May I suggest that they move their records out of the US and into the Bahamas, and re-incorporate there so they will not be obligated to show their search records to the US government.
Do you think that Islamic exposure to the Internet, and the information age is causing culture shock in the Middle East. Surely it must be, it is causing a culture shock in the US even. How do they handle it? How are they reactiong? Do you think it's causing a backlash that relates to terrorisim?
There was once a person who said that 1 in a million odds happen 7 times a day in New York city. The same is true about this book. They use esoteric pattern searches with random perbutrations to prove that there are hidden phrases and words in historic documents. After billions of tries on computers, they are sure to find something - to where they can say "see theres a hidden message here". In truth, it is just another way of using statistics to lie.
I don't agree with your opinions about taking away my rights to the content I've created. Please let me do what I wish with my creations.
You don't have rights to controll content you've created and more than you have a right to controll the ocenways because you peed in the ocean with your piss. You might have privacy rights if you never releases content you created to the world, you might have contract rights if you made a 2 way binding agreement with everyone who came across content you created, you might have plagerisim rights if someone claims they created something when you really did. But sorry, there is no such things as content rights. It is also hypocritical, chances are 98% of the content value you have was given to you freely, now you turn arround and say society owes you to controll content?
Copyrights are anti freedom, anti business, anti propertyrights. They destroy culture, education, and reward anti trust behavior. They really have no place in the information age, and their death will be long overdue.
Professional writers, painters, musicians, etc., deserve to be compensated for their efforts. Copyright can be used to defend the little guy against the big bully. Therefore, copyright can stay.
There are millions of people who recieve compensation for their work every day without controlling a monopoly over their output. In some theories copyright can be used to defend the little guy, but in practice, that is never the case. The reality is that copyrights can't survive the information age, but instead of wineing about it, people should learn how to make money from content services and not content controlls.
The AC is right, the debate shouldn't be wether Google violated fair use or not, the debate should be: how can we get rid of this beast called "copyrights" that doesn't belong in the information age.
Apple runs iTunes. Disney produces some content. Serious risk of antitrust action.
Maybe so, but just look at Disney with their intellectually challenging content production, and Apple with their beautifull non proprietary hardware;) Who can deny that these two companies truely deserve each other?
Some companies want to provide products or services that people want, need, and use. Other companies want to ram proprietary crap down peoples throat so they get a lock on the market. Would you like to gess what kind of attitude SONY has after their rootkit scandal, and Microsoft has after their backing of SCO? INHO, we need a non proprietary standard, not a "better" one.
You forgot some, the biggest regulations of all are copyrights and patents. Alot of times they have the effect of causing people to struggle, constantly reinventing the wheel and constantly causing people to be in a rats race to get the next invention so that a competitor doesn't patent it and lock everyone else out for 20 years.
It reminds me of a story I like to tell my peers. Back in 1990, I learnt how to use UNIX and Windows both at the same time. As time went on, I added to my UNIX skills while the next version of windows came out and had to relearn most of my windows skills from scratch. A few years later Linux came out, and I made the transition rather easially and my UNIX skills added onto it's value. (the same was true of my programming abilities too) And then a new version of Windows came out and once again I had to relearn most of my windows skills from scratch. As time went on, time and time again I added to my Linux skills while constantly relearning my windows skills from scratch. Then the dot.com crash happened, I got nailed hard, but when things started to pick up afterward - I recovered. Many of my friends who were windows experts never did.
At the time the only reason why I chose UNIX and then Linux was because it was less proprietary, and so allowed me more freedom and liberty to do what I want. The choice was highly morality driven. But as time went on that non proprietary nature created a foundation for me to build on while my peers who didn't buyinto those values constantly struggled on a treadmill to get somewhere and eventually got spit out my the system.
The truth is that we are way past the industrial revolution, and are getting into the information age. There is no reason in this world why people should half to struggle so hard to meet their needs. 15 minutes of productivity from the average person, should be more than enough productivity to meet their needs for a week. We do not have a technology problem, we have a people problem - or more importantly a freedom problem. While our technology and science have evolved quite a bit, our freedom hasn't very much at all in 150 years.
