I guess I just don't understand any rational fear of free market economics. The common argument I hear is that people are greedy. To that I say "so what?", but the implication I hear is that greed must be bad, that if people are left to make selfish choices rather than ones that consider everyone else would leave a few people rich and many people poor. I disagree. I think that rational individuals will selfishly help the people around them for one reason or another. I think one of the reason for few winners and many losers in a "free" economy is due to a lack of infrastructure, which I think can be more directly related to quality of life around the world than anything else. Further, I don't think that even politicians with the most honest intentions can know what everyone wants or how everything can work well enough to anticipate the needs of people than they can manage them themselves and that the interests of groups with money have the power to get their voice heard better by such politicians leading to what is perceived as, and might as well be corruption. On the other hand, if a persons individual desires allowed to run free are harmful to society and need to be controlled, then government needs to be all that much more limited, because politicians are humans too. So either way, there is no moral justification for government intervention in most situations.
Better?
He he, the first thing I thought of when you said sophistry was James Brown, but to repeat rhetoric or attribute rhetoric in an argument is most always rhetoric. Thanks for pointing it out. I should have been more clear.
From each according to their ability; to each according to their need
like supporting people with love and non-judgmental understanding
Unfortunately, we are talking about government rationing of goods, not how people care about each other. It is sad that they are made to be confusing because in practice, it is easy to find pleasure in giving some of your extra food to someone with less, but when the tax man takes it at gun point whether or not you have any to spare is TOTALLY different.
More directly related to the quote, each according to their need implies everyone needs bread. From each according to their ability means that everyone should make bread if they can (keeping this simple), but further, if one person has the exceptional ability to double production through organization, then he should be given a factory because giving this person a factory would be wise because then there will be more bread for all those that need it. Technically, I don't think this conflicts with any economic theory. The key difference is the METHOD by which the person who "deserves" a bread factory acquires such bread factory. Communism says the state has the right to tell masons and steel smiths and whoever to build the factory and give it to qualified manager who will in return receive more bread. The government will further say how many people will work there and how much bread the manager must give to each of its employees, how much he may fairly take for himself, and the rest is distributed by the will of the state. I am sure you can quickly see where the term "looks good on paper" was coined, and how, just maybe, no matter how "smart" the government managed to "plan" EVERYTHING, things might not work out quite as well as they anticipated.
By contrast, Free Market is the same thing, except that masons and steel works will work voluntarily if made a compelling offer of bread by the Bread Company CEO. The CEO will also ONLY be able get people to work to make bread if he can offer them the amount of bread in return that "satisfies their greed", of course, with the realization on the part of the employee that if they do not accept the CEO's offer, that they will be left to fend for themselves in some other way, but the important part is that this exchange of goods for service is CONSENSUAL.
The debate is under which circumstances do we have the most productive and happy society with the fewest number of people suffering severely? If some are very prosperous, and others are suffering greatly, what should be done? Is it rationally compelling for those with more to give to the needy, or is the threat of violence (what can the government do if you don't pay your taxes?) necessary for a minimum standard of care to be provided to the needy or others that can not otherwise contribute (lets just say that they don't have any skills you would give them a slice of bread for)? What is the moral thing to do? How much force is ethical? Do rich people pay taxes to keep the poor from using their own force to acquire what they deem "need" directly? Is that selfish?
I don't think a lot of people followed his example very well. In applying his philosophy today, I believe a central authority that agreed with Marx would take it as an opportunity to justify what I stated. The decentralized, independent thinking socialist ideal today is the anarchist or socio-anarchist movement of which I would have to say I am a partial supporter / participant of. It could be that I needed to read the article more thoroughly, but the thing was so goofy in its attempts to force a relationship between certain events and terms that I must call BS. Guess what I really meant was that I could make exactly the same argument backwards and it would make just as much sense. The difference is that in application, and in the presence of a strong central authority, I think it would be far more appropriate to call this "Free Market Living Strong has escaped to Internet" than "New Global Collectivist Rejects Capitalism". The author brings up some great points, but I think his use of terms in describing certain things was only meant to be controversial. The terms are used so loosely, opposite / conflicting terms would have been just as appropriate, if not more so, to make exactly the same point (with regard to progress).
What is the difference between property being owned by everybody, and property being owned by nobody?
to make the working class the owners of the means of production.
There is nothing to stop individuals from voulentarily contributing as they desire in a capitalist system, or for non-employees to be investors, or for employees to not be investors. The only thing Communism prescribed was the removal of choice. Only employees were the principle investors whether or not that actually contributed any capital beyond their labor and skill. Marx claimed that this was necessary, and that each owned the fruit of his own labor. The caveat was that Marx proposed that your portion was the portion of the entire net without any consideration to the necessary startup capital. To mitigate this, it was added that there would no longer be such a thing as private capital. No private capital, to capital to repay, thus employees would receive their proper share, and nobody would loose.
