You are right of course, Germany has developed an environment where (financial) success is frowned upon. Many people whine about those rich people and rarely see their own opportunities.
Unfortunately, politicians are busy to underscore this belief instead of battling it: The Vermoegenssteuer- (wealth tax) and Erbschaftssteuer- (inheritance tax) debates are excellent examples. Everybody agrees that rich families have to make their contribution to the general good (ie. taxes) , but seldom do they realize that it is these families/people who run businesses and create jobs. I have not seen such a heated discussion about inheritance tax in any other country (it is mostly within reasonable boundaries). Only Germany seems to have a problem with (supposedly undeserved) transfer of (already taxed) wealth from one generation to the next. Maybe the reason is, because it is the first time in post-war Germany that such an enormous amount of wealth is transferred.
I also agree with your point regarding risk: The general public doesn't seem to acknowledge the higher risk an entrepreneur is taking, who is in turn expecting a higher pay off as a result. By ignoring this very simple economic/business/finance rule society at large is bound to regard the failing as "too stupid to run a business."
This image has been underlined by many top executives' incompetence in the past couple of years and many mistake a large company's CEO with an entrepreneur.
On the other hand success of an entrepreneur is often attributed to luck without recognising the hard work behind most ventures.
*Sigh* I think we could go on for hours on end, eventually politicians, as the moral and political guides (sigh again) in this country, have to start marketing (financial/business/economic) success as something achievable and desirable for all. I like and don't want to miss many things of our social security system, but having almost the whole population relying on it in one form or another, is asking for desaster. The current system is completely nuts: On one hand we want people to take matters into their hands regarding the pension scheme (with the "Riester Rente" as the first step towards a self-financed pension scheme) and on the other we want to tax wealth, because, well these "rich" people have too much. And I am not talking about the 0.001% of the population who are mulit-millionaires, but rather our precious Mittelstand.
The issue of the number of universities has been raised quite a lot of times in the past and is completely stupid IMHO. Yes, Berlin has more general universities and universities for applied sciences (Fachhochschulen) than any other German city, but it is also the city with the largest population and has no other resources than human. It is neither the financial capital (which is Frankfurt) nor does it have any industrial capacitiy to speak of .
Berlin's only resources are knowledge and initiative of its people. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurial initiatives are killed through red tape and an extremely unefficient administration. If the city were to finally embrace its academic community and respective creative and entrepreneurial output, spending more (instead of less) on higher education, while simultaneously lowering red tape and speeding up administrative issues regarding almost all aspects of life (especially industrial and estate permissions), it could eventually have a job-creating industry.
...if I manage to flunk twice in Mathematics, I'm not allowed to study anything where Mathematics is a part of the degree (Engineering, Computer Science,...)
Not quite, if I were to study mathematics and were to flunk a course, I could still study economics or business even though these include courses in algebra, finance mathematics and statistics. So, while it may apply to engineering or computer science, it wouldn't apply to other courses containing math lectures. And yes, flunking one single part of a degree program twice (sometimes thrice) means that you can't study this program in Germany anymore.
Furthermore, the "Hochschulreife" you mention, usually acquired through the Abitur (or High School Diploma in US, Baccaleaureat in France, but don't hit me for spelling), is not the only way to get higher education in Germany. There are three ways I can think of to get it:
1. Abitur, which means that you could study at every public and private University, Fachhochschule (University for Applied Sciences, Polytechs) and Berufsakademie (professional academy) provided that you meet the entry requirements (NC, special tests, portfolio evidence for arts and architecture).
2. Without Abitur, you can still qualify through apprenticeships and further education in a specific field that would let you study at some Fachhochschulen and Berufsakademien.
3. Obtain a first degree at a foreign university and continue in Germany.
Your degree will state where you got it:
Dipl. Ing. - University
Dipl. Ing. (FH) - Fachhochschule
Dipl. Ing. (BA) - Berufsakademie
In my own experience, Fachhochschulen and Berufsakademien are usually not any worse than normal university education and are sometimes better regarded by some. E.g. the reputation of the TFH Berlin is much better than the other Berlin universities in architecture.
