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While I have observed this trend myself, I humbly submit the following idea that occured to me over coffee at Waffle House this evening:

Perhaps the very fact that they can't agree can be used to everyone's advantage. Everything is a matter of perspective, largely dependent upon the resolution of your viewing equipment. Projecting to a near-term future where ubiquitious computing is realized (Magic Kingdom style), we see a massive number of discrete capitalist micro-transactions taking place at a very fast pace.

From each individual's perspective, he's "buying resources" and "selling goods" he's produced so rapidly that he feels as though his needs are being met automatically. Zooming out to a global perspective, it appears that the entire planet is operating in a highly socialist manner. High density and frequency of individual capitalist transactions results in global socialist outcome. I guess this depends on population density to work well, though. Signs of this sort of emergent behavior are already being exhibited in densly populated and technologically advanced societies such as Japan. No wonder Gibson likes those folks so much...

Incidentally, I have a strong gut feeling that any person or group attempting to exercise control over such a vast system will feel the unfortunate backlash we've come to recognize from such famous experiments as the War on Drugs.

In other words, we're proving that current attempts at regulating free market behavior only serve to prove economists right by producing black markets devoid of said regulation. There's no reason the math would work any differently in the future, and considerable reason to believe that regulatory bodies will become increasingly impotent. Then there's the question of motivation: if everyone can easily obtain everything they want anyhow, what reason would even the worst egomaniac have for trying to control the system? It would be kinda like moonshiners trying to control the liquor market while consumers can buy legit product for $10 a jug.

I'd like to compliment you: I have a hard time finding many people who help me generate/refine ideas this way. You seem like a cool person. As stated in my last reply to your post, I'd be honored if you'd be willing to toss around more ideas with me from time to time. Please consider donating a few bytes of your bandwidth to pparadis@transops.net if you have a couple of minutes to spare here and there. If you're concerned about your privacy (a guess considering your non-public email), I highly recommend creating a free account at some free mail provider (more disk space now, competition is so yummy) or HushMail. Thanks!

Since approximately age seven (the age my father gave me an AT&T 8086 PC to learn programming) I've been trying to organize myself :). Or, somewhat more accurately, I've been trying to create models of everything I see around me to faciliate further modelling (a fool's errand, true, but engrossing work nonetheless).

Funny you should mention more appropriate placement in a blog or forum-style environment. I've been designing such an environment for the last two weeks in my spare time. I would have used existing an existing CMS to host it, but none of the major packages have the feature set I need as a capitalist interested in utilizing the system as a means for funding further investigation.

Might you be interested in contributing to the design and eventual content for such a system? Email me if this might be the case. Note: I've already got the network resources needed to accomodate a fairly ridiculous amount of traffic.

If anyone has mod points burning a hole in their pocket, please consider modding the parent post down.

"Centrino" is not the processor. It's Intel's project designation for their current wireless integration tech. The processor would be something along the lines of "Pentium."

Sig: Seeking partnerships with web design firms.

Of particular interest, of course, would be the lengthy and detailed rebuttals listed in the comments section. I suggest browsing at +3 or so to separate the wheat from the chaff, but you'll probably still get a few angry fanatics making the overall message look bad (which is really too bad... excess emotion in a rebuttal can really ruin valid points for an otherwise uneducated reader). Again, hope it helps.

Sig: Seeking partnerships with web design firms.

(1) Since you are a member of a company that's subject to rather scrutinous regulatory and privacy concerns, you would definitely need to develop a solid policy for code auditing. Yes, I tend to trust the core developers of most major projects to watch patches and such pretty closely (especially with OpenBSD and Debian), but mistakes can happen. You'd probably need to consider the cost of keeping an in-house audit team (a few good coders) to review new releases under consideration for your production environment. These people don't come free, but I'm pretty sure they'd be less expensive than (a) implementing the applications yourself in-house, or (b) going with a propietary solution (which costs money up front) and then STILL having to audit the code to be sure.

(2) In relation to item (1), I'd be sure to cover the fact that just because a company has a closed source product doesn't necessary make their developers any more trustworthy than highly regarded community development teams. Reference the Sybase backdoor debacle for some concrete proof that nasty things happen in Fortune 500 companies. "Having someone to sue" doesn't necessarily mean jack when your company is getting hounded by the Feds for improper information disclosure.

