Crackers break shrink-wrapped software? Industry moves to sucky subscription-based model and/or "product activation".
People rip CDs and post them online? Copy-protected CDs that won't play on my box.
Warez kiddies use P2P wireless to circumvent copyright? Maybe they will go after P2P wireless.
Hey y'all, if we end up having to pay some kind of onerous tax on these devices and/or having lengthy debates about whether or not they should be legal and/or having more FCC regulations and/or having violence in the streets involving stupid ugly paper-mache puppets, will you do me a favor? Find the nearest warez kiddie and piss on him.
When I was in tech support, everybody thought USRobotics modems sucked. We spent a lot of time dealing with USRobotics problems, much more than any other modem. Then we realized that USRobotics modems were in 70-80% of the PCs on the market. That meant that if USR modems caused 60% of our problems, they were actually better than the average modem!
I can't get to the article, but if they are talking about desktops, then anything less than 90% of the security problems coming from Windows actually means that Windows is better than average. For servers that number would have to be what, 30%?
There are other statistics involved here too. For example, Linux people always point out that Linux bugs get fixed faster than Windows bugs. True, but if the Windows patch gets released after 2 weeks, you still are still running clean more than 90% of the time--it just doesn't make that big a statistical difference.
Then of course there is the difference between "bugs found" and "bugs exploited". I imagine fewer "hackers" exploit Linux bugs because of sheer hate for "M$". If they ever let an AOLinux loose on the market, it might become a hate-target, and then all of the sudden Linux looks a lot less secure.
So you're assuming the local organic food store isn't lying to you about where the meat came from, and their distributors aren't lying to the store where the meat came from, and the individual farmers aren't lying to the distributors about where the meat came from
So you're assuming the doctor isn't lying to you about your health, and that his med school professors weren't lying about how to examine a patient, and the medical researchers aren't lying about what consititutes healthy vital signs.
Sorry, but that statement was just a bit hyperbolic dontcha think? I mean, you can't function as a human being without trusting people on some things.
Otherwise, I agree with what you say. I stay clear of undercooked/raw meat, especially at restaurants.
It's only dolts like you who think that you should be paid every time somebody besides the original purchaser uses the software
Ad hominem, but I'll address the rational part: When software is free, there are precious few "original purchasers".
I can tell I've touched a raw nerve with some people... that always happens when you confront a bad religion, which is essentially what the GNU philosophy is.
To be fair, I painted with a broad brush. Their *are* capitalists in the Open Source world, it's just that they aren't *software* capitalists. They are capitalists in some other industry who happen to have business models where software fits in as a loss-leader. It's like giving away razors to sell blades. Businesses with Free Software first-sale as the only line of revenue simply don't exist. Turn over any successful "free software business" and you will find consulting, services, distribution, customization, or something else that really makes the money. I addressed all of that in the USENET posting.
Try to keep an open mind. I don't hate you. In fact, whoever you are, I love you as a fellow human being enough to care that you don't continue to believe lies.
That's ridiculous, eggs are scarce, physical goods, software is non-scarce, abstract.
Software is a representation of labor on the part of the developer, which is not abstract or non-scarce at all. People who make your argument see only the golden egg, and forget about the goose (or chicken).
They are not comparable, and your entire argument is an exercise in strawmannery.
They are comparable. The eggs are programs. The programmers are chicken--afraid to participate in the entreprenurial system and content to find foundations, charities, or corporations who will pay them adequatly in exchange for the reduced risk. This in and of itself doesn't bother me. Risk is not for everybody. It's the moral posturing I find offensive. I have seen no better explanation of what the Free Software advocates desire. They think it's perfectly fine to sell themselves to a company, but they think it's immoral to sell what they produce. The Free Software movement is already replicating a classic soviet-style economy in which people line up for goods, waiting on the producers. If you don't believe me, just install that nice user-friendly HURD OS.
Hey dummy. You are sadly misinformed. In a bitter twist of irony, it was the ostensibly pro-regulation Clinton administration that decided to be slack in enforcing regulations against "herbal supplements" some of which are in fact potent drugs. If you don't believe me, just search for "penny royal"+"abortion". Several women have had severe problems with it, and I recall reading an article in The Washington Post about a woman who died from it. Other supplements have recently been shown to cause liver damage.
