And it shows how little you understand about the above reply, but I guess you said that when you said "makes no sense". The point was that by the age of 60, the person who has saved $100 a month since age 20 (note the 40 years bit?) will have only $255,225.08, while the "sap" who waited until 30 to start saving and then put away more will at the age of 60 have $1,196,170.35.
You're right, and that is what I get for trying to do something from memory. Now that I'm at home, looking at my notes, here is what I derived. These are the calculations I made that I found so impressive at the time. It wasn't the factor of 10 I remembered that surprised me, it was the doubling of $1000 to $2000 that resulted in one being poorer at the end if one started just ten years later!
If you start at 20, you can put away 1/3 as much each month as someone who (as I did) starts at 35, and end up living better:
$1000/mo @ 7% for 40 years (20-60): $2,624,813 $2000/mo @ 7% for 30 years (30-60): $2,439,941 $3000/mo @ 7% for 25 years (35-60): $2,430,215 ** $4000/mo @ 7% for 20 years (40-60): $2,083,706
** that is how old I was when I figured out how badly I'd fucked up.
Even more interesting are calculations where you put $100/mo aside the first year, $150/mo aside the second, and so on, slowly ramping up to $1000/mo by the time your 30, then leaving it there for the remainder. Putting even a little away early, knowing you'll be putting much more away later, seems on the face of it like it is hardly worth it. But actually, it can make a big difference (sorry, I don't have the calculations handy and I don't feel like redoing them now, but the difference was something like a million bucks IIRC.
Re:Our Parents are the evil fucks, not us
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Generation Wrecked
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· Score: 2
All those mountains of evidence and emperical studies proving, time and time again, just how effective conditioning is even on those who are unwilling recepients suddenly don't exist, because they don't fit in with your pathetically niave, reactionary world view?
Damn it. I wish I'd previewed that before posting. That sentence came off sounding for more harsh than I intended...no flame was intended toward you personally, merely a harsh criticism of the overly simplistic notion that (a) any of us are operating with full and complete freedom in today's culture and (b) no one else bears any responsiblity, even when they've excersized tremendous influece in affecting our decisions, if indeed we've even been left with a decision to make (often not the case). Both points are both overly simplistic and inaccurate to a fair degree.
The fact is that those conditioning our responses so methodically, so pervasively, and so persistently does mean they share responsibility for the results, in precisely the amount by which they have managed to influence and, yes, even condition us to respond in a particular matter. All the available evidence indicates that that degree of influence, and corresponding guilt, is significant.
This does not mean we don't share some of the guilt (indeed, we do, in precise measure as to how much conscious choice we've been left with...sometimes a great deal, sometimes almost none at all). Which was the point I was trying to make in my initial comment.
Re:Our Parents are the evil fucks, not us
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Generation Wrecked
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· Score: 2
You bear complete and total responsibility for everything you freely choose to do.
I see. And operant conditioning doesn't exist? No one has ever been brainwashed, in the entire history of mankind? All those mountains of evidence and emperical studies proving, time and time again, just how effective conditioning is even on those who are unwilling recepients suddenly don't exist, because they don't fit in with your pathetically niave, reactionary world view?
You should open your eyes. Take a marketing class, or read some of their literature. We are being brainwashed (quite literally) through repetition, and while different people have different threshholds before the succumb to repetative conditioning, no human being is or ever has been immune to the effect. In short, it gets all of us, sooner or later. Much later, if you have had the good luck to realize what is happening to you, realize where it is coming to, and minimize your exposure, but not everyone can study conditioning techniques, marketing, or psychology, or even have friends who do (as I have). Not everyone knows or is aware of how much of their free will, their ability to decide, is eroded each hour they view their television set or listen to their radio.
It isn't like there is a Surgeon General's warning on the product, or even a common warning being disseminated through our educational systems, or even by word of mouth. Quite the opposite, actually.
And our wealthiest, most powerful people and organizations have been actively conditioning the entire population for a very long time now, indeed, for the entire lifetime of any generation x-er.
Someone who has succumbed to such conditioning is no more responsible for their behavior than a brainwashed child is for believing in Santa Clause or the child of a religion fanatic is for believing in a Christian/Muslim/Jewish God.
Or put another way, anyone who has been subjected to such conditioning has had their ability to "freely choose" degraded, perhaps destroyed altogether. Which, ultimately, is the point of many of the marketing methodologies employed today, including repetative advertising, which, in the intelligence trade, is referred to as repetative conditioning.
Until you realize that you won't quite be human.
You have an odd definition of human. Probably one derived in some asinine way from some Ayn Randian diatribe, which takes one aspect of being a human being and ignores a hundred other equally important aspects of being human, then misapplies it as a sole metric of measure for something it is completely unrelated to.
What discourages people is morality. I buy software because it's right. I buy films because it's right - I tape stuff when I can't buy it at a reasonable price, and normally buy in a sale. I could download hours of music and have a CD burner, yet I've got well over 100 albums and am adding to that at 2-3 a month. I'm one of the guys they like, and they make quite a bit from me.
That may be true for you, but it is not true for anyone I know, and I know a number of people who consider themselves to be 'moral' people, of many walks of life. People (yourself excepted, apparently) seem to have a natural instinct that tells them copying and sharing something among friends and family is a good thing, and enriches their lives, and that includes copying and sharing software. And indeed, almost everyone I know (and, back in the day, myself included) did exactly that, despite the silly copy protection schemes software manufacturers came up with to try and stop it.
What did stop it was when our names became, merely by implication, associated with the copy in question. Suddenly no one I know was all that willing to share software with one another, and if they did it was with the 'make sure this doesn't go any farther' admonition that never existed before. Ultimately even that little bit of sharing went away (though most of us now use free software, so it isn't even an issue any more).
The point being: morality you cannot rely on. Indeed, there are powerful moral arguments against entitlement monopolies such as copyrights and patents, and for sharing and disseminating wealth as far and as wide as you possibly can, and that moral argument can and often does include sharing information (data or software) that others are immorally trying to hoard.
On the other hand, no one can argue with the fact that if you do get caught sharing illegal copies, you will be in trouble. As a result, regardless of your ethical or moral stance on the right or wrong of government entitlements such as copyright, or on the right or wrong of sharing illegal copies of software or data, you are a damn site less likely to be inclined to do so if your name is attached in some way to the copy and the act can be traced back to you.
Some people may believe sharing copying is ethically wrong, but everyone wants to avoid standing trial or facing a civil suit for copyright violation regardless of their stance on the ethics of copyright. Which is why serializing software worked so well, and why it would work so well for music and movies, irrespective of where one comes down on the whole copyright-copywrong debate.
Invested how exactly? I mean the 2.5% at the bank isn't going to do much good.
No, it isn't, and if your money is in a savings account your wealth is actually shrinking, as the interest you are compounding is less than the inflation you are compounding, which means you are compounding a loss, not a gain.
Get an investment advisor. I am neither qualified nor inclined to tell people how to invest, though I can tell you (a) be diverse in your holdings and (b) don't be overcome by greed. A 5%-7% annual return, compounded over several years, results in a very respectable nestegg and can generally be achieved without taking big risks.
Read some books on investing and get a good investment advisor. That is by far your best bet. And understand the implications of compound interest, not merely the theoretical meaning of the words. You will be very, very glad you did, and probably very shocked at just what those implications are. My telling you won't convince you: calculate the numbers yourself and study what they mean and what they imply for you.
Hint: the other respondant who threw some numbers out hasn't done this (his numbers are wrong, ignoring not just compounded interst, but the compounding effect of adding a sum to the principle generating that interst each month, even a modest sum). There are numerous calculators online... play around with the numbers, get a feel for what is going on, educate yourself, then get some advice from a professional. A professional advisor that is, not a broker or someone with something they want to sell you.
I have a few $5000 CDs at variable rate 48 months. Should I continue with CDs or use some other method?
I'm not qualified to give investment advice, only to point out the mathematical facts of compound intersest and to explain that most people who think they know what it means often do not, and almost always don't understand the implications.
I do not buy CDs, because their interest rates generally do not exceed the inflation rate by much if anything at all. I personally tend to invenst in a diverse portfolio of stocks, bonds, and other instruments (some of the bonds for example reflect market indexes, but mast other things, including real estate investments, etc.). Your best bet is to read a few books on investing and hire a good investment advisor. Right now I tend to invest somewhat conservately, but others choose other strategies, sometimes more successfully than mine, sometimes not. The important thin is diversity in your portfolio, the specifics are something you and your investment advisor will want to work out.
The key is threefold:
1) keep adding to the investment nestegg, even if it is only $100/month, though more is always better 2) keep the interest rate above the rate of inflation, so that the overall value of your savings, adjusted for inflation, continues to grow and compound. If you are earning less than inflation you are compounding a loss, not a gain, and your actual wealth is shrinking. 3) time, time, time. Time is the most potent ingredient, starting early and modestly will get you farther than starting later, even if you are investing more heavilly later. I am feeling the bite of that stark fact right now, as I started later.
The RIAA has been rebuffing Microsoft's "secure digital media" initiatives for *years*. They know what Microsoft does to its business "partners" and it scares them, along with the wholly known stupidity of becoming reliant on one company that will supply the DRM system and then "manage it" to maximize their own business needs (more features to Windows, less to other players).
Microsoft is simply strong-arming them with this; the idea is to put Hollywood on notice that its Microsoft DRM or none at all. There is no *way* that BillG and STEVE! Ballmer would EVER allow Microsoft to become reliant on either an open standard they have to compete on and ESPECIALLY a proprietary system owned by someone else to do DRM for what many consider to be "the next killer app" for PCs.
Very interesting point, and quite probably very correct. If what you say is true, the Copyright and Media Cartels could save themselves from both fates (out of control napsterization vs. Microsoft's strongarming them into subservience via DRM), but in order to do so they will have to give up their dreams of DRM control and change their business model.
Software has successfully used serial numbers and registration to discourage copyright violations, and while copyright violations do exist (and the software industry loves to exaggerate the economic impact of such violations), game manufacturers do make a profit (else they would no longer be selling gtames), Microsoft does make money, as do most software vendors not on Microsoft's hit-list. This is because serialization and/or registration is enough to discourage most illegal copying, and nothing, not even the most draconian DRM technologies, will ever stop all of it.