Sounds good on paper, right? If not, I would say you are smart because you understand there is a bigger picture.
While we don't have government subsidized data centers for open source, what we do have is no competition agreement with telecoms. The US was able to leap ahead in broadband penetration in the late nineties by demanding that telecoms build their infrastructure everywhere rather than just in the places where the companies thought they could make money. This would give everyone Internet instead of those privileged enough to live in better neighborhoods. The trade off was that the telecoms would not have to share any of the neighborhoods with competitors for a very long period of time. The government also gave the telecoms large sums of money in return for unlimited free service to government agencies. So what do we have now 10 years later? Lots of telecoms with neither the will, need, or necessity to improve upon their networks. Such "scams" are almost identical to those that were made with railroad companies. Railroad had exclusive contracts to build, and while the jobs paid reasonably well, compared to other work, there was no competition to drive labor conditions until workers demanded the same special treatment; the government monopoly created the necessity for a labor monopoly to fight back, which was eventually supported by the government in the form of labor code.
Government gives out monopolies all the time in the form of patents and copyrights. In addition to other special treatment, Microsoft has used this position to bully the market. But Free Market isn't just the way to DO things, they are the inescapable way that things happen. Be it FOSS in general, or the Internet, people have always tried to profit off the control and restriction of progress and communication. Gutenberg in his day was treated little different than Peter Sunde now.
People strive for better productivity and communication, but as I am sure Hobbes would agree, people will settle for what they can get. Read the Jefferson letters where he discusses with Madison his concerns about allowing a congress to hand out monopolies in the form of patents and copyrights, and you will see not only did he understand EXACTLY what we are facing today, but that hundreds of years before HIM supported his position. Personally, I am mystified when reading through history how very little has changed. Stuff has changed, and how people do things is different. As for what has changed PEOPLE, I think eradicating small pox and polio had greater impacts than the Internet.
Much has changed in the last 100 years, but to say that they are too different I see as little more than an excuse to ignore our history textbooks and allow politicians to play their guessing game with policy. The thing I always hated about history class in high school was that it was presented as the "past" rather than examples of the way people behave.
People are too self involved and egotistical to think they are incorrect in their assumptions and therefore everyone else must be wrong. They can't see how others can see it any other way.
Just curious, when you say "egotistical", do you mean rational egoism, where their claim is the most appropriate explanation for the evidence they have gathered, or Social Metaphysics where it is politically incorrect to disagree with the "majority" of others without ANY respect for evidence to support claims, and certainty is directly proportional to the size of the perceivable majority.
Cause personally, I would consider the latter to be completely "selfless" in the most literal sense, and the former to be quite rare.
Ah, the great "for our own good" argument. I don't think we have a Big Brother government so much as Molesting Senile Uncle Sam that assures us that all this experience will better prepare you to please all the hot babes when you get to college.
Very well said, thank you. While I think that the only just purpose of government is infrastructure, the only point I would clarify is that the only thing that makes government special is that they are the one company whose actions can not ever be accused of being criminal, from taking in the form of taxes, to the use of force to compel people to do things. Smith and many other Free Market supporters speak of the invisible hand of the economy. Government is often an invisible gun. In any argument that begins with "The government needs to..." should simply be replaced with "The use of violence is necessary because...". I think this would make many debates go much more smoothly, and also much more honest about what we expect the "government" to do.
Maybe this only further supports your point, but I think one major issue is that people try to take all political issues and put them on one spectrum between capitalism and communism, or socialism versus free market. This is ridiculous. Capitalism is about the right for individuals to own property, and Free Market is the idea that individuals can make the most responsive efficient rational choices regarding their labor and resources, which of course quickly ties back to the idea of Capitalism. Communism claims that individuals are wasteful and inefficient, and if left to their own devices are corrosive to society; only an all powerful, all seeing state can best manage the resources and labor of a society for greatest good.
Middle ground? There is no middle ground. What DOES exist is different questions, but not middle ground. If one tends towards a better society, than a mix of both is certain to be a failure.
The problem I see is that people (of certain political tendencies) give government certain god-like qualities, most common believing government has perfect knowledge, or that anything the government does is "free". Government is simply a business that "we" have authorized a virtually unlimited use of force. Beyond that they have no special super powers. Government can help organize a military to protect against foreign invaders, police that can neutrally handle disputes over violations of social contract, courts to handle issues of contract law and establish statutes regarding the interpretation of contract language to help encourage mutually beneficial voluntary exchange of goods and service.