Why was the Clinton admin slack against these supplements? The only thing I can figure is that at the time "alternative medecine" was fashionable among the academic elite circles in which the Clintons traveled.
Now, I'm not suggesting that the government ban all of these things. I certainly wouldn't want to have to get a prescription for aspirin. OTOH, when pitchmen are touting products that can put you in the hospital after 10 years of normal use, or even a single use, something needs to be done. What do you suggest as an alternative to regulation?
No, no, you've got it all wrong. It's OK to control the chickens. Controlling the eggs is heresy. You've goaded me into posting my grocery store piece about the GPL. It's also available on Google's USENET archive if you search for it:
Nevermind where they are getting the value from, the bottom line is: are
they getting it?
As a customer, I look at a product and say: Does it do what I want? Is the
price reasonable?
If the answer to both these questions is YES, I buy the product.
The only way Free Software loses is by failing the 1st question, and that
happens quite a bit. Either a system is efficient at answering my two
questions, or it isn't, and Free Software is not the efficient system that
its advocates would like you to think it is. It's like, I want to buy eggs,
and the guy at the supermarket says:
"we have no eggs, but we have chickens. You can take the eggs for free when
they lay".
There is a long line for the free eggs, and the guy estimates the wait will
be 6 hours. Do you sit around waiting in line for eggs, or do you go next
door and buy them? Then this guy walks in and says:
"Hi, I'm Mr. IBM. I'd like to buy a chicken".
"Fine" says the clerk. "That'll be $1500."
So, Mr. IBM gets fresh eggs every day any way he likes them.
"This is ridiculous" you say. "I'm going next door".
"No" says the clerk. "selling eggs for money is evil. Eggs want to be
free".
"But you just sold a chicken for $1500. How is that any less evil than
selling eggs?".
"Don't ask me to explain it" says the clerk. "There is this bearded guy who
comes around preaching every day at 11 and he has a lot of followers. I'm
afraid to upset them".
The clerk had a wild look in his eye, so I stayed the full 6 hours. Quite
frankly, I was afraid what he might do with the meat cleaver.
My answer: None of the above. The very fact that all these different licenses exist--including the GPL--that represents true freedom.
Yeah, this is just another statement of the O'Reilly "freedom to choose your license" statement. So what.
Yes, the GPL has an agenda. Stuff that my friends have been telling me I'm paranoid... it's being confirmed. Come to think of it, since 9-11, the paranoids have been vindicated to a degree. I must say though, publishing software under the GPL is nowhere near as bad as say... marketing fuel-grade ethanol as a beverage or selling "herbal remedies" that are in fact potent medicines with potentially fatal side effects from long term usage.
Spyware has nothing to do with shareware. You may not like the shareware business model but please do not associate it with spyware. Spyware can be distributed under all business models. Yes. Spyware could even be distributed as Open Source on a mass-market Linux distro since many users never recompile. If Linux is ever mass-marketed on the desktop by AOL, I expect to see such things happen. It will work because most users don't read security journals and won't bother to recompile.
if I was running a project with tight money constraints, and I had to choose between a $499 and a $0 dollar compiler and the only reason was the expensive one was faster, unless I absolutly had a better reason for paying the $499, I would have to choose gcc.
Exactly. It depends on the project.
Scenario 1: Project runs client-side and is an interactive windowed application. It interacts with a remote database and is therefore "network bound". In this case, the app might as well be written Java and run by the JVM. It isn't going to make a difference. Use gcc.
Scenario 2: Project runs server-side and performs enhanced rendering functions and post-processing of global weather data. The contract initially called for 5 loaded racks that are going to cost $30,000 each and require modifications to the HVAC system so the boxes can run properly. Your analysis indicates that a 20% speed-up will allow you to go with 4 racks and avoid modifying the HVAC system, resulting in a total cost savings of $35,000 for the company. Use Intel.
A more tricky scenario is when the project starts out small and expands or changes environments. In that case I'd start with gcc, but ask myself every few weeks whether or not a speedup would help; especially if new hardware purchases were being considered.
The Supreme Court does not seem to think these laws infringe on our rights. The repeal of prohibition passed the responsability on to the states. Virginians elected to place hard liquor sales under state monopoly. Some counties even voted to stay "dry". This is a policy that most Virginians do not want to change, lest our state become festooned with blinking neon LIQUOR signs and shabby shops that exploit immigrants and Blacks. This is NOT an infringement on our rights. There is no constitutional right to market poisonous substances in a manner that has such negative impact on the "general welfare", which our government is designed to promote.
