How can you reap profits AND corrupt research? I mean, if you get some students to develop something for you, if their research is bogus, then the product's not going to work, is it?
Well, if you had bothered to read the article the answer would have been obvious. Allow me to recap just one of several ways research is corrupted by corporate influence:
You are selling a drug to consumer that purports to offer some well defined benefit (relieving arthritis pain, for example). Your research, which is funded by the drug manufacturer, conducted in a scientific and unbiased manner, reveals that the drug is completely ineffective (in a double blind study, for example, you find the results to be no different among the test group as among the group given a placebo). By corrupting the results, cooking the data, and making the study confirm the effectiveness of the drug instead, continued sales (and perhaps even a growth in sales) is confirmed. The sponsor makes money, the researcher continues to get grants and "gifts." The only loosers are the public consumers and the scientific community. In other words, all of society with the exception of those perpetrating the fraud.
A more far reaching example is the cooked research funded by oil companies which was designed to undermine arguments against green-house gas emission reductions (also cited by the article you failed to read). I leave the ramifications of treating such corrupted research as scientifically valid, and failing to adjust public policy as a result, as an excersize to the reader (hint: don't by low-lying coastal real estate).
Last fall I took a 3 week vacation and just flew around the country: myself, a sleeping back, a small pup tent, and a small plane. Sometimes I would camp out next to the plane, other times I would find a hotel room.
When I went to visit my grandmother at her nursing home in San Jose I discovered that there was no hotel room available anywhere within an absurd distance. Had I wanted to get a room I would have needed to book months (!!) in advance. Months, long before I had even considered making the trip.
I've been around the world twice, and in all my travels I have never run into such absurdity. No accomodations, at any price.
The result? I spent the day with my grandmother, slept on the couch at the airport's FBO (no camping on the ramp at San Jose International:-)), visited my grandmother again the following morning, and then pointed the plane eastward toward Yosemite, vowing never to return.
I am not surprised at the cost of rent, or the other problems (economic and otherwise) afflicting the region. There is a serious supply/demand dysfunction in the silicon valley area, whether it is living accomidations, electricity, hotel rooms, or what have you. While I doubt I could identify all of the causes myself, the pattern was clearly recognizable after being in the region for less than twenty four hours and long before the dot.com bust.
To those living in silicon valley and scratching by desperately looking for work I can only say this: run. Run like the wind and don't look back. Pick any city in the United States, any at all, that is not within 100 miles of silicon valley, and you will find conditions much more suitable to human life. And if you're absolutely in love with the region (having been born in Palo Alto I can sympathise), you can always return again for vacation... assuming you've booked that hotel room four or five months in advance.
Read Daniel Quinne's Ishmael. He discusses this issue in depth with far more eloquence than I.
Humans aren't just hunting animals, they are waging all out war against (some) animals. Why? Because they compete against us for food. Farmers exterminate wolves and foxes that prey upon their livestock, rabbits that prey upon their produce, etc. etc. We gas insects routinely for the same reason. In this all out war, many species are diven to the brink of extinction and beyond. Others survive, marginalized and with an ever more depleated reserve of genetic diversity, lessoning their capacity for adaptation when natural ecological changes occur. Add to that the very unnatural, man-made ecological changes occurring (global warming, which a mountain of scientific evidence supports despite the nay-saying of a few ostrich-mimicking humans) and you do have mass extinction caused by humankind.
But, and here's the real catch people like you seem to miss, it isn't just about the extinction of other species. It is about our own impending extinction. Contrary to popular myth, propogated by everything from right-wing religious fanatics to left-wing "we can manage the ecosphere" to trekkie/trekker "social and technological change will solve these problems" optomists that we are somehow "above" or "outside" of our ecology, we are an inherent part of the ecological structure and web of food chains we ourselves are ravaging.
If we continue as we are, we will in the not so very distant future bring the entire structure crashing down, along with it that portion of the ecology which supports our own food chain. For example, if the worms die, our soil dies, and with it our crops, and ultimately ourselves. Why should worms die? The reason may not be obvious, but they, as we, are a part of an entire complex web of interdependency, key portions of which are being thoughtlesshack hacked out of existence with unforseen consiquences. Warnings abound: dustbowls, the desertification of once lush areas through absolutist agricultural methods which, in those regions, left the ecosystem in such tatters that, thousands of years later, it still hasn't recovered. Entire civilizations (e.g. the Mayans) are believed to have vanished in no small part as a result of agricultural collaps.
Take a look at it from another perspective. At one time there were a thousand different types of apples, some sweet, some tart, some red, some yellow, some green. Now there are a handfull of types which are mass-farmed. The same holds true for virtually every other food product we consume: where once there was tremendous diversity there are now a scant few surviving types, and many of those (oranges, for example) have been deliberately bred to not be able to reproduce (no seeds). What was once a robust food chain, with enough redundancy to withstand tremendoous changes in the environment (whether such changes be the emergence of a new species of plant, animal or insect, or climatic change) there remains only a fragile few choices, any one of which can be wiped out by a single parisite or disease.
It isn't as obvious as the Irish potato famine, which resulted in no small part because there was only one food crop of significance, and when it failed, everyone starved, but the principle is the same. The more we weaken our supporting ecology, whether it is by reducing the diversity of our own food sources, or that of the life around us (even competing life, such as wolves and the like), the more vulnerable we become to any change, no matter how small.
Down this road lies inevitable extinction, it is really only a question of how soon and how fast.
The solution doesn't require us foregoing technology, as some of the luddite inspired environmentalists would have us believe. It doesn't even necessarilly mean foregoing genetic enhancement of food products (although Monsato's habit of making seeds steril to protect their so-called intellectual property is certainly one way to jump-start a famine). It is only necessary that we stop waging war on the life around us and stop trying to turn every square meter of land into a production device for human food.
Back off, allow some robustness to return to our supporting ecology, and we will not only have less extinctions, we may even manage to prevent our own.
The best research never sets out to prove or dis-prove something, rather, it sets out to find out what happened without any prior opinion.
While I understand what you're trying to get at (can scientists really be dispassionate if they start out with a preconcieved notion... the answer of course is both no and yes, no, they are not dispassionate but yes, their methodology and results can be), your characterization of scientific methodology is wrong.
The most common scientific method (there is more than one scientific method btw) is to pose a falsifiable hypothesis and then go about proving or disproving it through the rigorous gathering of evidence. Inherent in this method is having a prior opinion, and then proving (or disproving) it through rigorous scientific research. Despite the high fluff/low fact ratio of the article in question, it does appear that this group followed exactly that approach: they formed a falsifiable hypothesis, then went about gathering evidence to support it. It appears their methods were sound and that the available evidence thus far supports their hypothesis.
Does this mean their right? Perhaps, perhaps not. Someone else may well come forward with evidence which knocks the legs out from their hypothesis. But for now it appears their hypothesis is standing up to scientific rigor. Of course, others in the scientific community will examine their hypothesis and in turn add supporting or contravening evidence.
It is not really surprising that this makes certain camps of Randian rationalists uncomfortable to the point of frothing at the mouth (no, I do not include the post to which I am replying, but do point to other posts in this thread)... the (almost religious) belief that capitalism can do no wrong and unfettered trade with no restraint or regulation holds little water when set against the obvious ecological impact such lassaiz-faire approaches have engendered in the past. The notion that even low-tech cavemen were having a negative impact with nothing more than their native intelligence, a mastadonian thigh-bone, fire, and a lack of restraint would serve to threaten those beliefs even more potently. The dubya supporters and their ilk have had another beloved myth torn from their eyes, with predictable results.
And yes, of course "the greenies" will point to this as further evidence that mankind needs to learn to tread more lightly on this planet. After all, if even cavemen can damage their environment so severely that mass extinctions are a result, what of modern man, where each individual commands more energy to their own ends than the whole of humankind ten thousand years ago? Clearly this is evidence supporting their perspective, so yes, they will come forth. As well they should, right wing frothing at the mouth notwithstanding.
All it takes is a union supervisor telling his union lackeys that Covad & other non telco companies threaten their jobs and to remember that when they install the lines for COvad to use - I'm sure many would be unusable. You'd be surpised how often stuff like this happens.
In which case, the natural consiquence of those actions is that their employer is sued, forced to pay millions in damages, and either goes out of business altogether or is forced to operate on a shoestring and struggle back into the black over a period of years.
There goes any union pay increases and, quite possibly, all those union jobs altogether. Not fair to the stockholder, or those employees who were conscientious in doing their job, but a natural consiquence of sabataging one's own employer by doing deliberately shoddy work or engaging in outright sabatage.
Any union supervisor with such a narrow view of his economic reality should be fired for his own incompitence, both by his employer and his union rank and file. If this lawsuit accentuates that economic reality, then while I have some sympathy for the stockholders, I find the overall result to be a positive one.
Regardless of whether or not the direction for this came from upper management or some utterly stupid and foolish union boss, the bottom line is that the company is resposible for its employees' actions while on the job, and if those employees are engaging in sabatage, can and should be required to pay appropriate damages.
