Door locks don't keep burglars or determined attackers out, either. So, what purpose do they serve?

They make it hard to *casually* invade a room or building. They make it so there's at least a small hassle involved.

I think it's more or less true that carrots probably work better than sticks -- it's probably better to combat piracy with affordable prices, convenient availability, and a feelgood sense of legitimacy. But I can kindof understand why some content purveyors would also want to do something to stop casual piracy. And as long as DRM is optional -- as long as every codec that allows DRM also allows un-DRM'd content -- I don't see a problem with letting people see how offering restricted content works out for them.

Wish I had the mod points for it.

Ogg Theora is technically highly inferior to H.264. All it has going for it is religion and ideology... Why should Microsoft support your particular belief system over the beliefs of anyone else?

Because it's not just an arbitrary or personal belief system. It's one of the important qualities that made the Web a wildly successful medium. When you've got protocols and formats that anyone can freely implement -- when authoring and rendering tools are unencumbered by rentiers who would extract tools -- then anybody who wants to has nearly no barriers to creating value-adding services around the "edges" of this agreement.

Imagine for a minute how well things would have gone for the WWW if tolls were required for anybody who implemented a browser, a server, an authoring tool. It might have been somewhat successful anyway, but it likely would have been a lot more like AOL or eWorld instead of what it is today.

After all, THAT would at least have explained better why Neo was able to sense the damn squidbots and blow them up.

Seems pretty clear to me why Neo could sense & blow up the squidbots: they're part of the machine network, connected to some master system ("the source") that activated when he visited the architect.

The entire public education structure is broken

Not really. And I say this as a former would-be teacher who bailed because of weaknesses in the system, and of course, as a grown-up student who can now see many flaws in my the education I received.

On the other hand, of course, I actually got a pretty great public education, at the end of which I knew basic Calculus, electronic circuits, Pascal & C, how to use UNIX, basic writing and argument skills, an appreciation for poetry and literature, a little bit about the Spanish language, and college credit for a lot of this (never had to take freshman comp, general biology, american history, and I also had two semesters of Computer Science down). I can come up with examples of holes in my education too, but honestly, with a bit of better counseling from somebody or a better internal compass, I could have *easily* gotten a lot more out of the whole thing -- there was simply a lot stuff on the table that I just left there. All from a state (Utah) that tends to lag in per pupil spending.

The school I did my student teaching had at least that much to offer. Problems, yes, not necessarily the apogee, but pretty good.

Yes, of course there are districts and schools and individuals out there in deeper trouble than I'm describing... enough that reform is a worthy problem. But this idea that it's all broken top to bottom seems fishy to me, and I think it's driven more by a subtle antipathy than actual analysis.

A HS teacher should have at least an MS in the field they teach and not in education.

Credentialism isn't going to save us from any of our current problems. In fact, we probably need less of it: slightly lower barriers to getting into the profession, better evaluation of those already involved.

But even if we were talking about more subtle solutions, a subject-and-practice focused undegrad (augmented with some light pedagogical theory) is going to be as helpful as tacking on an extra two years of study, particularly for the better candidates.

On the teaching side HS should be more like college and less like grade school

Oh, certainly. Probably most importantly in having more time for teachers to refine and practice their subject matter and less time on per-se prep and teaching. Of course, that's going to cost us, particularly if we're also increasing the professionalization of teachers (and compensating accordingly).

it IS AN OPEN STANDARD. It's just not free as in beer.

It's not free as in libre either if you can't freely re-implement.

  Imagine a world where HTML itself was controlled by a patent association that charged fees to anyone who implemented authoring or rendering software.

You're essentially arguing for that.

Wrong. H.264 was created to create a STANDARD.

Great. If they want a standard, they're welcome to it. And if the members of the patent pool want the pool to protect their intellectual property and mine the value, then that's their privilege.

If they want a *web* standard, though, that's different.

You do not have a open web -- in the free/libre sense -- when its clients can't be freely implemented and re-implemented. Imagine a world where HTML itself was controlled by a patent association that charged fees to anyone who implemented authoring or rendering software and you start to get the idea. Yet some people are apparently OK with playing exactly that game with a key piece of the HTML5 spec.

WebM is a step away from that.

I wish people would just stop drinking the Google Cool-Aid and think about WHY they are making this move. It's not about the money. it's not about openess. It's about trying to make the standard that they bought the standard for video on the web. Next thing, they will limit the licensing to their competitors so that they can't do everything they are doing with video on the web.

Google has granted a perpetual, royalty-free patent license to VP8/WebM.

Who's drinking kool-aid again?

The Journal of Cosmology has published a special issue...which touches all the bases. In a chapter titled Sex on Mars...

Are we sure we got the right "Cosmo" here?