Maybe you can handle these things just fine. That's the insidious thing about the drug culture--it buries its failures.
Exactly how far are you willing to take your philosophy? Should crack dealers be allowed to give out free samples at stadium rock shows?
You decided to drink something that would get you drunk
I decided to drink something that would get me buzzed. It tasted like wine cooler. Based on my experience at the time, that much wine cooler would get me buzzed. Instead, IT BLACKED ME OUT.
I could agree with your argument that grain alcohol shouldn't be banned if we did the following: 1. make it illegal to serve anyone something with an unknown quantity of alcohol. 2. actually punish people who serve to minors.
If both of these rules were followed, I would have had a greatly reduced chance of even consuming the beverage, and if I had managed to fake my way in, I would have known what I was drinking. Now, I know what you are going to say "you should have found out what was in it". And the answer would have been "we poured some vodka in it or something". And, if I hadn't drank I would have been a party pooper. Yes, that's stupid. Newsflash: TEENAGE BOYS ARE STUPID AND DON'T CARE ABOUT DANGER.
UVa, where this happened, has gradually moved towards a stricter environment. IIRC, they went to "dry rush" for fraternities. I believe it would be much more difficult for an 18-year old to get alcohol poisoning now.
In an ideal world, we could probably enforce the rules only at the point of violation: the fraternity parties where these things happened.
At the time, the legislators realized it would be much more effective to get rid of a form of alcohol that was most likely to cause the problems.
However, even if the frats were well behaved, how do you solve this: Two wrestlers dared eachother to drink shots of pure grain. One of them ended up in pure misery, but fortunately he was OK the next day. He could have just as easily been killed. Is your right to drink grain really more important than the lives of those boys?
Hmmm... This is Slashdot, so I bet you like the GPL. You would probably disagree that my right to own software is more important than the Public's right to access the source. For the record, I believe that my right to own the source is important. As a general rule, I dislike government intervention, but "a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of a simple mind". Pure Libertarianism, Pure capitalism, Pure Socialism, and Pure grain alcohol marketed for human consumption are all forms of extremism that lead to no good.
We tried lowering the drinking age. A lot of young people got killed.
<RANT>
Now, I'm not advocating prohibition or anything, but alcohol certainly needs some control. As someone who experienced a very "wet" campus environment, and later returned to see the trend towards moderation, I can tell you moderation is better. I don't like government regulation either, but I was happy when Virginia outlawed certain types of grain alcohol. That stuff is very deceptive. After having had 4 stadium cups of seemingly innocuous punch made with the stuff, I blacked out and woke up to stories of me puking and getting violent with my room-mates, and a 24-hour hangover. That never happened with beer, or even most hard liquor unless I was trying to get f***ed up.
The very same year I had that incident, IIRC, 3 students were killed. One simply fell out of a fraternity window (BAC 0.3) a couple of others decided to go to sleep--on the railroad tracks.
As others have pointed out, soldiers can drink, but I bet they are severely disciplined and/or sent to treatment if they get drunk too much. Maybe the military does a better job of teaching people how to drink responsably. Most colleges don't, at least not when I went. Maybe things have changed.
I blame a lot of this on the 1960s drug culture. Before then, it was considered rude to get drunk in public. After that, "getting wasted" became "cool".
Now, I don't need to hear all this crap about how Europe is not like that, and Europe is better, blah, blah, blah.
All nations have their strengths and weaknesses. This is one of our weaknesses. It is especially so because of our reliance on the car. Car+Alcohol=Death so we have to be careful with alcohol. You can run all the PSAs you want, but when the only way to get home is by car, people are going to drink and drive. One or the other has to go. That's why as a mature adult, I do my best to limit drinks and stop drinking a few hours before the drive and/or get a designated driver. It takes a long time to get that discipline. Most hormone soaked teenage boys don't have it.
An Internet cafe opened in Fairfax, VA recently. I looked into it, and thought to myself: Why would I want to go there?
I thought perhaps if you are a hardcore gamer, but then unless you were a *poor* hardcore gamer you already have your own machine. With what you spend to rent their PCs, you could at least afford a PS2 for the cost of a few months of regular cafe visitation.