To say "we need the government to blah blah blah..." is to say that violence is a necessary means to an end. To paraphrase Jonathan Gullible, the penalty for all crimes against government is death / loss of life. This is the difference between taxes and charitable donation or voluntary exchange; people will be most compelled to be charitable with a gun to their head, how could we ever expect to get so much from people on a voluntary basis? If it is a one time thing, I would be inclined to agree, but can you really argue maximum net production through such means? This implies that a robber could keep robbing the same home repeatedly and that their gain will be proportional to the number of times they rob the house. Does knowing which houses are the richest change much?
To paraphrase Richard Saldman
Let me suggest an experiment.... For one year don't buy or use any Microsoft products.... At the same time send the government no money, that is, pay no taxes. Then wait. Watch who comes after you for your money and how and with what weapons.
The "problem" with the government trying to regulate the Internet is where do you point the gun, the governments only tool? The government does not do work, it only consumes, with the intent and strength to intimidate by threat do do what it desires... but it is ok because it is the will of (51% of) the people, right?
And just because it was brought it up, got to mention something. I am really getting tired of this "finding a middle ground" / "moderate" position. Moderation is a tool of negotiation, not a principle unto itself. Take for example an accused killer. The courts have the authorization to take this persons life if convicted of the crime, so there is a burden of the court to justify both its use of force, and their authority to do so. In this particular case, it is found that the police in their enthusiasm fabricated evidence in order to make the case go faster. Unfortunately for the police as a matter of checks and balances, their fabrication of evidence and getting caught in doing so means that the accused man must be let go, because an objective measure of evidence, according to the law, is now impossible. One one side, (a type of classical conservative) people claim that unfortunately the man must be let go, and shame of the police for tainting their revered leg
I could not agree more. I fear people that say we need collectivism to protect us from ourselves because people are naturally evil and need to be controlled. All that hear is projection; the only way I can understand a persons position that people left to their own free will are destined to evil is a reflection of themselves, and quite possibly needs to be protected from themselves because they have so sense of self worth or personal responsibility. I, for one, prefer the optimistic image that people have it within their own capacity to be rational, if encouraged and given the opportunity to do so.
If people are irrational, corrupt, and corrosive to society, how could we ever trust such people to pick quality leaders?
Who is being compelled against their will to contribute? While each individual may contribute to their ability, it is on a voluntary basis. "Each according to their need" is ONLY being met as market demands and individuals consider it in their best interest to meet that demand. Just because the exchange can not be measured in per unit monetary compensation does not make the contribution "selfless". People contribute for recognition, or hell, maybe because they actually gain value from their own work and can not loose any value by sharing it. Also, major contributions give you an advantage of time to market. Red Hat, for example, greatly gains from its contributions because while the information is free to share (even if they are not assisting directly to the free exchange) they have built the reputation of quality products and can be the first to teach people how to use it.
I think what people are finally realizing is that censorship isn't greedy, but irrational. Copyright was intended to be very limited, but people like Jack Valenti made a living as a con artist convincing people otherwise. Copyright is government attempting to put a control on something that doesn't need to be controlled, and as people are escaping the abuse of government regulation by way of free and voluntary exchange of information as was MEANT to be protected in the US Constitution, of course we are seeing tremendous growth.
Karl Marx would have called for government to come in and heavily regulate software. Designate a central authority to manage the development of software, public schools train a specific number of necessary software developers, outlaw the possession, development, or use of "rogue" compilers to help protect people from poor quality software that wasn't approved by the state, and possibly imprison people for unauthorized forking of projects arguing that such action "steals" the necessary resources of the state and impedes progress.
Centralized, communistic control over what people develop and how is the way of Microsoft, if not even more so by Apple. Government does give them big contracts too, and many government (public) schools mandate their use.
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both said that with no natural right to real property ownership, there is no imaginable justification for natural rights over an idea (Jefferson Letters). Does that make THEM Communists?
Further, just because everyone wins does not make it collectivism. Collectivism asks for self sacrifice, that you as an individual is not as important as the many. Really? That is why people develop software? Hackers don't have really huge egos when it comes to their accomplishments? Gee, guess I had it all wrong.
I think the Internet is Communistic about as much as I think Al Gore invented it. If I haven't made my point yet, I don't know what else I can say that will.
Why not use traditional white dice with black dots on a white background. Then it is as simple as visgrep <CameraImage.png> <DotImage.pat> -t 10? | wc -l Calculating the full image is far more work than necessary. This also easily allows for an arbitrary number of dice to be used, assuming the don't start piling on top of each other.
I was talking about today with regard to the ADA, though I think we rightfully treat the situations different, but that doesn't mean they are not related simply because one is right and the other is wrong.
