but I do think it's more realistic to push for that than for meaningful reform. What they could do is require that patents be used and that the plaintiff demonstrate a genuine effort to minimize damages when asking for damages. Additionally, measures to bar gatekeeper patents would be important as well.
That wouldn't be a problem if corporate morons weren't so naive as to assume that the Chinese weren't doing it. If they limited outsourcing to countries with better records it wouldn't be a problem. But then the costs would make it largely inefficient to outsource.
The only change is that the first party to file for a particular patent gets it. Whereas now it's a lot more complicated than that. You'd still have prior art and the standard methods of getting a patent set aside, it's just that patents would be considered in the order that they're submitted, giving some consistency to which similar patents are approved.
I feel the need to point out that while it is great, you're somewhat exaggerating the benefit. It's not useful if you haven't gotten a basic education and if you don't have broadband, which pretty much shuts out the people that are most in need right there.
I do support what they're doing because free or affordable education is a good thing for everybody. Except perhaps for educators, but since this really doesn't hit everybody I'm not too worried going into education.
That's more a problem with the model than the practice. A good instructor is well worth attending. The problem is that there's a lot of ones which aren't qualified and or are not doing their jobs properly.
The Khan Academy has its strengths, but ultimately if you're not the type of learner that they're focusing on it's a complete waste. Which is the point, some people really do need to have an instructor in the room to learn.
All Democrats are not equal just as all Republicans are not equal. If the citizens of other states would take IA's and WA's lead and take away the ability of the winners of elections to draw the districting lines a lot of that would change. Likewise going with a top two primary system like we have in WA inevitably provides for the more moderate of the two candidates winning in districts which are essentially one party only. We've yet to have an election go to the more extreme candidate since we switched over a while back. Sure it's a short track record, but I don't think we're the only state using top two elections.
I realize that, but it doesn't change the fact that this is where the fix needs to be applied. It's a shame that the Republicans are more interested in fighting the will of the people on health care and banking reform than actually trying to make America a better place to live in.
MS does the same sort of thing here in WA, they claim that they are selling all their items in Nevada, and so they don't have to pay any taxes on those sales here in WA. Unfortunately, that's not how that works, but the state legislature has been hesitant to tell Steve Ballmer that MS has to pay up for violating our tax laws.
There's three problem, online retailers like being able to offset some of the costs of shipping with savings on tax, companies don't want to deal with the complicated system necessary to assess the correct sales tax for the numerous localities and lastly the federal government is the only part that can resolve the issue. The federal government doesn't really care because most states have an income tax and are more interested in other things.
If you believe that, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you. A sales tax in excess of 20% would kill the economy. That's not something which I say lightly. Taxing consumption by that much in what's become a consumer oriented country isn't good at all. And it's rather perverse to put up that amount of tax on something that you're trying to encourage.
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Youtube is the main one that would need to be dislodged, the other providers will likely go that route if Youtube is doing it. Given that Youtube is now owned and controlled by Google, it's a pretty good bet that H.264 is going to be yanked before long. Which is legitimate, Google has to pay a royalty to be able to reencode files in H.264 and as such would almost certainly be free of any antitrust claims that might result.
My money is on Google using its own patent portfolio to bash them back into the last century. I'd be very surprised if between offensive patents and patents covering the technology that they aren't quite well covered.
More likely it's a scheme to ensure that H.264 continues to be the codec of choice so as to make it harder for free OSes and browsers to compete with them. H.264 isn't free despite the claims that a lot of people make. It's free if you've got a small number of licenses or to stream, but as soon as your user base grows beyond the threshold you have to pay for all the licenses and streaming isn't typically very useful, they do charge for encoding and decoding the streams.
Which is one of the reasons that Google and Mozilla aren't so keen on it.
If it's being funded or run by the product owner or retailer then it should be. It's an easy way to fraudulently pass a product marketing off as an unbiased community review.
And, that explains why ebooks are barred as well? I can see that as an argument against laptops, but ebooks? They're books in a more convenient format. I can cruise the web on mine, but it's a frustrating enough proposition that I don't do it ever.
It's not a 700% markup, that's the general cost for that sort of coffee around here. Sure it's a lot more expensive than when people order black coffee elsewhere, but there's a lot more work involved. If it's not your thing you're entitled to your opinion, but it's asinine to suggest that something that takes 5 minutes tops to prepare at the beginning of the day is going to cost as much as something which requires several minutes per cup to produce.
This is somehow different than dead tree books? I get the logic, around here it's not likely to be much of a problem during most of the day, but I do understand that it could be a problem in more dense areas. But, at the end of the day, there's really very little reason to bar people from reading their Nook or Kindle when books are allowed. I can sort of see barring the iPad as it is more computer than book.
The problem is that President Bush stacked SCOTUS with jurists that weren't likely to say no to that sort of thing so that he could do as he pleased. The problem is that there aren't enough other jurists on the court that disagree to provide for the more reasoned approach. Additionally SCOTUS tends to be pretty deferential to the President in times of war anyways, Bush just fucked up royally by antagonizing them. Had he shown due respect, it's a pretty good bet that a lot more decisions would've gone his way.
