Did I say that he was? I just want to know his opinion on it. He's also not saying anything about promoting illegal search and seizure, but The PATRIOT Act says differently, as do his actions.
FYI, there is going to be a Supreme Court decision on the whole "under God"/Pledge of Allegiance thing, (if it doesn't get thrown out for lack of standing) and one of the issues there is whether or not it constitutes a prayer.
The pledge was mandatory in California schools too, IIRC. And I think I know which side Ashcroft would be on, but it'd be nice to hear from the people running our Justice department, especially when it concerns our freedoms.
Yeah, guys, 51% is really biased there... especially when you can completely solve this by the simple expedient of not looking at the coin before you toss it. (or by having one person pass the coin over, and the other person call it)
USE flags. They let you compile in (or out!) support for whatever you want in your system, which is great for custom-tailoring your own sets of packages for whatever tasks.
Otherwise, you could just use the binary packages, and it'd be quite a bit like any other distro.:)
Best RPG Evar: Legacy of the Ancients -- on a Commodore 64, no less; it's amazing what they could pack in there!
Other than that, and in no particular order, Masters of Magic, Star Control II, Super Mario Bros. 3, Leisure Suit Larry 4*, Final Fantasy V, and Ultima VI...
* Yes, I realize that this game does not exist...:)
no... I have a feeling that if you had cut 99% of government programs back then, they would have been even worse off.:)
But seriously, in case you haven't noticed, we live in a very different country now, and it isn't all due to income tax. If you live the way people did back then, (and I did for a while) chances are income tax won't affect you much, in your log cabin, without electricity, making just enough to get by......on the other hand, you can't just go west anymore, and settle the frontier. And most people now depend on things like gas, electricity, cars, televisions, computers... the list goes on.
I agree with many libertarian principles, but there's a limit to what's practical, and what's feasible. You can't just cut 99% of government spending today, and not expect a catastrophe.
I agree that the current US government has stepped beyond the original intent of the Framers. I disagree that (a) overthrowing the government by force (b) cutting the Federal government's size/budget by 99% (c) keeping defense expenditures at their current (high) levels (which also contradicts (b)) or (d) eliminating everything else is a good idea, or is justified
And I think you'll find that almost everyone else thinks so too--including many libertarians--even if they agree that our current government has some major problems. Hence... nutjob.
Show me a government where 99% of the existing programs have been cut, and I'll show you a smoking disorganized unhappy desert hellhole anarchy wasteland currently known as 'Iraq'...
If those protests were insignificant, then wouldn't all other protests be rather insignificant by comparison? Oh well, I guess there's no point in making your views known in an open democracy then...
About half of the population that can vote doesn't, due to apathy, disinterest, or some other reason. Of those that do, I think most people recognize that a third party doesn't have much of a chance currently, due to how the voting system works in the first place, and the power of the two major parties.
That having been said, when a third party candidate *does* manage to get some media attention, and on the ballots, they do get votes, which shows that even people who do vote aren't necessarily satisfied with the two parties. H. Ross Perot was a total nutjob, but he had the money, he had enough support to get on the ballots, and most importantly he got some time on TV in the debates, and presented an alternative to the two major parties. And he got a significant amount of votes because of it--and perhaps enough to have changed the results of the election, had he not run.
Also, not all Libertarians are the total nutjobs that you describe (although some of them certainly are), much as not all Democrats or Republicans are extremists either (although it might be hard to tell these days). Some Libertarians are for laissez-faire economics, and might be called "big L Libertarians"; I think that such a position is hopelessly naive in this era of corporate control. Others just want their individual freedoms back, which I think is rather Constitutional of them...
I don't see why I should pay good money for a commercial, binary-only, GPL-incompatible Linux license that doesn't even provide indemnification for its customers!
No, it sounds like a much safer bet to stick with one of the big companies on this one, and avoid pissing off Linux developers and the FSF!:)
What you speak of is more of a community issue than a technical issue; obviously the *BSDs have different distributions too, (which also aren't terribly incompatible) and all of these Unix platforms are capable of using the same free toolkits.
If you set up your organization on Linux, and standardized on a particular distribution, desktop environment, stable set of applications, etc., then you wouldn't have a problem. Or you could indeed pay Apple to do all that for you, much as you could pay any Linux reseller.
As for your first point--and the only one that seems to reference my points--yes, the cost of software is quite flexible due to the enormous mark-ups involved. Other industries (music, movie, and pharmaceutical to name a few) that rely on protecting their IP to protect their profits could have similar properties, although they sometimes won't provide such incentives in favor of maintaining their monopoly control and artificial pricing schemes.
I'm not convinced that small particles are spherical, but assuming that they are can certainly make your mathematical modeling simpler. There may in fact be no true perfectly competitive economies, but that doesn't make it a worthwhile goal, and it doesn't stop you from seeing when your economy isn't perfectly competitive--in fact, it can help.
