The key phrases of your entire post are "I would like to believe..." "In theory..." "....seem to do a good job"
The reality of it...really...we, as sysadmins turning to "The Cloud", have no real bloody idea how good the people there are. And lets face it...there are rogue sysadmins everywhere (just like rogue accountants, etc). Sure, its a serious minority of people, but they exist.
If I have a rogue sysadmin at my office, my data is in danger (whether by accidential/intentional destruction, leaks, theft, etc). At aq major cloud provider, hundreds, if not thousands of company's data is at risk.
There are definite cases for The Cloud...I have my antispam services in the cloud for example. The economy of scale meant that they could do a better job for the same price as I could internally. If you are a retailer with an e-comm presence, having the ability to instantly scale up your processing power based on need at a given moment (ie..Black Friday/Cyber Monday) without having to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment that is rarely used is a good thing.
But throwing my day-to-day operations and database to the cloud? I have no need, and I can provide the services to my company far cheaper than any external provider. Last time I priced it out, I could entirely re-do my entire computer infrastructure (Servers, desktops, switches, routers,etc) every 2 years for the extra cost of having it hosted for me. I'd be a fucking retard to do that.
But you CAN root your phone, which means that these massive security flaws are actually a FEATURE of Android phones, because it will inspire everyone to root their android phone too!
With all due respect, you've been drinking the Fox News koolaid.
Buisinesses are not refusing to invest in people because of ObamaCare. (Don't get me wrong, I think ObamaCare is a big fucking turd too).
Business are not investing in hiring people because they don't fucking have to...they're finding more than enough people willing to give up 80 hours a week keeping their business afloat with half the staff they should have because said people are "thankful, in this economy, that they even have a job" and only employing 1/2 the people they should allows them to line their and thier investor's pockets with huge piles of fucking cash.
Corporations, small business, doesn't fucking matter...they are there to line their own pockets, NOT yours.
I do agree though that the government can't do fuck all about the problem, because the problem is the very fucking root of capitalism....make a shitton of money, live the American fucking Dream baby. If they start regulating the shit out of business, then they're creating a "hostile environment" for business and they all threaten to pack up and take all their toys to Elbonia or something. If you de-regulate the shit out of everything, then you have subprime mortgage scandals and investment fraud and other such bullshit.
In the end, the rich get richer, the poor stay poor, regardless of what the government does.
The only true answer is abject pure communism where the country and economy is managed by everyone equally, and everyone gets an equal share of everything. But communism is just a failed an idea as capitalism where in reality a few jerkoffs take everything and everyone else suffers too.
Basically, the system is fucking broken, regardless of what system it is, because a few greedy piles of shit control it all.
If there was ONE thwarted terrorist attack by the TSA, you can be sure it would be ALL the fuck over the airwaves on how the wonderful beacon of security saved all our lives.
The simple fact that there have been no such announcements in the wake of such intense public hatred of the TSA only solidifies that they've done fuck and all.
Actually, at least in my own personal opinion, you have the argument wrong.
I have no issue that others have more wealth than me. People smarter/better/luckier/whatever than I took risks with their money & created businesses, corporations, etc that DO help "society" if in nothing more providing jobs. The rich can continue to get richer...no argument whatsoever from me.
What pisses ME the fuck off is that I as an upper middle classer pay something in the neighborhood of my income into tax. Plus I pay payroll taxes, local taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc etc etc so that realistically somewhere near 50% of my income ends up in someone's tax drawer. But fine, lets ONLY take my ~25% income tax into account...
Now take someone who maes the same amount of gross cash per year, but put him in the shelter of a corporation where he can write off fucking everything. Or the Buffet type where it is all capital gains, not "income".
I pay 25% of my annual earnings. Buffet pays 15% of his annual earnings.
How in the FUCK is that even slightly fair to anyone?
My idea...make income taxes a flat tax...every man, woman, child and corporation pays (picking a number out of my ass) 22% of their earnings to Uncle Sam. Period, end of discussion. No tax shelters, no deductions, no bullshiot, fuck you pay or don't do business in/live in the USA.
