Wellspring: Sadly, the post office is doing what other people do just fine already, and not coming up with a way to stay relevent. Dare I wonder if we will soon even need a USPS?
Hrunting: I hate how every time someone decides to talk about that wonderous new invention e-mail, the end of the discussion always has to be a statement like this.
Yes, we will need a postal service of some sort for a long time, whether it's a corporation called the United States Postal Service or one called FedEx.
I think you missed his point. Email doesn't make the USPS irrelevant; companies like FedEx make the USPS irrelevant. Or would, if the USPS didn't have a legal monopoly on first class mail.
And as far as government organizations go, the post office isn't exactly like other governmental organizations. They don't depend on the Congressional budget and they operate as a corporation, not as an agency.
Except for nonprofit mailers; they get tax subsudies. Happily the USPS determines who qualifies... which is why magazines like Smithsonian, Mother Jones, and Reason get to mail at taxpayer expense. But yes, the USPS mostly gets it's revenue through business-class (junk) mail, their rates kept low by (illegally) raising first class mail prices.
They are actually an example of an excellently run part of the government and make a strong argument for modeling the different agencies after corporations.
The USPS is much like many corporations in spirit at least... insofar as if the corporations had the power, they'd be despots. In the '70s, they went so far as to tear open FedEx packages, find the senders, and threaten them with Federal prosecution. They tried to ban private email in '79... we may thank, of all people, the folks at the FCC that they failed. Then they started their own day email-to-snailmail system, ECOM: they charged $0.26/letter, and they never lost less than $1.25/letter. Despite electronic transmission, the mail took 2+ days to show up, and 70% of the mail came from an auto advertiser in Detroit... but happily 30% of what got sent ever showed up.
Today they won't allow private companies to deliver to post boxes, and they tried to make private delivery boxes illegal. When they failed, they began requiring companies offering private boxes to collect and report information on their clients: information Congress had forbade the USPS to collect on their own customers. Since government regulations measure lateness from the time the mail leaves the Post Office for final delivery, they've been known to load mail into trailers and roll them outside for weeks at a time.
Bring down their legal monopoly, and you'll see the USPS do an even better imitation of many corporations: they'll go out of business.
While I don't think the e-mail address thing is a good idea, I don't think it is a bad one, either. And I think the Post Office will do a/much/ better job or regulating and controlling abuses to its system than organizations like Hotmail and Yahoo do.
The first sentence of the artice sums it up: it would link the e-mail and real-world addresses in a giant Postal Service database in Memphis, Tenn. Same reason they make private box companies report customer information: to keep a record of them. And as with Social Security, what's optional today may not be tomorrow. Tomorrow you may have to have one, but not have to use it. Once everybody's got one, we'll start hearing arguments about unregulated mail, drugs and terrorism... same arguments which still help prop up the USPS' monopoly. One of many paranoid reasons not to like this.
_____
I should note... most of the facts I quote here are from two excellent articles. The first is on the Postal Monopoly, published by the Cato Institute. The second is on the USPS' most recent efforts to do something about rampant privacy in America. It's by Ron Paul, Representative from Texas. I strongly suggest reading both, as they convey more than I could have justly summarized here, even if that were my purpose.
The US is the only country bull-headed enough to be FOR landmines.
My Greek friends were bitching to me about this treaty a few years ago. Seems they used to have the mountains along the Albanian border mined, and never had any problems. Then the mines came out, and they started having problems with packs of armed bandits crossing the border at night, pillaging isolated houses, and slipping back before dawn.
I don't know how popular or unpopular the treaty was with most Greeks. But I do suspect mines, like most things, aren't such a black-and-white issue.
The point of trademark, trade dress, and design patent law isn't to promote innovation, but to prevent predatory marketing and avoid customer confusion.
Thank you for clearing that point. The best replies I get are the corrections.
iMac: Apple pays money for a uniquely designed computer that puts aesthetics on a par with function for the first time since the NeXT Cube.
Even people who do approve of IP might well question whether advances in the color and shape of a computer case is of sufficient importance to the people to warrant protecting by law. From that point of view, the imac case and the qube case are identical.
However, I must realize that I'm posting this on slashdot, where many readers think stealing is better than paying, and IP means nothing.
