Shein seems to acknowledge this freely - he says he doesn't care. This isn't because he's a selfish idiot who cares nothing for his subscribers, it's because in the battle for control over his own webserver, there are things he can do to keep his business afloat, and the loss of one or two messages here or there - while very inconvenient to the parties concerned - is really nothing more than (as he puts it) a hangnail.
I implemented a spam filter that completely blocked spam to me personally - it simply checked a list of authorized senders, and if the sender was not on that list, sent them an email asking them to reply to that email to put them on my recipients list.
Unfortunately, such a solution does nothing for my ISP who still have to put up with all the emails that come my way that my computer holds for 7 days before dumping, without ever letting me know they were there.
The system fell apart when I started applying for jobs and was about to receive a load of emails from potential employers for whom I wanted to minimize the effort taken to get in touch with me.
Spam will never go away, but the answer is unlikely to be technological unless widespread, rapid and automated counter-measures are implemented. These are unlikely to be perfect and will result in a loss of legitimate traffic. On the other hand, the legal approach that criminalizes the sending of spam and closes the many loopholes in present laws may reduce the noise to a distant mumble.
It's about at which point the profits are calculated. If the band gets an alleged 15% royalty after all costs, then they'd have a decent cut, instead the distribution of "profit" is a far cry from 15% of retail.
The band was made to pay for all the costs of recording the music, if this business model were to be made efficient, you'd have labels owning studios and using the economies of scale they can get from using the same studio for all of their artists to improve the lot of all the participants in the deal. Instead, every cost is passed on - fully loaded - to the artists, and all the label really did was lend them $300,000 at an exorbitant rate of interest.
"These are the guys that commonly lie in the courtroom to get the guilty off entirely".
What planet are you from? Do you know anything about law? Think about what you're saying for a second.
Lawyers don't make statements of fact, they present evidence to witnesses, the validity of which is then discussed in court. They call expert witnesses to testify when such testimony is needed. Apart from their opening statement and concluding remarks, they are not allowed to make speeches, or make unsubstantiated statements of fact as part of their cross-examination. Since they don't make statements of fact, how then do they lie?
The lawyers here are making the case that compared to other crimes causing similar levels of damage, and involving similar levels of malice/negligence, the convicted party receives a comparatively harsher penalty because there was a keyboard and processor involved, and their comments force lawmakers to justify the practice.
The level of penalties at present was decided upon arbitrarily, and not with reference to other similar crimes. Given the statement the lawyers have made, the lawmakers now have to go back and either reduce the penalty or explicitly state why it is that the penalties are higher.
This is a good thing regardless of what happens to the level of penalties because it forces the law to remain internally consistent - if you shoot someone for stealing a loaf of bread but let a multi-million dollar con-artist off with a caution, that's inconsistent - they're arguing the same occurs here, and it's worth ironing it out, for the sake of the people we're punishing. "Justice" is supposed to be even-handed.
In smaller scale actions, players should always have a 'cheater' button that allows them to collectively police the game by booting and banning malicious players.
Sounds like mob rule to me. As easily abused as the exploits people currently use.
What a load of drivel, and completely unjustifiable as a response to the parent post.
The simple point made by the original poster was that management had a fiduciary duty - enforceable through the threat of removal of the relevant persons from office - that was, on balance, a greater motivator in decisions than the perceived moral requirements of certain interest groups (hence the reference to Slashdotters).
Taking certain points in your post...
If the company had no moral compunction, then there would be no reason for them to follow any laws...you honor laws because you feel it is right to do so, not because you fear punishment
Not everyone has the same moral compass, and what is perceived as immoral or unjustifiable by some seems normal to others. Society creates rules, some of which are enshrined in law, and others enforced by society, and the laws serve to control the behaviour of people with a moral system not in alignment with society, generally through the use of deterrent force.
everyday everyone of us has a million oppertunites to flaunt many a piddling law
Sure, but not all laws are piddling and the penalty tends to be in proportion to the perceived severity of the crime. Get caught speeding and get a fine. Get caught trading on insider information and get put in prison for 2 years at least. Get caught deliberately making decisions that go against the interests of the shareholders you represent and get disbarred from ever being made a director again.
So, if you have no moral compunction and if your highest motive is profit, then you are obligated to get into teh most profitable concievable business. That business is the dealing of addictive substance (with a relatively low production/conversion cost, no quality control, and a vertical demand curve.)
