Re:Perhaps they know a thing or two...
on
NYT On Open Source
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· Score: 2
Did you ever consider the possibility that the old guard does know what they're talking about? Or that recently acclaimed "Open Source" accomplishments are not, in fact, that much of an accomplishment [in terms of technical ability/effort/innovation]?
If that's in response to my post, maybe I miscommunicated something. I thought the tenor of my post would say that while I don't belong to either of the groups I mentioned, I tend to be more sympathetic with the older crowd. From what I've read on computer history, they did some amazing things, and I don't think the (misplaced) arrogance in the newer generation of coders is always warranted. --
This is the arrogance he was hinting at - the failure to look to the future, and sticking with good ol' English! Sheesh! Did you actually READ the speech?
Actually, my point was his wording; he implied that currently English was not the de facto international standard. It's not arrogance, it's just fact. Now, I assume eventually another language will become so, judging by history; I don't dispute that. Language, and language use, evolve relatively naturally. I don't think there's anything we can really do about it, so it doesn't really bother me that much... --
Though you've got to admit, the Greeks and Romans had a pretty good run; Greek was the lingua franca of most of the Mediterranean world for almost a thousand years, and Latin only declined a few hundred years ago... --
You have to remember, the guy who gave this speech has a great deal riding on whether what he's saying comes true or not; his company's website indicates that his job is to produce content for Asian markets (ironically, a quick scan of the website shows that they offer plenty of American shows and movies)
And his premise is pretty much wrong because, for good or ill, English is already the international language, and was long before the internet came about.
That said, he did bring up some good points. To tell you the truth, -I- can't bring myself to watch American TV, and I've lived here my whole life. I don't know how the rest of the world gets so addicted to it.
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Last November, acting at the RIAA's request, Mitch Glazier, then chief
counsel for Congress' copyright subcommittee, inserted the "sound
recording" amendment to an unrelated bill...Glazier, who now works for the RIAA,
consulted only a handful of congressional assistants last fall. He was able
to make the change because he explained the alteration was
non-controversial and technical in nature.
Now there's a lovely bit of ethics there. There's got to be some law involving influence peddling by Congressional employees. Guess that kind of morality really impressed the RIAA ("What? You'd be willing to do that? How about a job? We need people like you!").
The funniest thing is the remarks of the RIAA president:
The book needs to be closed on this issue so
we can get back to a united industry on so many important challenges of
the day," said RIAA president and CEO Hilary Rosen in a prepared
statement.
More important challenges of the day? First of all this is a manipulation of legislative process. It's important to keep investigating. Secondly, what else does the RIAA do that's so important? Besides suing Napster I mean.
osen blasted
Billboard as part of "a sensationalist media that simply could not resist
adding fuel to the fire, fanning the flames of misunderstanding with a
misleading but juicy story."
If you were to compile a list of groups justified in assuming wounded innocence, the record companies in general and the RIAA in particular would probably be at the end. Hopefully a few members of congress will be irritated enough to look into this matter more.
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Yes, some companies are run incompetently. Some people invest poorly. Tough.
Yes, it is tough. And I think that's why the government should monitor banking practices. I think one of the government's jobs is to protect those who can't protect themselves. This includes people with poor judgement.
Regulation hasn't, and never will, guarantee any return on (or of) your investment.
It does. The FDIC insures my accounts. It returns the money that I invested if the bank loses it.
Not everyone with money can lay rail. The government granted and enforced monopolies on rail-lines in certain places, which was naturally a bad thing for consumers.
Actually, no private group could have built the railroad; it was a joint venture between corporations and the US government. Without 300 years of infrastructure building by the local and federal governments, we'd still travel mostly on dirt roads.
I agree that the government might have taken over railroad line management in the beginning, but in that case it wouldn't be fair to those companies who poured their money into helping build it. The best result in this case in my opinion would have been regulation from the start; private ownership, with government oversight but without a government monopoly. This would be sort of like the government being a co-owner. The same holds true for other networked commodities, like gas and electricity.
Prices do fluctuate in a free market. That's the natural order of things
No argument here. But the problem begins when you have a company that changes it's prices not in response to costs or demand, but rather as a way to force others out of the market.