With that, I want to leave people a warning before I stop. This may seem unrelated, but the next attack on your freedom is going to come from people who think that the entire purpose and meaning of technology is to eternally manipulate the value of your currenty for unlimited growth and profit. People who didn't listen to my advice and even insulted me and humiliated me 10 years ago because they thought I was a fool career wise are very sorry now - I hope people don't act that this time when I give advice. The ammount of currency in circulation from 5 years ago has nearly doubbled, the amount of debt has nearly doubbled, has your pay doubbled? Really, people should very very serouusly consider owing precious metals, the US economy is going to go thru an "adjustment" like never before in it's history. People should also consider ownership of a weapon, and food storage.
In business 101, they teach one way to make a company very profitable is to have high bariers to entry, that way innovators and competitors can't squeese in and take away profit margins.
A favorite way to have high barriers to entry in the US is to lobby congressmen to impose environmental regulations. These regulations can easially be afforded by the big-guys who already have a strong positive cash flow, but they tend to kill and wipe out the small-guys who usually are the front-line innovators when it comes to clean technologies and alternate solutions.
So the truth is that you have these enviromentalists who play into imposing environemntal restrictions and who think what they're doing all these good deeds to the environment. But in practice, they are not only helping the big wasters to lock in their monopoly, but killing all the small innovators and solution providers while they are at it.
Moral, free markets are an end in themselves, because freedom and free will are. A cleaner environment is a consequence of free markets seeking out more efficient solutions, not an ends. Anyone who makes it an ends at the expense of economic freedom, is really just poising their environment.
Typically, the environmental movement takse as a premise of faith that we need very very large levels of government microregulation and manpulation of business, property, and commerce to protect the environment.
Typically, the annti copyright and patent movement simply wants the government to get out of the way more by not helping to impose restrictions on what people can copy and immitate.
The system is the problem, not the solution. Unless you have a self feeding media machine that is proped up by copyrights too, your method is guatanteed to get no legal results. Using defiance, and technology, and forcing the copyright system to collapse upon itself will be a far more effective use of resources. Same thing with software patents.
For physical patents, that will be a little harder, but new tchnology will eventually force their death too.
Re:Prior art is on the burden of the copyrighters
on
Source Code & Copyright
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Well, there may be public domain prior art, but I think you hit on a real point. People are trying to use all these tricks to get arround problems caused by copyrights. I think the real solution is to get rid of copyrights, not to try and play games with the system. The game playing will only have short term results.
No, the solution is to get rid of copyrights and patent monopolies all together. The system alreasy was "reasonable" when it started out, but we are where we are today because it is the very nature of these beasts to start out with a small amount of controll and baloon into a gargantuian murderous beast.
The people who are trying to impose copyrights and patnets understand that it's an all or nothing game, which is why they will never let a "reasonable" solution play out no matter what it is. Why is it that they can understand this, but it seems we can't?
I think the truth is that people instinctively know that copyrights (and patents esp on software) are harmfull, and that's why there are so many legal challanges to it and attempts to reform copyright law. But the truth is that the system is not going to change.
Rather than playing all sorts of legal tricks, I think people would be better served with outright defiance. Ignore copyrights no matter what, use technology to secure that right in the best way's possible, and eventually the system will come arround after it's totally obvious that they're irrelavent.
I know that the few examples of people they've attacked and left strung up to die were pretty harsh, but in practice the risks of being left behind in the information age and not getting practical use out of the code out there far exceed the risks of getting pounced by the legal system. In all truth, people are better off ignoring the legal witch hunt and just go on doing what they need to.
I can't count the number of times I've been critized for spelling by people who deserve twice the critizisim for not independently thinking. So which skill do you think will be more needed in the information age?
This isn't like the old days, when you had to type out a page with perfection on a manual typerwriter - and to redo it ment you had to thow the whole thing out and start from scratch. Frankly, obsessing to that level now is a waste of time. It also isn't like the old days when managers had secrataries to do that for them, and where a memo was a once per day thing to higher managment.