So then I thought, perhaps it is visited by people who simply want to be "trendy" and do what the in-crowd does just because they say you should do it.
That means teenagers.
Then I thought, why were they drawn there to begin with? And then I thought: NO CONTENT PROTECTION.
So, I was thinking that it would be only a matter of time before the news splashed all kinds of stories about kids going to the cafes to download pr0n. This would be followed by public outcry, government intervention, yada yada yada.
That makes a lot of sense. Just as "the last mile" is a problem for broadband, it's also a problem for online retailers. The difference is that most people already own the necessary infrastructure--their cars and some spare time.
If the "buy online, pickup at the store" model takes hold, this has all kinds of implications for the way distribution works, and what a retailer actually does. For one thing, it cuts into the revenue stream for delivery companies like UPS, who've been getting a shot in the arm from online retailing.
I think this is the way things will eventually go. Shipping everything right to your door via UPS isn't efficient. Economic darwinism will ultimately scale that market back so that only those who truly want that convenience will pay for it.
It figures. The lawyers know better than to share those goodies with the rest of us. I always thought they weren't public by convention, but since lawyers write the laws I guess they wrote that one to make sure that none of the club members would ever defect.
1. The people who started the rumor in Silly Valley and told their "friends" to buy RHAT have already sold.
2. The "friends" of the people who started the rumor asked for a pullback so they could get in too.
Notice that friends is in quotes. I don't want to sound too cynical, but with stakes like these it's hard to have real friends.
I think scenario 2 is more likely. Why else would you build up such a fevered pitch over the weekend and then demolish it before Wall Street has a chance to trade?
Of course it's entirely possible that there is no market manipulation going on at all (snicker).
Pizza Time Theatre
Atari opens the first Pizza Time Theatre, a new arcade-restaurant combination that features moving robotic animals, electronic games, and food. The mascot for the restaurant is a rat named Chuck E. Cheese. Bushnell thought up the concept three years earlier while standing in line at a pizza parlor.
I still have a Chuck E. Cheese token back from when I used to play games a lot. It's a 1984 token and it says "In pizza we trust" on it.
There is no way I would play it now. I just hold onto it as a memory of youth, and wonder if it will ever achieve spectacular collector value.
Except they can't use the RedHat trademark without buying RedHat. That may not sound like much, but if they can use the RedHat name then they can put all kinds of spin into their ad campaigns like: "It's the same ultra-secure system used by IBM and many others.".
Also, don't forget RHAT is becoming profitable. Cut out some of the dead weight in management (e.g., no more RHAT HR department) and you've got a solidly profitable business.
The idea that IP is not a natural right is currently one of the most popular ways to deconstruct it.
It may have been easy to ignore (or difficult to discern) the value of IP in Jefferson's time. In those days, IP constituted only a small part of the effort in most endevours. Patenting a new type of bridge design makes little sense when it takes 2 man-months to come up with the design, and 1000 man-years to actually build the bridge.
As technology has prorgressed, the proportion of intellectual labor to physical labor has shifted for some products. Wherever this occurs, ordinary people immediatly recognize the value of IP. Only a certain class of fashionable intellectuals seem to be interested in rationalizing things differently (the other class of people who tend to be AIP are warezers, but their arguments are hardly worth addressing).
It took the printing press to shift the labor balance from the hands to the head. Before then, copyright was a non-issue and the types of funding you describe were best because they were the only practical means.
Copyright does indeed protect a natural right--the right to benefit from one's own labor in the way one sees fit. Anything else is slavery.
This does not preclude the limitation of copyright. Copyright may be limited for the same reason wages may be taxed, but not for any other reason. This *does* preclude the elimination of copyright.
I shudder to think what kind of software we would get if it were all government funded, and for most people, choosing among 20 different shareware applications for $50/each is infinitely preferable to comissioning a custom app for $50,000.
Slashdot Mirror
...spoiled by warez kiddies?
Crackers break shrink-wrapped software? Industry moves to sucky subscription-based model and/or "product activation".
People rip CDs and post them online? Copy-protected CDs that won't play on my box.
Warez kiddies use P2P wireless to circumvent copyright? Maybe they will go after P2P wireless.
Hey y'all, if we end up having to pay some kind of onerous tax on these devices and/or having lengthy debates about whether or not they should be legal and/or having more FCC regulations and/or having violence in the streets involving stupid ugly paper-mache puppets, will you do me a favor? Find the nearest warez kiddie and piss on him.