Many here indeed do not recognize the validity of IP. That does not mean they approve of stealing, since stealing involves taking the property of others; you're pretty obviously begging the question. I'm not sure why you chose to say this, unless you think that the best way to deal with those who disagree with you is to insult them. I hope not; that'd be lower than being a thief.
Pity they didn't just come out and say why they were including these rights. It'd have made it a lot harder to subvert the constitution.
Actually, I don't think that would have helped. It might have hurt. The doctrine of looking at legislative intent has become a tool for the adventuresome judge. Reference to the arguments of the legislators today gives a judge more leeway to construe a law to fit his goals; one more option, when deciding on a reading.
If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might want to read "A Matter of Interpretation", by Antonin Scalia. It's a short, excellent work which provides a keen peek into judicial activism and the way laws are (mis)interpreted. It was one of the things which, for me, finally made sense of some of the craziness of the judicial system today.
What makes you so much more fit to judge who's a criminal and who's not than your government?
Actually, here in the US, there's a long tradition that holds that the citizens are more fit than the government to judge who's a criminal and who's not. We call it, "trial by jury".
They were undermining the stability of the state, a charge that most Westerners greatly underestimate the importance of.
*ahem*
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
True, theese people were charged for the wrong thing, but those were trying times for the American nation, and unruly groups causing chaos and unrest were the last thing it needed.
Or in other words, in times of trouble, freedom's fine, except when the going gets rough. Your words are inspiring.
Booker:And those damn Japanese-Americans during WWII.
This was out of line, agreed.
Why? This seems very much out of line with the rest of your reasoning. WWII was a much more troubled period than the early Cold War. Potential enemies at home were the last things America needed.
Once again, most Westerners take a stable nation for granted. You grossly underestimate the value of this privilege.
And you grossly undervalue those things which make stability of value, the freedoms which make America a nation worth protecting. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Yeah, well, this is what happens when you lack an explicit Constitution and Bill of Rights.
One must assume that the poster either has not read the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, or he is totally unfamiliar with life in the United States.
This is what happens when people lack a committment to liberty, and to individual rights. Without the support of the people, no written law can protect freedom... and there can be no better evidence of this than the US Constitution.
I like private property, free markets, global free trade etc. I get the impression that I am the only such person who doesn't like intellectual property, since most of the anti-IP arguments I read, like the one cited, are anti-capiatlist arguments as well.
The possibility of owning ideas is, uncontroversially I think, created by the action of government. For that reason, thoughtful capitalists seem much divided on the subject. Some are more attached to what's become traditional in the marketplace, and are inclined to label strident libertarians like ESR "communists". Others see IP as government again tampering with the natural order of things, obscuring that great Platonic Form of the One True Market.
I'm being a bit facetious, of course... but I hear bunches of people taking your position. Of course, that's in geek spots like Slashdot. In society at large, capitalists are indeed a small portion of the anti-IP folks, who are themselves a tiny fraction of the statisically insignificant group of people that cares about IP.
Unix was designed for programmers, scientists, and engineers. It works for them rather well. It was not designed for PHBs and their secretaries.
So, the question. Is adapting Unix for this last category of people is the right thing to do?
Unix was designed to effectively manage the resources of a computer. It was designed to get work done. It was also designed to be flexible, so that each user could have an environment which was well-adapted for his needs, without disturbing his neighbors.
Heck yeah, it's the right thing to do. Adapting Unix for schoolteachers is the right thing to do. Adapting Unix for artists is the right thing to do. Adapting Unix for parrots is the right thing to do.
Adapting PBHs and their secretaries for Unix is the wrong thing to do, and telling them to go away is the wrong thing to do. Relax. Nobody's going to steal your command line.
at a maximum of, say, 12 posts per day, each one being a paragraph, or 4 lines at most, the "wasting our time" argument is a bit weak.
And interestingly as well, do the wasting-our-time arguments waste more of our time than the things they're complaining about?:-)
Anyway, my argument was mostly about regarding Slashdot as a search engine. I think that's a crummy attitude, because it looks at the other users simply as a means to a personal end. Alhough I can see where you might have thought I was just bitching about irritating questions, I actually don't have much of a problem with the status quo.
It's your decision to read it. Wander off quietly if you've got a problem.
Jesus, people are bitchy today.
