Well, that's sort of the point. Anyone who thinks that this is an argument of wether oil will run out or not completely doesn't get it.
Peak oil has nothing to do with limited resources (even though they are) and everything to do with implementing political controlls so that big government influence can "save" society from their "barbaric" selves. When the price of oil rips thru the roof in these next few years, the last thing in the universe that they would want you to think is that it's the governments fault for screwing up the dollar.
Almost every part of your post is wrong. The US government's debt (Federal debt only) is about 40% of US GDP. Compare this to countries like Japan which are well over 100%.
I didn't say the US government, even though their debt is nice and high too. It's the total debt in the US economy vs what the economy puts out and economic growth. (not to mention unfunded promises)
Gold, historically has underperformed any other asset class. Over the last 200 years. Over the last 50 years. And over the last 10 years. Gold is traditionally seen as a good inflation hedge, for obvious reasons, but it's not a good long term investment.
It mostly has. And that is a very bullish argument for gold, because once it starts to get remonitized - the catch-up will be enormous.
The US government will never resort to seignorage (printing of money) as you seem to suggest. Any macroeconomist knows this is a recipe for disaster.
There are 270 trillion with a T in outstanding derivative contracts, they can not afford a cascading default at any cost. They will monatize, there is no way arround it.
Compare, by the way, the current debt load as a fraction of GDP to that during WWII - it was well over 100% by the end of WWII, vs. ~60% now (including all levels of government). Also remember that because of nominal (and real) GDP growth, this fraction changes over time.
With WW2 most the investment went into infrastructure, the dollar was backed with precious metals, and the US wasn't experiencing technology deflation. This "business cycle" most of the debt went into re-fi's, the dollar is backed by nothing, and the information age has created a very strong technology deflation - the worst since the invention of the cotton-gin and the railroads.
Anyway, what you are predicting is a complete collapse of sound management of the US economy. I sincerely doubt this will happen in our lifetimes. Stagnation, maybe, inflation, at times, boom and bust cycles, sure, but your prediction is completely alarmist and I see no justification for it
I am not calling for a collapse of the US economy, but I am calling for a collapse of the dollar, which will likely cause some suvere pain for a while in the US economy too. In fact, it is the US economy making the transition to the information age forcing the death of the dollar and the re-monitisation of gold. Of course, you will have pelnty of warning before that happens. Gold will probably go to about 680 this year, 1600 within a year or two after, stabilize for a while, then head up north of $4000 and seal the fate of the dollar.
Well, back in 95 they said I was a kook when I said that Linux was going to take over the marketplace, and I bet my career on that (dumping SCO). They lauged and even mocked me. Implied that I was stupid and throwing away my career, but I was so right and they were so wrong. And it brought me a lot of success and opportunity while many of them fell on their faces and became career loosers. But ironcally my success did not bring me joy, because I didn't do it to prove that they were loosers and I was a winner, or to have just another stupid trivia debate - I did it to try and convey some values, understanding, to share some depth, to be sociable. My point is that I am trying to say something that is way beyond price prediction of a stupid yellow metal. The fed is controlling people and lying to people about the value of their money in a way that is unjust and can not and will not survive the information age any more than the unjustices of the slave plantation system could survive the industrial revolution. Once the concept of justice is in place, then everything else is just connecting the dots.
Forget trying to analize companies for optimum performance. For real performance dump the whole batch and buy precious metals because the fact is that the US economy has more debt than can ever be paid off at face value. IMHO, gold is pratically guaranteed to outperform every investmant class out there.
Seriously, just watch what happens when the fed decides to print up money to try and stall off a cascading credit collapse. They will print up some, but that will make things worse because it will drive up costs without driving up pay or driving down personal debt. So they will print up more, and that will make things more worse for the same reasons, and so on. When it is all over, costs will likely be 10 x higher while pay stas about the same. I woulnd't be supprised if the dollar stopped being a currency.
In all fairness, the US openly and actively participates in content Censorship. That is, copyright controlls. While it may not seem like censorship, the fact is that there is no technology in existence that can automatically distinguish between free spech content and copyright content. In the information age, you can not have individuals or corporations controlling media content chanels to the end user unless they will also have the power to controll speech content.
