I have an Acoustic Research AR-1 speaker that is over 50 years old and working like a top as a subwoofer.:) One of the things I like about analog audio is the shear durability of the products compared to anything digital. The golden age of audio was the 70s and 70s Sansui, Pioneer, and Marantz amps and receivers are VERY in demand, name ANY digital product that was better 30+ years ago? I do like advancements in processor speed HD capacity etc, and filling up landfills with working 6 year old computers? Not so much...
"Yes, companies screw up and are evil; but they have the right to be, just like individuals."
Your statement that companies have a "right" to be "EVIL" sums up the Libertarian philosophy in a nutshell. It's why I could never vote for Ron Paul despite having great respect for his consistent courageous opposition to endless war by the U.S. government. The fatal flaw of the Libertarian philosophy is that you don't think morality or even basic human decency applies to business, that they should be allowed to operate in a 100% ethics free zoneand that the "free market" excuses ALL excesses with a magic wand. M$ is just but one relatively small example of why that is a bad idea, Shell oil in Nigeria is a more serious example of what private businesses are capable of unhindered by morality.
And no this isn't the Nigerian governments fault they only used government soldiers because they were cheap they would have hired pivate militias to slaughter Nigerian environmentalists if no soldiers had been available.
In an ideal world of course business morality would come from voluntary self restraint but since greed seems to overpower self restraint (again see M$) alas it seems that businesses must be regulated to keep people from suffering. Unrestrained greed is quite literally the killer of the Goose that lays the golden egg of the Libertarians stateless utopia which is just that a utopia just as 100% unrealistic as the communist utopia that looks good on paper and not so much in practice.
That cuts both ways though in a capitalist "free market" employers can choose to keep labor prices artificially low to line their pockets with profits stolen from labor FORCING the working person to take a very low paying job with poor working conditions just to survive. In an economy with more work place democracy and better social supports the working person has more freedom to CHOOSE the job they want and be assured that that work will provide a living wage healthcare for that worker and his or her family.
You don't understand the difference? The Libertarian version of "freedom" in practice only means "freedom" for the upper 15% of well to do people and wage slavery misery for that is no way free for the vast majority of the population. This is born out in looking at quality of life in quasi socialist countries like Sweden v.s. the U.S. hint we aren't "#1."
"No less a "capitalist tool" than Forbes Magazine let a red cat out of the bag with a report this month that the happiest countries tend to be Scandinavian socialist democracies. High per-capita GDP certainly plays a role in their felicity, but even social democratic New Zealand, with per-capita GDP only 64 percent of the United States', ranks with the 10 democracies above us in the happiness index. They pay high taxes in these pinkotopias, but folks enjoy entitlements like free college, extensive elder care, and 52-week paid maternity leave.
The 2005 poll measured personal reports of enjoyment, pride in achievement and learning, being respected, among other things. Forbes suggests that such happiness derives from family, social and community networks, and a decent work-life balance, noting that the average workweek in Scandinavia is 37 hours."
In sum try again, many of us see through the Libertarian charade about "freedom" in the workplace. Yes to Libertarians correct critiques of police state at home and empire abroad, no to laissez affaire capitalism that is naught but a recipe for a very few living living in opulent excess while many suffer without healthcare, adequate housing, or the opportunity for high quality secondary education for their kids.
This is proof that corporations that arise from your beloved "market" can be every bit as evil and draconian as the government. And don't even give me that B.S. that monopolies wouldn't arise if there was less government intervention in markets, Stadard oil arising when there was NO government intervention in markets ring a bell? In short Ayn Rand fans time to find another paradigm that maps the real world.
A smart person questions BOTH concentrated public and private power which is why I hope OSS wins in the long run as it's inherently decentralized and avoids BOTH public and private monopolies on production that lead to debacles like this on private side and debacles like the "v-chip" on the public side.
Agree. Properly maintained electronic equipment ought to be good for a 20 year lifespan, yes CPUs change but printers and scanners have NOT improved much in a decade.
Some of my best sounding audio equipment is 40+ years old and was built to last, would that we made peripherals with the same attitude we could do a lot to save money and the environment.
Where is the Marantz of computer equipment and who would support it with drivers if it were made?
Fill up landfills great idea, oh wait...
on
Phoenix BIOSOS?
