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European OSS Advantage?
Andrew Crump writes
"Here is an interesting article
published in Intraware by Thomas Scoville of O'Reilly. Does
Europe have an advantage in fostering free software by virtue
of its less capital-driven academia, its wariness of
Microsoft products, its longer-term philosophies: in general
its socialist leanings? There
are certainly plenty of examples to cite that point to less
US-centric development."
The FreeWare and OSS has always had it's main followers in europe.
However, I feal the need for OSS is not very high, as long as there is good freeware out there for people to enjoy, the big bunch doesn't care about OSS.
Europe (Britain) is short-term, capital driven and, if the latest issue of Computer Weekly is correct, largely wary of open-source.
Writing from the US gives a certain perspective but from here Microsoft appears at the very top of the pile.
There was always a big following in Europe for OSS and Freeware but Freeware being the biggest by far. My friend Reflective Jim says that freeware is the bomb. I agree.
Leaning towards Socialism - in *Europe*
....
You must be kiddin'
I work on Free Software in my copious spare time, at home, using equipment I bought with my own money and paying "European" ISP and phone charges (why is Internet access inevitably linked with telephony - the only reason for me to keep that 19 century technology running over here is for my Internet access
The not so anonymous Cow-hard:
Toon Moene (toon@moene.indiv.nluug.nl)
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
Phone: +31 346 214290; Fax: +31 346 214286
g77 Support: fortran@gnu.org; egcs: egcs-bugs@cygnus.com
Britain is not all that much
like the rest of Europe, really.
Even Ireland, the other English-speaking
European state, has a very different
take on pretty much everything. Of course,
a lot is reactionary, seeing as
Ireland was Britain's closest
(and very badly governed) colony
for a long time, and anti-British feeling
in Ireland is therefore quite commonplace.
Anyway, having said that, some very
nice open source projects do come from
British universities, and
http://sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk/
is a pretty big site, to say the least...
On the other hand, American graduate schools are the best in the world
Hmmm, it's not about quality, there are tons of better places, it's that EF shit that does it.
, often stocked with people from the rest of the world who benefitted from the K-12 and undergraduate educations of their own countries.
It's not the education, it's about gettin a lifetime experience.
I've heard that Russia and Portugal are considered the best if you want to learn.
A bit of my own reflection - this is obviously a very socialist article.
As a libertarian, I seem to be supporting free
software for a different reason, feeling that it
will aid the developement of good software for
singular purposes (what people should actually
pay for is a personalized software- written just
for them).
I don't know if this maxim meshes with mine, where
he says that Europe is the salvation because they "are cost conciouss", and "not market driven."
I do agree that "unavoidable" software should be free. I don't believe that all software should be free, just the stuff we need to use.
Some day I hope to be building software systems that specific people need, while they and I are recieving all software to build and update it for free, over a free internet. Perchance to dream, that the software I need won't be handed to me by a socialist state, but free for me to pick from the tree of Knowlege.
-Ben
I have to defend him(or her) here.
Most people don't care if they get the damn src, they want a product for free that makes them productive.
And GLP btw, is not freedom, src without a licence is FREE.
the reason why this superior free market approach is more common in europe and other countries is because they also tend to believe less in copyrights. copyrights are pure socialist intervention, it is basically the government placing restrictions on what U can copy to change the natural market distribution of a given work.
they call it intellectual "property" rights, but in the real world property rights derive from reality, not from federal wet dreams. see ip not page
Get away you spineless socialist dweebs. Open Source software and socialism have nothing in common. Go away. Shoo.
There's still a freaking economic MARKET involved with open source software; socialism deals away with such a thing. Consumer action has propelled the Open Source movement; the government dictates EVERYTHING in socialism.
Europe is less under the grip of the Corporate State, yes (and more under the grip of the Police State)...but to say socialism could even remotely be the cause? Uh no way.
Open Source software is about the DECENTRALIZATION OF POWER - socialism is about the CENTRALIZATION of power.
(babylon@netroplex.com)
Fact - Spain is the only EU country with a center-right Government right now. The rest of Europe is governed by social democrats/socialists. Which party governs in France - the Socialists beat out Rallie pour la Republic (the Gaullists) at the last election, the SPD beat the CDU in Germany (and have a coalition with the _Greens_), etc.
Agreed that copyright is an attempt to define intellectual property - the precise definition of copyright matters, because the rules used to govern them are important. But it's not exclusive to any political philosophy. However, you are so wrong about Marxism. While many Marxists may have freedom as a goal, the road they use (of central planning) necessitates the reduction of freedom everywhere. In both theory and reality, Marxism requires the absence of freedom, even though abhored by many who adhere to Marxist tenets.
> I expect in the near future the edge belongs to Europe, but beyond that I'd say India and China.
How 'bout the Internet Nation?
Dumb Euro-weenies. Linux would be a cute toy without the needs created by our capitalism. In fact, that goes triple for the entire industry!
Nothing, but that's what freedom is about, do what you want.
If they make a comertial product out of the free code, fine, the original src will still be around for someone to make a free alternative to that one, and who will win, you will, as competition is good.
YOU shoo!
Socialism (as it applies to the context of open source) is the collective application of talent in a common direction for the benefit of all, not only those who can pay or are in positions of power.
If you learned the definitions of words and thought instead of blindly accepting the pap spewed out by those who are threatened by such ideas (such as those with a power based on a completely self-serving paradigm) it might be an aid to intelligent discussion.
I don't say that you have to agree, but at least get it right.
It's about reprogramming people to take care of eachother, when it's done, total freedom will settle.
People are plain stupid in many cases and needs someone to guide them.
I know that repropgramming is not a nice thing but I can see no other way, people are stupid moneyhungry egoists right now.
The very essence of Marxism is that material relations determine ideology, NOT the other way around! (In fact, I think that's simplistic, but in general I do agree with the idea.)
:(, what I ment was exactly what you said.
It means that if you people have direct control over their economic substructure, instead of going through abstractions of alien ownership, that their new situation will "reprogram" them.
Oh, I was gravly missunderstood
I shudder at any representation of Marxism that calls for re-education camps.
I didn't mean that, I meant what you said, but my english is to limited =)
After reading trough this discussion, I get the impression that a lot of Americans think Socialism==Communism. (I shouldn't be surprised a big part of the US population still thinks the sun revolves around the earth).
Well Socialism!=Communism, although they both have the same roots, in 'modern' Europe (+1960) Socialism is something that's very different from communism. It's because of socialism that we (Europe) have cheap healthcare and education. The European socialist/liberal system ALLOWS free a free market economy on one hand while trying to divide the wealth from this economic activity among the whole population.
It's by no means a perfect model, but it's certainly nothing to disrespect.
BTW: Even communism can do some good, if you have ever been in Cuba and The Domenican Republic, you will know what I mean. Despite a economic boycot from the US Cuba is safer and less poor than the 'Capitalist' Domenican Republic (and most other 'Capitalist' US-supported states in the region).
Note: I'm not a communist, nor a Socialist nor a capitalist. I just try to look at the facts and make up my own mind Free you mind!
I never heard about this Iraq printer thing, but the supposedly neutral Swiss company Crypto AG had back doors for US and German intelligence in their crypto products for *decades*. STill do, AFAICT. There's an article in Covert Action Quarterly at
/., but no go.
http://caq.com:80/CAQ/caq63/caq63madsen.html
Note: CAQ is a somewhat doctinaire leftist pub, but it's research is almost always sound, notwithstanding the rhetoric. I tried to get this article posted to
Huh?
OK, what country do Larry Wall, Brian Behlendorf,
Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Eric Allman,
most of the people behind BSD UNIX, and the
Mozilla full-timers live in? Gnome is mostly
getting worked on in which continent?
Andrew Tridgell is from what continent at the
antipodes of the US?
Other than Mr. Torvalds, where are the Europeans
on this list? And he lives in the US now, too.
Europe may have a greater proportion of free
software users, but the whole software
development industry in the US is so
disproportionately large, a disproportionate
number of important free software advocates live
there.
And as for this American academia being too tied
to commercial business argument, that doesn't
seem to have stopped MIT and Berkeley from being
two of the most important places in the world to
the history of free software. Nor does it stop
people from all over the world from coming to the
US in grossly disproportionate numbers for their
engineering educations.
Oh, and isn't Microsoft's primary academic
research lab in Cambridge? (or possibly Oxford, I
forget but that's Cambridge, England, not Cambridge, Massachusetts.)
America produces a disproportionate amount of a
lot of things, including both clueless losers
stuck with Windows and free software developers.
Those of you who are from Europe--especially Spain!-- I'd like to hear what you think about all this. Once again, I realize that the situation in Northern Europe is a lot better than that in the Mediterranean and Eastern parts of the continent. Let's face it, Northern Europe is far more progressive and outward-looking than the rest of the continent, and often more so than America! However, I stand by my assertions when it comes to the rest. This is a really interesting issue. If someone has matices (nuances) to add or contradictions to register, please post!