I'm certainly not complaining; I simply disagree with TangentMan123's view. And it's not very reasonable to take a "like it or leave it" attitude about a site which is principally user-driven. I might say that someone who tried to squelch discussion would be the better one to wander off quietly... but it takes all types.:-)
This is an search engine. The bonus is you get answers specific to your question without having to plow through 1,240 hits (AltaVista "linux vpn") of which some are probably porn.
As far as I know, Slashdot does not exist in order to save a few people time by wasting a great many people's time. If the answer to a question is either easy to find elsewhere, or of little interest to most people here, I would hope it didn't make the front page.
So FascDot's complaint seems perfectly valid in principle. Whether it is valid in fact is another issue. Apparently, while the question at hand was interesting to some (you, for instance), it was not to others (some of whom modded FascDot up). By all means, voice your opinion on the question; it's a very legitimate point of debate.
5.Let's not start predicting the death of Microsoft.
If there's one thing I really don't think we have to worry about, it's that this will cause Slashdotters to start predicting the death of Microsoft.:-)
I'm still amazed people want my city (Toronto) to have the games, given the Salt Lake and Quebec scandals. Yeesh.
Things have changed, and the pivotal year was 1984. The '84 games were the first to really start raking in the money. Before that, things were often on a shoestring... but now hosting the games means a fortune to a city. Which is why, if I recall correctly, there's a $100,000 fee just to turn in your (book-sized) application to have your city host the games. I think that's confidential information, by the way, so don't tell anybody.;-)
Believe me. I lived at a US Olympic Training Center for years, and I've got friends in various parts of the USOC.
We're talking about the people who won't let you use footage of *yourself* competing for less than $1000/second... even though they've never shown the footage to anyone, and nobody ever saw you win your medal. They're cutting back numbers in most sports (particularly those with weight classes, like wrestling, weightlifting, judo and taekwondo), so that they can economicially keep including more sports (like synchronized swimming and fscking ballroom dancing), for media reasons. Similarly, countries must now qualify their athletes, if they want to compete in the games. Of course they still talk about de Coubertain's vision... "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle."
Anyway, that's the IOC's up to on the surface. I won't go into the corruption stuff, since I can't substantiate it... I just saw a lot of it, and heard about a lot more. Suffice it to say that the bribery scandals weren't much of a shock. The amusing thing was, just as they were going on, the USOC was cutting back towel service for the OTC athletes, due to lack of funding. Scumbags. They're worse than the NCAA, and that's saying something.
Anyway, no, this is a huge moneymaking organization which certainly doesn't give a damn about anyone else's resources. Heck, they even warned us not to use the rings on our web pages or fundraising stuff. This sort of thing is very typical of them; it's not stupidity.
Riiight... so I take it that when you forget to lock a door or a window to your house, it's your fault if I come in and look through your stuff?
YES! If someone fails to take the proper precautions, then he/she has no one to blame but him/herself when things go wrong. That's the way the world works...
Legally, no, and in fact that's why we have laws: to keep everything from devolving into a simple power struggle. Where I live, if I enter your house via unlocked window and search your effects without your permission, I am criminally liable.
Naturally, though, we should take precautions to protect our privacy. Like keeping these silly boxes off our networks.
I do love how we all feel that the Internet is a god-given right.
Sure. "Freedom of speech" carries only as far as your unaugmented voice, and "freedom of the press" doesn't apply to anything but an actual machine which presses ink onto paper with dies.
And yes, there are laws to make sure that they aren't looking unless they have substantial reason to be looking.
Specifically, unless they have a court order permitting them to do so. Swell. Only problem is, there's not much difference between an unenforcable law and a bunch of words on a napkin. How will anyone know what they're doing?
and while they have the right to look, users also have the right to encrypt their email to prevent this. so instead of whining about your god given right to snoop-free internet access, actively protect yourself by encrypting your emails if your privacy is so important to you.
Riiight... so I take it that when you forget to lock a door or a window to your house, it's your fault if I come in and look through your stuff?
Sometimes I really do wonder about people with allegedly advanced educations. Political systems set the base for the functionality of society, and all the rest follows. Meaning that ulitmately everything is political.
