Once upon a time, Alexander the Great had conquered a city in Persia. He gathered up the city fathers and asked: do you have any advice for me. One old man who figured he didn't have much to loose said: "Yes, sire. Don't you think it would be a good idea to have your soldier quite burning your city?".
The problem with Microsoft, they are now big enough, they need to start looking at the big picture-and they can't. Microsoft really is in a position to greatly influence IP legislation-and change the rules to create substantial open source infrastructure. Microsoft has already benefited from this-isnt Microsoft more valuable than it would have been without the internet?(no way the net would have been created with Microsoft tools).
Companies like Shell, BP, Exxon are really corporate welfare queens that create a guarenteed profit for their investors by buying politicians and passing costs onto the public. For example, these companies do pay for the costs of the pollution they generate-nor do they pay for policies like the war in Iraq that are largely ploys to maintain oil trade routes.
Frankly, companies of this nature lack the competence or inclination to do serious innovation with level playing field prizes like Baldrson proposed. They'd get their asses kicked, and that is why they are scared to death of any competitition that isn't systematically weighted in their favor.
RTFA. The prize the post you were responding to was specifically a hot fusion prize. Current intellectual property protection has limits in how well it funds certain types of infrastructural and breakthrough types of research-the prize legislation talked about in that article closes one example of those gaps-and does so by reallocation of existing resources.
The current regime sadly has not seriously tried to solve the energy crisis-or the impending resource limits implied by the growth of industrial civilization. This is a crime against humanity.
I'm suggesting an additional model. The government is already a huge customer of software. IMHO there ought to be substantial prizes for creation of open source systems critical to government agencies-including operating systems and office suites. For a fraction of what the government now pays to Oracle and Microsoft, the entire country could have equivalent applications free _and_ the government would have better support options than they have now. All this requires is rational reallocation of existing resources. Similarly, there should be similar prizes for vertical market applications for government agencies. I work for a public school district-and I'm amazed at how poor some of the applications are that taxpayer dollars are spent on.
Is there is a need to have means of rewarding inventors and researchers that include the Pro-Ams, part time pros and others that are not affiliated with the existing research establishment. What I'm thinking here is a system of prizes similar to the Longitude prize and the X prize-but something that would impact a lot more people.
What I personally think would be optimal is a both some major prizes for achievement of significant milestones(i.e. creation of the viable first fusion reactor or a cure for AIDS) and a series of smaller prizes that would involve smaller lifetime payments(work out a set of criteria that would be used to award small lifetime stipends to researchers/inventors on the order of maybe twice what social security pays so these folks don't have to mess with the mundane realities of just scraping by--and have thousands of these awarded every year so that a big chunk of Pro-Ams can expect to get one once they've showng themselves to be serious contributors). Frankly, if the government wants to be anything but a deadbeat, they ought to start giving out these prizes because a lot of agencies could barely run without free software!
Check out the stuff Marshall Burns has done at Ennex. He wrote a book(now out of print) titled Automated Fabrication that outlined the state of the art in this area several years ago.
It wasn't clear from the article what the process of privatization would be. The US originally granted (free of charge) large blocks of spectrum to private companies that had done nothing much in the way of the R&D that had made the spectrum valuable-that was a classic case of corporate welfare.
Now, it would be rather different if there is an _auction_ of the spectrum. The other issue is how long the licenses last(I favor shorter term licenses)-and what is done with the revenue from the auction. I personally think part of the revenue from the auction of spectrum should be used to reward the inventors that make spectrum more useful-and the rest should help lower the worst taxes.
The last thing we need is another boondoggle to make the rich richer.
Widespread support is largely a measure of marketing muscle. The real hard questions though here: how much longevity does the technology really have? As my article pointed out, it will be real hard to do anything really like Rails in Java. What that means is for a big block of important applications, you've taken a serious hit by using Java. I understand the reality of Java-and Microsoft. Ultmately, I question whether there are real returns in that kind of approach.
I can easily imagine canada becoming a major technological power if the US continues its race to the bottom. I don't think it is just an issue of national will. The US and USSR both diplomatically pressured other nations(i.e. Germany) not to develop orbital capability. Part of it is the notion that _only_ large countries can do anything to do with space development-though the X-Prize went a long ways towards dispelling that. If the US implodes, I can easily imagine Canada, New Zealand and Australia developing space capability. For that matter, despite deindustrialization, a lot of the US industrial capacity is in "Blue States" that are immediately adjacent to Canada-and many of the residents of those states might prefer association with canada to association with a fascist, fundamentalist United States(if that develops).
RTFA. The original article was posing Linus Torvalds as the dictator of Linux-and Java as some kind of nice democracy. Also, read the link in my comment please. There is interesting stuff happening well outside the C/C++/Java/C# world.