Quinn Weaver http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/Quinn
. . . and since I agree with you, that puts us in meta-metagroupthink territory . . .
Badly governed though it was, Ireland was not a colony. It was represented by MPs at Westminster, just like the rest of the UK. Colonies do not return MPs to parliament, and never have done. This is similar to American colonies (`territories'), which have no representation in the Senate and are only allowed to send non-voting (i.e. powerless) delegates to the House of Representatives.
The real problem is 75% of the population of the British Isles is concentrated in England, and this rough distribution (with some variation) has been true for a long time. As such, the Union has always been very lopsided in favour of England, and became even more so with the secession of what is now the Republic of Ireland.
To put it into perspective, imagine 75% of the population of the USA + Canada lived in California. Then imagine there was no US-style Senate and there were no state governments (only governors appointed by the president). Under those circumstances, I think it's fair to say there would be a strong anti-California attitude in the rest of North America.
Europe, in particular Germany, consistently seems to buck US market trends for no apparent reason other than to be different:
*OS/2 Warp retained a rabid following in Germany long after it lost the desktop war to Windows 95 (I remember when Vobis, a German PC company, made a big deal about preinstalling OS/2 on all its machines at the height of the Windows 95 frenzy)
*Amiga remained popular in Germany well after its market share collapsed everywhere else (in fact, I believe Vobis bought up Commodore's assets after it went bankrupt)
*Ireland's IONA keeps up the charge for CORBA, even as CORBA is being overrun by DCOM and EJB
Genuine greater appreciation for technical elegance or cultural chauvinism?
You obviously fail to see the significance of the saga of the last 20 years. Competition is of course good, but enhanced freedom is simply not how it shakes out without a protective license.
You may think that, GLP still sucks.
I have released sourcecode without licence and it has worked by far the best.
If I'll ever release anything with licence nowadays, it will be under the much more free oriented BSD licence.
-- A licence is a bill of rights... especially GLP.
So what your saying is that Europe uses a group goal model over an individual goal based on capitol right? Sounds socialist to me.
And my goodness, that other stuff defies logic. Europe is more mindful of their neighboring states AND has faught more wars?
Then the "US has only fought one war on it's own soil". Please try again: American Revolution, War of 1812, Spanish American War, and the westward expansions.
It's also interesting to note that a majority of so called 'discoveries' in the US were done be Europeans who'd been educated outside the US. The US is a country reknowened for exploiting the technology and ideas of others to their own credit. One exception is Richard Feynman who has been described as a true rarity, a native born and educated American intellectual.
Even the famous Thomas Edison was not all he was cracked up to be. In fact Bill Gates could be described as his contemporary equivalent.
The Japanese were going to clean our clock. They took the long view...were more communaly minded...sound familiar?
What they did was provide good competition and that made us get off our butts. If European OSS will do that, more power to them. But they are deluding themelves if they think they will have some long term advantage in the software industry (Death of the American Programmer, Pt II?)
The MS hegemony will eventually crumble -- once it starts the speed of the disintegration will startle people, just like the collapse of the Soviet Union. After this period of Windows lock-in has ended, there will be an absolute explosion in software development to fill the void it leaves behind -- I'm personally hoping several OSs (both Open Source and commercial) will fill the market to keep competition healthy.
I'm sure the European software community will do well in this market, but so will plenty of American firms. If Europe becomes the economic rival of America it will be because of the Euro, not some innate OSS advantage.
copyrights (and patents) are government granted monopolies, not rights. even the libertarians at the time knew this, did U ever hear of rights that have an expiration date? sheesh, if U study economics and a little bit of observation, you will find that the factor that limits the supply (get it supply/demand) is not the information, or the media, but rather the indivual services that create them - and that's what should be comoditized in a true open market society - not this granting a monopoly on copying bull shit.
ps. if someone copys your stuff, you haven't lost nothing that you didn't already have - other than economic controll over the masses (sounds pretty socialist to me)
Being puzzled by Thomas Scoville's claims, I dropped him an email, and got an... interesting
r ope.html
response.
I'd just like to point out that since Britain
is in Europe, the UK contributors he talks
about would have had to describe themselves as
out of touch. Of course, this is lost on Thomas.
L.
did research, huh?
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 14:34:46 -0800
From: Thomas Scoville
To: Lloyd Wood
Subject: Re: Open Source Europe
You know, you Brits are all out to lunch on this. I did extensive research
for that piece, way over and above the two O'Reilly authors I quoted. One
of the straight lines I could draw through the entire dataset was this:
nearly every UK contributor was completely out of touch. Not by my
estimation, by the estimation of all the Euro contributors.
As far as I'm concerned, your perspective is invalid.
Your tone is offensive, too. You've given me more than enough reason to
ignore you. Welcome to my kill file.
Lloyd Wood wrote:
> http://www.intraware.com/ms/mktg/indaa/itkc/osseu
>
> It is clear Europe is already well ahead of the United States in Open
> Source utilization, culture, and awareness. A disproportionate number
> of Open Source development efforts are based there.
> [..]
> The willingness of European business to embrace Open Source software
>
> Thomas,
>
> This doesn't sound much like the Europe I live in. The European Union
> has standardised on Microsoft Word documents for exchanging
> information, for one thing. That has a massive impact on how a large
> number of European companies work. And you've missed the fact that
> use of unix variants requires a strong grasp of English; there's a
> good reason why Apple had such a high market share in France for so
> long - localisation. Localisation, coupled with the graphical
> interface, is Microsoft's strong point in countries where _all_
> operating systems are perceived as American. Red Hat?
> American. Software licences? Definitely American.
>
> (And just how localised is O'Reilly in Europe? France, Germany, UK.
> Other markets aren't large enough to support localisation - yet
> the higher education examples you cite would presumably be
> crying out for e.g. Italian perl tutorial books.)
>
> Disproportionate how, exactly? By population? By English literacy
> according to GRE tests? Some figures actually supporting your
> arguments would be useful. A quick mental run-through of open-source
> efforts didn't produce any notable European centricity, although it
> produced a number of people contributing to efforts largely based in
> the US.
>
> Your article reads like Cold War rhetoric all over again; exhorting
> Americans to make more effort to counter the non-existent and illusory
> {Russian military | European software productivity} threat.
>
> timBL moved to Boston, Linus is in California - and their efforts
> largely moved with them. If Europe is as well ahead of the States as
> you say, why did they feel they needed to do that?
>
> L.
>
> the Europeans are coming! the Europeans are coming! Riiiight.
>
> L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk PGP http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/
Large primates organize themselves into heirarchical troops led by an Alpha male. =This= is what motivates capitalism, feudalism, and free software. The methods of building rank and the means of keeping score are different, but the motivations are the same. This is also why egalitarianism is a silly pipe dream. You can call free software "socialist" because you don't keep score monetarily, but it sure as hell isn't egalitarian.
Lots of unemployed people with free time to write OSS.
compared to white, blue is black
The fact that in europe the government still gives social security,etc. is not because we are living in harmony or tired of all these wars or something...
Nowadays, whenever you look at a magazine or a newspaper, at least in my country, Portugal, theres some article saying that government should act in less ways, that we should privatize this and that. And it is happening.
Our national phone company will be privatized on the 1st of January of the year 2000, for example.
So, if OSS development is bigger here is just because we are behind of the US, like usually, all the time. On Capitalism, on Technology, etc.
But this time, it happened for the better. We can still avoid the society were Market law is the only law(notice Microsofts case, it mostly used economic or market ways to go to where it is( blackmailing and such are market ways, in my view)) and it cares less or doesnt care for the individual person.
I also think that, in a general way, Europe is more inclined to "intelectual" work. But then again, this is only a picture of US some time ago.
There MUST be some way that we can stop this mad-race to a cliff.
And if its true that computers are changing the world we live in, then OSS, or free software may help.
Eduardo
Ahh nobody cares about them anymore. Everything is overpriced, it's crowded, and worst of all it's full of Europeans (Especially the British people...eww).
Well, I read Capital and Marx'x ideas are intrinsimcally authoritarian. As far as how Communism should actually work, Marx had little to say: therfore, Stalin's and Mao's interpretations were as valid as any other. provided they are consistent with Marx's theoretical premises. What are those premises? Above all, materialism - Marx called his philosophy "dialectical materialism". There is no room in materialism for free will, and in the absense of free will, freedom is a meaningless concept. Marx did indeed pay lip service to the concept now and again, though he also attacked it in the form of "Liberalism". However, a view that people's apparently free economic choices are entirely the reflection of impersonal economic forces acting through them - the most fundamental tenet of the Marxist edifice - is a view that has already taken freedom as a illusion. Marx pretended that abolishing inequality would change this, but he was understandably vague about this point, since once you have described humans as economically determined, there is no coherant way to get freedom back. Even if "utopia" were achieved, people would still be determined by their now presumably ideal econmomic conditions.
For all the atrocities it created in practice, the Marxist view at least had more intellectual integrity in dismissing freedom than the nerd orthodoxy of embracing both a Libertarianism that posits free will and a materialist science that denies it is possible.