For those who don't think this is a possibility, governments (blacks law dictionary) and religions (think scientology) and corporations (think diebold) already routinely try to use copyright controlls to controll speech, research, and opinions. Unless society kills copyright, this problem will only grow exponentially worse.
INHO, copyrights are some of the biggest censorship tools ever created. It is hypocritical to point to China when we have such a huge gaping problem ourselves.
I half to admit that they always got me an interview, and always got me a job, but the few times I've had a chance to see the info they presented to my prospective employer - I wouldn't have even recoginized that it was talking about me. What was even funnier is that I would get the job thinking that I am doomed when they find out about all the bullshit that was spoonfed to them, but instead they're impressed - cause I guess they were expecting bullshit, but then actually got some substance instead. Go figure?
It seems to me that if people from foriegn lands called in death threats and bomb threats to companies like yahoo where it might not be illegal in a far away foriegn land, yahoo would be outraged and they wouldn't take that kind of threat to their security. But if they turn in people who literally get tossed in jail for 40 years for free press, then it's just business as usual - and they are acting within the laws of the countries they do business in.
(obviously you cannot buy your own debt with the money you print)
Sure you can. After all, the bonds are promises to pay in dollars and not gold. Of course don't be suprised if it causes instant inflation and instant dollar dumping. In fact, some have argued that it is already happening. Just as China stopped buying more bonds at auction causing markets to get really nervous, some mysterious account in the Cyamans started buying billions and billions worth of US treasuries at auction.
Has anyone else noticed how all these companies are starting to have troubble. Gateway, SGI, even GM and Ford.
IMHO, the problem is that the US economy has more debt than it can pay off at face value so this is just the beginning. What will most likely happen is that the fed will monitize some debts in order to prevent massive bankruptcies. But it will make the problem worse, because watering down the value of the money will drive up commodity prices like gas and food, but it likely won't drive up pay. So people will have the same debts, but costs that are several times higher. This will cause more bankruptcies, which will lead to more monitization, which will lead to more bankruptcies and so on in a vicious cycle.
It seems to me that these next few years will be hell. Also, I think the dollar is doomed as a global reserve currency, and I wouldn't be suprised if the dollar ceased to be a currency at all. Put extra money into precious metals.
... but it works in the real world. It is showing people that they can control the level of copyright protection of their works...
But it doesn't work in the real world. That's why we are where we are today. Even in cases where the licenses are reasonable, things will grow out of controll for the exact same reasons that copyrights grew out of controll. Permitting the controll of content incentivizes behavior that is expansionary and unproductive and creative commons does nothing to change this.
Slavery? Come on.
Woah, where are you getting off at? Compairing dying systems in the industrial revolution and the information age is not the same as saying slavery=copyright.
Well, when all was said and done - we all know how slavery ended up too. Eventually, even those who wanted a compromise had no choice but to murder the slavery system. It remains to be seen wether Lessig will follow that route, or end up following the destiny of the cooperationalist party.
(the cooperationalist party was a political movement in the 1840s that tried to force a compromise between the slave states and the free states that would keep the plantation system in tact... they failed)
And what people like you don't understand is that it is entirely right to demand that people get compensated for work they do and when you copy their creative output you are acting immorally.
Read the constitution. That's not what copyrights exist for. And nobody is owed compensation for labor - that is so knee-jerk. Maybe I work my fingers to the bone building a mud statue in your front yard without you permission. Maybe I even build it in my front yard. Nobody owes me anything, no matter how hard I worked on it. If it was that important to me, then I should have secured a payment for service beforehand.
Slavery is bad partly because work that they produced is not owned by them. So what you are proposing is make artists, writers and software developers your slave.
That is also knee-jerk. I'm not forcing anyone to produce something for me. They are not my slave. If they didn't get paid, they should consider that as the punishment they get for trying to controll content and not offering their skills as a service.
As society enters the information age, I think that any type of controll over information will be lost or change will be forced. So while I think that software patents must go first, I think hardware patents are by far more evil.
This is becuase software patents are about controlling information, but hardware patnets are about physical controll. To controll information often requires BS and deception, but to controll physically often requires physical coercion and violence.
