Like to point out another cultural obstacle to efficient generation of power. Bucky Fuller pointed out that a single location, across the Bering Straits, would link a worldwide electrical grid. Since the sun is always shining on about half of the earth, even without power storage this could cut dependence on other sources drastically. Transmission losses would be the technical obstacle, of course.
I read an account in 1999(?) detailing how the government of Iceland wrote to M$ about when they expected to develop packages to run the OS in Icelandic. M$ replied "Well, hmm, never". Not enough by itself, but I just remember that this was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a member of neither the Democratic nor Republican parties. Because Vermont has such a small population, he's the only Representative. The two Senators are Pat Leahy, a very tech-savvy Democrat, and the former Republican, now independent, James Jeffords. Now that I think about it, maybe Jeffords counts too, although he hasn't stood election as an independent yet.
Maybe think about the contrast between freedom and dependency. I don't see much advantage in dependency on huge corporations over dependency on government - both limit freedom extensively.
Making government be accountable depends on having an uncompelled voice; making business accountable depends on being able to tell them to take a hike. We need technologies that enhance our ability to do, as opposed to get, and we need technologies that allow us to be independent of large organizations, while facilitating voluntary cooperation. So, we need to promote those technologies that enhance these things where possible, and keep watch over the necessary centralized organizations, whether corporate or state. I see GNU/linux in that context.
I think the large organizations of all kinds see independent action as a hindrance to their activity, and so try to curtail it in general. Ivan Illich, an interesting writer on these kind of subjects, calls this tendency the "war on subsistence".
Dare I suggest an analogy? If we were to think of this "win or lose" stuff in a game context, rather than a war context, then it seems to me that Herr Gates is using a chess metaphor, which may not be appropriate. There is no checkmate here; as some have said, you can't put Linux out of business, because it's not in business (per se). The game of Go might be a more appropriate metaphor, in which it's possible to win by simply surviving in larger numbers than the opponent.Sketching out too-huge amounts of territory (viz. Herr Gates megalomaniacal plans) is an easy way to lose the long-term game in Go.
Pretend-people like Microsoft are not actually owned by anyone. The CEO, for instance, is an officer of the corporation. The rights of the persons in the corporation inhere to them, but the corporation itself is not human. There is no logic to anthropomorphizing these organizations - it's mere assertion. And foolish, IMHO.
Call me a quibbler, but it seems to me that the rights granted by the US Constitution are meant to inhere to humans, not pretend-people like Microsoft, Inc. Grrr.
If you make people desperate, they do desperate things. Relieving the desperation is the key to long-term improvement in the chances for peace.
The history of aid to the "developing world" is not encouraging, but why is that? I submit that the model usually used, requiring as it does that the big economic actors of the country in question (usually the elite, often the dictators and their cronies) be heavily involved and quickly rewarded, is a major part of the problem. Programs like the microloans given by the SEWA bank
in India are designed to help people on a scale that they can absorb, not to rocket them from the village to modern urban life ASAP. You need to ask people what help they need, and then find a way to give it to them that leaves them relatively independent of government handouts and corporate control. Too often the help of the industrial world is mainly disruptive, because it serves the goals of the IMF or the US first, and asks questions later.
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It's fanatacism that't the problem, not religion itself. Fanatical capitalists and fanatical totalitarian communists are both materialists, disdainful of religion to say the least, yet there is a lot of destruction and death in the 20th century stemming from the actions of these folks. Don't be intolerant.
To me, the comparison to slavery highlights the fact that systems of ownership have a structure that has consequences, and, additionally, that the idea of property has always been defined in the context of society. Don't tell me to swallow your definition of property, and then nab my taxes to hire police and courts to enforce it. Thomas Jefferson and other fairly smart people who founded this country thought intellectual property was a crock, I do, and so do a lot of other people. Stop taking my money and my freedom to enforce your views.
Having money gives me the right to manipulate the system to make more money
Or, you might say, if you repeat it enough times, it might seem like a law. Are the assumptions about human nature such "economists" base their whole edifice on descriptive, or prescriptive/propagandistic?
The equivalent of industrial production in cyberspace, namely coding, is doable with the same resources you need to access the Internet. This gives an essential equality to all participants. What Nolle refers to as "basic economic laws", it seems to me, is actually the sequestering of resources by a few based on their access to money and influence. If they can't play that game, then the system must be unfair, hmm?