Really, if it's that important. I'll pass it thru a spell checker and a gramer checker. But this is everyday communication, and it is imperfect, people are imperfect, that is the way the human condition is. If only people obsessed about being true to their nature only a fraction as much as they do trying to look perfect to the outside world. We would actually be more perfect instead of looking more perfect.
What percentage of how many boxes run Linux, again?
It's not driven by the amount, but the uptake. Which for Linux , apache, firefox , etc is obviously very high
do you think IBM, to pick an example, is into OSS for their health? Or do you think, just maybe, they believe they'll make up lost software sales in service, maintenance, and support, and in the hardware needed to deploy those solutions?
You don't get it, this is the way the market is going wether it provides IBM optimum profit or not. IBM learnt that the hard way with OS2. The fact is that if all your competitors are reducing their costs because of OSS, then you had better too or get whats comming to you.
your thesis totally ignores any productivity and time-to-market gains generated by deploying OSS solutions.
And yours ignores the fact that most of the productivity gains had already been squeesed out by proprietary software. Those transitions to oss will not increase productivity, but only reduce costs, hence DEFLATIONARY!
That being the case, I think we can safely ignore the rest of your rant and their supposed macro-economic implications.
Do so at your own risk, but don't be supprised when gold breaks 1000/oz. Technology deflation is a well understood concept. The last time we had tech deflation this bad was in 1855, just before the civil war. Those plantation masters who thought that they could leverage inventions like the cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit were wrong. The media and software companies who think that they can leverage inventions like the internet to expand their copyright licensing for unlimited growth and profit, well? Well, all freaking information age hell is about to break loose.
The US is going thru technology deflation. In the past, a 1000 companies would have been required to buy over 2000 software packages at over 3000 each. Today, they just collaberate on an opensource software project, maybe add a few K to the pot here and there depending on their needs.
This is very good for the little guy who can now get literally millions of dollars worth of development for free, but the transition in the US economy will be very harsh. The drastic drops in cost and margin (along with Asian competition) will make it impossible to prop up the present levels of Americas debt. All this recent debt in housing is literally the worst thing they could have done after the dot com crash. The only way to stop a massive chain reaction of cascading debt default is to try and print up money to pay it off, but that is even worse than the housing debt. Because of technology deflation, printing up money will likely drive up the prices of commodities, but not pay - making the chances of default worse.
Moral, we would have saved ourselves a lot of hell if we had gold backed money that couldn't be printed up out of thin air, and if we didn't have copyrights that caused the distortion in the software and media industries to begin with.
But it's not just government debt, it is total debt and obligations in the US economy, and the fact that were going thru a technology and offshore service induced deflation - which means that there won't be the pay base to prop it up. When push comes to shove, there will only be two options, massive cascading defaults on debts or massive hyperinflation to put so much money in the economy so as to try and devalue the debt. (which will actually make the debt problem worse, but they don't know that yet) They will almost certainly try to choose inflation over depression, but they will end up getting both.
This is silly when we can purchase their services from overseas without the burdens of naturalization. That's the whole point of outsourcing: you can purchase services from overseas in fields where you use to have to hire locally or literally import the talent through immigration.
burdens of naturalization? It might be a burden on the applicants to do the paperwork, but not on society. The more free they are, the more empowered they are to get results.
IMHO, the economic fundamentals do not favor China and India making a smooth transition into the world economy. I think that both China and India will become a large part of the world economy someday, just not as soon as most people think.
First off, if you look at the infrsatructure of these countries, they are very small compaired to the size of infrastructure in the western world. Which I'm sure they will catch up, but infrastructure is expensive and the US has over 100 years up on them.
Second off, if you look at the political freedom rankings of these countries, many of them are in really bad shape. This is very important, because countries with political freedoms have outlets for the stress cuased by growth and change. China especially, could be explosive.
Third off, if you look at the economic freedom rankings of these countries. They are also in really bad shape. This is extremely important, because economic freedom allows peoples to exploit opportunities to create wealth and prosperity. I could really see a situation where all these cool technologies get developed all over the world, but they only get applied in productive ways in the free and western countries. In China, general tax rates are as high as 40%. (The US is pretty bad too, but already has a middle class(for now)) But there is no way that you can have high rates of sustained growth under those kind of taxes, because there is no way to build an economic middle class.