Frankly, unemployed union memebers who get that way for actions like you describe are, in my humble but very correct opinion, disserving of exactly what they got.
The same goes for the other side, of course. If Covad did submit fake bug reports (rather than submitting actual reports for deliberately shoddy Verizon work), then the natural consiquence of having one's employees engage in such activity will be for Covad to pay through the nose. One can only hope that the judicial system will sort the facts out properly (which, while an iffy proposition, is certainly more likely than getting the truth directly from either corporation or their respective unions).
And, as anywone familiar with repetetive stress injuries knows, if you treat it early on (and one aspect of treatment is to STOP THE REPETETIVE ACTIONS CAUSING THE INJURY) yes, the injury will heal itself. But, if it is not treated early, the injury can become very permanent. This should not be a surprise, many physical injuries share similar traits (treat it early and it heals, ignore it and the damage worsens, ultimately becoming irreversable(.
While I agree with you that psychosomatic illnesses are just as real as physiological illnesses in that the suffering is no less acute, the notion the repetetive strain injuries are psychosomatic is, to put it bluntly, a crock of shit. I know several people who are suffering from this and, indeed, suffered a little from it myself before taking longer keyboard breaks and mixing up my duties enough to take myself away from the computer every so often.
Repetetive strain injuries are real and, if not taken seriously and treated properly, can become absolutely debilitating. Imagine not being able to grip a tennis ball or hold a pencil. I've seen people in that bad of shape, with swollen writsts, etc. and it was not in their heads. In one case I know for a fact that his physician agreed, pointedly ordering him away from the keyboard for several months.
This article (while not as extreme as the slashdot headline leads one to believe, nevertheless) reminds me of the idiots who were telling Gulf War who were dying from Mustard Gas exposure in Iraq (the ingredients of which were sold to the Iraqis by US companies, with US government approval, from 1985-1989) that their symptoms (passing blood, exhaustion, etc.) were psychosomatic, a result of stress.
It makes me seriously wonder if the author isn't a shill for insurance companies wanting to get out of covering the medical bills of tens of thousands of programmers now entering their thirties and beginning to reap the physical consiquences of those 80 hour weeks of repetetive typing. It certainly would not be the first time in our (very recent) history something like this has happened.
Many Americans get seduced by the mythology which surrounds their particular political bias. One such is that [republicans/democracts] support more free speech than [democrats/republicans], that [liberal/conservatives] uphold basic freedoms while [conservatives/liberals] are actively attacking every freedom except [one that isn't important to you].
The truth is that both parties are actively attacking virtually every freedom, whether it is the Republicans' War on Drugs virtually destroying the fourth amendment (but it's for our children!) or the Democrats destroying our freedom of speech (you can't say the n-word!). Or, for that matter, the Democrats destroying the fourth amendment (raiding and seizing the property of white supremescists because of the racists' asinine political beliefs) or the Republicans decimating our basic freedom of speech (the obscenity laws and laws restricting speech on the internet).
Both parties, and people of both liberal and conservative stripes, are equally guilty of trying to, and often succeeding in, abridging the constitution for the advancement of their own political and/or social agenda. The same BTW is true of the Libertarians, who would have the constitution stop at the borders of anyone's private property.
Until we couch our arguments firmly in the domain of freedom vs. restriction and constitutionality vs. unconstitutionality we will all be missing the point, and will continue to elect people to political office who trample all over the constitution whenever it suits them. This is unacceptable, and it is time we as voters began making that clear to candidates of all parties, conservative, moderate, and liberal alike.
Ogg/Vorbis recently changed the license for much of their stuff (the libraries, etc.) from GPL to FreeBSD in order to facilitate the incorporation of Ogg/Vorbis into hardware. This was done because of the legal complexities of incorporating GPL firmware with hardware and was fully endorsed by the free software foundation. As one who generally makes use of the GPL (and has even written a GPL-like Free Media License for other forms of artistic media (films, music, etc.), I found this to be very interesting... a vindication that no single free license fits all, and a strong indication that the Free Software Foundation can be very flexible in supporting whatever measures enhance software (and hardware) freedom, even when it means putting the good of the community before their own pride.
Given the interest hardware manufacturers have expressed in OggVorbis (remember, they could well take the brunt of the hit when the royalty demands for MP3 start rolling in), I would be very surprised if many, perhaps even most, hardware players aren't supporting both MP3 and OggVorbis in the near future.
I agree. Solutions to these sorts of things are difficult to find. History offers some insights (and hints at some strategies), but we are fighting the combined might of some very powerful interests in bed with an ever more powerful government. We are also fighting the intertia of history itself and the decline of our civilization. Like entropy, these forces will one day probably emerge victorious, but, like entropy, by adding (positive) energy to the local system from outside (grass roots involvement of people and word-of-mouth spreading of information as to why these issues are important) we can stem the tide and even make localized progress.
Just because the world will someday end doesn't mean we need to let our opponents usher it in today.:-)
Anyway maybe I was harsh in what I said. But katz still sucks:)
I agree. Sometimes he writes brilliantly, but more often his diatribes read like long-winded slashdot posts. Like you, I often find myself agreeing with his points will taking issue with some of his specific arguments and how he couches his points. Just as in this case I agreed with the underlying motive of your criticism while taking exception to the specifics of one of your arguments.:-)
So it's ok to compare the holocaust, with tens of millions people dead, to a business enterprise?
I made no such comparison. An inane comment was made about "lets just work harder and everything will be allright," a belief which is nearly axiomatic in American society. I pointed out its obvious flaw and invalidity by pointing to an obvious and dramatic historical example in which the same belief was propogated and demonstrated to be very unambiguously wrong.
If you cannot see a historical allusion and reference for what it is, and furthermore are incapable of understanding the difference between pointing out disturbing paralles and equating disparate events, then it is you with no sense of proportion or logic, and an even more tenuous grasp of reality.
I strongly suggest you reconsider your priorities and open you mind, even a crack.
Oh, and by the way, after reading your comment I called a couple of jewish friends and asked them to read the thread and give me their opinions. They found the concept of Goodwin's law far more offensive than my historical allusion, for whatever that is worth. One went so far as to speculate that Goodwin's law is effectively a conspiracy of silence with respect to the holocaust (I disagree... it is an old, worn out joke, hardly a conspiracy), a reaction rather the opposite of what your accusations of "insulting all the jews" would imply.
But then, clearly you have no wish whatsoever to discuss the issue at hand (modern day threats against our basic liberties and freedoms and how to address and counter them), as your initial invocations of Goodwin's venerable joke makes clear. I can only say that, if the time ever comes and you actually develope an interest in such things, history does offer positive lessons in how to resist and even succeed against such onslaughts, even from overwhelmingly stronger forces such as those represented by Corporate America today. Until such a time as you decide to constructively address these issues I can only say "good luck." With current trends, even under the best of circumstances, we are all going to need it.
In anticipation of your next cut-and-paste from old USENET threads in an effort at realizing a tautological fulfillment of prophecy implicit in Goodwin's law...
I just don't get it. You buy the Tivo from Philips, and then you hook it up to a phone line for a free time/update service that Tivo provides.
You're right. You don't get it. These people paid good money for a product which requires the "free" timing service you allude to.
They purchased the product with the understanding that the time setting service (as opposed to the listing services) would be available. They did not agree to or expect this service to retroactively sabatage their equipment and make an optional service which they had chosen not to buy a required service, after the fact.
You all sound like a bunch of fucking whiny kids that can't handle a couple months without TV.
You sound like a fucking whiny objectivist who cannot see basic human and consumer rights in anything other than terms of immediate profitability and contract business law. Capitalism is one aspect of our society, not the entire sum total of our society. Consumer rights legislation (no matter how weakened by the last couple of decades of neglect and outright attack) balances that against other social interests. On a more fundamental level (and less related to the immediate subject at hand, but nevertheless a valid example of another aspect of society which has nothing whatsoever to do with the objectivisit world view) human rights, religion, and even democracy itself stem not from contract law or capatalistic self-interest, but from a completely unrelated set of ideals and expectations which our society has deemed important, even necessary, to forming the kind of world we wish to live in.
Back to the immediate subject at hand: if the next time you took your car in for a tuneup the manufactuer (or its representative in the form of the local mechanic) were to replace engine parts with inferior alternatives because they accidentally built cars that could run 10 million miles and 200 years without repairs, threatening their service revinue, you would probably complain bitterly. Nevermind that the tuneup was offered for free as part of a sales promotion, the fact remains that your property has been sabataged after the fact in order to enhance the revinue stream of the manufacturer.
This is tantimount to vandalism of private property by the manufacturer (you, not they, now own the car or the TiVo), whether or not it is an automobile or a recording device and irrespective of whether the sabataged part is a mechanical device or a piece of software.
I suppose if I were a juvinile in some kind of a pissing contest this notion of "winning" or "losing" a discussion, rather than merely conducting one, would matter. As it is, if you wish to take an old and somewhat worn bit of humor far more seriously than even its author ever intended and thereby ignore one of history's most potent and relevant lessons and consign it to a noman's land of "taboo, oh we mustn't allude to it" then, quite frankly, I am uninterested in trying to persuade you of anything anyway.
