While I generally agree with you, there are games that have been in continuous development for over 10 years, and are all the better for it. Angband (and its finest variant) is continually improving, and is far in advance of any commercial game in terms of long-term playability. Nethack is another one that has been around for a very, very long time now, and continues to improve. It is amazing how much gameplay can get squeezed into a game over a decade or so, especially when no one cares about the graphics:)
I agree completely, there are big differences between the situations, and you succinctly elucidated the main one. However, and maybe this was unclear, my point was that picking one incident and making arbitrary and simplistic moral judgements based on it is naive and/or stupid.
Not to mention extremely annoying if you're not in a good mood:)
PR can be bad as well as china being a communist country with a total lack of respect for human rights. Shame really, I would like to have seen the great wall. But I will be damned if I step foot in a place like that - running over and shooting demonstrating students.
Buddha knows, I try not to, but I really hate ignorant, ill informed, self-righteous prats.
just because you don't speak the language, you assume it's fair fodder for a incredibly boneheaded american joke.
*sigh*
Firstly, who said the writer was American?
Secondly, I would be careful about accusing people of mocking a language when you obviously have a complete lack of understanding of the language youself.
It's been a while since I've spoken any Mandarin, and I was never that good anyway, but what they wrote looks a lot like Mandarin Chinese to me.
Of all the languages of the world there are three that clearly have great bodies of literature - Sanskrit, Greek, and yes, English.
Hmm, I assume that there was an implyed 'only' in there. I have read a few Chinese authors and poets who would very strongly disagree with you, my Eurocentric friend. In fact I would venture to suggest that the body of literature in Chinese is substantially greater than in either Sanskrit or Greek, although I freely admit that I have absolutely no facts whatsoever.
Corel's dumb move is just one recent example of companies overlooking or deliberately ignoring the GPL. As free software penetrates further into different areas, especially traditional companies, do you see this as an increasing problem? Given that legal action is expensive, and that there is probably no single entity that could afford to prosecute many infractions, what do you think should be done to address the problem?
I would have to disagree with your premise, as I understand it, on a number of points. I read your post as saying:
1. Governments can be 'good' or 'bad'. 2. Good government is desirable and should be sought after and protected. 3. Bad government is undesirable and should be overthrown. 4. It is possible for a good government to go bad (implied). 5. It is better to risk the overthrow of a good government than risk not being able to overthrow a bad one. 6. Thus, it is desirable that all governments be weak.
Now, lets take the assumptions in order: 1. Now, I despise pointless semantic disputes, but what is 'good' and 'bad'? I can answer that question to my own satisfaction, and I'm sure that you, and most others can too. But I doubt we agree on all points. For example, would you call the US government good or bad? I think a very good case could be made that it is a bad government, and that therefore (according to the above assumptions) should be overthrown. Do you agree? If so I presume you are actively engaged in the subversion and overthrow of the US government. If not, why not? Can you honestly describe the US government as being good? Has it always been so during your adult life? If it is, what then consitutes bad government? (BTW, if you are actually planning to topple the US government, I wouldn't recommend saying so in a public forum:)
2. I agree with the intent, if not the formulation of the intent.
3. Should bad governments be overthrown? Is a bad government undesirable in comparison with the likely alternatives (and don't forget that good government is only one alternative, and not a very likely one IMHO). Lets take the situation in East Timor for example. I guess you would call the Indonesian government 'bad'. They are also weak, extremely so. Should they be overthrown? Hell no! If it is overthrown the miltary would take over, and a bad government would be replaced with a (probably) much worse one. There is increasing evidence that the power struggle between the military and government is intensifying, and that the military are prevailing. How many governments have been toppled by revolution in recent centuries? How many of the revolutions delivered a better situation than what was there before? Here are a few 'positive' revolutions I can think of, in rough order of the improvement they brought to the lives of the people. Please feel free to add to them: The French The American Romanian, and other Eastern European nations ditching communism (some of which are arguably not revolutions) Cuba (OK, just being provocative here)
I would list some of the more horrible revolutions, but I don't have the time or inclination. Too depressing.
4. Well, given any reasonable definition of good and bad, this seems inarguable.
5. The vast majority of revolutions install a much worse government than the one they overthrew. See 3, above. It must always be remembered, romantic images notwithstanding, revolution is a horrible state. It invariably is accompanied by great suffering, and usually great death. Note, I think revolution is the correct action in some circumstances, but those circumstances are pretty damn rare! It should be the absolute last resort, undertaken only in situation of direst extremity.