What are you talking about, seizer?
The only country in western europe that isn't socialist is spain (who also happens to be the most backwards country in western europe).
-ElCabron
at work, don't remember my password
In the absence of metaphysical free will, what right or attribute of a human being is violated by political coercion? What is taken away from us when we are coerced? Common defenses of freedom, including the Libertarian ones I am familiar with, speak of people "having the right to make their own decisions" (clearly a mythic right if you don't make decisions in the first place), "operating as free agents" (for example, in a "free" market), and so on, which are appeals to metaphysical free will.
It is true that Libertarians make both a moral and a pragmatic argument, and only the former requires appeals to "freedom". Pragmatically, the Libertarian can say "we get the best results by behaving as though people were free, regardless of whether this is really the case" - thereby black boxing the problem. But this rules out appeals to principle and leaves the Libertarians proving that their results are best in each particular case (and that their definition of "best", which is hotly contested, is, well, the best). A much weaker stance than Ls are used to.
I think it incoherant to be a scientific but not historical materialist. Of course, being an historcial materialist doesn't mean you have to accept Marx's particular theories, any more than being a physicist obligates you to accept a particular physical theory.
No! only if the individual is forced to contribute. Many give voluntarily, but do not want to be forced to give. It's the principle of the thing.
This is simply not so. European nations have existed as entities for over a thousand years. They have developed a consistent CULTURE that is familiar 'first hand' with long term consequences. This is where the 'socialist' interpretation comes from. Europeans KNOW that their actions affect their neighbors - so they are more considerate and respectful of other's rights.
This is not 'socialism', it is cultural courtesy and social responsibility. mericans have only been around as a culture for 200 or so years. They are used to fast, faster, fastest. Hit and run, boom and bust. There's no longevity. This is why there are abborations such as Jack Kevorkian, Insurance fraud, and a 60% divorce rate. Americans, as a culture, do not understand the meaning of COMMITMENT to your FELLOW MAN.
We used to (blame the 60's and 70's). The 60% divorge rate stastistic comes from % of marriages that end in divorce not the % of people that have been divorced. Where I live most, ppl i know have only been married once, but there are some ppl who have been married and divorced a lot of times. Americans have only had one major war on their own soil in their entire history, and that one was against themselves. Europeans as a culture, have been through war after war, for enturies. They know that they can depend on each other in times of need. And this is how I get to the point of the original article. Europeans are culturally conditioned to work towards a COMMON GOOD with no holds barred - precisely how open source software fits into the equation.
Americans arn't conditioned to work for the common good. Even the phrase "common good" has bad Borg like conotations. Americans (present company exempted) try to get ahead at all costs, even by ripping each other off. This is why copyrights are such an issue, this is why people sue each other for 'intellectual property' and other frivalous bs, this is why there is insurance fraud and why generations of people spend their lives on welfare. Microsoft is a red-blooded American company. Linus is a Finn - a European academic. ($$$'s are good bait)
Not all americans are like this. Many are though (unfortuinately). I disagree thas ms is a "red-blooded American company." "Red-blooded American" usualy refers to working hard, paying your taxes and your bills, obeying the law (this includes but is not limited to trafic laws), taking care of ones family, being patriotic, and being willing to fight for one's country. I have lived in the US for a while now, even though I am not a citizen (yet), and i personally think its a very good place, better than most infact. I am curently a citizen on the UK and Equador, and I am a resident alien in the us. (try to figure that one out:]) #include
This 'rugged individualism' and nose to the grindstone belief is destroying the mental health of families, which I think, IMHO, is a very, very bad thing. You will note the high rates of murder this country has. I think it's because that money means more than human life in America. Is it such a bad thing to question our society or should we just play along and smile and pretend nothing is wrong?
ElCabron
i'm at work, don't know my passwd by heart
Hmm, interesting. Many of my European friends say that the cops here are nicer than their European counterparts (especially the Swiss!!)
...and the germans.
Linux and FreeBSD are used massively in Japan yet there
is very little Japanese contribution. Why not, are they just
takers?
And how about Russia and India, poor countries with much
talented programmers. Why is there so little contribution
from them I wonder.
Germany is the biggest contributor. I think it's because of the
old fashioned good quality of their universities and the
general mentality of the German people.
European nationalism comes from the Roman ages.
Crap. Learn some history, smoke less crack, get a job. Not necessarily in that order, of course, but all three are advisable.
The modern European nation-states that we now know and love mostly coalesced in the last four or five hundred years. Italy wasn't unified between Roman times and the 19th century, nor Germany. France got it together a bit earlier, as did England. Ever heard of Flanders? As an independent nation? The Papal States? The Kingdom of Naples? The Florentine Republic? The Holy Roman Empire? Hesse? Prussia? In "the Roman ages" (whatever those were
um, really, speaking as an american wanker, one bonehead flame deserves another, i guess . . .
if it's any consolation, i ain't much fond of england but i sympathized with y'all when i read that guy's obnoxious response. it wasn't at all fair or even sane. "out to lunch" indeed.
oh, well. if we'd've let hitler bomb you guys a little longer i'm sure you'd be causing us less trouble now
Well, at least we do if our "other" nationality's government doesn't make laws to keep us from participating.
Look, these Europeans are a bunch of pansies and perverts, prancing around in their tight pants drinking white wine and nibbling wursts and pate all day. The only exception is the British, who are a race of misshapen, toothless neanderthals who can't even speak their own language properly.
We could conquer the whole place in a month.
What then would we do with it? I don't care! Sell it off to the Japanese, pave it over, build a mall, it doesn't matter. The point is to shut these bastards up and get them out of our hair. They interfere with us in international affairs -- butt out! It's none of their damn business! God put us here with the power we have, and if he'd wanted them to have it, they would -- so they should just butt out and let us try to get the world in working order for once. It's for their own damn benefit, how stupid must they be not to see that.
Their art is disgusting pornography (it's all about the Rape of Lettuce, the Rape of the Shaving Women, rape, rape, rape!), their food is all just internal organs and crap, their beer is weak (not like the real Rocky Mountain MAN'S brews in the U. S. of A.), their cars are puny little runty things, damn, I don't know why they even exist on this earth! Their women are all shaved bald with hairy armpits, they swear like sailors -- did you know that in Europe, boxing is a sport only for women? The men can no longer compete, they get their asses kicked! The average European woman can bench-press 231 pounds, while the average European man won't even try!
For every eleven lobsters sold in Paris, fully SIX of them end up whoring themselves to survive, peddling their asses on the street corners of the Foborg Sant Yaddayadda because the effete, pointy-headed Parisian powder-puffs are too WEAK-WILLED to kill and eat them! The other five, of course, are hewn to bits and gobbled up by American tourists, driven to the deed by confusion, hunger, powerful Parisian crack, and a mortal terror of having to go back to fucking Cincinatti and tell the secretary in the next cube that they didn't eat none of that there Frenchy food. Them's big red bugs, Clem, better not eat them, dunno but what they might not be Martians or what-all, by golly it sure don't look none like none a them critters what took out Ma's ovarian cysts last year and did such a nice job sewing her back up even if they did might I say touch me in some places that I really didn't think appropriate, still the price was right, you know what I mean?
Clearly, the answer to the whole European problem is immediate and total annihilation.
Amen brudder,
A good number of the libertarians I listen to make me think that the philosophy is a refuge for self-centered people. Hope they have fun with themselves. I agree with their goal of reducing gov't influence where possible but most of them seem to be rather extremist about it.
-wrote down my password but forgot my nick name-
haystratearthlinkdotnet
You forgot to mention their movies. Plots and dialogs, I don't want to hear dialog, I just want explosions and tits! Dialog is so boring.
Plus, they think their meat is tainted? The reason they get mad cow disease over there is because when they try to be like us Red-Blooded American men, they go sick in the head. They're wimps, face it. They don't understand that if you're going to lose a fight, you at least bite of the guy's ear. Common knowledge out here. They can't understand that.
And the Spice Girls. Only Europe can come up with something that cheesy. Sporty, Scary, Baby, Ginger, and what's the fifth one, Puck? Pod? Pervert Pete? I know it's some stupid British word for a chick with a dick.
Then those British all drink tea. The only people who drink tea are either wimps, losers, or those who sodomize small farm animals.
We need to make more nuclear bombs and drop them on every city with more than 10,000 inhabitants. So what if we kill a few American tourists in the process. Only degenerate and non-true Americans would want to visit Europe anyways.
So the next time your neighbor shows you pictures of him and his fat wife in front of the Eiffel Tower, kill him.
At work, I was semi-guaranteed I would have a shot at demo'ing Linux for a new install of about 70 computers.
Now, I've been told it won't happen. My middle manager likes NT, and doesn't want the customer to see anything else.
He keeps saying it's the official choice of the Navy and Air Force, and a de-facto standard everywhere else, so he thinks Unix and Linux are sure to die.