It is probably pointless to continue replying to such an obvious troll, however, on the off chance someone with a mind even slightly open is reading this thread...
Our fundamental rights are under concerted and widespread attack in ways which parallel many of the lessons of history. If you do not wish to acknowledge or learn from those lesson neither I, nor anyone else, can help you. If you think anyone with a grain of intellectual thought is going to bow to your absurd notion of what historical references can and cannot be referred to in a discussion, you are sorely mistaken.
Hard work isn't always enough, and the good guys lose their battles as often as not. It is important that we recognize this and not be complacent, assuming that merely because we are in the right we will inevitably avoid being crushed by the likes of Microsoft. Indeed, if we are complacent quite the opposite is likely.
Oh enough with the bleeding heart liberal whining, Katz. America was built on capitalism and I like it that way. I hate microsoft too. Just means people need to work that much harder to beat them at their own game. It isn't impossible to do.
Yeah. Arbeit macht frei.
If you believe "hard work and perserverance" is enough to displace the very rich and powerful, who can buy laws, legislatures, and legislators by the armload, then I have some excellent lakeside property in Florida I'd like to sell you.
GNU/Linux and other Free Software can be killed outright by legislation. Proposed UCITA legislation would impose onerous default warranty conditions on software which only corporations are to be allowed to disclaim... pray it doesn't pass in any more states than it already has. Microsoft has already sounded the "unamerican" theme, which among other things is clearly a trial balloon to test the waters for the possibility of buying legislation banning free software outright, perhaps arguing that it has an "unfair" advantage in that it costs nothing and is written by volunteers, and there are other threats as well... such as patents and changes in the copyright laws at the federal level designed to favor the large copyright holders at the expense of individual copyright holders and consumers.
Now, why is this a concern? Because suppression at the point of a government gun may be the only recourse Copyright Cartels and Patent Barrons such as Microsoft have to fall back on. Certainly efforts to get hardware manufacturers to produce only closed-spec hardware are having a small effect, but fortunately for free software most hardware vendors are intelligent enough that by allowing everyone to write software to use their hardware they generate more customers, hence more demand and profit. Not all are so wise, and a big cash payment from the likes of Microsoft can tip the scales of advantage far the other way.
It is true that free software is hard to kill. Unlike proprietary software it can thrive in unkind markets, living soley off the time and energy of its own adherents and enthusiasts, improving and competing against such behomeths as Microsoft without the underlying capitol. But in a country, or a world, in which large corporations can and do routinely buy governments we can, all of us, very easilly be forced away from the keyboard at gunpoint and back to the couch where the media and copyright conglomerates would prefer us to be, as happy, compliant consumers of whatever they choose to push down our throats.
Having said all that I suspect the worse case scenerio won't come to pass, or if it does, it will be limited to the United States and possibly (and this is a remote possibility I think) Europe. Microsoft and its ilk have already lost most of the rest of the world... probably one of the reasons they are taking off the gloves in the part they still, as yet dominate.
One certain way to usher in the worst of all possible outcomes is to dismiss it completely, as many on both sides of the Microsoft/Proprietary vs GNU/Linux/Free Software argument do (though for very different reasons). These dangers are real, immediate, and our vigilence in standing up to them leaves a great deal to be desired.
May I quote this on my web page? This is probably the most eloquent explanation of why we fight the DMCA, the RIAA, fascist universities and corporations in general that I have heard yet.
I would be very flattered. Yes, by all means you can (re)use my argument as you see fit. Ideas cannot and should not be owned... having expressed this one it is out there for anyone to use as they see fit. If you'd like to use the expression (normally restricted under our more-than-a-little-onerous copyright law) I hereby grant you and anyone else permission to do so.
Well, let's take a look at some of the google cached headlines, shall we?:
"Should the "U" limit its administrative terms?
(I imagine some deans were more than a little irritated by this)
Jason V. Morgan writes "According to The Utah Daily Chronicle, several deans are irked by the U's 10-year rule, an informal limit on the length an administrator can hold an appointment. Apparently, Machen's own career has followed this philosophy.
My own opinion is somewhat similar to The Chrony's: while promoting administrative turnover has its benefits, it is unwise to blindly follow an unofficial rule such as this. It contributes to the "us vs. them" mentality shared by the faculty and administration when the administration arbitrarily refuses to reappoint a dean that may be doing an effective job.
"Utah could be hurting its economoc potential"
(Mormons are notoriously ill-humored about even innocuous subjects... this one likely sent them into frothing hysterics)
Oxymoronic writes "On Monday, the Los Angeles Times published this article. Apparently, many former "dot com" programmers, as well as many movie technichians, have entered into the pornography industry or at least spent some time looking into it. Unlike other industries that have tried to make it on the Internet, pornography has turned out to be very profitable. Utah's very conservative stance, embodied in the appointment of a "Porn Czar," could limit the potential for Utahns to profit from this lucrative, stable industry."
"U" School of Medicine Accused of Discrimination
(The University can't be happy about this one either)
The Utah Daily Chronicle recently ran this article reporting that an audit of the School of Computing admissions process is being pushed by Rep. Carl Saunders, R-Ogden. He has cited cases where students have been denied admission by the University of Utah School of Medicine, but have been accepted into other top-notch universities.
"Is the U insensitive to the Native American Heritage?"
(Another criticism that probably hits a little too close to home)
Today's The Chronicle View contends that the University of Utah still has some steps in order to stop degrading the Native American Heritage. While the University of Utah does much to recognize and highlight Native Americans, there are apparantly many who feel that the University of Utah's efforts are not enough. What do University of Utah students think? Log in and click on Read More... to add your thoughts to this issue.
"What do U of U students think of the war on drugs?"
(Another topic likely to deeply offend and confuse the dominant religion of the region)
Jason V. Morgan writes "A recent slashdot.org article highlighted a New York Times article (free registration required) which says that Amtrack shares information about its passengers with the DEA. This seems to be an unnecessary violation of privacy; one that weakens our fourth amendment rights. Do University of Utah students think that the war on drugs is worth these kinds of compromises and its incredible cost?"
Given the subjet matter at hand, and my own personal experience with the authoritarian nature of Mormon society (my mother and sister are Mormons, so I've seen this first hand on many occasions), it is very possible that we do in fact have the entire story and the extreme (over)reaction of the university is in fact all it has been described as. Other universities, including my own alma matar of the University of Illinois, have frequently reacted in very heavy handed fashion which, while remaining technically within the rather wide bounds granted to them by law, were nevertheless indefensible on an ethical level.
As an aside (not related to your post, but to others I have read here), the arguments that the poster should shut up and stop bitching because he has no constitutional rights on private property are particularly disturbing, and the main reason I ultimately rejected the Libertarian stance on social issues. A nation in which one's rights end at the edge of the public sidewalk, in a country as privatized is this, is not a very free nation at all. How much of your life do you spend on private property vs. public property, and how many rights do you assume you have that, according to such an argument, you in fact do not? I type this message right now, sitting on private property. I excersize my freedom of speech on my lunch hour, yet these people would argue that firing my sorry ass would be just fine (if I were to offend my employer), simply because although it is my time, it is my employer's network to which my laptop is connected and across which the bytestream passes.
If this is the kind of world they wish to advocate, then I want nothing of it. And, I suspect, our founding fathers would feel similarly.
We were forced to upgrade to FreeBSD 4.3 because we could no longer find a hardware vendor that would sell us new hardware that would also support FreeBSD 3.2.
You chose to purchase a new machine and/or upgrade your hardware, and are complaining because that choice also entails a software upgrade? (Other possible choices you could have made would have been to buy used hardware or shop the components yourself and put together something your old OS supported). That is a very, very far cry from having your vendor coerce you into changing to a new platform because all support of the old one is being discontinued and, without the right to examine and modify the source, you are completely beholden to them to fix any problem which may arise.
We have GNU/Linux boxes that are still running 1.2.x of the kernel and haven't been touched in years (the uptimes exceed two years and would be longer were it not for having to physically move the machines a time or two). When we choose, we will upgrade to new hardware and, yes, probably new versions of the Linux kernel and GNU software. And yes, that will require some time, effort, and work to do so.
The difference is that we will ourselves choose if and when to do it, not our hardware or software vendors. And who knows... if the requirements don't change, the machines may never be upgraded at all... merely discontinued when their purpose is no longer relevant to the business. That has happened several times already, much to the amazement of one of my colleagues. A machine in use for five years, then retired when the service was no longer necessary, with never an upgrade and never a crash. A far cry from the days of running SunOS/Solaris/Windows and being compelled every six months to upgrade this or that package, occasionally with disasterous results as one required "upgrade" was completely incompatible with another, both of which were necessary to the underlying service.
I deserved that. It seems I need to remove the plank from my own eye.