Also, I would specifically take issue with this statement: Once a government becomes strong, it is very difficult to make it weak again...
It is natural for all governments to deteriorate over time. Sure, you have to take a longer view than is usual, but eventually all governments weaken and fail, no matter how 'good' or 'bad' they are, no matter how strong or weak.
For an illuminating insight providing a bit of historical perspective, review a bit of ancient history. For the last four thousand years or so China been ruled in turn by various extremely strong governments (which would also count as being very 'bad' in most modern people's estimation, I suspect), all of which inevitably weakened and decayed, and were eventually overthrown and replaced. Rome would provide a similar example in the West. An incredibly powerful government, arguably the most powerful political entity that has yet existed, but still it weakened and fell. Of course we are talking about timeframes of centuries, which is cold comfort if you are suffering now.
It would be interesting to examine whether the strength of a government is related to its 'badness'. I suspect that a case could be made that strong government is usually bad government. Anyway, an argument for another day.
BTW, does anyone else find the similarity between one of the founding principles of the US (ensuring the possibility of revolution), and one of the central tenets of Maoism (perpetual revolution) interesting?
Yep, by Daniel Keyes if I remember right (and I probably don't). One of the very best short stories ever, IMHO (well, novella actually, from memory). That was the first thought that sprung to my mind too when I saw this story.
Not at all, sorry if I sounded a bit harsh, we Kiwis tend to get a bit annoyed when people mistake us for Aussies:) Kinda like Canadians and Americans, I think.
re. Lord of Ring, it's being film in Australia by an aussie director.
Um, NO! The Lord of the Rings is being filmed in New Zealand by a Kiwi (New Zealand) director, Peter Jackson. For those who don't know the man he has done Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, Braindead, Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners, plus some bits and bobs. If you want to see how good Jackson is with drawing out human emotion and the characters in a film see Heavenly Creatures. If you want to see how good he is with special effects see The Frighteners (they had CGI effects in the movie that had never been able to be done before), or Heavenly Creatures again (which also shows how well he can integrate them with the rest of the movie, enhancing rather than replacing plot and character development).
Think Dark City with better FX.
Um, NO! LOTR is NOTHING like Dark City. LOTR is as similar to Dark City as, say, Star Wars is to Titanic. If you do not know what LOTR is like, well I will not be presumptious enough to describe it. Suffice it to say that it is one of the few stories that has invented an entire genre (and is still the finest example within it).
I think the move on the Kansas board is GREAT! Without even touching on whether evolution is Fantasy or Fact, let's consider this. The schools are not allowed to teach opposing points of view such as Creationism. Only teaching one side is wrong, and it is indoctrinating the children in what one faction believes to be true! If Christian Schools will present both sides, why not public schools?
I think the move to teach practical methods of mass killing is GREAT! Without even touching on whether "killing people is bad" is Fantasy or Fact, lets consider this. The schools are not allowed to teach opposing points of view such as "it's good to kill". Only teaching one side is wrong, and it is indoctrinating the children in what one faction believes to be true! If murderers will present both sides, why not public schools?
Consider the McCarthy witchunts of a few decades ago (when super-paranoid Uncle Sam hounded his OWN citizens and demanded they answer questions abut their political views. "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Communist"). These days, if your government wanted to track all Communists, for example, they woudl no longer need those expensive and potentially embarrassing trials.
I take your point, but I think it is important to remember that the McCarthy trials were not in any way, shape or form about finding 'communists'. It was all about a particularly objectionable group of people retaining and increasing their power. The trials were not only desirable to those involved, they and the publicity they generated were the whole point (There may have been some rather ignorant and stupid people involved who actually believed they were fighting the 'dirty commies', such people have always and will always be used as pawns in the games of others (to paraphrase a certain astute political analyst mentioned in my.sig:)).
Here is the most simple and direct refutation of this claim that plants with terminator genes will cause the rest of the food supply to disappear: it is a non-stable system in evolutionary terms; it is not self-sustaining because the terminator line is by definition one which cannot perpetuate itself. The termiator genes could not "infect" the original plant stock because when it comes down to measuring the fitness of the germline in that age-old dance of reproduction the terminator pollen automatically loses. The only way that it can spread into the general genetic mix is if mutation turns off the terminator part of the genetic modification.