I agree with you about IP law though. And as I read it you shouldn't be allowed to either copyright or trademark software, just as you can't with any other kind of algorithm. The patent office seems to be breaking it's own rules.
Here is an essay that covers why I don't think IP law is necessary for software.
The essay is interesting, but it sounds mainly like the shareware idea, minus the crippleware component. And while it sounds good in theory, the problem comes to one of self-interest. It's the old "tragedy of the commons" aspect of environmental economics: it is of greater benefit for me to abuse the system than to abide by it. Expecting people to act in concert that way just doesn't make sense. My objection to the IP system is that it is immoral; words or ideas shouldn't be considered property. If I copy a book I haven't changed the inherent value of that book.
income tax- The more you earn, the more you pay, in fact, the higher a portion of your earnings you pay! An insane disincentive to profit and productivity.
It's not an "insane" disincentive to profit; most people pay 1/4-1/3 of their salary in income tax. The sliding income tax rate is to prevent hardship for those so poor that a flat tax rate (which would be somewhere between 10-20%) would be too much hardship. And since when has moving into a higher tax bracket ever prevented people from seeking pay raises or higher paying jobs?
public schooling- Incompetent government bureaucracy given an important task combined with the government indoctrination of our children. How much worse can a deal get? I remember grade school as the greatest waste of time in my life, and I believe that the chosen course material forms most of the political opinions of the masses.
I didn't particularly enjoy any of my pre-college schooling, but private schools would have done the same thing, with different kinds of indoctrination. What other options are there? Home schooling? Go ahead, nobody's preventing you. For-profit private schools? Too much incentive for them to cut costs. Maybe the free market will even it out in the end, where good schools would become recognized and successful, but that would take a few years. And in that time we'd just produce a generation of children with an even worse education than they get now.
You should not be able to buy voting stock in a company without being personally responsible for all actions of that company.
I agree whole-heartedly. I'd also expand it to those who work in those companies.
--
Actually, I fall on the RMS side of the fence as well. Just don't think it falls into quite so dramatic terms; as RMS himself has said, free software isn't the most important cause in the world... --
Aren't we putting a little too much moral importance into this? --
NYT might be believing the hype a little too much.
on
NYT On Open Source
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· Score: 4
"The truth is, great software comes from great programmers, not from a large number of people slaving away," Mr. Joy said. "Open source can be useful. It can speed things up. But it's not new, and it's not holy water."
I've seen this come up a couple of times before; there seems to be some resentment on the part of the old guard towards a younger, somewhat arrogant crowd who think just because they can slam out an ls frontend with the gtk toolkit that they're wizards(no, of course this doesn't apply to everyone, or even most people) Not meant as a flame, I'm not part of either crowd, just an interested observer.
Eric S. Raymond, an open-source evangelist, observed that Mr. Torvalds was "the first person who learned how to play by the new rules that pervasive Internet access made possible."
This is probably one of those statements that irritates the older crowd as well. The internet was founded as a scientific and technological collaboration tool. Linux is the new kid on the block.
--
Re:"Laboratory supermarkets" do this kind of thing
on
Focusing Audio
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· Score: 1
Never heard about the clockwise thing, and now that I think about it the larger supermarkets I frequent have entries in the left side of the store, so you move clockwise. The produce is near the entrance, and the frozen food is on the far right end. The "impulse" buys are near the counter of course, but now that I think even further about it I almost never buy anything from them. I wouldn't read too much into marketing research; they come up with some pretty wacky stuff.
And slashdot has reduced me to writing about where the produce in my local supermarket is. Please, someone moderate me down as off-topic. I need it. --
Herein we find the root of the error of your reasoning: you rightly recognize the need for large-scale organization, but you believe that only government can provide it.
Actually, I think private standards bodies are a good thing, especially in industries that don't deal with life or death situations (not the pharmaceutical or medical professions, obviously).
Most importantly, though, is the nanny-state attitude that most citizens have: "the gub'r'ment will take care of us! we don't have to look out for ourselves."