Similarly, even though (or perhaps because) no country has a truly equitable distribution of wealth, its gini index is still a useful tool, and it still makes sense to strive to lower that number towards fairness (or raise it, as the case may be, if you're already Bill Gates).
What the value should be in a competitive market, vs. what it actually is... Maybe that was a sloppy way of putting it.
"Another situation, where the free market may not operate in the best interest of society is in a monopoly situation. A monopoly is a situation where the free market ultimately led to dominance by one large firm either through luck, innovation, and savvy or illegal business practices. It has been determined by economists that a monopoly will create a situation in which we are operating at a point on the supply-demand curve that is sub-optimal. More specifically, it is at a point above equilibrium. At this point, prices for products or services are higher than they would be in a perfectly competitive economy; fewer goods are being produced; and the monopolistic firm is enjoying above normal profits (Case and Fair). All of this happens at the expense to society. Without Government intervention, the monopoly would continue to enjoy its dominant position for as long as the factor that brought it to dominance continues to exist. The Government can intervene by ordering the firm to take specific actions or a bide by certain rules to improve competition in the industry. Microsoft is a well-known example of such a case where it was ordered by the Government to take specific steps to allow others in the industry to have a better chance to compete."
-- The Two Sides of the Invisible Hand
Apple's got like $5 billion in cash lying around, Microsoft has $50 billion or so last I heard... Just to put this into perspective, $50 billion dollars is about $166.67 from every man, woman, and child in the US, or about enough for them each to buy a copy of Windows retail (or almost two upgrade editions or full OEM editions). It's almost equal to the GDP of Iraq in 2002. You could hire a million people full-time with that money and pay them $25/hr for a year. It's a lot of money.
The profit margin on software is about as high as a profit margin can be, and even when you consider that they spend money on R&D, salaries, advertising, buildings, manufacturing, computers, etc., etc. -- that's still an enormous mark-up from the market value of their products. (They both sell hardware too, and in Apple's case, there's a hefty mark-up on that as well, especially RAM--but not nearly as much as there is on software.)
So it'll be interesting to see what happens, as Microsoft slashes prices on core offerings to compete with Linux, and newer desktop environments and toolkits are developed across the board to compete with Apple. Still--I don't know about TCO, but there should be no doubt in your mind that these companies are overcharging.:)
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I think we need *more* laws like this. For example, how about this one:
Any Congressman who receives $10,000 or more from the RIAA should be put in jail...
Did I say that he was? I just want to know his opinion on it. He's also not saying anything about promoting illegal search and seizure, but The PATRIOT Act says differently, as do his actions.
FYI, there is going to be a Supreme Court decision on the whole "under God"/Pledge of Allegiance thing, (if it doesn't get thrown out for lack of standing) and one of the issues there is whether or not it constitutes a prayer.
The pledge was mandatory in California schools too, IIRC. And I think I know which side Ashcroft would be on, but it'd be nice to hear from the people running our Justice department, especially when it concerns our freedoms.
Thanks to Ashcroft, the DoJ has lost all their credibility with me. If they say it's bad, well, it must be WONDERFUL.
I'd love to hear their positions on this, and a variety of other issues; can we get a DoJ interview?
Should we have broken up Ma Bell? Standard Oil? American Tobacco?
What's your position on mandatory prayer in school... how about illegal search and seizure--an idea that was ahead of its time?
Sounds sort of like Xen's approach, but with hardware support.
Actually, there are some very efficient OCaml implementations out there, on par with C. But don't take my word for it...
Sounds good to me. Now all you have to do is convince governments that they can't tax online purchases, and the like...
Maybe if they did this for all of their patches, people would actually install them... ...naah.
Yeah, guys, 51% is really biased there... especially when you can completely solve this by the simple expedient of not looking at the coin before you toss it. (or by having one person pass the coin over, and the other person call it)
USE flags. They let you compile in (or out!) support for whatever you want in your system, which is great for custom-tailoring your own sets of packages for whatever tasks.
:)
Otherwise, you could just use the binary packages, and it'd be quite a bit like any other distro.
Best RPG Evar: Legacy of the Ancients -- on a Commodore 64, no less; it's amazing what they could pack in there!
:)
Other than that, and in no particular order, Masters of Magic, Star Control II, Super Mario Bros. 3, Leisure Suit Larry 4*, Final Fantasy V, and Ultima VI...
* Yes, I realize that this game does not exist...
no... I have a feeling that if you had cut 99% of government programs back then, they would have been even worse off. :)
...on the other hand, you can't just go west anymore, and settle the frontier. And most people now depend on things like gas, electricity, cars, televisions, computers... the list goes on.
But seriously, in case you haven't noticed, we live in a very different country now, and it isn't all due to income tax. If you live the way people did back then, (and I did for a while) chances are income tax won't affect you much, in your log cabin, without electricity, making just enough to get by...
I agree with many libertarian principles, but there's a limit to what's practical, and what's feasible. You can't just cut 99% of government spending today, and not expect a catastrophe.