This is a straw man - our food supply is disappearing no time soon, with or without the advent and wide-scale deployment of this technology. However, there are VERY serious concerns that are raised that cannot be dismissed in such a cavalier fashion. For some more extensive discussions of this issue see a previous slashdot discussion.
Quickly, one problem is that even if only one generation of neighbouring crops is killed off because of 'infection', the farmer that owns them is still going to be mighty pissed. If it happens every year then they need to buy from Monsanto or go broke (and any suggestions that they can rely on the legal system for protection or redress are hereby laughed at in advance).
Secondly, in a hybrid the 'terminator' gene may well be 'hidden', and may not manifest for several generations. This has obvious and very nasty consequences. Again, I refer you to the above link for more info.
Forgive the lack of appropriate terminology, IANAGOMB (I-am-not-a-genticist-or-molecular-biologist).
Umm, I have to say that using quotes saying Buddhism is 'better' than other religions is not a particularly good way to make your point. Frankly, I found your post quite offensive in that regard, and I like to think of myself as a Buddhist.
The Buddha said emphatically, repeatedly, that Buddhism is not the One True Way, and that in fact there is no One True Way. Anyone who says or implies otherwise fails to understand his message, and IMHO fatally undermines their own arguments. He also said that mere appeals to authority (including his own) have no credibility, which makes the one sentence quote from Einstein somewhat pointless. Anyway, aside from these quibbles I do agree that some of the other quotes had relevancy, and I would certainly agree that Buddhism can fit in very well with the spirituality described and discussed in the review.
Well, I can't speak for Sweden, but NZ does not have a socialist system, or anything close. Maybe fifteen or twenty years ago you could say that we had something close, but these days the economy is as capitalist as they come. I think that we actually have a more open market than the US (basically no tarrifs or subsidies). Whether this is a good thing or not is, of course, the subject of much debate...
"To qualify as a world-class success and not just a fad, each new product or method must pass the acid test of 'crossing the chasm' that separates early adoption from mainstream acceptance. Linux, and open source in general, fails this acid test."
I strongly disagree with this. The key question here is, what is the mainstream market? It is interesting to note that the OSS that has been around for a while has been very widely adopted among its intended market: software developers. Would anyone say that Emacs, vi, grep, sed, gcc, gzip, tar, to name just a very few, do not have mainstream acceptance amongst developers? And what about the server world: BIND, Sendmail, Apache, not to mention the Berkley TCP/IP stack?
Now, it is true that there is not wide spread adoption of GNU/Linux on the desktop. No one is arguing that, and that is not the immediate goal. GNU/Linux is currently being (re)positioned as a server OS. Its original 'market' was simply hobbyist OS hackers. A perfect example of its new market are ISPs. What proportion of hobbyist OS hackers and ISPs run GNU/Linux or *BSD systems? More than enough, I am sure, to qualify as 'mainstream acceptance'.
Pronouncements that OSS is just a 'fad', and that it 'fails this acid test' are certainly premature. IMHO, the evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion. In the markets it was designed for GNU/Linux and OSS already have mainstream acceptance. The question is whether they will be able to gain such acceptance in other markets, such as the workstation and desktop markets. This has yet to be seen, and to state that OSS has failed the acid test is like stating that Microsoft has failed the acid test because the majority of toasters do not run WinCE.
"The more the open source paradigm succeeds, the more untenable it becomes because maintenance and support grow more complex, and costs increase due to a scarcity of talented programmers. Success leads to features, and feature creep leads to bloated software."
Here the author seems to get confused between individual OSS projects, and the 'OSS paradigm' itself. Ignoring such distinctions the argument seems to go: 1) Maintenance and support for OSS grows more complex as that software succeeds. 2) [Implied] There is a limited pool of talented programmers willing to work on OSS projects. Therefore: 3) Costs increase because this pool is exhausted due to 1.
Firstly, the statement that success breeds features is not necessarily sound. Success does not have to equate to feature bloat, and it does not have to mean increased complexity. 'ls' is a very successful utility. Is it bloated? I think not. One key design principle of UNIX, and therefore of GNU/Linux, is that of modularity. This directly counters feature creep. For non-utility apps this principle is not as strong, however it is still important. X is a classic example: it works with all the different WMs, which (should) work with all the different X apps. (Please! No GUI flames! Maybe I shouldn't even mention this as an example, oh well...)