Just as the false property of slavery was destined to end in a violent civil war as those who "owned" slaves lost controll, physical patents brought to their logical conclusion will result in the violent death of billions as society enters into the replication age and physical creation becomes more and more imposible to controll for the sake of monopolizing profit. In some ways we are already seeing a warm up. Millions in africa die of AIDS because access to generics are forbidden, millions of elderly are strongly pressured into using drugs which may lock in markets, but have all sorts of strange hidden side effects because the natural alternatives can't be patented. Safety devices on cars don't get installed causing 1000s of unneded deaths per year because other auto companies own the patent and won't let it be used. Billions and billions of incompatable parts and pieces to appliances that have no need to be incompatable except for patents. (and billions of uneeded enviromental waste because of it). The examples go on and on...
During the 1850's there were all these groups that wanted to work out a friendly solution so that the slave states could get along with the free states. Rules to be nicer to slaves, shorter slave terms, more clearly defined boundaries, and so on and so on. Well they didn't get it, it was an all or nothing game. The very nature of the beast was coercive and restrictive in a way that could not survive the industrial revolution.
Well today, there are people who want a "compromise" with the copyright system. A shorter term here, a nicer enforcement there, more controll to the original author here, and so on and so on. What these people don't understand that the very nature of beast centers arround coercing how people can use and manipulate information at their disposal - the anti thesis of the information age. The only kind of copyright that can survive the information age, is one that can not be enforced.
Instead of crying about that, or clinging to old ways, what people need to do is learn how to make money from content services and not from content controll.
1) the economy: the government is lying to us about the value of our money and pretending that the economy can pay off all its debt when it can't. Even worse, when they try to print money to pay it off - they will drive up prices, but not income or pay - so the debt problem will become worse. Got Gold?
2) copyrights and patnets - and all the industries that bend you over and butter you up into using proprietary products. While there are always these glossy, we'll save your life and make it sooo perfect, if you let us sucker you into using our crap. In the long run, those who choose the proprietary route for products and carrers are screwed 90% of the time. Even worse are artists and writers who actually believe that copyrights can make them money. They are screwed 99.9% of the time.
3) social security - if you believe that SSI is going to relieve more than 1% of your retirement needs, then I have brooklyen bridge shares that I need to sell you.
4) public education - right now the state of CA spends up to 11K per student. Even if you discounted every special needs student for 100,000 bucks - the cost per student is still more than 90% of best private prep schools in the state. Why do the public school teachers have more students in private schools than parents in any other profession? Why do many high quality private college prep boarding schools cost less than gehto high?
5) social medicine - please, don't make me go there.
No he doesn't. Microsoft has more coppied software than any other commercial company on the planet. Even the very word "piracy" and others like "intellectual property" is loaded and a lie. Yeah... I guess they have no inventive to monopolize things.
Actually, they're already paying for that to the USPS...
Unfortunately, most 4th class mail in the US is subsidized by higher prices on first class mail. So chances are, *you* are the one paying to ship all those CD's.
First off. I really hate patents. See my Violent Protest Against Patents. But the reality is that even if you hate patents, and despize the thought of using them, you (or your company) may need to get them to hold back sue happy people and force your way into cross licencing agreements so that you can use other large companies patnets without getting sued. In fact, that's why I wrote it. I felt like I forced into the patent system in order to be part of the technology revolution. But I wasn't going to eat the bullshit along with it.
There is a big difference between stealing posessions vs stealing a sale from a granted monopoly. I'm not foring anyone to invent anything, but now since they did - they say that it's their property and as such are entitled to control how others apply that knowledge. Like salvery, it is not about property, but control using thinly veiled justifications.
Back then, they said slavery was a "property right" as they participated brutal oppression and controll. Today they say patents are a "property right" - as they lock out things like AIDS medication as millions needlessly die arround the world. So how is the first form of controll any less brutal than the other.
"the wealth of America is built on this...", "I have no incentive...", "it's a property","nobody will do ABC without it...", we've herd all this poor logic before. I wonder, how many dead people will it take this time to change peoples minds? For those who can still accept patents, think carefully about that answer.
You're assuming that the UK powers that be want intellignet people. They don't. What they want is unquestioning masses who blindly accept government social programs, centralized monitary policy, and poor government finance.
I dislike his basic beliefs. Contrary to popular belief, he does not have a special vision other then create proprietary stuff that looks pretty so a to sucker people into buying it. He is different in that he understands that his role is that of a PR firm and not a technology company, but IMHO, that is not a good thing.