I am sick of these jerks portraying their beliefs and prejudices as rock-bottom facts.
This is a method of social control, I'm afraid. It wouldn't even be necessary to make it illegal to use anything other than the "approved" OS, you would simply have to require a license and examination (or some such obstacle) to make to make the use of "dangerous" OSes tracable and controlled. "Professionals" may even support this, as they would perceive it to give them a market advantage. The means of production is in the hands of the user currently, and some are working hard to change that, just as they did with radio years ago, and again currently with legal restrictions on low-power radio. Anything to keep control in a few hands.
But, their qualifications for the "power" club rest on their ability to make money. Why should greedy people be in charge of the world? Knowing how to make the world a better place and knowing how to become wealthy may not coincide at all.
Can you explain to me for what reason corporations have the "right" to compete in the market? You are implying, I believe, that they have this right like the rest of us, but human beings have little in common with corporate entities. We are humans, they are corporations, and are not like the "rest of us". Similarly, I can understand why a human might have rights under the constitution, but why corporations? And if this reason that human beings have extended this right to corporations derives from a point of law, is it possible that the law may need to be revised?
Corporations were heavily regulated at the beginning of US history because experience with such European entities (the Hudson Bay Company comes to mind) gave a clear indication that corporate interests often diverge from human ones. We may need to re-visit the status of corporations in general, in my view.
The most powerful and wealthiest "citizens" of the U.S. are corporations, entities which have the same legal presence as persons, due to inexplicable rulings by the Supreme Court in the 19th century. I think that folks often anthropomorphize corporations, despite the fact that they are not human, and as organizations do not necessarily have a human agenda. The fact that they are run by humans doesn't belie this; history is littered with human organizations that have been vicious or genocidal. IMHO, it is the corporations that have abandoned the golden rule, and too many folks just sleepily follow that moral lead. My own feeling, along with R. Nader, is that corporations need to be stripped of their legal status as person, and instead be chartered.
It seems to me that the tradition of paranoia about continuing support derives from a mechanical paradigm where the parts become unavailable, and hence the widget or gadget can no longer be maintained. The part could no longer even be machined, because the blueprints or material specifications were held privately. These objections evaporate if you have the source for your software.
I agree that this strongly resembles the earliest stages of a colonizing process. This scheme of asserting rights over the "natives" and backing the assertion up with force has worked in Ireland, in Africa, in the Americas,...(the list actually goes on quite a ways). The question is, can the result be any different here. If not, then go for the best accomodation to the monsters that is possible, as early as possible. But, perhaps this outcome isn't inevitable, perhaps this is more like a game of go than chess, where survival and percentage matter the most in the long run. Or perhaps the netizens can take a page from the fugitive criminal J.D. Rockefeller, who found a safe sanctuary in New Jersey through bribery. (I'm not advocating the bribery part, but the unassailable sanctuary part.)
Aside from the specifics of this case, the glib statement "Extreme claims require extreme evidence" begs the question: Who decides what shall be considered extreme, and under what criteria? Recent obstructionism over the conventional theory that people arrived in the Americas before 11,500 years ago, or the resistance in this century to the radical notion that women are the intellectual peers of men are just a couple of examples of the danger of accepting authoritative pronouncements uncritically.
A recent Whole Earth review had an interesting article about mycoremediation (i.e. using fungi)of toxics. One fascinating part of the article was a competitive test between different biological methods: fascinating because it made clear that there was tension between the plant and the fungus advocates. The final impression you get is that using one, then the next, etc. might work best. Kind of like "nature", but more precisely applied.
I hope that authoritative persons (like Linus) and virtual persons (like Red Hat) counter this FUD quickly and decisively. With the history of such organizations as the AMA in mind, I am concerned that non-technically oriented folks can be flummoxed into believing that somehow Linux or indeed any alternative to MS and Apple is dangerous and needs to be controlled by law. The recent/. story on blocking software shows how easily little things like facts can be completely ignored in political decisions.
Is it possible that your intention is, at least in part, to bring up ethical questions within a community of people who are daily making ethically consequential technical choices, but many of whom may as yet see little relationship between what they do and ethical choice? Do you see any possibility that the vituperation that you receive is actually engendered by the "intrusion" of ethical issues into what some technical users see as an ethically-neutral activity, and you are targeted as its source? If this is too many questions, would you like to comment on the relationship of ethical choice to technical choice in general?