Nevertheless, the point SerpentMage was making was flawed on a number of issues:
Higher education in Germany is not free, we pay for it through the tax system. Berufsakademien and private universities charge you.
Nowhere does it say that you MUST study. Though this might be a socially induced phenomenon.
...no assurances that the student will spend any effort to study. This is complete bullshit. Everybody who obtained a degree in Germany took quite an effort financially (you have to support yourself and libraries are increasingly worthless so many buy the books, especially in medical and legal sciences) and with regard to time (many courses are far too academic and many seminars are overcrowded, so it is becoming increasingly difficult to finish in time).
You shouldn't have to give these idiots MONEY to have them vote according to the people.
You're absolutely right.
Personally, I think we need a forceful overhaul in this country and implement a true democracy where any American 18 or over can cast a vote. The votes are counted and a law is either passed or not passed based on those votes. We could have a big vote every 6 months.
This is not a very good idea. Think about how easy it is to manipulate public opinion, especially with todays media's omnipresence. I also used to say that the people, ie. voters, should have more direct saying in general legislation, but the sad truth is, is that most people don't care about laws as much as we would like them to do. Most importantly they mostly don't understand the complexity of the legal and social system they are part of. Passing a popular law, like for example the government may not raise taxes on certain popular things (cars, real estate etc.), would sound wonderful to everybody, but would stifle the governments budgetary flexibility. See California and the European monetary union for examples.
We don't want to pass laws on an emotional basis, which happens if you install a true direct democracy. Laws always have to be considered within their legal, social and historical context. Most people would only consider laws within their personal context, which doesn't always make sense for society in general.
However, I could imagine having a public vote on vital things, like changing/amending the constitution where personal freedom is touched.
The Republicans are now the liberals, wanting to change every damned law in a way that contradicts their original purpose so they can micromanage people's lives.
"Martin Niemoeller was a Protestant pastor born January 14, 1892, in Lippstadt, Westphalia. He was a submarine commander in World War I. He was anti-communist and initially supported the Nazis until the church was made subordinate to state authority.
In 1934, he started the Pastors' Emergency League to defend the church. Hitler became angered by Niemoeller's rebellious sermons and popularity and had him arrested on July 1, 1937. He was tried the following year and sentenced to seven months in prison and fined.
After his release, Hitler ordered him arrested again. he spent the next seven years in concentration camps in "protective custody." He was liberated in 1945 and was elected President of the Protestant church in Hesse and Nassau in 1947. He held the title until 1964. He was also a President of the World Council of Churches in the 1960's.
Niemoeller was a pacifist who spoke out against nuclear weapons. He is best known for his powerful statement about the failure of Germans to speak out against the Nazis:
"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
It is easy to find fault with Microsoft and Windows. Most of it is deserved. But, Linux has faults, too. One big problem is part and parcel of its evelopment modeL: Because there's no single entity setting and enforcing standards, the highly touted benefits of "choice" often become a crapshoot of conflicting libraries, packaging schemes, and software compiled by God-Knows-Who in God-Know-Where.
You realize of course, that this is exactly what most people pisses off about Windows. Let's take this one by one:
Microsoft sets and enforces different standards with every distribution they release. Remember how it is difficult for multiple contributors to work on the same Word document with different releases of Word, only to find out that the formatting has been lost a couple of times? So, many people prefer to have open standards regarding protocols, set by the IETF through a well published procedure. Users then enforce the standard by ignoring not standards compliant implementations.
Have you ever heard of the DLL-hell? The dependency problems you experience with RPM, DEB or source tarballs go hand in hand with the increasing complexity of the system. A solution is to the best of my knowledge non-trivial. With Linux at least you can have different versions of the same library around.
When having problems with binary software compiled by "God-Knows-Who in God-Knows-Where", remember that you can rewrite and recompile the entire system. When was the last time you compiled rundll?
