Slashdot Mirror
The Leased Life?
Effugas asks: "I've been thinking about something off and on for some time now...perhaps, in all of our complaining that the patent office equates 'net' with 'new', we've done a bit of this ourselves? I'm thinking particularly in regards to non-computer related economic trends that look suspiciously like what the computer industry has taught us to expect. To wit: You don't own your apps (ASP's), you can't control your software (UCITA), your music isn't yours (SDMI), your privacy isn't yours, etc. Now look at the real world in areas where tech savviness is on the rise: leased cars, rented houses, long term apartments / condos / duplexes...your employment is at will and can disappear anytime, and your cities seem strangely hostile to you doing anything other than working, sleeping, or spending. Note the lack of any kind of long term commitments, ownerships, investments, or so on... Is there a relationship between tech patterns and what's going on outside? I'd appreciate your comments."
Ok, I agree with your remark about the sad lack of values, but here's something you should consider before insulting Christianity: you claim hypocrisy on the part of the entire religion. I'm getting a little tired of the me-too attitude that you can just say "hypocrisy" and expect everyone to agree. But let's bring that a little closer to home.
I see a televangelist or anyone else claiming to speak for Christ. He then does something hypocritical/contradictory. Well, obviously Christianity is wrong.
I see a Linux user griping about Microsoft's instability and promising 100% stability from Linux. I try to install Linux and the installer crashes all over the place, taking down my partition table (this really happened, btw). Obviously, Linux users are grossly hypocritical - or just dumb.
I hear slashdotters yell about even the slightest form of censorship and then moderate down remarks solely because they don't agree with them.
People are imperfect. Some mess up, others overstate their case, and still others try to manipulate people's beliefs - be they religious, political, whatever - to get others to follow them and do as they say.
Complaining about a person's actions? Fine. Or a whole group's actions. But invalidating a set of beliefs due to bad experiences with a few people who hold, or claim to hold, those beliefs? That's flat-out narrow-minded.
(Yes, I'm the same Effugas who submitted the original question.)
Wow, you've all come up with some fascinating commentary. I'll probably be looking at it for quite some time, digesting everything that I've seen(and been sent via email, for those who wish to be more private).
There is some question of why it matters whether or not you own something. My concerns aren't particularly materialistic, folks--do you plan to ever send your kids to college? Do you plan to work until the day you drop dead? Do you hope and pray to never become sick, because the moment your health insurance falls out from under you(and you know it will), it's all over?
There's something to be said about a nest egg, or about amassing something after years of life. How strange is it to think that, maybe, just maybe a vicious end run around inheritance taxes is just to never have anything to inherit--all that which would otherwise go to the state ends up in the hands of an organization that can never die.
Law of unintended consequences, no?
Corporations aren't necessarily good nor evil, but one has to wonder about whether, in certain regions, an economic upturn and subsequent increase in quality of life is being paid for with the college tuitions of our children.
It's not about taking it with you. It's about taking care of yourself and not needing to beg for handouts or bailouts.
I'll be blunt--I simply don't know how all this is going to come together. But I do understand that, in the long term, oppression is just as privitizable as everybody else--you just need to lease out the freedom, and define the terms of that leasing as arbitrarily as you can get away with.
I'll write more on this later. Too much work to do...
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I'd appreciate your comments.
Sorry, I don't own any. I'd be happy to let you lease some comments as soon as I borrow them from someone else though..
_______
2B1ASK1
I don't think it's fair to say that "Christianity" is "tainted with holes, contradictions, and hypocrisy." Today, we have fragments of Christ's teachings embedded into man-made religions, but all are a far cry from what I'm sure Christ had intended. This may be a rather insignificant statement to some, but quite significant to other I would imagine.
Futher, I am apt to disagree that "People know right and wrong." I don't think such a thing as right and wrong exists.
For instance, if I kill someone, you might say to me, "That was wrong." But I say, "wrong for who?" Because we live in a society that deems it "uncivilized" to kill each other, then as a collective, we have deemed that behavior as "wrong." But some might look from a biological standpoint -- are we not an agressive lifeform? Many of us can appreciate the rage and anger of human emotions. Not that these emotions mean we are required to kill each other, but we don't look at animals in nature who kill each other and think, "That is wrong."
And so another perspective -- it is "wrong" according to our laws. So what happens when my feelings contradict with the law, does that mean I am "wrong?" What makes my viewpoint any more invalid than the lawmakers? Because it is a popular concensus? Slavery was once the popular concensus.
As far as needing "a reason to care", I agree that our country appears to suffer from a lack of "values", and many seem not to care whatsoever.