Pick the number so that the deficit goes automatically to $0. Then force our elected officials to strip a couple of trillion dollars out of the annual budget. Force the law so that both (a) deficit spending is illegal and (b) every dollar of surplus must immediately go towards debt repayment. Slash the shit out of the DoD - the USA can no longer play World Police. Slash the shit out of congressional salaries and benefits...get rid of the 3294587345 staffers every fucking member has (exxageration, I know). If the current crop of politicians, Dem and Repub alike refuse to do it, fuck them, elect people...NORMAL PEOPLE...who fucking will. Get these rich assclowns out of the business of making themselves and their cronies richer.
The tax system is biased towards those with the cash to fuck the most with the deductions/transfers/deferrals/etc. Ive seen above even where people are pissed that the rich already pay the majority of the tax revenues. Well no fucking shit sherlock, they have the most fucking MONEY to pay...but proportionally, they pay less per dollar earned than us "normal schmucks" who keep bending over & letting the rich fuckers in congress give it to us up the ass.
If you kill them off, there will only be a rise of new people to take their place.
These people (in general) are dirt fucking poor (in the beginning) and drugs are a fast way to make a shitload of cash.
So long as the profit margins are obscene, there will always be someone to take the place of those that die/are arrested/whatever.
Your idea only serves to increase the violence...if they know they have forfeit their lives if caught, they are more likely to use whatever means necessary to prevent their own death....my killing anyone who stands in their way.
Remove the profit (ie - legalize it) - and the entire point of their operation goes away. No profit, no drug cartel, no more drug cartel violence.
Let me put it to you this way. You invent something. You get a patent. You start manufacturing said product. I try to license the patent from you. You tell me to go fuck myself.
If I need your patent to bring a competing product, I'm completely fucked.
But that's what a fucking patent is - a legal monopoly that you have the right to x idea for y period of time. You are under no obligation to share your patent...and why fucking would you, because you're making a shitton of money?
Whether or not the Apple patents are dubious is a full other discussion...but the fact as it stands right now is they DO have patents, and they are using their legal patents to protect their intellectual property within the due process of law. Again, NOT A FUCKING ILLEGAL MONOPOLY.
And lets say, for the sake of argument, that Apple really does have an "impenetrable hold on the market" (which is a pile of flaming turd, since any other company can try to bring a better/cheaper product to market & dethrone Apple, but hey, lets say that nobody else has a fucking chance)...
It STILL isn't a fucking illegal monopoly, because Apple isn't the one's preventing the competition's success. The CONSUMER is handing Apple the monoploy, NOT Apple.
That's the fucking difference here...if Apple was using their success to buy up every component that could go into a tablet computer, that's a fucking monopoly. If Apple was somehow preventing competition from coming to market (and defending one's patents, per current law, is not preventing a competitor from coming to market), then it's a monopoly. If Apple was somehow buying up every competing technology to prevent competitors from coming to market, that's a monopoly too.
Making the public believe you have the best product? To the point that the public doesn't buy your competition? NOT A FUCKING MONOPOLY.
Whoa, you appear to have missed the point somewhere...
He wasn't talking about the "status" of the purchaser of a LV bag. He is comparing it to spending the same amount for a fake knockoff vs paying for the "real thing", regardless of what the "real thing" actually is.
To compare it to cars:
You go into a Ford dealership, and see a Pinto on sale for $10,000. You go the Frod dealership (yes, I meant the misspelling) behind the iHop next to the dumpster, and the guy there is selling the Frod Pinte for $10,000.
Why in the name of Zeus' asshole would you drop the same price on the knockoff, when you could buy the real thing for the same price?
This has to be one of the most brain-dead comments I've ever seen.
Just because another product fails to penetrate the market does NOT make it an illegal and anti-competitive monopoly that the DoJ would ever get involved in (re: "forcing Apple to spin off a chunk of its tablet division").