Here's one of the areas where our fundamental views differ; I take it (and I apologize if I'm mistaken) that you're a libertarian, as this is one of those terms that seems to be in the standard libertarian arsenal. I've always preferred "statist" to "non-statist"; while it's meant as an insult, it doesn't have the slant that "nanny state" does.
To me this country is not a "nanny state"; that implies a lack of control that I don't think exists. If I try to eat food that hasn't been regulated by the FDA, I don't have federal health inspectors breaking into my house and wrestling it out of my hands. If I decide to take herbal remedies the Surgeon General doesn't send agents to my house to stop me. The FDA limitations on experimental drugs are another thing, but I agree totally with you that the rules governing them should be made more permissive.
I have a contract with my government. I pay my taxes, and I expect those taxes to be spent a certain way. I expect the FDA to test my drugs and food; I expect the Surgeon General's office to make recommendations as to my health. The government may be inefficient, overly bureacratized, and slow, but I'd rather have them conduct testing than private companies, mainly because I feel they are both more objective, and more prone to err on the side of caution.
I didn't sign this contract, but I endorse it by living in this country and taking advantage of it. If I wanted no part of it I'd move to a less restrictive place.
Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does a free market. Supply grows to meet demand...
The free market is a "magical black box" which produces all good things without an outside controlling organization.
This is the other fundamental point on which we disagree. It's been consistently shown that the freer a market, the more liable consumers are to abuse. Whether it's the railroad companies in the 1800s using variable pricing schemes to squeeze out every dollar they could, to Japanese electronics companies flooding the US market with below-cost goods then driving up prices once the competitors were gone, to Microsoft driving competitors out of the market, to Savings and Loans going under because they made obviously bad loans to 3rd world dictators, business without oversight has been consistently shown to end in harm.
A central libertarian/anti-government mistake is, I feel, the premise that government takes control out of spite or in an attempt to grab power. The regulations in this country sprang up piecemeal in response to specific problems. Maybe they've grown too much, and maybe they're too encompassing, but it wasn't a product of some malevolent government official, but rather 300 years of (usually well-intentioned) lawmaking.
I'm not saying the system is perfect; far from it. I just think the alternatives are worse.
And while I have major problems with the way the government has done a lot of things, I recognize that some form of central government is needed.
I tend to defend more than most people mainly to avoid the hypocrisy that a sizeable chunk of our population participates in; the "there oughta be a law" crowd that later turns around and criticizes how large the government has grown. At least I (and my libertarian opponents) are consistent.
--
Absolutely. Doctors know their business and are quite capable of organizing their own testing of drugs. Putting the thing in the hands of government bureaucrats only adds a healthy dose of waste and incompetence to the process.
And how many individual medical practitioner can afford to fund their own tests? This isn't about who's qualified; private practitioners may be just as skilled in these matters as FDA scientists, but they have neither the time, the inclination, or the money to pursue rigorous testing. And the drug companies have a history of suppressing negative results, and a financial incentive to cut down on testing as much as possible.
Furthermore, it takes the choice out of how "experimental" a drug a patient can choose to take. People die who could be saved while FDA human drug tests go on, with no option to tell the government to stick their cautious testing methods wherever they care, and just try the medicine themselves.
I agree that restrictions on testing of experimental drugs should be made much looser, but I don't challenge the government's (as elected, and funded by me) authority in saying that publicly sold drugs should have some oversight.
Suckers are still sold poison as medicine every day. The FDA hasn't stopped that, and nothing ever will.
If I take a drug that's advertised as a antihistamine (hypothetically speaking), it shouldn't have a side affect of making me die. It has nothing to do with being a "sucker"; I can't analyze the chemical properties and possible biological impact of medication by just looking at the pill.
As long as the government enforces the exclusivity of standards-organization trademarks, sensible people would only buy food from vendors who follow practices they consider fit.
Yeah, fine, but the problem is enforcement. I'm supposed to take some large corporations word that what they put on their label is what's actually in the food?
This is pure "straw man" idiocy. The corporations don't own the rivers. Not everybody who has some interest in the river is agreeing freely to have toxic chemicals poured into it... It is instead a crime against the non-consenting public, like robbery or murder.