To be fair, I have never had any problem with quality computers. The place I have had the most issues is with cheap computers that any tech savvy person would discourage anyone from buying. Any Sony Vaio I have put Ubuntu on has had major issues with sound, and if it has a low end integrated graphics card, proper configuration is a nightmare because the firmware doesn't give you ANY information about the cards capabilities.
I don't consider it to "elite" to blame Sony for those issues, but it does mean that if you already bought one... you just SOL.
The only reason I can see for this is that there are so many people diving into Ubuntu these days that are non-techie people. I have many friends that love Ubuntu that really are not even computer people (very limited experience with Windows). When they have problems, I see things that they are unlikely to have caused, and are very simple to fix, and obvious.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Those that wouldn't necessarily know how to handle a "bad update" or whatever you want to call it should turn on auto install of security updates only, and otherwise leave things alone. If someone ever asked me if they should go ahead and update to a major release, I would say no, simply because if they have to ask... you get the idea.
It is an option in the guided setup in the alternate expert install:) Personally, I don't see why not to just use the manual setup, but it is in there.
Oh, and further, Gentoo is the BLEEDING edge of Linux development. If source is available,, it is available for Gentoo. That just is what it is, good and bad. But complaining about something breaking in Gentoo (particularly something easily fixed) is a little like arguing political philosophy in war trenches on the front line. Sure, it may seem the most appropriate place to talk about it, but be mindful of your context.
probably why forcing packages is highly discouraged with warnings of "only do this if you are absolutely sure you know what you are doing". Sometimes good updates have poor transitions, and typically the good update has to be completed and tested before all the case scenarios for transition can be developed, and in that case, it is a timing issue.
Linux isn't really designed to handle big updates.
I'll assume since the topic is Ubuntu, you mean aptitude. There can be issues, but I have never had an issue with aptitude itself. I have had packages that were incompatible, or had packages with software that didn't work, but even in the worse cases, aptitude itself was rock solid. If there is an issue on a computer, and you manually fixed it, there is a chance that an update will over write your fix without fixing the problem requiring you to go back and put it back in, but that is dependent on 1) how much you customize your system, and 2) how well you keep track of how much you have customized your system. So the chances of something being set back to a non-working default is only statistically more likely when you are doing 2000 updates rather than just 3. But calling it "Linux isn't designed to handle large updates" is a gross misstatement, in my opinion.
The Intel driver front is one very small piece. This is also an issue that Intel is working on with X. It isn't an Ubuntu issue in so far as everyone waiting for Cannonical to do something about it. Personally, even when I used to used and "promoted" Windows, I always discouraged people from getting computers with Intel graphics cards simply because the drivers have never been all that great (assuming there are no fundamental issues with the hardware, which I would not be too quick to rule out.)
Updates work most all the time. I have fortunately had enough experience in the past two years that the need to wipe and start over from scratch is mostly pointless. However, I would not expect the average user to be able to watch Xserver fail to startup and have any perception of why, or how to resolve it. The EASIEST thing to do, and what I usually do before even looking at a log or the configuration is to backup xorg.conf, and re-autoconfigure. Xserver to non-techies is scary. Loose internet, and you get no internet... which is pretty bad if you were expecting to find the solution online. Loose Xserver, and you loose your entire graphical environment. Fortunately, in 9.04 (maybe earlier) when you enter single user mode, you are prompted with a menu of common problems, one of which is "try and fix Xserver", which really just runs the autoconfigure like anyone else could have typed into the command line, but sometimes asking people to remember to type something can be a big much.
I'll admit, it is so convenient to have that there that I have switched to run level 1 just to use the item menu, then select "resume normal boot", as long as it was necessary to log out anyway.
Reinstalling means never having to figure out what went wrong. It never fails, short of a hardware problem, or issues that CAN NOT be resolved. My personal problem with Windows was that well after a decade of use, it was always easier to reinstall. When I first got into Linux in a dedicated way (before Ubuntu existed), I would keep breaking things I did not know how to fix. Often trying 10 different ways to fix something unsuccessfully, I had really left a mess behind me that meant reinstalling was easier. It was less then two years before I had hit a point where any problem encountered (whether I created it myself or not) never really required a restart. My thought today is why restart the computer when the bios will keep doing the same thing it was doing before?
Your best Windows techs simply keep better images on hand. Windows problems are easy: You either explain to the user it was an id10t error, or reimage the computer.
So is the cost of providing such assistance to big corporations, media, unions, and industry included in that 90% or not? I really don't think you are giving enough credit to how expensive it is to keep stealing money from people and convince them it is for their own good. Also, I think politicians do all that ass kissing to help their own careers. And don't forget all the bribes these industries need to pay out to stay on top, and the further bribes by the small guy just to stay afloat... I am sure it all balances out in the end.
