like the ones in Colombia, south-east Turkey, El Salvador and Yugoslavia?
The US is a culture of extreme violence. It has always relied on force for the subjugation of the legitimate owners of raw materials, of labour organizations, and of potential "good examples" of independent development.
it's not just nice that RH has their dist up for free, it's required:) GPL and all that, ya know
Actually the GPL doesn't mention putting binary RPMs and installation tools on the Internet for free download. Caldera's distribution contains lots of GPLed software but you can't download it for free.
You can't even download all of Official Red Hat for free -- or you couldn't at 5.1 when I got BRU and MetroX on the CD. Maybe those proprietary programs are no longer part of the Official package.
I forgot that "security concerns" replaced "freedom" as the national ideal some time in 1972
It's not "security concerns", it's "investor's rights". Have you looked at NAFTA or the Multilateral Agreement on Investment? These documents give corporations rights equivalent to nations. So public policy (i.e. social security, banning poisonous industrial chemicals, taxation) is being subordinated to the protection of investment.
And this is what "freedom" has meant to American public policy makers, more or less, since the days of Madison.
Do the staff at Transmeta wear flared jeans and platform shoes?
No, it's worse. They wear shorts, long white socks and Birkenstocks;-)
Microcode isn't coming back into fashion, btw. What's happening here is (probably) a hybrid between just-in-time compilation in the cache hardware (physically separate from the main execution path) and software emulation.
But this is just one interpretation of the rumour.
Jonathan
Capitalism and science
on
Gene Leakage
·
· Score: 1
It's the system!
Money talks, even to well-meaning idealists.
Look at me, I work in the defense industry.
Jonathan
He's got it backwards
on
Gene Leakage
·
· Score: 1
Also, feeding antibiotics to livestock in mass quantities on a regular basis is a textbook example of how to literally engineer[sic] a resistant strain unintentionally
Engineering? Evolution by un-natural selection.
Jonathan
hysterical environmentalists -- Uh, yeah OK
on
Gene Leakage
·
· Score: 1
Let me just add that gene flow and evolution do 'trend' towards homogeny anyway. In the presence of selection pressure will variation begin to arise. (This is beyond just random mutation.)
There may be a certain homogeny of phenotypes. A large, geographically diverse population, however, will have massive *genetic* variation -- with recessives and local variations ready to take advantage of selection pressures.
Simply by reducing the wild population of something, you reduce genetic diversity -- even if the organisms you're killing looked just like the ones still alive. The "options" for natural selection disappear.
Non-reproducing crops are quite irrelevant to any studies of "gene flow". Their dangers lie in cross-pollination (which can render seed from fertile strains sterile), some infinitesimal risk of gene "hopping" (absurd, but it happens all the time) and in monoculture.
Monocultures, even of reproductive crops, reduce genetic diversity drastically. Potato blight, people! Root stock, people!
Sure, potato famines and equivalent potential crop wipeouts due in part to genetic modifications are not going to end the world; (I hope the "insect resistance" quote was distorted!) but even short-term ecological and human catastrophes are not "good science".
And what if we can't *find* the root stock? 100% control of the world market of a crop by a GM food company is SCARY.
And some nonsense a few comments back about "farmers feeding all their animals antibiotics" is just silly. The only genetic mucking about most farmers ever do is artificial insemination
Feeding antibiotics isn't genetic mucking about, penicillin is a normal ingredient in normal "feed supplements", or was for many years. You don't have to have "most farmers" using them to cause bacteria to develop resistence, either.
All you need is to have some few large, industrial agribusinesses putting the stuff in feedlots with hundreds of grain- (and who knows what else?) -fed animals in sheds no "farmer" ever sees.
Funny, those nations that are currently wealthy had just this "chicken and egg" problem 150 years ago, and they seem to be doing quite nicely.
Before and during "industrial capitalism" in the West there was, and is, something called "mercantile capitalism". This is where people become enormously rich by moving things around.
It was found out pretty early on that a shortage of something in one place and a glut of it in another helped them make money -- and creating shortages (by, say, smashing looms in India and banning the manufacture of salt there) is a fantastic way of speeding up the process.
These policies were initially practiced at home and abroad, but simple patriotism, strong wealthy governments in the West, and the simple fact that not all rich people like to live in cesspits of their own devising, meant that such obvious economic benefits of capitalism as brewing and distilling half the grain in England (because alcohol has a better profit margin than bread) were ended by those rotten, socialist British politicians.
Capitalism has been impoverishing a "third" world for as long as it has been enriching a "first" one; it has always been an international phenomenon. Much of the wealth of Western nations is thanks to strong, interventionist governments who have curbed the local excesses of capitalism while supporting the foreign ones.