Maybe his "audience" does't mind being suckered into costly proprietary stuff that constantly becomes obsolete, but in the big picture he is really a drain. Even worse, he is a bigger distraction to the things in technology that matter - like freedom from controll. A concept the pretty proprietary world may never grasp.
But it REALLY IS different this time
on
The New Boom
·
· Score: 1
One thing I learnt from the last bubble (and having read up about other ones in history) people always say "It's different this time..."
Last time we were suffering a credit induced bubble. With the dot.com boom, the fed saw an opportunity to loan out tones of money and get away with it without causing hyperinflation or default because of increased productivity and technology infrastructure. When they turned off the loan faucet, it caused an credit collapse within months and brought down the entire dot.com bubble with it.
This time we are suffering a "deflationary boom". This hasn't happened since the mid 1800's. In a deflationary boom, real (inflation adjusted manufacturing and service) costs keep going down because of increased efficiency, outsourcing, offshoring, etc... The problem is that:
a) this is killing the profit margins of industries across the board
b) this is killing any real demand for employment
The worst part is that the Fed is treating it like a deflation caused by a shortage of credit (1929), rather than a deflation caused by efficiency and technology improvement (1860). By loaning out tons of cheap money during the housing boom, they got everyone into long term fixed payments - which is the worst thing they could do, because now people have more debt than they can pay off as the prospects for more cash are getting slim.
What I think is going to happen is that the Fed is going to try and print up more money to water down the value of the dollar so that the economy can afford all it's debt. However, when they do that peoples pay will not adjust to relieve their debt because the ongoing deflation will keep it down. Even worse, while peoples pay won't go up, the price of commodities and needs will - making peoples situation much worse. Translation: it is different this time... all freakin hell is going to break loose.
I think the problem here isn't more women in tech - it is a liberal hatred of men and women. They try to make men act more feminine, and try to make women act more masculine rather than just accepting that men and women are different, should be different, and complement each other rather than compete with each other. IMHO, there are too many political interests that absolutely hate that because it leads to a stable family system, and that leads to less dependence on welfare, public freebies, and government programs.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, that's sort of the point. Anyone who thinks that this is an argument of wether oil will run out or not completely doesn't get it.
Peak oil has nothing to do with limited resources (even though they are) and everything to do with implementing political controlls so that big government influence can "save" society from their "barbaric" selves. When the price of oil rips thru the roof in these next few years, the last thing in the universe that they would want you to think is that it's the governments fault for screwing up the dollar.
Almost every part of your post is wrong. The US government's debt (Federal debt only) is about 40% of US GDP. Compare this to countries like Japan which are well over 100%.
I didn't say the US government, even though their debt is nice and high too. It's the total debt in the US economy vs what the economy puts out and economic growth. (not to mention unfunded promises)
Gold, historically has underperformed any other asset class. Over the last 200 years. Over the last 50 years. And over the last 10 years. Gold is traditionally seen as a good inflation hedge, for obvious reasons, but it's not a good long term investment.
It mostly has. And that is a very bullish argument for gold, because once it starts to get remonitized - the catch-up will be enormous.
The US government will never resort to seignorage (printing of money) as you seem to suggest. Any macroeconomist knows this is a recipe for disaster.
There are 270 trillion with a T in outstanding derivative contracts, they can not afford a cascading default at any cost. They will monatize, there is no way arround it.
Compare, by the way, the current debt load as a fraction of GDP to that during WWII - it was well over 100% by the end of WWII, vs. ~60% now (including all levels of government). Also remember that because of nominal (and real) GDP growth, this fraction changes over time.
With WW2 most the investment went into infrastructure, the dollar was backed with precious metals, and the US wasn't experiencing technology deflation. This "business cycle" most of the debt went into re-fi's, the dollar is backed by nothing, and the information age has created a very strong technology deflation - the worst since the invention of the cotton-gin and the railroads.
Anyway, what you are predicting is a complete collapse of sound management of the US economy. I sincerely doubt this will happen in our lifetimes. Stagnation, maybe, inflation, at times, boom and bust cycles, sure, but your prediction is completely alarmist and I see no justification for it
I am not calling for a collapse of the US economy, but I am calling for a collapse of the dollar, which will likely cause some suvere pain for a while in the US economy too. In fact, it is the US economy making the transition to the information age forcing the death of the dollar and the re-monitisation of gold. Of course, you will have pelnty of warning before that happens. Gold will probably go to about 680 this year, 1600 within a year or two after, stabilize for a while, then head up north of $4000 and seal the fate of the dollar.