In essence, get a clue before you start mumbling;-)
I guess this is why I am a CS major and not a business one.
Actually a business graduate would be shot (well, downgraded) if this were a case study and he were to suggest the current RIAA behaviour regarding file sharing as a solution to the problem in a decent business school with good teachers. For a number of reasons:
Not an innovative solution to a disrupting problem set. Student was probably asleep during lecture on Christensen and Disruptive Technologies.
Micro- and macroeconomic theory and issues (like economic downturn, deflationary tendencies in some important markets, simple demand and supply behaviour) as possibly playing a part in this situation are completely disregarded.
Prolonged ignorance towards customers' demand.
They are not adding value, rather subtracting, therefore ignoring a simple marketing rule: Don't piss off your customers.
Because of excessive greed and ignorance towards their competitive environment they should eventually fail......hmmmm, well see.
In this kind of setup, how can one company (in this case Microsoft) make absolutely (as in beyond any doubt) certain that no one else can access home user's boxes to "update" the system via their mechanism.
The obvious answer would be, by signing the updates and verifying them on the recipient machine via public keys. Now, given this particular company's outstanding track record of handling security issues, how can anyone actually mandate this (and not be employed at MS)?
Other question that might arise:
As a home user, who doesn't make constant backups of the whole system, how can I verify that one particular patch doesn't corrupt my whole system (as has happened before)? If it would be really automatic, how can I make sure that the same patch that hosed my system won't be installed right after I rebooted from backups? Wouldn't this be a Microsoft denial-of-service attack?
One would now argue, that it is possible to switch the automatic update off, but then what would this be useful for? After the first malfunctioning automatic patch many users will switch this feature off to prevent from further incidents. And we would be back to square one.
1. The alleged terror network that was funded by the CIA until more recently. 2. The country in the Middle East, who's dictator was supposed to own huge stockpiles of WMD (provided by the US), which accidently can't momentarily be located even though the war is over and the country is at this very moment in the process of becoming a democracy. 3. The US people, whose rights and freedoms are abused, and furthermore have to cope with a government that is trying their best to keep them paranoid. 4. The "Coalition of the Unwilling", ie. the vast majority of the world's population who is increasingly frightened by a unilaterally acting US government that is very successful at pissing everybody else off.
If the "guy in the White House" and his bunch truly don't matter that much, and if a Democrat or Liberal government wouldn't have acted differently, then shouldn't the US people do something about their politcal system to provide measures to control these representatives? If the US really is a model democracy and therefore its government represents the populations will, then is it any wonder that many people are pissed off with Americans in general?
Disclaimer: I have close friends in the US and know many people to be as reasonable as the next European, Asian, African or Australian, but I am beginning to understand some of the Anti-American sentiment and reasoning. I don't accept these generalizations though.
You know, given the politics surrounding that war, the righteous thing for Americans to do would have been to start referring to french fries as "chips"...;)
You realize of course, that Americans would have had to make the distinction between chips and crisps. This would never have worked...
Its a lot more than just GNU, so you can call it:
GNU/Linux/XFree/KDE/etc.
This is so unfair since most useful programs reside/bin or/sbin or/usr/bin and so on and so forth./etc only contains some configuration files, really minor in importance when compared to the overall system. Especially if you, like me, equate size (in the filesystem) with importance.
Well, while I agree with you on how financial magazines come up with their interpretations, I am having trouble finding the insider trades at SCOX that you mention: Check it out for yourself here.
No, that's not what it implies. Short-selling means that you are selling something that you don't have with the intention to buy it (to satisfy delivery to your initial counterpart) at a later point. Of course, to make a profit, the transaction implies that you (the short-seller) hope to buy SCOX (in this case) at a discount (a price that is below the price of the intitial deal). This may not work, because the share price could rise as well as fall. It is a gamble that only works if the market generally agrees with your evaluation of the company/share. Supply will be greater than demand and the price falls.