Also, if a project is succeeding that implies that it is becoming more reliable, getting better documentation, and gaining a larger user base. Now, it is true that as the user base grows the testing becomes more exacting, more bugs will be found, and more features/enhancements requested, but:
One key aspect of OSS, notably espoused by ESR, is that as the user base grows, so does the support base. This counters the third point. As an app becomes more widely used, more people will want to hack at it, fix bugs, write docs, etc. It could be argued that the proportion of developers in the user base is too small to alleviate the problem. This is simplistic, however. Programmers are not the only ones who contribute to a project. Writing documentation, sending in bug reports, sharing ideas, providing feedback: these are all very important contributions that anyone can make.
Furthermore, it is perfectly possible for companies to pay people to work on OSS. If the cost of paying for the maintenance of existing OSS software is less than the cost of buying or developing and maintaining alternate versions of the software, then the argument is irrelevant. Note that in some cases it is impossible to maintain proprietary software at any price (e.g. when the owner goes out of business).
If I have the time I might try to address the rest of the points in the article, but for now these will do.
Many others have thoroughly refuted your utterly bogus statements, so I just thought I'd mention this one.
The only thing I will say is Christianity hinges on the man Jesus who lived about 2000 years ago. If he was God, lived a perfect life, was crucified on a cross, died, and rose back to life, then you would be a fool not to be a Christian.
And I say that you have got even this very wrong. Say, for the sake of argument, that Jesus was God, etc. Also for the sake of argument assume that the Christian fundamentalists are right, and that Jesus' teachings have not been completely corrupted/ignored/twisted by the very people that call themselves his followers. Given then that I will surely go to Hell if I do not repent my sinful ways and become a good God-fearing Christian - will I do so?
No. I proudly choose to go to hell. I will not do what I know is immoral, under threat of torture in Hell. I will not take your Heaven, your pieces of silver, in return for selling my own morality. You may buy and sell your beliefs, your morals, but I will not. Now, that may make me stupid in your books, but then I guess you think that the German citizens that spoke out against the Nazis during the war were "stupid". (you started with the bloody Nazis, not me).
Anyway, this whole thread is bogus. Goodwin says you lose.
There are already seedbank organisations which are dedicated to preserving seed stock for free use, and there have been for a long time (since the 60s?).
Unfortunately I think they are going rapidly downhill, their stock is declining, in quality and quantity. There is a lot of corporate antipathy towards them (funny that). Even the research scientists tend to be allied with Evil Corporations(tm) these days (for e.g. an Australian university tried to patent genetic stock that it sourced from seedbanks, in direct violation of their contract (not sure of the outcome of the lawsuit, don't have any URLs, sorry)).
The thing about Monsanto's product is that farmers will have no choice but to use it. There are many reasons why this is so. For a start, it will not only have the terminator genes, it will also have other (to farmers) highly desirable genes. For example, if these plants are resistent to Round Up (Monsanto's flagship herbicide) farmers will be able to significantly increase their yields (by eliminating weeds) and lower their costs (by spraying it over their entire fields, instead of paying people to walk the rows spot spraying). This is just an example, it applies to all the other pest resistent genes that will only be available in terminator type plants. Farmers will have no choice but to use these seeds if they want to stay competitive, and therefore stay in farming. Chances are they will not even be able to position their crop as a premium product, because of packaging laws which make it illegal to state a product is not genetically engineered. I would also not be surprised if newer varietals only came out in terminator form. Crop breeds have only a limited useful life span. Over time (5-10 years?) diseases adapt to attack the dominant crop breeds, and new varieties are introduced with better yields, better resistences, whatever. Older varieties yield less and are also worth less to buyers, especially those buying quality grain for human consumption. And there is the point, as someone mentioned above, that farmers in the poorest regions are dependent on aid money and have to do what they are told by the aid suppliers, who have their own agendas...
Agricultural scientists have been discussing the issues this technology raises for years (I have no idea how long Monsanto has been working at this, but it has been common knowledge they are for a long time). The mood amongst the ones that I know is not happy.
Slashdot Mirror
While I generally agree with you, there are games that have been in continuous development for over 10 years, and are all the better for it. Angband (and its finest variant) is continually improving, and is far in advance of any commercial game in terms of long-term playability. Nethack is another one that has been around for a very, very long time now, and continues to improve. It is amazing how much gameplay can get squeezed into a game over a decade or so, especially when no one cares about the graphics :)
Even in the WWII examply there were a lot of rules that were followed: nobody used battle gases, nobody infected enemy cities with diseases.