Rails is another interesting Open Source database development platform-but it isn't strictly "LAMP"(uses Ruby instead of Perl/Python/PHP-though I suspect we'll see a Python version soon). My favorite line in the article: "J2EE as a fear-driven technology choice made by higher powers"
Space development is something that will pay handsomely for any country that does it correctly. Right now, India is focused on projects with clear, immediate payoffs-and there are quite a few such potential projects.
It is sad the uber-rich and media/academic/financial elites running the US have shut down the US economy to the point the US hasn't been able to take advantage of technologies that were developed here. I suspect it will take something like another sputnik to turn that around. These plans on the part of India isn't really another Sputnik-but eventually we'll see something like that.
Right now, there is the image that only large countries can do space. However, when I can easily imagine some highly profitable industries get developed in space-and then major commercial powers like Taiwan and Singapore get into the act.
"J2EE as a fear-driven technology choice made by higher powers"
Whatever the claims about "Community Process", Sun runs Java and Scott McNealy runs Sun when it really comes down to it. I would suggest asking long term Sun folks(the folks that built that company and were there over 15 year ago) what they really think of that means of governance.
I think you are underestimating the potential of robotics and remotely operated equipment. The first "inhabitants" of the moon will be machines-not people.
You need to consider the value of orbital mass in the immediate future. Once a rail gun or space elevator is created on the moon, it will become much less expensive to get mass to orbit. Maybe the moon doesn't have all the minerals you need-but suddenly, it becomes plausible to build substantial orbital structures.
Bush and the GOP appear to have used Diebold voting machines to steal yet another election--and Democrats have such a history in promoting lower tech vote fraud they are too cowed to say anything.
When there are open source voting systems around(one was actually used in Australian elections) there is no reason to allow corporate control of voting software.
Now, what is needed is creating a system that has better hard encryptian and authentication. Paper ballots are subject to various forms of tampering--but hard encryption can make any tampering very easy to detect.
The Diebold system was designed with really only one thing in mind: allowing fraud by making recounts impossible.
JP Aerospace has proposed using an ion drive to take a special purpose blimp orbital.
What is interesting about this approach is the high ISP might make space fairly cheap. Personally, I find the fact that travel using this means is slow somewhat interesting. Humanity might benefit by having some "wide open spaces". Communications inside the solar system would be rapid in any event. Slow transportation might act to help discourage things like rash, interplanetary wars.
You might have an argument if the folks affected were _selling_ their citizenship rights to people that can more profitably using them. In this case though, the companies in question get to mint new immigration rights at no cost to the companies in question.
This BTW is part of the reason why recent immigration is associated with long term economic decline. What is your evidence that immigration "helps" the people that are in an area already? I can think of many counter examples-I don't see evidence that Native Americans were particularly helped by European immigration--that is just wishful thinking.
No, some countries _do_ sell visas-or have fees so that the demand and supply are somewhat in sync. I've heard canada does this with certain visas. US corps bought congress to avoid that practice because it gave US corps the abilty to lure employees at the expense of US workers rather than the expense of the companies profiting.
At other times, citizenship, required _doing something_ to earn it. Giving away H-1b visas is simply watering down the value of US citizenship. I'm saying _no_ visas should be "given" away. The fees should be such that the supply equals the demand-and work or immigration visas should be allocated only when there is clear benefit to the public--and few risks passed onto the public.
I see no evidence that the corporate welfare of H-1b has produced great technical innovation(as was promised). Basically, one particular, politically unpopular profession was targeted for foreign competition-which has meant mass exodus of US citizens from computer science programs. What is wrong with this? Well it was a decision made by political bribery and against popular will-and those things don't matter much to you. In economic terms: US citizenship is a pecular kind of property right. It carries with it a share of public lands--and access to public resources like roads. Foreigners were willing to work to gain access to those resources-and the H-1b program was structured so that essentially private companies were using access to those public resources as a form of compensation. This is little different than if a company could use a share in your home equity to compensate their employees.
What is being "traded" are various financial instruments--mainly US government debt.
You can make an argument for "Free trade" in the absence of governmental deficits. In this case, the Bush administration has a program of Guns, Butter--and tax cuts too! financed by lots of debt-this is in fact a wholesale liquidation of assets.
The US government can borrow so much due to some old arrangements-the US dollar is the reserve currency of many foreign banks. That could change-and the American public would have a rather rapid, rude awakening to the way the world works.
I think the issue of hatred here is that you hate the idea of social welfare programs that are in fact pretty popular here in the US. I honestly hope that someday you get the chance to experience unbridled Randite capitalism-I expect the reality will be rather different than you expectations/hopes.
I personally have no desire to experience Randite capitalism. I see it as just an excuse to enrich a small group of people and recreate de facto conditions of slavery/indentured servitude.