If my product is better than your product - perception or reality - so that nobody buys your shit...then YOU suck. YOU are still welcome to try and compete and bring a product to market that can bring my product down, just like I'll keep trying to keep my product as the king of the hill. YOUR failure to penetrate my market doesn't make me an illegal monopoly...only if I use my position at the top of the heap to prevent you from coming to market.
Now, granted, Apple is being rather uncompetative with their patent lawyers at the moment, but even THAT doesn't make someone an (illegal) monopoly - if I have patents that prevent you from coming to market, either license them, come up with something unique, or tough shit. That's the theoretical purpose of a patent...that I can make money on my idea before every other asshole can make money on my idea. Now we all know that the patent process is a festering pile of shit right now, but again, that's not Apple's fault either, and if I had patents I'd sure as hell use whatever means I could within the system as it exists to see as much profit as I could.
But then, I don't know if you'll care about this comment...you seem to be one of those fucking useless Apple haters.
Are you really suprised that they don't offer a plugin that will benefit 1% of all computer users?
Windows (and Microsoft) sucks ass. OSX/Apple is no better. But stop pretending that Linux (on the desktop) actually matters to anyone but the 100 of us here on/. that like to bitch.
I use linux, and if this article was important to me, I'd view it on my work Windows box or my own Windows partition. You can do the same. We have choices here, and if we choose to limit ourselves to an OS that doesn't do what we want it to, its our own stupid fault for being arrogant assholes.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Seriously though, GP has it right - the only people who can fix the system & make America a less corporately controlled nation are the very people directly benefitting from the fact that America is a corporately controlled nation. And anyone who dares to try to become part of the system quickly learns that they can either hold to their ideals and morals and win the most idealistic politician award while being shunned by thier colleagues, or they become part of the corporate governance and then have no desire to change the system.
And actually, you're are entirely 100% wrong in your assertion.
"True Communism" absolutely does NOT require an elite ruling class. Hell, it expressly forbids an elite ruling class.
"True" communism is where everyone has a stake in the means of production. "True" communism is a classless and stateless society where everyone is equal. Note the word "Stateless".
You, like the majority of Americans (sorry, I know I'm over-generalizing here) have been bred to fear communism. Fear it, and hate it. America points to fascism and dictatorships (ala the former USSR), labels them as "Communism", and paints them with the big bad paintbrush of the evil demonic horde.
Now, true communism probably isn't possible considering the greed and corruption of the average person...its all about ME ME ME FUCK EVERYONE ELSE ME!!! which absolutley fails in a true communist state.
But now, think about yourself...if you're like me, you're sitting in a cubicle working for The Man for whatever he decides to pay you, and working in whatever conditions he provides, and especially right now in an economy that is reaching a true unemployment rate of 20% you're pretty much fucked, and "lucky to have a job" (how many times have you heard that spoken recently?)
Now, imagine a system where you are an equal partner in the business you work in. The business succeeds, you share it's success. There is no "Man" - everyone democratically votes on the direction of the company. And before you mock this, before you say "This cannot work" - look at the fucking Amish/Hutterites/Mennonites. They all work together for the good of everyone, not just the fucking glorious leader. And, quite frankly, their communes are fucking growing like mad (at least around here). Forget the freaky religious aspects entirely, and just focus on the economics of it all...everyone there works together for the benefit of everyone. They share in their successes. Everyone has what they need. Nobody goes without food, or clothing, or shelter. Everyone has a say in the direction of the comune.
Tell me this doesn't work. At least on a small scale. THe problem of course is human nature and greed.
I'm no communist really...but capitialism is a fucking joke and failure, where the rich succeed and the poor languish. It sells the illusion of "success" - work hard, and you too can be rich! Except that's a fucking lie too...unless you are lucky, or brilliant, or a right-place-right-time scenario, you will languish in the working class for the rest of your life. You might not be poor, but you sure as fuck aren't rich either...you are a slave to The Man, and your future, your success, rides on whether or not The Man thinks you are worthwhile to keep employed...and keep in mind that his perception here may not be based in the reality of the work you do. The Man doesn't give a fuck about you, or whether or not you eat next week...The Man only fucking cares about padding his pockets and/or the pockets of his shareholders.