I think you didn't type what you meant to type. An international call wouldn't be solely within the borders of the US. A domestic call would be and presumably not subject to border patrol taps.
The thing is that the voters reward that kind of behavior. If he wasn't doing it and something did happen, do you really think he'd get any credit for adhering to the constitution? Which is really unfortunate, at this point one really has to hand it to him, while it's not easy to avoid this, it is his problem at this point.
But by the same token, no President would be able to get away with it if there weren't a significant number of voters that are scared by their own shadows and willing to throw everybody else under the bus to get a modicum of safety.
One of the issues with the best sellers lists is that it's subject to manipulation, nobody really knows how many copies of a given book are out there at any given times. Ebooks for the portion they make up, should be a lot more accurate in that respect.
It's the way the system is set up. If more states would take the lead of IA and WA and take away the power to district from the majority party you'd start to see some change. If you switched the state primary system to a top two system you'd see that those deep red and deep blue districts moving a bit towards purple, and towards more moderate politicians.
If the Egyptians and Tunisians can effect that amount of change, I see no reason why we in the US can't effect a more modest change in terms of implementing what I mentioned in some form in each state.
Exactly, they could cut DoD spending significantly and still be providing for the common defense. There's no reason why the DoD needs an operational budget of over $400bn before figuring in for the operational costs involved with Afghanistan. It's particularly bad when you consider that the money is being spent despite the DoD not requesting it.
Probably because people who say that are full of it. With the possible exception of international trade law you're completely wrong on all counts. Nice hedging on "unreasonable liability laws" it's bad form to use a phrase like that without any hint as to the actual meaning.
The issue is that those things don't bar innovation, in fact most of those things you list are powerful tools of innovation. Imagine how much innovation would have happened if you looked at all the innovations that have been contributed by various minority groups. Sure most of that would've come about eventually, but it would've taken a longer time, sometimes diversity is invaluable when trying to innovate.
We don't have to ditch patents or copyright to fix the problem, but I do think it's more realistic to push for that than for meaningful reform. What they could do is require that patents be used and that the plaintiff demonstrate a genuine effort to minimize damages when asking for damages. Additionally, measures to bar gatekeeper patents would be important as well.
And, yes I know, easier said than done.
That wouldn't be a problem if corporate morons weren't so naive as to assume that the Chinese weren't doing it. If they limited outsourcing to countries with better records it wouldn't be a problem. But then the costs would make it largely inefficient to outsource.
The only change is that the first party to file for a particular patent gets it. Whereas now it's a lot more complicated than that. You'd still have prior art and the standard methods of getting a patent set aside, it's just that patents would be considered in the order that they're submitted, giving some consistency to which similar patents are approved.
The DoD is the sacred cow to end all sacred cows, the only way it's ever going to get budget cut is if there is nothing else left to cut.
I feel the need to point out that while it is great, you're somewhat exaggerating the benefit. It's not useful if you haven't gotten a basic education and if you don't have broadband, which pretty much shuts out the people that are most in need right there.
I do support what they're doing because free or affordable education is a good thing for everybody. Except perhaps for educators, but since this really doesn't hit everybody I'm not too worried going into education.
That's more a problem with the model than the practice. A good instructor is well worth attending. The problem is that there's a lot of ones which aren't qualified and or are not doing their jobs properly.
The Khan Academy has its strengths, but ultimately if you're not the type of learner that they're focusing on it's a complete waste. Which is the point, some people really do need to have an instructor in the room to learn.
All Democrats are not equal just as all Republicans are not equal. If the citizens of other states would take IA's and WA's lead and take away the ability of the winners of elections to draw the districting lines a lot of that would change. Likewise going with a top two primary system like we have in WA inevitably provides for the more moderate of the two candidates winning in districts which are essentially one party only. We've yet to have an election go to the more extreme candidate since we switched over a while back. Sure it's a short track record, but I don't think we're the only state using top two elections.
I realize that, but it doesn't change the fact that this is where the fix needs to be applied. It's a shame that the Republicans are more interested in fighting the will of the people on health care and banking reform than actually trying to make America a better place to live in.
MS does the same sort of thing here in WA, they claim that they are selling all their items in Nevada, and so they don't have to pay any taxes on those sales here in WA. Unfortunately, that's not how that works, but the state legislature has been hesitant to tell Steve Ballmer that MS has to pay up for violating our tax laws.
There's three problem, online retailers like being able to offset some of the costs of shipping with savings on tax, companies don't want to deal with the complicated system necessary to assess the correct sales tax for the numerous localities and lastly the federal government is the only part that can resolve the issue. The federal government doesn't really care because most states have an income tax and are more interested in other things.
If you believe that, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you. A sales tax in excess of 20% would kill the economy. That's not something which I say lightly. Taxing consumption by that much in what's become a consumer oriented country isn't good at all. And it's rather perverse to put up that amount of tax on something that you're trying to encourage.