The relevance of drugs to patent law and director's fiduciary duties? Anyone's guess, but by this point in your post you were obviously foaming at the mouth. Pretending to take this seriously, I would answer taht you have deliberately ignored the high risk and concurrent cost associated with getting caught. This, to use your terminology, is not a "piddling" crime.
Do most corporations deal crack? Well, then, I guess there's some fucking morality out there afterall, you dim fucking shits.
At this point I had to either moderate your down as a troll or go through the motions of replying. I prefer to moderate good posts up rather than morons down, so I replied.
Study a little law before you spout bullshit like this - with some effort you might even come across as someone who thinks before entering a discussion all guns blazing and coming out the other side looking like a fool.
The use of a word is defined in two way - by the dictionary (or original reference text), from which it's original meaning can be obtained; or from common modern use.
When Mullah Omar says he will retaliate by calling a Holy Jihad upon America, I don't think he means they are all going to struggle with America in their heads. To back up my view on this, I would like to point out the very big guns they wave about to illustrate their point, and invite you to think of successful ways in which they would use these on themselves in their Jihad against the US. Although they probably reason somewhat differently to me, I believe they would agree with me when I suggest that introducing projectile weapons into a personal mental struggle would be counterproductive, and as detrimental to their continued personal wellbeing as provoking the US would be.
Really? I read yesterday that it meant "Holy Struggle", but that it could be applied as equally to the struggle against temptation as it could to the struggle against religious oppression, and that this was the source of the ambiguity surrounding the use of the word.
But just 'cos its written don't make it right, so I may be wrong.
He also made it very clear that he thought the mistake was due to overwork, and the general tone of his article was not critical to the Washington Post, but rather trying to clear up a misunderstanding.
Zimmerman comes across as constructive and considered precisely because he spends more time trying to clear up the facts rather than point the finger at everyone in sight, blame the establishment and cry conspiracy at the top of his voice. It's precisely because his contributions to discussions are so considered that he has reached a position where his opinions carry a lot of weight.
Anyone who was expecting a similarly considered reaction from Slashdot (as a whole, not individuals), was obviously being a little optimistic. Most of the posts seemed to indicate that the most people got out of Zimmerman's letter was that the Washington Post had misrepresented him - they then went on their (somewhat predictable) anti-WP crusade as they perceived one of their heroes to have been slighted.
Thank goodness the hero himself has the presence of mind to calm things down before they get out of hand. But I doubt the reaction did much to endear the Slashdot crowd to him. At least he knows where to go if he needs to rally some unconsidered fanatical support.
Disclaimer: I am not making comments directed at any individual post, but at a theme that ran through a number of posts in the other thread, so don't take it personally.
I don't know if it is the same in Canada, but in the UK, you don't get to choose what order you pay people in, the law covering liquidation of insolvent businesses states what order creditors come in, and employees are not at the top of the list (although they still come before shareholders).
The law very clearly states that you liquidate all assets (including laptops etc) at the best price you can get within a short timeframe, and you pay the creditors off in the order stipulated by the law.
If an employee is stealing goods from a bankrupt company, they are not stealing from the shareholders or from the VC, but from the creditors that came before them (unless the VC's investment is in the form of cash debt as opposed to equity, at which point he will have a higher position in the payment order).
There are very sound financial reasons for why this order of payment is considered right. Primarily because if you ask someone to take a purely financial risk in a business (ie Debt but no say in the running of the company or selling them goods or services on credit), then a failure to ensure that they get their money back early within the framework of a liquidation, will make them unwilling to finance this kind of investment in the first place.
Dot coms were not the victim, by and large, of bad management. They were based on poor investment in the first place as their assumptions about market size were over-reaching from the very beginning. People who chose to dump promising careers in established industry, or chose to not go into those industries in the first place because they thought they could make more money in the dot-com sector, were taking exactly the same risk as equity holders. The equity holders still got paid less at liquidation than employees (equity holders come last in the list). When someone joins a company with a screwed up business model, they are choosing to enter into a risk, and have their eyes wide open. When the company fails, they get paid AFTER the liquidator and the creditors. In a company whose main asset is a "good" idea, there's no way the equipment is even going to be enough to pay off the creditors, so it's unsurprising that a number of employees have received less than (sometimes none of) the amounts outstanding to them. This always happens in liquidations, but you don't always hear of people walking off with the furniture. I don't see why any exception should be made in judging the behaviour of dot com employees when they take things that do not belong to them.