Tell me, seriously, which system would you prefer? One where everone wins, or one where 1% of the population wins?
Android has done a fucking great job of "copying" (and I use that in the loosest sense) thew iPhone and sold it at a price point that the average poor loser can afford. It can "do what an iPhone can do" and is cheaper. Also keep in mind, iOS market share is holding steady. Android is growing huge. And everyone else is bleeding marketshare (Hi BlackBerry!).
So Andriod on phones is kicking ass, but NOT at the expense of the iPhone.
Now look at tablets. Effectively the same price between iPad and the competition (unless it is cheap made-in-China knockoff shit, or being firesold by the vendor). No carrier subsidies. iOS is outselling everyone else what, 9:1? 12:1? Android is getting fucking assraped in the tablet space.
Actually, honestly, I think you're incorrect. There are actually 3 consumer camps in the tablet market :
1. Apple lovers who will buy anything that Apple shits out. They don't give a shit if it is open or closed, cheap or expensive, they'll just fucking buy it. They buy iPads.
2. People who want a tablet. Why isn't important, they've been caught by the tablet size/formfactor/price/feature set and they buy a device. These buyers are often motivated by price more than anything, but since Apple has been highly competitive on price in the tablet space, the iPad is the comparison they draw up against. They don't give a shit if the device is open or closed, because they'll never fuck around with custom firmwares or jailbreaking. They just want something that works based on their wants and expectations of a tablet. The majority of these people buy iPads, mostly because Apple has been very price competitive, but really they are mostly platform agnostic. Purchase split between iPad and Android is probably around 9:1 iPad:Others (pulled out of my ass based on my recollection of the marketshare and sales figures I've read)
3. Tech geeks. They don't really want a tablet at all, because it is a low-spec pile of shit computer wannabe compared to the rigs they normally run, but if they want one they want something that is entirely open...that they can hack to shit to their heart's content. These people love Android, because you can root the device & put on a custom Android firmware, but they don't buy anything because tablets are a low-spec pile of shit computer wannabe.
"We" seem to think everyone falls into Camp #3. The reality is that everyone that isn't a Apple fanboi is in Camp #2, where openness doesn't fucking matter really either. And since in this one tiny market segment Apple isn't horridly overpriced, people have a tendancy to pick iPads because that's what everyone else has & there are tons of shitty apps for it.
Hell, the success in the tablet space has been exactly inversely proportional to the ability to "hack" the device. Look at the iPad 2.
Someone needs to figure out that the average dumb schmuck doesn't give two shits about "rooting" a device. They just want something that gets email, surfs the web, and allows them to consume the content of their choice. In fact, if anything, the more options/tweaking/etc you give an average user, the more likely they'll just fuck up the device/os/etc.
Us geeks of course want to fuck with the shit we buy...but we're not the target market either. The target market is the average dumb schmuck.
So you have to use an intermediary program to load content on your iDevice. It isn't fucking rocket science here people.
And on the same line, do you know how many people have come to me pissed off because their not-iDevice has broken and all their files are on the fucking MP3 player itself, NOT on their PC? Speaking only for myself, that number is a couple of orders of magnitude greater than people who have fucked up on iTunes.
iTunes is bloated shit...but its not the worst thing ever in the world of computing either...that's called Microsoft Bob.
Slashdot Mirror
The key phrases of your entire post are "I would like to believe..." "In theory..." "....seem to do a good job"
The reality of it...really...we, as sysadmins turning to "The Cloud", have no real bloody idea how good the people there are. And lets face it...there are rogue sysadmins everywhere (just like rogue accountants, etc). Sure, its a serious minority of people, but they exist.
If I have a rogue sysadmin at my office, my data is in danger (whether by accidential/intentional destruction, leaks, theft, etc). At aq major cloud provider, hundreds, if not thousands of company's data is at risk.