If Hollywood adopts a similar approach to content distribution on the internet they will likely have people lining up to pay $8.00 for the privelege of downloading unencumbered DivX encodings of their latest movies (with all $8.00 going to the studio, much to the dismay of theaters no doubt), and they will thrive without having their content ruthlessly napsterized (are you really going to share a copy of a movie that has a serial number they might have associated with your credit card and, thus, your real-world identity? Only if you are a fool) and without having to rely on Microsoft's DRM snakeoil (or someone else, though Microsoft is the only one likely to turn the MPAA and RIAA into wholley owned subsidiaries as part of the bargain). Having said that, if they try this stunt with some propreitary, encumbered, crippled format, they will fail as miserably as the RIAA currently is in their efforts to sell music online.
Television will have to make an even bigger adjustment, selling content to their viewers instead of selling their viewers like so much chattel to their advertisers. This isn't a bad thing... most of us would pay a couple of buck a week to subscribe to our favorite programs, and the choice of programming driven by the desires of the viewership rather than advertisers can only improve.
However, if these cartels are unable or unwilling to adjust their world view and business strategies, the stark choice you outline between rampant illegal sharing or life beneath the heal of Redmond is likely to be the one they face, but if so, it will be entirely self inflicted and deserved.
Sure this makes sense. But if you had to blow most of your savings when you got layed off and couldn't find another job for 6+ months then it doesn't really do you any good.
Very true, but I was addressing the original poster's assumption that 'there was no way s/he could have $100k by 30, becuase s/he has a shitty entry-level job', which was the assumption I made at that age, an assumption that is just plain wrong, though you have to understand compound interest before you can understand why that assumption is wrong.
Losing your job and having to eat up your nest egg (and the interest it generates) of course wrecks any retirement plan, and you are right, a lot of gen-xers and gen-wers (which I guess I am, since I was born in 1964 and my parents were baby boomers) have been hit very hard by the recession and are in trouble as a result, but that wasn't the point I was addressing (though indirectly I am addressing the point that you can recover from such a blow by minimizing your debt and maximizing your invested savings, even if it means living far more frugally than you're used to).
It Doesn't Matter, You're Still Better Off
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Generation Wrecked
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· Score: 2
if you bought a house in the last 2 years, you're going to look worse than this guy after the bubble bursts in the housing market.
houses arent that great of investments, and unless you are sure you are going to be in it for 5-10 years, you will get screwed.
That reasoning is only valid for investment property, not the home you live in. Everyone has to live somewhere, so either you own a house and get a tax break, and have some equity in it, or you are flushing a rent check down the toilet every month. Period.
Even if the property value went to zero (to use an extreme, absurd example), as long as it is fit for you to live on, you are still ahead owning as opposed to buying for two reasons:
1) you still get the tax break, which is vastly more than you get flushing that rent check down the drain every month
2) your property value can rebound from zero to some positive amount, while the asset value of the rent you paid will always and forever remain zero, regardless.
Of course, even the shittiest properties in the shittiest areas, assuming they haven't been contaminated chemically or otherwise and thus made uninhabitable, have a value far greater than zero. Having attended numerous tax foreclosure auctions I can tell you the value of said properties is usually surprisingly greater than zero.
Even in the worst case scenerio, where you own a house in a neighborhood that is going down hill, even if you sell at a loss, you will almost always be ahead of where you would have been had you merely rented for the same period of time.
However, if you are looking to buy a second house as an investment, then I agree absolutely with everything you've said... hold off, and let the bubble burst.
Interest Compounds, you CAN do it
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Generation Wrecked
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The starting pay absolutely blows. If I were to have 100k "stashed-away" by the time I am 32, I would have to save 1/4 of my earnings for 10 years. Now, explain to me how you are supposed to: buy a house, pay for your car, keep out of debt, and still fucking have 100k saved by the time you are 30s?
If only someone had sat down and explained to me how things work when I was in my twenties.
You need to sit down and understand how compound interst works. Seriously. You need to run the numbers, until you understand exactly how modest savings over time, invested wisely, will compound into wealth by the time you hit retirement. Calculate the numbers for yourself over 10 years, over 20 years, over 30 years.
One of the surprises you will find is that, if you start saving $100/month at 20, you will live better than someone who starts saving $1,000/month at 30. Time is the most important ingredient in saving, and if you are only 24, you still have a good amount of time on your side.
Yes, your beginning salary sucks, and yes, you should probably be putting as much extra cash away now as you can reasonably afford. My first job paid only $20,000, so little that the minimum payment on my college debts exceeded my takehome pay. I obvously only worked that job for as long as I needed to find a much better one... the norm for most entry-level jobs. Do not be loyal to an employer who pays you so little -- my initial mistake at the time -- but rather, get the experience you need, then find a proper paying job with someone willing to pay you appropriately).
And this brings me to my second point: you will not be making such miserable wages for the next 6 years. Put away as much as you can afford now, because time will grow that money remarkably over the next decade, and time is the most potent ingredient in the mixture (assuming, of course, you are earning interest that exceeds inflation. Modest interest will do, you do not need to be making 10% annual returns, and as I pointed out, $100 put away today will do more for your retirement than $1,000 put away ten years from now).
Compound interest is something everyone who participates in a capitalist economy should have an intimate understanding of. The only good debt 'interest' is real-estate interest, because of the tax savings it creates (which reduces the real interst to a very small amount) and the equity in your (likely) improving property value, plus the fact that if you weren't paying it you'd be paying rent and flushing your entire monthly payment down the drain with no benefit and no asset to show for it, and you have to live somewhere.
Other than your morgage, you want to be on the positive side of the compound interest equation, and that means saving and investing, even modestly, while avoiding debt otherwise. If you are on the positive side of that equation and do nothing, you will eventually become wealthy. If you are on the negative side of that equation, there is a good chance you will become impoverished despite working your ass off.
When I was in my twenties I thought I understood compound interest because I'd had a couple of business and economic classes, and because I knew what the words meant. It wasn't until I ran the numbers, and pondered what the results meant (like the surprising result I mention above) that I realized how little I understood the concept's implications in our everyday lives, much less its impact on our retirement. I wish to hell I'd known 10 years ago what I know now, and can only reiterate my advice: run the numbers, study and ponder the result. Understand what the implications are, and start saving and investing, even modestly, now.
So how does that analogy play out with an X-Box? I can mod it and play around with it as long I don't use it to play any officially liscended X-Box games? Or use it to log onto an official X-Box network?
Unless and until congress sells what little digital future we have left down the river and mandates DRM, Palladium, or some similarly destructive requirement into our technology via a bill like those proposed by Senator "Disney" Hollings, none of the limits you imply are relevant. Unlike a modified car, which law restricts from being used on public roads, there are no such restrictions for a modified x-box.
If you've paid for the games legally, you are legally entitled to play them (or a backup copy you've made) on any x-box, modified or not. Ditton for running GNU/Linux or some other, hitherto unknown, operating system. Ditto for connecting to the internet, whether to browse the web or play UT3 (under GNU/Linux or, if a client exists, Microsoft's crippled offering). Ditto for anything else.
In other words, the x-box is perfectly legal to modify and use any way you like (short of violating criminal laws with respect to fraud, cracking into other people's systems, and the like). Microsoft is out of line, and in need of a serious bitch-slap, for what they've done and what they are trying to do.
Our Parents are the evil fucks, not us
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The article says how we keep working jobs, the economy sucks, etc., but it also keeps calling us slackers. How are we different than our parents and grandparents? We work, pay the bills, try to do better, etc. The author of this piece is torn between wanting to tell how fucked up things have been for a lot of us, and wanting to insult us.
Amen.
The baby boomers were the most well educated, richest, most spoiled generation in the history (of the United States, at least). What did they do with all this wealth, all this privelege?
They did some great things. They rebelled against the establishment and ended institutionalized racism (and the social acceptance of common racism in most circles, despite the nagging existence of a few ethnocentric throwbacks in populations of every ethnicity). They rebelled against the establishment and won the right for a woman to choose the fate of her own body. They rebelled against the establishment and won a large degree of gender equality and sexual freedom.
And they engaged in excesses that proved to be a little less positive, such as excessive drug experimentation in the 60's, arguably excessive sexual experimentation in the 70's, excessive conservatism and reactionsim in the 80's, and excessive dishonesty in the 90's.
They took all the freedoms they inherited and enjoyed, abused some of them, and then took those same freedoms away from us in the name of their 'knowing better', they systematically and deliberately inundated us with incessent marketing from the day we were born, tempted us with easy credit, pounded into our heads the compulsion to use that credit to buy their products and enrich them, then blamed us for our irresponsiblity when many of us succumbed to their repeated conditioning and actually did what they were telling us to do, an average of 10 minutes each hour (of television viewed or radio heard), and countless other times as we innocently walked or drove down the street to work.
Do we bear some of the responsibility for our alleged lack of self control? Sure. Do the generation of our parents and grandparents, who have orchestrated the incessant advertising that conditions us into submissive little shoppers and consumers, often as unable to resist a shiny new object as we are unable to join a protest for a cause we are forbidden, by that very same conditioning, from feeling strongly about? You bet they do.
There is enough blame for everyone to share, but no generation ever engaged in as much excess, or stripped their descendents of as much freedom and constitutional protection, not to mention financially mortgaging their children's future with unprecendented government deficits and ponzai retirement and real estate schemes than did the generation of our parents.
So while they may condemn us of our weaknesses (and they are real, valid weaknesses we must address if we are to survive), they would be well advised to check out beam in their own eyes.
Nobody will stop you. The modding itself is not illegal.
Absolutely right.
Using your newly modded car is, however.
Aboslutely wrong. You can use your modded car all you like, so long as you don't drive it on public roads. This may sound like a nit, but if you live in the western United States, for example, (where I did as a kid) there are plenty of places you can go drive non-street-legal vehicles all day long, just for the fun of it, perfectly legally. Utah salt flats are probably the most famous examples, but any ranch big enough to have its own road(s) (and that is most if not all of them) would suffice.