Well, nearly. If you are interested, and have a strong stomach, you might want to check out the history of the Japanese invasion of China.
Cheers,
Duane.
I agree completely, there are big differences between the situations, and you succinctly elucidated the main one. However, and maybe this was unclear, my point was that picking one incident and making arbitrary and simplistic moral judgements based on it is naive and/or stupid.
:)
Not to mention extremely annoying if you're not in a good mood
PR can be bad as well as china being a communist country with a total lack of respect for human rights. Shame really, I would like to have seen the great wall. But I will be damned if I step foot in a place like that - running over and shooting demonstrating students.
Buddha knows, I try not to, but I really hate ignorant, ill informed, self-righteous prats.
Three words: Kent State Massacre.
just because you don't speak the language, you assume it's fair fodder for a incredibly boneheaded american joke.
*sigh*
Firstly, who said the writer was American?
Secondly, I would be careful about accusing people of mocking a language when you obviously have a complete lack of understanding of the language youself.
It's been a while since I've spoken any Mandarin, and I was never that good anyway, but what they wrote looks a lot like Mandarin Chinese to me.
Try not to be so precious, huh?
Of all the languages of the world there are three that clearly have great bodies of literature - Sanskrit, Greek, and yes, English.
Hmm, I assume that there was an implyed 'only' in there. I have read a few Chinese authors and poets who would very strongly disagree with you, my Eurocentric friend. In fact I would venture to suggest that the body of literature in Chinese is substantially greater than in either Sanskrit or Greek, although I freely admit that I have absolutely no facts whatsoever.
Anyone got any figures?
Corel's dumb move is just one recent example of companies overlooking or deliberately ignoring the GPL. As free software penetrates further into different areas, especially traditional companies, do you see this as an increasing problem? Given that legal action is expensive, and that there is probably no single entity that could afford to prosecute many infractions, what do you think should be done to address the problem?
Cheers,
Duane.
Warning, long rambling post ahead :)
:)
I would have to disagree with your premise, as I understand it, on a number of points. I read your post as saying:
1. Governments can be 'good' or 'bad'.
2. Good government is desirable and should be sought after and protected.
3. Bad government is undesirable and should be overthrown.
4. It is possible for a good government to go bad (implied).
5. It is better to risk the overthrow of a good government than risk not being able to overthrow a bad one.
6. Thus, it is desirable that all governments be weak.
Now, lets take the assumptions in order:
1. Now, I despise pointless semantic disputes, but what is 'good' and 'bad'? I can answer that question to my own satisfaction, and I'm sure that you, and most others can too. But I doubt we agree on all points. For example, would you call the US government good or bad? I think a very good case could be made that it is a bad government, and that therefore (according to the above assumptions) should be overthrown. Do you agree? If so I presume you are actively engaged in the subversion and overthrow of the US government. If not, why not? Can you honestly describe the US government as being good? Has it always been so during your adult life? If it is, what then consitutes bad government? (BTW, if you are actually planning to topple the US government, I wouldn't recommend saying so in a public forum
2. I agree with the intent, if not the formulation of the intent.
3. Should bad governments be overthrown? Is a bad government undesirable in comparison with the likely alternatives (and don't forget that good government is only one alternative, and not a very likely one IMHO). Lets take the situation in East Timor for example. I guess you would call the Indonesian government 'bad'. They are also weak, extremely so. Should they be overthrown? Hell no! If it is overthrown the miltary would take over, and a bad government would be replaced with a (probably) much worse one. There is increasing evidence that the power struggle between the military and government is intensifying, and that the military are prevailing. How many governments have been toppled by revolution in recent centuries? How many of the revolutions delivered a better situation than what was there before? Here are a few 'positive' revolutions I can think of, in rough order of the improvement they brought to the lives of the people. Please feel free to add to them:
The French
The American
Romanian, and other Eastern European nations ditching communism (some of which are arguably not revolutions)
Cuba (OK, just being provocative here)
I would list some of the more horrible revolutions, but I don't have the time or inclination. Too depressing.
4. Well, given any reasonable definition of good and bad, this seems inarguable.
5. The vast majority of revolutions install a much worse government than the one they overthrew. See 3, above. It must always be remembered, romantic images notwithstanding, revolution is a horrible state. It invariably is accompanied by great suffering, and usually great death. Note, I think revolution is the correct action in some circumstances, but those circumstances are pretty damn rare! It should be the absolute last resort, undertaken only in situation of direst extremity.