Well, back in 95 they said I was a kook when I said that Linux was going to take over the marketplace, and I bet my career on that (dumping SCO). They lauged and even mocked me. Implied that I was stupid and throwing away my career, but I was so right and they were so wrong. And it brought me a lot of success and opportunity while many of them fell on their faces and became career loosers. But ironcally my success did not bring me joy, because I didn't do it to prove that they were loosers and I was a winner, or to have just another stupid trivia debate - I did it to try and convey some values, understanding, to share some depth, to be sociable. My point is that I am trying to say something that is way beyond price prediction of a stupid yellow metal. The fed is controlling people and lying to people about the value of their money in a way that is unjust and can not and will not survive the information age any more than the unjustices of the slave plantation system could survive the industrial revolution. Once the concept of justice is in place, then everything else is just connecting the dots.
Forget trying to analize companies for optimum performance. For real performance dump the whole batch and buy precious metals because the fact is that the US economy has more debt than can ever be paid off at face value. IMHO, gold is pratically guaranteed to outperform every investmant class out there.
Seriously, just watch what happens when the fed decides to print up money to try and stall off a cascading credit collapse. They will print up some, but that will make things worse because it will drive up costs without driving up pay or driving down personal debt. So they will print up more, and that will make things more worse for the same reasons, and so on. When it is all over, costs will likely be 10 x higher while pay stas about the same. I woulnd't be supprised if the dollar stopped being a currency.
In all fairness, the US openly and actively participates in content Censorship. That is, copyright controlls. While it may not seem like censorship, the fact is that there is no technology in existence that can automatically distinguish between free spech content and copyright content. In the information age, you can not have individuals or corporations controlling media content chanels to the end user unless they will also have the power to controll speech content.
For those who don't think this is a possibility, governments (blacks law dictionary) and religions (think scientology) and corporations (think diebold) already routinely try to use copyright controlls to controll speech, research, and opinions. Unless society kills copyright, this problem will only grow exponentially worse.
INHO, copyrights are some of the biggest censorship tools ever created. It is hypocritical to point to China when we have such a huge gaping problem ourselves.
I half to admit that they always got me an interview, and always got me a job, but the few times I've had a chance to see the info they presented to my prospective employer - I wouldn't have even recoginized that it was talking about me. What was even funnier is that I would get the job thinking that I am doomed when they find out about all the bullshit that was spoonfed to them, but instead they're impressed - cause I guess they were expecting bullshit, but then actually got some substance instead. Go figure?
It seems to me that if people from foriegn lands called in death threats and bomb threats to companies like yahoo where it might not be illegal in a far away foriegn land, yahoo would be outraged and they wouldn't take that kind of threat to their security. But if they turn in people who literally get tossed in jail for 40 years for free press, then it's just business as usual - and they are acting within the laws of the countries they do business in.
(obviously you cannot buy your own debt with the money you print)
Sure you can. After all, the bonds are promises to pay in dollars and not gold. Of course don't be suprised if it causes instant inflation and instant dollar dumping. In fact, some have argued that it is already happening. Just as China stopped buying more bonds at auction causing markets to get really nervous, some mysterious account in the Cyamans started buying billions and billions worth of US treasuries at auction.
Has anyone else noticed how all these companies are starting to have troubble. Gateway, SGI, even GM and Ford.
IMHO, the problem is that the US economy has more debt than it can pay off at face value so this is just the beginning. What will most likely happen is that the fed will monitize some debts in order to prevent massive bankruptcies. But it will make the problem worse, because watering down the value of the money will drive up commodity prices like gas and food, but it likely won't drive up pay. So people will have the same debts, but costs that are several times higher. This will cause more bankruptcies, which will lead to more monitization, which will lead to more bankruptcies and so on in a vicious cycle.
It seems to me that these next few years will be hell. Also, I think the dollar is doomed as a global reserve currency, and I wouldn't be suprised if the dollar ceased to be a currency at all. Put extra money into precious metals.