But distributing unsafe medicine to an unsuspecting public isn't? Or we should just force them to take responsibility for it after someone dies?
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Can't be done, unfortunately. A couple of months ago a four CENT tax became a major campaign issue; the Republicans argued that it should be eliminated to provide relief for the poor suffering consumers.
The only thing that will work in the short term is creating economic incentives to drive low emission/alternative fuel cars. The tax breaks you mentioned would be a much more effective tool, and hopefully they'll create them sooner rather than later, since at the moment the US government has an adequate cash flow.
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They way I see it, it's about time that a whole lot of law knowledgable computer techies need to sit down and discuss the laws
That's a lot easier said than done. Law is a pretty complicated subject; it takes 3 years to learn it, and once you do you're still going to be spending a large chunk of your time researching laws and rulings you don't know about.
Maybe we should try to convince computer science graduates to go to law school (or law school graduates to go back to school and learn computer science).
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Re:LEGO: Not Open Source...
on
The LEGO Desk
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· Score: 1
I really hate this kind of garbage. I'm assuming they're doing it for the same reason that Band-Aids are now "Band-Aid brand bandages" and Jello is now "Jello brand gelatin dessert" and the like: trademark dilution.
It's not really their fault I think. Companies have to show that they're protecting their trademark if they want to keep it. By putting all those disclaimers and maybe launching a half-hearted lawsuit every once in a while, they can say to a judge "hey, look, we've actively protected our trademark.". They probably don't really care if you actually use it incorrectly.
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Even a lot of libertarians seem to think that one of the few purposes of a government is to make sure contracts are honored, and that's all that this law is doing. It's saying that if you have a warranty, it must be honored; that's all. It doesn't apply to non-warrantied computers
I misread the article; the only-under-warranty part refers to a law already on the books. Shouldn't of skimmed so fast I guess. So ignore my last paragraph (I know, I know, you're probably ignoring the whole thing anyway)
Anyway, my point still is that it's not automatically a bad idea when the government forces corporations to maintain some quality control. And for a lot of people a computer is a pretty major purchase. While I personally see no big deal in spending half of my salary on computer hardware, a lot of people consider it an investment that should last a while.
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Of course it's interference. Doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad thing.
This isn't protection from the seller lying about the product, this is protection from their own bad choices, like seat-belt laws and anti-drug laws. It's government saying, "We know what's good for you better than you do." and forcing their opinion of what's good for you on you whether you like it or not.
What "bad choices"? So I -HAVE- to buy from a large, well-known company? Most computer retailers list their components in detail. If I buy a P3 that's really a falsely marked P2, how is that a "bad choice"?
It's wrong in principle, even if it improves results for thousands of stupid or careless people
It's wrong in principle? How? Is it wrong in principle when the FDA "interferes" with drug companies by examining their product before it allowing it to go on the market? Or forcing food companies to maintain some standard of quality control? How about when the EPA "interferes" with corporations pouring toxic chemicals into our rivers? Alright, enough of a rant, I guess seeing the automatic "any government interference is bad" reaction on slashdot for so long has gotten to me...
Even a lot of libertarians seem to think that one of the few purposes of a government is to make sure contracts are honored, and that's all that this law is doing. It's saying that if you have a warranty, it must be honored; that's all. It doesn't apply to non-warrantied computers.
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Isn't that similiar to what some people were trying with UHF signals? You'd send requests through regular dial-up, and would download from a UHF antenna? I remember them getting some rather impressive bandwidth with it, but I guess it never caught on. Anyone have any real info on this? --
Good luck to you. I'd be a lot happier with a few changes: I'd like to cut and paste across different applications, and I'd like a faster, cleaner window design. I don't need 3 million "toolkits". --
Ahhhh, ok, so the chips were pretty much useless as P3s. I thought they had intentionally disabled perfectly good P3s, but it makes sense if they were forced to do something with slightly defective chips. Smart move, actually... --
Intel intentionally crippling Celeron 2's so not to
offer a reasonable price point vis a vis the Pentium 3
You know, I understood, at least in theory, everything else, but I still haven't figured this one out. Anyone know what the whole point of that was? --
Slashdot Mirror
Did you ever consider the possibility that the old guard does know what they're talking about? Or that recently acclaimed "Open Source" accomplishments are not, in fact, that much of an accomplishment [in terms of technical ability/effort/innovation]?
