Horace, as usual, makes some very astute observations. I've noted this effect with other technology firms that consistently design, build, and market innovative products. The stock market only values currently shipping products, rarely does it value the culture and process of the enterprise that allows it to consistently create something new and valuable.

The premise of the stock market today is therefore that being innovative in technology is meaningless. Innovations are valuable but there is no such thing as an innovation process. If there was such a thing then we could measure it and put a number of its value. Until then innovation is nothing more than a spin of the roulette wheel.

This is really, really serious. Congress is considering one of the most draconian, unfair, and freedom-blocking bills in a long time. Read this and *act*!

On November 16 the U.S. Congress will hold hearings on a bill that would unfairly, recklessly and capriciously enable and encourage broad censorship of the Internet in the name of suppressing distribution of works not authorized by copyright holders. As Public Knowledge aptly summarizes, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” would seriously “threaten the functioning, freedom, and economic potential of the Internet” by:

• short-circuiting the legal system, giving rightsholders a fast-track to shutting down whole websites;
• creating conflicts between Domain Name System (DNS) servers, making you more vulnerable to hackers, identity theft, and cyberattacks;
• sanctioning government interference with the Internet, making it more censored globally.

SOPA threatens every site on Internet, but would especially harm the commons, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains, focusing on free software. The same applies to free and open projects beyond software, which often use CC licenses. While standard public licenses have lowered the costs and risks of legal sharing and collaboration, SOPA would drastically increase both the costs and risks of providing platforms for sharing and collaboration (think sites ranging from individual blogs to massive community projects such as Wikipedia, from open education repositories to Flickr and YouTube), and vaporize accessibility to huge swathes of free culture, whether because running a platform becomes too costly, or a single possibly infringing item causes an entire domain to be taken down.

The trend that one can plot from the DMCA (1998) to SOPA, and continued extensions and expansions of copyright and related restrictions around the world, also demonstrate the incredible importance of the commons for healthy information policy and a healthy Internet — almost all other “IP” policy developments have been negative for society at large. The DMCA was decried by advocates of free speech and the Internet, and has over past 13 years had many harmful effects. Now, in 2011, some think that the U.S. Congress ‘struck the right balance’ in 1998, while big content is dissatisfied, and with SOPA wants to ratchet the ‘balance’ (watch out, 2024!) much further to their short-term advantage.

Techdirt has excellent coverage of the gritty details of SOPA, its ill effects, and the many constituencies alarmed (such as librarians and sports fans).

Sign up at American Censorship Day to be alerted of actions you can take against SOPA. Demand Progress, EFF, and PK have forms you can use to write the U.S. Congress right now.

Please take action! If you aren’t already sharing works under a CC license and supporting our work, now is a good time. Bad legislation needs to be stopped now, but over the long term, we won’t stop getting new bad legislation until policymakers see broad support and amazing results from culture and other forms of knowledge that work with the Internet, rather than against it. Each work or project released under a CC license signals such support, and is an input for such results.

Thanks to Gus Mueller (master of "Flying Meat" and creator of Acorn and VoodooPad and FlySketch) I learned about this absolutely fabulous interactive site explaining the math and geometry behind Bezier curves ... which are the fundamental building blocks for drawing nice smooth curves in digital graphics. If you are at all interested, check it out!

BTW, the interactivity and math typesetting is all done without any plugins ... just using standard HTML5 and JavaScript ... IE people need to be running IE 9, but everyone else just needs to be using the current version of their browser.

A primer on Bezier curves - by Mike "Pomax" Kamermans

Last updated: 2 November, 2011

Before we begin I'd like to say that all the graphics on the page, except for the Wolfram Alpha images, are interactive graphics, without requiring any special browser plugins. If your browser supports javascript, and the canvas element (sorry IE8 users, you'll have to upgrade to IE9, which supports <canvas> - Get it here,) it will be able to let you use this page, thanks to the most excellent Processing.js project. You will also see rather nicely typeset mathematics, thanks to the equally excellent MathJax library.

So, with that out of the way, let's look at the topic at hand: Bezier curves.

This is good stuff, and I'm glad to say that I had a bit to do with this (although our excellent PHY team - both engineering and marketing - did the heavy lifting while I provided high-level technical and evangelism support). Anyway, congratulations to our team!

Tech and Automotive Leaders Unite to Drive Next Generation In-vehicle Networking

IRVINE, Calif., Nov. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

News Highlights:

• Enables Wide Scale Adoption of Ethernet-Based Automotive Connectivity
• Establishes industry standard for 100Mbps Ethernet connectivity over single pair, unshielded cable
• Enables migration from closed application to open, scalable Ethernet-based network

Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI), Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL), and Harman International (NYSE:HAR) today announced the formation of a special interest group (SIG), established to drive wide scale adoption of Ethernet-based automotive connectivity. Jointly developed with founding automotive members BMW and Hyundai Motor Company, the OPEN Alliance (One-Pair Ether-Net) SIG will address industry requirements for improving in-vehicle safety, comfort, and infotainment, while significantly reducing network complexity and cabling costs. For more information visit www.opensig.org.

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20111109/LA03155LOGO)

Designed to encourage wide scale adoption of 100Mbps Ethernet connectivity as the standard in automotive networking applications, the OPEN Alliance plans to expand its membership roster in the coming months to additional automotive suppliers and manufacturers.