It's a sad fact of life that when a business fails, not everyone who is owed money gets paid as there isn't enough money in the bank to pay them. Being dishonest by trying to jump the queue when it's not your right is morally ambiguous at best, and criminal at worst.
To the poster who said his VC screwed around with the assets and somehow clawed cash back - I'm not condoning the VC doing anything illegal/immoral either, so I can't comment on that, although if the VC was an equity holder, I don't see how that would allow them to get money back, unless the rules are very different there.
This is a really good point, if this is the case, then the anonymity of the spammers has disappeared. You get your right to free speech, but if you want to ram it down my throat, you have to put your name to it.
But then - how does the system the spammer (or telephone caller or whatever) is using to generate the message positively identify them as the authentic sender - we need a foolproof system that can always identify the individual sending the message, and a means oif preventing forged identities (which was covered in a previous thread, but not in great detail).
Perhaps the technology to deliver the message is there, but I'd be reluctant to create a system that can do this before the systems to ensure the origin of the message can be determined are in place.
It doesn't take long down this particular trail of logic before you find yourself in the script of Gattaca. This probably means that some caution is required. But I wouldn't write the idea off, it would be amazingly practical.
Right, but who's going to give them the funding if there isn't a good chance of their making a return on it that will be sufficient to guarantee the reimbursement of that funding, plus a significant interest rate to cover the cost of capital?
If they don't hold the patent over the design that they've built, and other companies decide it's a cool, saleable design, then the best features of that design will quickly be integrated into other models built by more established competitors, and that will quickly invalidate any compatarive benefits their model has over others - also, more established competitors will have a wider manufacturing base and will therefore be able to produce/source the parts more cheaply and compete the newcomer out of the market in no time.
This is a perfect example of people who would *need* a patent in order to commercialise their work. Of course, they could do the open source thing and design the car for the love of designing a car, and with absolutely no thought of reward other than the satisfaction of having drawn up the blueprints and watching others make money off it - but I personally don't think there are many people in the world (other than OS developers in the software field) who are willing to do this kind of work for free - it takes too much time, too many resources, and people want to get paid for the work they do.
Yes - of course, but would the toy get designed without the company behind the person, or without the paycheck in return - even if they are enjoying it?
Perhaps designed, in their spare time, but certainly not distributed, unless they became an entrepreneur and therefore a company in their own right.
Well, the Wright brothers wanted to fly - they never created a consumer good/service with their invention, and certainly wouldn't have created a free-thinking group of professional pilots who move people around the world for free in aircrafts built out of charity.
The Apple I was certainly built for fun, but later PCs were built to be useful to a vast number of people, and encompassed design attributes that were focused on what other people wanted, rather than what the designer wanted. And they certainly weren't going to give the Apple I away for free - who would pay for the manufacturing costs? What about people who wanted support and help in using it?
In any situation of free economic exchange, the word "exploit" is a bit weird. Individuals choose to purchase something at a price, and enter into the exchange of their own free will - that is not exploitation. Only when you're talking about a life saving drug being sold at a huge profit can you bring exploitation into it, because the consumer no longer has a choice about buying it.
To "exploit" the value of a patent is often the reason the discovery was arrived at in the first place, and you have to wonder whether it is better that the discovery is arrived at, at a cost - or that it was never developed at all.
I wasn't talking about the specifics of this case, but of Linus' more general comments regarding Patents and Intellectual Property.
I don't disagree with you - if you read my other posts, you'll see that I think the open source movement is a powerful argument for limiting the scope of patents. I just don't think the lessons and arguments used in the context of software can be expanded to encompass manufacturing in general or the development of various other types of knowledge-based assets.
The economist had a great article on Microsoft last week that argued that although it was singing a new song, it had not really changed underneath the surface.
A couple of quotes... watch me use my fair use rights - haha!
..."Yet despite all this, there are good reasons to be sceptical about Microsoft's intentions (or even ability) to reform itself. Granting limited access to the Windows source code, for example, may help to soften Microsoft's image, but it is a far cry from embracing the open-source model. Microsoft has falsely portrayed itself as the champion of open standards in the past, notably during its 'browser war' with Netscape, only to revert to its old tactics later. Might to company not simply be waiting for XMP, SOAP and the other new standards to take off, ask its critics, before hijacking them by creating its own proprietary versions?"