I must say, this sort of sentiment often makes me wonder about people with advanced educations. Each one seems to have his own mantra. Everything is biological. Everything is about power. Everything is about your childhood. Everything is about money. Everything is math. Most people with advanced educations want to reduce everything to their favorite something, and they've all got different somethings.
In the present case, I disagree: political systems seem to me an effect of the base functionality of society. I would be inclined to call that base commerce. Which is a function of lots of people acting according to what they think is their own best interests.
Hence, I think in the present case, we can ignore the politicians without much peril at all. Society will do as it pleases, and the politicians will (eventually) dance along.
Of course, whether this is an issue that ought to be handled politically rather than in the marketplace is a question I hope the witnesses get around to in their spare moments.
This seems not to make sense; maybe I'm misunderstanding timothy. We're talking about a marketplace which could not exist save by political action (ie. IP law). We're dealing with the rules upon which the marketplace is predicated. A market-based solution doesn't quite make sense in this context; like we're trying to decide on the rules for chess, and someone proposes we settle the matter on the chessboard.
Yeah that's the problem, nobody programs in qbasic anymore;-)
I'm sorry... I generally oppose violence... but if ever there were a good reason to assassinate an elected official, it would be for encouraging qbasic.
I find the tenor of this article to be most interesting. It struck me as very odd when it began to speak of demand as a function of price. Eventually it made sense. From the article:
Our read of Lockheed-Martin is that they've reacted to this by a dual-track strategy of, to date, soaking up most available government cheap-launch R&D money so none of their competitors (competitor, now) could get the jump on their existing high-cost launch business, while pursuing government financing for their own "Venturestar" concept in the hope of using other people's money to get the jump on their remaining competitor.
The only remarkable thing about the US government creating a duopoly, IMHO, is that they left a competitor. Anyway, now it seems we're stuck in the middle. Problem with being stuck in the middle is, everybody knows you've got to go somewhere, but they can't agree on which way.
The authors continue to insist that the government must be the investor of last resort in pushing launch costs down to "radically" lower levels - the country and the world would benefit hugely, but getting past the break-point in the demand curve has so far taken too much money and time for private investors in the current climate.
And that's the problem with government involvement in the market; a little is never enough. The author(s) must surely have seen the other road: cut government R&D money. Level the playing field by removing the artificial barrier to entry for private investors. Let the market set the price, rather than expecting the price to create the market.
Now that's a risk. To apply the article's words in a different context, the potential payoff may be huge, but it's a long-term and speculative payoff; the new markets can't be straight-line projected from current markets, and they won't spring into being overnight.
Maybe the barrier to entry will still be too high; maybe government funding to date has made this duopoly too tough to crack. Maybe the lack of support would lead to even worse stagnation than the present "flat demand curve".
On the other hand, maybe it wouldn't. $600/lb. is just a best-guess critical point for spurring enterprise; maybe smaller companies would find cunning paths through the level field; maybe revolutionary growth in the space economy is closer than we think.
I don't know; I'm a libertarian, not an economist. But before anyone goes criticizing the big companies (which these guys don't) for not taking visionary risks with their money, consider how brave you feel taking visionary risks with your vote.
I can certainly see why these guys would be leery of such a scheme. I worked with a small company which created a nifty little program, and the time came when some of us proposed GPL-ing it. Our poor boss, much as he loved the free software movement, underwent visible anguish over the prospect; this was his baby. And I understood; I couldn't promise that freeing the software wouldn't kill the company.
We didn't take the risk. The company's doing... okay.
I've been raised under the notion that cloning is wrong without ever really being explained why, and at this time I'm still leaning towards that belief, however I've never been able to come up with a reason. Being a computer nerd I usually go by logic which would tell me that if I can't come up with any reasons not to do it, it should be done; however I and many people I know still have the nagging feeling that theres something wrong with it. And I'm favoring going with my gut instinct in this case. Just wondering what other people's opinions on the morality of things like this are?
It could be argued that people's ethical ideas usually boil down to their gut feeling; "Reason is, and should be, the slave of the passions," as Hume said. But it would be more useful to examine your gut feelings to determine a basis of your morality, and deduce from there. For instance, do you believe that the consequences determine the morality of an action, or are actions categorically right or wrong? How do you define, "good" and "bad"? Without making such evaluations, your ideas about particular issues will be ill-founded.