If that's in response to my post, maybe I miscommunicated something. I thought the tenor of my post would say that while I don't belong to either of the groups I mentioned, I tend to be more sympathetic with the older crowd. From what I've read on computer history, they did some amazing things, and I don't think the (misplaced) arrogance in the newer generation of coders is always warranted.
--
This is the arrogance he was hinting at - the failure to look to the future, and sticking with good ol' English! Sheesh! Did you actually READ the speech?
Actually, my point was his wording; he implied that currently English was not the de facto international standard. It's not arrogance, it's just fact. Now, I assume eventually another language will become so, judging by history; I don't dispute that. Language, and language use, evolve relatively naturally. I don't think there's anything we can really do about it, so it doesn't really bother me that much...
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Though you've got to admit, the Greeks and Romans had a pretty good run; Greek was the lingua franca of most of the Mediterranean world for almost a thousand years, and Latin only declined a few hundred years ago...
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You have to remember, the guy who gave this speech has a great deal riding on whether what he's saying comes true or not; his company's website indicates that his job is to produce content for Asian markets (ironically, a quick scan of the website shows that they offer plenty of American shows and movies)
And his premise is pretty much wrong because, for good or ill, English is already the international language, and was long before the internet came about.
That said, he did bring up some good points. To tell you the truth, -I- can't bring myself to watch American TV, and I've lived here my whole life. I don't know how the rest of the world gets so addicted to it.
--
Should have run it through lynx as it was being built to see if they were missing anything fundamental...
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Last November, acting at the RIAA's request, Mitch Glazier, then chief counsel for Congress' copyright subcommittee, inserted the "sound recording" amendment to an unrelated bill...Glazier, who now works for the RIAA, consulted only a handful of congressional assistants last fall. He was able to make the change because he explained the alteration was non-controversial and technical in nature.
Now there's a lovely bit of ethics there. There's got to be some law involving influence peddling by Congressional employees. Guess that kind of morality really impressed the RIAA ("What? You'd be willing to do that? How about a job? We need people like you!").
The funniest thing is the remarks of the RIAA president:
The book needs to be closed on this issue so we can get back to a united industry on so many important challenges of the day," said RIAA president and CEO Hilary Rosen in a prepared statement.
More important challenges of the day? First of all this is a manipulation of legislative process. It's important to keep investigating. Secondly, what else does the RIAA do that's so important? Besides suing Napster I mean.
osen blasted Billboard as part of "a sensationalist media that simply could not resist adding fuel to the fire, fanning the flames of misunderstanding with a misleading but juicy story."
If you were to compile a list of groups justified in assuming wounded innocence, the record companies in general and the RIAA in particular would probably be at the end. Hopefully a few members of congress will be irritated enough to look into this matter more.
--
Seriously, how often does this happen? I mean, besides your theft of Stairway to Heaven...
--
Yes, some companies are run incompetently. Some people invest poorly. Tough.
Yes, it is tough. And I think that's why the government should monitor banking practices. I think one of the government's jobs is to protect those who can't protect themselves. This includes people with poor judgement.
Regulation hasn't, and never will, guarantee any return on (or of) your investment.
It does. The FDIC insures my accounts. It returns the money that I invested if the bank loses it.
Not everyone with money can lay rail. The government granted and enforced monopolies on rail-lines in certain places, which was naturally a bad thing for consumers.
Actually, no private group could have built the railroad; it was a joint venture between corporations and the US government. Without 300 years of infrastructure building by the local and federal governments, we'd still travel mostly on dirt roads. I agree that the government might have taken over railroad line management in the beginning, but in that case it wouldn't be fair to those companies who poured their money into helping build it. The best result in this case in my opinion would have been regulation from the start; private ownership, with government oversight but without a government monopoly. This would be sort of like the government being a co-owner. The same holds true for other networked commodities, like gas and electricity.