I can talk about burlington, 3dfx, quake3 -- none of that matters.
Well, all I can say is the presence of fr, it, ru and de when I do searches on dejanews has exploded over the last several months -- piles of non-english responses to all my queries!
Well, If americans are too stupid to recognize a good thing when we see it, I guess we'll get exactly what we deserve -- the rug pulled out from under us.
I guess I view Euros as generally harder working, more intellectual, more emotionally stable. Certainly higher self esteem. But I guess there is a certain raw drive that us yanks can pull from our collective sphincter as the situation warrants.
Oh well, gotta go. Funny, this topic is something I've been thinking about for a couple weeks.
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jmcbride@networkone.net
Well, you got to remember in this country that not everyone had a social net that you did. Not criticizing you by any means, just pointing out you are lucky to have a supportive family. However when the bottom falls out, it falls out. No one is to blame. Bad luck happens. I sympathize with those who turn to desperation. As for my ex, she had a kid, had to feed the kid. Welfare sucks, wasn't enough, and she did other things on the side. Such is life. I'd call her more lazy and immoral had she done absolutely nothing.
I agree with you about subsidizing the problem with drugs does nothing to the core of the problem. However, let's be realistic. People will take drugs and subsidizing the problem is better than them killing people so they could afford their disgusting habits. It also puts the scummy dealers out of business.
You make interesting arguments, I enjoyed this discussion so far. But I still see gov't loans and grants as a socialistic idea. I got some fat grants for being poor and I'm thankful for that. The rest I loaned. Actually the loans were a lot more than the grants but in a true socialistic nation, it would have been the other way around. Well, at least I got something and already, I've paid more in taxes than I've been given in grants.
About the jail statement, if you want to really cut crime in this country, give everyone jobs. Hell, pay people to clean the streets, the lakes, and the streams. I'd like to see a government that instead of funding police states in third world countries that are in our best economic interests, why not take care of its own people?
All those people still living on that same island is bound to produce some intense inbreeding.
Just imagine if your grand parents had a bit more adventurous spirit you wouldn't be on that island, you'd be on a bigger island called America.
Main Entry: socialism
Pronunciation: 'sO-sh&-"li-z&m
Function: noun
Date: 1837
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
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just to remind you
I guess I view Euros as generally harder working, more intellectual, more emotionally stable. Certainly higher self esteem.
I doubt that is a valid generalization. We are after all all just humans and generally the same everywhere. To say anything as to a difference in Americans could only be perhaps from the departure from England, ie leaving the place for political/religious/etc reasons, then gaining independence, THEN rewriting the books on a lot of things. That drastic departure from what is the norm on the other side of the atlantic is what will produce any great difference, and it has.
Recall the free software movement was a mere after effect of what was the norm in AI labs across the country. RMS apparently liked this community and he wanted to recreate it, and now we have what we have today.
Also compare the copyright law in US to Brit's and you will see a vast difference of idea about what they serve. Although there has been a departure in US lately leaning towards what the europe peoples have, which is a shame.
If europe is anything in OSS its because they must use whatever they can to compete with the US, if the people of europe DID accept OSS and US did not it would be to their advantage because it is a Good Thing, but thats not the case. Anyone that *really* can use this and make descisions on OSS know about it and know its value and I'm not talking about some lusers boss in some lame ass job putting NT on their machines, I'm talking about the programmers, system designers and the people who will create the context of the next generations computing.
Europe doesn't have one culture and isn't one nation. It's a bit like saying Africa is a single state!
;-)
The US has a much more unified political and cultural direction - that's the difference - and that is why business and research is conducted differently in the US to the dozen or so *different* countries that comprise "Europe".
You you really need to understand this before digesting the article. Apologies to those of you who already realise this
And Windows was developed in the USA.
They are in prison.
you anglo fascists will be screaming for
internationalization then! ill be laughing too.
The title says everything! Since when is European Culture 1000 years old? What about the Roman empire, the Greek cities? Alexandre Magno? Cretian civilization? the oldest known city in the world, Catal Iuyuk in Turkey (therefore still in Europe), is about 11,000 years old!
Are you American?
Sure, they were wars... Against equally well equipped foes; where the US actually stood a chance of losing and being wiped off the map!!!
Guess again. These were wars in name only. They are no different then the Serb-Croat conflict in Yugoslavia, which the US defines as 'ethnic battles'...
A war is something that decimates all nations involved. It is not a slaughter of an ethnic minority.
"That being said, I'm not convinced that Europe's wars provide any supporting evidence for cooperation."
Unless the meaning was that the members of groups fighting each other learn to pull together better then if there was no conflict.
- the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that.
There is no competition, except maybe the typical hacker machismo - I did it first, I did it better - but it's a healthy contest.
But you have to admit, OSS is a socialist movement. It's like a food-drive, rather then an Imperialistic 'let them eat cake' dismissal.
We're doing this for the common good, not to get ourselves and our company, ahead in the marketplace.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the OSS movement will lead to an adoption of the same or similar principals on a social level. What will it take for indiviuals to get over the 'Us vs Them' mentality and cognite that we're all the same family with the same goals: be sane, live well, have fun.
ksc@wanetwork.net
Though one thing I'd say about America, since you Europeans have been breeding like rabbits, you destroyed your environment and America is beautiful.
Isn't the US the only (major) country that didn't sign the Rio environment treaty because they want to continue to blow 4 times as much CO2 and stuff into the world's air as Europeans do?
Hmm, births out of wedlock in Sweden are 53% of
all births. Births out of wedlock in US, below 30%; but you're more than ten times as likely to be murdered in a US city as in a Swedish one. Methinks our correspondent is making two errors (1) taking a blinkered attitude to data, and (2) confusing the correlation found in his non-random sample with causality.
By moving the discussion to this realm - asking me to defend Libertarian theses that I do not hold (that coercion is a priori
wrong, for example) - you've essentially ceded to me the ground that such a stance is philosophically defensible.
You do realize that, although this statement is completely wrong as it stands, by pointing out that you do not hold that coercion is apriori wrong, you have conceded me the argument, unless you can show that this belief is independent of your determinism. Regardless of what you do, Libertarians do hold coercion to be a priori wrong. Elsewhere, you try to argue that coercion is wrong if it is not "comapassionate". The argument doesn't stand up on its own, as I point out in my response to that thread. It is also an argument that Libertarians object to strongly as "paternalism". Though you are not a Libertarian, you are attempting to show that Libertarianism can be supported from your determinist world-view and are in fact showing the opposite - that your determinism causes you to abandon (or never to adopt) the values on which Libertarianism is based.
Sweden has a socialist government. France has a socialist government. Germany has a socialist government. Denmark has a socialist government. Finland has a socialist government. The UK has has a socialist government. Probably some other European countries have socialist governments, too, but I can't be bothered to look it up right now. And the socialist group in the European parliament is the largest of the political groups. So I'd say there is quite a bit of socialist leaning in Europe, at least in the part of Europe that is in the EU.
Though to tell the truth, not all of these socialists are all that socialistic nowadays. So it's not as bad as it might sound to those who are non-socialist in their leanings. But socialism is definitely way more common and accepted in Europe that it is in the US.
Posted by DarkYoda:
who cares about oss?
freeware is where it is at!!!
Inertial factors include: population, economics, ubiquity, education, american copyright tyranny....
Just as VinodV said in the halloween document, the internet is an IQ magnifier, and there is simply more IQ outside the US than inside (by orders of magnitude).
Yeah, the melting pot thing is way cool. And U.S. capitalism takes excellent advantage of it. But I still believe in the possibility of a global humanistic melting pot, both enabled and amplified by the internet and free software. Too bad we all don't speak/read the same language. I wonder if it's possible that english could be agreed upon as a first (or second) language by virtually all of the world's population? I think there are a lot of good reasons for this, and it would make sharing source code a _whole_ lot easier.
Imagine if we'd have let Ballmer or Berst define what "Free Software" or "Open Source" mean...
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=8^
Americans can think for themselves when it comes to more primal matters, but when confronted with the semantic nightmare and decades-old FUD surrounding the word "socialism", their eyes glaze over. We're left with a state of affairs in which most people think "socialism" == "communism", and many people think "liberalism" == "socialism". That's not good news for the quality of political discourse; it creates a situation in which even a moderate viewpoint can be demonized or discredited, due to its "association" with "failed" "communism".
This isn't about one ancient textbook; it's about a damaging repetition of falsehoods, and it doesn't just apply to this one set of circumstances. If "socialism" can become a swear word, so can "Free Software", "RMS", "Linux"... just as American politics has been ruined by draining words and phrases of useful meaning, Free Software can become a complete nonentity by the same process. And it needn't take decades for this to happen.