In any case, since I don't understand where you're coming from, I suspect my presenting arguments might not do you much good. "I've been raised under the notion" suggests, perhaps, a religious upbringing... religions tend not to replace the answers to basic philosophical questions, but rather to give them interesting twists.
Anyway, as regards cloning in particular: do you think identical twins are wrong? If so, what should be done about the scoundrels? If not, is it because they were unintentional, or is there another reason? Or are you simply worried about the effects of widespread cloning?
For my part, I say, "cool beans", and look forward to raising myself just as soon as it becomes affordable. Whether cloning is a good practice for society at large I would evaluate based on the effects it turns out to have upon society and the gene pool. It should certainly be legal, IMHO, but then I'm a libertarian looney, and not wholly to be trusted.:-)
More ubermouse conspiracy stuff. Soon we'll be up to our knees in 10-year-old oversized glowing green mice that are smarter than we are. We're going to need a "mouse eugenics" category here.
Funny how this obsolete, warmed-over thirty-year-old technology is so hard to improve on. Stuff like this is like trying to add rococo scrollwork to a greek column... just looks silly there.
I guess this is what Microsoft means about encouraging innovation; third-party stuff like this is actually useful on Windows. Try to sell it to Linux people, and everybody shrugs and says, "I don't need it. I've got ssh." (or whatever simple, elegant tool fits the task in question)
Slashdot Mirror
Hrunting: I hate how every time someone decides to talk about that wonderous new invention e-mail, the end of the discussion always has to be a statement like this.
Yes, we will need a postal service of some sort for a long time, whether it's a corporation called the United States Postal Service or one called FedEx.
I think you missed his point. Email doesn't make the USPS irrelevant; companies like FedEx make the USPS irrelevant. Or would, if the USPS didn't have a legal monopoly on first class mail.
And as far as government organizations go, the post office isn't exactly like other governmental organizations. They don't depend on the Congressional budget and they operate as a corporation, not as an agency.
Except for nonprofit mailers; they get tax subsudies. Happily the USPS determines who qualifies... which is why magazines like Smithsonian, Mother Jones, and Reason get to mail at taxpayer expense. But yes, the USPS mostly gets it's revenue through business-class (junk) mail, their rates kept low by (illegally) raising first class mail prices.
They are actually an example of an excellently run part of the government and make a strong argument for modeling the different agencies after corporations.
The USPS is much like many corporations in spirit at least... insofar as if the corporations had the power, they'd be despots. In the '70s, they went so far as to tear open FedEx packages, find the senders, and threaten them with Federal prosecution. They tried to ban private email in '79... we may thank, of all people, the folks at the FCC that they failed. Then they started their own day email-to-snailmail system, ECOM: they charged $0.26/letter, and they never lost less than $1.25/letter. Despite electronic transmission, the mail took 2+ days to show up, and 70% of the mail came from an auto advertiser in Detroit... but happily 30% of what got sent ever showed up.
Today they won't allow private companies to deliver to post boxes, and they tried to make private delivery boxes illegal. When they failed, they began requiring companies offering private boxes to collect and report information on their clients: information Congress had forbade the USPS to collect on their own customers. Since government regulations measure lateness from the time the mail leaves the Post Office for final delivery, they've been known to load mail into trailers and roll them outside for weeks at a time.
Bring down their legal monopoly, and you'll see the USPS do an even better imitation of many corporations: they'll go out of business.
While I don't think the e-mail address thing is a good idea, I don't think it is a bad one, either. And I think the Post Office will do a /much/ better job or regulating and controlling abuses to its system than organizations like Hotmail and Yahoo do.
The first sentence of the artice sums it up: it would link the e-mail and real-world addresses in a giant Postal Service database in Memphis, Tenn. Same reason they make private box companies report customer information: to keep a record of them. And as with Social Security, what's optional today may not be tomorrow. Tomorrow you may have to have one, but not have to use it. Once everybody's got one, we'll start hearing arguments about unregulated mail, drugs and terrorism... same arguments which still help prop up the USPS' monopoly. One of many paranoid reasons not to like this.
_____
I should note... most of the facts I quote here are from two excellent articles. The first is on the Postal Monopoly, published by the Cato Institute. The second is on the USPS' most recent efforts to do something about rampant privacy in America. It's by Ron Paul, Representative from Texas. I strongly suggest reading both, as they convey more than I could have justly summarized here, even if that were my purpose.