It does not imply that people would buy the shares again, since somebody _already_ bought them. If demand is lower than supply, you buy the shares at the lower price to only satisfy the past deal. One might think, that this increased demand could level the share price again, but your buyer is very likely to sell the shares as quickly as possible since he probably has the same kind of fundamental expectations about SCO as you, but was hoping to make a quick profit on current situation.
What I find strangest about this situation instead is this: Why does the business press (eg. Business Week, Forbes) write rather favourably about SCO in this situation? Are they really that daft? Or do they know something I haven't picked up yet?
This is the kind of interpretation that can only come from a Geordie. Too much beer and shagging in the streets of Newcastle must have a lasting effect on the mind. Come to think of it, I miss it quite a lot:)
Re:SCO still packs a punch?
on
SCO SCO SCO!
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· Score: 1
Of course not, consider Mircosoft buying SCO. I couldn't bring myself to buying or even using their products. But I would recommend them to others, stating, like I always do, that I don't use them and why.
While I roughly agree with you, let me throw in a couple of points:
1. Theoretically I should be willing to pay up to an amount equal to the opportunity cost for your tax software. In your example $75. Since I value your work and I am a law abiding person I will pay you. Your marginal cost for producing an extra copy or your break even point is completely irrelevant to me, but I acknowledge your willingness to limit your profit by releasing the software into the public domain.
You state "So I'm saying that the value of the software to you is $75, and you should willingly give up that $75 to cover my startup costs of $100K. If you are not,[...]." Exactly, what if I am not willing to pay because my opportunity cost is lower, ie. I don't make $75 in the two hours it would take to complete my tax return? Are you willing to negotiate that price? For the sake of argument I am making $75 in two hours, but do you actually give me these hours. I wouldn't think so. I will have to learn the software, enter all the data and basically have to adjust to your way of doing things (in this case file a tax return). So, maybe your software helps me to do it quicker and it saves me half an hour. It's not worth those $75 to me anymore. Are you willing to negotiate that price?
While I would in this case simply look for a free (as in beer) alternative, I don't have this option when it comes to music. I like listening to music, but am almost always unsatisfied when actually buying music (or rather the license). Most of the time I am paying 15-20 $ (Euros actually) for one or two good songs. The rest on the CD is mostly crap and I rarely bother reading a booklet. That is too much money for my taste. Now, the Internet and P2P apps are resources where I can find a nearly unlimited supply of music.
You say: "You enjoy listening to music right? What are you willing to trade for music? It appears that space on your harddrive, and some time searching, some power, some bandwidth, and a partially the cost of a computer." The marginal cost for one downloaded mp3 is very close to zero, which means that my opportunity cost is close to zero in this case. You then state that some people would write and play their own music and that this would be the opportunity cost to buying music, if I interpret your sentence "the time they would have spent creating it, is representative of the value of the time they are willing to spend" correctly.
Not true, making music gives me far more than just buying a CD or ten or a hundred. I know, I played in a couple of bands. And even having been an artist (sort of:-)) I can understand people who have no moral problem with downloading music and not paying the RIAA, which is getting a far bigger cut than any artist, most of whom are up to their necks in debt after a record production. The artist isn't getting any money anyhow, well at least most of the time.
"So those bits have economic value to the public at large. The problem is that the marginal cost is $0, after the up front cost is paid. I'll be interested to see how the first copy gets paid for, if the public continues to insist on only paying for the marginal cost. I wonder who in the public will pay for the first one, because like most other things, the first step is a real doozie."
You are touching two problems here: First the demand for music at marginal cost leads to really crappy music, because it is cheaper to build up and promote two or three bands instead of a hundred. A hundred bands would increase the initial investment in general, because many of them will not pay off, but will lead to more variety and competition. Secondly, you are stating that the production of music is so expensive that nobody would pay the (higher) price of a low-volume (pun not intended) article. That's crap. Producing music (not superstars) has never been cheaper than today. Friends of mine are producing high-quality audio in their home-recording studios or just their PC (and decent audio equipment). Whil
Yes, very nice, but the real trouble only begins here: Our economic system is founded on the principle of scarcity. Food is scarce (ie. limited supply), that is why we have to pay for it, same goes for real estate (finite habitable supply on earth) and clean drinking water. Breathable air is still ubiquitous, thus has no economic value yet (the opposite will come true with the flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto protocol where pollution gets a price, thus can be traded. Some states in the US have a somewhat similar system already and the UK has already implemented an emissions trading system).