There are definite cases for The Cloud...I have my antispam services in the cloud for example. The economy of scale meant that they could do a better job for the same price as I could internally. If you are a retailer with an e-comm presence, having the ability to instantly scale up your processing power based on need at a given moment (ie..Black Friday/Cyber Monday) without having to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment that is rarely used is a good thing.
But throwing my day-to-day operations and database to the cloud? I have no need, and I can provide the services to my company far cheaper than any external provider. Last time I priced it out, I could entirely re-do my entire computer infrastructure (Servers, desktops, switches, routers,etc) every 2 years for the extra cost of having it hosted for me. I'd be a fucking retard to do that.
But you CAN root your phone, which means that these massive security flaws are actually a FEATURE of Android phones, because it will inspire everyone to root their android phone too!
Duh!
I don't know if that is insulting to the original AC, or to Taco's wife's vagina.
Accountability? In Government?
bwahahahahahahahaahaa
With all due respect, you've been drinking the Fox News koolaid.
Buisinesses are not refusing to invest in people because of ObamaCare. (Don't get me wrong, I think ObamaCare is a big fucking turd too).
Business are not investing in hiring people because they don't fucking have to...they're finding more than enough people willing to give up 80 hours a week keeping their business afloat with half the staff they should have because said people are "thankful, in this economy, that they even have a job" and only employing 1/2 the people they should allows them to line their and thier investor's pockets with huge piles of fucking cash.
Corporations, small business, doesn't fucking matter...they are there to line their own pockets, NOT yours.
I do agree though that the government can't do fuck all about the problem, because the problem is the very fucking root of capitalism....make a shitton of money, live the American fucking Dream baby. If they start regulating the shit out of business, then they're creating a "hostile environment" for business and they all threaten to pack up and take all their toys to Elbonia or something. If you de-regulate the shit out of everything, then you have subprime mortgage scandals and investment fraud and other such bullshit.
In the end, the rich get richer, the poor stay poor, regardless of what the government does.
The only true answer is abject pure communism where the country and economy is managed by everyone equally, and everyone gets an equal share of everything. But communism is just a failed an idea as capitalism where in reality a few jerkoffs take everything and everyone else suffers too.
Basically, the system is fucking broken, regardless of what system it is, because a few greedy piles of shit control it all.
If you have an answer, you're smarter than me.
If there was ONE thwarted terrorist attack by the TSA, you can be sure it would be ALL the fuck over the airwaves on how the wonderful beacon of security saved all our lives.
The simple fact that there have been no such announcements in the wake of such intense public hatred of the TSA only solidifies that they've done fuck and all.
It is one thing for a private business to refuse to accept cash for a transaction.
It is another entirely for a government to mandate that ALL businesses (dealing in secondhand goods) cannot accept cash for a transaction.
As much as people like to give Apple a dick in the ass on /. this is a VERY different situation.
Actually, at least in my own personal opinion, you have the argument wrong.
I have no issue that others have more wealth than me. People smarter/better/luckier/whatever than I took risks with their money & created businesses, corporations, etc that DO help "society" if in nothing more providing jobs. The rich can continue to get richer...no argument whatsoever from me.
What pisses ME the fuck off is that I as an upper middle classer pay something in the neighborhood of my income into tax. Plus I pay payroll taxes, local taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc etc etc so that realistically somewhere near 50% of my income ends up in someone's tax drawer. But fine, lets ONLY take my ~25% income tax into account...
Now take someone who maes the same amount of gross cash per year, but put him in the shelter of a corporation where he can write off fucking everything. Or the Buffet type where it is all capital gains, not "income".
I pay 25% of my annual earnings. Buffet pays 15% of his annual earnings.
How in the FUCK is that even slightly fair to anyone?
My idea...make income taxes a flat tax...every man, woman, child and corporation pays (picking a number out of my ass) 22% of their earnings to Uncle Sam. Period, end of discussion. No tax shelters, no deductions, no bullshiot, fuck you pay or don't do business in/live in the USA.