My Greek friends were bitching to me about this treaty a few years ago. Seems they used to have the mountains along the Albanian border mined, and never had any problems. Then the mines came out, and they started having problems with packs of armed bandits crossing the border at night, pillaging isolated houses, and slipping back before dawn.
I don't know how popular or unpopular the treaty was with most Greeks. But I do suspect mines, like most things, aren't such a black-and-white issue.
Thank you for clearing that point. The best replies I get are the corrections.
Even people who do approve of IP might well question whether advances in the color and shape of a computer case is of sufficient importance to the people to warrant protecting by law. From that point of view, the imac case and the qube case are identical.
However, I must realize that I'm posting this on slashdot, where many readers think stealing is better than paying, and IP means nothing.
Many here indeed do not recognize the validity of IP. That does not mean they approve of stealing, since stealing involves taking the property of others; you're pretty obviously begging the question. I'm not sure why you chose to say this, unless you think that the best way to deal with those who disagree with you is to insult them. I hope not; that'd be lower than being a thief.
Actually, I don't think that would have helped. It might have hurt. The doctrine of looking at legislative intent has become a tool for the adventuresome judge. Reference to the arguments of the legislators today gives a judge more leeway to construe a law to fit his goals; one more option, when deciding on a reading.
If you're interested in this sort of thing, you might want to read "A Matter of Interpretation", by Antonin Scalia. It's a short, excellent work which provides a keen peek into judicial activism and the way laws are (mis)interpreted. It was one of the things which, for me, finally made sense of some of the craziness of the judicial system today.
Actually, here in the US, there's a long tradition that holds that the citizens are more fit than the government to judge who's a criminal and who's not. We call it, "trial by jury".
They were undermining the stability of the state, a charge that most Westerners greatly underestimate the importance of.
*ahem*
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
True, theese people were charged for the wrong thing, but those were trying times for the American nation, and unruly groups causing chaos and unrest were the last thing it needed.
Or in other words, in times of trouble, freedom's fine, except when the going gets rough. Your words are inspiring.
Booker: And those damn Japanese-Americans during WWII.
This was out of line, agreed.
Why? This seems very much out of line with the rest of your reasoning. WWII was a much more troubled period than the early Cold War. Potential enemies at home were the last things America needed.
Once again, most Westerners take a stable nation for granted. You grossly underestimate the value of this privilege.
And you grossly undervalue those things which make stability of value, the freedoms which make America a nation worth protecting. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
One must assume that the poster either has not read the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, or he is totally unfamiliar with life in the United States.
This is what happens when people lack a committment to liberty, and to individual rights. Without the support of the people, no written law can protect freedom... and there can be no better evidence of this than the US Constitution.
The possibility of owning ideas is, uncontroversially I think, created by the action of government. For that reason, thoughtful capitalists seem much divided on the subject. Some are more attached to what's become traditional in the marketplace, and are inclined to label strident libertarians like ESR "communists". Others see IP as government again tampering with the natural order of things, obscuring that great Platonic Form of the One True Market.
I'm being a bit facetious, of course... but I hear bunches of people taking your position. Of course, that's in geek spots like Slashdot. In society at large, capitalists are indeed a small portion of the anti-IP folks, who are themselves a tiny fraction of the statisically insignificant group of people that cares about IP.
But cheer up. I agree with you. :-)
Of course we all expect binary/porn groups and several years worth of archives...
What? Oh, you meant except? Damn...
So, the question. Is adapting Unix for this last category of people is the right thing to do?
Unix was designed to effectively manage the resources of a computer. It was designed to get work done. It was also designed to be flexible, so that each user could have an environment which was well-adapted for his needs, without disturbing his neighbors.
Heck yeah, it's the right thing to do. Adapting Unix for schoolteachers is the right thing to do. Adapting Unix for artists is the right thing to do. Adapting Unix for parrots is the right thing to do.
Adapting PBHs and their secretaries for Unix is the wrong thing to do, and telling them to go away is the wrong thing to do. Relax. Nobody's going to steal your command line.