Read the fucking article and when your little troll eyes get to:
The other 20 percent? Gaming consoles like Xbox 2 and the next generation of Sony PlayStations will likely include DVR technology
You'll understand why this isn't a plug for MS, but an unbiased article on a site that just happens to be owned by MS.
And when you grow up and stop assuming everyone who is even mildly critical of your employer^H^H^H^H^H^H favorite software vendor isn't necessarilly a troll, perhaps you'll be able to ponder larger pictures and marketing strategies that go beyond a particlar brand item v. another to encompass an attempt at taking over an entire market v. another.
Hint: Microsoft's push toward DRM and Palladium has a lot more to gain by taking over the TiVo market than it does by taking over the playstation market. Why? Tivo is based upon open, non-DRM hardware and an open, GPLed operating system, while playstation is itself a proprietary player and, while it is a competitor, it does not stand in the way of Microsoft's DRM and Palladium strategies, despite having a GNU/Linux kit available for hobbiests. TiVo, on the other hand, as a widely adopted PVR that does use standard PC parts and a free operating system, does represent not only a potential barrier to Microsoft's DRM-and-Palladium-Ueber-Alles strategy, it has two other factors which the PS lacks:
1) Potentially a much larger marketplace than PS (nearly every household has a VCR, while many fewer have game consoles of any kind)
2) A legitimate competitor to whome consumers will flock if given a choice between that and a DRM/Palladium crippled alternative.
Many informed people believe the X-Box may well be a Palladium trial balloon and a test bed for emerging Microsoft DRM technology. If true, its use and penetration of the game console market is incidental compared to those qualities and the value they represent to Microsoft, and in that light it becomes clear that TiVo is a much more potent threat to Microsoft's plans than the playstation is likely to ever become. In which case, throwing a bone to the PS in an attempt to appear "neutral" (which is hardly likely of a Microsoft publication, any more than Linux Weekly is neutral when it posts a link to a pro-Linux article. Even more telling, this article was written by a Microsoft author, not merely linked to by a Microsoft site) costs them nothing in the persuit of their larger strategy.
If files from ftp.sendmail.org get infected, then people could probably get a bogus key as well.
This difference, though, is that one can download a public GPG key from a site (like sendmail.org or something) and continue using it to verify software over several versions.
Not only that, but public keys (or even complete keyrings containing public keys for groups of developers) can be obtained from multiple, different sources, all of which in turn are different and ideally independent of where one downloads the source tarball from.
This means one can obtain a developer's key or keyring from, say, a public key server (or two, or several), some ftp site (preferably a different non-mirror one from the tarball), a purchased CD, or any number of other places, check them against each other (make sure none disagree), and use them to check a download immediately, as well as 5 years from now.
The cracker would have to not only trojan the tarball, but also break into numerous independent key servers around the globe, numerous ftp sites around the globe, likely numerous web sites as well, and perhaps even various freenet nodes as well (if that is being used to distribute keys as well). And for those who anti up $5 for a CD with developers keys on it, they'd have to intercept the postal service and swap CDs as well (or crack the master CD before it goes to press).
Good luck. Even the NSA would probably have trouble pulling something like that off.
I have been following closely the adoptation of open source within European Union lately. It seems they are working, studying and experimenting this in many fronts.
This is indeed good news.
The fact of the matter is that if the world wants to free itself from the American hegemony and economic dominance in the 21st century, one of the critical things it must do is free itself from dependence on American Proprietary software, particularly operating systems, with all of their NSA backdoors, NSA-inspired weak cryptography, deliberate incompatabilities, moving development targets, subscription pricing, and so on. Probably the smartest and best approach is to leverage software freedom by using Free Software and developing home-grown talent and expertise in customizing it for local or regional use. Not only does that allow a solid audit of existing code (and help insure against malicious code a la Microsoft's NSA_KEY), but it creates a breeding ground for local expertise and a local software industry.
Of course, Europe is already on par with the United States in this area despite our home-grown software monopoly, but for the developing world this is a tremendous boon, and it is exciting to see countries like China and India embrace software freedom.
China: ~1 Billion India: ~1 Billion
That is already about a third of humanity. Add to that Germany, Brazil, Colombia, etc. and you have a ground swell that must boggle Bill Gate's mind. Even if Palladium and DRM were to do their worst, effectively banning Free Software in the United States, it would only be the United States that suffers... the bulk of the rest of the world seems to already have made their choice for freedom, and are poised to sprint right past us into the information age if we are foolish enough to cripple ourselves in the way Microsoft and Hollywood are lobbying Washington to do.
Next time we feel depressed, or run down, in hearing the latest bad news from Washington we can take heart that, at worst, it is only the United States emasculating its own information industry, not humanity as a whole. I, for one (despite being an American who will undoubtably suffer both economically and intellectually if the battles against Palladium and DRM are lost), take heart in that.
Basically, few KDE-developers disagree with some of Israels policies regarding the Palestinians. But that does not make them in to nazis.
It is absurd to see the asinine, provincial conflict that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affect the rest of the world at all, much less make its filthy way into discussions of free software, KDE, or what have you.
You are correct, taking the Palestinian side is no more or less anti-semetic than taking the Israeli side.
First, many jews (including nearly all of my jewish friends) vehemently disagree with Israeli policies, just as I (and many other Americans) vehemently disagree with Baby Bush's Iraq policy ("Al Q'aida uses suicide bombers, so deterrance will never work with Iraq" as if the fact that both groups happen to wear funny cloths on their heads makes them identical, which perhaps it does to Baby Bush's audience, the American public, but somehow I doubt even that).
Palestinians and Jews are both semetic people's.
I will go out on a limb and make what is a balanced, arguably antisemetic statement (though in fact it is not, it is anti-pouring gasoline on the flame):
Fuck Palestine. Fuck Israel. The rest of us should stay out of that asinine conflict and, quite frankly, ignore the idiots on both sides until they either come to their senses and sue for peace, or exterminate one another completely. We should certainly not allow that asinine, provincial conflict to affect our lives elsewhere, much less impact free software and our collaboration with individuals who happen to be either Israeli or Palestinian, or who happen to have the poor judgement of supporting one side or another of that asinine conflict, given, as we all know, how little impact individuals have on their government'-s' collective acts of collassal stupidity, be it Idiot Sharon, Idiot Arafat, or Idiot Bush.
Your intellectual superiority would be more impressive if you could back up those numbers with recent official information. I've heard just as many arguments by others who also conveintly can't back it up that lowering component cost has resulted in next to no money loss per console at this point.
Good point... numbers like that should be backed up by some kind of reference. Indeed, the numbers presented appear (unfortunately) to be exaggerated. According to estimates by Credit Suisse First Boston, M$ is only losing $20-$40/box. Still, if a million GNU/Linux users buy them as cheap Linux consoles, that's $20 million-$40 million dollars taken from 'The Man.':-)
Credit Suisse First Boston analyst George Gilbert estimated Microsoft's hardware subsidy at $20 to $40 per Xbox, putting the company on track to make money on the Xbox sooner than expected.
Of course, even this still begs the question, where is the rigorous analasys from which those estimates were derived, and when? As you correctly point out, what may have been a $40 loss in January might well be break-even today.
I mostly agree with the points your are making, though remain skeptical of the instance you cite. I even agree that we are (in normal circumstance, mostly) responsible for how others percieve us, but I should point out:
He is responsible for how he is percieved, so it does no good to say the accusations are exagerated.
I think Oppenheimer, numerous Hollywood personalities blacklisted during the MacCarthy debacle, what's-his-name who saved people's lives from a pending explosion during the Atlanta Olympics who was later publicly accused by the FBI of being the bomber, then yet later found to be utterly innocent but whose reputation has never fully recovered, or any number of Aschcroft's current detainees who happen to be completely innocent of involvement in terrorism might take exception to the assumption you express.
Yes, I'm exaggerating my position slightly to make a point.
RMS has numerous enemies, many of them idealogical enemies who repudiate free software and all it stands for, many others personal opponents due to whatever circumstances (professional differences, personal disagreements, personality conflicts, what have you). Some are honest and balanced in their criticisms, many others are less honest and much less balanced in their accusations. Unless RMS is going to hire a marketing company to manage his image (as many famous people with a lot more money than RMS has in fact do) he is going to suffer disporportionately when others criticize him, whether or not the criticism is deserved and whether or not he did anything to precipitate it.
I agree with much of what you have said at the philisophical level, but having personally debunked a great deal of misinformation (which I myself believed for many years) regarding RMS I remain profoundly skeptical of the kind of broad and dramatic accusations you quoted earlier (though I fully understand you intended it as an example in making a point, not as a specific indictment per se).
However, I didn't mean to imply you assumed guilt, merely that the way the item was quoted appeared to imply guilt where it may not in fact exist (or maybe it does, I really don't know). Having waded through so much diatribe that isn't true, I felt compelled to offer some general defense for the guy and to express my sentiment that I find such accusations to be unlikely to be true or accurate, even if they are based in some fact (i.e. at best I suspect they are grossly exaggerated), based on how many other accusations against the guy I have since found to be utterly baseless in their entirety. But that is just an opinion, one that could certainly be wrong in this particular instance.
On the point for our need for unity and to have a willingness to get past whatever differences we have, agree to disagree, and move on in insuring our freedom and preventing what you so correctly fear, the implimentation of "Architectures of Control" (excellent way to put it BTW... I may have to borrow your turn of phrase in the future:-)), I couldn't possibly agree more.
Sorry to include so much, but I don't think this can be emphasised enough. Open Source strengthens Free Source, and this is why. It's also central to my criticism of RMS's stance on LGPL. I was trying to find a link to his position paper on this and instead I found this [topology.org] which is even more disturbing.
[various accusations against RMS removed]
I'm not going to take sides in an argument that old, or even try to guess as to which side of the argument is the side of Angels, if either. I do however feel compelled to offer RMS a more general defense to the implication he is a raving lunatic, control freak, or what have you.
I've met the guy. I've seen him speak about numerous things, including his passionate plea for 'GNU/Linux' v. 'Linux', I've corresponded with him (about a science fiction novel I'm writing, unrelated to GNU and Linux), and I was around for his less-than-diplomatic 'lignuux' nonsense in the early days of Linux.