I would like you to explain something, because it makes no sense to me and I hear it a lot: how is it possible for corporations to do all the terrible things you claim they do without government help? and if so, why is this the fault of the corporation and not the government?
It is accomplished *with* government help. Which is *bought*. Carrot-and-stick economics, bribery, drug and arms deals, pressure from neighbouring and Western governments who answer to the same masters.
These countries must fundamentally reform their social systems, and I don't think there is all that much we can do from outside to accomplish this.
On the contrary. "You" (the collective US public) can tell "your" government to STOP doing the things you abhor (it hasn't stopped by magic!) and "your" multinationals (many of them, not all) to cease the business practices which keep governments corrupt, people impoverished, and freedom a joke.
I find it laughable that you say the majority of third world countries' governments are "socialistic and dictatorial". The US -- government and (some) business, that is -- has actively supported the overthrow of popular nationalist government (usually misinterpreted by Western analysts as "communist", whether or not they have a socialist element) by US-friendly dictators time and time again. And the US people, on the whole, stand back and cheer. There are dissident voices but there are none so deaf as those who will not listen.
What kind of a reaction will I get if I mention Noam Chomsky?
Jonathan
PS Australia isn't much better. Money talks, everywhere.
People who want to by software can buy GPLed software as well as proprietary programs. There are more Linux users who have never read the kernel source than ones who have, I am convinced. And the kernel is the first place for curious hacker-wannabes to go.
Free software has users, as well as hackers.
Here's a poll idea for Rob.
The first Unix-ish source code I read was:
- an example PPP script - my window manager config - the Linux kernel - BSD / AT&T code - Huh? - I haven't, what's it like?
We have enough oil in presently-exploited oil fields to last well over a century at present rates of consumption. The main thing we're running out of is clean air -- if we burn all that, we'll return the atmosphere to the CO2 levels of the Jurassic period, nice & warm.
It's Aho, Sethi & Ullman, Compilers : Principles, Techniques and Tools published by Addison-Wesley and the Amazon URL is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/020110088 6/qid%3D917415425/002-2583591-9682245
The reason 3rd-world economies do not belong to the citizens of 3rd-world nations is twofold: One, the capitalists and governments of wealthier nations made it that way by military force and the drug trade, and kept it that way by military force and the drug trade, and protectionist duties, boycotts, capital flight and by appropriating resources with "hard currency".
Two, capitalists and capitalist governments never quite got the point of capitalist economic analysis, that freedom helps *people*, not just capitalists, to create wealth. Poor people are discriminated against on the grounds that they are poor, which is what keeps them that way. Some, in the more "free" countries, with insight and industry and good luck, can get rich. Most continue to live hand-to-mouth for generations.
Banks have traditionally treated poor people as a bad risk. But, if a bank chooses to work *with* its debtors, it can (at some cost) help even the poorest of them to make money -- to break the poverty cycle. Credit is a bridge to the other side of the world -- the end of poverty.
Many, many westerners donate money to charity without expecting anything (except their tax) back in exchange. Since charities are not the government and don't force you to pay them, this is seen as a "free market" deal. But charity is often worse than welfare when it comes to creating dependents. Responsible investment, OTOH, can lead to empowerment of millions of individuals, and you can expect to reap modest financial rewards as well as to feel good.
The biggest revelation to me since I have discovered microcredit is that it has been the segregation of the world's economy into countries which has kept markets non-free for so long. While globalisation is usually seen by environmentalists and socialists as a negative change for the world, it is the most important precondition for income equalisation between countries -- for as long as smug wealthy people can congratulate themselves for living in a free market, they can continue to blame other people's misery on other people's governments, instead of helping to fix it.
Regulation and/or taxation of international capital movements by the UN (or equivalent body) would end the nightmare of capital flight which compels 3rd-world governments to toe the capitalist line (i.e., permit the rape of their own countries) on pain of instant depression; uniform currency would end currency speculation.
However as long as the US remains in the hands of Democrats and Republicans with their big guns, big dicks and oil stocks, minerals will be more important than people and the profits from stealing them will be more important than the profits from allowing individuals to make their own way in the world.
I bloody well hope not! Trees are what is known as a *renewable* resource. You might even say they grow on trees.
I'm sick of scarcity economics. Software doesn't cost a *thing* to replicate, and since tree-genes are self-replicating too, all you need is soil, air, sunlight & water to make more trees.
Slashdot Mirror
firearm-committed mass murders in the US
like the ones in Colombia, south-east Turkey, El Salvador and Yugoslavia?
The US is a culture of extreme violence. It has always relied on force for the subjugation of the legitimate owners of raw materials, of labour organizations, and of potential "good examples" of independent development.