Pick the number so that the deficit goes automatically to $0. Then force our elected officials to strip a couple of trillion dollars out of the annual budget. Force the law so that both (a) deficit spending is illegal and (b) every dollar of surplus must immediately go towards debt repayment. Slash the shit out of the DoD - the USA can no longer play World Police. Slash the shit out of congressional salaries and benefits...get rid of the 3294587345 staffers every fucking member has (exxageration, I know). If the current crop of politicians, Dem and Repub alike refuse to do it, fuck them, elect people...NORMAL PEOPLE...who fucking will. Get these rich assclowns out of the business of making themselves and their cronies richer.
The tax system is biased towards those with the cash to fuck the most with the deductions/transfers/deferrals/etc. Ive seen above even where people are pissed that the rich already pay the majority of the tax revenues. Well no fucking shit sherlock, they have the most fucking MONEY to pay...but proportionally, they pay less per dollar earned than us "normal schmucks" who keep bending over & letting the rich fuckers in congress give it to us up the ass.
THATS the fucking problem.
If you kill them off, there will only be a rise of new people to take their place.
These people (in general) are dirt fucking poor (in the beginning) and drugs are a fast way to make a shitload of cash.
So long as the profit margins are obscene, there will always be someone to take the place of those that die/are arrested/whatever.
Your idea only serves to increase the violence...if they know they have forfeit their lives if caught, they are more likely to use whatever means necessary to prevent their own death....my killing anyone who stands in their way.
Remove the profit (ie - legalize it) - and the entire point of their operation goes away. No profit, no drug cartel, no more drug cartel violence.
And this is the fault of someone other than you because??
wooooosh
Not anti-competitive. At least per the law.
Let me put it to you this way. You invent something. You get a patent. You start manufacturing said product. I try to license the patent from you. You tell me to go fuck myself.
If I need your patent to bring a competing product, I'm completely fucked.
But that's what a fucking patent is - a legal monopoly that you have the right to x idea for y period of time. You are under no obligation to share your patent...and why fucking would you, because you're making a shitton of money?
Whether or not the Apple patents are dubious is a full other discussion...but the fact as it stands right now is they DO have patents, and they are using their legal patents to protect their intellectual property within the due process of law. Again, NOT A FUCKING ILLEGAL MONOPOLY.
I didn't brag shit a couple of posts up.
And lets say, for the sake of argument, that Apple really does have an "impenetrable hold on the market" (which is a pile of flaming turd, since any other company can try to bring a better/cheaper product to market & dethrone Apple, but hey, lets say that nobody else has a fucking chance)...
It STILL isn't a fucking illegal monopoly, because Apple isn't the one's preventing the competition's success. The CONSUMER is handing Apple the monoploy, NOT Apple.
That's the fucking difference here...if Apple was using their success to buy up every component that could go into a tablet computer, that's a fucking monopoly. If Apple was somehow preventing competition from coming to market (and defending one's patents, per current law, is not preventing a competitor from coming to market), then it's a monopoly. If Apple was somehow buying up every competing technology to prevent competitors from coming to market, that's a monopoly too.
Making the public believe you have the best product? To the point that the public doesn't buy your competition? NOT A FUCKING MONOPOLY.
Whoa, you appear to have missed the point somewhere...
He wasn't talking about the "status" of the purchaser of a LV bag. He is comparing it to spending the same amount for a fake knockoff vs paying for the "real thing", regardless of what the "real thing" actually is.
To compare it to cars:
You go into a Ford dealership, and see a Pinto on sale for $10,000. You go the Frod dealership (yes, I meant the misspelling) behind the iHop next to the dumpster, and the guy there is selling the Frod Pinte for $10,000.
Why in the name of Zeus' asshole would you drop the same price on the knockoff, when you could buy the real thing for the same price?
This has to be one of the most brain-dead comments I've ever seen.
Just because another product fails to penetrate the market does NOT make it an illegal and anti-competitive monopoly that the DoJ would ever get involved in (re: "forcing Apple to spin off a chunk of its tablet division").