RMS is a complicated man, but overall my impression of him is that he is a very well meaning and generally kind individual, and his tendencies toward excess appear, to me at least, to be vastly exaggerated by his detractors. In particular, he is the first to say (paraphrased from when I saw him speak) "those who do not want to call GNU/Linux just Linux and ignore the GNU project's contributions are well within their rights to do so, though it isn't a very nice thing to do." He states, in a very mild mannered way, that he isn't all that interested in getting credit for the GNU's contribution to the core OS. What he is extraordinarilly concerned about is that the message of software freedom that GNU and the FSF stand for get out, and he feels that, his project having written 95% of the code that makes up the core Linux-as-a-unix-variant operating system, the request to include the GNU name when refering to the overall distribution as a way of pointing to that message isn't at all an unreasonable request.
He convinced me, and I went from a very hostile 'no way in hell I'll ever call it GNU/Linux stance' to my current "I'll try to remember, but make no guarantees" stance (as I happen to agree that the message of freedom is important, and he certainly has put in the hours of work and produced the code to warrant such an attribution). I cannot emphesize it enough... he'll stubbornly call it GNU/Linux, but he is very mild-mannered in his request that one do so, in very stark contrast to the way he is generally portrayed on slashdot and elsewhere.
Four points I think are important to keep in mind when reading negative comments about public figures such as RMS:
RMSes detractors have political agendas of their own, and are certainly as prone to smearing their opponents as anyone else engaged in political debate is
Conflicts and disagreements like the one you quote tend to be even more one-sided in their characterization, and any stance (pro or con) should be read with that in mind, and any accusations taken with the requisite grains of salt
RMS today is not the same man he was 10 or even 5 years ago. He himself has said he regrets many of his actions taken during the 'lignux' nonsense (hacking emacs to say 'lignux' instead of Linux, etc.). I wouldn't stand up to scrutiny very well either if I were judged by my rhetoric or actions of 10 years ago, when I was much younger and more hot-headed.
RMSes rhetoric and positions on most (perhaps all) issues are not nearly as radical as people like to portray them. You would be well advised to read or listen to what RMS says, not what is reported by others and attributed to him, as the latter is quite frequently misleading and not representative of what either he or the FSF stand for.
Aside from the assumption of guilt being accorded RMS on the basis of one one-sided rant by someone who had a professional disagreement with the man, I agree with the overall gist of your comment. RMSes contributions aside, no one, regardless of their contribution, has the right to "stomp all over" anyone else, or limit their freedoms. RMS would almost certainly agree with you as well, and indeed insuring those freedoms is precisely why he authored the GPL to begin with.
Hopefully, a court case WILL come of this, and maybe we'll get a Judge with a clue that realizes the DMCA restricts your First Amendment rights.
Perhaps 2600.com could file suit under the 'equal protection under the law' clause. Technically, this sort of double standard is unconstitutional:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. [emphesis mine]
Now, a literal reading might allow the federal government to be unfair, while requiring fairness from state governments, but I cannot imagine even our frighteningly corrupt supreme court interpreting the clause in such a fashion.
Did Bruce say "Free Software Community"? There's still hope that he'll join the light of Free Software rather than the slightly off white of Open Source.
Look, I'm a rather strong advocate of Free Software, indeed of software freedom in general. I try to remember to say (and write) GNU/Linux, and even succeed in not forgetting the GNU as often as not, out of respect for RMSes wishes even if I think his making a big deal out of it is chasing the wrong goal to some degree, and despite the wretched flames from those who would like to sweep RMSes 95% contribution to the core Linux-as-a-UNIX-like operating system under the rug, and claim notoriety for much of his work.
I donate rather generously to the EFF and the FSF, I support and use the GPL in my own work, and am even working on a Media equivelent of the GPL for my more creative literary and media projects, and I tend to value the definition of free software over the definition of open source licenses which are often, IMHO, too liberal in allowing restrictions on the user/customer.
All that having been said, calling Open Source "off-white" (American, perhaps a general English, idiom for 'not quite legitimate', also 'off-color') is utterly bogus.
Open Source has played an important role in bridging the cultural divide between software freedom and the old school, proprietary 'you get what you pay for (and nothing else)' mindset that, despite its trivial disprovability in most areas of life, persists to a remarkable degree among decision makers in many walks of life. Open Source is a stepping stone, a rhetoric that exposes some of the important benefits of free software (peer review and a rigorous scientific method vs. 'secret formula' methodologies, or as I like to put it, 'the free software folks are chemists sharing knowledge, while the proprietary software folks are alchemists hoarding secrets, and everyone knows which approach yields progress and which does not').
Many people coming from a proprietary mindset aren't able to make the complete leap from an information hoarding, toll-charging for every mile travelled mindset to the notion of software freedom, complete with all its ideals and, to the rest of us, obvious advantages of synergy, exponential cooperative growth and development of projects, and so on, but these very same people can and do make the leap toward understanding why the scientific method of sharing knowledge and submitting to rigorous peer review of code does lead to better software. It isn't the only aspect of free software that leads to better software, and it may not even be the most important factor, but it is a factor that they can understand. Once one has grown accustomed to these factors, and has moved one or more project to an open source or free software platform as a result, one begins to experience and learn the other advantages of free software (freedom from orphaned software, freedom from vendor coercion, freedom to set one's own upgrade cycle and timetable, freedom to fix libraries one's work depends on, rather than waiting months for the vendor to get around to it, freedom to leverage the work of others into getting a project out the door in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken, in short, freedom to use technology to serve one's business interests, rather than one's vendors' business intersts).
I have witnessed this metamorphesis in at least a dozen people, who came from the aforementioned 'free means worthless' mindset to adament advocates of free software, and in each case their first, rudimentary understanding came via the open source rhetoric, and in each case their understanding did not stop there. RMSes fears that open source would blind people to free software are IMHO largely misguided, as is the entire conflict between the two movements.
Open source is an important stepping stone for those in the proprietary world, a step they can take relatively easilly, and can understand, but one which generally does lead to an understanding of the value of software freedom, not through rhetorici or evangelism, but through personal experience.
So, while the differentiation between Free Software and Open Source is important, this bickering between the two is quite asinine and counterproductive, and while software freedom may encompass a more complete and accurate picture of the benefits offered by free software than Open Source does, Open Source bridges the divide and helps make those advantages available to many who otherwise would have never taken the opportunity. In so doing Open Source provides an important, some might argue critical, service to the Free Software community, and despite any disagreements between the two, Open Source is most certainly not 'off-white.'
I supposte that is a long winded way of saying "can't we just all get along" or perhaps "go away Microsofty, we don't need no stinkin' agent provocatueurs around here." In any event, however you interpret it, let's put this silly 'open source' vs. 'free software' bickering behind us, recognize the importance of both, and move on to enjoying the marvelous digital world the software freedom they help protect has created for us.
I think he is referencing our unstinting support of Israel despite their many atrocities, though he could be talking about our support of any number of other countries as well (at least on many of those point). Assuming I'm right, and he is pointing out the double standard of our treatment of Iraq v. our treatment of Israel...
... [a country that] ignores UN resolutions,
Indeed. Kyoto, Haag, plenty more...
Numerous resolutions regarding the boundries of Israel and calling for a Palastinian state on the west bank and gaza strip, and for the return of the Golan heights to Syria.
has weapons of mass destruction,
A, B and C. And lots of them.
A and C for certain, probably B as well.
has invaded some of its neighbours,
I wasn't aware of his? Mexico?
This is why I'm pretty certain he is referring to Israel. Although as small as the world has become, invading Panama and various Carrabean islands might certainly qualify as 'neighbors.'
In any event the shoe fits both countries pretty well, in the case of Israel: Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan have all been invaded and had territory occupied. The United States is actually quite well behaved in comparison, were it not for the monetary and military support we keep giving varrious jerks around the world, including Israel.
treats ethnic groups in their territories badly
Yes, the poor American Indians.
Native Americans, hispanics, blacks, Americans of Chinese and Japanese Descent. All of which is largely historical at this point in terms of official behavior, but remains an issue with respect to the behavior of thug cops in any number of American cities. Now of course we get to add Arab and Islamic Americans to the list, a condition which most certainly isn't historical, but will almost certainly be yet another glaring black mark on our ever-more-sordid history.
Israel: Muslims, Palestinians, reformist and black Jews, to name just three.
and is lead by a nasty man.
Sure, Bush-2 is extremely nasty. One of the nastiest so far. But hey, about the "invaded" point... We are talking about the US, yes?
I don't think so, though the shoe fits disturbingly well. I think Sharon is the player here, and yes, I think he is significantly nastier than Baby Bush, much as I despise and loathe the latter.
Conclusion: Bush-2 is the most dangerous man in the world today. We must nuke him at the first opportunity.
Conclusion: Israel and Sharon are the most dangerous people in the world. We must nuke them at the first opportunity.
NOT
If this doesn't show how asinine preemptive strikes, and 'threat of future developments as a justification to start a war and invade a country' type of arguments, consider this:
Is the United States really going to be able to bomb every country into submission who doesn't see eye to eye with our policies and has the capability of developing weapons of mass destruction over the next ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty years?
The technologies have become so ubiquitious that a Boy Scout has already succeeded in building a breeder reactor in his garage and turning his entire neighborhood into a superfund site, while another group of college students were able to create fissionable material in their dorm room. And that is just here in the United States. How many countries are going to have the wherewithall to build atomic, biological, or chemical weapons in the next ten years? How about the next fifty? Does the United States government really think a policy of beating small countries into submission for having the audacity of building the same weapons we stockpile in abundance is at all sustainable even over the near term future?
I certainly don't think so, and I think anyone with their head not firmly in the sand can recognize just how auful, how mislead, how ultimately self-destructive even considering such a posture is to the United States.
The sooner we get Baby Bush and his ultra-hawkish, quite-possibly-fascist advisors out of office the better.
I once said that regardless of the outcome of the last electorial debacle, we'd survive four years of whoever was in office just fine and elect someone else in four years. Now I am not at all certain our economy, our telecommunications and internet infrastructure (c.f. Baby Powell's gross mismanagement of the FCC), the moral or ethical ideals of our country, or even the country itself, is going to survive even three years of the idiots currently running it into the ground.