I disagree. As one who has travelled to both places and would be the first to point out just how very different they are, I have to say it was crystal clear in the context of your statement that you were describing colonialism in general, not India/Africa specifically (beyond citing historical examples of colonialism which refute and highlight the stupidity of the comment you were replying to). You certainly weren't guilty of equating the two, beyond alluding to the fact that both Africa and India (and of course other places such as China) suffered immensly under European colonialism, which did, in fact, destroy much older and arguably more civilized societies in favor of its own model of government and culture. You made this point well, and only someone with the head in their ass would have missed this and think you were somehow saying "all former colonies of european powers are alike." They do all share the one attribute you discussed, namely the damage of one degree or another to their own (often older and more venerable cultures) by europe's imperialism, which after rereading your comment is the only equation of the two places you imply.
The plank wasn't in your eye until you were distracted from the subject at hand by a meaningless and pointless diversion from the subject at hand. That, if anything, is far more insulting to everyone than anything you wrote or may have implied to those who are more interested in picking apart the literal semantics of your words than in having an intelligent discussion.
If we are going to argue this from the open source perspective (peer reviewed methodology produces better than secret sourcecode) rather than the Free (as in freedom) software perspective (free software is about fundamental freedoms), then we will find we are playing Microsoft's game on their own terms and our arguments quickly become moot. Microsoft can and, if dubious reports are to be believed, may perhaps actually be getting their software reviewed by other professionals, peers if you will, in a source-available-under-onerous-conditions approach, with the result than Windows 2000, while still inferior to GNU/Linux/FreeBSD/etc, is vastly improved over its predicessors. The open source argument can and likely will be made moot by a little agility on Microsoft's part coupled with a tremendous amount of cash.
That does not, however, affect the underlying issue of freedom at all, which actually has much more compelling business implications. One of the major reasons my employer moved away from Sun and Microsoft products and toward free software (Linux and GNU software in particular) was not because the software was technically superior (although it was), but because we would no longer be beholden to our vendor and have dictated to us when and to what we would upgrade.
Many people do not realize just how onerous and expensive such lack of freedom is for a company. When you are developing in house software for mission critical systems and you are told "platform x will no longer be supported as of this date, port your stuff to our new platform y" this can result in deployment delays and huge amounts of money spent on hiring enough staff to get the changes made in a reasonably timely manner. The cost is very real, and very significant. By switching to Linux and GNU we enabled ourselves to deploy in-house apps in a quick and timely manner, and we upgrade when we decide we need to, not when our vendor decides to pad their bank accounts at our expense.
I will reiterate: the major cost isn't the "upgrade cost," it is the actual time, effort, and work involved in moving an entire codebase from platform x to y, and being forced to do so over and over again every two or three years at the behest of one's vendors. Whether it is Sun, Sybase, Oracle, or Microsoft doing this is irrelevant, it delays important work and sucks up valuable resources.
The freedom of free software in allowing a company to preserve its own autonomy and not be beholden to its vendors, and to have a free, competitive marketplace in which to obtain and/or provide its services (as opposed to a monopoly) is IMHO a much more potent argument that the "peer review makes free software better than proprietary software," since, as Microsoft is showing, they can at least create the perception (and, if they wish, the reality) that proprietary software can also be peer reviewed.
I think sometimes we loose sight of real value of using free software vs. proprietary alternatives: the freedom itself, and how it enables us to do business and lead our lives in a much less encumbered fashion. Technical superiority is nice, and certainly important, but even in a case where proprietary and free software are both peer reviewed and a parity in quality is achieved, the free-as-in-freedom is still preferable because of the significantly lower drain it places on a companies resources and IT personnel, and the greater flexibility and choice it affords its users.
he popular opinion that "the US has laws ensuring more freedom than any other nation", is not always correct.
Not any other nation (the Netherlands and others have much more freedom, both of speech and how one leads one's private life in general, and there are probably other examples as well, particularly since the enactment of the DMCA), but most other nations, which I think is probably still true.
Certainly in this example, the allowance for speech in the United States exceeds that of countries with British style rules of libel which basically amount to "you aren't allowed to say anything not nice about someone publicly" with a few exceptions thrown in to obfuscate that fact enough that people do not rebel outright. If the lowest common denominator of freedom becomes the internet norm through this kind of back door, international legal thuggary, then each of our freedoms becomes defined by the most oppressive regime on the planet, and none of us, in the US, in Europe, or anywhere else, will have any significant freedom at all. Would you like to see Bush and the American Religious Right defining obscenity on the internet in the Netherlands? That is the danger the previous poster is warning about... these international, back door legal attacks can work both directions.
Yes, we'll be free to do what we're told or suffer the consiquences (and you would be surprised at how many Americans of religiously right leanings have used that very phrase to argue that their onerous restrictions don't infringe on the freedoms of others). However, I would argue that the freedom to do as one is told or [insert harsh penalty up to and including death here] is not freedom at all, and any definition which would say otherwise must also then imply that life under Stalin and Pol Pot was equally "free."
It is this danger that the poster correctly warns against... whatever level of freedom we have now will be taken away by another, more oppressive regime elsewhere on the planet if this kind of "our laws apply to you over there" legal fiction is permitted to define our juristic reality. Distracting arguments over who is more or less free will become very moot in such an environment, as we will all become equally (and severely) oppressed.
URLs, or extended URLs, remain universal, but just like hostnames resolve to local search paths defined by/etc/resolv.conf, so to could shortened URLs resolve according to the local system or user's configuration.
Let a systemwide configuration option define what is the default if the root domain identifier is left off, and allow the systemwide default to be overridden by each user for their own processes. Then, all of my ftp, ssh, web, mail, and other traffic would default to opennic when I send it to someaddress.com, whereas the systemwide default might well go to icann, or elsewhere.
Astute system administrators would of course set the default to opennic, but individuals can and should be able to override it.
This solution has the added advantage that alternatives such as opennic would in no way have to adhere to ICANNs standards, and indeed, if ICANN decides to play dirty and steal anternate tlds, opennic could respond by issuing its own.com's in direct conflict with ICANNs.
We could choose to whome we wish to listen, and to whome we wish to defer, and may the most just and fair naming service take the bulk of the marketplace, but may no one own it outright.
Re:One world. One internet. One root. (ICANN polic
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By invoking "Goodwin's Law" you lost first.
Goodwin's Law: A humorous joke taken at the expense of those who, in the early days of USENET, often got a little too passionate in expressing their viewpoints.
The Modern Invocation of Goodwin's Law: [1]The mistaken notion that pointing to lessons of history, in particular those that occurred in Europe around 1935 through 1945, and relating them to current discussions is somehow taboo, that in so doing one has, by violating some obscure social norm certain cretins on the internet seek to define and enforce, automatically acceeded or reversed the very point they were trying to make. [2] The notion that any mention of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, or activities surrounding these people and events, automatically disqualifies one from taking part in a discussion. [3] A tool being actively exploited by historical revisionists in an effort to use social engineering to diminish, and eventually marginalize, awareness of the holocaust and lessons learned therefrom. [4] The final argument of one who cannot win a point of contention through reasoned discourse, or had no point to make in the first place, but instead clings to an old, stale joke as though it were a gem of internet wisdom.
Ain't nothing illegal about sharing a CD with a friend, right?
That, along with the suggestion to STOP BUYING CDs for a month, are the best ideas I've heard in a while. For those to weak to give up their CD/DVD habits (as I have done, and believe me, it wasn't easy... I was used to spending several thousand dollars a year on movies in particular, first on LaserDisk, then later DVD), is one of the smaratest ideas I've heard yet.
Another possibility: donate DVD collections to local libraries, and use the library as your conduit for sharing media. Nothing illegal about that, and you have 200 years of precedent and a large institution backing you up.
The moderation above is an example...
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And mderators[sic], how is this insightful?
The moderation you refer to is an example of the very sort of astroturfing this post and an anonymous rebuttal to an astroturfer's empty denial referred to. Microsoft paid lackeys are here, in force, doing exactly what they are paid to do, undermining the public fora of the open source and free software movements, attempting to sow discord, etc.
I will immediately sell my loft, my airplane, and most of the rest of my worldly possessions and emigrate from this country (USA).
I will then, at my new location, immediately set up a freenet node for those unfortunate enough to remain within the borders of this once-free land.
Perhaps political asylum in Canada would be worth getting, assuming they still have the kind of backbone they once had during the Vietnam era.
In any event, I will cease contributing to the economy and power of a nation which goes down this path. Indeed, I'm on the verge of doing so already, with all the freedoms they have stripped from us. I'm not advocating a mass exodus of intelligent IT people (although the idea has a certain appeal -- do you suppose a country run by idiots would notice the brain drain and force us to stay, at the point of a government gun?), but voting with one's feet is a very legitimate action, one which, in a generation or two, might even effect the kind of change made virtually impossible by our entrenched and corrupt political apparatus.
--FreeUser, fondly remembering living in Europe, which even twelve years ago was more free than the less-draconian-than-today United States of the time...
Slashdot Mirror
How can you reap profits AND corrupt research? I mean, if you get some students to develop something for you, if their research is bogus, then the product's not going to work, is it?