I think the reality is that Microsoft can't do this without also acknowledging that copyrights and patents retard innovation.
But it doesn't work in the real world. That's why we are where we are today. Even in cases where the licenses are reasonable, things will grow out of controll for the exact same reasons that copyrights grew out of controll. Permitting the controll of content incentivizes behavior that is expansionary and unproductive and creative commons does nothing to change this.
Slavery? Come on.
Woah, where are you getting off at? Compairing dying systems in the industrial revolution and the information age is not the same as saying slavery=copyright.
Well, when all was said and done - we all know how slavery ended up too. Eventually, even those who wanted a compromise had no choice but to murder the slavery system. It remains to be seen wether Lessig will follow that route, or end up following the destiny of the cooperationalist party.
(the cooperationalist party was a political movement in the 1840s that tried to force a compromise between the slave states and the free states that would keep the plantation system in tact
And what people like you don't understand is that it is entirely right to demand that people get compensated for work they do and when you copy their creative output you are acting immorally.
Read the constitution. That's not what copyrights exist for. And nobody is owed compensation for labor - that is so knee-jerk. Maybe I work my fingers to the bone building a mud statue in your front yard without you permission. Maybe I even build it in my front yard. Nobody owes me anything, no matter how hard I worked on it. If it was that important to me, then I should have secured a payment for service beforehand.
Slavery is bad partly because work that they produced is not owned by them. So what you are proposing is make artists, writers and software developers your slave.
That is also knee-jerk. I'm not forcing anyone to produce something for me. They are not my slave. If they didn't get paid, they should consider that as the punishment they get for trying to controll content and not offering their skills as a service.
As society enters the information age, I think that any type of controll over information will be lost or change will be forced. So while I think that software patents must go first, I think hardware patents are by far more evil.
This is becuase software patents are about controlling information, but hardware patnets are about physical controll. To controll information often requires BS and deception, but to controll physically often requires physical coercion and violence.
Just as the false property of slavery was destined to end in a violent civil war as those who "owned" slaves lost controll, physical patents brought to their logical conclusion will result in the violent death of billions as society enters into the replication age and physical creation becomes more and more imposible to controll for the sake of monopolizing profit. In some ways we are already seeing a warm up. Millions in africa die of AIDS because access to generics are forbidden, millions of elderly are strongly pressured into using drugs which may lock in markets, but have all sorts of strange hidden side effects because the natural alternatives can't be patented. Safety devices on cars don't get installed causing 1000s of unneded deaths per year because other auto companies own the patent and won't let it be used. Billions and billions of incompatable parts and pieces to appliances that have no need to be incompatable except for patents. (and billions of uneeded enviromental waste because of it). The examples go on and on...
In a way, history is repeating itself.
During the 1850's there were all these groups that wanted to work out a friendly solution so that the slave states could get along with the free states. Rules to be nicer to slaves, shorter slave terms, more clearly defined boundaries, and so on and so on. Well they didn't get it, it was an all or nothing game. The very nature of the beast was coercive and restrictive in a way that could not survive the industrial revolution.
Well today, there are people who want a "compromise" with the copyright system. A shorter term here, a nicer enforcement there, more controll to the original author here, and so on and so on. What these people don't understand that the very nature of beast centers arround coercing how people can use and manipulate information at their disposal - the anti thesis of the information age. The only kind of copyright that can survive the information age, is one that can not be enforced.
Instead of crying about that, or clinging to old ways, what people need to do is learn how to make money from content services and not from content controll.
1) the economy: the government is lying to us about the value of our money and pretending that the economy can pay off all its debt when it can't. Even worse, when they try to print money to pay it off - they will drive up prices, but not income or pay - so the debt problem will become worse. Got Gold?
2) copyrights and patnets - and all the industries that bend you over and butter you up into using proprietary products. While there are always these glossy, we'll save your life and make it sooo perfect, if you let us sucker you into using our crap. In the long run, those who choose the proprietary route for products and carrers are screwed 90% of the time. Even worse are artists and writers who actually believe that copyrights can make them money. They are screwed 99.9% of the time.
3) social security - if you believe that SSI is going to relieve more than 1% of your retirement needs, then I have brooklyen bridge shares that I need to sell you.