Fourth off, IMHO the economic shithole that the US is in is temporary. Currently the US has more debt than it can ever pay off, and is about ready to fall off a hyperinflationary debt cliff. However, once the financial system collapses, and they push the reset button, the path will be cleared for sustained growth. Half the government freebies will be dead, realestate will collapse and become reasonably priced, the debt will be offloaded, the currency will likely end up backed by something other than the good faith of the federal government, and taxes will be low. That combined with the higher level of economic and political freedoms will position the US very nicely. Hopefully, the US will also open the immigration flood gates, bringing intellignet people over here who will even create more jobs and oppertunity - getting more bang for the buck.
This is really another reason why copyrights and patents are so harmfull. The US has a big technology sector, but pretty soon the world's will be way bigger. By upholding copyrights and patents, we will eventually lock ourselves out from innovation and progress all over the world. IMHO, the copyright system is already dead and will probably formally be so betime it becomes an issue, the patent system though - I worry that it will be too late. Just like false physically coerced property rights like slavery in the industrial era only died after great violence, patents will likely die a hideous death.
When you dig past all the bs, the bottom line is that powerfull individuals in China are making choices that are evil, and powerfull individuals at Google (and Cisco, and Yahoo) are making choices to help them be evil. Everything else is just bs, red-herrings, excuses, and hiding behind governments and corporate identities - to disguise the facts.
Yeah, I'm sure there are all sorts of nice sounding reasons to support evil choices. There always is, but a nice sounding reason doesn't make a choice any less of a choice. So the bottom line is that either you support evil choices, or you don't and in doing so you are either going to make an evil choice or you are not.
Slashdot Mirror
May I suggest that they move their records out of the US and into the Bahamas, and re-incorporate there so they will not be obligated to show their search records to the US government.
The appropiate way to handle this is spend your resources creating a GPL'd implementation of the skype protocol, not on lawyers.
Do you think that Islamic exposure to the Internet, and the information age is causing culture shock in the Middle East. Surely it must be, it is causing a culture shock in the US even. How do they handle it? How are they reactiong? Do you think it's causing a backlash that relates to terrorisim?
There was once a person who said that 1 in a million odds happen 7 times a day in New York city. The same is true about this book. They use esoteric pattern searches with random perbutrations to prove that there are hidden phrases and words in historic documents. After billions of tries on computers, they are sure to find something - to where they can say "see theres a hidden message here". In truth, it is just another way of using statistics to lie.
I don't agree with your opinions about taking away my rights to the content I've created. Please let me do what I wish with my creations.
You don't have rights to controll content you've created and more than you have a right to controll the ocenways because you peed in the ocean with your piss. You might have privacy rights if you never releases content you created to the world, you might have contract rights if you made a 2 way binding agreement with everyone who came across content you created, you might have plagerisim rights if someone claims they created something when you really did. But sorry, there is no such things as content rights. It is also hypocritical, chances are 98% of the content value you have was given to you freely, now you turn arround and say society owes you to controll content?
Copyrights are anti freedom, anti business, anti propertyrights. They destroy culture, education, and reward anti trust behavior. They really have no place in the information age, and their death will be long overdue.
Professional writers, painters, musicians, etc., deserve to be compensated for their efforts. Copyright can be used to defend the little guy against the big bully. Therefore, copyright can stay.
There are millions of people who recieve compensation for their work every day without controlling a monopoly over their output. In some theories copyright can be used to defend the little guy, but in practice, that is never the case. The reality is that copyrights can't survive the information age, but instead of wineing about it, people should learn how to make money from content services and not content controlls.
The AC is right, the debate shouldn't be wether Google violated fair use or not, the debate should be: how can we get rid of this beast called "copyrights" that doesn't belong in the information age.
Apple runs iTunes. Disney produces some content. Serious risk of antitrust action.