Prices do fluctuate in a free market. That's the natural order of things
No argument here. But the problem begins when you have a company that changes it's prices not in response to costs or demand, but rather as a way to force others out of the market.
I agree with you about IP law though. And as I read it you shouldn't be allowed to either copyright or trademark software, just as you can't with any other kind of algorithm. The patent office seems to be breaking it's own rules.
Here is an essay that covers why I don't think IP law is necessary for software.
The essay is interesting, but it sounds mainly like the shareware idea, minus the crippleware component. And while it sounds good in theory, the problem comes to one of self-interest. It's the old "tragedy of the commons" aspect of environmental economics: it is of greater benefit for me to abuse the system than to abide by it. Expecting people to act in concert that way just doesn't make sense. My objection to the IP system is that it is immoral; words or ideas shouldn't be considered property. If I copy a book I haven't changed the inherent value of that book.
income tax- The more you earn, the more you pay, in fact, the higher a portion of your earnings you pay! An insane disincentive to profit and productivity.
It's not an "insane" disincentive to profit; most people pay 1/4-1/3 of their salary in income tax. The sliding income tax rate is to prevent hardship for those so poor that a flat tax rate (which would be somewhere between 10-20%) would be too much hardship. And since when has moving into a higher tax bracket ever prevented people from seeking pay raises or higher paying jobs?
public schooling- Incompetent government bureaucracy given an important task combined with the government indoctrination of our children. How much worse can a deal get? I remember grade school as the greatest waste of time in my life, and I believe that the chosen course material forms most of the political opinions of the masses.
I didn't particularly enjoy any of my pre-college schooling, but private schools would have done the same thing, with different kinds of indoctrination. What other options are there? Home schooling? Go ahead, nobody's preventing you. For-profit private schools? Too much incentive for them to cut costs. Maybe the free market will even it out in the end, where good schools would become recognized and successful, but that would take a few years. And in that time we'd just produce a generation of children with an even worse education than they get now.
You should not be able to buy voting stock in a company without being personally responsible for all actions of that company.
I agree whole-heartedly. I'd also expand it to those who work in those companies.
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Actually, I fall on the RMS side of the fence as well. Just don't think it falls into quite so dramatic terms; as RMS himself has said, free software isn't the most important cause in the world...
--
Aren't we putting a little too much moral importance into this?
--
"The truth is, great software comes from great programmers, not from a large number of people slaving away," Mr. Joy said. "Open source can be useful. It can speed things up. But it's not new, and it's not holy water."
I've seen this come up a couple of times before; there seems to be some resentment on the part of the old guard towards a younger, somewhat arrogant crowd who think just because they can slam out an ls frontend with the gtk toolkit that they're wizards(no, of course this doesn't apply to everyone, or even most people) Not meant as a flame, I'm not part of either crowd, just an interested observer.
Eric S. Raymond, an open-source evangelist, observed that Mr. Torvalds was "the first person who learned how to play by the new rules that pervasive Internet access made possible."
This is probably one of those statements that irritates the older crowd as well. The internet was founded as a scientific and technological collaboration tool. Linux is the new kid on the block.
--
Never heard about the clockwise thing, and now that I think about it the larger supermarkets I frequent have entries in the left side of the store, so you move clockwise. The produce is near the entrance, and the frozen food is on the far right end. The "impulse" buys are near the counter of course, but now that I think even further about it I almost never buy anything from them. I wouldn't read too much into marketing research; they come up with some pretty wacky stuff.
And slashdot has reduced me to writing about where the produce in my local supermarket is. Please, someone moderate me down as off-topic. I need it.
--
Herein we find the root of the error of your reasoning: you rightly recognize the need for large-scale organization, but you believe that only government can provide it.
Actually, I think private standards bodies are a good thing, especially in industries that don't deal with life or death situations (not the pharmaceutical or medical professions, obviously).
Most importantly, though, is the nanny-state attitude that most citizens have: "the gub'r'ment will take care of us! we don't have to look out for ourselves."
Here's one of the areas where our fundamental views differ; I take it (and I apologize if I'm mistaken) that you're a libertarian, as this is one of those terms that seems to be in the standard libertarian arsenal. I've always preferred "statist" to "non-statist"; while it's meant as an insult, it doesn't have the slant that "nanny state" does.