However, I think Israel is even less likely to survive the excesses of the monsters they, themselves have elected, nor is the middle east likely to survive the excesses many of them have turned to for leadership.
Europe, Canada, or maybe even Australia are looking better all the time.
An easily accessible handgun allows people to ROB convenience stores and MUG the elderly in Cetral[sic] Park.
So does a baseball bat or an easilly accessible knife. Shall we ban buck-knives? How about steaknives? Butterknives? Box cutters? Hell, we can all start eating applesauce instead, or pre-mashed foods a la the restaurant scene in Gilliam's Brazil,/i>, a dark comedic future that is looking more and more like contemporary America each day we spend under the dubious tutalage of Baby Bush.
I'm not a fan of the NRA or handguns in particular, but the notion of disallowing technologies, be they potential weapons, chips, or software, because of what people might possibly do with them is the kind of fallacious logic that got us into this mess to begin with. People may not like the slippery slope argument, and indeed may even label it logically fallacious (which it may in fact be), but historical evidence shows just how apropos the argument remains when applied to real world social and political policy, and while historical performance may not be a guarantee of future performance, ignoring it is a certain means to learning nothing whatsoever from history and repeating it again, ad nauseum.
PS: I'm also rather skeptical that you would be unable to return the monitor to Apple had it not worked with your hardware. I've found Apple's customer service to be far superior to most PC hardware vendors.
In fairness, it was what the Apple iStore salesperson told me when I called to inquire about the monitor (before I had discovered the 24" Samsung). It was a dealbreaker, as I was unwilling to risk $3800 (price+shipping and possibly sales tax IIRC).
I also found our debate worthwhile and informative (a rare thing in most fora unfortunately). Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
And it shows how little you understand about the above reply, but I guess you said that when you said "makes no sense".
The point was that by the age of 60, the person who has saved $100 a month since age 20 (note the 40 years bit?) will have only $255,225.08, while the "sap" who waited until 30 to start saving and then put away more will at the age of 60 have $1,196,170.35.
You're right, and that is what I get for trying to do something from memory. Now that I'm at home, looking at my notes, here is what I derived. These are the calculations I made that I found so impressive at the time. It wasn't the factor of 10 I remembered that surprised me, it was the doubling of $1000 to $2000 that resulted in one being poorer at the end if one started just ten years later!
If you start at 20, you can put away 1/3 as much each month as someone who (as I did) starts at 35, and end up living better:
$1000/mo @ 7% for 40 years (20-60): $2,624,813
$2000/mo @ 7% for 30 years (30-60): $2,439,941
$3000/mo @ 7% for 25 years (35-60): $2,430,215 **
$4000/mo @ 7% for 20 years (40-60): $2,083,706
** that is how old I was when I figured out how badly I'd fucked up.
Even more interesting are calculations where you put $100/mo aside the first year, $150/mo aside the second, and so on, slowly ramping up to $1000/mo by the time your 30, then leaving it there for the remainder. Putting even a little away early, knowing you'll be putting much more away later, seems on the face of it like it is hardly worth it. But actually, it can make a big difference (sorry, I don't have the calculations handy and I don't feel like redoing them now, but the difference was something like a million bucks IIRC.
All those mountains of evidence and emperical studies proving, time and time again, just how effective conditioning is even on those who are unwilling recepients suddenly don't exist, because they don't fit in with your pathetically niave, reactionary world view?
...sometimes a great deal, sometimes almost none at all). Which was the point I was trying to make in my initial comment.
Damn it. I wish I'd previewed that before posting. That sentence came off sounding for more harsh than I intended...no flame was intended toward you personally, merely a harsh criticism of the overly simplistic notion that (a) any of us are operating with full and complete freedom in today's culture and (b) no one else bears any responsiblity, even when they've excersized tremendous influece in affecting our decisions, if indeed we've even been left with a decision to make (often not the case). Both points are both overly simplistic and inaccurate to a fair degree.
The fact is that those conditioning our responses so methodically, so pervasively, and so persistently does mean they share responsibility for the results, in precisely the amount by which they have managed to influence and, yes, even condition us to respond in a particular matter. All the available evidence indicates that that degree of influence, and corresponding guilt, is significant.
This does not mean we don't share some of the guilt (indeed, we do, in precise measure as to how much conscious choice we've been left with
You bear complete and total responsibility for everything you freely choose to do.
I see. And operant conditioning doesn't exist? No one has ever been brainwashed, in the entire history of mankind? All those mountains of evidence and emperical studies proving, time and time again, just how effective conditioning is even on those who are unwilling recepients suddenly don't exist, because they don't fit in with your pathetically niave, reactionary world view?
You should open your eyes. Take a marketing class, or read some of their literature. We are being brainwashed (quite literally) through repetition, and while different people have different threshholds before the succumb to repetative conditioning, no human being is or ever has been immune to the effect. In short, it gets all of us, sooner or later. Much later, if you have had the good luck to realize what is happening to you, realize where it is coming to, and minimize your exposure, but not everyone can study conditioning techniques, marketing, or psychology, or even have friends who do (as I have). Not everyone knows or is aware of how much of their free will, their ability to decide, is eroded each hour they view their television set or listen to their radio.
It isn't like there is a Surgeon General's warning on the product, or even a common warning being disseminated through our educational systems, or even by word of mouth. Quite the opposite, actually.
And our wealthiest, most powerful people and organizations have been actively conditioning the entire population for a very long time now, indeed, for the entire lifetime of any generation x-er.
Someone who has succumbed to such conditioning is no more responsible for their behavior than a brainwashed child is for believing in Santa Clause or the child of a religion fanatic is for believing in a Christian/Muslim/Jewish God.
Or put another way, anyone who has been subjected to such conditioning has had their ability to "freely choose" degraded, perhaps destroyed altogether. Which, ultimately, is the point of many of the marketing methodologies employed today, including repetative advertising, which, in the intelligence trade, is referred to as repetative conditioning.
Until you realize that you won't quite be human.
You have an odd definition of human. Probably one derived in some asinine way from some Ayn Randian diatribe, which takes one aspect of being a human being and ignores a hundred other equally important aspects of being human, then misapplies it as a sole metric of measure for something it is completely unrelated to.
What discourages people is morality. I buy software because it's right. I buy films because it's right - I tape stuff when I can't buy it at a reasonable price, and normally buy in a sale. I could download hours of music and have a CD burner, yet I've got well over 100 albums and am adding to that at 2-3 a month. I'm one of the guys they like, and they make quite a bit from me.
That may be true for you, but it is not true for anyone I know, and I know a number of people who consider themselves to be 'moral' people, of many walks of life. People (yourself excepted, apparently) seem to have a natural instinct that tells them copying and sharing something among friends and family is a good thing, and enriches their lives, and that includes copying and sharing software. And indeed, almost everyone I know (and, back in the day, myself included) did exactly that, despite the silly copy protection schemes software manufacturers came up with to try and stop it.
What did stop it was when our names became, merely by implication, associated with the copy in question. Suddenly no one I know was all that willing to share software with one another, and if they did it was with the 'make sure this doesn't go any farther' admonition that never existed before. Ultimately even that little bit of sharing went away (though most of us now use free software, so it isn't even an issue any more).
The point being: morality you cannot rely on. Indeed, there are powerful moral arguments against entitlement monopolies such as copyrights and patents, and for sharing and disseminating wealth as far and as wide as you possibly can, and that moral argument can and often does include sharing information (data or software) that others are immorally trying to hoard.
On the other hand, no one can argue with the fact that if you do get caught sharing illegal copies, you will be in trouble. As a result, regardless of your ethical or moral stance on the right or wrong of government entitlements such as copyright, or on the right or wrong of sharing illegal copies of software or data, you are a damn site less likely to be inclined to do so if your name is attached in some way to the copy and the act can be traced back to you.
Some people may believe sharing copying is ethically wrong, but everyone wants to avoid standing trial or facing a civil suit for copyright violation regardless of their stance on the ethics of copyright. Which is why serializing software worked so well, and why it would work so well for music and movies, irrespective of where one comes down on the whole copyright-copywrong debate.
Invested how exactly? I mean the 2.5% at the bank isn't going to do much good.
... play around with the numbers, get a feel for what is going on, educate yourself, then get some advice from a professional. A professional advisor that is, not a broker or someone with something they want to sell you.
No, it isn't, and if your money is in a savings account your wealth is actually shrinking, as the interest you are compounding is less than the inflation you are compounding, which means you are compounding a loss, not a gain.
Get an investment advisor. I am neither qualified nor inclined to tell people how to invest, though I can tell you (a) be diverse in your holdings and (b) don't be overcome by greed. A 5%-7% annual return, compounded over several years, results in a very respectable nestegg and can generally be achieved without taking big risks.
Read some books on investing and get a good investment advisor. That is by far your best bet.
And understand the implications of compound interest, not merely the theoretical meaning of the words. You will be very, very glad you did, and probably very shocked at just what those implications are. My telling you won't convince you: calculate the numbers yourself and study what they mean and what they imply for you.
Hint: the other respondant who threw some numbers out hasn't done this (his numbers are wrong, ignoring not just compounded interst, but the compounding effect of adding a sum to the principle generating that interst each month, even a modest sum). There are numerous calculators online
I have a few $5000 CDs at variable rate 48 months. Should I continue with CDs or use some other method?
I'm not qualified to give investment advice, only to point out the mathematical facts of compound intersest and to explain that most people who think they know what it means often do not, and almost always don't understand the implications.
I do not buy CDs, because their interest rates generally do not exceed the inflation rate by much if anything at all. I personally tend to invenst in a diverse portfolio of stocks, bonds, and other instruments (some of the bonds for example reflect market indexes, but mast other things, including real estate investments, etc.). Your best bet is to read a few books on investing and hire a good investment advisor. Right now I tend to invest somewhat conservately, but others choose other strategies, sometimes more successfully than mine, sometimes not. The important thin is diversity in your portfolio, the specifics are something you and your investment advisor will want to work out.