Well, if you had bothered to read the article the answer would have been obvious. Allow me to recap just one of several ways research is corrupted by corporate influence:
You are selling a drug to consumer that purports to offer some well defined benefit (relieving arthritis pain, for example). Your research, which is funded by the drug manufacturer, conducted in a scientific and unbiased manner, reveals that the drug is completely ineffective (in a double blind study, for example, you find the results to be no different among the test group as among the group given a placebo). By corrupting the results, cooking the data, and making the study confirm the effectiveness of the drug instead, continued sales (and perhaps even a growth in sales) is confirmed. The sponsor makes money, the researcher continues to get grants and "gifts." The only loosers are the public consumers and the scientific community. In other words, all of society with the exception of those perpetrating the fraud.
A more far reaching example is the cooked research funded by oil companies which was designed to undermine arguments against green-house gas emission reductions (also cited by the article you failed to read). I leave the ramifications of treating such corrupted research as scientifically valid, and failing to adjust public policy as a result, as an excersize to the reader (hint: don't by low-lying coastal real estate).
Last fall I took a 3 week vacation and just flew around the country: myself, a sleeping back, a small pup tent, and a small plane. Sometimes I would camp out next to the plane, other times I would find a hotel room.
:-)), visited my grandmother again the following morning, and then pointed the plane eastward toward Yosemite, vowing never to return.
... assuming you've booked that hotel room four or five months in advance.
When I went to visit my grandmother at her nursing home in San Jose I discovered that there was no hotel room available anywhere within an absurd distance. Had I wanted to get a room I would have needed to book months (!!) in advance. Months, long before I had even considered making the trip.
I've been around the world twice, and in all my travels I have never run into such absurdity. No accomodations, at any price.
The result? I spent the day with my grandmother, slept on the couch at the airport's FBO (no camping on the ramp at San Jose International
I am not surprised at the cost of rent, or the other problems (economic and otherwise) afflicting the region. There is a serious supply/demand dysfunction in the silicon valley area, whether it is living accomidations, electricity, hotel rooms, or what have you. While I doubt I could identify all of the causes myself, the pattern was clearly recognizable after being in the region for less than twenty four hours and long before the dot.com bust.
To those living in silicon valley and scratching by desperately looking for work I can only say this: run. Run like the wind and don't look back. Pick any city in the United States, any at all, that is not within 100 miles of silicon valley, and you will find conditions much more suitable to human life. And if you're absolutely in love with the region (having been born in Palo Alto I can sympathise), you can always return again for vacation
Read Daniel Quinne's Ishmael. He discusses this issue in depth with far more eloquence than I.
Humans aren't just hunting animals, they are waging all out war against (some) animals. Why? Because they compete against us for food. Farmers exterminate wolves and foxes that prey upon their livestock, rabbits that prey upon their produce, etc. etc. We gas insects routinely for the same reason. In this all out war, many species are diven to the brink of extinction and beyond. Others survive, marginalized and with an ever more depleated reserve of genetic diversity, lessoning their capacity for adaptation when natural ecological changes occur. Add to that the very unnatural, man-made ecological changes occurring (global warming, which a mountain of scientific evidence supports despite the nay-saying of a few ostrich-mimicking humans) and you do have mass extinction caused by humankind.
But, and here's the real catch people like you seem to miss, it isn't just about the extinction of other species. It is about our own impending extinction. Contrary to popular myth, propogated by everything from right-wing religious fanatics to left-wing "we can manage the ecosphere" to trekkie/trekker "social and technological change will solve these problems" optomists that we are somehow "above" or "outside" of our ecology, we are an inherent part of the ecological structure and web of food chains we ourselves are ravaging.
If we continue as we are, we will in the not so very distant future bring the entire structure crashing down, along with it that portion of the ecology which supports our own food chain. For example, if the worms die, our soil dies, and with it our crops, and ultimately ourselves. Why should worms die? The reason may not be obvious, but they, as we, are a part of an entire complex web of interdependency, key portions of which are being thoughtlesshack hacked out of existence with unforseen consiquences. Warnings abound: dustbowls, the desertification of once lush areas through absolutist agricultural methods which, in those regions, left the ecosystem in such tatters that, thousands of years later, it still hasn't recovered. Entire civilizations (e.g. the Mayans) are believed to have vanished in no small part as a result of agricultural collaps.
Take a look at it from another perspective. At one time there were a thousand different types of apples, some sweet, some tart, some red, some yellow, some green. Now there are a handfull of types which are mass-farmed. The same holds true for virtually every other food product we consume: where once there was tremendous diversity there are now a scant few surviving types, and many of those (oranges, for example) have been deliberately bred to not be able to reproduce (no seeds). What was once a robust food chain, with enough redundancy to withstand tremendoous changes in the environment (whether such changes be the emergence of a new species of plant, animal or insect, or climatic change) there remains only a fragile few choices, any one of which can be wiped out by a single parisite or disease.
It isn't as obvious as the Irish potato famine, which resulted in no small part because there was only one food crop of significance, and when it failed, everyone starved, but the principle is the same. The more we weaken our supporting ecology, whether it is by reducing the diversity of our own food sources, or that of the life around us (even competing life, such as wolves and the like), the more vulnerable we become to any change, no matter how small.
Down this road lies inevitable extinction, it is really only a question of how soon and how fast.
The solution doesn't require us foregoing technology, as some of the luddite inspired environmentalists would have us believe. It doesn't even necessarilly mean foregoing genetic enhancement of food products (although Monsato's habit of making seeds steril to protect their so-called intellectual property is certainly one way to jump-start a famine). It is only necessary that we stop waging war on the life around us and stop trying to turn every square meter of land into a production device for human food.
Back off, allow some robustness to return to our supporting ecology, and we will not only have less extinctions, we may even manage to prevent our own.
The best research never sets out to prove or dis-prove something, rather, it sets out to find out what happened without any prior opinion.
... the answer of course is both no and yes, no, they are not dispassionate but yes, their methodology and results can be), your characterization of scientific methodology is wrong.
... the (almost religious) belief that capitalism can do no wrong and unfettered trade with no restraint or regulation holds little water when set against the obvious ecological impact such lassaiz-faire approaches have engendered in the past. The notion that even low-tech cavemen were having a negative impact with nothing more than their native intelligence, a mastadonian thigh-bone, fire, and a lack of restraint would serve to threaten those beliefs even more potently. The dubya supporters and their ilk have had another beloved myth torn from their eyes, with predictable results.
While I understand what you're trying to get at (can scientists really be dispassionate if they start out with a preconcieved notion
The most common scientific method (there is more than one scientific method btw) is to pose a falsifiable hypothesis and then go about proving or disproving it through the rigorous gathering of evidence. Inherent in this method is having a prior opinion, and then proving (or disproving) it through rigorous scientific research. Despite the high fluff/low fact ratio of the article in question, it does appear that this group followed exactly that approach: they formed a falsifiable hypothesis, then went about gathering evidence to support it. It appears their methods were sound and that the available evidence thus far supports their hypothesis.
Does this mean their right? Perhaps, perhaps not. Someone else may well come forward with evidence which knocks the legs out from their hypothesis. But for now it appears their hypothesis is standing up to scientific rigor. Of course, others in the scientific community will examine their hypothesis and in turn add supporting or contravening evidence.
It is not really surprising that this makes certain camps of Randian rationalists uncomfortable to the point of frothing at the mouth (no, I do not include the post to which I am replying, but do point to other posts in this thread)
And yes, of course "the greenies" will point to this as further evidence that mankind needs to learn to tread more lightly on this planet. After all, if even cavemen can damage their environment so severely that mass extinctions are a result, what of modern man, where each individual commands more energy to their own ends than the whole of humankind ten thousand years ago? Clearly this is evidence supporting their perspective, so yes, they will come forth. As well they should, right wing frothing at the mouth notwithstanding.
All it takes is a union supervisor telling his union lackeys that Covad & other non telco companies threaten their jobs and to remember that when they install the lines for COvad to use - I'm sure many would be unusable. You'd be surpised how often stuff like this happens.
In which case, the natural consiquence of those actions is that their employer is sued, forced to pay millions in damages, and either goes out of business altogether or is forced to operate on a shoestring and struggle back into the black over a period of years.
There goes any union pay increases and, quite possibly, all those union jobs altogether. Not fair to the stockholder, or those employees who were conscientious in doing their job, but a natural consiquence of sabataging one's own employer by doing deliberately shoddy work or engaging in outright sabatage.
Any union supervisor with such a narrow view of his economic reality should be fired for his own incompitence, both by his employer and his union rank and file. If this lawsuit accentuates that economic reality, then while I have some sympathy for the stockholders, I find the overall result to be a positive one.
Regardless of whether or not the direction for this came from upper management or some utterly stupid and foolish union boss, the bottom line is that the company is resposible for its employees' actions while on the job, and if those employees are engaging in sabatage, can and should be required to pay appropriate damages.