To me this country is not a "nanny state"; that implies a lack of control that I don't think exists. If I try to eat food that hasn't been regulated by the FDA, I don't have federal health inspectors breaking into my house and wrestling it out of my hands. If I decide to take herbal remedies the Surgeon General doesn't send agents to my house to stop me. The FDA limitations on experimental drugs are another thing, but I agree totally with you that the rules governing them should be made more permissive.
I have a contract with my government. I pay my taxes, and I expect those taxes to be spent a certain way. I expect the FDA to test my drugs and food; I expect the Surgeon General's office to make recommendations as to my health. The government may be inefficient, overly bureacratized, and slow, but I'd rather have them conduct testing than private companies, mainly because I feel they are both more objective, and more prone to err on the side of caution.
I didn't sign this contract, but I endorse it by living in this country and taking advantage of it. If I wanted no part of it I'd move to a less restrictive place. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does a free market. Supply grows to meet demand... The free market is a "magical black box" which produces all good things without an outside controlling organization.
This is the other fundamental point on which we disagree. It's been consistently shown that the freer a market, the more liable consumers are to abuse. Whether it's the railroad companies in the 1800s using variable pricing schemes to squeeze out every dollar they could, to Japanese electronics companies flooding the US market with below-cost goods then driving up prices once the competitors were gone, to Microsoft driving competitors out of the market, to Savings and Loans going under because they made obviously bad loans to 3rd world dictators, business without oversight has been consistently shown to end in harm.
A central libertarian/anti-government mistake is, I feel, the premise that government takes control out of spite or in an attempt to grab power. The regulations in this country sprang up piecemeal in response to specific problems. Maybe they've grown too much, and maybe they're too encompassing, but it wasn't a product of some malevolent government official, but rather 300 years of (usually well-intentioned) lawmaking.
I'm not saying the system is perfect; far from it. I just think the alternatives are worse. And while I have major problems with the way the government has done a lot of things, I recognize that some form of central government is needed. I tend to defend more than most people mainly to avoid the hypocrisy that a sizeable chunk of our population participates in; the "there oughta be a law" crowd that later turns around and criticizes how large the government has grown. At least I (and my libertarian opponents) are consistent.
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Absolutely. Doctors know their business and are quite capable of organizing their own testing of drugs. Putting the thing in the hands of government bureaucrats only adds a healthy dose of waste and incompetence to the process.
And how many individual medical practitioner can afford to fund their own tests? This isn't about who's qualified; private practitioners may be just as skilled in these matters as FDA scientists, but they have neither the time, the inclination, or the money to pursue rigorous testing. And the drug companies have a history of suppressing negative results, and a financial incentive to cut down on testing as much as possible.
Furthermore, it takes the choice out of how "experimental" a drug a patient can choose to take. People die who could be saved while FDA human drug tests go on, with no option to tell the government to stick their cautious testing methods wherever they care, and just try the medicine themselves.
I agree that restrictions on testing of experimental drugs should be made much looser, but I don't challenge the government's (as elected, and funded by me) authority in saying that publicly sold drugs should have some oversight.
Suckers are still sold poison as medicine every day. The FDA hasn't stopped that, and nothing ever will.
If I take a drug that's advertised as a antihistamine (hypothetically speaking), it shouldn't have a side affect of making me die. It has nothing to do with being a "sucker"; I can't analyze the chemical properties and possible biological impact of medication by just looking at the pill.
As long as the government enforces the exclusivity of standards-organization trademarks, sensible people would only buy food from vendors who follow practices they consider fit.
Yeah, fine, but the problem is enforcement. I'm supposed to take some large corporations word that what they put on their label is what's actually in the food?
This is pure "straw man" idiocy. The corporations don't own the rivers. Not everybody who has some interest in the river is agreeing freely to have toxic chemicals poured into it... It is instead a crime against the non-consenting public, like robbery or murder.
But distributing unsafe medicine to an unsuspecting public isn't? Or we should just force them to take responsibility for it after someone dies?