Are we living in the 10 year bubble before copy protection breaks down (or something to that effect).
If you can log onto the free P2P network anytime you want, so can the FBI. That, and a little signal triangulation is all they need for a conviction.
When I was in tech support, everybody thought USRobotics modems sucked. We spent a lot of time dealing with USRobotics problems, much more than any other modem. Then we realized that USRobotics modems were in 70-80% of the PCs on the market. That meant that if USR modems caused 60% of our problems, they were actually better than the average modem!
I can't get to the article, but if they are talking about desktops, then anything less than 90% of the security problems coming from Windows actually means that Windows is better than average. For servers that number would have to be what, 30%?
There are other statistics involved here too. For example, Linux people always point out that Linux bugs get fixed faster than Windows bugs. True, but if the Windows patch gets released after 2 weeks, you still are still running clean more than 90% of the time--it just doesn't make that big a statistical difference.
Then of course there is the difference between "bugs found" and "bugs exploited". I imagine fewer "hackers" exploit Linux bugs because of sheer hate for "M$". If they ever let an AOLinux loose on the market, it might become a hate-target, and then all of the sudden Linux looks a lot less secure.
Or just buy a $200 kitchen TV and bring your laptop to the kitchen table whenever you need it.
I should know, we bought a new kitchen TV for Christmas. It was $200.
So you're assuming the local organic food store isn't lying to you about where the meat came from, and their distributors aren't lying to the store where the meat came from, and the individual farmers aren't lying to the distributors about where the meat came from
So you're assuming the doctor isn't lying to you about your health, and that his med school professors weren't lying about how to examine a patient, and the medical researchers aren't lying about what consititutes healthy vital signs.
Sorry, but that statement was just a bit hyperbolic dontcha think? I mean, you can't function as a human being without trusting people on some things.
Otherwise, I agree with what you say. I stay clear of undercooked/raw meat, especially at restaurants.
It's only dolts like you who think that you should be paid every time somebody besides the original purchaser uses the software
Ad hominem, but I'll address the rational part: When software is free, there are precious few "original purchasers".
I can tell I've touched a raw nerve with some people... that always happens when you confront a bad religion, which is essentially what the GNU philosophy is.
To be fair, I painted with a broad brush. Their *are* capitalists in the Open Source world, it's just that they aren't *software* capitalists. They are capitalists in some other industry who happen to have business models where software fits in as a loss-leader. It's like giving away razors to sell blades. Businesses with Free Software first-sale as the only line of revenue simply don't exist. Turn over any successful "free software business" and you will find consulting, services, distribution, customization, or something else that really makes the money. I addressed all of that in the USENET posting.
Try to keep an open mind. I don't hate you. In fact, whoever you are, I love you as a fellow human being enough to care that you don't continue to believe lies.
That's ridiculous, eggs are scarce, physical goods, software is non-scarce, abstract.
Software is a representation of labor on the part of the developer, which is not abstract or non-scarce at all. People who make your argument see only the golden egg, and forget about the goose (or chicken).
They are not comparable, and your entire argument is an exercise in strawmannery.
They are comparable. The eggs are programs. The programmers are chicken--afraid to participate in the entreprenurial system and content to find foundations, charities, or corporations who will pay them adequatly in exchange for the reduced risk. This in and of itself doesn't bother me. Risk is not for everybody. It's the moral posturing I find offensive. I have seen no better explanation of what the Free Software advocates desire. They think it's perfectly fine to sell themselves to a company, but they think it's immoral to sell what they produce. The Free Software movement is already replicating a classic soviet-style economy in which people line up for goods, waiting on the producers. If you don't believe me, just install that nice user-friendly HURD OS.
Education. The government is not a $6 trillion nanny
LOL!!! Where does most education take place? Who pays for it? And what do teachers spend most of their time doing?
Hey dummy. You are sadly misinformed. In a bitter twist of irony, it was the ostensibly pro-regulation Clinton administration that decided to be slack in enforcing regulations against "herbal supplements" some of which are in fact potent drugs. If you don't believe me, just search for "penny royal"+"abortion". Several women have had severe problems with it, and I recall reading an article in The Washington Post about a woman who died from it. Other supplements have recently been shown to cause liver damage.