·
· Score: 1
So in essence westlake you are saying we should replace perfectly good working printers, scanners, etc, every couple of years??? What a waste the ONLY reason I'd ever use Linux on the the desktop is vaguely lefty guilt about not supporting OSS. OTOTH if OSS is going to mean filling up landfills with perfectly good working peripherals due to lack of driver support in OS updates that is a FAR worse offense against my lefty sensibilities than not not supporting GNU. Thanks for killing my one reason to support Linux.:(
"People are not going to be using online AutoCAD. Probably ever."
I absolutly agree or online Photoshop, or online code development tools, or online video editing. There is a definite real need for a desktop among pros, *I'm* not giving up my desktop you'll pry my secure local storage and content creation tools from my cold dead fingers. *You* aren't giving up your desktop. And none of this refutes my point at all that we AREN'T the 90% of home users who mainly use e-mail, chat, the web, and very basic snapshot photo retouching all of which could be done with web apps.
I am not too sure this is even that great a thing, while it is an opening for simple Linux desktops it also an opening for corporate control of our data in the "cloud." I wasn't advocating anything just describing what is likely to happen as net connectivity increases and pressure to drive costs down leads to a dumbed down cheap netbook style "desktop" (notebook) for the masses. As long as they keep making pro desktops for corporate users, content creators, IT geeks, and coders I don't think it's a problem, I do think it's coming however so hold onto your hat (the Red one????).
The parent poster is not talking about corporate use, or geeks like us, he's talking about the folks at home. You know the other NINETY percent of the market.
"I repeat myself when under stress I repeat myself when under stress I repeat myself when under stress I repeat myself when under stress I repeat myself when under stress I repeat..."
You Libertarians need a new riff before you become more unpopular than even George Bush himself. Hint a Libertarian is only slightly less repulsive than a neo-con. Yeah Libertarians get it right on opposing empire abroad, and police state at home, and your economic theory? Not so much...
"In short, create a liberal Western society and a truly free market."
Because that worked soooooo well for us now didn't it? Tired stale Libertarian rhetoric, is tired, stale and so 2006. A xenophobic Libertarian wonderful good thing your user id is 666... that ought to be a tip off right there. SIGH!
By resist I mean something more like burn Washington and the media down to the ground and shoot the survivors fleeing from the flames. And if that sounds "extreme" remember that is in essence what the vaunted founding fathers did. Of course we are cowards now aren't we? If people like us had lived in 18th century America we'd still be a British Commonwealth.:(
Obama's new government unaccountability for violating our 4th amendment rights are some neo-con bullshit and yet when I challenge this from the left citing articles from people like Amy Goodman and Glenn Greewald all I get are glassy eyed stares from the Obama koolaid drinkers.:(
So, gasp I actually agree with you on something dude, I think hell just became a massive ice skating rink.
Meshnets may be one of the best ways to roll out free wireless to the urban poor like in my hometown of Ypsilanti Michigan. Will someone please stop these overly paranoid police state loving yuppies hyped on fear from "reality" tee vee from shutting down everything that is the least bit challenging and interesting?
If we are really facing getting our doors kicked in for sharing our internet connections then we are actually living in an Orwellian police state and we ought to resist, not be cowards.
First they came for the open wi-fi users, and I was not an open wi-fi user so...
First off I want to say Freeman Dyson is a brilliant physcist and we should all be grateful for his work in physics, he is not however a climate scientist, climate scientists have a rather different view of the whole thing:
"IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].
Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).
The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).
The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."
So do some research about the mainstream of climatology before jumping on the Dyson bandwagon.
And yes Al Gore is often an exaggerated propagandist and he isNOT helpful in this debate, that doesn't however mean that there isn't real climate science out there pointing to the anthropogenic origin of observed climate change.
Me too, or as George Harrison put it what if we gained the world and lost our souls? Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to take a long walk in the woods, 100% "non productive," and it will make you feel more alive and free. Try it sometime and see... If you think the actual Buddha sat around and worried about how "productive" he was you are kidding yourself. Remember too boys and girls oh so "productive" bankster CEOs caused the American economy to collapse.
I always thought had very believable A.I. your opponents drive well but do crash sometimes on slick spots on the road. They are good enough to keep you on your toes but not so perfect as to make you loose all hope.
Slashdot Mirror
I have an Acoustic Research AR-1 speaker that is over 50 years old and working like a top as a subwoofer. :) One of the things I like about analog audio is the shear durability of the products compared to anything digital. The golden age of audio was the 70s and 70s Sansui, Pioneer, and Marantz amps and receivers are VERY in demand, name ANY digital product that was better 30+ years ago? I do like advancements in processor speed HD capacity etc, and filling up landfills with working 6 year old computers? Not so much...