If my product is better than your product - perception or reality - so that nobody buys your shit...then YOU suck. YOU are still welcome to try and compete and bring a product to market that can bring my product down, just like I'll keep trying to keep my product as the king of the hill. YOUR failure to penetrate my market doesn't make me an illegal monopoly...only if I use my position at the top of the heap to prevent you from coming to market.
Now, granted, Apple is being rather uncompetative with their patent lawyers at the moment, but even THAT doesn't make someone an (illegal) monopoly - if I have patents that prevent you from coming to market, either license them, come up with something unique, or tough shit. That's the theoretical purpose of a patent...that I can make money on my idea before every other asshole can make money on my idea. Now we all know that the patent process is a festering pile of shit right now, but again, that's not Apple's fault either, and if I had patents I'd sure as hell use whatever means I could within the system as it exists to see as much profit as I could.
But then, I don't know if you'll care about this comment...you seem to be one of those fucking useless Apple haters.
Are you really suprised that they don't offer a plugin that will benefit 1% of all computer users?
Windows (and Microsoft) sucks ass. OSX/Apple is no better. But stop pretending that Linux (on the desktop) actually matters to anyone but the 100 of us here on /. that like to bitch.
I use linux, and if this article was important to me, I'd view it on my work Windows box or my own Windows partition. You can do the same. We have choices here, and if we choose to limit ourselves to an OS that doesn't do what we want it to, its our own stupid fault for being arrogant assholes.
Exactly.
Communism is scary to those in power....it puts power back into the hands of the people, not an elite ruling class.
And that scares the living fuck out of The Man.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Seriously though, GP has it right - the only people who can fix the system & make America a less corporately controlled nation are the very people directly benefitting from the fact that America is a corporately controlled nation. And anyone who dares to try to become part of the system quickly learns that they can either hold to their ideals and morals and win the most idealistic politician award while being shunned by thier colleagues, or they become part of the corporate governance and then have no desire to change the system.
We be fucked people.
And actually, you're are entirely 100% wrong in your assertion.
"True Communism" absolutely does NOT require an elite ruling class. Hell, it expressly forbids an elite ruling class.
"True" communism is where everyone has a stake in the means of production. "True" communism is a classless and stateless society where everyone is equal. Note the word "Stateless".
You, like the majority of Americans (sorry, I know I'm over-generalizing here) have been bred to fear communism. Fear it, and hate it. America points to fascism and dictatorships (ala the former USSR), labels them as "Communism", and paints them with the big bad paintbrush of the evil demonic horde.
Now, true communism probably isn't possible considering the greed and corruption of the average person...its all about ME ME ME FUCK EVERYONE ELSE ME!!! which absolutley fails in a true communist state.
But now, think about yourself...if you're like me, you're sitting in a cubicle working for The Man for whatever he decides to pay you, and working in whatever conditions he provides, and especially right now in an economy that is reaching a true unemployment rate of 20% you're pretty much fucked, and "lucky to have a job" (how many times have you heard that spoken recently?)
Now, imagine a system where you are an equal partner in the business you work in. The business succeeds, you share it's success. There is no "Man" - everyone democratically votes on the direction of the company. And before you mock this, before you say "This cannot work" - look at the fucking Amish/Hutterites/Mennonites. They all work together for the good of everyone, not just the fucking glorious leader. And, quite frankly, their communes are fucking growing like mad (at least around here). Forget the freaky religious aspects entirely, and just focus on the economics of it all...everyone there works together for the benefit of everyone. They share in their successes. Everyone has what they need. Nobody goes without food, or clothing, or shelter. Everyone has a say in the direction of the comune.
Tell me this doesn't work. At least on a small scale. THe problem of course is human nature and greed.