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=8^
Why is socialist in this context seen as a perjorative? When I talk of socialist, I think of things like taxpayer-funded medicine, social welfare, subsidized schooling, etc.; basically any situation where the government plays a role in allocating resources to individuals, rather than a pure capitalist "trade labor for resources" system. As European tax rates are higher than U.S. rates even with the higher U.S. defense spending, I place Europe further along the individualismsocialism scale than the U.S. It's not meant as a perjorative or a compliment, just a statement.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I sometimes wonder about an idea from Larry Nivens known space universe. In the belt, adequate food and shelter were free. Good food and Good quarters had to be paid for. Nobody was homeless or starved, but still there was a motivation to make a living.
I wouldn't be so quick to call poor people lazy. Ever worked a minimum wage job? It's a lot of work, for a paycheck that will either buy food or pay for rent (but not both). It's easy to say go to school so you can make more money, but after working all day every day and then having to do more work to make ends meet, WHEN is school supposed to happen?
In other words, we do have a strong inheretance based class system in the US. There are ways to move from one class to another, but simply being intelligent, honest, and hard working isn't allways enough.
The articles made a lot of unsubstanciated claims, and idle speculation based on these claims. I see very few facts that point towards the conclusions in the article.
How many major freeware projects are lead from Europe? Let's see, there are KDE, LaTeX2e (if that is concidered major), and Qt (if that is concidered free). Others?
The only general trend I can see in Europe is that academia might make more use of freeware than in the US. And I beleive that is mostly due to academia in Europe being (in general) more cash starved than in the US.
In Denmark, everybody follows the strongest player. It used to be IBM, we used to be the bluest country in the world. Now it is Microsoft.
Exactly... I wish I could have put it as eloquently.
"Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
Again, they aren't talking about politics, but attitudes. For instance, would you ever consider having unprofitable railroads routes in your country? Well, if you are European, you ought to know there are many in Europe, and they're kept functioning only because it is a service to the citizens who live on those areas. Most European countries also have free health-services (including semi-free medicine administration), Work Unions are strong and very well-established, and many other social movements even have political representation, such as the Green Party. On the other hand, in the US the unions are so weak it seems they do not exist, I nev er heard of any Green Party (or Greenpeace rallies and mettings?), and there is nothing for free (but Coke refills and OSS) here.
Again, it is not a question of politics, but attitudes. From my living experience in the US, I can assure you Europe is far ahead in those aspects.
Those of you who are from Europe--especially Spain!-- I'd like to hear what you think about all this.
Ok, I'm from Spain, although I temporarily live in the US, I still go there very often.
The reason most people use programs for the windows patform is no other than the huge ammount of piracy among computer users. Although things have changed considerably and Linux is becoming more popular, with articles in many magazines and, last year, with the release of the 1st linux magazine in spanish.
Most people believe software is overpriced (and that *is* true), so they do not buy it, but copy it. Most people feel that if prices went down they would buy the programs. For instance, a company that has been VERY successful with this strategy is Dinamic Multimedia (the makers of PC-Futbol), who sell their games at a low price, so people *do* buy their games.
In Spain there has been so much demand for CD-R technology that today many people I know have their own CD-R unit. CD-R disks can be bought for about $1.25-$1.50 (just for audio, that is 2-3 times cheaper than chrome-based audio-cassettes!!!)
Countries worried about US technical dominance, and that have no real operating system industry to speak of have nothing to lose and everything to gain from OSS.
Also, anyone who might have a potential run-in with the US government (in theory, that could be anyone) should be leary of accepting closed-source programs from the US, especially after that Iraq-printer trojan thing.
I expect in the near future the edge belongs to Europe, but beyond that I'd say India and China.
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I may have fallen for an urban legend, but that doesn't make me stupid or the feat impossible. I know of cases where virii have been implanted in printer BIOS chips.
Even so, the possibility of trojans (horses, not baloons) being included in commercial software is a real one. Hell, MS Excel contained a whole flight simulator.
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
There was a post here (again) advocating the removal of sengan. It's gone now.
I don't agree with the sentiment, but is censoring the posts really necessary?
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Europeans began existing as nations in about 1780, starting with France. Prior to that, it was all Kings, landed nobles, and Popes.
:)
I agree with your post, I'm just a bit too anal to let the 1000 years bit slide by
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
At least in the US, for most people the freedom they think they have is mostly illusion. Marxism can't take from them what they haven't got.
Marx is very plain about reducing the freedom of the most rich and powerful folks however. The idea being that the common folks will fill the power vacuum in a constructive way.
I don't think this was ever accomplished in the USSR, but the CCP under Mao made this sort of direct democracy and production work spectacularly in the early stages of the revolution.
Of course Mao was a bit too picky about the manner in which the peasants filled the upper ranks left by the Nationalists, and we all know what happened after that...
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Well, Czechoslovakia was more or less occupied. That'd piss anyone off, regardless of whatever nice government the conquering nation may have.
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Other countries have more subsidies than the US does. I hardly think you can place the blame there.
I think a better culprit would be the fact that we are so fabulously affluent that no one gives a fuck anymore, and is content to scapegoat government-susidized bastard trash for everything bad that happens.
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
This is the funniest thread I've read in a while.
I guess if anything can be inferred from this little exchange, it would be that Brits and Americans are pretty damn similar in outlook and temperment.
I don't know of another culture where people make inbreeding jokes.
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
"Social Anarchism" is oxymoronic, and exists only in the world of KMFDM and British punk.
Anarchism is completely theoretical anyway, like pi, absolute zero, fifth normal form, and the bug-free service pack.
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"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
It seems that many laws are pushed to regulate and control everything about software and communication, because it is power. It prevents the people who do the innovating from having any control or rights. If I write a program that takes advantage of crypto for security, I would be entering a nasty and perhaps expensive legal domain. No fun.
The lobbying groups of big software companies and consultants seem to make existing monopolies much more powerful. Thought laws (Intelectual Property laws) establish and protect monopolies. Ban them and you will once again have high quality and increased production in other areas. I see so much scrap at work because NT burps a lot.
A lot of the US growth right now is driven by technology companies, mostly software and services. The growth of the internet may have the most short-term benefit for the USA, but in the long term we will have a harder time competing.
Everyone (I use this loosely here) in technology in the US makes good money, and it's easy to lose perspective. How many people do you know that make more money than your general doctor, and will this unbalanced payscale really last? Of course not.
Just like with manufacturing in the US, we will be hit hard once the infrastructure exists. In this case, once enough skilled people exist in a non-USA region where it can support a number of outsourced projects (I'm talking "density" here, like the US Pacific Northwest, New England, and Silicon Valley).
I've already moved all my savings out of funds that hinge on Microsoft, who are doomed since they cannot sustain their empire without the power of owning the desktop (infrastructure). MS will sell MANY FEWER copies of Office once they lose control of the desktop. Even if Linux takes over and Microsoft is forced to port their applications to Linux, and even if they are reasonably well ported. Microsoft will charge a computer maker more for Windows if they bundle applications that compete with Microsoft products, like Office. When Microsoft looses the desktop, stage 2 of their beating begins.
You as a computer maker will add less value if you seland put them in software companies that are less "vulnerable" to OSS projects.
Someday though, programmers will stop putting OTHER people out of work -- and automate their very own job. It's inevitable.
In Europe, unskilled and semiskilled workers are much more powerful than their counterparts in the US. For instance, in Germany the workweek is enforced by law and you can't do any shopping at all on Sunday or Saturday afternoon. On the other hand, companies and governments don't try hard at all to retain talented people. As a result, they leave, usually to the US.
Famous examples are Linus Torvalds and Guido van Rossum (although he might have just gotten tired of the rain in the Netherlands...)
Call it socialism or what you want, the great labor struggles before 1950 ended with labor unions having much greater power on the behalf of lower class workers. Upper classes always take care of themselves, so as usual it's the people in the middle, knowledge workers, who bear the brunt.
you get what someone has paid for...
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
in the spirit that it was intended, this posting is funny as hell
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
"The law, in all its equanimity, prohibits the rich as well as the poor from sleeping in public parks and under bridges." Although if you're rich enough, your lawyer can probably get you out.
If people are going to hold Marxism accountable for the undemocratic aspects of Stalinism and Maoism, I think it only fair to add that this Glorious Jeffersonian Democracy flourished in its first century with the help of a little institution called slavery, under which auspices millions were killed, and millions more lived and died without freedom. And that women were without the basic rights of the constitution until the early part of this century, and that racism thrived in the laws of the land until less than 35 years ago.
Here's another thing to consider: in each country in which some sort of communism was attempted, there never was a real democratic tradition to begin with, and in many cases the communist regime was the fairest and most humane that those lands had ever known.
Talk to any Afghani women lately?
Yes, I would describe the Czech Republic, East Germany and Poland as exceptions to my claim, especially insofar as they were essentially given satellite governments by the USSR. Also, Russia did enjoy a liberal democracy for a couple years before the October Revolution, but not really enough to create democratic institutions.
OK, I don't believe that the above is the case; you can be a determinist or a non-determinist, you can be of any political bent, and neither fact determines the other. (In fact, if you're a determinist and a capitalist, you could say that you had no choice but to be a capitalist, just like we have no choice but to say the things we are saying, but I think that's a ridiculous way of looking at it.)