Also, I would specifically take issue with this statement:
Once a government becomes strong, it is very difficult to make it weak again...
It is natural for all governments to deteriorate over time. Sure, you have to take a longer view than is usual, but eventually all governments weaken and fail, no matter how 'good' or 'bad' they are, no matter how strong or weak.
For an illuminating insight providing a bit of historical perspective, review a bit of ancient history. For the last four thousand years or so China been ruled in turn by various extremely strong governments (which would also count as being very 'bad' in most modern people's estimation, I suspect), all of which inevitably weakened and decayed, and were eventually overthrown and replaced. Rome would provide a similar example in the West. An incredibly powerful government, arguably the most powerful political entity that has yet existed, but still it weakened and fell. Of course we are talking about timeframes of centuries, which is cold comfort if you are suffering now.
It would be interesting to examine whether the strength of a government is related to its 'badness'. I suspect that a case could be made that strong government is usually bad government. Anyway, an argument for another day.
BTW, does anyone else find the similarity between one of the founding principles of the US (ensuring the possibility of revolution), and one of the central tenets of Maoism (perpetual revolution) interesting?
Cheers,
Duane.
Yep, by Daniel Keyes if I remember right (and I probably don't). One of the very best short stories ever, IMHO (well, novella actually, from memory). That was the first thought that sprung to my mind too when I saw this story.
Cheers,
Duane.
Not at all, sorry if I sounded a bit harsh, we Kiwis tend to get a bit annoyed when people mistake us for Aussies :) Kinda like Canadians and Americans, I think.
Cheers,
Duane.
re. Lord of Ring, it's being film in Australia by an aussie director.
Um, NO! The Lord of the Rings is being filmed in New Zealand by a Kiwi (New Zealand) director, Peter Jackson. For those who don't know the man he has done Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles, Braindead, Heavenly Creatures and The Frighteners, plus some bits and bobs. If you want to see how good Jackson is with drawing out human emotion and the characters in a film see Heavenly Creatures. If you want to see how good he is with special effects see The Frighteners (they had CGI effects in the movie that had never been able to be done before), or Heavenly Creatures again (which also shows how well he can integrate them with the rest of the movie, enhancing rather than replacing plot and character development).
Think Dark City with better FX.
Um, NO! LOTR is NOTHING like Dark City. LOTR is as similar to Dark City as, say, Star Wars is to Titanic. If you do not know what LOTR is like, well I will not be presumptious enough to describe it. Suffice it to say that it is one of the few stories that has invented an entire genre (and is still the finest example within it).
It's got very high expectation and rightfully so.
Now that I'll agree with!
Cheers,
Duane.
I think the move on the Kansas board is GREAT! Without even touching on whether evolution is Fantasy or Fact, let's consider this. The schools are not allowed to teach opposing points of view such as Creationism. Only teaching one side is wrong, and it is indoctrinating the children in what one faction believes to be true! If Christian Schools will present both sides, why not public schools?
I think the move to teach practical methods of mass killing is GREAT! Without even touching on whether "killing people is bad" is Fantasy or Fact, lets consider this. The schools are not allowed to teach opposing points of view such as "it's good to kill". Only teaching one side is wrong, and it is indoctrinating the children in what one faction believes to be true! If murderers will present both sides, why not public schools?
Consider the McCarthy witchunts of a few decades ago (when super-paranoid Uncle Sam hounded his OWN citizens and demanded they answer questions abut their political views. "Are you now, or have you ever been, a Communist").
.sig :)).
These days, if your government wanted to track all Communists, for example, they woudl no longer need those expensive and potentially embarrassing trials.
I take your point, but I think it is important to remember that the McCarthy trials were not in any way, shape or form about finding 'communists'. It was all about a particularly objectionable group of people retaining and increasing their power. The trials were not only desirable to those involved, they and the publicity they generated were the whole point (There may have been some rather ignorant and stupid people involved who actually believed they were fighting the 'dirty commies', such people have always and will always be used as pawns in the games of others (to paraphrase a certain astute political analyst mentioned in my
And just how many third world farmers do you know?