I think what you are missing here:these immigration rights are obtained at low cost by corporations, but the H-1b holders must work very hard to get access to these immigration rights. Immigration rights aren't _always_ give away for free. In Canada and New Zealand, the fees are sometimes substantial and you must in some cases show you have substantial amount of money you intend to invest in the country. My basic argument is that the US government ought to price these immigration rights at a level that benefits the existing US citizenry and that companies sponsoring these visas ought to assume liability for the problems caused by mass immigration. For example, not all visa holders are here for peaceful reasons. Whoever sponsors a visa should purchase an insurance policy that covers damage done by the visa holder. For example, the public absorbed about $500 Billion in damages done by the 911 terrorist-that damage shouldn't be paid for by the general public.
I'm _not_ objecting to the immigrants per se. I am objecting to companies whose profits depend on irresponsibly passing costs onto the general public or taking risks with public safety.
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"Yes, sire. Don't you think it would be a good idea to have your soldier quite burning your city?".
The problem with Microsoft, they are now big enough, they need to start looking at the big picture-and they can't. Microsoft really is in a position to greatly influence IP legislation-and change the rules to create substantial open source infrastructure. Microsoft has already benefited from this-isnt Microsoft more valuable than it would have been without the internet?(no way the net would have been created with Microsoft tools).
Frankly, companies of this nature lack the competence or inclination to do serious innovation with level playing field prizes like Baldrson proposed. They'd get their asses kicked, and that is why they are scared to death of any competitition that isn't systematically weighted in their favor.
The current regime sadly has not seriously tried to solve the energy crisis-or the impending resource limits implied by the growth of industrial civilization. This is a crime against humanity.
What I personally think would be optimal is a both some major prizes for achievement of significant milestones(i.e. creation of the viable first fusion reactor or a cure for AIDS) and a series of smaller prizes that would involve smaller lifetime payments(work out a set of criteria that would be used to award small lifetime stipends to researchers/inventors on the order of maybe twice what social security pays so these folks don't have to mess with the mundane realities of just scraping by--and have thousands of these awarded every year so that a big chunk of Pro-Ams can expect to get one once they've showng themselves to be serious contributors). Frankly, if the government wants to be anything but a deadbeat, they ought to start giving out these prizes because a lot of agencies could barely run without free software!
Check out the stuff Marshall Burns has done at Ennex. He wrote a book(now out of print) titled Automated Fabrication that outlined the state of the art in this area several years ago.
Now, it would be rather different if there is an _auction_ of the spectrum. The other issue is how long the licenses last(I favor shorter term licenses)-and what is done with the revenue from the auction. I personally think part of the revenue from the auction of spectrum should be used to reward the inventors that make spectrum more useful-and the rest should help lower the worst taxes.
The last thing we need is another boondoggle to make the rich richer.
Widespread support is largely a measure of marketing muscle. The real hard questions though here:
how much longevity does the technology really have? As my article pointed out, it will be real hard to do anything really like Rails in Java. What that means is for a big block of important applications, you've taken a serious hit by using Java. I understand the reality of Java-and Microsoft. Ultmately, I question whether there are real returns in that kind of approach.
I can easily imagine canada becoming a major technological power if the US continues its race to the bottom. I don't think it is just an issue of national will. The US and USSR both diplomatically pressured other nations(i.e. Germany) not to develop orbital capability. Part of it is the notion that _only_ large countries can do anything to do with space development-though the X-Prize went a long ways towards dispelling that. If the US implodes, I can easily imagine Canada, New Zealand and Australia developing space capability. For that matter, despite deindustrialization, a lot of the US industrial capacity is in "Blue States" that are immediately adjacent to Canada-and many of the residents of those states might prefer association with canada to association with a fascist, fundamentalist United States(if that develops).
RTFA. The original article was posing Linus Torvalds as the dictator of Linux-and Java as some kind of nice democracy. Also, read the link in my comment please. There is interesting stuff happening well outside the C/C++/Java/C# world.
Rails is another interesting Open Source database development platform-but it isn't strictly "LAMP"(uses Ruby instead of Perl/Python/PHP-though I suspect we'll see a Python version soon).
My favorite line in the article:
"J2EE as a fear-driven technology choice made by higher powers"
It is sad the uber-rich and media/academic/financial elites running the US have shut down the US economy to the point the US hasn't been able to take advantage of technologies that were developed here.
I suspect it will take something like another sputnik to turn that around. These plans on the part of India isn't really another Sputnik-but eventually we'll see something like that.
Right now, there is the image that only large countries can do space. However, when I can easily imagine some highly profitable industries get developed in space-and then major commercial powers like Taiwan and Singapore get into the act.
Whatever the claims about "Community Process", Sun runs Java and Scott McNealy runs Sun when it really comes down to it. I would suggest asking long term Sun folks(the folks that built that company and were there over 15 year ago) what they really think of that means of governance.