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Increase fuel prices, the way they did here
Can't be done, unfortunately. A couple of months ago a four CENT tax became a major campaign issue; the Republicans argued that it should be eliminated to provide relief for the poor suffering consumers.
The only thing that will work in the short term is creating economic incentives to drive low emission/alternative fuel cars. The tax breaks you mentioned would be a much more effective tool, and hopefully they'll create them sooner rather than later, since at the moment the US government has an adequate cash flow.
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They way I see it, it's about time that a whole lot of law knowledgable computer techies need to sit down and discuss the laws
That's a lot easier said than done. Law is a pretty complicated subject; it takes 3 years to learn it, and once you do you're still going to be spending a large chunk of your time researching laws and rulings you don't know about. Maybe we should try to convince computer science graduates to go to law school (or law school graduates to go back to school and learn computer science).
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I really hate this kind of garbage. I'm assuming they're doing it for the same reason that Band-Aids are now "Band-Aid brand bandages" and Jello is now "Jello brand gelatin dessert" and the like: trademark dilution.
It's not really their fault I think. Companies have to show that they're protecting their trademark if they want to keep it. By putting all those disclaimers and maybe launching a half-hearted lawsuit every once in a while, they can say to a judge "hey, look, we've actively protected our trademark.". They probably don't really care if you actually use it incorrectly.
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Even a lot of libertarians seem to think that one of the few purposes of a government is to make sure contracts are honored, and that's all that this law is doing. It's saying that if you have a warranty, it must be honored; that's all. It doesn't apply to non-warrantied computers
I misread the article; the only-under-warranty part refers to a law already on the books. Shouldn't of skimmed so fast I guess. So ignore my last paragraph (I know, I know, you're probably ignoring the whole thing anyway)
Anyway, my point still is that it's not automatically a bad idea when the government forces corporations to maintain some quality control. And for a lot of people a computer is a pretty major purchase. While I personally see no big deal in spending half of my salary on computer hardware, a lot of people consider it an investment that should last a while.
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Consumer "protection" is interference.
Of course it's interference. Doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad thing.
This isn't protection from the seller lying about the product, this is protection from their own bad choices, like seat-belt laws and anti-drug laws. It's government saying, "We know what's good for you better than you do." and forcing their opinion of what's good for you on you whether you like it or not.
What "bad choices"? So I -HAVE- to buy from a large, well-known company? Most computer retailers list their components in detail. If I buy a P3 that's really a falsely marked P2, how is that a "bad choice"?
It's wrong in principle, even if it improves results for thousands of stupid or careless people
It's wrong in principle? How? Is it wrong in principle when the FDA "interferes" with drug companies by examining their product before it allowing it to go on the market? Or forcing food companies to maintain some standard of quality control? How about when the EPA "interferes" with corporations pouring toxic chemicals into our rivers? Alright, enough of a rant, I guess seeing the automatic "any government interference is bad" reaction on slashdot for so long has gotten to me...
Even a lot of libertarians seem to think that one of the few purposes of a government is to make sure contracts are honored, and that's all that this law is doing. It's saying that if you have a warranty, it must be honored; that's all. It doesn't apply to non-warrantied computers.
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Isn't that similiar to what some people were trying with UHF signals? You'd send requests through regular dial-up, and would download from a UHF antenna? I remember them getting some rather impressive bandwidth with it, but I guess it never caught on. Anyone have any real info on this?
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Good luck to you. I'd be a lot happier with a few changes: I'd like to cut and paste across different applications, and I'd like a faster, cleaner window design. I don't need 3 million "toolkits".
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Ahhhh, ok, so the chips were pretty much useless as P3s. I thought they had intentionally disabled perfectly good P3s, but it makes sense if they were forced to do something with slightly defective chips. Smart move, actually...
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What I don't understand is what kind of mentality could result in doing that.
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Dense I guess. I don't follow hardware that closely, but from what I remember they just disabled half of the cache or something. You know why?
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Intel intentionally crippling Celeron 2's so not to offer a reasonable price point vis a vis the Pentium 3
You know, I understood, at least in theory, everything else, but I still haven't figured this one out. Anyone know what the whole point of that was?
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