The article goes on to say that the Hailstorm services that are part of the.NET strategy will do the same thing as IE did, by being packaged into Windows XP, they will automatically have every XP user on the planet hooked up. By funnelling all their MSN and Hotmail subscribers into it, they could very soon have an unassailable customer base that would make supporting Java alternatives a complete waste of time for most companies, as 90% of their customers will be Microsoft compliant once again.
The final paragraph reads... "In short, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, if Microsoft has changed at all, it has done so only superficially. Inside the software industry's 800-pound gorilla, the heard of an incorrigible monopolist beats still".
The article is on page 77 of the April 28th to May 4th Economist.
Certainly it took millions of man-hours to produce something like Linux
I agree, but I don't think you're going to find the same community spirit willing to purchase the factory space necessary to mass-produce an open-source car. Partly because such a community doesn't have the cash, and partly because the Open Source movement is (and this is a very personal opinion which could well be wrong) quite specific to computer scientists, ex-geeks and uber-coders.
Something that interests me is these new 3D printers, that overlay sheets of plastic to build things. If technology like that were ever to become cheap and ubiqutous, and were also capable of printing circuitry and LCD displays, then I bet you'd see something similar to open source, with a lot of consumer electronics companies complaining about unfair competition.
This is quite interesting - it would start to break down the difference between software and manufacturing by making manufacturing more accessible to smaller entrepreneurs / free-goods designers. It could create a paradigm shift and kick some of the incumbents out of the top positions in the supply of small, personal devices.
Just off the top of my head, I agree - the business model of running r&d has proven itself to be a pain and a dinosaur. What we need to do is present an environment where more people would express what they know and come up with new discoveries. And these discoveries don't really have to come from scientists or researchers.
Need to get rid of scarcity - it is, after all, the root of all evil. Without scarcity, no more need to get rich, because seeing as wealth is a comparative measure and without scarcity everyone has everything they could possibly want, we would be free of the rat race and the need for self-promotion and could focus on discovery for the pleasure of discovery.
And in the field of software, the free software movement is a fine example of people creating "consumer goods for the love of discovery" (or at least without serios financial expectations).
I agree entirely with this - I don't disagree with a spirited defence of the Open Source Movement or the Free Software Movement. I do, however, believe that Patents have a role in certain areas where they provide a reason to develop something that would otherwise never receive the necessary investment to get developed at all.
I don't think there are enough people who have all three of - 1) a day job, 2) significant expertise in a certain area, 3) the desire to use the expertise without financial reward - to provide us with the consumer goods we desire to enhance our standard of living.
If the pharmaceuticals weren't over-exploiting this system quite so ruthlessly, they would be a good example, as things stand, I'd be on pretty shaky ground defending their recent actions. But if you took away all protection for any of their discoveries, their business model would fold overnight as people (like myself) bailed out of their shares as fast as the markets would allow us.
I agree, I think the answer to this is to go back to a slightly older model of universities, where people went there to study because they could be in close proximity to so much knowledge and breaking-edge research. At some point they just because teaching institutions, with more funding they could become the academic playground and free-thinkers paradise they once were.
But we still have people spending silly amounts building particle accelerators, and throwing atoms together at ridiculous velocities just to see what happens, so I guess there's still hope!
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if he's French, but I am, and yes, it is ignorant. And yes, it is old. And yes, it is insulting. And no. It's not funny, nor is it smart.
I implemented a spam filter that completely blocked spam to me personally - it simply checked a list of authorized senders, and if the sender was not on that list, sent them an email asking them to reply to that email to put them on my recipients list.
Unfortunately, such a solution does nothing for my ISP who still have to put up with all the emails that come my way that my computer holds for 7 days before dumping, without ever letting me know they were there.
The system fell apart when I started applying for jobs and was about to receive a load of emails from potential employers for whom I wanted to minimize the effort taken to get in touch with me.
Spam will never go away, but the answer is unlikely to be technological unless widespread, rapid and automated counter-measures are implemented. These are unlikely to be perfect and will result in a loss of legitimate traffic. On the other hand, the legal approach that criminalizes the sending of spam and closes the many loopholes in present laws may reduce the noise to a distant mumble.