Here is the most simple and direct refutation of this claim that plants with terminator genes will cause the rest of the food supply to disappear: it is a non-stable system in evolutionary terms; it is not self-sustaining because the terminator line is by definition one which cannot perpetuate itself. The termiator genes could not "infect" the original plant stock because when it comes down to measuring the fitness of the germline in that age-old dance of reproduction the terminator pollen automatically loses. The only way that it can spread into the general genetic mix is if mutation turns off the terminator part of the genetic modification.
This is a straw man - our food supply is disappearing no time soon, with or without the advent and wide-scale deployment of this technology. However, there are VERY serious concerns that are raised that cannot be dismissed in such a cavalier fashion. For some more extensive discussions of this issue see a previous slashdot discussion.
Quickly, one problem is that even if only one generation of neighbouring crops is killed off because of 'infection', the farmer that owns them is still going to be mighty pissed. If it happens every year then they need to buy from Monsanto or go broke (and any suggestions that they can rely on the legal system for protection or redress are hereby laughed at in advance).
Secondly, in a hybrid the 'terminator' gene may well be 'hidden', and may not manifest for several generations. This has obvious and very nasty consequences. Again, I refer you to the above link for more info.
Forgive the lack of appropriate terminology, IANAGOMB (I-am-not-a-genticist-or-molecular-biologist).
Umm, I have to say that using quotes saying Buddhism is 'better' than other religions is not a particularly good way to make your point. Frankly, I found your post quite offensive in that regard, and I like to think of myself as a Buddhist.
The Buddha said emphatically, repeatedly, that Buddhism is not the One True Way, and that in fact there is no One True Way. Anyone who says or implies otherwise fails to understand his message, and IMHO fatally undermines their own arguments. He also said that mere appeals to authority (including his own) have no credibility, which makes the one sentence quote from Einstein somewhat pointless. Anyway, aside from these quibbles I do agree that some of the other quotes had relevancy, and I would certainly agree that Buddhism can fit in very well with the spirituality described and discussed in the review.
Well, I can't speak for Sweden, but NZ does not have a socialist system, or anything close. Maybe fifteen or twenty years ago you could say that we had something close, but these days the economy is as capitalist as they come. I think that we actually have a more open market than the US (basically no tarrifs or subsidies). Whether this is a good thing or not is, of course, the subject of much debate...
"To qualify as a world-class success and not just a fad, each new product or method must pass the acid test of 'crossing the chasm' that separates early adoption from mainstream acceptance. Linux, and open source in general, fails this acid test."
I strongly disagree with this. The key question here is, what is the mainstream market? It is interesting to note that the OSS that has been around for a while has been very widely adopted among its intended market: software developers. Would anyone say that Emacs, vi, grep, sed, gcc, gzip, tar, to name just a very few, do not have mainstream acceptance amongst developers? And what about the server world: BIND, Sendmail, Apache, not to mention the Berkley TCP/IP stack?
Now, it is true that there is not wide spread adoption of GNU/Linux on the desktop. No one is arguing that, and that is not the immediate goal. GNU/Linux is currently being (re)positioned as a server OS. Its original 'market' was simply hobbyist OS hackers. A perfect example of its new market are ISPs. What proportion of hobbyist OS hackers and ISPs run GNU/Linux or *BSD systems? More than enough, I am sure, to qualify as 'mainstream acceptance'.
Pronouncements that OSS is just a 'fad', and that it 'fails this acid test' are certainly premature. IMHO, the evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion. In the markets it was designed for GNU/Linux and OSS already have mainstream acceptance. The question is whether they will be able to gain such acceptance in other markets, such as the workstation and desktop markets. This has yet to be seen, and to state that OSS has failed the acid test is like stating that Microsoft has failed the acid test because the majority of toasters do not run WinCE.
"The more the open source paradigm succeeds, the more untenable it becomes because maintenance and support grow more complex, and costs increase due to a scarcity of talented programmers. Success leads to features, and feature creep leads to bloated software."
Here the author seems to get confused between individual OSS projects, and the 'OSS paradigm' itself. Ignoring such distinctions the argument seems to go:
1) Maintenance and support for OSS grows more complex as that software succeeds.
2) [Implied] There is a limited pool of talented programmers willing to work on OSS projects.
Therefore:
3) Costs increase because this pool is exhausted due to 1.