Frankly, unemployed union memebers who get that way for actions like you describe are, in my humble but very correct opinion, disserving of exactly what they got.
The same goes for the other side, of course. If Covad did submit fake bug reports (rather than submitting actual reports for deliberately shoddy Verizon work), then the natural consiquence of having one's employees engage in such activity will be for Covad to pay through the nose. One can only hope that the judicial system will sort the facts out properly (which, while an iffy proposition, is certainly more likely than getting the truth directly from either corporation or their respective unions).
And, as anywone familiar with repetetive stress injuries knows, if you treat it early on (and one aspect of treatment is to STOP THE REPETETIVE ACTIONS CAUSING THE INJURY) yes, the injury will heal itself. But, if it is not treated early, the injury can become very permanent. This should not be a surprise, many physical injuries share similar traits (treat it early and it heals, ignore it and the damage worsens, ultimately becoming irreversable(.
While I agree with you that psychosomatic illnesses are just as real as physiological illnesses in that the suffering is no less acute, the notion the repetetive strain injuries are psychosomatic is, to put it bluntly, a crock of shit. I know several people who are suffering from this and, indeed, suffered a little from it myself before taking longer keyboard breaks and mixing up my duties enough to take myself away from the computer every so often.
Repetetive strain injuries are real and, if not taken seriously and treated properly, can become absolutely debilitating. Imagine not being able to grip a tennis ball or hold a pencil. I've seen people in that bad of shape, with swollen writsts, etc. and it was not in their heads. In one case I know for a fact that his physician agreed, pointedly ordering him away from the keyboard for several months.
This article (while not as extreme as the slashdot headline leads one to believe, nevertheless) reminds me of the idiots who were telling Gulf War who were dying from Mustard Gas exposure in Iraq (the ingredients of which were sold to the Iraqis by US companies, with US government approval, from 1985-1989) that their symptoms (passing blood, exhaustion, etc.) were psychosomatic, a result of stress.
It makes me seriously wonder if the author isn't a shill for insurance companies wanting to get out of covering the medical bills of tens of thousands of programmers now entering their thirties and beginning to reap the physical consiquences of those 80 hour weeks of repetetive typing. It certainly would not be the first time in our (very recent) history something like this has happened.
Many Americans get seduced by the mythology which surrounds their particular political bias. One such is that [republicans/democracts] support more free speech than [democrats/republicans], that [liberal/conservatives] uphold basic freedoms while [conservatives/liberals] are actively attacking every freedom except [one that isn't important to you].
The truth is that both parties are actively attacking virtually every freedom, whether it is the Republicans' War on Drugs virtually destroying the fourth amendment (but it's for our children!) or the Democrats destroying our freedom of speech (you can't say the n-word!). Or, for that matter, the Democrats destroying the fourth amendment (raiding and seizing the property of white supremescists because of the racists' asinine political beliefs) or the Republicans decimating our basic freedom of speech (the obscenity laws and laws restricting speech on the internet).
Both parties, and people of both liberal and conservative stripes, are equally guilty of trying to, and often succeeding in, abridging the constitution for the advancement of their own political and/or social agenda. The same BTW is true of the Libertarians, who would have the constitution stop at the borders of anyone's private property.
Until we couch our arguments firmly in the domain of freedom vs. restriction and constitutionality vs. unconstitutionality we will all be missing the point, and will continue to elect people to political office who trample all over the constitution whenever it suits them. This is unacceptable, and it is time we as voters began making that clear to candidates of all parties, conservative, moderate, and liberal alike.
Ogg/Vorbis recently changed the license for much of their stuff (the libraries, etc.) from GPL to FreeBSD in order to facilitate the incorporation of Ogg/Vorbis into hardware. This was done because of the legal complexities of incorporating GPL firmware with hardware and was fully endorsed by the free software foundation. As one who generally makes use of the GPL (and has even written a GPL-like Free Media License for other forms of artistic media (films, music, etc.), I found this to be very interesting ... a vindication that no single free license fits all, and a strong indication that the Free Software Foundation can be very flexible in supporting whatever measures enhance software (and hardware) freedom, even when it means putting the good of the community before their own pride.
Given the interest hardware manufacturers have expressed in OggVorbis (remember, they could well take the brunt of the hit when the royalty demands for MP3 start rolling in), I would be very surprised if many, perhaps even most, hardware players aren't supporting both MP3 and OggVorbis in the near future.
I agree. Solutions to these sorts of things are difficult to find. History offers some insights (and hints at some strategies), but we are fighting the combined might of some very powerful interests in bed with an ever more powerful government. We are also fighting the intertia of history itself and the decline of our civilization. Like entropy, these forces will one day probably emerge victorious, but, like entropy, by adding (positive) energy to the local system from outside (grass roots involvement of people and word-of-mouth spreading of information as to why these issues are important) we can stem the tide and even make localized progress.
:-)
:)
:-)
Just because the world will someday end doesn't mean we need to let our opponents usher it in today.
Anyway maybe I was harsh in what I said. But katz still sucks
I agree. Sometimes he writes brilliantly, but more often his diatribes read like long-winded slashdot posts. Like you, I often find myself agreeing with his points will taking issue with some of his specific arguments and how he couches his points. Just as in this case I agreed with the underlying motive of your criticism while taking exception to the specifics of one of your arguments.
So it's ok to compare the holocaust, with tens of millions people dead, to a business enterprise?
... it is an old, worn out joke, hardly a conspiracy), a reaction rather the opposite of what your accusations of "insulting all the jews" would imply.
I made no such comparison. An inane comment was made about "lets just work harder and everything will be allright," a belief which is nearly axiomatic in American society. I pointed out its obvious flaw and invalidity by pointing to an obvious and dramatic historical example in which the same belief was propogated and demonstrated to be very unambiguously wrong.
If you cannot see a historical allusion and reference for what it is, and furthermore are incapable of understanding the difference between pointing out disturbing paralles and equating disparate events, then it is you with no sense of proportion or logic, and an even more tenuous grasp of reality.
I strongly suggest you reconsider your priorities and open you mind, even a crack.
Oh, and by the way, after reading your comment I called a couple of jewish friends and asked them to read the thread and give me their opinions. They found the concept of Goodwin's law far more offensive than my historical allusion, for whatever that is worth. One went so far as to speculate that Goodwin's law is effectively a conspiracy of silence with respect to the holocaust (I disagree
But then, clearly you have no wish whatsoever to discuss the issue at hand (modern day threats against our basic liberties and freedoms and how to address and counter them), as your initial invocations of Goodwin's venerable joke makes clear. I can only say that, if the time ever comes and you actually develope an interest in such things, history does offer positive lessons in how to resist and even succeed against such onslaughts, even from overwhelmingly stronger forces such as those represented by Corporate America today. Until such a time as you decide to constructively address these issues I can only say "good luck." With current trends, even under the best of circumstances, we are all going to need it.
In anticipation of your next cut-and-paste from old USENET threads in an effort at realizing a tautological fulfillment of prophecy implicit in Goodwin's law...
I just don't get it. You buy the Tivo from Philips, and then you hook it up to a phone line for a free time/update service that Tivo provides.
You're right. You don't get it. These people paid good money for a product which requires the "free" timing service you allude to.
They purchased the product with the understanding that the time setting service (as opposed to the listing services) would be available. They did not agree to or expect this service to retroactively sabatage their equipment and make an optional service which they had chosen not to buy a required service, after the fact.
You all sound like a bunch of fucking whiny kids that can't handle a couple months without TV.
You sound like a fucking whiny objectivist who cannot see basic human and consumer rights in anything other than terms of immediate profitability and contract business law. Capitalism is one aspect of our society, not the entire sum total of our society. Consumer rights legislation (no matter how weakened by the last couple of decades of neglect and outright attack) balances that against other social interests. On a more fundamental level (and less related to the immediate subject at hand, but nevertheless a valid example of another aspect of society which has nothing whatsoever to do with the objectivisit world view) human rights, religion, and even democracy itself stem not from contract law or capatalistic self-interest, but from a completely unrelated set of ideals and expectations which our society has deemed important, even necessary, to forming the kind of world we wish to live in.
Back to the immediate subject at hand: if the next time you took your car in for a tuneup the manufactuer (or its representative in the form of the local mechanic) were to replace engine parts with inferior alternatives because they accidentally built cars that could run 10 million miles and 200 years without repairs, threatening their service revinue, you would probably complain bitterly. Nevermind that the tuneup was offered for free as part of a sales promotion, the fact remains that your property has been sabataged after the fact in order to enhance the revinue stream of the manufacturer.
This is tantimount to vandalism of private property by the manufacturer (you, not they, now own the car or the TiVo), whether or not it is an automobile or a recording device and irrespective of whether the sabataged part is a mechanical device or a piece of software.
Godwin Law. You lose.
...
I suppose if I were a juvinile in some kind of a pissing contest this notion of "winning" or "losing" a discussion, rather than merely conducting one, would matter. As it is, if you wish to take an old and somewhat worn bit of humor far more seriously than even its author ever intended and thereby ignore one of history's most potent and relevant lessons and consign it to a noman's land of "taboo, oh we mustn't allude to it" then, quite frankly, I am uninterested in trying to persuade you of anything anyway.