The key is threefold:
1) keep adding to the investment nestegg, even if it is only $100/month, though more is always better
2) keep the interest rate above the rate of inflation, so that the overall value of your savings, adjusted for inflation, continues to grow and compound. If you are earning less than inflation you are compounding a loss, not a gain, and your actual wealth is shrinking.
3) time, time, time. Time is the most potent ingredient, starting early and modestly will get you farther than starting later, even if you are investing more heavilly later. I am feeling the bite of that stark fact right now, as I started later.
The RIAA has been rebuffing Microsoft's "secure digital media" initiatives for *years*. They know what Microsoft does to its business "partners" and it scares them, along with the wholly known stupidity of becoming reliant on one company that will supply the DRM system and then "manage it" to maximize their own business needs (more features to Windows, less to other players).
... most of us would pay a couple of buck a week to subscribe to our favorite programs, and the choice of programming driven by the desires of the viewership rather than advertisers can only improve.
Microsoft is simply strong-arming them with this; the idea is to put Hollywood on notice that its Microsoft DRM or none at all. There is no *way* that BillG and STEVE! Ballmer would EVER allow Microsoft to become reliant on either an open standard they have to compete on and ESPECIALLY a proprietary system owned by someone else to do DRM for what many consider to be "the next killer app" for PCs.
Very interesting point, and quite probably very correct. If what you say is true, the Copyright and Media Cartels could save themselves from both fates (out of control napsterization vs. Microsoft's strongarming them into subservience via DRM), but in order to do so they will have to give up their dreams of DRM control and change their business model.
Software has successfully used serial numbers and registration to discourage copyright violations, and while copyright violations do exist (and the software industry loves to exaggerate the economic impact of such violations), game manufacturers do make a profit (else they would no longer be selling gtames), Microsoft does make money, as do most software vendors not on Microsoft's hit-list. This is because serialization and/or registration is enough to discourage most illegal copying, and nothing, not even the most draconian DRM technologies, will ever stop all of it.
If Hollywood adopts a similar approach to content distribution on the internet they will likely have people lining up to pay $8.00 for the privelege of downloading unencumbered DivX encodings of their latest movies (with all $8.00 going to the studio, much to the dismay of theaters no doubt), and they will thrive without having their content ruthlessly napsterized (are you really going to share a copy of a movie that has a serial number they might have associated with your credit card and, thus, your real-world identity? Only if you are a fool) and without having to rely on Microsoft's DRM snakeoil (or someone else, though Microsoft is the only one likely to turn the MPAA and RIAA into wholley owned subsidiaries as part of the bargain). Having said that, if they try this stunt with some propreitary, encumbered, crippled format, they will fail as miserably as the RIAA currently is in their efforts to sell music online.
Television will have to make an even bigger adjustment, selling content to their viewers instead of selling their viewers like so much chattel to their advertisers. This isn't a bad thing
However, if these cartels are unable or unwilling to adjust their world view and business strategies, the stark choice you outline between rampant illegal sharing or life beneath the heal of Redmond is likely to be the one they face, but if so, it will be entirely self inflicted and deserved.
Sure this makes sense. But if you had to blow most of your savings when you got layed off and couldn't find another job for 6+ months then it doesn't really do you any good.
Very true, but I was addressing the original poster's assumption that 'there was no way s/he could have $100k by 30, becuase s/he has a shitty entry-level job', which was the assumption I made at that age, an assumption that is just plain wrong, though you have to understand compound interest before you can understand why that assumption is wrong.
Losing your job and having to eat up your nest egg (and the interest it generates) of course wrecks any retirement plan, and you are right, a lot of gen-xers and gen-wers (which I guess I am, since I was born in 1964 and my parents were baby boomers) have been hit very hard by the recession and are in trouble as a result, but that wasn't the point I was addressing (though indirectly I am addressing the point that you can recover from such a blow by minimizing your debt and maximizing your invested savings, even if it means living far more frugally than you're used to).
if you bought a house in the last 2 years, you're going to look worse than this guy after the bubble bursts in the housing market.
... hold off, and let the bubble burst.
houses arent that great of investments, and unless you are sure you are going to be in it for 5-10 years, you will get screwed.
That reasoning is only valid for investment property, not the home you live in. Everyone has to live somewhere, so either you own a house and get a tax break, and have some equity in it, or you are flushing a rent check down the toilet every month. Period.
Even if the property value went to zero (to use an extreme, absurd example), as long as it is fit for you to live on, you are still ahead owning as opposed to buying for two reasons:
1) you still get the tax break, which is vastly more than you get flushing that rent check down the drain every month
2) your property value can rebound from zero to some positive amount, while the asset value of the rent you paid will always and forever remain zero, regardless.
Of course, even the shittiest properties in the shittiest areas, assuming they haven't been contaminated chemically or otherwise and thus made uninhabitable, have a value far greater than zero. Having attended numerous tax foreclosure auctions I can tell you the value of said properties is usually surprisingly greater than zero.
Even in the worst case scenerio, where you own a house in a neighborhood that is going down hill, even if you sell at a loss, you will almost always be ahead of where you would have been had you merely rented for the same period of time.
However, if you are looking to buy a second house as an investment, then I agree absolutely with everything you've said
The starting pay absolutely blows. If I were to have 100k "stashed-away" by the time I am 32, I would have to save 1/4 of my earnings for 10 years. Now, explain to me how you are supposed to: buy a house, pay for your car, keep out of debt, and still fucking have 100k saved by the time you are 30s?
... the norm for most entry-level jobs. Do not be loyal to an employer who pays you so little -- my initial mistake at the time -- but rather, get the experience you need, then find a proper paying job with someone willing to pay you appropriately).
If only someone had sat down and explained to me how things work when I was in my twenties.
You need to sit down and understand how compound interst works. Seriously. You need to run the numbers, until you understand exactly how modest savings over time, invested wisely, will compound into wealth by the time you hit retirement. Calculate the numbers for yourself over 10 years, over 20 years, over 30 years.
One of the surprises you will find is that, if you start saving $100/month at 20, you will live better than someone who starts saving $1,000/month at 30. Time is the most important ingredient in saving, and if you are only 24, you still have a good amount of time on your side.
Yes, your beginning salary sucks, and yes, you should probably be putting as much extra cash away now as you can reasonably afford. My first job paid only $20,000, so little that the minimum payment on my college debts exceeded my takehome pay. I obvously only worked that job for as long as I needed to find a much better one
And this brings me to my second point: you will not be making such miserable wages for the next 6 years. Put away as much as you can afford now, because time will grow that money remarkably over the next decade, and time is the most potent ingredient in the mixture (assuming, of course, you are earning interest that exceeds inflation. Modest interest will do, you do not need to be making 10% annual returns, and as I pointed out, $100 put away today will do more for your retirement than $1,000 put away ten years from now).
Compound interest is something everyone who participates in a capitalist economy should have an intimate understanding of. The only good debt 'interest' is real-estate interest, because of the tax savings it creates (which reduces the real interst to a very small amount) and the equity in your (likely) improving property value, plus the fact that if you weren't paying it you'd be paying rent and flushing your entire monthly payment down the drain with no benefit and no asset to show for it, and you have to live somewhere.
Other than your morgage, you want to be on the positive side of the compound interest equation, and that means saving and investing, even modestly, while avoiding debt otherwise. If you are on the positive side of that equation and do nothing, you will eventually become wealthy. If you are on the negative side of that equation, there is a good chance you will become impoverished despite working your ass off.
When I was in my twenties I thought I understood compound interest because I'd had a couple of business and economic classes, and because I knew what the words meant. It wasn't until I ran the numbers, and pondered what the results meant (like the surprising result I mention above) that I realized how little I understood the concept's implications in our everyday lives, much less its impact on our retirement. I wish to hell I'd known 10 years ago what I know now, and can only reiterate my advice: run the numbers, study and ponder the result. Understand what the implications are, and start saving and investing, even modestly, now.
So how does that analogy play out with an X-Box? I can mod it and play around with it as long I don't use it to play any officially liscended X-Box games? Or use it to log onto an official X-Box network?
Unless and until congress sells what little digital future we have left down the river and mandates DRM, Palladium, or some similarly destructive requirement into our technology via a bill like those proposed by Senator "Disney" Hollings, none of the limits you imply are relevant. Unlike a modified car, which law restricts from being used on public roads, there are no such restrictions for a modified x-box.
If you've paid for the games legally, you are legally entitled to play them (or a backup copy you've made) on any x-box, modified or not. Ditton for running GNU/Linux or some other, hitherto unknown, operating system. Ditto for connecting to the internet, whether to browse the web or play UT3 (under GNU/Linux or, if a client exists, Microsoft's crippled offering). Ditto for anything else.
In other words, the x-box is perfectly legal to modify and use any way you like (short of violating criminal laws with respect to fraud, cracking into other people's systems, and the like). Microsoft is out of line, and in need of a serious bitch-slap, for what they've done and what they are trying to do.
The article says how we keep working jobs, the economy sucks, etc., but it also keeps calling us slackers. How are we different than our parents and grandparents? We work, pay the bills, try to do better, etc. The author of this piece is torn between wanting to tell how fucked up things have been for a lot of us, and wanting to insult us.
Amen.
The baby boomers were the most well educated, richest, most spoiled generation in the history (of the United States, at least). What did they do with all this wealth, all this privelege?
They did some great things. They rebelled against the establishment and ended institutionalized racism (and the social acceptance of common racism in most circles, despite the nagging existence of a few ethnocentric throwbacks in populations of every ethnicity). They rebelled against the establishment and won the right for a woman to choose the fate of her own body. They rebelled against the establishment and won a large degree of gender equality and sexual freedom.
And they engaged in excesses that proved to be a little less positive, such as excessive drug experimentation in the 60's, arguably excessive sexual experimentation in the 70's, excessive conservatism and reactionsim in the 80's, and excessive dishonesty in the 90's.
They took all the freedoms they inherited and enjoyed, abused some of them, and then took those same freedoms away from us in the name of their 'knowing better', they systematically and deliberately inundated us with incessent marketing from the day we were born, tempted us with easy credit, pounded into our heads the compulsion to use that credit to buy their products and enrich them, then blamed us for our irresponsiblity when many of us succumbed to their repeated conditioning and actually did what they were telling us to do, an average of 10 minutes each hour (of television viewed or radio heard), and countless other times as we innocently walked or drove down the street to work.