Government is just company like any other that wants your business. They are the civic monopoly.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess I just don't understand any rational fear of free market economics. The common argument I hear is that people are greedy. To that I say "so what?", but the implication I hear is that greed must be bad, that if people are left to make selfish choices rather than ones that consider everyone else would leave a few people rich and many people poor. I disagree. I think that rational individuals will selfishly help the people around them for one reason or another. I think one of the reason for few winners and many losers in a "free" economy is due to a lack of infrastructure, which I think can be more directly related to quality of life around the world than anything else. Further, I don't think that even politicians with the most honest intentions can know what everyone wants or how everything can work well enough to anticipate the needs of people than they can manage them themselves and that the interests of groups with money have the power to get their voice heard better by such politicians leading to what is perceived as, and might as well be corruption. On the other hand, if a persons individual desires allowed to run free are harmful to society and need to be controlled, then government needs to be all that much more limited, because politicians are humans too. So either way, there is no moral justification for government intervention in most situations.
Better?
He he, the first thing I thought of when you said sophistry was James Brown, but to repeat rhetoric or attribute rhetoric in an argument is most always rhetoric. Thanks for pointing it out. I should have been more clear.
From each according to their ability; to each according to their need
like supporting people with love and non-judgmental understanding
Unfortunately, we are talking about government rationing of goods, not how people care about each other. It is sad that they are made to be confusing because in practice, it is easy to find pleasure in giving some of your extra food to someone with less, but when the tax man takes it at gun point whether or not you have any to spare is TOTALLY different.
More directly related to the quote, each according to their need implies everyone needs bread. From each according to their ability means that everyone should make bread if they can (keeping this simple), but further, if one person has the exceptional ability to double production through organization, then he should be given a factory because giving this person a factory would be wise because then there will be more bread for all those that need it. Technically, I don't think this conflicts with any economic theory. The key difference is the METHOD by which the person who "deserves" a bread factory acquires such bread factory. Communism says the state has the right to tell masons and steel smiths and whoever to build the factory and give it to qualified manager who will in return receive more bread. The government will further say how many people will work there and how much bread the manager must give to each of its employees, how much he may fairly take for himself, and the rest is distributed by the will of the state. I am sure you can quickly see where the term "looks good on paper" was coined, and how, just maybe, no matter how "smart" the government managed to "plan" EVERYTHING, things might not work out quite as well as they anticipated.
By contrast, Free Market is the same thing, except that masons and steel works will work voluntarily if made a compelling offer of bread by the Bread Company CEO. The CEO will also ONLY be able get people to work to make bread if he can offer them the amount of bread in return that "satisfies their greed", of course, with the realization on the part of the employee that if they do not accept the CEO's offer, that they will be left to fend for themselves in some other way, but the important part is that this exchange of goods for service is CONSENSUAL.
The debate is under which circumstances do we have the most productive and happy society with the fewest number of people suffering severely? If some are very prosperous, and others are suffering greatly, what should be done? Is it rationally compelling for those with more to give to the needy, or is the threat of violence (what can the government do if you don't pay your taxes?) necessary for a minimum standard of care to be provided to the needy or others that can not otherwise contribute (lets just say that they don't have any skills you would give them a slice of bread for)? What is the moral thing to do? How much force is ethical? Do rich people pay taxes to keep the poor from using their own force to acquire what they deem "need" directly? Is that selfish?
Just some questions that come to my mind.
I don't think a lot of people followed his example very well. In applying his philosophy today, I believe a central authority that agreed with Marx would take it as an opportunity to justify what I stated. The decentralized, independent thinking socialist ideal today is the anarchist or socio-anarchist movement of which I would have to say I am a partial supporter / participant of. It could be that I needed to read the article more thoroughly, but the thing was so goofy in its attempts to force a relationship between certain events and terms that I must call BS. Guess what I really meant was that I could make exactly the same argument backwards and it would make just as much sense. The difference is that in application, and in the presence of a strong central authority, I think it would be far more appropriate to call this "Free Market Living Strong has escaped to Internet" than "New Global Collectivist Rejects Capitalism". The author brings up some great points, but I think his use of terms in describing certain things was only meant to be controversial. The terms are used so loosely, opposite / conflicting terms would have been just as appropriate, if not more so, to make exactly the same point (with regard to progress).
fair?
Especially if what you get has no relationship to your contribution. :)
to make the working class the owners of the means of production.