I'm no communist really...but capitialism is a fucking joke and failure, where the rich succeed and the poor languish. It sells the illusion of "success" - work hard, and you too can be rich! Except that's a fucking lie too...unless you are lucky, or brilliant, or a right-place-right-time scenario, you will languish in the working class for the rest of your life. You might not be poor, but you sure as fuck aren't rich either...you are a slave to The Man, and your future, your success, rides on whether or not The Man thinks you are worthwhile to keep employed...and keep in mind that his perception here may not be based in the reality of the work you do. The Man doesn't give a fuck about you, or whether or not you eat next week...The Man only fucking cares about padding his pockets and/or the pockets of his shareholders.
Tell me, seriously, which system would you prefer? One where everone wins, or one where 1% of the population wins?
Well, the intelligence world was already trying to spank Wikileaks...effectively without a real quality excuse.
Now they have the excuse, and lives really are on the line. Bye Wikileaks!
One word: Price
Android has done a fucking great job of "copying" (and I use that in the loosest sense) thew iPhone and sold it at a price point that the average poor loser can afford. It can "do what an iPhone can do" and is cheaper. Also keep in mind, iOS market share is holding steady. Android is growing huge. And everyone else is bleeding marketshare (Hi BlackBerry!).
So Andriod on phones is kicking ass, but NOT at the expense of the iPhone.
Now look at tablets. Effectively the same price between iPad and the competition (unless it is cheap made-in-China knockoff shit, or being firesold by the vendor). No carrier subsidies. iOS is outselling everyone else what, 9:1? 12:1? Android is getting fucking assraped in the tablet space.
Price > *
Actually, honestly, I think you're incorrect. There are actually 3 consumer camps in the tablet market :
1. Apple lovers who will buy anything that Apple shits out. They don't give a shit if it is open or closed, cheap or expensive, they'll just fucking buy it. They buy iPads.
2. People who want a tablet. Why isn't important, they've been caught by the tablet size/formfactor/price/feature set and they buy a device. These buyers are often motivated by price more than anything, but since Apple has been highly competitive on price in the tablet space, the iPad is the comparison they draw up against. They don't give a shit if the device is open or closed, because they'll never fuck around with custom firmwares or jailbreaking. They just want something that works based on their wants and expectations of a tablet. The majority of these people buy iPads, mostly because Apple has been very price competitive, but really they are mostly platform agnostic. Purchase split between iPad and Android is probably around 9:1 iPad:Others (pulled out of my ass based on my recollection of the marketshare and sales figures I've read)
3. Tech geeks. They don't really want a tablet at all, because it is a low-spec pile of shit computer wannabe compared to the rigs they normally run, but if they want one they want something that is entirely open...that they can hack to shit to their heart's content. These people love Android, because you can root the device & put on a custom Android firmware, but they don't buy anything because tablets are a low-spec pile of shit computer wannabe.
"We" seem to think everyone falls into Camp #3. The reality is that everyone that isn't a Apple fanboi is in Camp #2, where openness doesn't fucking matter really either. And since in this one tiny market segment Apple isn't horridly overpriced, people have a tendancy to pick iPads because that's what everyone else has & there are tons of shitty apps for it.
Well, in the phone market, another factor is the root cause: Price
MOST of the android phones are free with a contract, and/or cheaper than the iPhone.
Openness is irrelevant.
Not likely...
Hell, the success in the tablet space has been exactly inversely proportional to the ability to "hack" the device. Look at the iPad 2.
Someone needs to figure out that the average dumb schmuck doesn't give two shits about "rooting" a device. They just want something that gets email, surfs the web, and allows them to consume the content of their choice. In fact, if anything, the more options/tweaking/etc you give an average user, the more likely they'll just fuck up the device/os/etc.
Us geeks of course want to fuck with the shit we buy...but we're not the target market either. The target market is the average dumb schmuck.
Why in the fuck is this a big deal?
So you have to use an intermediary program to load content on your iDevice. It isn't fucking rocket science here people.
And on the same line, do you know how many people have come to me pissed off because their not-iDevice has broken and all their files are on the fucking MP3 player itself, NOT on their PC? Speaking only for myself, that number is a couple of orders of magnitude greater than people who have fucked up on iTunes.
iTunes is bloated shit...but its not the worst thing ever in the world of computing either...that's called Microsoft Bob.