The band was made to pay for all the costs of recording the music, if this business model were to be made efficient, you'd have labels owning studios and using the economies of scale they can get from using the same studio for all of their artists to improve the lot of all the participants in the deal. Instead, every cost is passed on - fully loaded - to the artists, and all the label really did was lend them $300,000 at an exorbitant rate of interest.
What planet are you from? Do you know anything about law? Think about what you're saying for a second.
Lawyers don't make statements of fact, they present evidence to witnesses, the validity of which is then discussed in court. They call expert witnesses to testify when such testimony is needed. Apart from their opening statement and concluding remarks, they are not allowed to make speeches, or make unsubstantiated statements of fact as part of their cross-examination. Since they don't make statements of fact, how then do they lie?
The lawyers here are making the case that compared to other crimes causing similar levels of damage, and involving similar levels of malice/negligence, the convicted party receives a comparatively harsher penalty because there was a keyboard and processor involved, and their comments force lawmakers to justify the practice.
The level of penalties at present was decided upon arbitrarily, and not with reference to other similar crimes. Given the statement the lawyers have made, the lawmakers now have to go back and either reduce the penalty or explicitly state why it is that the penalties are higher.
This is a good thing regardless of what happens to the level of penalties because it forces the law to remain internally consistent - if you shoot someone for stealing a loaf of bread but let a multi-million dollar con-artist off with a caution, that's inconsistent - they're arguing the same occurs here, and it's worth ironing it out, for the sake of the people we're punishing. "Justice" is supposed to be even-handed.
$96000 / 5 = $19200 per year
so depending on how many resources were required to deal with the case, this doesn't seem all that ridiculous to me (surprisingly enough).
But then they'll turn it into a blockbuster movie and the cash will come rolling in.
Sounds like mob rule to me. As easily abused as the exploits people currently use.
The simple point made by the original poster was that management had a fiduciary duty - enforceable through the threat of removal of the relevant persons from office - that was, on balance, a greater motivator in decisions than the perceived moral requirements of certain interest groups (hence the reference to Slashdotters).
Taking certain points in your post...
If the company had no moral compunction, then there would be no reason for them to follow any laws ... you honor laws because you feel it is right to do so, not because you fear punishment
Not everyone has the same moral compass, and what is perceived as immoral or unjustifiable by some seems normal to others. Society creates rules, some of which are enshrined in law, and others enforced by society, and the laws serve to control the behaviour of people with a moral system not in alignment with society, generally through the use of deterrent force.
everyday everyone of us has a million oppertunites to flaunt many a piddling law
Sure, but not all laws are piddling and the penalty tends to be in proportion to the perceived severity of the crime. Get caught speeding and get a fine. Get caught trading on insider information and get put in prison for 2 years at least. Get caught deliberately making decisions that go against the interests of the shareholders you represent and get disbarred from ever being made a director again.
So, if you have no moral compunction and if your highest motive is profit, then you are obligated to get into teh most profitable concievable business. That business is the dealing of addictive substance (with a relatively low production/conversion cost, no quality control, and a vertical demand curve.)
The relevance of drugs to patent law and director's fiduciary duties? Anyone's guess, but by this point in your post you were obviously foaming at the mouth. Pretending to take this seriously, I would answer taht you have deliberately ignored the high risk and concurrent cost associated with getting caught. This, to use your terminology, is not a "piddling" crime.
Do most corporations deal crack? Well, then, I guess there's some fucking morality out there afterall, you dim fucking shits.
At this point I had to either moderate your down as a troll or go through the motions of replying. I prefer to moderate good posts up rather than morons down, so I replied.
Study a little law before you spout bullshit like this - with some effort you might even come across as someone who thinks before entering a discussion all guns blazing and coming out the other side looking like a fool.
When Mullah Omar says he will retaliate by calling a Holy Jihad upon America, I don't think he means they are all going to struggle with America in their heads. To back up my view on this, I would like to point out the very big guns they wave about to illustrate their point, and invite you to think of successful ways in which they would use these on themselves in their Jihad against the US. Although they probably reason somewhat differently to me, I believe they would agree with me when I suggest that introducing projectile weapons into a personal mental struggle would be counterproductive, and as detrimental to their continued personal wellbeing as provoking the US would be.