Maybe so, but just look at Disney with their intellectually challenging content production, and Apple with their beautifull non proprietary hardware ;) Who can deny that these two companies truely deserve each other?
Some companies want to provide products or services that people want, need, and use. Other companies want to ram proprietary crap down peoples throat so they get a lock on the market. Would you like to gess what kind of attitude SONY has after their rootkit scandal, and Microsoft has after their backing of SCO? INHO, we need a non proprietary standard, not a "better" one.
You forgot some, the biggest regulations of all are copyrights and patents. Alot of times they have the effect of causing people to struggle, constantly reinventing the wheel and constantly causing people to be in a rats race to get the next invention so that a competitor doesn't patent it and lock everyone else out for 20 years.
It reminds me of a story I like to tell my peers. Back in 1990, I learnt how to use UNIX and Windows both at the same time. As time went on, I added to my UNIX skills while the next version of windows came out and had to relearn most of my windows skills from scratch. A few years later Linux came out, and I made the transition rather easially and my UNIX skills added onto it's value. (the same was true of my programming abilities too) And then a new version of Windows came out and once again I had to relearn most of my windows skills from scratch. As time went on, time and time again I added to my Linux skills while constantly relearning my windows skills from scratch. Then the dot.com crash happened, I got nailed hard, but when things started to pick up afterward - I recovered. Many of my friends who were windows experts never did.
At the time the only reason why I chose UNIX and then Linux was because it was less proprietary, and so allowed me more freedom and liberty to do what I want. The choice was highly morality driven. But as time went on that non proprietary nature created a foundation for me to build on while my peers who didn't buyinto those values constantly struggled on a treadmill to get somewhere and eventually got spit out my the system.
The truth is that we are way past the industrial revolution, and are getting into the information age. There is no reason in this world why people should half to struggle so hard to meet their needs. 15 minutes of productivity from the average person, should be more than enough productivity to meet their needs for a week. We do not have a technology problem, we have a people problem - or more importantly a freedom problem. While our technology and science have evolved quite a bit, our freedom hasn't very much at all in 150 years.
With that, I want to leave people a warning before I stop. This may seem unrelated, but the next attack on your freedom is going to come from people who think that the entire purpose and meaning of technology is to eternally manipulate the value of your currenty for unlimited growth and profit. People who didn't listen to my advice and even insulted me and humiliated me 10 years ago because they thought I was a fool career wise are very sorry now - I hope people don't act that this time when I give advice. The ammount of currency in circulation from 5 years ago has nearly doubbled, the amount of debt has nearly doubbled, has your pay doubbled? Really, people should very very serouusly consider owing precious metals, the US economy is going to go thru an "adjustment" like never before in it's history. People should also consider ownership of a weapon, and food storage.
In business 101, they teach one way to make a company very profitable is to have high bariers to entry, that way innovators and competitors can't squeese in and take away profit margins.
A favorite way to have high barriers to entry in the US is to lobby congressmen to impose environmental regulations. These regulations can easially be afforded by the big-guys who already have a strong positive cash flow, but they tend to kill and wipe out the small-guys who usually are the front-line innovators when it comes to clean technologies and alternate solutions.
So the truth is that you have these enviromentalists who play into imposing environemntal restrictions and who think what they're doing all these good deeds to the environment. But in practice, they are not only helping the big wasters to lock in their monopoly, but killing all the small innovators and solution providers while they are at it.
Moral, free markets are an end in themselves, because freedom and free will are. A cleaner environment is a consequence of free markets seeking out more efficient solutions, not an ends. Anyone who makes it an ends at the expense of economic freedom, is really just poising their environment.
Typically, the environmental movement takse as a premise of faith that we need very very large levels of government microregulation and manpulation of business, property, and commerce to protect the environment.
Typically, the annti copyright and patent movement simply wants the government to get out of the way more by not helping to impose restrictions on what people can copy and immitate.
The system is the problem, not the solution. Unless you have a self feeding media machine that is proped up by copyrights too, your method is guatanteed to get no legal results. Using defiance, and technology, and forcing the copyright system to collapse upon itself will be a far more effective use of resources. Same thing with software patents.