I agree that the current US government has stepped beyond the original intent of the Framers. I disagree that (a) overthrowing the government by force (b) cutting the Federal government's size/budget by 99% (c) keeping defense expenditures at their current (high) levels (which also contradicts (b)) or (d) eliminating everything else is a good idea, or is justified
And I think you'll find that almost everyone else thinks so too--including many libertarians--even if they agree that our current government has some major problems. Hence... nutjob.
Show me a government where 99% of the existing programs have been cut, and I'll show you a smoking disorganized unhappy desert hellhole anarchy wasteland currently known as 'Iraq'...
More specifically from Titor, by 2008 it should be fairly obvious, and with no doubt left at all by 2012. :)
As for the economic gap, check out the Gini Index to see how we stack up. At the moment, the US is about as equitable as China in that department.
If those protests were insignificant, then wouldn't all other protests be rather insignificant by comparison? Oh well, I guess there's no point in making your views known in an open democracy then...
About half of the population that can vote doesn't, due to apathy, disinterest, or some other reason. Of those that do, I think most people recognize that a third party doesn't have much of a chance currently, due to how the voting system works in the first place, and the power of the two major parties.
That having been said, when a third party candidate *does* manage to get some media attention, and on the ballots, they do get votes, which shows that even people who do vote aren't necessarily satisfied with the two parties. H. Ross Perot was a total nutjob, but he had the money, he had enough support to get on the ballots, and most importantly he got some time on TV in the debates, and presented an alternative to the two major parties. And he got a significant amount of votes because of it--and perhaps enough to have changed the results of the election, had he not run.
Also, not all Libertarians are the total nutjobs that you describe (although some of them certainly are), much as not all Democrats or Republicans are extremists either (although it might be hard to tell these days). Some Libertarians are for laissez-faire economics, and might be called "big L Libertarians"; I think that such a position is hopelessly naive in this era of corporate control. Others just want their individual freedoms back, which I think is rather Constitutional of them...
If you believe your friendly neighborhood time traveler...
I don't see why I should pay good money for a commercial, binary-only, GPL-incompatible Linux license that doesn't even provide indemnification for its customers!
:)
No, it sounds like a much safer bet to stick with one of the big companies on this one, and avoid pissing off Linux developers and the FSF!
We need our three strikes laws, so that harsh crimes like... stealing videotapes... send a message to.... aw fuck it.
What you speak of is more of a community issue than a technical issue; obviously the *BSDs have different distributions too, (which also aren't terribly incompatible) and all of these Unix platforms are capable of using the same free toolkits.
If you set up your organization on Linux, and standardized on a particular distribution, desktop environment, stable set of applications, etc., then you wouldn't have a problem. Or you could indeed pay Apple to do all that for you, much as you could pay any Linux reseller.
As for your first point--and the only one that seems to reference my points--yes, the cost of software is quite flexible due to the enormous mark-ups involved. Other industries (music, movie, and pharmaceutical to name a few) that rely on protecting their IP to protect their profits could have similar properties, although they sometimes won't provide such incentives in favor of maintaining their monopoly control and artificial pricing schemes.
It always entertains(/depresses) me that the US is about on par with China on this one...
I'm not convinced that small particles are spherical, but assuming that they are can certainly make your mathematical modeling simpler. There may in fact be no true perfectly competitive economies, but that doesn't make it a worthwhile goal, and it doesn't stop you from seeing when your economy isn't perfectly competitive--in fact, it can help.
Similarly, even though (or perhaps because) no country has a truly equitable distribution of wealth, its gini index is still a useful tool, and it still makes sense to strive to lower that number towards fairness (or raise it, as the case may be, if you're already Bill Gates).
Apple's got like $5 billion in cash lying around, Microsoft has $50 billion or so last I heard... Just to put this into perspective, $50 billion dollars is about $166.67 from every man, woman, and child in the US, or about enough for them each to buy a copy of Windows retail (or almost two upgrade editions or full OEM editions). It's almost equal to the GDP of Iraq in 2002. You could hire a million people full-time with that money and pay them $25/hr for a year. It's a lot of money.
:)
The profit margin on software is about as high as a profit margin can be, and even when you consider that they spend money on R&D, salaries, advertising, buildings, manufacturing, computers, etc., etc. -- that's still an enormous mark-up from the market value of their products. (They both sell hardware too, and in Apple's case, there's a hefty mark-up on that as well, especially RAM--but not nearly as much as there is on software.)
So it'll be interesting to see what happens, as Microsoft slashes prices on core offerings to compete with Linux, and newer desktop environments and toolkits are developed across the board to compete with Apple. Still--I don't know about TCO, but there should be no doubt in your mind that these companies are overcharging.
DON'T LOOK!
This publicly available Caldera documentation could contain items including but not limited to proprietary, unpublished SCO code, copyrights, trade secrets, and/or patents!
And you have jwz to thank for it, eh? I guess you can start moving people away from Linux next...