Ever played "Cowboys and Indians", boys?
Money talks. So do guns.
Jonathan
it's not just nice that RH has their dist up for free, it's required :)
GPL and all that, ya know
Actually the GPL doesn't mention putting binary RPMs and installation tools on the Internet for free download. Caldera's distribution contains lots of GPLed software but you can't download it for free.
You can't even download all of Official Red Hat for free -- or you couldn't at 5.1 when I got BRU and MetroX on the CD. Maybe those proprietary programs are no longer part of the Official package.
Jonathan
I forgot that "security concerns" replaced "freedom" as the national ideal some time in 1972
It's not "security concerns", it's "investor's rights". Have you looked at NAFTA or the Multilateral Agreement on Investment? These documents give corporations rights equivalent to nations. So public policy (i.e. social security, banning poisonous industrial chemicals, taxation) is being subordinated to the protection of investment.
And this is what "freedom" has meant to American public policy makers, more or less, since the days of Madison.
Jonathan
Do the staff at Transmeta wear flared jeans and platform shoes?
;-)
No, it's worse. They wear shorts, long white socks and Birkenstocks
Microcode isn't coming back into fashion, btw. What's happening here is (probably) a hybrid between just-in-time compilation in the cache hardware (physically separate from the main execution path) and software emulation.
But this is just one interpretation of the rumour.
Jonathan
It's the system!
Money talks, even to well-meaning idealists.
Look at me, I work in the defense industry.
Jonathan
Also, feeding antibiotics to livestock in mass quantities on a regular basis is a textbook example of how to literally engineer [sic] a resistant strain unintentionally
Engineering? Evolution by un-natural selection.
Jonathan
Let me just add that gene flow and evolution do 'trend' towards homogeny anyway. In the presence of selection pressure will variation begin to arise. (This is beyond just random mutation.)
There may be a certain homogeny of phenotypes. A large, geographically diverse population, however, will have massive *genetic* variation -- with recessives and local variations ready to take advantage of selection pressures.
Simply by reducing the wild population of something, you reduce genetic diversity -- even if the organisms you're killing looked just like the ones still alive. The "options" for natural selection disappear.
Non-reproducing crops are quite irrelevant to any studies of "gene flow". Their dangers lie in cross-pollination (which can render seed from fertile strains sterile), some infinitesimal risk of gene "hopping" (absurd, but it happens all the time) and in monoculture.
Monocultures, even of reproductive crops, reduce genetic diversity drastically. Potato blight, people! Root stock, people!
Sure, potato famines and equivalent potential crop wipeouts due in part to genetic modifications are not going to end the world; (I hope the "insect resistance" quote was distorted!) but even short-term ecological and human catastrophes are not "good science".
And what if we can't *find* the root stock? 100% control of the world market of a crop by a GM food company is SCARY.
Jonathan
And some nonsense a few comments back about "farmers feeding all their animals antibiotics" is just silly. The only genetic mucking about most farmers ever do is artificial insemination
Feeding antibiotics isn't genetic mucking about, penicillin is a normal ingredient in normal "feed supplements", or was for many years. You don't have to have "most farmers" using them to cause bacteria to develop resistence, either.
All you need is to have some few large, industrial agribusinesses putting the stuff in feedlots with hundreds of grain- (and who knows what else?) -fed animals in sheds no "farmer" ever sees.
Jonathan
Funny, those nations that are currently wealthy had just this "chicken and egg" problem 150 years ago, and they seem to be doing quite nicely.
Before and during "industrial capitalism" in the West there was, and is, something called "mercantile capitalism". This is where people become enormously rich by moving things around.
It was found out pretty early on that a shortage of something in one place and a glut of it in another helped them make money -- and creating shortages (by, say, smashing looms in India and banning the manufacture of salt there) is a fantastic way of speeding up the process.
These policies were initially practiced at home and abroad, but simple patriotism, strong wealthy governments in the West, and the simple fact that not all rich people like to live in cesspits of their own devising, meant that such obvious economic benefits of capitalism as brewing and distilling half the grain in England (because alcohol has a better profit margin than bread) were ended by those rotten, socialist British politicians.
Capitalism has been impoverishing a "third" world for as long as it has been enriching a "first" one; it has always been an international phenomenon. Much of the wealth of Western nations is thanks to strong, interventionist governments who have curbed the local excesses of capitalism while supporting the foreign ones.
I would like you to explain something, because it makes no sense to me and I hear it a lot: how is it possible for corporations to do all the terrible things you claim they do without government help? and if so, why is this the fault of the corporation and not the government?
It is accomplished *with* government help. Which is *bought*. Carrot-and-stick economics, bribery, drug and arms deals, pressure from neighbouring and Western governments who answer to the same masters.