Why was the Clinton admin slack against these supplements? The only thing I can figure is that at the time "alternative medecine" was fashionable among the academic elite circles in which the Clintons traveled.
Now, I'm not suggesting that the government ban all of these things. I certainly wouldn't want to have to get a prescription for aspirin. OTOH, when pitchmen are touting products that can put you in the hospital after 10 years of normal use, or even a single use, something needs to be done. What do you suggest as an alternative to regulation?
No, no, you've got it all wrong. It's OK to control the chickens. Controlling the eggs is heresy. You've goaded me into posting my grocery store piece about the GPL. It's also available on Google's USENET archive if you search for it:
Nevermind where they are getting the value from, the bottom line is: are
they getting it?
As a customer, I look at a product and say: Does it do what I want? Is the
price reasonable?
If the answer to both these questions is YES, I buy the product.
The only way Free Software loses is by failing the 1st question, and that
happens quite a bit. Either a system is efficient at answering my two
questions, or it isn't, and Free Software is not the efficient system that
its advocates would like you to think it is. It's like, I want to buy eggs,
and the guy at the supermarket says:
"we have no eggs, but we have chickens. You can take the eggs for free when
they lay".
There is a long line for the free eggs, and the guy estimates the wait will
be 6 hours. Do you sit around waiting in line for eggs, or do you go next
door and buy them? Then this guy walks in and says:
"Hi, I'm Mr. IBM. I'd like to buy a chicken".
"Fine" says the clerk. "That'll be $1500."
So, Mr. IBM gets fresh eggs every day any way he likes them.
"This is ridiculous" you say. "I'm going next door".
"No" says the clerk. "selling eggs for money is evil. Eggs want to be
free".
"But you just sold a chicken for $1500. How is that any less evil than
selling eggs?".
"Don't ask me to explain it" says the clerk. "There is this bearded guy who
comes around preaching every day at 11 and he has a lot of followers. I'm
afraid to upset them".
The clerk had a wild look in his eye, so I stayed the full 6 hours. Quite
frankly, I was afraid what he might do with the meat cleaver.
I never went back to that market.
--$teve
How does that compare to ordinary batteries? Remember, the 70-80% that gets wasted becomes heat. How hot do these things get?
My answer: None of the above. The very fact that all these different licenses exist--including the GPL--that represents true freedom.
Yeah, this is just another statement of the O'Reilly "freedom to choose your license" statement. So what.
Yes, the GPL has an agenda. Stuff that my friends have been telling me I'm paranoid... it's being confirmed. Come to think of it, since 9-11, the paranoids have been vindicated to a degree. I must say though, publishing software under the GPL is nowhere near as bad as say... marketing fuel-grade ethanol as a beverage or selling "herbal remedies" that are in fact potent medicines with potentially fatal side effects from long term usage.
spyware/shareware
Spyware has nothing to do with shareware. You may not like the shareware business model but please do not associate it with spyware. Spyware can be distributed under all business models. Yes. Spyware could even be distributed as Open Source on a mass-market Linux distro since many users never recompile. If Linux is ever mass-marketed on the desktop by AOL, I expect to see such things happen. It will work because most users don't read security journals and won't bother to recompile.
if I was running a project with tight money constraints, and I had to choose between a $499 and a $0 dollar compiler and the only reason was the expensive one was faster, unless I absolutly had a better reason for paying the $499, I would have to choose gcc.
Exactly. It depends on the project.
Scenario 1: Project runs client-side and is an interactive windowed application. It interacts with a remote database and is therefore "network bound". In this case, the app might as well be written Java and run by the JVM. It isn't going to make a difference. Use gcc.
Scenario 2: Project runs server-side and performs enhanced rendering functions and post-processing of global weather data. The contract initially called for 5 loaded racks that are going to cost $30,000 each and require modifications to the HVAC system so the boxes can run properly. Your analysis indicates that a 20% speed-up will allow you to go with 4 racks and avoid modifying the HVAC system, resulting in a total cost savings of $35,000 for the company. Use Intel.
A more tricky scenario is when the project starts out small and expands or changes environments. In that case I'd start with gcc, but ask myself every few weeks whether or not a speedup would help; especially if new hardware purchases were being considered.