For physical patents, that will be a little harder, but new tchnology will eventually force their death too.
Well, there may be public domain prior art, but I think you hit on a real point. People are trying to use all these tricks to get arround problems caused by copyrights. I think the real solution is to get rid of copyrights, not to try and play games with the system. The game playing will only have short term results.
No, the solution is to get rid of copyrights and patent monopolies all together. The system alreasy was "reasonable" when it started out, but we are where we are today because it is the very nature of these beasts to start out with a small amount of controll and baloon into a gargantuian murderous beast.
The people who are trying to impose copyrights and patnets understand that it's an all or nothing game, which is why they will never let a "reasonable" solution play out no matter what it is. Why is it that they can understand this, but it seems we can't?
I think the truth is that people instinctively know that copyrights (and patents esp on software) are harmfull, and that's why there are so many legal challanges to it and attempts to reform copyright law. But the truth is that the system is not going to change.
Rather than playing all sorts of legal tricks, I think people would be better served with outright defiance. Ignore copyrights no matter what, use technology to secure that right in the best way's possible, and eventually the system will come arround after it's totally obvious that they're irrelavent.
I know that the few examples of people they've attacked and left strung up to die were pretty harsh, but in practice the risks of being left behind in the information age and not getting practical use out of the code out there far exceed the risks of getting pounced by the legal system. In all truth, people are better off ignoring the legal witch hunt and just go on doing what they need to.
I can't count the number of times I've been critized for spelling by people who deserve twice the critizisim for not independently thinking. So which skill do you think will be more needed in the information age?
This isn't like the old days, when you had to type out a page with perfection on a manual typerwriter - and to redo it ment you had to thow the whole thing out and start from scratch. Frankly, obsessing to that level now is a waste of time. It also isn't like the old days when managers had secrataries to do that for them, and where a memo was a once per day thing to higher managment.
Really, if it's that important. I'll pass it thru a spell checker and a gramer checker. But this is everyday communication, and it is imperfect, people are imperfect, that is the way the human condition is. If only people obsessed about being true to their nature only a fraction as much as they do trying to look perfect to the outside world. We would actually be more perfect instead of looking more perfect.
You're probably right, but It'd sure be something to get sued in Court over a warp drive patnet.
What percentage of how many boxes run Linux, again?
It's not driven by the amount, but the uptake. Which for Linux , apache, firefox , etc is obviously very high
do you think IBM, to pick an example, is into OSS for their health? Or do you think, just maybe, they believe they'll make up lost software sales in service, maintenance, and support, and in the hardware needed to deploy those solutions?
You don't get it, this is the way the market is going wether it provides IBM optimum profit or not. IBM learnt that the hard way with OS2. The fact is that if all your competitors are reducing their costs because of OSS, then you had better too or get whats comming to you.
your thesis totally ignores any productivity and time-to-market gains generated by deploying OSS solutions.
And yours ignores the fact that most of the productivity gains had already been squeesed out by proprietary software. Those transitions to oss will not increase productivity, but only reduce costs, hence DEFLATIONARY!
That being the case, I think we can safely ignore the rest of your rant and their supposed macro-economic implications.
Do so at your own risk, but don't be supprised when gold breaks 1000/oz. Technology deflation is a well understood concept. The last time we had tech deflation this bad was in 1855, just before the civil war. Those plantation masters who thought that they could leverage inventions like the cotton-gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit were wrong. The media and software companies who think that they can leverage inventions like the internet to expand their copyright licensing for unlimited growth and profit, well? Well, all freaking information age hell is about to break loose.
.... that way we won't get harrassed with frivolous lawsuits when it becomes a reality 20 years + down the road.
Essay: A Violent Protest Against Patents
The US is going thru technology deflation. In the past, a 1000 companies would have been required to buy over 2000 software packages at over 3000 each. Today, they just collaberate on an opensource software project, maybe add a few K to the pot here and there depending on their needs.