But just 'cos its written don't make it right, so I may be wrong.
Zimmerman comes across as constructive and considered precisely because he spends more time trying to clear up the facts rather than point the finger at everyone in sight, blame the establishment and cry conspiracy at the top of his voice. It's precisely because his contributions to discussions are so considered that he has reached a position where his opinions carry a lot of weight.
Anyone who was expecting a similarly considered reaction from Slashdot (as a whole, not individuals), was obviously being a little optimistic. Most of the posts seemed to indicate that the most people got out of Zimmerman's letter was that the Washington Post had misrepresented him - they then went on their (somewhat predictable) anti-WP crusade as they perceived one of their heroes to have been slighted.
Thank goodness the hero himself has the presence of mind to calm things down before they get out of hand. But I doubt the reaction did much to endear the Slashdot crowd to him. At least he knows where to go if he needs to rally some unconsidered fanatical support.
Disclaimer: I am not making comments directed at any individual post, but at a theme that ran through a number of posts in the other thread, so don't take it personally.
The law very clearly states that you liquidate all assets (including laptops etc) at the best price you can get within a short timeframe, and you pay the creditors off in the order stipulated by the law.
If an employee is stealing goods from a bankrupt company, they are not stealing from the shareholders or from the VC, but from the creditors that came before them (unless the VC's investment is in the form of cash debt as opposed to equity, at which point he will have a higher position in the payment order).
There are very sound financial reasons for why this order of payment is considered right. Primarily because if you ask someone to take a purely financial risk in a business (ie Debt but no say in the running of the company or selling them goods or services on credit), then a failure to ensure that they get their money back early within the framework of a liquidation, will make them unwilling to finance this kind of investment in the first place.
Dot coms were not the victim, by and large, of bad management. They were based on poor investment in the first place as their assumptions about market size were over-reaching from the very beginning. People who chose to dump promising careers in established industry, or chose to not go into those industries in the first place because they thought they could make more money in the dot-com sector, were taking exactly the same risk as equity holders. The equity holders still got paid less at liquidation than employees (equity holders come last in the list). When someone joins a company with a screwed up business model, they are choosing to enter into a risk, and have their eyes wide open. When the company fails, they get paid AFTER the liquidator and the creditors. In a company whose main asset is a "good" idea, there's no way the equipment is even going to be enough to pay off the creditors, so it's unsurprising that a number of employees have received less than (sometimes none of) the amounts outstanding to them. This always happens in liquidations, but you don't always hear of people walking off with the furniture. I don't see why any exception should be made in judging the behaviour of dot com employees when they take things that do not belong to them.
It's a sad fact of life that when a business fails, not everyone who is owed money gets paid as there isn't enough money in the bank to pay them. Being dishonest by trying to jump the queue when it's not your right is morally ambiguous at best, and criminal at worst.
To the poster who said his VC screwed around with the assets and somehow clawed cash back - I'm not condoning the VC doing anything illegal/immoral either, so I can't comment on that, although if the VC was an equity holder, I don't see how that would allow them to get money back, unless the rules are very different there.
But then - how does the system the spammer (or telephone caller or whatever) is using to generate the message positively identify them as the authentic sender - we need a foolproof system that can always identify the individual sending the message, and a means oif preventing forged identities (which was covered in a previous thread, but not in great detail).
Perhaps the technology to deliver the message is there, but I'd be reluctant to create a system that can do this before the systems to ensure the origin of the message can be determined are in place.
It doesn't take long down this particular trail of logic before you find yourself in the script of Gattaca. This probably means that some caution is required. But I wouldn't write the idea off, it would be amazingly practical.
Getting rid of this is a shame in some ways, but might take away one of the many silly motivations that drove the web-site defacers.
Really? Think I must have missed it - what books?
If they don't hold the patent over the design that they've built, and other companies decide it's a cool, saleable design, then the best features of that design will quickly be integrated into other models built by more established competitors, and that will quickly invalidate any compatarive benefits their model has over others - also, more established competitors will have a wider manufacturing base and will therefore be able to produce/source the parts more cheaply and compete the newcomer out of the market in no time.