The Supreme Court does not seem to think these laws infringe on our rights. The repeal of prohibition passed the responsability on to the states. Virginians elected to place hard liquor sales under state monopoly. Some counties even voted to stay "dry". This is a policy that most Virginians do not want to change, lest our state become festooned with blinking neon LIQUOR signs and shabby shops that exploit immigrants and Blacks. This is NOT an infringement on our rights. There is no constitutional right to market poisonous substances in a manner that has such negative impact on the "general welfare", which our government is designed to promote.
Maybe you can handle these things just fine. That's the insidious thing about the drug culture--it buries its failures.
Exactly how far are you willing to take your philosophy? Should crack dealers be allowed to give out free samples at stadium rock shows?
I am a 19year old college sophomore
It will be interesting to see what your opinion is in 10 or 20 years.
You decided to drink something that would get you drunk
I decided to drink something that would get me buzzed. It tasted like wine cooler. Based on my experience at the time, that much wine cooler would get me buzzed. Instead, IT BLACKED ME OUT.
I could agree with your argument that grain alcohol shouldn't be banned if we did the following: 1. make it illegal to serve anyone something with an unknown quantity of alcohol. 2. actually punish people who serve to minors.
If both of these rules were followed, I would have had a greatly reduced chance of even consuming the beverage, and if I had managed to fake my way in, I would have known what I was drinking. Now, I know what you are going to say "you should have found out what was in it". And the answer would have been "we poured some vodka in it or something". And, if I hadn't drank I would have been a party pooper. Yes, that's stupid. Newsflash: TEENAGE BOYS ARE STUPID AND DON'T CARE ABOUT DANGER.
UVa, where this happened, has gradually moved towards a stricter environment. IIRC, they went to "dry rush" for fraternities. I believe it would be much more difficult for an 18-year old to get alcohol poisoning now.
In an ideal world, we could probably enforce the rules only at the point of violation: the fraternity parties where these things happened.
At the time, the legislators realized it would be much more effective to get rid of a form of alcohol that was most likely to cause the problems.
However, even if the frats were well behaved, how do you solve this: Two wrestlers dared eachother to drink shots of pure grain. One of them ended up in pure misery, but fortunately he was OK the next day. He could have just as easily been killed. Is your right to drink grain really more important than the lives of those boys?
Hmmm... This is Slashdot, so I bet you like the GPL. You would probably disagree that my right to own software is more important than the Public's right to access the source. For the record, I believe that my right to own the source is important. As a general rule, I dislike government intervention, but "a foolish consistancy is the hobgoblin of a simple mind". Pure Libertarianism, Pure capitalism, Pure Socialism, and Pure grain alcohol marketed for human consumption are all forms of extremism that lead to no good.
We tried lowering the drinking age. A lot of young people got killed.
<RANT>
Now, I'm not advocating prohibition or anything, but alcohol certainly needs some control. As someone who experienced a very "wet" campus environment, and later returned to see the trend towards moderation, I can tell you moderation is better. I don't like government regulation either, but I was happy when Virginia outlawed certain types of grain alcohol. That stuff is very deceptive. After having had 4 stadium cups of seemingly innocuous punch made with the stuff, I blacked out and woke up to stories of me puking and getting violent with my room-mates, and a 24-hour hangover. That never happened with beer, or even most hard liquor unless I was trying to get f***ed up.
The very same year I had that incident, IIRC, 3 students were killed. One simply fell out of a fraternity window (BAC 0.3) a couple of others decided to go to sleep--on the railroad tracks.
As others have pointed out, soldiers can drink, but I bet they are severely disciplined and/or sent to treatment if they get drunk too much. Maybe the military does a better job of teaching people how to drink responsably. Most colleges don't, at least not when I went. Maybe things have changed.
I blame a lot of this on the 1960s drug culture. Before then, it was considered rude to get drunk in public. After that, "getting wasted" became "cool".
Now, I don't need to hear all this crap about how Europe is not like that, and Europe is better, blah, blah, blah.
All nations have their strengths and weaknesses. This is one of our weaknesses. It is especially so because of our reliance on the car. Car+Alcohol=Death so we have to be careful with alcohol. You can run all the PSAs you want, but when the only way to get home is by car, people are going to drink and drive. One or the other has to go. That's why as a mature adult, I do my best to limit drinks and stop drinking a few hours before the drive and/or get a designated driver. It takes a long time to get that discipline. Most hormone soaked teenage boys don't have it.