(3) I'd try to focus on tech segments where open source solutions are already extemely well tested and in general acceptance, such as Apache for web serving. Again, some internal problems may really benefit from a chained solution using existing OSS projects and toolkits, but these are probably a touch sell that would be better left alone until other projects are firmly grounded. Possibly exempt from this rule would be broad projects such as the Perl programming language, although you would probably want to add a policy subsection on module auditing as well (since CPAN is just so darned comprehensive).

That's about all I've got for now; I'm a bit tired from a late day/night of bug fixes. Hope some of this helps.

Sig: Seeking partnerships with web design firms.

In fact, from a psychological perspective, putting too many ineffective barriers to harm in place may actually have the effect of lulling the populace (read: target) into a false sense of security. Case in point: grandmothers getting anal cavity searches during "routine" airport screenings (sorry for the nasty mental image, it's for purposes of illustration).

There is simply no way to reliably defend a large land mass against random insurgent attacks from loosely organized parties, especially when said attacking parties are comfortable with the notion of dying for their cause. I don't advocate our leaving Iraq anytime soon, as that would be utterly disastrous in the long term, but you only have to look at CNN each morning to note the steady stream of attacks on U.S. forces. True, the attacks don't have any significant impact on the forces deployed at large, but they will continue as long as people are willing to lay down their lives in the name of rebellion (or freedom, depending on which side of the fence you're standing on).

Personally, I think any measure of success in all of this goes back to people worrying about preserving their own immediate liberty first while still standing ready to defend their country as a whole against attack. This is not to be confused with attempting to play Dad to the entire nation while leaving one's own door unlocked, a practice many people seem somewhat adept at these days.

Of course, I'm probably going to be branded an armchair-this-or-that for my rambling, but so it goes.

Seeking partnerships with web design firms.

Man, death by asphyxiation under a heap of wool Macs sounds like a terrible way to go... I'd much prefer to be instantly crushed by an errant plane full of SGI workstations.

Since you're all better from it now that you've been reincarnated, I have to ask... is Mr. Gates *really* Satan? ;).

Sig: Seeking partnerships with web design firms.

I put forth the proposition that *this* is truly what BitTorrent is designed for: leveraging the power of the Internet to allow individuals to use their keyboards to contribute to the ever-increasing glut of meaningless dribble in cyberspace. :).

Sig: Seeking partnerships with web design firms.

I think the reverse engineering clause in the DMCA would protect this sort of behavior. Mind you, I'm not trying to portray the DMCA in anything resembling a rose-colored light, but I don't *think* the example you cited would be problematic.

I've actually had the opportunity to discuss this sort of thing (or something very similar) with an attorney who's a client of my company. Basically, his verdict on the matter was in concurrence with my interpretation of the law. This is (at best) third-hand legal advice however, and should probably be taken with a larger amount of salt than even ordinary Slashdot posts ;).

Sig: Seeking partnerships with web design firms.

Guns enable some people to get items for free which they otherwise would have to pay for. I don't recall seeing my father holding up gas stations with his Reuger 9mm.

Sig: Seeking partnerships with web design firms.

(1) My original post was meant mostly in fun. Too bad it wasn't taken that way.

(2) Hi! My name is Phil Paradis, and I'm (mostly) a programmer with a software firm, although on paper I'm the CIO. Please reference transops.net for more background information.

(3) Pursuant to -2-, most of our clients happen to be attorneys. Of course, we couldn't possibly know anything about copyright law, even though my first firm was a partnership with a guy whose father was Dean of John Marshall Law School.

(4) Yeah, your code is protected quite nicely under a registered copyright, but (and pay attention now):

This does absolutely nothing to prevent somebody else from reproducing every shred of functionality your software has, from scratch, by writing their own code. For reference, please see linux.org.

Perhaps you should examine your wording a bit more precisely before you get jumpy on your conclusions, eh? Discussions are the only way we have for testing and refining our concepts, but people seem to get a tad rude when they have a net connection in between themselves and their "debate opponent". Let's just keep it civil and everyone can have a nice time, eh?

By the way, I appreciate the fact that you're a girl (as opposed to a "he"). It's good to see women offering their thoughts in a rather male-centric forum. Take it as a compliment. Thanks.