4) public education - right now the state of CA spends up to 11K per student. Even if you discounted every special needs student for 100,000 bucks - the cost per student is still more than 90% of best private prep schools in the state. Why do the public school teachers have more students in private schools than parents in any other profession? Why do many high quality private college prep boarding schools cost less than gehto high?
5) social medicine - please, don't make me go there.
No he doesn't. Microsoft has more coppied software than any other commercial company on the planet. Even the very word "piracy" and others like "intellectual property" is loaded and a lie. Yeah... I guess they have no inventive to monopolize things.
See essay: Straight Talk About Copyrights
Actually, they're already paying for that to the USPS...
Unfortunately, most 4th class mail in the US is subsidized by higher prices on first class mail. So chances are, *you* are the one paying to ship all those CD's.
First off. I really hate patents. See my Violent Protest Against Patents. But the reality is that even if you hate patents, and despize the thought of using them, you (or your company) may need to get them to hold back sue happy people and force your way into cross licencing agreements so that you can use other large companies patnets without getting sued. In fact, that's why I wrote it. I felt like I forced into the patent system in order to be part of the technology revolution. But I wasn't going to eat the bullshit along with it.
There is a big difference between stealing posessions vs stealing a sale from a granted monopoly. I'm not foring anyone to invent anything, but now since they did - they say that it's their property and as such are entitled to control how others apply that knowledge. Like salvery, it is not about property, but control using thinly veiled justifications.
As an added bonus, it also translates DRM to spyware.
Back then, they said slavery was a "property right" as they participated brutal oppression and controll. Today they say patents are a "property right" - as they lock out things like AIDS medication as millions needlessly die arround the world. So how is the first form of controll any less brutal than the other.
...", "it's a property" ,"nobody will do ABC without it...", we've herd all this poor logic before. I wonder, how many dead people will it take this time to change peoples minds? For those who can still accept patents, think carefully about that answer.
"the wealth of America is built on this...", "I have no incentive
You're assuming that the UK powers that be want intellignet people. They don't. What they want is unquestioning masses who blindly accept government social programs, centralized monitary policy, and poor government finance.
I dislike his basic beliefs. Contrary to popular belief, he does not have a special vision other then create proprietary stuff that looks pretty so a to sucker people into buying it. He is different in that he understands that his role is that of a PR firm and not a technology company, but IMHO, that is not a good thing.
Maybe his "audience" does't mind being suckered into costly proprietary stuff that constantly becomes obsolete, but in the big picture he is really a drain. Even worse, he is a bigger distraction to the things in technology that matter - like freedom from controll. A concept the pretty proprietary world may never grasp.
One thing I learnt from the last bubble (and having read up about other ones in history) people always say "It's different this time..."
Last time we were suffering a credit induced bubble. With the dot.com boom, the fed saw an opportunity to loan out tones of money and get away with it without causing hyperinflation or default because of increased productivity and technology infrastructure. When they turned off the loan faucet, it caused an credit collapse within months and brought down the entire dot.com bubble with it.
This time we are suffering a "deflationary boom". This hasn't happened since the mid 1800's. In a deflationary boom, real (inflation adjusted manufacturing and service) costs keep going down because of increased efficiency, outsourcing, offshoring, etc... The problem is that:
a) this is killing the profit margins of industries across the board
b) this is killing any real demand for employment
The worst part is that the Fed is treating it like a deflation caused by a shortage of credit (1929), rather than a deflation caused by efficiency and technology improvement (1860). By loaning out tons of cheap money during the housing boom, they got everyone into long term fixed payments - which is the worst thing they could do, because now people have more debt than they can pay off as the prospects for more cash are getting slim.
What I think is going to happen is that the Fed is going to try and print up more money to water down the value of the dollar so that the economy can afford all it's debt. However, when they do that peoples pay will not adjust to relieve their debt because the ongoing deflation will keep it down. Even worse, while peoples pay won't go up, the price of commodities and needs will - making peoples situation much worse. Translation: it is different this time ... all freakin hell is going to break loose.
I think the problem here isn't more women in tech - it is a liberal hatred of men and women. They try to make men act more feminine, and try to make women act more masculine rather than just accepting that men and women are different, should be different, and complement each other rather than compete with each other. IMHO, there are too many political interests that absolutely hate that because it leads to a stable family system, and that leads to less dependence on welfare, public freebies, and government programs.