</RANT>
An Internet cafe opened in Fairfax, VA recently. I looked into it, and thought to myself: Why would I want to go there?
I thought perhaps if you are a hardcore gamer, but then unless you were a *poor* hardcore gamer you already have your own machine. With what you spend to rent their PCs, you could at least afford a PS2 for the cost of a few months of regular cafe visitation.
So then I thought, perhaps it is visited by people who simply want to be "trendy" and do what the in-crowd does just because they say you should do it.
That means teenagers.
Then I thought, why were they drawn there to begin with? And then I thought: NO CONTENT PROTECTION.
So, I was thinking that it would be only a matter of time before the news splashed all kinds of stories about kids going to the cafes to download pr0n. This would be followed by public outcry, government intervention, yada yada yada.
Oh well, can't win 'em all.
That makes a lot of sense. Just as "the last mile" is a problem for broadband, it's also a problem for online retailers. The difference is that most people already own the necessary infrastructure--their cars and some spare time.
If the "buy online, pickup at the store" model takes hold, this has all kinds of implications for the way distribution works, and what a retailer actually does. For one thing, it cuts into the revenue stream for delivery companies like UPS, who've been getting a shot in the arm from online retailing.
I think this is the way things will eventually go. Shipping everything right to your door via UPS isn't efficient. Economic darwinism will ultimately scale that market back so that only those who truly want that convenience will pay for it.
Alas, tt is illegal for law firms to sell stock.
It figures. The lawyers know better than to share those goodies with the rest of us. I always thought they weren't public by convention, but since lawyers write the laws I guess they wrote that one to make sure that none of the club members would ever defect.
1. The people who started the rumor in Silly Valley and told their "friends" to buy RHAT have already sold.
2. The "friends" of the people who started the rumor asked for a pullback so they could get in too.
Notice that friends is in quotes. I don't want to sound too cynical, but with stakes like these it's hard to have real friends.
I think scenario 2 is more likely. Why else would you build up such a fevered pitch over the weekend and then demolish it before Wall Street has a chance to trade?
Of course it's entirely possible that there is no market manipulation going on at all (snicker).
1977
Pizza Time Theatre Atari opens the first Pizza Time Theatre, a new arcade-restaurant combination that features moving robotic animals, electronic games, and food. The mascot for the restaurant is a rat named Chuck E. Cheese. Bushnell thought up the concept three years earlier while standing in line at a pizza parlor.
I still have a Chuck E. Cheese token back from when I used to play games a lot. It's a 1984 token and it says "In pizza we trust" on it.
There is no way I would play it now. I just hold onto it as a memory of youth, and wonder if it will ever achieve spectacular collector value.
Except they can't use the RedHat trademark without buying RedHat. That may not sound like much, but if they can use the RedHat name then they can put all kinds of spin into their ad campaigns like: "It's the same ultra-secure system used by IBM and many others.".
Also, don't forget RHAT is becoming profitable. Cut out some of the dead weight in management (e.g., no more RHAT HR department) and you've got a solidly profitable business.
The idea that IP is not a natural right is currently one of the most popular ways to deconstruct it.
It may have been easy to ignore (or difficult to discern) the value of IP in Jefferson's time. In those days, IP constituted only a small part of the effort in most endevours. Patenting a new type of bridge design makes little sense when it takes 2 man-months to come up with the design, and 1000 man-years to actually build the bridge.
As technology has prorgressed, the proportion of intellectual labor to physical labor has shifted for some products. Wherever this occurs, ordinary people immediatly recognize the value of IP. Only a certain class of fashionable intellectuals seem to be interested in rationalizing things differently (the other class of people who tend to be AIP are warezers, but their arguments are hardly worth addressing).
It took the printing press to shift the labor balance from the hands to the head. Before then, copyright was a non-issue and the types of funding you describe were best because they were the only practical means.
Copyright does indeed protect a natural right--the right to benefit from one's own labor in the way one sees fit. Anything else is slavery.
This does not preclude the limitation of copyright. Copyright may be limited for the same reason wages may be taxed, but not for any other reason. This *does* preclude the elimination of copyright.
I shudder to think what kind of software we would get if it were all government funded, and for most people, choosing among 20 different shareware applications for $50/each is infinitely preferable to comissioning a custom app for $50,000.