I think you are underestimating the potential of robotics and remotely operated equipment. The first "inhabitants" of the moon will be machines-not people.
You need to consider the value of orbital mass in the immediate future. Once a rail gun or space elevator is created on the moon, it will become much less expensive to get mass to orbit. Maybe the moon doesn't have all the minerals you need-but suddenly, it becomes plausible to build substantial orbital structures.
Well, there are _other_ kinds of fraud that are done using paper ballots -and which favor different constituencies.
Yes and this year, the major state in question is Ohio.
Bush and the GOP appear to have used Diebold voting machines to steal yet another election--and Democrats have such a history in promoting lower tech vote fraud they are too cowed to say anything.
When there are open source voting systems around(one was actually used in Australian elections) there is no reason to allow corporate control of voting software.
Now, what is needed is creating a system that has better hard encryptian and authentication. Paper ballots are subject to various forms of tampering--but hard encryption can make any tampering very easy to detect.
The Diebold system was designed with really only one thing in mind: allowing fraud by making recounts impossible.
JP Aerospace has proposed using an ion drive to take a special purpose blimp orbital.
What is interesting about this approach is the high ISP might make space fairly cheap. Personally, I find the fact that travel using this means is slow somewhat interesting. Humanity might benefit by having some "wide open spaces". Communications inside the solar system would be rapid in any event. Slow transportation might act to help discourage things like rash, interplanetary wars.
You might have an argument if the folks affected were _selling_ their citizenship rights to people that can more profitably using them. In this case though, the companies in question get to mint new immigration rights at no cost to the companies in question.
This BTW is part of the reason why recent immigration is associated with long term economic decline. What is your evidence that immigration "helps" the people that are in an area already? I can think of many counter examples-I don't see evidence that Native Americans were particularly helped by European immigration--that is just wishful thinking.
No, some countries _do_ sell visas-or have fees so that the demand and supply are somewhat in sync. I've heard canada does this with certain visas. US corps bought congress to avoid that practice because it gave US corps the abilty to lure employees at the expense of US workers rather than the expense of the companies profiting.
At other times, citizenship, required _doing something_ to earn it. Giving away H-1b visas is simply watering down the value of US citizenship. I'm saying _no_ visas should be "given" away. The fees should be such that the supply equals the demand-and work or immigration visas should be allocated only when there is clear benefit to the public--and few risks passed onto the public.
I see no evidence that the corporate welfare of H-1b has produced great technical innovation(as was promised). Basically, one particular, politically unpopular profession was targeted for foreign competition-which has meant mass exodus of US citizens from computer science programs. What is wrong with this? Well it was a decision made by political bribery and against popular will-and those things don't matter much to you. In economic terms:
US citizenship is a pecular kind of property right. It carries with it a share of public lands--and access to public resources like roads. Foreigners were willing to work to gain access to those resources-and the H-1b program was structured so that essentially private companies were using access to those public resources as a form of compensation. This is little different than if a company could use a share in your home equity to compensate their employees.
What is being "traded" are various financial instruments--mainly US government debt.
You can make an argument for "Free trade" in the absence of governmental deficits. In this case, the Bush administration has a program of Guns, Butter--and tax cuts too! financed by lots of debt-this is in fact a wholesale liquidation of assets.
The US government can borrow so much due to some old arrangements-the US dollar is the reserve currency of many foreign banks. That could change-and the American public would have a rather rapid, rude awakening to the way the world works.
I think the issue of hatred here is that you hate the idea of social welfare programs that are in fact pretty popular here in the US. I honestly hope that someday you get the chance to experience unbridled Randite capitalism-I expect the reality will be rather different than you expectations/hopes.
I personally have no desire to experience Randite capitalism. I see it as just an excuse to enrich a small group of people and recreate de facto conditions of slavery/indentured servitude.
I think what you are missing here:these immigration rights are obtained at low cost by corporations, but the H-1b holders must work very hard to get access to these immigration rights. Immigration rights aren't _always_ give away for free. In Canada and New Zealand, the fees are sometimes substantial and you must in some cases show you have substantial amount of money you intend to invest in the country. My basic argument is that the US government ought to price these immigration rights at a level that benefits the existing US citizenry and that companies sponsoring these visas ought to assume liability for the problems caused by mass immigration. For example, not all visa holders are here for peaceful reasons. Whoever sponsors a visa should purchase an insurance policy that covers damage done by the visa holder. For example, the public absorbed about $500 Billion in damages done by the 911 terrorist-that damage shouldn't be paid for by the general public.
I'm _not_ objecting to the immigrants per se. I am objecting to companies whose profits depend on irresponsibly passing costs onto the general public or taking risks with public safety.