It is probably pointless to continue replying to such an obvious troll, however, on the off chance someone with a mind even slightly open is reading this thread
Our fundamental rights are under concerted and widespread attack in ways which parallel many of the lessons of history. If you do not wish to acknowledge or learn from those lesson neither I, nor anyone else, can help you. If you think anyone with a grain of intellectual thought is going to bow to your absurd notion of what historical references can and cannot be referred to in a discussion, you are sorely mistaken.
Hard work isn't always enough, and the good guys lose their battles as often as not. It is important that we recognize this and not be complacent, assuming that merely because we are in the right we will inevitably avoid being crushed by the likes of Microsoft. Indeed, if we are complacent quite the opposite is likely.
"Corporate Republic formerly known as America"
... pray it doesn't pass in any more states than it already has. Microsoft has already sounded the "unamerican" theme, which among other things is clearly a trial balloon to test the waters for the possibility of buying legislation banning free software outright, perhaps arguing that it has an "unfair" advantage in that it costs nothing and is written by volunteers, and there are other threats as well ... such as patents and changes in the copyright laws at the federal level designed to favor the large copyright holders at the expense of individual copyright holders and consumers.
... probably one of the reasons they are taking off the gloves in the part they still, as yet dominate.
Oh enough with the bleeding heart liberal whining, Katz. America was built on capitalism and I like it that way. I hate microsoft too. Just means people need to work that much harder to beat them at their own game. It isn't impossible to do.
Yeah. Arbeit macht frei.
If you believe "hard work and perserverance" is enough to displace the very rich and powerful, who can buy laws, legislatures, and legislators by the armload, then I have some excellent lakeside property in Florida I'd like to sell you.
GNU/Linux and other Free Software can be killed outright by legislation. Proposed UCITA legislation would impose onerous default warranty conditions on software which only corporations are to be allowed to disclaim
Now, why is this a concern? Because suppression at the point of a government gun may be the only recourse Copyright Cartels and Patent Barrons such as Microsoft have to fall back on. Certainly efforts to get hardware manufacturers to produce only closed-spec hardware are having a small effect, but fortunately for free software most hardware vendors are intelligent enough that by allowing everyone to write software to use their hardware they generate more customers, hence more demand and profit. Not all are so wise, and a big cash payment from the likes of Microsoft can tip the scales of advantage far the other way.
It is true that free software is hard to kill. Unlike proprietary software it can thrive in unkind markets, living soley off the time and energy of its own adherents and enthusiasts, improving and competing against such behomeths as Microsoft without the underlying capitol. But in a country, or a world, in which large corporations can and do routinely buy governments we can, all of us, very easilly be forced away from the keyboard at gunpoint and back to the couch where the media and copyright conglomerates would prefer us to be, as happy, compliant consumers of whatever they choose to push down our throats.
Having said all that I suspect the worse case scenerio won't come to pass, or if it does, it will be limited to the United States and possibly (and this is a remote possibility I think) Europe. Microsoft and its ilk have already lost most of the rest of the world
One certain way to usher in the worst of all possible outcomes is to dismiss it completely, as many on both sides of the Microsoft/Proprietary vs GNU/Linux/Free Software argument do (though for very different reasons). These dangers are real, immediate, and our vigilence in standing up to them leaves a great deal to be desired.
May I quote this on my web page? This is probably the most eloquent explanation of why we fight the DMCA, the RIAA, fascist universities and corporations in general that I have heard yet.
... having expressed this one it is out there for anyone to use as they see fit. If you'd like to use the expression (normally restricted under our more-than-a-little-onerous copyright law) I hereby grant you and anyone else permission to do so.
I would be very flattered. Yes, by all means you can (re)use my argument as you see fit. Ideas cannot and should not be owned
Well, let's take a look at some of the google cached headlines, shall we?:
"Should the "U" limit its administrative terms?
(I imagine some deans were more than a little irritated by this)
Jason V. Morgan writes "According to The Utah Daily Chronicle, several deans are irked by the U's 10-year rule, an informal limit on the length an administrator can hold an appointment. Apparently, Machen's own career has followed this philosophy.
My own opinion is somewhat similar to The Chrony's: while promoting administrative turnover has its benefits, it is unwise to blindly follow an unofficial rule such as this. It contributes to the "us vs. them" mentality shared by the faculty and administration when the administration arbitrarily refuses to reappoint a dean that may be doing an effective job.
"Utah could be hurting its economoc potential"
(Mormons are notoriously ill-humored about even innocuous subjects
Oxymoronic writes "On Monday, the Los Angeles Times published this article. Apparently, many former "dot com" programmers, as well as many movie technichians, have entered into the pornography industry or at least spent some time looking into it. Unlike other industries that have tried to make it on the Internet, pornography has turned out to be very profitable. Utah's very conservative stance, embodied in the appointment of a "Porn Czar," could limit the potential for Utahns to profit from this lucrative, stable industry."
"U" School of Medicine Accused of Discrimination
(The University can't be happy about this one either)
The Utah Daily Chronicle recently ran this article reporting that an audit of the School of Computing admissions process is being pushed by Rep. Carl Saunders, R-Ogden. He has cited cases where students have been denied admission by the University of Utah School of Medicine, but have been accepted into other top-notch universities.
"Is the U insensitive to the Native American Heritage?"
(Another criticism that probably hits a little too close to home)
Today's The Chronicle View contends that the University of Utah still has some steps in order to stop degrading the Native American Heritage. While the University of Utah does much to recognize and highlight Native Americans, there are apparantly many who feel that the University of Utah's efforts are not enough. What do University of Utah students think? Log in and click on Read More... to add your thoughts to this issue.
"What do U of U students think of the war on drugs?"
(Another topic likely to deeply offend and confuse the dominant religion of the region)
Jason V. Morgan writes "A recent slashdot.org article highlighted a New York Times article (free registration required) which says that Amtrack shares information about its passengers with the DEA. This seems to be an unnecessary violation of privacy; one that weakens our fourth amendment rights. Do University of Utah students think that the war on drugs is worth these kinds of compromises and its incredible cost?"
Given the subjet matter at hand, and my own personal experience with the authoritarian nature of Mormon society (my mother and sister are Mormons, so I've seen this first hand on many occasions), it is very possible that we do in fact have the entire story and the extreme (over)reaction of the university is in fact all it has been described as. Other universities, including my own alma matar of the University of Illinois, have frequently reacted in very heavy handed fashion which, while remaining technically within the rather wide bounds granted to them by law, were nevertheless indefensible on an ethical level.
As an aside (not related to your post, but to others I have read here), the arguments that the poster should shut up and stop bitching because he has no constitutional rights on private property are particularly disturbing, and the main reason I ultimately rejected the Libertarian stance on social issues. A nation in which one's rights end at the edge of the public sidewalk, in a country as privatized is this, is not a very free nation at all. How much of your life do you spend on private property vs. public property, and how many rights do you assume you have that, according to such an argument, you in fact do not? I type this message right now, sitting on private property. I excersize my freedom of speech on my lunch hour, yet these people would argue that firing my sorry ass would be just fine (if I were to offend my employer), simply because although it is my time, it is my employer's network to which my laptop is connected and across which the bytestream passes.
If this is the kind of world they wish to advocate, then I want nothing of it. And, I suspect, our founding fathers would feel similarly.
We were forced to upgrade to FreeBSD 4.3 because we could no longer find a hardware vendor that would sell us new hardware that would also support FreeBSD 3.2.
... if the requirements don't change, the machines may never be upgraded at all ... merely discontinued when their purpose is no longer relevant to the business. That has happened several times already, much to the amazement of one of my colleagues. A machine in use for five years, then retired when the service was no longer necessary, with never an upgrade and never a crash. A far cry from the days of running SunOS/Solaris/Windows and being compelled every six months to upgrade this or that package, occasionally with disasterous results as one required "upgrade" was completely incompatible with another, both of which were necessary to the underlying service.
You chose to purchase a new machine and/or upgrade your hardware, and are complaining because that choice also entails a software upgrade? (Other possible choices you could have made would have been to buy used hardware or shop the components yourself and put together something your old OS supported). That is a very, very far cry from having your vendor coerce you into changing to a new platform because all support of the old one is being discontinued and, without the right to examine and modify the source, you are completely beholden to them to fix any problem which may arise.
We have GNU/Linux boxes that are still running 1.2.x of the kernel and haven't been touched in years (the uptimes exceed two years and would be longer were it not for having to physically move the machines a time or two). When we choose, we will upgrade to new hardware and, yes, probably new versions of the Linux kernel and GNU software. And yes, that will require some time, effort, and work to do so.
The difference is that we will ourselves choose if and when to do it, not our hardware or software vendors. And who knows
I deserved that. It seems I need to remove the plank from my own eye.