There is nothing to stop individuals from voulentarily contributing as they desire in a capitalist system, or for non-employees to be investors, or for employees to not be investors. The only thing Communism prescribed was the removal of choice. Only employees were the principle investors whether or not that actually contributed any capital beyond their labor and skill. Marx claimed that this was necessary, and that each owned the fruit of his own labor. The caveat was that Marx proposed that your portion was the portion of the entire net without any consideration to the necessary startup capital. To mitigate this, it was added that there would no longer be such a thing as private capital. No private capital, to capital to repay, thus employees would receive their proper share, and nobody would loose.
Sounds good on paper, right? If not, I would say you are smart because you understand there is a bigger picture.
While we don't have government subsidized data centers for open source, what we do have is no competition agreement with telecoms. The US was able to leap ahead in broadband penetration in the late nineties by demanding that telecoms build their infrastructure everywhere rather than just in the places where the companies thought they could make money. This would give everyone Internet instead of those privileged enough to live in better neighborhoods. The trade off was that the telecoms would not have to share any of the neighborhoods with competitors for a very long period of time. The government also gave the telecoms large sums of money in return for unlimited free service to government agencies. So what do we have now 10 years later? Lots of telecoms with neither the will, need, or necessity to improve upon their networks. Such "scams" are almost identical to those that were made with railroad companies. Railroad had exclusive contracts to build, and while the jobs paid reasonably well, compared to other work, there was no competition to drive labor conditions until workers demanded the same special treatment; the government monopoly created the necessity for a labor monopoly to fight back, which was eventually supported by the government in the form of labor code.
Government gives out monopolies all the time in the form of patents and copyrights. In addition to other special treatment, Microsoft has used this position to bully the market. But Free Market isn't just the way to DO things, they are the inescapable way that things happen. Be it FOSS in general, or the Internet, people have always tried to profit off the control and restriction of progress and communication. Gutenberg in his day was treated little different than Peter Sunde now.
People strive for better productivity and communication, but as I am sure Hobbes would agree, people will settle for what they can get. Read the Jefferson letters where he discusses with Madison his concerns about allowing a congress to hand out monopolies in the form of patents and copyrights, and you will see not only did he understand EXACTLY what we are facing today, but that hundreds of years before HIM supported his position. Personally, I am mystified when reading through history how very little has changed. Stuff has changed, and how people do things is different. As for what has changed PEOPLE, I think eradicating small pox and polio had greater impacts than the Internet.
Much has changed in the last 100 years, but to say that they are too different I see as little more than an excuse to ignore our history textbooks and allow politicians to play their guessing game with policy. The thing I always hated about history class in high school was that it was presented as the "past" rather than examples of the way people behave.
People have always adapted.
People are too self involved and egotistical to think they are incorrect in their assumptions and therefore everyone else must be wrong. They can't see how others can see it any other way.
Just curious, when you say "egotistical", do you mean rational egoism, where their claim is the most appropriate explanation for the evidence they have gathered, or Social Metaphysics where it is politically incorrect to disagree with the "majority" of others without ANY respect for evidence to support claims, and certainty is directly proportional to the size of the perceivable majority.
Cause personally, I would consider the latter to be completely "selfless" in the most literal sense, and the former to be quite rare.
Ah, the great "for our own good" argument. I don't think we have a Big Brother government so much as Molesting Senile Uncle Sam that assures us that all this experience will better prepare you to please all the hot babes when you get to college.
Very well said, thank you. While I think that the only just purpose of government is infrastructure, the only point I would clarify is that the only thing that makes government special is that they are the one company whose actions can not ever be accused of being criminal, from taking in the form of taxes, to the use of force to compel people to do things. Smith and many other Free Market supporters speak of the invisible hand of the economy. Government is often an invisible gun. In any argument that begins with "The government needs to..." should simply be replaced with "The use of violence is necessary because...". I think this would make many debates go much more smoothly, and also much more honest about what we expect the "government" to do.
Middle ground? There is no middle ground. What DOES exist is different questions, but not middle ground. If one tends towards a better society, than a mix of both is certain to be a failure.
The problem I see is that people (of certain political tendencies) give government certain god-like qualities, most common believing government has perfect knowledge, or that anything the government does is "free". Government is simply a business that "we" have authorized a virtually unlimited use of force. Beyond that they have no special super powers. Government can help organize a military to protect against foreign invaders, police that can neutrally handle disputes over violations of social contract, courts to handle issues of contract law and establish statutes regarding the interpretation of contract language to help encourage mutually beneficial voluntary exchange of goods and service.
To say "we need the government to blah blah blah..." is to say that violence is a necessary means to an end. To paraphrase Jonathan Gullible, the penalty for all crimes against government is death / loss of life. This is the difference between taxes and charitable donation or voluntary exchange; people will be most compelled to be charitable with a gun to their head, how could we ever expect to get so much from people on a voluntary basis? If it is a one time thing, I would be inclined to agree, but can you really argue maximum net production through such means? This implies that a robber could keep robbing the same home repeatedly and that their gain will be proportional to the number of times they rob the house. Does knowing which houses are the richest change much?