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Like to point out another cultural obstacle to efficient generation of power. Bucky Fuller pointed out that a single location, across the Bering Straits, would link a worldwide electrical grid. Since the sun is always shining on about half of the earth, even without power storage this could cut dependence on other sources drastically. Transmission losses would be the technical obstacle, of course.
I read an account in 1999(?) detailing how the government of Iceland wrote to M$ about when they expected to develop packages to run the OS in Icelandic. M$ replied "Well, hmm, never". Not enough by itself, but I just remember that this was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a member of neither the Democratic nor Republican parties. Because Vermont has such a small population, he's the only Representative. The two Senators are Pat Leahy, a very tech-savvy Democrat, and the former Republican, now independent, James Jeffords. Now that I think about it, maybe Jeffords counts too, although he hasn't stood election as an independent yet.
Maybe think about the contrast between freedom and dependency. I don't see much advantage in dependency on huge corporations over dependency on government - both limit freedom extensively.
Making government be accountable depends on having an uncompelled voice; making business accountable depends on being able to tell them to take a hike. We need technologies that enhance our ability to do, as opposed to get, and we need technologies that allow us to be independent of large organizations, while facilitating voluntary cooperation. So, we need to promote those technologies that enhance these things where possible, and keep watch over the necessary centralized organizations, whether corporate or state. I see GNU/linux in that context.
I think the large organizations of all kinds see independent action as a hindrance to their activity, and so try to curtail it in general. Ivan Illich, an interesting writer on these kind of subjects, calls this tendency the "war on subsistence".
So, you're actually saying that complete triumph over physical need would be a bad thing? What a strange viewpoint!
Dare I suggest an analogy? If we were to think of this "win or lose" stuff in a game context, rather than a war context, then it seems to me that Herr Gates is using a chess metaphor, which may not be appropriate. There is no checkmate here; as some have said, you can't put Linux out of business, because it's not in business (per se).
The game of Go might be a more appropriate metaphor, in which it's possible to win by simply surviving in larger numbers than the opponent.Sketching out too-huge amounts of territory (viz. Herr Gates megalomaniacal plans) is an easy way to lose the long-term game in Go.
Good point. These rights are affirmed, of course, not merely for US citizens, but for all human beings.
Pretend-people like Microsoft are not actually owned by anyone. The CEO, for instance, is an officer of the corporation. The rights of the persons in the corporation inhere to them, but the corporation itself is not human. There is no logic to anthropomorphizing these organizations - it's mere assertion. And foolish, IMHO.
Call me a quibbler, but it seems to me that the rights granted by the US Constitution are meant to inhere to humans, not pretend-people like Microsoft, Inc. Grrr.
If you make people desperate, they do desperate things. Relieving the desperation is the key to long-term improvement in the chances for peace.
The history of aid to the "developing world" is not encouraging, but why is that? I submit that the model usually used, requiring as it does that the big economic actors of the country in question (usually the elite, often the dictators and their cronies) be heavily involved and quickly rewarded, is a major part of the problem. Programs like the microloans given by the SEWA bank in India are designed to help people on a scale that they can absorb, not to rocket them from the village to modern urban life ASAP. You need to ask people what help they need, and then find a way to give it to them that leaves them relatively independent of government handouts and corporate control. Too often the help of the industrial world is mainly disruptive, because it serves the goals of the IMF or the US first, and asks questions later.
It's fanatacism that't the problem, not religion itself. Fanatical capitalists and fanatical totalitarian communists are both materialists, disdainful of religion to say the least, yet there is a lot of destruction and death in the 20th century stemming from the actions of these folks. Don't be intolerant.
To me, the comparison to slavery highlights the fact that systems of ownership have a structure that has consequences, and, additionally, that the idea of property has always been defined in the context of society. Don't tell me to swallow your definition of property, and then nab my taxes to hire police and courts to enforce it. Thomas Jefferson and other fairly smart people who founded this country thought intellectual property was a crock, I do, and so do a lot of other people. Stop taking my money and my freedom to enforce your views.
The equivalent of industrial production in cyberspace, namely coding, is doable with the same resources you need to access the Internet. This gives an essential equality to all participants. What Nolle refers to as "basic economic laws", it seems to me, is actually the sequestering of resources by a few based on their access to money and influence. If they can't play that game, then the system must be unfair, hmm? I am sick of these jerks portraying their beliefs and prejudices as rock-bottom facts.