And Adam Smith who knows where that "invisible hand" has been?
Toonol sed:
"Yes, companies screw up and are evil; but they have the right to be, just like individuals."
Your statement that companies have a "right" to be "EVIL" sums up the Libertarian philosophy in a nutshell. It's why I could never vote for Ron Paul despite having great respect for his consistent courageous opposition to endless war by the U.S. government. The fatal flaw of the Libertarian philosophy is that you don't think morality or even basic human decency applies to business, that they should be allowed to operate in a 100% ethics free zoneand that the "free market" excuses ALL excesses with a magic wand. M$ is just but one relatively small example of why that is a bad idea, Shell oil in Nigeria is a more serious example of what private businesses are capable of unhindered by morality.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Boycotts/Flames_Shell.html
And no this isn't the Nigerian governments fault they only used government soldiers because they were cheap they would have hired pivate militias to slaughter Nigerian environmentalists if no soldiers had been available.
In an ideal world of course business morality would come from voluntary self restraint but since greed seems to overpower self restraint (again see M$) alas it seems that businesses must be regulated to keep people from suffering. Unrestrained greed is quite literally the killer of the Goose that lays the golden egg of the Libertarians stateless utopia which is just that a utopia just as 100% unrealistic as the communist utopia that looks good on paper and not so much in practice.
That cuts both ways though in a capitalist "free market" employers can choose to keep labor prices artificially low to line their pockets with profits stolen from labor FORCING the working person to take a very low paying job with poor working conditions just to survive. In an economy with more work place democracy and better social supports the working person has more freedom to CHOOSE the job they want and be assured that that work will provide a living wage healthcare for that worker and his or her family.
You don't understand the difference? The Libertarian version of "freedom" in practice only means "freedom" for the upper 15% of well to do people and wage slavery misery for that is no way free for the vast majority of the population. This is born out in looking at quality of life in quasi socialist countries like Sweden v.s. the U.S. hint we aren't "#1."
"No less a "capitalist tool" than Forbes Magazine let a red cat out of the bag with a report this month that the happiest countries tend to be Scandinavian socialist democracies. High per-capita GDP certainly plays a role in their felicity, but even social democratic New Zealand, with per-capita GDP only 64 percent of the United States', ranks with the 10 democracies above us in the happiness index. They pay high taxes in these pinkotopias, but folks enjoy entitlements like free college, extensive elder care, and 52-week paid maternity leave.
The 2005 poll measured personal reports of enjoyment, pride in achievement and learning, being respected, among other things. Forbes suggests that such happiness derives from family, social and community networks, and a decent work-life balance, noting that the average workweek in Scandinavia is 37 hours."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/24
In sum try again, many of us see through the Libertarian charade about "freedom" in the workplace. Yes to Libertarians correct critiques of police state at home and empire abroad, no to laissez affaire capitalism that is naught but a recipe for a very few living living in opulent excess while many suffer without healthcare, adequate housing, or the opportunity for high quality secondary education for their kids.
Koolaid Oh Yeah!
And you think there weren't large businesses before the government created the corporation? East India Trading Co. ring a bell?
http://www.google.com/search?q=East+India+Trading+Company&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en-us&tbs=tl:1&tbo=1&ei=R-UZSrO7A8jktgfXof2ADQ&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11
And if you want to be employable exactly how much choice are you given then other than shut up and enjoy your Windows desktop?
Does a 90% market share monopoly ring a bell? Oops.
This is proof that corporations that arise from your beloved "market" can be every bit as evil and draconian as the government.
And don't even give me that B.S. that monopolies wouldn't arise if there was less government intervention in markets, Stadard oil arising when there was NO government intervention in markets ring a bell? In short Ayn Rand fans time to find another paradigm that maps the real world.
A smart person questions BOTH concentrated public and private power which is why I hope OSS wins in the long run as it's inherently decentralized and avoids BOTH public and private monopolies on production that lead to debacles like this on private side and debacles like the "v-chip" on the public side.
Agree. Properly maintained electronic equipment ought to be good for a 20 year lifespan, yes CPUs change but printers and scanners have NOT improved much in a decade.
Some of my best sounding audio equipment is 40+ years old and was built to last, would that we made peripherals with the same attitude we could do a lot to save money and the environment.
Where is the Marantz of computer equipment and who would support it with drivers if it were made?