To paraphrase Richard Saldman
Let me suggest an experiment. ... For one year don't buy or use any Microsoft products. ... At the same time send the government no money, that is, pay no taxes. Then wait. Watch who comes after you for your money and how and with what weapons.
The "problem" with the government trying to regulate the Internet is where do you point the gun, the governments only tool? The government does not do work, it only consumes, with the intent and strength to intimidate by threat do do what it desires... but it is ok because it is the will of (51% of) the people, right?
And just because it was brought it up, got to mention something. I am really getting tired of this "finding a middle ground" / "moderate" position. Moderation is a tool of negotiation, not a principle unto itself. Take for example an accused killer. The courts have the authorization to take this persons life if convicted of the crime, so there is a burden of the court to justify both its use of force, and their authority to do so. In this particular case, it is found that the police in their enthusiasm fabricated evidence in order to make the case go faster. Unfortunately for the police as a matter of checks and balances, their fabrication of evidence and getting caught in doing so means that the accused man must be let go, because an objective measure of evidence, according to the law, is now impossible. One one side, (a type of classical conservative) people claim that unfortunately the man must be let go, and shame of the police for tainting their revered leg
I could not agree more. I fear people that say we need collectivism to protect us from ourselves because people are naturally evil and need to be controlled. All that hear is projection; the only way I can understand a persons position that people left to their own free will are destined to evil is a reflection of themselves, and quite possibly needs to be protected from themselves because they have so sense of self worth or personal responsibility. I, for one, prefer the optimistic image that people have it within their own capacity to be rational, if encouraged and given the opportunity to do so.
If people are irrational, corrupt, and corrosive to society, how could we ever trust such people to pick quality leaders?
Who is being compelled against their will to contribute? While each individual may contribute to their ability, it is on a voluntary basis. "Each according to their need" is ONLY being met as market demands and individuals consider it in their best interest to meet that demand. Just because the exchange can not be measured in per unit monetary compensation does not make the contribution "selfless". People contribute for recognition, or hell, maybe because they actually gain value from their own work and can not loose any value by sharing it. Also, major contributions give you an advantage of time to market. Red Hat, for example, greatly gains from its contributions because while the information is free to share (even if they are not assisting directly to the free exchange) they have built the reputation of quality products and can be the first to teach people how to use it.
I think what people are finally realizing is that censorship isn't greedy, but irrational. Copyright was intended to be very limited, but people like Jack Valenti made a living as a con artist convincing people otherwise. Copyright is government attempting to put a control on something that doesn't need to be controlled, and as people are escaping the abuse of government regulation by way of free and voluntary exchange of information as was MEANT to be protected in the US Constitution, of course we are seeing tremendous growth.
Karl Marx would have called for government to come in and heavily regulate software. Designate a central authority to manage the development of software, public schools train a specific number of necessary software developers, outlaw the possession, development, or use of "rogue" compilers to help protect people from poor quality software that wasn't approved by the state, and possibly imprison people for unauthorized forking of projects arguing that such action "steals" the necessary resources of the state and impedes progress.
Centralized, communistic control over what people develop and how is the way of Microsoft, if not even more so by Apple. Government does give them big contracts too, and many government (public) schools mandate their use.
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson both said that with no natural right to real property ownership, there is no imaginable justification for natural rights over an idea (Jefferson Letters). Does that make THEM Communists?
Further, just because everyone wins does not make it collectivism. Collectivism asks for self sacrifice, that you as an individual is not as important as the many. Really? That is why people develop software? Hackers don't have really huge egos when it comes to their accomplishments? Gee, guess I had it all wrong.
I think the Internet is Communistic about as much as I think Al Gore invented it. If I haven't made my point yet, I don't know what else I can say that will.
Why not use traditional white dice with black dots on a white background. Then it is as simple as
visgrep <CameraImage.png> <DotImage.pat> -t 10? | wc -l
Calculating the full image is far more work than necessary. This also easily allows for an arbitrary number of dice to be used, assuming the don't start piling on top of each other.
I was talking about today with regard to the ADA, though I think we rightfully treat the situations different, but that doesn't mean they are not related simply because one is right and the other is wrong.
Seriously, since when did tasteless jokes become offtopic?
To be fair, I have never had any problem with quality computers. The place I have had the most issues is with cheap computers that any tech savvy person would discourage anyone from buying. Any Sony Vaio I have put Ubuntu on has had major issues with sound, and if it has a low end integrated graphics card, proper configuration is a nightmare because the firmware doesn't give you ANY information about the cards capabilities.