I disagree. As one who has travelled to both places and would be the first to point out just how very different they are, I have to say it was crystal clear in the context of your statement that you were describing colonialism in general, not India/Africa specifically (beyond citing historical examples of colonialism which refute and highlight the stupidity of the comment you were replying to). You certainly weren't guilty of equating the two, beyond alluding to the fact that both Africa and India (and of course other places such as China) suffered immensly under European colonialism, which did, in fact, destroy much older and arguably more civilized societies in favor of its own model of government and culture. You made this point well, and only someone with the head in their ass would have missed this and think you were somehow saying "all former colonies of european powers are alike." They do all share the one attribute you discussed, namely the damage of one degree or another to their own (often older and more venerable cultures) by europe's imperialism, which after rereading your comment is the only equation of the two places you imply.
The plank wasn't in your eye until you were distracted from the subject at hand by a meaningless and pointless diversion from the subject at hand. That, if anything, is far more insulting to everyone than anything you wrote or may have implied to those who are more interested in picking apart the literal semantics of your words than in having an intelligent discussion.
If we are going to argue this from the open source perspective (peer reviewed methodology produces better than secret sourcecode) rather than the Free (as in freedom) software perspective (free software is about fundamental freedoms), then we will find we are playing Microsoft's game on their own terms and our arguments quickly become moot. Microsoft can and, if dubious reports are to be believed, may perhaps actually be getting their software reviewed by other professionals, peers if you will, in a source-available-under-onerous-conditions approach, with the result than Windows 2000, while still inferior to GNU/Linux/FreeBSD/etc, is vastly improved over its predicessors. The open source argument can and likely will be made moot by a little agility on Microsoft's part coupled with a tremendous amount of cash.
That does not, however, affect the underlying issue of freedom at all, which actually has much more compelling business implications. One of the major reasons my employer moved away from Sun and Microsoft products and toward free software (Linux and GNU software in particular) was not because the software was technically superior (although it was), but because we would no longer be beholden to our vendor and have dictated to us when and to what we would upgrade.
Many people do not realize just how onerous and expensive such lack of freedom is for a company. When you are developing in house software for mission critical systems and you are told "platform x will no longer be supported as of this date, port your stuff to our new platform y" this can result in deployment delays and huge amounts of money spent on hiring enough staff to get the changes made in a reasonably timely manner. The cost is very real, and very significant. By switching to Linux and GNU we enabled ourselves to deploy in-house apps in a quick and timely manner, and we upgrade when we decide we need to, not when our vendor decides to pad their bank accounts at our expense.
I will reiterate: the major cost isn't the "upgrade cost," it is the actual time, effort, and work involved in moving an entire codebase from platform x to y, and being forced to do so over and over again every two or three years at the behest of one's vendors. Whether it is Sun, Sybase, Oracle, or Microsoft doing this is irrelevant, it delays important work and sucks up valuable resources.
The freedom of free software in allowing a company to preserve its own autonomy and not be beholden to its vendors, and to have a free, competitive marketplace in which to obtain and/or provide its services (as opposed to a monopoly) is IMHO a much more potent argument that the "peer review makes free software better than proprietary software," since, as Microsoft is showing, they can at least create the perception (and, if they wish, the reality) that proprietary software can also be peer reviewed.
I think sometimes we loose sight of real value of using free software vs. proprietary alternatives: the freedom itself, and how it enables us to do business and lead our lives in a much less encumbered fashion. Technical superiority is nice, and certainly important, but even in a case where proprietary and free software are both peer reviewed and a parity in quality is achieved, the free-as-in-freedom is still preferable because of the significantly lower drain it places on a companies resources and IT personnel, and the greater flexibility and choice it affords its users.
he popular opinion that "the US has laws ensuring more freedom than any other nation", is not always correct.
... these international, back door legal attacks can work both directions.
... whatever level of freedom we have now will be taken away by another, more oppressive regime elsewhere on the planet if this kind of "our laws apply to you over there" legal fiction is permitted to define our juristic reality. Distracting arguments over who is more or less free will become very moot in such an environment, as we will all become equally (and severely) oppressed.
Not any other nation (the Netherlands and others have much more freedom, both of speech and how one leads one's private life in general, and there are probably other examples as well, particularly since the enactment of the DMCA), but most other nations, which I think is probably still true.
Certainly in this example, the allowance for speech in the United States exceeds that of countries with British style rules of libel which basically amount to "you aren't allowed to say anything not nice about someone publicly" with a few exceptions thrown in to obfuscate that fact enough that people do not rebel outright. If the lowest common denominator of freedom becomes the internet norm through this kind of back door, international legal thuggary, then each of our freedoms becomes defined by the most oppressive regime on the planet, and none of us, in the US, in Europe, or anywhere else, will have any significant freedom at all. Would you like to see Bush and the American Religious Right defining obscenity on the internet in the Netherlands? That is the danger the previous poster is warning about
Yes, we'll be free to do what we're told or suffer the consiquences (and you would be surprised at how many Americans of religiously right leanings have used that very phrase to argue that their onerous restrictions don't infringe on the freedoms of others). However, I would argue that the freedom to do as one is told or [insert harsh penalty up to and including death here] is not freedom at all, and any definition which would say otherwise must also then imply that life under Stalin and Pol Pot was equally "free."
It is this danger that the poster correctly warns against
Why not expand this to:
/etc/resolv.conf, so to could shortened URLs resolve according to the local system or user's configuration.
.com's in direct conflict with ICANNs.
opennic:http://www.somedomain.com
icann:http://www.somedomain.com
alternic:ftp://ftp.somedomain.com
URLs, or extended URLs, remain universal, but just like hostnames resolve to local search paths defined by
Let a systemwide configuration option define what is the default if the root domain identifier is left off, and allow the systemwide default to be overridden by each user for their own processes. Then, all of my ftp, ssh, web, mail, and other traffic would default to opennic when I send it to someaddress.com, whereas the systemwide default might well go to icann, or elsewhere.
Astute system administrators would of course set the default to opennic, but individuals can and should be able to override it.
This solution has the added advantage that alternatives such as opennic would in no way have to adhere to ICANNs standards, and indeed, if ICANN decides to play dirty and steal anternate tlds, opennic could respond by issuing its own
We could choose to whome we wish to listen, and to whome we wish to defer, and may the most just and fair naming service take the bulk of the marketplace, but may no one own it outright.
By invoking "Goodwin's Law" you lost first.
Goodwin's Law: A humorous joke taken at the expense of those who, in the early days of USENET, often got a little too passionate in expressing their viewpoints.
The Modern Invocation of Goodwin's Law: [1]The mistaken notion that pointing to lessons of history, in particular those that occurred in Europe around 1935 through 1945, and relating them to current discussions is somehow taboo, that in so doing one has, by violating some obscure social norm certain cretins on the internet seek to define and enforce, automatically acceeded or reversed the very point they were trying to make. [2] The notion that any mention of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, or activities surrounding these people and events, automatically disqualifies one from taking part in a discussion. [3] A tool being actively exploited by historical revisionists in an effort to use social engineering to diminish, and eventually marginalize, awareness of the holocaust and lessons learned therefrom. [4] The final argument of one who cannot win a point of contention through reasoned discourse, or had no point to make in the first place, but instead clings to an old, stale joke as though it were a gem of internet wisdom.
Start a trust-based community for CD swapping.
... I was used to spending several thousand dollars a year on movies in particular, first on LaserDisk, then later DVD), is one of the smaratest ideas I've heard yet.
Ain't nothing illegal about sharing a CD with a friend, right?
That, along with the suggestion to STOP BUYING CDs for a month, are the best ideas I've heard in a while. For those to weak to give up their CD/DVD habits (as I have done, and believe me, it wasn't easy
Another possibility: donate DVD collections to local libraries, and use the library as your conduit for sharing media. Nothing illegal about that, and you have 200 years of precedent and a large institution backing you up.
And mderators[sic], how is this insightful?
The moderation you refer to is an example of the very sort of astroturfing this post and an anonymous rebuttal to an astroturfer's empty denial referred to. Microsoft paid lackeys are here, in force, doing exactly what they are paid to do, undermining the public fora of the open source and free software movements, attempting to sow discord, etc.
I will immediately sell my loft, my airplane, and most of the rest of my worldly possessions and emigrate from this country (USA).
I will then, at my new location, immediately set up a freenet node for those unfortunate enough to remain within the borders of this once-free land.
Perhaps political asylum in Canada would be worth getting, assuming they still have the kind of backbone they once had during the Vietnam era.
In any event, I will cease contributing to the economy and power of a nation which goes down this path. Indeed, I'm on the verge of doing so already, with all the freedoms they have stripped from us. I'm not advocating a mass exodus of intelligent IT people (although the idea has a certain appeal -- do you suppose a country run by idiots would notice the brain drain and force us to stay, at the point of a government gun?), but voting with one's feet is a very legitimate action, one which, in a generation or two, might even effect the kind of change made virtually impossible by our entrenched and corrupt political apparatus.
--FreeUser, fondly remembering living in Europe, which even twelve years ago was more free than the less-draconian-than-today United States of the time...