Do we bear some of the responsibility for our alleged lack of self control? Sure. Do the generation of our parents and grandparents, who have orchestrated the incessant advertising that conditions us into submissive little shoppers and consumers, often as unable to resist a shiny new object as we are unable to join a protest for a cause we are forbidden, by that very same conditioning, from feeling strongly about? You bet they do.
There is enough blame for everyone to share, but no generation ever engaged in as much excess, or stripped their descendents of as much freedom and constitutional protection, not to mention financially mortgaging their children's future with unprecendented government deficits and ponzai retirement and real estate schemes than did the generation of our parents.
So while they may condemn us of our weaknesses (and they are real, valid weaknesses we must address if we are to survive), they would be well advised to check out beam in their own eyes.
Nobody will stop you. The modding itself is not illegal.
Absolutely right.
Using your newly modded car is, however.
Aboslutely wrong. You can use your modded car all you like, so long as you don't drive it on public roads. This may sound like a nit, but if you live in the western United States, for example, (where I did as a kid) there are plenty of places you can go drive non-street-legal vehicles all day long, just for the fun of it, perfectly legally. Utah salt flats are probably the most famous examples, but any ranch big enough to have its own road(s) (and that is most if not all of them) would suffice.
You'll understand why this isn't a plug for MS, but an unbiased article on a site that just happens to be owned by MS.
And when you grow up and stop assuming everyone who is even mildly critical of your employer^H^H^H^H^H^H favorite software vendor isn't necessarilly a troll, perhaps you'll be able to ponder larger pictures and marketing strategies that go beyond a particlar brand item v. another to encompass an attempt at taking over an entire market v. another.
Hint: Microsoft's push toward DRM and Palladium has a lot more to gain by taking over the TiVo market than it does by taking over the playstation market. Why? Tivo is based upon open, non-DRM hardware and an open, GPLed operating system, while playstation is itself a proprietary player and, while it is a competitor, it does not stand in the way of Microsoft's DRM and Palladium strategies, despite having a GNU/Linux kit available for hobbiests. TiVo, on the other hand, as a widely adopted PVR that does use standard PC parts and a free operating system, does represent not only a potential barrier to Microsoft's DRM-and-Palladium-Ueber-Alles strategy, it has two other factors which the PS lacks:
1) Potentially a much larger marketplace than PS (nearly every household has a VCR, while many fewer have game consoles of any kind)
2) A legitimate competitor to whome consumers will flock if given a choice between that and a DRM/Palladium crippled alternative.
Many informed people believe the X-Box may well be a Palladium trial balloon and a test bed for emerging Microsoft DRM technology. If true, its use and penetration of the game console market is incidental compared to those qualities and the value they represent to Microsoft, and in that light it becomes clear that TiVo is a much more potent threat to Microsoft's plans than the playstation is likely to ever become. In which case, throwing a bone to the PS in an attempt to appear "neutral" (which is hardly likely of a Microsoft publication, any more than Linux Weekly is neutral when it posts a link to a pro-Linux article. Even more telling, this article was written by a Microsoft author, not merely linked to by a Microsoft site) costs them nothing in the persuit of their larger strategy.
If files from ftp.sendmail.org get infected, then people could probably get a bogus key as well.
This difference, though, is that one can download a public GPG key from a site (like sendmail.org or something) and continue using it to verify software over several versions.
Not only that, but public keys (or even complete keyrings containing public keys for groups of developers) can be obtained from multiple, different sources, all of which in turn are different and ideally independent of where one downloads the source tarball from.
This means one can obtain a developer's key or keyring from, say, a public key server (or two, or several), some ftp site (preferably a different non-mirror one from the tarball), a purchased CD, or any number of other places, check them against each other (make sure none disagree), and use them to check a download immediately, as well as 5 years from now.
The cracker would have to not only trojan the tarball, but also break into numerous independent key servers around the globe, numerous ftp sites around the globe, likely numerous web sites as well, and perhaps even various freenet nodes as well (if that is being used to distribute keys as well). And for those who anti up $5 for a CD with developers keys on it, they'd have to intercept the postal service and swap CDs as well (or crack the master CD before it goes to press).
Good luck. Even the NSA would probably have trouble pulling something like that off.
I have been following closely the adoptation of open source within European Union lately. It seems they are working, studying and experimenting this in many fronts.
... the bulk of the rest of the world seems to already have made their choice for freedom, and are poised to sprint right past us into the information age if we are foolish enough to cripple ourselves in the way Microsoft and Hollywood are lobbying Washington to do.
This is indeed good news.
The fact of the matter is that if the world wants to free itself from the American hegemony and economic dominance in the 21st century, one of the critical things it must do is free itself from dependence on American Proprietary software, particularly operating systems, with all of their NSA backdoors, NSA-inspired weak cryptography, deliberate incompatabilities, moving development targets, subscription pricing, and so on. Probably the smartest and best approach is to leverage software freedom by using Free Software and developing home-grown talent and expertise in customizing it for local or regional use. Not only does that allow a solid audit of existing code (and help insure against malicious code a la Microsoft's NSA_KEY), but it creates a breeding ground for local expertise and a local software industry.
Of course, Europe is already on par with the United States in this area despite our home-grown software monopoly, but for the developing world this is a tremendous boon, and it is exciting to see countries like China and India embrace software freedom.
China: ~1 Billion
India: ~1 Billion
That is already about a third of humanity. Add to that Germany, Brazil, Colombia, etc. and you have a ground swell that must boggle Bill Gate's mind. Even if Palladium and DRM were to do their worst, effectively banning Free Software in the United States, it would only be the United States that suffers
Next time we feel depressed, or run down, in hearing the latest bad news from Washington we can take heart that, at worst, it is only the United States emasculating its own information industry, not humanity as a whole. I, for one (despite being an American who will undoubtably suffer both economically and intellectually if the battles against Palladium and DRM are lost), take heart in that.
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=kde-cafe&m=1017
Basically, few KDE-developers disagree with some of Israels policies regarding the Palestinians. But that does not make them in to nazis.
It is absurd to see the asinine, provincial conflict that is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict affect the rest of the world at all, much less make its filthy way into discussions of free software, KDE, or what have you.
You are correct, taking the Palestinian side is no more or less anti-semetic than taking the Israeli side.
I will go out on a limb and make what is a balanced, arguably antisemetic statement (though in fact it is not, it is anti-pouring gasoline on the flame):
Good point
Source
Of course, even this still begs the question, where is the rigorous analasys from which those estimates were derived, and when? As you correctly point out, what may have been a $40 loss in January might well be break-even today.
I mostly agree with the points your are making, though remain skeptical of the instance you cite. I even agree that we are (in normal circumstance, mostly) responsible for how others percieve us, but I should point out:
... I may have to borrow your turn of phrase in the future :-)), I couldn't possibly agree more.
He is responsible for how he is percieved, so it does no good to say the accusations are exagerated.
I think Oppenheimer, numerous Hollywood personalities blacklisted during the MacCarthy debacle, what's-his-name who saved people's lives from a pending explosion during the Atlanta Olympics who was later publicly accused by the FBI of being the bomber, then yet later found to be utterly innocent but whose reputation has never fully recovered, or any number of Aschcroft's current detainees who happen to be completely innocent of involvement in terrorism might take exception to the assumption you express.
Yes, I'm exaggerating my position slightly to make a point.
RMS has numerous enemies, many of them idealogical enemies who repudiate free software and all it stands for, many others personal opponents due to whatever circumstances (professional differences, personal disagreements, personality conflicts, what have you). Some are honest and balanced in their criticisms, many others are less honest and much less balanced in their accusations. Unless RMS is going to hire a marketing company to manage his image (as many famous people with a lot more money than RMS has in fact do) he is going to suffer disporportionately when others criticize him, whether or not the criticism is deserved and whether or not he did anything to precipitate it.
I agree with much of what you have said at the philisophical level, but having personally debunked a great deal of misinformation (which I myself believed for many years) regarding RMS I remain profoundly skeptical of the kind of broad and dramatic accusations you quoted earlier (though I fully understand you intended it as an example in making a point, not as a specific indictment per se).
However, I didn't mean to imply you assumed guilt, merely that the way the item was quoted appeared to imply guilt where it may not in fact exist (or maybe it does, I really don't know). Having waded through so much diatribe that isn't true, I felt compelled to offer some general defense for the guy and to express my sentiment that I find such accusations to be unlikely to be true or accurate, even if they are based in some fact (i.e. at best I suspect they are grossly exaggerated), based on how many other accusations against the guy I have since found to be utterly baseless in their entirety. But that is just an opinion, one that could certainly be wrong in this particular instance.
On the point for our need for unity and to have a willingness to get past whatever differences we have, agree to disagree, and move on in insuring our freedom and preventing what you so correctly fear, the implimentation of "Architectures of Control" (excellent way to put it BTW
[various accusations against RMS removed]
I'm not going to take sides in an argument that old, or even try to guess as to which side of the argument is the side of Angels, if either. I do however feel compelled to offer RMS a more general defense to the implication he is a raving lunatic, control freak, or what have you.
I've met the guy. I've seen him speak about numerous things, including his passionate plea for 'GNU/Linux' v. 'Linux', I've corresponded with him (about a science fiction novel I'm writing, unrelated to GNU and Linux), and I was around for his less-than-diplomatic 'lignuux' nonsense in the early days of Linux.
RMS is a complicated man, but overall my impression of him is that he is a very well meaning and generally kind individual, and his tendencies toward excess appear, to me at least, to be vastly exaggerated by his detractors. In particular, he is the first to say (paraphrased from when I saw him speak) "those who do not want to call GNU/Linux just Linux and ignore the GNU project's contributions are well within their rights to do so, though it isn't a very nice thing to do." He states, in a very mild mannered way, that he isn't all that interested in getting credit for the GNU's contribution to the core OS. What he is extraordinarilly concerned about is that the message of software freedom that GNU and the FSF stand for get out, and he feels that, his project having written 95% of the code that makes up the core Linux-as-a-unix-variant operating system, the request to include the GNU name when refering to the overall distribution as a way of pointing to that message isn't at all an unreasonable request.