I don't consider it to "elite" to blame Sony for those issues, but it does mean that if you already bought one... you just SOL.
The only reason I can see for this is that there are so many people diving into Ubuntu these days that are non-techie people. I have many friends that love Ubuntu that really are not even computer people (very limited experience with Windows). When they have problems, I see things that they are unlikely to have caused, and are very simple to fix, and obvious.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Those that wouldn't necessarily know how to handle a "bad update" or whatever you want to call it should turn on auto install of security updates only, and otherwise leave things alone. If someone ever asked me if they should go ahead and update to a major release, I would say no, simply because if they have to ask... you get the idea.
It is an option in the guided setup in the alternate expert install :) Personally, I don't see why not to just use the manual setup, but it is in there.
Oh, and further, Gentoo is the BLEEDING edge of Linux development. If source is available,, it is available for Gentoo. That just is what it is, good and bad. But complaining about something breaking in Gentoo (particularly something easily fixed) is a little like arguing political philosophy in war trenches on the front line. Sure, it may seem the most appropriate place to talk about it, but be mindful of your context.
probably why forcing packages is highly discouraged with warnings of "only do this if you are absolutely sure you know what you are doing". Sometimes good updates have poor transitions, and typically the good update has to be completed and tested before all the case scenarios for transition can be developed, and in that case, it is a timing issue.
Linux isn't really designed to handle big updates.
I'll assume since the topic is Ubuntu, you mean aptitude. There can be issues, but I have never had an issue with aptitude itself. I have had packages that were incompatible, or had packages with software that didn't work, but even in the worse cases, aptitude itself was rock solid. If there is an issue on a computer, and you manually fixed it, there is a chance that an update will over write your fix without fixing the problem requiring you to go back and put it back in, but that is dependent on 1) how much you customize your system, and 2) how well you keep track of how much you have customized your system. So the chances of something being set back to a non-working default is only statistically more likely when you are doing 2000 updates rather than just 3. But calling it "Linux isn't designed to handle large updates" is a gross misstatement, in my opinion.
The Intel driver front is one very small piece. This is also an issue that Intel is working on with X. It isn't an Ubuntu issue in so far as everyone waiting for Cannonical to do something about it. Personally, even when I used to used and "promoted" Windows, I always discouraged people from getting computers with Intel graphics cards simply because the drivers have never been all that great (assuming there are no fundamental issues with the hardware, which I would not be too quick to rule out.)
Updates work most all the time. I have fortunately had enough experience in the past two years that the need to wipe and start over from scratch is mostly pointless. However, I would not expect the average user to be able to watch Xserver fail to startup and have any perception of why, or how to resolve it. The EASIEST thing to do, and what I usually do before even looking at a log or the configuration is to backup xorg.conf, and re-autoconfigure. Xserver to non-techies is scary. Loose internet, and you get no internet... which is pretty bad if you were expecting to find the solution online. Loose Xserver, and you loose your entire graphical environment. Fortunately, in 9.04 (maybe earlier) when you enter single user mode, you are prompted with a menu of common problems, one of which is "try and fix Xserver", which really just runs the autoconfigure like anyone else could have typed into the command line, but sometimes asking people to remember to type something can be a big much.
I'll admit, it is so convenient to have that there that I have switched to run level 1 just to use the item menu, then select "resume normal boot", as long as it was necessary to log out anyway.
Reinstalling means never having to figure out what went wrong. It never fails, short of a hardware problem, or issues that CAN NOT be resolved. My personal problem with Windows was that well after a decade of use, it was always easier to reinstall. When I first got into Linux in a dedicated way (before Ubuntu existed), I would keep breaking things I did not know how to fix. Often trying 10 different ways to fix something unsuccessfully, I had really left a mess behind me that meant reinstalling was easier. It was less then two years before I had hit a point where any problem encountered (whether I created it myself or not) never really required a restart. My thought today is why restart the computer when the bios will keep doing the same thing it was doing before?
Your best Windows techs simply keep better images on hand. Windows problems are easy: You either explain to the user it was an id10t error, or reimage the computer.
So what you are saying is that a repeal of the 9th and 10th amendments to The Constitution wasn't such a great idea after all?
I think I just found a new best friend.
So is the cost of providing such assistance to big corporations, media, unions, and industry included in that 90% or not? I really don't think you are giving enough credit to how expensive it is to keep stealing money from people and convince them it is for their own good. Also, I think politicians do all that ass kissing to help their own careers. And don't forget all the bribes these industries need to pay out to stay on top, and the further bribes by the small guy just to stay afloat... I am sure it all balances out in the end.
Government is just company like any other that wants your business. They are the civic monopoly.