Key to the newly established SIG is the proliferation of Broadcom's BroadR-Reach® technology as an open standard. BroadR-Reach technology, designed specifically to address the stringent requirements of the automotive industry, delivers high-performance bandwidth of 100Mbps over an unshielded single twisted pair cable. By eliminating the need for expensive, cumbersome shielded cabling, automotive manufacturers can significantly reduce connectivity costs and cabling weight.

Founding members will initially focus on establishing interoperability requirements, third party testing, certification procedures, and higher data rate specification requirements. License to specification for BroadR-Reach is available to all interested OPEN Alliance members under RAND terms via a license from Broadcom.  

Quotes:

Kevin Brown

, Vice President and General Manager, PHY, Broadcom Corporation

"Broadcom is working closely with leaders throughout the industry in defining the future of automotive networking. Through the formation of the SIG, we'll gain invaluable insight and support in the proliferation of BroadR-Reach Ethernet technology as an open industry standard. Making BroadR-Reach Ethernet open to the industry will help manufacturers achieve higher bandwidth, significantly reduce connectivity costs, and deliver new and exciting features and applications to a broad range of vehicles."

Lars Reger

, Vice President Strategy & New Business Automotive, NXP

"BroadR-Reach Ethernet technology addresses the high bandwidth functionality the automotive market is asking for. We're excited to adopt this standard. As the global No. 1 supplier of In-Vehicle Networking technologies NXP will speed up the wide adoption of Ethernet in the automotive industry. Automotive Ethernet is the logical next step in NXP's broad In-Vehicle Networking portfolio of products, starting from LIN, CAN and FlexRay up to Ethernet."

Ray Cornyn

, Vice President and General Manager, Automotive Microcontroller Division, Freescale

"Freescale has long been at the forefront of automotive networking technology, helping to establish such standards as CAN, LIN and FlexRay. Ethernet is the next step in the evolution of automotive networking, meeting the need of new high bandwidth applications, such as cameras and multimedia. By enabling Ethernet communication over unshielded twisted pair cable, BroadR-Reach technology provides a critical element to a flexible and cost effective Ethernet solution."

Sachin Lawande

, Chief Technology Officer and Co-President, Lifestyle and Infotainment Divisions, Harman

"As the leader in connectivity solutions for the world's automakers, HARMAN is pleased to support the work of our industry partners in driving scalable Ethernet solutions for high speed networking for the car.  Increasingly we see the need for flexible and cost-effective connectivity solutions supporting the customers growing demand for information, entertainment, and safety features seamlessly integrated within the car network.  Ethernet will provide the highest quality streaming A/V experience and encourage interoperability of networked A/V devices."  

About Broadcom

Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a FORTUNE 500® company, is a global leader and innovator in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications. Broadcom® products seamlessly deliver voice, video, data and multimedia connectivity in the home, office and mobile environments. With the industry's broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip and embedded software solutions, Broadcom is changing the world by Connecting everything®. For more information, go to www.broadcom.com.

About NXP Semiconductor

NXP Semiconductors N.V. (Nasdaq: NXPI) provides High Performance Mixed Signal and Standard Product solutions that leverage its leading RF, Analog, Power Management, Interface, Security and Digital Processing expertise. These innovations are used in a wide range of automotive, identification, wireless infrastructure, lighting, industrial, mobile, consumer and computing applications. A global semiconductor company with operations in more than 25 countries, NXP posted revenue of $4.4 billion in 2010. For more information visit www.nxp.com.

About Freescale Semiconductor

Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE:FSL) is a global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial and networking markets. The company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing and sales operations around the world. www.freescale.com.

About Harman International

HARMAN (www.harman.com) designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of audio and infotainment solutions for the automotive, consumer and professional markets - supported by 15 leading brands, including AKG,

Harman Kardon

, Infinity, JBL, Lexicon and

Mark Levinson

. The Company is admired by audiophiles across multiple generations and supports leading professional entertainers and the venues where they perform. More than 25 million automobiles on the road today are equipped with HARMAN audio and infotainment systems. HARMAN has a workforce of about 12,500 people across the Americas, Europe and Asia, and reported net sales of $4.0 billion for twelve months ending September 30, 2011. The Company's shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NYSE:HAR.

Media Contacts:
Tamara Snowden Broadcom Corporation 408 922-6505 tamaras@broadcom.com	Birgit Ahlborn NXP Semiconductor 49 1705746124 Birgit.Ahlborn@nxp.com	Andy North Freescale Semiconductor 512 996-4498 andy.north@freescale.com	Darrin Shewchuk Harman International 203-328- 3834 Darrin.shewchuck@harman.com

Broadcom®, the pulse logo, Connecting everything®, BroadR-Reach® and the Connecting everything logo are among the trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States, certain other countries and/or the EU.  Freescale, the Freescale logo, are trademarks of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.  Any other trademarks or trade names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Broadcom Corporation; BRCM Infrastructure & Networking

News Provided by Acquire Media

I'll admit to being one of those that used Amazon extensively over the past few years to get around taxes ... but it's really time to stop that. I'm just draining biz away from local firms and benefiting places where Amazon workers (and executives) do their thing. Not fair, and I'm stopping. I'm glad that even Amazon is supporting this act ... good on them!