He convinced me, and I went from a very hostile 'no way in hell I'll ever call it GNU/Linux stance' to my current "I'll try to remember, but make no guarantees" stance (as I happen to agree that the message of freedom is important, and he certainly has put in the hours of work and produced the code to warrant such an attribution). I cannot emphesize it enough
Four points I think are important to keep in mind when reading negative comments about public figures such as RMS:
Aside from the assumption of guilt being accorded RMS on the basis of one one-sided rant by someone who had a professional disagreement with the man, I agree with the overall gist of your comment. RMSes contributions aside, no one, regardless of their contribution, has the right to "stomp all over" anyone else, or limit their freedoms. RMS would almost certainly agree with you as well, and indeed insuring those freedoms is precisely why he authored the GPL to begin with.
Perhaps 2600.com could file suit under the 'equal protection under the law' clause. Technically, this sort of double standard is unconstitutional:
Now, a literal reading might allow the federal government to be unfair, while requiring fairness from state governments, but I cannot imagine even our frighteningly corrupt supreme court interpreting the clause in such a fashion.
Did Bruce say "Free Software Community"?
There's still hope that he'll join the light of Free Software rather than the slightly off white of Open Source.
Look, I'm a rather strong advocate of Free Software, indeed of software freedom in general. I try to remember to say (and write) GNU/Linux, and even succeed in not forgetting the GNU as often as not, out of respect for RMSes wishes even if I think his making a big deal out of it is chasing the wrong goal to some degree, and despite the wretched flames from those who would like to sweep RMSes 95% contribution to the core Linux-as-a-UNIX-like operating system under the rug, and claim notoriety for much of his work.
I donate rather generously to the EFF and the FSF, I support and use the GPL in my own work, and am even working on a Media equivelent of the GPL for my more creative literary and media projects, and I tend to value the definition of free software over the definition of open source licenses which are often, IMHO, too liberal in allowing restrictions on the user/customer.
All that having been said, calling Open Source "off-white" (American, perhaps a general English, idiom for 'not quite legitimate', also 'off-color') is utterly bogus.
Open Source has played an important role in bridging the cultural divide between software freedom and the old school, proprietary 'you get what you pay for (and nothing else)' mindset that, despite its trivial disprovability in most areas of life, persists to a remarkable degree among decision makers in many walks of life. Open Source is a stepping stone, a rhetoric that exposes some of the important benefits of free software (peer review and a rigorous scientific method vs. 'secret formula' methodologies, or as I like to put it, 'the free software folks are chemists sharing knowledge, while the proprietary software folks are alchemists hoarding secrets, and everyone knows which approach yields progress and which does not').
Many people coming from a proprietary mindset aren't able to make the complete leap from an information hoarding, toll-charging for every mile travelled mindset to the notion of software freedom, complete with all its ideals and, to the rest of us, obvious advantages of synergy, exponential cooperative growth and development of projects, and so on, but these very same people can and do make the leap toward understanding why the scientific method of sharing knowledge and submitting to rigorous peer review of code does lead to better software. It isn't the only aspect of free software that leads to better software, and it may not even be the most important factor, but it is a factor that they can understand. Once one has grown accustomed to these factors, and has moved one or more project to an open source or free software platform as a result, one begins to experience and learn the other advantages of free software (freedom from orphaned software, freedom from vendor coercion, freedom to set one's own upgrade cycle and timetable, freedom to fix libraries one's work depends on, rather than waiting months for the vendor to get around to it, freedom to leverage the work of others into getting a project out the door in a fraction of the time it would have otherwise taken, in short, freedom to use technology to serve one's business interests, rather than one's vendors' business intersts).
I have witnessed this metamorphesis in at least a dozen people, who came from the aforementioned 'free means worthless' mindset to adament advocates of free software, and in each case their first, rudimentary understanding came via the open source rhetoric, and in each case their understanding did not stop there. RMSes fears that open source would blind people to free software are IMHO largely misguided, as is the entire conflict between the two movements.
Open source is an important stepping stone for those in the proprietary world, a step they can take relatively easilly, and can understand, but one which generally does lead to an understanding of the value of software freedom, not through rhetorici or evangelism, but through personal experience.
So, while the differentiation between Free Software and Open Source is important, this bickering between the two is quite asinine and counterproductive, and while software freedom may encompass a more complete and accurate picture of the benefits offered by free software than Open Source does, Open Source bridges the divide and helps make those advantages available to many who otherwise would have never taken the opportunity. In so doing Open Source provides an important, some might argue critical, service to the Free Software community, and despite any disagreements between the two, Open Source is most certainly not 'off-white.'
I supposte that is a long winded way of saying "can't we just all get along" or perhaps "go away Microsofty, we don't need no stinkin' agent provocatueurs around here." In any event, however you interpret it, let's put this silly 'open source' vs. 'free software' bickering behind us, recognize the importance of both, and move on to enjoying the marvelous digital world the software freedom they help protect has created for us.
I think he is referencing our unstinting support of Israel despite their many atrocities, though he could be talking about our support of any number of other countries as well (at least on many of those point). Assuming I'm right, and he is pointing out the double standard of our treatment of Iraq v. our treatment of Israel...
... [a country that] ignores UN resolutions,
Indeed. Kyoto, Haag, plenty more...
Numerous resolutions regarding the boundries of Israel and calling for a Palastinian state on the west bank and gaza strip, and for the return of the Golan heights to Syria.
has weapons of mass destruction,
A, B and C. And lots of them.
A and C for certain, probably B as well.
has invaded some of its neighbours,
I wasn't aware of his? Mexico?
This is why I'm pretty certain he is referring to Israel. Although as small as the world has become, invading Panama and various Carrabean islands might certainly qualify as 'neighbors.'
In any event the shoe fits both countries pretty well, in the case of Israel: Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan have all been invaded and had territory occupied. The United States is actually quite well behaved in comparison, were it not for the monetary and military support we keep giving varrious jerks around the world, including Israel.
treats ethnic groups in their territories badly
Yes, the poor American Indians.
Native Americans, hispanics, blacks, Americans of Chinese and Japanese Descent. All of which is largely historical at this point in terms of official behavior, but remains an issue with respect to the behavior of thug cops in any number of American cities. Now of course we get to add Arab and Islamic Americans to the list, a condition which most certainly isn't historical, but will almost certainly be yet another glaring black mark on our ever-more-sordid history.
Israel: Muslims, Palestinians, reformist and black Jews, to name just three.
and is lead by a nasty man.
Sure, Bush-2 is extremely nasty. One of the nastiest so far. But hey, about the "invaded" point... We are talking about the US, yes?
I don't think so, though the shoe fits disturbingly well. I think Sharon is the player here, and yes, I think he is significantly nastier than Baby Bush, much as I despise and loathe the latter.
Conclusion: Bush-2 is the most dangerous man in the world today. We must nuke him at the first opportunity.
Conclusion: Israel and Sharon are the most dangerous people in the world. We must nuke them at the first opportunity.
NOT
If this doesn't show how asinine preemptive strikes, and 'threat of future developments as a justification to start a war and invade a country' type of arguments, consider this:
Is the United States really going to be able to bomb every country into submission who doesn't see eye to eye with our policies and has the capability of developing weapons of mass destruction over the next ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty years?
The technologies have become so ubiquitious that a Boy Scout has already succeeded in building a breeder reactor in his garage and turning his entire neighborhood into a superfund site, while another group of college students were able to create fissionable material in their dorm room. And that is just here in the United States. How many countries are going to have the wherewithall to build atomic, biological, or chemical weapons in the next ten years? How about the next fifty? Does the United States government really think a policy of beating small countries into submission for having the audacity of building the same weapons we stockpile in abundance is at all sustainable even over the near term future?
I certainly don't think so, and I think anyone with their head not firmly in the sand can recognize just how auful, how mislead, how ultimately self-destructive even considering such a posture is to the United States.
The sooner we get Baby Bush and his ultra-hawkish, quite-possibly-fascist advisors out of office the better.
I once said that regardless of the outcome of the last electorial debacle, we'd survive four years of whoever was in office just fine and elect someone else in four years. Now I am not at all certain our economy, our telecommunications and internet infrastructure (c.f. Baby Powell's gross mismanagement of the FCC), the moral or ethical ideals of our country, or even the country itself, is going to survive even three years of the idiots currently running it into the ground.
However, I think Israel is even less likely to survive the excesses of the monsters they, themselves have elected, nor is the middle east likely to survive the excesses many of them have turned to for leadership.
Europe, Canada, or maybe even Australia are looking better all the time.
An easily accessible handgun allows people to ROB convenience stores and MUG the elderly in Cetral[sic] Park.
So does a baseball bat or an easilly accessible knife. Shall we ban buck-knives? How about steaknives? Butterknives? Box cutters? Hell, we can all start eating applesauce instead, or pre-mashed foods a la the restaurant scene in Gilliam's Brazil,/i>, a dark comedic future that is looking more and more like contemporary America each day we spend under the dubious tutalage of Baby Bush.
I'm not a fan of the NRA or handguns in particular, but the notion of disallowing technologies, be they potential weapons, chips, or software, because of what people might possibly do with them is the kind of fallacious logic that got us into this mess to begin with. People may not like the slippery slope argument, and indeed may even label it logically fallacious (which it may in fact be), but historical evidence shows just how apropos the argument remains when applied to real world social and political policy, and while historical performance may not be a guarantee of future performance, ignoring it is a certain means to learning nothing whatsoever from history and repeating it again, ad nauseum.
PS: I'm also rather skeptical that you would be unable to return the monitor to Apple had it not worked with your hardware. I've found Apple's customer service to be far superior to most PC hardware vendors.
In fairness, it was what the Apple iStore salesperson told me when I called to inquire about the monitor (before I had discovered the 24" Samsung). It was a dealbreaker, as I was unwilling to risk $3800 (price+shipping and possibly sales tax IIRC).
I also found our debate worthwhile and informative (a rare thing in most fora unfortunately). Thanks.