Now, digital information can theoretically be copied infinitely, thus a price can no longer exist. One might now argue that the music itself is not part of the RIAA's (or MPAA's for that matter) business, it's the license. Well the license is for use of the product, which itself can be as ubiquitous as the air that we breath. The scarcity of music (or digital information in general) is no longer given and our economic model does not apply anymore.
So, I would argue that while the RIAA might still win any legal battle they intend to fight, the economic is already lost. It still doesn't show in their sales figures yet:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, politicians are busy to underscore this belief instead of battling it: The Vermoegenssteuer- (wealth tax) and Erbschaftssteuer- (inheritance tax) debates are excellent examples. Everybody agrees that rich families have to make their contribution to the general good (ie. taxes) , but seldom do they realize that it is these families/people who run businesses and create jobs. I have not seen such a heated discussion about inheritance tax in any other country (it is mostly within reasonable boundaries). Only Germany seems to have a problem with (supposedly undeserved) transfer of (already taxed) wealth from one generation to the next. Maybe the reason is, because it is the first time in post-war Germany that such an enormous amount of wealth is transferred.
I also agree with your point regarding risk: The general public doesn't seem to acknowledge the higher risk an entrepreneur is taking, who is in turn expecting a higher pay off as a result. By ignoring this very simple economic/business/finance rule society at large is bound to regard the failing as "too stupid to run a business."
This image has been underlined by many top executives' incompetence in the past couple of years and many mistake a large company's CEO with an entrepreneur.
On the other hand success of an entrepreneur is often attributed to luck without recognising the hard work behind most ventures.
*Sigh* I think we could go on for hours on end, eventually politicians, as the moral and political guides (sigh again) in this country, have to start marketing (financial/business/economic) success as something achievable and desirable for all. I like and don't want to miss many things of our social security system, but having almost the whole population relying on it in one form or another, is asking for desaster. The current system is completely nuts: On one hand we want people to take matters into their hands regarding the pension scheme (with the "Riester Rente" as the first step towards a self-financed pension scheme) and on the other we want to tax wealth, because, well these "rich" people have too much. And I am not talking about the 0.001% of the population who are mulit-millionaires, but rather our precious Mittelstand.
I'll stop rambling now....
Berlin's only resources are knowledge and initiative of its people. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurial initiatives are killed through red tape and an extremely unefficient administration. If the city were to finally embrace its academic community and respective creative and entrepreneurial output, spending more (instead of less) on higher education, while simultaneously lowering red tape and speeding up administrative issues regarding almost all aspects of life (especially industrial and estate permissions), it could eventually have a job-creating industry.
I doubt that it will happen though.
Not quite, if I were to study mathematics and were to flunk a course, I could still study economics or business even though these include courses in algebra, finance mathematics and statistics. So, while it may apply to engineering or computer science, it wouldn't apply to other courses containing math lectures. And yes, flunking one single part of a degree program twice (sometimes thrice) means that you can't study this program in Germany anymore.
Furthermore, the "Hochschulreife" you mention, usually acquired through the Abitur (or High School Diploma in US, Baccaleaureat in France, but don't hit me for spelling), is not the only way to get higher education in Germany. There are three ways I can think of to get it:
1. Abitur, which means that you could study at every public and private University, Fachhochschule (University for Applied Sciences, Polytechs) and Berufsakademie (professional academy) provided that you meet the entry requirements (NC, special tests, portfolio evidence for arts and architecture).
2. Without Abitur, you can still qualify through apprenticeships and further education in a specific field that would let you study at some Fachhochschulen and Berufsakademien.