To say that determinism removes responsibility is a sophomore-year-of-philosophy take on determinism. Essentially, it is the claim that if a man is about to get hit by a car, it's alright to shoot him. I don't buy that claim.
Besides, there's an indeterminate determinism, too.
Another old trick is waiting until a thread is effectively past human ken before putting your follow up to it.
I stand by my name calling, as it actually reflects my experience with sophomore-year philosophy majors.
You accepted my "inferior argument," oddly enough.
If you want an exhaustive determinism that is reflected in the language about responsibility, then you end up in a position where the discourse about responsibility is one of the determining elements in human action, and that the determined analysis of the course of human events, filtered through human cognition, creates consequences for certain behaviors. The (determined) choice to create a minimal number of negative consequences is, essentially, the democratic instinct.
I do not believe that human behavior is at the same level of determination as a boulder crashing down a hill, but the activation of a neuron is.
The "indeterminate determinism" is the fact of the practical impossibility of determining all variables - I'm not talking about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, I'm talking about the fact that determining the total state of the brain (a dynamic system) is comparable to determining the state of the world.
If you choose to follow up on this conversation, have the courtesy to send an email.
The distinction between B and C is Ockham's razor. If there is an element to choice that is outside causality, then it falls upon you to demonstrate existence, as well as its mechanisms for initiating cause without being caused.
Another demonstration of B would be, of course, the design of an equally-complex model of the brain that demonstrated the same complexity of behaviour - for example, a software simulation. In small scales, these exist, although nowhere near human complexity. Yet.
Continuing...
All you need for a political free choice is 1. lack of extrapersonal constraints, and 2. internal representation of possible options. If I go to a restaurant and can choose between cake or pie for dessert, and I have an internal representation of my options for dessert, and there are no external constraints (including consequentialist) on the choice ("if you choose the pie, we kill you") then my choice is as free as I need it to be. That a 21st century brain scientist could predict my choice means as little as the fact that my mother, who knows my preferences, could probabilistically pick my choice with comparable accuracy.
While I am defending the right of determinist libertarians to exist with a certain amount of intellectual integrity, I am certainly not one of them, so calling me a liberal or a socialist has no real sting as a personal attack.
I believe the levels of determinacy are more appropriately the descriptive levels of interaction. We do not explain the contents of a book in terms of the analysis of the physics of ink and the visual perception of it, but on the level of language and things proper to it.
Also, the claim that indeterminacy means that I can not practically predict the accuracy of a particular brain's behaviour with 100% accuracy is not a trojan horse for free will, any more than the same indeterminacy applied to weather systems is. Since we cannot predict the even more complex behaviour of weather systems with 100% accuracy, should we ascribe free will to them also?
Continuing again ...
Finally, the claim that we do not construct consequences is patently false. Insofar as we enforce a law against bank robbery, by make it significantly and predictably more probable than chance that bank robbery will result in incarceration, we have constructed a consequence for it. Parking tickets are also a construction of a consequence. It is the relative predictability of these consequences - even more predictable than natural phenomena (i.e., swimming in shark infested waters having attack-by-shark as a consequence) that is the basis of their dissuasive force.
I don't quote because I'm rather busy. When *I* said analysis, I meant the social analysis of the social bodies constructing predictable consequences.
I have little difficulty describing these things as coercion, with the caveat that they are external coercions: I can, in fact, do anything I want, if I am willing to accept the consequences (social or natural). The only absolute coercion would be if I were physically manipulated into performing an action - or, perhaps, neurally manipulated.
However, that would mean that we would have to accept any significantly dissuasive consequence as coercion, as well - for example, if I would have great difficulty finding a new place to live, and my landlord demands that I join his church or face eviction, I would also describe that as coercive, although most libertarians would balk at that description.
I don't claim that it invalidates free will per se, it does provide a basis for a political discourse on freedom that doesn't rely on free will.
Ockham's razor both historically and practically applies to all explanation; William of Ockham was a medieval scholastic who developed the maxim for theological disputes, and was developed within and for metaphysics.
If you wish to throw out science, however, there's little point in having this discussion. Perhaps God told you want to think? Shall we appeal to authority? If you want to remove empiricism from the methods of determining the nature of human choice, and wish to use only introspection, you are on your own - we wind up in solipsistic claims ("I know, because I can FEEL it.") and my originial suggestion of sophomorism will be well justified. Just what sort of validity test are you looking for?
What is present to consciousness is the facility of choice, which mechanism I've already described.
I dispute your description of the straw-man materialist. Any cognitive scientist will balk at thee idea of a proiri claiming that the laws of the universe are comprehensible to the human mind. It's those who believe in a ghost-in-the-machine who would believe that human knowledge is universalizable; since I believe that human sentience is an emergent property that optimizes survival and does a bunch of amusing things additionally.
In any case, your attempts to move the nature of the debate are noted: originally, I was defending the notion of a determinist libertarianism against the idea that libertarianism relied on a belief in free will (even though, mind you, I'm not a libertarian.) Then you moved to a debate against determinism in general. Then you moved to a discussion on coercion and totalitarianism. Now you want to pit science against religion. Would you care to isolate your claims? Or would that make them too vulnerable?
By moving the discussion to this realm - asking me to defend Libertarian theses that I do not hold (that coercion is a priori wrong, for example) - you've essentially ceded to me the ground that such a stance is philosophically defensible. We can have a discourse about coercion and personal rights without appealing to metaphysical free will.
My own personal view is that insofar as coercion is non-compassionate, it is to be avoided where possible; it's an essentially Buddhist perspective on political right. Compassion is simply a basic component of the human psyche, and cannot be appealed to as a universal moral law. If you are looking for only universal moral law as the basis of moral behavior, then you are hamstringing yourself. Of course, if all you are claiming is that you cannot have a univeral law of right without a universal moral law, then that's nearly tautologically accurate. However, a determinist libertarian can have a rule or theory of right that does not rely on universal moral law, but instead out of a theory of human nature, or even an appeal to common preference.
I am going to sum up the determinist libertarian's basis in a few easy sentences, so that you won't again become confused:
1. The fact of determinism does not justify political coercion.
2. The fact of determinism does not obviate the faculty of choice: the faculty of choice is the ability to concieve of a multiplicity of options, process those options in cognition, and select an option. That the processes of cognition in evaluation options is internally determined is politically irrelevant.
3. A libertarian can claim that no political authority is justified in constraining the faculty of choice. A determinist theist - e.g., a Calvinist - might even note that political attempts to constrain choice demonstrate a disrespect for divine Will. A non-theist determinist might say that constraining choice is an offense against human potential, or is uncompassionate, or use both utilitarian and deontological basis for criticising the political constraint on choice.
Clear enough?
You continue to run like butter in heat.
My theory of choice was a straightforward one from another post: that all that is required for free choice without metaphysical free will is the ability to mentally represent different options as available and then evaluate those options in light of their benefits, risks, etc. The evaluation process itself can be determinist, but there would still be a capacity for choice. If you want to use the word moral agency to describe this process, fine. Moral considerations are part of the evaluative process. In a neural network model, moral nodes may excite or inhibit specific action nodes.
There has been much empirical work on the nature of decision making and choice, including priming effects, framing effects, and even lesion studies - Descarte's Error, by Michaal Demassio, is a good lay description of much of the work that has been done. I myself have done research work on such models for (non-moral, quantitative/comparative) mechanisms of decision making, in which we made models of decision-nets, made predictions, and then tested them experimentally.
You have moved the grounds of debate from the question of the relationship between determinism (which need not be materialist, by the way - I offer the historical example of Calvinism) and libertarianism, to an assault on science and materialism (including a straw-man depiction of a materialist who claims a-priori that the human mind is capable of any act of knowledge, when I don't know anyone who is actually capable of mentally concieving a superstring vibrating in 10 dimensions.)
Finally, let me demonstrate how my non-Libertarianism functions in such a way that is irrelevant to determinism questions, and still allows for maneuvering room for a determinst Libertarian.
My claim is the choice is not maximized by the removal of coercion, but that choice is maximized by actively proliferating a construction of choices, and the political freedom is better described as the construction of an optimal number of choices. This is classic liberal toleration - "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations," if you will. I hold that public institutions such as public education, public transportation, and social safety nets proliferate choice by 1. reducing anxiety about basic needs, thereby advancing everyone up Maslow's heirarchy of needs, 2. reducing pressure to compromise personal liberty in the interests of survival. That the cost-to-choice of forced taxation and redistribution of goods is less than the cost-to-choice of wage slavery, lost educational opportunities, lack of mobility, and need to concern with basic survival.
Now, a determinist libertarian could authentically take issue with the above claims, on a variety of bases. However, nowhere is my objection to libertarianism predicated on an objection to free will or determinism - the hypothetical libertarian and myself could have a debate about the above claims without resorting either to simple utilitarianism or to abandoning determinism. Resort to utilitarianism would move that libertarian to the pragmatist camp, of course - that given a set of practical social goals, the absence of political coercion would be the optimal way to achieve them. However, the proliferation of choice is not itself a utilitarian value - it may even have negative utility over a span of time, but both I and the libertarian may hold that it is categorically better to maintain a proliferation of choice than, for example, diminish a cholera epidemic or increase consumer spending.