Firstly, the statement that success breeds features is not necessarily sound. Success does not have to equate to feature bloat, and it does not have to mean increased complexity. 'ls' is a very successful utility. Is it bloated? I think not. One key design principle of UNIX, and therefore of GNU/Linux, is that of modularity. This directly counters feature creep. For non-utility apps this principle is not as strong, however it is still important. X is a classic example: it works with all the different WMs, which (should) work with all the different X apps. (Please! No GUI flames! Maybe I shouldn't even mention this as an example, oh well...)
Also, if a project is succeeding that implies that it is becoming more reliable, getting better documentation, and gaining a larger user base. Now, it is true that as the user base grows the testing becomes more exacting, more bugs will be found, and more features/enhancements requested, but:
One key aspect of OSS, notably espoused by ESR, is that as the user base grows, so does the support base. This counters the third point. As an app becomes more widely used, more people will want to hack at it, fix bugs, write docs, etc. It could be argued that the proportion of developers in the user base is too small to alleviate the problem. This is simplistic, however. Programmers are not the only ones who contribute to a project. Writing documentation, sending in bug reports, sharing ideas, providing feedback: these are all very important contributions that anyone can make.
Furthermore, it is perfectly possible for companies to pay people to work on OSS. If the cost of paying for the maintenance of existing OSS software is less than the cost of buying or developing and maintaining alternate versions of the software, then the argument is irrelevant. Note that in some cases it is impossible to maintain proprietary software at any price (e.g. when the owner goes out of business).
If I have the time I might try to address the rest of the points in the article, but for now these will do.
Many others have thoroughly refuted your utterly bogus statements, so I just thought I'd mention this one.
The only thing I will say is Christianity hinges on the man Jesus who lived about 2000 years ago. If he was God, lived a perfect life, was crucified on a cross, died, and rose back to life, then you would be a fool not to be a Christian.
And I say that you have got even this very wrong. Say, for the sake of argument, that Jesus was God, etc. Also for the sake of argument assume that the Christian fundamentalists are right, and that Jesus' teachings have not been completely corrupted/ignored/twisted by the very people that call themselves his followers. Given then that I will surely go to Hell if I do not repent my sinful ways and become a good God-fearing Christian - will I do so?
No. I proudly choose to go to hell. I will not do what I know is immoral, under threat of torture in Hell. I will not take your Heaven, your pieces of silver, in return for selling my own morality. You may buy and sell your beliefs, your morals, but I will not. Now, that may make me stupid in your books, but then I guess you think that the German citizens that spoke out against the Nazis during the war were "stupid". (you started with the bloody Nazis, not me).
Anyway, this whole thread is bogus. Goodwin says you lose.
There are already seedbank organisations which are dedicated to preserving seed stock for free use, and there have been for a long time (since the 60s?).
Unfortunately I think they are going rapidly downhill, their stock is declining, in quality and quantity. There is a lot of corporate antipathy towards them (funny that). Even the research scientists tend to be allied with Evil Corporations(tm) these days (for e.g. an Australian university tried to patent genetic stock that it sourced from seedbanks, in direct violation of their contract (not sure of the outcome of the lawsuit, don't have any URLs, sorry)).
The thing about Monsanto's product is that farmers will have no choice but to use it. There are many reasons why this is so. For a start, it will not only have the terminator genes, it will also have other (to farmers) highly desirable genes. For example, if these plants are resistent to Round Up (Monsanto's flagship herbicide) farmers will be able to significantly increase their yields (by eliminating weeds) and lower their costs (by spraying it over their entire fields, instead of paying people to walk the rows spot spraying). This is just an example, it applies to all the other pest resistent genes that will only be available in terminator type plants. Farmers will have no choice but to use these seeds if they want to stay competitive, and therefore stay in farming. Chances are they will not even be able to position their crop as a premium product, because of packaging laws which make it illegal to state a product is not genetically engineered.
I would also not be surprised if newer varietals only came out in terminator form. Crop breeds have only a limited useful life span. Over time (5-10 years?) diseases adapt to attack the dominant crop breeds, and new varieties are introduced with better yields, better resistences, whatever. Older varieties yield less and are also worth less to buyers, especially those buying quality grain for human consumption.
And there is the point, as someone mentioned above, that farmers in the poorest regions are dependent on aid money and have to do what they are told by the aid suppliers, who have their own agendas...
Agricultural scientists have been discussing the issues this technology raises for years (I have no idea how long Monsanto has been working at this, but it has been common knowledge they are for a long time). The mood amongst the ones that I know is not happy.