3. Obtain a first degree at a foreign university and continue in Germany.
Your degree will state where you got it:
Dipl. Ing. - University
Dipl. Ing. (FH) - Fachhochschule
Dipl. Ing. (BA) - Berufsakademie
In my own experience, Fachhochschulen and Berufsakademien are usually not any worse than normal university education and are sometimes better regarded by some. E.g. the reputation of the TFH Berlin is much better than the other Berlin universities in architecture.
Nevertheless, the point SerpentMage was making was flawed on a number of issues:
Higher education in Germany is not free, we pay for it through the tax system. Berufsakademien and private universities charge you.
Nowhere does it say that you MUST study. Though this might be a socially induced phenomenon.
You're absolutely right.
Personally, I think we need a forceful overhaul in this country and implement a true democracy where any American 18 or over can cast a vote. The votes are counted and a law is either passed or not passed based on those votes. We could have a big vote every 6 months.
This is not a very good idea. Think about how easy it is to manipulate public opinion, especially with todays media's omnipresence. I also used to say that the people, ie. voters, should have more direct saying in general legislation, but the sad truth is, is that most people don't care about laws as much as we would like them to do. Most importantly they mostly don't understand the complexity of the legal and social system they are part of. Passing a popular law, like for example the government may not raise taxes on certain popular things (cars, real estate etc.), would sound wonderful to everybody, but would stifle the governments budgetary flexibility. See California and the European monetary union for examples.
We don't want to pass laws on an emotional basis, which happens if you install a true direct democracy. Laws always have to be considered within their legal, social and historical context. Most people would only consider laws within their personal context, which doesn't always make sense for society in general.
However, I could imagine having a public vote on vital things, like changing/amending the constitution where personal freedom is touched.
This is difficult stuff. Just my 2 Eurocents
Don't you just love newspeak....
"Martin Niemoeller was a Protestant pastor born January 14, 1892, in Lippstadt, Westphalia. He was a submarine commander in World War I. He was anti-communist and initially supported the Nazis until the church was made subordinate to state authority.
In 1934, he started the Pastors' Emergency League to defend the church. Hitler became angered by Niemoeller's rebellious sermons and popularity and had him arrested on July 1, 1937. He was tried the following year and sentenced to seven months in prison and fined.
After his release, Hitler ordered him arrested again. he spent the next seven years in concentration camps in "protective custody." He was liberated in 1945 and was elected President of the Protestant church in Hesse and Nassau in 1947. He held the title until 1964. He was also a President of the World Council of Churches in the 1960's.
Niemoeller was a pacifist who spoke out against nuclear weapons. He is best known for his powerful statement about the failure of Germans to speak out against the Nazis:
"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
He died in Wiesbaden on March 6, 1984. "
You realize of course, that this is exactly what most people pisses off about Windows. Let's take this one by one:
Microsoft sets and enforces different standards with every distribution they release. Remember how it is difficult for multiple contributors to work on the same Word document with different releases of Word, only to find out that the formatting has been lost a couple of times? So, many people prefer to have open standards regarding protocols, set by the IETF through a well published procedure. Users then enforce the standard by ignoring not standards compliant implementations.
Have you ever heard of the DLL-hell? The dependency problems you experience with RPM, DEB or source tarballs go hand in hand with the increasing complexity of the system. A solution is to the best of my knowledge non-trivial. With Linux at least you can have different versions of the same library around.
When having problems with binary software compiled by "God-Knows-Who in God-Knows-Where", remember that you can rewrite and recompile the entire system. When was the last time you compiled rundll?
In essence, get a clue before you start mumbling ;-)
Actually a business graduate would be shot (well, downgraded) if this were a case study and he were to suggest the current RIAA behaviour regarding file sharing as a solution to the problem in a decent business school with good teachers. For a number of reasons:
Not an innovative solution to a disrupting problem set. Student was probably asleep during lecture on Christensen and Disruptive Technologies.
Micro- and macroeconomic theory and issues (like economic downturn, deflationary tendencies in some important markets, simple demand and supply behaviour) as possibly playing a part in this situation are completely disregarded.