The fact that human nature is neutral to the argument is ridiculous -if human beings were tempermentally incapable of moral behaviour, just what significance would moral law have?
Libertarians can appeal to common preference by claiming that shared values mandate libertarianism and demonstrating it. They do not have to directly claim that freedom is intrinsically a moral right - they can claim that it is an emergent right, that it follows from another value. You are the one trying to limit libertarianism into yet another straw man. All a libertarianism has to claim is that political coercive force is never justified - the nature of justification can differ from one libertarian to another. A rights-based libertarian would claim that the benefits of coercion still do not justify it.
http://hegel.cs.man.ac.uk/systems/Maverik/
Innovative software, under the GPL.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Free will vs. determinism arguments are exceedingly tiresome. You are welcome to email me at the above address if you wish to continue it, I don't want to subject the rest of Slashdot to it.
No, please do continue this discussion. I am finding it exceedingly interesting.
I'm not that interested in free will vs. deterministic arguments, this hasn't been the focus of this discussion. Instead I've been exposed to the idea that marxism (and hence socialism and communism?) are based on the assumption that we have no free will, while capitalism is based on (or more importantly works because of) the assumption that we do have free will.
Personally I've found this to be a stunning and valuable revelation. Let the man speak!
Capitalism pits us all against each other, dog eat dog, with no safety nets, except of course if you're born rich.
The best thing and the worst thing about capitalism. I think that the competition is good, but I dislike inheritance. I feel that inheritance encourages generation of wealth by the individual at a cost to society.
We know communism failed, but please don't equate socialism with communism
I didn't equate socialism with communism, I pondered whether, they are both derived from marxism and hence are based on the assumption that free will does not exist.
Socialism seems to be working just fine. Ask anyone in Northern or Western Europe. They love it.
I was born in a socialist country, it was great... while we could afford it. But the beancounters made us rationalise. State owned enterprises were sold to foreign compaines, education and health care went from being free to user pays overnight, and the unions were disempowered (through the government passing laws to require the negotiation of individual contracts).
I don't envy socialism, it bankrupted my country. Don't bother to hold it up as some kind of political ideal, to me it symbolises stupidity and gluttony.
In this country, you're only free if you could afford to be free.
That's true in any country. Wealth is a prerequisite to freedom. Thus the importance of using the most efficient system or resource allocation possible. (Which I believe to be capitalism)
Before I got into computers, I had so many problems with cops it was unreal, and it was all for one thing, I lived in working class neighborhoods, therefore, I was a criminal. Now, is that freedom?
No that's reality.
The cops called out to him to stop (in Polish), but he thought they were talking to someone else so he kept walking. They sicked their big German sheperds on him, and he panicked and started running. This was taken as an admition of guilt, so they let the dogs chew on him a while and whacked him a couple of times with their batons while he lay on the ground. He had to spend the night in a drunk cell with plenty of drunks, but when they found out he was a (western) foreigner the captain of the police station was on his knees apologizing, all but asking to lick my friend's shoes clean. He didn't dare sue them since he was going to spend a second semester there. When he came home his mother almost fainted when he showed her the bloodied tatters that used to be his jeans.
I guess police attitudes in the US differ a lot between, say, Vermont and South Carolina too?
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
To this day some brazilian universities will only use Russian authors to teach higher math to undergraduates.
And what country did Linus Torvalds get his education in?
And where did he originally start the kernel?
And why does it look like Americans think God created them to take over the world.
I offer free EUROPEAN beer (as much as you can drink) to everyone answering these questions correctly and showing up at my house!
Yeah, it's really sad. The extent of people's knowledge of history are names of president's and kings and queens.
Before we had labor unions, kids would be literally worked to death. When the unions initially started, companies hired the Pinkerton detectives to shoot protesters. The United States gov't usually intervened, almost always on the side of big business. But labor unions grew too strong and they eventually won safer working conditions, a living wage, a forty-hour work week, child-labor laws and benefits.
Personally, I'd like to kick anyone's ass who crosses a picket line because the battle still goes on.
Ah, why work when you can deal drugs? well,let me tell you something. many socialist european nations give drugs away, putting the drug dealers out of business and making it so that drug addicts don't have to kill for drugs.
In true socialism, you have a society based on cooperation. If John down the street gets laid off, he knows he has a safety net so he doesn't need to commit armed robbery to get that loaf of bread for his family. But in this country, people believe if you're poor, you're lazy, you're scum. I came from poverty, amigo. Some of my friends worked much harder than I did and they're in jail. They had good intentions too but poverty broke their spirits. That's hard for a middle-class man like I assume yourself to understand. (My apologies if I'm wrong). I was lucky because I took advantage of a socialist idea we have in this country called student loans. The gov't loans you money for college and when you graduate, you pay it back. Now I'm on my way to being very rich. It's too bad that not all the people I grew up with made it. One of my ex's is now a prostitute. She was a good woman but you'd probably see her as lazy and immoral. Several are in jail. Two are dead.
forgot to log in
Most European countries (all?) do have socialist economies. This is the reason for the extremely large taxes and government subsidies. I don't know if this definition is changing with many ex-government companies becoming private.
Don't get the economies confused with the types of government.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
"We could be happy if the air was as pure as the beer"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
The chief fault with this interpretation is that it considers government coercion to be the only measure of how caring a population is. While U.S. culture does in fact over-emphasize the pursuit of wealth, it is balanced by a cultural expectation that individuals are to support various charities.
Rugged Individualism is something of a myth even within the U.S. Without a strong government to help them out, the early settlers learned to help each other -- and found that they preferred to do it themselves.
Rather than being more caring, socialism (when coerced by the government) is an abdication of one's social responsibilities. From what I've seen discussed here, I have to doubt whether Europe is really more involved in OSS or not. Regardless, an awful lot has been done in the U.S., so there must be something more to this than just capitalism v. socialism.
Nonetheless, the U.S. has its many faults. But then, so does Europe and everywhere else.
Alan.
As usual, I've seen some pretty poor quality posts around. This one in particular merits attention, for this:
Other than Mr. Torvalds, where are the Europeans on this list? And he lives in the US now, too.
Troll. You don't even know what he's doing at Transmeta, so how can you really make presumptions about his motives for moving?
How about Alan Cox, well known for living in the UK? How about Andrew Tannenbaum, author of that old favourite, Minix? (Denmark, I think)
And Microsoft wants to milk as much British brainpower as possible by setting up labs within the reach of many Cambridge students... Not to mention the University has refused some MS money on grounds that "[they] do not want to encourage this approach to computing". That's academic independence.
I can't be bothered to name any more names because individuals without statistics are meaningless. Otherwise you'll be saying "World War II" or "Declaration of Independence" and that really bores me...
My country is better than yours. nyah, nyah nya nyaaah nya...
> Europe is less under the grip of the Corporate
> State, yes (and more under the grip of the
> Police State)
Having worked in the US and in Western Europe, I don't quite see what you are alluding to. Several people, having witnessed US and european cops in their tasks, told me that US cops tended to be ruder and to resort to force more often.
My personal feeling is that the US federal state is quite an oppressive bureaucracy. The mere idea of allowing tax agents to build armed operations seems outlandish in Europe.
I think that the reason is that US laboratories tend to have huge means. DARPA $500k research contracts for relatively small things seem to be relatively commonplace in the US. In Europe, it seems that governments are more reluctant to dole out money.
Russia seems to have been very strong in mathematics and theoretical computer science. Impressive stuff. Of course, nowadays, most good Eastern European researchers are in Europe and the United States...
Many unemployed people don't have the money to pay for electricity, let alone a computer and an Internet access.
Clear??? To whom?? I don't agree with this at all. The amount of software being produced is about right considering the populations of the US and Europe. Maybe it just people from the United States (of which I'm one of) don't hear much about Europe and the rest of the world in the news, since most of the news and television is US-based.
Microsoft's software is less common in europe due to good ole fashion european nationalism. Similar to the "Buy American" craze here in the US, people are less likely to buy something made in another country (not to mention the extremely high price on MS software).
Maybe it's because the cult of wealth is less rampant than in the U.S.
. . .
Current trends that put infrastructure-building into the hands of short-term-thinkers are quite frightening to them.
. . .
Association of a price with a value is not mandatory here.
. . .
Europe's communitarian reflexes may well play as a strength, while U.S. commercial prejudices and predispositions may cause America to take a back-seat . . .
My favorite irony is the fact that American "rugged individualists" are the most compulsive groupthinkers on earth, while more communitarian societies tend to be a great deal more intellectually pluralistic and open. This (among other, darker desires) drives us to play to the least common denominator in all things. Americans have a weird belief that any motivation other than short term gain is somehow vaguely immoral, or at best disreputable. Well, we've ruined every major industry in the U.S. but one (computers) with that crap; shall we go for a clean sweep? Yay team! Rah rah rah!