Money talks.
Jonathan
These countries must fundamentally reform their social systems, and I don't think there is all that much we can do from outside to accomplish this.
On the contrary. "You" (the collective US public) can tell "your" government to STOP doing the things you abhor (it hasn't stopped by magic!) and "your" multinationals (many of them, not all) to cease the business practices which keep governments corrupt, people impoverished, and freedom a joke.
I find it laughable that you say the majority of third world countries' governments are "socialistic and dictatorial". The US -- government and (some) business, that is -- has actively supported the overthrow of popular nationalist government (usually misinterpreted by Western analysts as "communist", whether or not they have a socialist element) by US-friendly dictators time and time again. And the US people, on the whole, stand back and cheer. There are dissident voices but there are none so deaf as those who will not listen.
What kind of a reaction will I get if I mention Noam Chomsky?
Jonathan
PS Australia isn't much better. Money talks, everywhere.
There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: UNIX and LSD.
We do not believe this to be a coincidence.
Of course it's not a coincidence! Both were produced under contract to the Defense Department.
and have been for centuries. Never read Gulliver's Travels?
People who want to by software can buy GPLed software as well as proprietary programs. There are more Linux users who have never read the kernel source than ones who have, I am convinced. And the kernel is the first place for curious hacker-wannabes to go.
Free software has users, as well as hackers.
Here's a poll idea for Rob.
The first Unix-ish source code I read was:
- an example PPP script
- my window manager config
- the Linux kernel
- BSD / AT&T code
- Huh?
- I haven't, what's it like?
Out-by-one errors are so *pervasive*!
Same again, Embarrassed Anonymous Coward.
Perhaps you meant, by 2000. Or Y2K if you must.
How much more trite can you get than Hollywood's idea of a hero?
Ronald Reagan?
We have enough oil in presently-exploited oil
fields to last well over a century at present
rates of consumption. The main thing we're
running out of is clean air -- if we burn all
that, we'll return the atmosphere to the CO2
levels of the Jurassic period, nice & warm.
Check out Project Underground for more information.
It's Aho, Sethi & Ullman, Compilers : Principles, Techniques and Tools published by Addison-Wesley and the Amazon URL is8 6/qid%3D917415425/002-2583591-9682245
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/02011008
The reason 3rd-world economies do not belong to the citizens of 3rd-world nations is twofold:
One, the capitalists and governments of wealthier nations made it that way by military force and the drug trade, and kept it that way by military force and the drug trade, and protectionist duties, boycotts, capital flight and by appropriating resources with "hard currency".
Two, capitalists and capitalist governments never quite got the point of capitalist economic analysis, that freedom helps *people*, not just capitalists, to create wealth. Poor people are discriminated against on the grounds that they are poor, which is what keeps them that way. Some, in the more "free" countries, with insight and industry and good luck, can get rich. Most continue to live hand-to-mouth for generations.
Banks have traditionally treated poor people as a bad risk. But, if a bank chooses to work *with* its debtors, it can (at some cost) help even the poorest of them to make money -- to break the poverty cycle. Credit is a bridge to the other side of the world -- the end of poverty.
Many, many westerners donate money to charity without expecting anything (except their tax) back in exchange. Since charities are not the government and don't force you to pay them, this is seen as a "free market" deal. But charity is often worse than welfare when it comes to creating dependents. Responsible investment, OTOH, can lead to empowerment of millions of individuals, and you can expect to reap modest financial rewards as well as to feel good.
The biggest revelation to me since I have discovered microcredit is that it has been the segregation of the world's economy into countries which has kept markets non-free for so long. While globalisation is usually seen by environmentalists and socialists as a negative change for the world, it is the most important precondition for income equalisation between countries -- for as long as smug wealthy people can congratulate themselves for living in a free market, they can continue to blame other people's misery on other people's governments, instead of helping to fix it.
Regulation and/or taxation of international capital movements by the UN (or equivalent body) would end the nightmare of capital flight which compels 3rd-world governments to toe the capitalist line (i.e., permit the rape of their own countries) on pain of instant depression; uniform currency would end currency speculation.
However as long as the US remains in the hands of Democrats and Republicans with their big guns, big dicks and oil stocks, minerals will be more important than people and the profits from stealing them will be more important than the profits from allowing individuals to make their own way in the world.
The lumber industry will someday run out of trees
I bloody well hope not! Trees are what is known as a *renewable* resource. You might even say they grow on trees.
I'm sick of scarcity economics. Software doesn't cost a *thing* to replicate, and since tree-genes are self-replicating too, all you need is soil, air, sunlight & water to make more trees.