Prolonged ignorance towards customers' demand.
They are not adding value, rather subtracting, therefore ignoring a simple marketing rule: Don't piss off your customers.
Because of excessive greed and ignorance towards their competitive environment they should eventually fail......hmmmm, well see.
The obvious answer would be, by signing the updates and verifying them on the recipient machine via public keys. Now, given this particular company's outstanding track record of handling security issues, how can anyone actually mandate this (and not be employed at MS)?
Other question that might arise: As a home user, who doesn't make constant backups of the whole system, how can I verify that one particular patch doesn't corrupt my whole system (as has happened before)? If it would be really automatic, how can I make sure that the same patch that hosed my system won't be installed right after I rebooted from backups? Wouldn't this be a Microsoft denial-of-service attack?
One would now argue, that it is possible to switch the automatic update off, but then what would this be useful for? After the first malfunctioning automatic patch many users will switch this feature off to prevent from further incidents. And we would be back to square one.
Now, what's the point in all this?
are we talking about here?
1. The alleged terror network that was funded by the CIA until more recently.
2. The country in the Middle East, who's dictator was supposed to own huge stockpiles of WMD (provided by the US), which accidently can't momentarily be located even though the war is over and the country is at this very moment in the process of becoming a democracy.
3. The US people, whose rights and freedoms are abused, and furthermore have to cope with a government that is trying their best to keep them paranoid.
4. The "Coalition of the Unwilling", ie. the vast majority of the world's population who is increasingly frightened by a unilaterally acting US government that is very successful at pissing everybody else off.
If the "guy in the White House" and his bunch truly don't matter that much, and if a Democrat or Liberal government wouldn't have acted differently, then shouldn't the US people do something about their politcal system to provide measures to control these representatives? If the US really is a model democracy and therefore its government represents the populations will, then is it any wonder that many people are pissed off with Americans in general?
Disclaimer: I have close friends in the US and know many people to be as reasonable as the next European, Asian, African or Australian, but I am beginning to understand some of the Anti-American sentiment and reasoning. I don't accept these generalizations though.
As opposed to beer tasting like warm, stale full-flavoured piss in the UK ;-)
You realize of course, that Americans would have had to make the distinction between chips and crisps. This would never have worked...
This is so unfair since most useful programs reside /bin or /sbin or /usr/bin and so on and so forth. /etc only contains some configuration files, really minor in importance when compared to the overall system. Especially if you, like me, equate size (in the filesystem) with importance.
Well, while I agree with you on how financial magazines come up with their interpretations, I am having trouble finding the insider trades at SCOX that you mention: Check it out for yourself here.
No, that's not what it implies. Short-selling means that you are selling something that you don't have with the intention to buy it (to satisfy delivery to your initial counterpart) at a later point. Of course, to make a profit, the transaction implies that you (the short-seller) hope to buy SCOX (in this case) at a discount (a price that is below the price of the intitial deal). This may not work, because the share price could rise as well as fall. It is a gamble that only works if the market generally agrees with your evaluation of the company/share. Supply will be greater than demand and the price falls.
It does not imply that people would buy the shares again, since somebody _already_ bought them. If demand is lower than supply, you buy the shares at the lower price to only satisfy the past deal. One might think, that this increased demand could level the share price again, but your buyer is very likely to sell the shares as quickly as possible since he probably has the same kind of fundamental expectations about SCO as you, but was hoping to make a quick profit on current situation.
What I find strangest about this situation instead is this: Why does the business press (eg. Business Week, Forbes) write rather favourably about SCO in this situation? Are they really that daft? Or do they know something I haven't picked up yet?
I am not sure, but I think they are actually the reason why they are called "Blue" Chips. Can someone verify?
This is the kind of interpretation that can only come from a Geordie. Too much beer and shagging in the streets of Newcastle must have a lasting effect on the mind. Come to think of it, I miss it quite a lot :)
Of course not, consider Mircosoft buying SCO. I couldn't bring myself to buying or even using their products. But I would recommend them to others, stating, like I always do, that I don't use them and why.