Your "taxophobic minority" is another person's "reasonable concern."

You may not be aware of this, but there are substantial members of the caucus that likes to present themselves as "reasonably concerned" about taxes that are actually signing pledges from people like Grover Norquist and similar ilk stating that they will flat-out oppose any new tax or tax increase. No consideration of policy, no assessment of fiscal impact. No tweaking the code by increases here, decreases there. Pure monotonic ratchet down.

Sound "reasonably concerned"? Or does "taxophobic" maybe start to sound more accurate?

designed to divide and conquer. For example, "shall we raise taxes on beer?" The majority of people, not being beer drinkers, thinks this is just swell. "Shall we increase the cigarette tax?" Different majority, same result.

Alcohol and tobacco as examples of singling out powerless minorities? Dude, you can't be serious. Taxes on those things pre-date income tax by decades, probably are among the earliest taxes in the USA, and the rationale behind them has far more to do with "sin tax" anti-incentives and public costs associated with their trade, use, and abuse than it does with rarity of use amongst population -- particularly alcohol, since depending on who you ask, 40-50% of the population drinks beer, and 60+% drinks something (yes, I suppose that technically makes beer drinkers a slight minority, but a minority that's as big as a plurality in many presidential elections is not the kind that isn't going to have any clout when the issue comes up for review).

I'm even a full supporter of the idea that anyone who votes in favor of a tax has to be subject to that tax even if they don't participate in the actions being taxed.

Sure! And while we're at it, let's extend the operative principle here to *all* areas of the law! Proposing or voting for a new statutory punishment? Well, get ready to pay the fine and do the time yourself, buddy!

The Fairness Doctrine is being leveraged to ensure that there are only two viable political parties.

If you're worried about an entrenched party duoarchy, any content-focused "Fairness Doctrine" should be the least of your concerns. Even if it were still operating (it's not, and it's pretty easy to verify both by pointing at examples of broadcast outlets that violate its principles as well as checking history), any effects it has are an order of magnitude lower than the plurality voting system.

Then when new regulations are passed that give more power to the corporations, you blame the people who told you that was going to happen if you kept pushing for more regulations.

Naw, I blame the people who talk about about "regulation" vaguely and as if it's some monolithic thing, of course. Always easier rhetorically, particularly when you're preaching to a choir of fellow conservatives who've repeated the "regulation bad" mantra for so long it's become their own personal lobotomy and they are no longer even *capable* of actually thinking about policy specifics.

So here's the question: can you describe the mechanics of how a regulation that, say, prohibited tolls or discrimination based on packet source/destination would create barriers that favor existing big companies?

The ONLY way to stop corporate control of something by a small group of companies with lobbying power is not to regulate it. End of story.

Either that, or write regulations that are a matter of condition rather than favor.

It's really not that hard to stipulate something to the effect that carriers aren't allowed to bill by source or destination of a packet.

Packets are speech, after all. Is a DDOS really so different from too many people trying to use a telephone system at the same time?

</diabolicaladvocacy>

Phineas and Ferb.

I can't stand the rest of Disney's lineup, but that show is one of my favorite pieces of television ever. A light and pleasantly self-aware show where the protagonists build fantastic things to enjoy and play with? All the fun of Family Guy without the grossness and empty cynicism? Yes, more please.

Man, none of you guys have a clue. Have you read Rand or are you just regurgitating what you read on Wikipedia?

I've read The Fountainhead, Anthem, and a number of Rand's essays, as well as Wikipedia and other biographic articles. I also, of course, know who John Galt is. I think some of her work has some depth it's not given credit for (unfortunately, as much by her apparent followers as her critics).

But I don't think her critics here have no clue. They might be ignoring how noble the protagonists in her fiction are, but they're not incorrect that her philosophy as policy would lead to as many (if not more) James Taggarts and Ellsworth Tooheys as Reardens and Roarks (not to mention the problems with Roark, however romantic a character he is -- sure, he had a contract with Keating that enabled him to blow up the building, but did Keating have a contract with the land owners/developers/ect that gave him property rights that he could transfer to Roark?). And as has been pointed out, when it's come to practical recognition of real-world individuals, Rand has endorsed some individuals and behavior that resembles psychopathy.

On the other hand, the Karl Marx philosophy is about theft. Those who need take precedent over those who produce.

So, speaking of "Have you even read _____" criticisms.... how much Marx have you read? Because while needs are part of the philosophy (and the fact that this is a target of criticism says something about the critics, I'd say), there's a hell of a lot more to Marx than that -- it is, in fact highly concerned with "a fair reward for [the] inspiration and sweat" of laborers and craftsmen. I'd recommend, for starters, this slashdot comment about the implications of a competitive market for labor-as-commodity.