And interestingly as well, do the wasting-our-time arguments waste more of our time than the things they're complaining about? :-)
Anyway, my argument was mostly about regarding Slashdot as a search engine. I think that's a crummy attitude, because it looks at the other users simply as a means to a personal end. Alhough I can see where you might have thought I was just bitching about irritating questions, I actually don't have much of a problem with the status quo.
Well... guess we beat that horse to death...
Jesus, people are bitchy today.
I'm certainly not complaining; I simply disagree with TangentMan123's view. And it's not very reasonable to take a "like it or leave it" attitude about a site which is principally user-driven. I might say that someone who tried to squelch discussion would be the better one to wander off quietly... but it takes all types. :-)
As far as I know, Slashdot does not exist in order to save a few people time by wasting a great many people's time. If the answer to a question is either easy to find elsewhere, or of little interest to most people here, I would hope it didn't make the front page.
So FascDot's complaint seems perfectly valid in principle. Whether it is valid in fact is another issue. Apparently, while the question at hand was interesting to some (you, for instance), it was not to others (some of whom modded FascDot up). By all means, voice your opinion on the question; it's a very legitimate point of debate.
If there's one thing I really don't think we have to worry about, it's that this will cause Slashdotters to start predicting the death of Microsoft. :-)
Things have changed, and the pivotal year was 1984. The '84 games were the first to really start raking in the money. Before that, things were often on a shoestring... but now hosting the games means a fortune to a city. Which is why, if I recall correctly, there's a $100,000 fee just to turn in your (book-sized) application to have your city host the games. I think that's confidential information, by the way, so don't tell anybody. ;-)
We're talking about the people who won't let you use footage of *yourself* competing for less than $1000/second... even though they've never shown the footage to anyone, and nobody ever saw you win your medal. They're cutting back numbers in most sports (particularly those with weight classes, like wrestling, weightlifting, judo and taekwondo), so that they can economicially keep including more sports (like synchronized swimming and fscking ballroom dancing), for media reasons. Similarly, countries must now qualify their athletes, if they want to compete in the games. Of course they still talk about de Coubertain's vision... "The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle."
Anyway, that's the IOC's up to on the surface. I won't go into the corruption stuff, since I can't substantiate it... I just saw a lot of it, and heard about a lot more. Suffice it to say that the bribery scandals weren't much of a shock. The amusing thing was, just as they were going on, the USOC was cutting back towel service for the OTC athletes, due to lack of funding. Scumbags. They're worse than the NCAA, and that's saying something.
Anyway, no, this is a huge moneymaking organization which certainly doesn't give a damn about anyone else's resources. Heck, they even warned us not to use the rings on our web pages or fundraising stuff. This sort of thing is very typical of them; it's not stupidity.
YES! If someone fails to take the proper precautions, then he/she has no one to blame but him/herself when things go wrong. That's the way the world works...
Legally, no, and in fact that's why we have laws: to keep everything from devolving into a simple power struggle. Where I live, if I enter your house via unlocked window and search your effects without your permission, I am criminally liable.
Naturally, though, we should take precautions to protect our privacy. Like keeping these silly boxes off our networks.
Sure. "Freedom of speech" carries only as far as your unaugmented voice, and "freedom of the press" doesn't apply to anything but an actual machine which presses ink onto paper with dies.
And yes, there are laws to make sure that they aren't looking unless they have substantial reason to be looking.
Specifically, unless they have a court order permitting them to do so. Swell. Only problem is, there's not much difference between an unenforcable law and a bunch of words on a napkin. How will anyone know what they're doing?
and while they have the right to look, users also have the right to encrypt their email to prevent this. so instead of whining about your god given right to snoop-free internet access, actively protect yourself by encrypting your emails if your privacy is so important to you.
Riiight... so I take it that when you forget to lock a door or a window to your house, it's your fault if I come in and look through your stuff?
I must say, this sort of sentiment often makes me wonder about people with advanced educations. Each one seems to have his own mantra. Everything is biological. Everything is about power. Everything is about your childhood. Everything is about money. Everything is math. Most people with advanced educations want to reduce everything to their favorite something, and they've all got different somethings.
In the present case, I disagree: political systems seem to me an effect of the base functionality of society. I would be inclined to call that base commerce. Which is a function of lots of people acting according to what they think is their own best interests.