This is a method of social control, I'm afraid. It wouldn't even be necessary to make it illegal to use anything other than the "approved" OS, you would simply have to require a license and examination (or some such obstacle) to make to make the use of "dangerous" OSes tracable and controlled. "Professionals" may even support this, as they would perceive it to give them a market advantage. The means of production is in the hands of the user currently, and some are working hard to change that, just as they did with radio years ago, and again currently with legal restrictions on low-power radio. Anything to keep control in a few hands.
But, their qualifications for the "power" club rest on their ability to make money. Why should greedy people be in charge of the world? Knowing how to make the world a better place and knowing how to become wealthy may not coincide at all.
Can you explain to me for what reason corporations have the "right" to compete in the market? You are implying, I believe, that they have this right like the rest of us, but human beings have little in common with corporate entities. We are humans, they are corporations, and are not like the "rest of us". Similarly, I can understand why a human might have rights under the constitution, but why corporations? And if this reason that human beings have extended this right to corporations derives from a point of law, is it possible that the law may need to be revised?
Corporations were heavily regulated at the beginning of US history because experience with such European entities (the Hudson Bay Company comes to mind) gave a clear indication that corporate interests often diverge from human ones. We may need to re-visit the status of corporations in general, in my view.
The most powerful and wealthiest "citizens" of the U.S. are corporations, entities which have the same legal presence as persons, due to inexplicable rulings by the Supreme Court in the 19th century. I think that folks often anthropomorphize corporations, despite the fact that they are not human, and as organizations do not necessarily have a human agenda. The fact that they are run by humans doesn't belie this; history is littered with human organizations that have been vicious or genocidal. IMHO, it is the corporations that have abandoned the golden rule, and too many folks just sleepily follow that moral lead. My own feeling, along with R. Nader, is that corporations need to be stripped of their legal status as person, and instead be chartered.
It seems to me that the tradition of paranoia about continuing support derives from a mechanical paradigm where the parts become unavailable, and hence the widget or gadget can no longer be maintained. The part could no longer even be machined, because the blueprints or material specifications were held privately. These objections evaporate if you have the source for your software.
But, money isn't a substance. It's a social institution. There is no money in nature.
I agree that this strongly resembles the earliest stages of a colonizing process. This scheme of asserting rights over the "natives" and backing the assertion up with force has worked in Ireland, in Africa, in the Americas, ...(the list actually goes on quite a ways). The question is, can the result be any different here. If not, then go for the best accomodation to the monsters that is possible, as early as possible. But, perhaps this outcome isn't inevitable, perhaps this is more like a game of go than chess, where survival and percentage matter the most in the long run. Or perhaps the netizens can take a page from the fugitive criminal J.D. Rockefeller, who found a safe sanctuary in New Jersey through bribery. (I'm not advocating the bribery part, but the unassailable sanctuary part.)
Aside from the specifics of this case, the glib statement "Extreme claims require extreme evidence" begs the question: Who decides what shall be considered extreme, and under what criteria? Recent obstructionism over the conventional theory that people arrived in the Americas before 11,500 years ago, or the resistance in this century to the radical notion that women are the intellectual peers of men are just a couple of examples of the danger of accepting authoritative pronouncements uncritically.
A recent Whole Earth review had an interesting article about mycoremediation (i.e. using fungi)of toxics. One fascinating part of the article was a competitive test between different biological methods: fascinating because it made clear that there was tension between the plant and the fungus advocates. The final impression you get is that using one, then the next, etc. might work best. Kind of like "nature", but more precisely applied.
I hope that authoritative persons (like Linus) and virtual persons (like Red Hat) counter this FUD quickly and decisively. With the history of such organizations as the AMA in mind, I am concerned that non-technically oriented folks can be flummoxed into believing that somehow Linux or indeed any alternative to MS and Apple is dangerous and needs to be controlled by law. The recent /. story on blocking software shows how easily little things like facts can be completely ignored in political decisions.
Is it possible that your intention is, at least in part, to bring up ethical questions within a community of people who are daily making ethically consequential technical choices, but many of whom may as yet see little relationship between what they do and ethical choice? Do you see any possibility that the vituperation that you receive is actually engendered by the "intrusion" of ethical issues into what some technical users see as an ethically-neutral activity, and you are targeted as its source? If this is too many questions, would you like to comment on the relationship of ethical choice to technical choice in general?