So in essence westlake you are saying we should replace perfectly good working printers, scanners, etc, every couple of years??? What a waste the ONLY reason I'd ever use Linux on the the desktop is vaguely lefty guilt about not supporting OSS. OTOTH if OSS is going to mean filling up landfills with perfectly good working peripherals due to lack of driver support in OS updates that is a FAR worse offense against my lefty sensibilities than not not supporting GNU. Thanks for killing my one reason to support Linux. :(
Linux on the server FTW of course...
"People are not going to be using online AutoCAD. Probably ever."
I absolutly agree or online Photoshop, or online code development tools, or online video editing. There is a definite real need for a desktop among pros, *I'm* not giving up my desktop you'll pry my secure local storage and content creation tools from my cold dead fingers. *You* aren't giving up your desktop. And none of this refutes my point at all that we AREN'T the 90% of home users who mainly use e-mail, chat, the web, and very basic snapshot photo retouching all of which could be done with web apps.
I am not too sure this is even that great a thing, while it is an opening for simple Linux desktops it also an opening for corporate control of our data in the "cloud." I wasn't advocating anything just describing what is likely to happen as net connectivity increases and pressure to drive costs down leads to a dumbed down cheap netbook style "desktop" (notebook) for the masses. As long as they keep making pro desktops for corporate users, content creators, IT geeks, and coders I don't think it's a problem, I do think it's coming however so hold onto your hat (the Red one????).
The parent poster is not talking about corporate use, or geeks like us, he's talking about the folks at home. You know the other NINETY percent of the market.
You remind me of the King Crimson song:
"I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat myself when under stress
I repeat..."
You Libertarians need a new riff before you become more unpopular than even George Bush himself. Hint a Libertarian is only slightly less repulsive than a neo-con. Yeah Libertarians get it right on opposing empire abroad, and police state at home, and your economic theory? Not so much...
"In short, create a liberal Western society and a truly free market."
Because that worked soooooo well for us now didn't it? Tired stale Libertarian rhetoric, is tired, stale and so 2006. A xenophobic Libertarian wonderful good thing your user id is 666... that ought to be a tip off right there. SIGH!
Mod accordingly.
By resist I mean something more like burn Washington and the media down to the ground and shoot the survivors fleeing from the flames. And if that sounds "extreme" remember that is in essence what the vaunted founding fathers did. Of course we are cowards now aren't we? If people like us had lived in 18th century America we'd still be a British Commonwealth. :(
Obama's new government unaccountability for violating our 4th amendment rights are some neo-con bullshit and yet when I challenge this from the left citing articles from people like Amy Goodman and Glenn Greewald all I get are glassy eyed stares from the Obama koolaid drinkers. :(
So, gasp I actually agree with you on something dude, I think hell just became a massive ice skating rink.
That's just sad:
Meshnets may be one of the best ways to roll out free wireless to the urban poor like in my hometown of Ypsilanti Michigan. Will someone please stop these overly paranoid police state loving yuppies hyped on fear from "reality" tee vee from shutting down everything that is the least bit challenging and interesting?
http://www.metromodemedia.com/devnews/wirelessypsi0051.aspx
http://www.wireless.ypsi.com/
If we are really facing getting our doors kicked in for sharing our internet connections then we are actually living in an Orwellian police state and we ought to resist, not be cowards.
First they came for the open wi-fi users, and I was not an open wi-fi user so...
Then they are LYING when they say they are selling us unlimited bandwidth and ought to be sued for breach of contract.
Is that you?
You got that one right:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
(Peer reviewed science journal Science)
First off I want to say Freeman Dyson is a brilliant physcist and we should all be grateful for his work in physics, he is not however a climate scientist, climate scientists have a rather different view of the whole thing:
"IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].
Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).
The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).
The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686
(Peer reviewed science journal Science)
So do some research about the mainstream of climatology before jumping on the Dyson bandwagon.
And yes Al Gore is often an exaggerated propagandist and he isNOT helpful in this debate, that doesn't however mean that there isn't real climate science out there pointing to the anthropogenic origin of observed climate change.
Me too, or as George Harrison put it what if we gained the world and lost our souls? Sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is to take a long walk in the woods, 100% "non productive," and it will make you feel more alive and free. Try it sometime and see... If you think the actual Buddha sat around and worried about how "productive" he was you are kidding yourself.
Remember too boys and girls oh so "productive" bankster CEOs caused the American economy to collapse.
I always thought had very believable A.I. your opponents drive well but do crash sometimes on slick spots on the road. They are good enough to keep you on your toes but not so perfect as to make you loose all hope.