A greater communitarian bent isn't just a good idea now; it always was and it always will be. Most of what the U.S. has gained by its "rugged individualism" was never worth having. Not all, but most. On balance, I'd say we've screwed ourselves. The bottom line is that a culture IS a community, and if people within that culture pretend that it isn't, they're ignoring reality and they're going to break things.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Socialism is a style of economics, not a style of government. . .
There has been a longstanding tradition of the Republican Party in the U.S. trying to paint these with the same brush, as if totalitarianism is somehow the inevitable result of Socialism. By responding to the word 'Socialist' as if it were an insult, you are helping them make their flawed point.
Uh, yeah, what he said!
I wuz gonna post something to that effect but I got like totally off the subject.
By the way, though, the Democrats have often been guilty of the same crap as the Republicans.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Hmm, interesting. Many of my European friends say that the cops here are nicer than their European counterparts (especially the Swiss!!).
Yeah, but then there's the upstate NY state trooper who damn near ripped off my door handle and put me through endless drunk-tests, waving my arms around two feet from traffic when he caught me going maybe 15 mph over the limit . . . And searched my car . . . I was cold sober and very polite (I'm always polite w/ those guys; there's a well-known moving violation called "Failure of the Attitude Test" . . .
ALL cops can be pricks, but we're only pissed off at the ones who've been pricks to us -- which tend to be the ones at home, 'cause they've had more opportunity. Brendan Behan hated Irish cops intensely ("The harp of Ireland will never want for strings as long as there's a gut in a peeler!"), but he thought the cops in Paris were grand guys. He was even easier on ENGLISH cops than on Irish cops.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
LSD was invented by Hofman, in Switzerland, in the 1940s.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. -Albert Einstein
Americans seem to have this view, that if a majority of individuals in a society actually consider the welfare of the society in their actions, then those individuals, and therefore the society they comprise, is necessarily SOCIALIST.
This is simply not so. European nations have existed as entities for over a thousand years. They have developed a consistent CULTURE that is familiar 'first hand' with long term consequences. This is where the 'socialist' interpretation comes from. Europeans KNOW that their actions affect their neighbors - so they are more considerate and respectful of other's rights.
This is not 'socialism', it is cultural courtesy and social responsibility.
Americans have only been around as a culture for 200 or so years. They are used to fast, faster, fastest. Hit and run, boom and bust. There's no longevity. This is why there are abborations such as Jack Kevorkian, Insurance fraud, and a 60% divorce rate. Americans, as a culture, do not understand the meaning of COMMITMENT to your FELLOW MAN.
Americans have only had one major war on their own soil in their entire history, and that one was against themselves. Europeans as a culture, have been through war after war, for centuries. They know that they can depend on each other in times of need.
And this is how I get to the point of the original article. Europeans are culturally conditioned to work towards a COMMON GOOD with no holds barred - precisely how open source software fits into the equation.
Americans (present company exempted) try to get ahead at all costs, even by ripping each other off. This is why copyrights are such an issue, this is why people sue each other for 'intellectual property' and other frivalous bs, this is why there is insurance fraud and why generations of people spend their lives on welfare. Microsoft is a red-blooded American company. Linus is a Finn - a European academic. ($$$'s are good bait)
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Why can't a democracy be totalitarian? Whether it's a politburo or a parliament that takes away your rights, it's still the same effect for the victim.
The reason that many Americans view European socialist economies in such a negative way is that many Americans feel that a concept called "property rights" exists.
The high taxation and regulation of a socialist economy conflicts with a sense of property rights. And, since the USA has such a history of strong individuals and personal freedom, handing over many of these rights to the government sounds very uncomfortable.
The condescending attitude many socialists take toward such-minded Americans doesn't help the image of socialism, either.
Now, some Americans may be thinking "Since when do we have property rights? I thought Roosevelt and Johnson got rid of those?" but the 3rd consecutive Republican congress shows there's still hope.
The earlier comment stated that the US has only fought one MAJOR war on its own soil. This is true. The American Revolution was a series of skirmishes compared to major European wars. The weak government of the US at the time of the American Revolution prevented the US from fielding a larger army, and logistics of an overseas war kept the British forces small. The War of 1812 was mostly a naval war (excluding, most notably, the burning of Washington and the Battle of New Orleans), again with neither nation fielding large armies, for the same reasons as stated earlier, plus the need on the part of the British to concentrate their resources against Napoleon. The Spanish-American war was not fought in the US, but in Spanish colonies (Cuba and the Philippines). Westward expansion did less to foster cooperation than it did to idealize "rugged individualism", and those still weren't major wars.
Contrast these with the Napoleanic wars, World War I, and World War II. Look at the death tolls, especially among the civilian population. The US Civil War is in the same league, but nothing else fought on US soil comes close.
That being said, I'm not convinced that Europe's wars provide any supporting evidence for cooperation.
Since when was it "Europeam" OSS vs. "American" OSS? Don't most of these projects tend to cross national borders?
Vidi, Vici, Veni
...
In all seriousness:
Ah, there's always one... Let's attempt to communicate with it...
Europe not much bad juju. Everyman here try like each other. Thank for good juju
flametalk. Now watch I make fire from small box. Big magic! Ooooooh Worth much cargo. You give cargo, we make you small box fire magic trade. Give Clinton-man for slave, make chief happy.
... my friends is an attempt at humour. Don't you just pity this guy ?
... of a comment I made to another.
There always one... Let's attempt to communicate with it...
Europe not much bad juju. Everyman here try like each other. Thank for good juju flametalk. Now watch I make fire from small box. Big magic! Ooooooh Worth much cargo. You give cargo, we make you small box fire magic trade. Give Clinton-man for slave, make chief happy.
I hate to make one of the first postings a bit off topic, but I resent somebody calling Europe "socialist" in its leanings. I mean, that has no reflection in reality, pal.
As for the open-source argument, Europe does have the edge. US companies are too steeped in the ethic that you get what you pay for.
France's National Front, a right-wing neo-fascist (don't sue me)racist party gained considerable success in the last elections. Germany, socialist? Never. Britain? Tories voted Labour because Tony Blair stole Mrs Thatcher's policies wholesale. Spain? Governed by Franco, fascist dictator for 30 odd years. Italy? Corrupt right-wing governments colluding with the mafia for most of this half-century. Ok, it wasn't meant to be flame bait, and I'm replying with that in mind, but it does seem like you American's have only a scant idea of what goes on "over there". Oh yeah, this is a debate about open source isn't it ;-) /OFFTOPIC
:)
mail me if ya wanna fight
Freeware as opposed to buying stuff?
Sure, I will gladly take free, but I wonder what the attitude signifies; if something is useful, valuable, and powerful, I will pay good money for it. I assume people are like this regardless of background, origin, or nationality. Am I wrong here?
All the arguments for OSS means you get control over your computer and life. If something is wrong, broken, or missing, you can fix it. There is nothing inherently superior/inferrior about OSS over closed source except for the ability to tinker with it, as it has been proven before that quality, features, and support are not functions of or relating to a closed source commercial model. Heck, OSS doesn't even mean cheap or inexpensive, though it very often has.
Freeware:is it a movement, a philosophy, or just a term? From the user's standpoint I assume it means paying for nothing. From the programmer's standpoint I assume it means no exhange of cash for goods. The question is where does the feedback occur? Why is there more than one generation of free software if source isn't available and feedback doesn't exist? In OSS the original author could get bored, tired, or die, and the software lives because someone else decides they need some functionality, and contribute, and in the nature of OSS, release said contribution.
In the commercial side, people get paid for their programs; if said payment offsets costs and efforts, continued energy is put into making the program better and better(hopefully) in exchange for a permanent and future user base willing and necessary to upgrade for new functionality, features, or performance.
There can even be a mix of the two, as in iD software's DooM and Quake games, with the mixture of commercial product and open tools, mods, hacks, and games, as well as licensed games and such.
Is Freeware just about accepting low quality for low cost, a function of 'getting what you pay for?', because Free software writers still need to eat and survive, right?
AS
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
As an Irish student in a British University (UMIST), I'd just like to point out that sunsite.* do tend to be big in general . What is nice, though, is that I can get 850 kB/s ftping from sunsite.doc.ic.ac.uk to my bedroom... Having sunsites nearby is always nice...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Right-wing government in Italy? Well, maybe, but we had state control over health assistance, electric power, phone service, school and university and other main infrastructures. And many of us think we should have going on so (while the "left"-wing government is trying to sell almost everything to commercial company).
I suppose that the above factors allow to think we are used to a socialist view about things like intellectual proprietry and OSS.
I don't even want to bother about the mafia thing... Looks like either you watched too many movies or you think Sicily represents the whole italian reality.
Seipse "Slave, I've set my life upon a cast, and I will stand the hazard of the die." W.Shakespeare "Richard III", act