But I attribute this to the inability to think for ourselves. There was a republican nominee who was very articulate and extremely intellegent. He carried himself with dignity and grace. He told it how he felt it was, and one never had to guess whether or not he was being honest. And although he was receiving a solid 3-7% of the votes in each state, when my absentee ballot from Pennsylvania arrived in the mail, his name wasn't even on it.
We have a society that is becoming more and more ignorant by the day. Look at our presidential candidates, easily the worst of the litter compared to all of the primary candidates, but they're the nominees nonetheless because mainstream media picked them as such. People aren't taking the time to educate themselves and would rather get the quick, spoon fed version than invest their time in learning. I think this is the real reason for our decline.
So I come back to the question of "right and wrong." If I take the time to consider the pro's and con's of killing other people, it won't take long to come to the conclusion that I would rather not end the life of another human being, excluding perhaps to save my own. But that process, while it might seem simple on paper, actually involves taking the time to sit down and consider my thoughts and feelings on the matter, to put weight into both arguments and make a genuine concious decision. I think many people lack such skills, or at least refuse to use them.
We are a nation overcome by our own excesses. Right and wrong aside, we have allowed techonology to think for us, and computers don't have a soul.
What if I gave you three dollars? How much? Thr-- four dollars? Keep talking, I'm listening.
Therein lies the root of the problem. The whole notion of "licensing" is flawed. When you pay money for something, you expect that you own what you paid for, and can do with it what you wish. Licensing is counterintuitive. I'll bet 90% of the population doesn't really grok the concept of a software license. When they buy a copy of MS Office, most people think they own it and can use it however they wish (most people do have a basic grasp of copyright, in that they understand you shouldn't distribute copies of software, but the idea that that don't actually own what they paid for is lost on them).
The same goes for music and video. I have a feeling that when consumers start to understand what licensing really means, there will be a huge backlash against the industries which seek to exploit them. Just look how angry the technically savvy crowd has gotten over this issue. When it starts to affect consumers more directly through lawsuits and other actions by corporations seeking to limit how consumers use the products they purchased, then we might see some changes.
But then again, most people are sheep and will accept whatever you shove down their throats.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
Especially if you work in IT, your life may have a deep sense of transience. IT people travel more, get transferred more, and tend to spend more time isolated than any other group (except maybe labratory scientists!).
Leased houses, apartments, cars, etc just fit into a sense of never quite belonging, or being there. We develop online communities (like Slashdot, or my old MUD, Tsunami) to combat the transience of the of our lives. As long as I can get online, I can be with my friends, I can be informed, I can be part of a group.
I don't know if this wandered off-topic or not, but all of these things seem to be symptoms of a growing seperation between physical ownership and the things we metaphysically own (like friendships).
(just my 2 sleep and caffeine deprived cents!)
Check out Magic Firesheep!
And when was this wonderful golden age when people knew right from wrong, again? Half a century ago, the age of Jim Crow and McCarthyism? A century ago, when the US was completing its genocide of the Indians? A century and a half, when a third of the country's economic system was built on slavery? Two centuries, when (as was true until fairly recently, in fact) orphans and the sick and old routinely starved to death?
By every meaningful standard, we live in an age which is more moral than any previous one. The only way this isn't the case is if you define poverty and misery as moral and wealth and happiness as immoral -- which many religions do, of course, but that's _their_ psychosis, not mine. "Mud to mud" is the most liberating, the most realistic, the most useful, and far and away the most moral worldview in human history.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
We (nerds) need adequate time in the Big Blue Room and to get out of ourselves and surroundings once in a while to see a bigger picture.
You might as well lease everything because, you're not taking it with you.
That 's wisdom, too. Ok. I'm going outside, now.-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
What you are talking about is the main delineation between the 'upper' and 'lower' classes in the United States. Throughout the history of this country, a minority of people have owned the majority of land, goods, and means of production, while the rest are generally shackled in debt and lease nearly everything they need.
The trick to joining the rich in America is to be very careful about spending your money and making sure to actually OWN things that you throw money at. Living below your means will give one the ability to purchase the means of production (stocks), more money in the future (bonds), and real estate (get a mortgage, you dont pay much more than rent and it goes into a real investment, rather than the landlord). You also pay less for everything when you are able to pay up front.
This principle works similarly in the digital world. One difference is that companies may have more power to keep users in 'rental space' rather than 'ownership space' by only putting digital property up for lease. As in the real world, one should always try to pay up front and attempt to gain true ownership of the 'goods' which you acquire.
I believe that this relates to the holy crusade of RMS for free software. When you get win98, you are essentially giving money to MS with no return ownership of anything. When you download gnu/linux, you have true ownership of the software on your computer. This may seem economically irrelevant right now, but as the real world further integrates with the internet (go watch lain) the economic importance of digital property will become very economically important, and ownership of webspace, software, and customized services will make you rich. For this reason, companies carefully guard the ownership of their goods.