Hence, I think in the present case, we can ignore the politicians without much peril at all. Society will do as it pleases, and the politicians will (eventually) dance along.
This seems not to make sense; maybe I'm misunderstanding timothy. We're talking about a marketplace which could not exist save by political action (ie. IP law). We're dealing with the rules upon which the marketplace is predicated. A market-based solution doesn't quite make sense in this context; like we're trying to decide on the rules for chess, and someone proposes we settle the matter on the chessboard.
I'm sorry... I generally oppose violence... but if ever there were a good reason to assassinate an elected official, it would be for encouraging qbasic.
Our read of Lockheed-Martin is that they've reacted to this by a dual-track strategy of, to date, soaking up most available government cheap-launch R&D money so none of their competitors (competitor, now) could get the jump on their existing high-cost launch business, while pursuing government financing for their own "Venturestar" concept in the hope of using other people's money to get the jump on their remaining competitor.
The only remarkable thing about the US government creating a duopoly, IMHO, is that they left a competitor. Anyway, now it seems we're stuck in the middle. Problem with being stuck in the middle is, everybody knows you've got to go somewhere, but they can't agree on which way.
The authors continue to insist that the government must be the investor of last resort in pushing launch costs down to "radically" lower levels - the country and the world would benefit hugely, but getting past the break-point in the demand curve has so far taken too much money and time for private investors in the current climate.
And that's the problem with government involvement in the market; a little is never enough. The author(s) must surely have seen the other road: cut government R&D money. Level the playing field by removing the artificial barrier to entry for private investors. Let the market set the price, rather than expecting the price to create the market.
Now that's a risk. To apply the article's words in a different context, the potential payoff may be huge, but it's a long-term and speculative payoff; the new markets can't be straight-line projected from current markets, and they won't spring into being overnight.
Maybe the barrier to entry will still be too high; maybe government funding to date has made this duopoly too tough to crack. Maybe the lack of support would lead to even worse stagnation than the present "flat demand curve".
On the other hand, maybe it wouldn't. $600/lb. is just a best-guess critical point for spurring enterprise; maybe smaller companies would find cunning paths through the level field; maybe revolutionary growth in the space economy is closer than we think.
I don't know; I'm a libertarian, not an economist. But before anyone goes criticizing the big companies (which these guys don't) for not taking visionary risks with their money, consider how brave you feel taking visionary risks with your vote.
I can certainly see why these guys would be leery of such a scheme. I worked with a small company which created a nifty little program, and the time came when some of us proposed GPL-ing it. Our poor boss, much as he loved the free software movement, underwent visible anguish over the prospect; this was his baby. And I understood; I couldn't promise that freeing the software wouldn't kill the company.
We didn't take the risk. The company's doing... okay.
It could be argued that people's ethical ideas usually boil down to their gut feeling; "Reason is, and should be, the slave of the passions," as Hume said. But it would be more useful to examine your gut feelings to determine a basis of your morality, and deduce from there. For instance, do you believe that the consequences determine the morality of an action, or are actions categorically right or wrong? How do you define, "good" and "bad"? Without making such evaluations, your ideas about particular issues will be ill-founded.
In any case, since I don't understand where you're coming from, I suspect my presenting arguments might not do you much good. "I've been raised under the notion" suggests, perhaps, a religious upbringing... religions tend not to replace the answers to basic philosophical questions, but rather to give them interesting twists.
Anyway, as regards cloning in particular: do you think identical twins are wrong? If so, what should be done about the scoundrels? If not, is it because they were unintentional, or is there another reason? Or are you simply worried about the effects of widespread cloning?
For my part, I say, "cool beans", and look forward to raising myself just as soon as it becomes affordable. Whether cloning is a good practice for society at large I would evaluate based on the effects it turns out to have upon society and the gene pool. It should certainly be legal, IMHO, but then I'm a libertarian looney, and not wholly to be trusted. :-)
More ubermouse conspiracy stuff. Soon we'll be up to our knees in 10-year-old oversized glowing green mice that are smarter than we are. We're going to need a "mouse eugenics" category here.
I guess this is what Microsoft means about encouraging innovation; third-party stuff like this is actually useful on Windows. Try to sell it to Linux people, and everybody shrugs and says, "I don't need it. I've got ssh." (or whatever simple, elegant tool fits the task in question)