1. Theoretically I should be willing to pay up to an amount equal to the opportunity cost for your tax software. In your example $75. Since I value your work and I am a law abiding person I will pay you. Your marginal cost for producing an extra copy or your break even point is completely irrelevant to me, but I acknowledge your willingness to limit your profit by releasing the software into the public domain. You state "So I'm saying that the value of the software to you is $75, and you should willingly give up that $75 to cover my startup costs of $100K. If you are not,[...]." Exactly, what if I am not willing to pay because my opportunity cost is lower, ie. I don't make $75 in the two hours it would take to complete my tax return? Are you willing to negotiate that price? For the sake of argument I am making $75 in two hours, but do you actually give me these hours. I wouldn't think so. I will have to learn the software, enter all the data and basically have to adjust to your way of doing things (in this case file a tax return). So, maybe your software helps me to do it quicker and it saves me half an hour. It's not worth those $75 to me anymore. Are you willing to negotiate that price?
While I would in this case simply look for a free (as in beer) alternative, I don't have this option when it comes to music. I like listening to music, but am almost always unsatisfied when actually buying music (or rather the license). Most of the time I am paying 15-20 $ (Euros actually) for one or two good songs. The rest on the CD is mostly crap and I rarely bother reading a booklet. That is too much money for my taste. Now, the Internet and P2P apps are resources where I can find a nearly unlimited supply of music.
You say: "You enjoy listening to music right? What are you willing to trade for music? It appears that space on your harddrive, and some time searching, some power, some bandwidth, and a partially the cost of a computer." The marginal cost for one downloaded mp3 is very close to zero, which means that my opportunity cost is close to zero in this case. You then state that some people would write and play their own music and that this would be the opportunity cost to buying music, if I interpret your sentence "the time they would have spent creating it, is representative of the value of the time they are willing to spend" correctly.
Not true, making music gives me far more than just buying a CD or ten or a hundred. I know, I played in a couple of bands. And even having been an artist (sort of :-)) I can understand people who have no moral problem with downloading music and not paying the RIAA, which is getting a far bigger cut than any artist, most of whom are up to their necks in debt after a record production. The artist isn't getting any money anyhow, well at least most of the time.
"So those bits have economic value to the public at large. The problem is that the marginal cost is $0, after the up front cost is paid. I'll be interested to see how the first copy gets paid for, if the public continues to insist on only paying for the marginal cost. I wonder who in the public will pay for the first one, because like most other things, the first step is a real doozie."
You are touching two problems here: First the demand for music at marginal cost leads to really crappy music, because it is cheaper to build up and promote two or three bands instead of a hundred. A hundred bands would increase the initial investment in general, because many of them will not pay off, but will lead to more variety and competition. Secondly, you are stating that the production of music is so expensive that nobody would pay the (higher) price of a low-volume (pun not intended) article. That's crap. Producing music (not superstars) has never been cheaper than today. Friends of mine are producing high-quality audio in their home-recording studios or just their PC (and decent audio equipment). Whil
Now, digital information can theoretically be copied infinitely, thus a price can no longer exist. One might now argue that the music itself is not part of the RIAA's (or MPAA's for that matter) business, it's the license. Well the license is for use of the product, which itself can be as ubiquitous as the air that we breath. The scarcity of music (or digital information in general) is no longer given and our economic model does not apply anymore.
So, I would argue that while the RIAA might still win any legal battle they intend to fight, the economic is already lost. It still doesn't show in their sales figures yet
Just my 2 cents.
Yes, and he found out that the US Government is treating the world the same way Microsoft does. What's left to do? ;-)
No wonder you haven't heard about it, everybody I know calls this thing Itanic.
...a beowulf cluster of these...
;-)
Sorry, it had to be said
But please, to exit it, add a crosshair to shoot the damn thing. You should be able to skin the paperclip with your bosses picture.
Oh, there is, in OpenOffice calc. Check this article for easter eggs in OSS.