This is a perfect example of people who would *need* a patent in order to commercialise their work. Of course, they could do the open source thing and design the car for the love of designing a car, and with absolutely no thought of reward other than the satisfaction of having drawn up the blueprints and watching others make money off it - but I personally don't think there are many people in the world (other than OS developers in the software field) who are willing to do this kind of work for free - it takes too much time, too many resources, and people want to get paid for the work they do.
Perhaps designed, in their spare time, but certainly not distributed, unless they became an entrepreneur and therefore a company in their own right.
I'm in the UK - and I read it a while ago - I'm a bit of a fan... Although Excession remains my favourite.
The Apple I was certainly built for fun, but later PCs were built to be useful to a vast number of people, and encompassed design attributes that were focused on what other people wanted, rather than what the designer wanted. And they certainly weren't going to give the Apple I away for free - who would pay for the manufacturing costs? What about people who wanted support and help in using it?
In any situation of free economic exchange, the word "exploit" is a bit weird. Individuals choose to purchase something at a price, and enter into the exchange of their own free will - that is not exploitation. Only when you're talking about a life saving drug being sold at a huge profit can you bring exploitation into it, because the consumer no longer has a choice about buying it.
To "exploit" the value of a patent is often the reason the discovery was arrived at in the first place, and you have to wonder whether it is better that the discovery is arrived at, at a cost - or that it was never developed at all.
I don't disagree with you - if you read my other posts, you'll see that I think the open source movement is a powerful argument for limiting the scope of patents. I just don't think the lessons and arguments used in the context of software can be expanded to encompass manufacturing in general or the development of various other types of knowledge-based assets.
A couple of quotes... watch me use my fair use rights - haha!
The article goes on to say that the Hailstorm services that are part of the .NET strategy will do the same thing as IE did, by being packaged into Windows XP, they will automatically have every XP user on the planet hooked up. By funnelling all their MSN and Hotmail subscribers into it, they could very soon have an unassailable customer base that would make supporting Java alternatives a complete waste of time for most companies, as 90% of their customers will be Microsoft compliant once again.
The final paragraph reads ... "In short, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, if Microsoft has changed at all, it has done so only superficially. Inside the software industry's 800-pound gorilla, the heard of an incorrigible monopolist beats still".
The article is on page 77 of the April 28th to May 4th Economist.
I agree, but I don't think you're going to find the same community spirit willing to purchase the factory space necessary to mass-produce an open-source car. Partly because such a community doesn't have the cash, and partly because the Open Source movement is (and this is a very personal opinion which could well be wrong) quite specific to computer scientists, ex-geeks and uber-coders.
Something that interests me is these new 3D printers, that overlay sheets of plastic to build things. If technology like that were ever to become cheap and ubiqutous, and were also capable of printing circuitry and LCD displays, then I bet you'd see something similar to open source, with a lot of consumer electronics companies complaining about unfair competition.
This is quite interesting - it would start to break down the difference between software and manufacturing by making manufacturing more accessible to smaller entrepreneurs / free-goods designers. It could create a paradigm shift and kick some of the incumbents out of the top positions in the supply of small, personal devices.
Need to get rid of scarcity - it is, after all, the root of all evil. Without scarcity, no more need to get rich, because seeing as wealth is a comparative measure and without scarcity everyone has everything they could possibly want, we would be free of the rat race and the need for self-promotion and could focus on discovery for the pleasure of discovery.
Ok - so I read too much Iain M Banks...
I agree entirely with this - I don't disagree with a spirited defence of the Open Source Movement or the Free Software Movement. I do, however, believe that Patents have a role in certain areas where they provide a reason to develop something that would otherwise never receive the necessary investment to get developed at all.
I don't think there are enough people who have all three of - 1) a day job, 2) significant expertise in a certain area, 3) the desire to use the expertise without financial reward - to provide us with the consumer goods we desire to enhance our standard of living.
If the pharmaceuticals weren't over-exploiting this system quite so ruthlessly, they would be a good example, as things stand, I'd be on pretty shaky ground defending their recent actions. But if you took away all protection for any of their discoveries, their business model would fold overnight as people (like myself) bailed out of their shares as fast as the markets would allow us.
These people design computers? In the same way as Dell, Compaq, IBM and Sony? Where can I buy one, and will they be at a competitive price?
But we still have people spending silly amounts building particle accelerators, and throwing atoms together at ridiculous velocities just to see what happens, so I guess there's still hope!