This is very good for the little guy who can now get literally millions of dollars worth of development for free, but the transition in the US economy will be very harsh. The drastic drops in cost and margin (along with Asian competition) will make it impossible to prop up the present levels of Americas debt. All this recent debt in housing is literally the worst thing they could have done after the dot com crash. The only way to stop a massive chain reaction of cascading debt default is to try and print up money to pay it off, but that is even worse than the housing debt. Because of technology deflation, printing up money will likely drive up the prices of commodities, but not pay - making the chances of default worse.
Moral, we would have saved ourselves a lot of hell if we had gold backed money that couldn't be printed up out of thin air, and if we didn't have copyrights that caused the distortion in the software and media industries to begin with.
Back up both of these arguments (the necessity of paying off the national debt and why we're on the brink of hyperinflation) with facts.
http://mwhodges.home.att.net/debt.htm
But it's not just government debt, it is total debt and obligations in the US economy, and the fact that were going thru a technology and offshore service induced deflation - which means that there won't be the pay base to prop it up. When push comes to shove, there will only be two options, massive cascading defaults on debts or massive hyperinflation to put so much money in the economy so as to try and devalue the debt. (which will actually make the debt problem worse, but they don't know that yet) They will almost certainly try to choose inflation over depression, but they will end up getting both.
This is silly when we can purchase their services from overseas without the burdens of naturalization. That's the whole point of outsourcing: you can purchase services from overseas in fields where you use to have to hire locally or literally import the talent through immigration.
burdens of naturalization? It might be a burden on the applicants to do the paperwork, but not on society. The more free they are, the more empowered they are to get results.
IMHO, the economic fundamentals do not favor China and India making a smooth transition into the world economy. I think that both China and India will become a large part of the world economy someday, just not as soon as most people think.
First off, if you look at the infrsatructure of these countries, they are very small compaired to the size of infrastructure in the western world. Which I'm sure they will catch up, but infrastructure is expensive and the US has over 100 years up on them.
Second off, if you look at the political freedom rankings of these countries, many of them are in really bad shape. This is very important, because countries with political freedoms have outlets for the stress cuased by growth and change. China especially, could be explosive.
Third off, if you look at the economic freedom rankings of these countries. They are also in really bad shape. This is extremely important, because economic freedom allows peoples to exploit opportunities to create wealth and prosperity. I could really see a situation where all these cool technologies get developed all over the world, but they only get applied in productive ways in the free and western countries. In China, general tax rates are as high as 40%. (The US is pretty bad too, but already has a middle class(for now)) But there is no way that you can have high rates of sustained growth under those kind of taxes, because there is no way to build an economic middle class.
Fourth off, IMHO the economic shithole that the US is in is temporary. Currently the US has more debt than it can ever pay off, and is about ready to fall off a hyperinflationary debt cliff. However, once the financial system collapses, and they push the reset button, the path will be cleared for sustained growth. Half the government freebies will be dead, realestate will collapse and become reasonably priced, the debt will be offloaded, the currency will likely end up backed by something other than the good faith of the federal government, and taxes will be low. That combined with the higher level of economic and political freedoms will position the US very nicely. Hopefully, the US will also open the immigration flood gates, bringing intellignet people over here who will even create more jobs and oppertunity - getting more bang for the buck.
This is really another reason why copyrights and patents are so harmfull. The US has a big technology sector, but pretty soon the world's will be way bigger. By upholding copyrights and patents, we will eventually lock ourselves out from innovation and progress all over the world. IMHO, the copyright system is already dead and will probably formally be so betime it becomes an issue, the patent system though - I worry that it will be too late. Just like false physically coerced property rights like slavery in the industrial era only died after great violence, patents will likely die a hideous death.
When you dig past all the bs, the bottom line is that powerfull individuals in China are making choices that are evil, and powerfull individuals at Google (and Cisco, and Yahoo) are making choices to help them be evil. Everything else is just bs, red-herrings, excuses, and hiding behind governments and corporate identities - to disguise the facts.
Yeah, I'm sure there are all sorts of nice sounding reasons to support evil choices. There always is, but a nice sounding reason doesn't make a choice any less of a choice. So the bottom line is that either you support evil choices, or you don't and in doing so you are either going to make an evil choice or you are not.