I think it's time for a paradigm change when it comes to secret information.
How about making all information available freely with the expectation that free coumtries and societies will be able to make better use of it than tyrrinical centralized ones. It would also do a lot to keep governments honest, transparent, and accountable, which to me is a far greater threat then the Chineese.
IMHO, we have recently become more vulnerable to the Chineese, not because they have become stronger - but because we have become weaker. (especially economics wise)
Agreed. I just don't think people understand how close to the edge of the cliff we realy are. I just don't think people understand how bad it can really get. Too many people have lived a cozy life in the US and never experienced Argentina style economics.
The US is better than that, and I never said that the US economy is going to totally fail, but I have serious doubts about the US financial system and the survivability of US dollar over these next few years, and housing IS going to crash very hard no matter what they say.
Actually, the opposite is true, we became the worlds largest super power with honest money, money that was backed by presious metals and not "the good faith of the federal government". The further we have moved away from that, the more we have weakened ourselves.
Housing is about to take a major hit, and it will affect all sorts of ways that money is used in the economy. That and derivatives. Double whammy bad mojo.
The problem isn't just the housing and derivitaves which will cause the entire economy to collapse. The problem is that they will take out every financial institution in the USA with them, who will hyperinflate the dollar out of existence in their last dying gasp!
The US will have no choice but to move to a gold economy or die. If I were VC's I would be getting into the gold and precious metals transaction business like it's doomsday, because it is! And for their sake, I hope they have a lot of that venture money of theirs stored in precious metals, commodities, and their resprctive unhedged mining companies.
God help us with derivatives and housing, all hell is going to break loose before the end of the year. By christmas, people will be saying WTF?, by feburary, people will be in outright panic!
I realise that this is just taking a jab at the war in Iraq, but seriously, over the long term using patents to physically controll how people use inventions will lead to deadly violence for many of the same reasons that the plantation systems attempts to physically controll labor blew up into the "bloodiest" war in history.
And yes, the civil war was more bloody than WW1, WW2, VietNam, Korean war, and the Iraqui war combined. It was at a time in history where we were just learning about new technologies like the machine gun, but had little understanding of appropiate defences like trench warfare.
Anyhow, in the long term, imposition of patents requires physical controll, which means escaping their breach of freedom will involve physical violence. The scenario I see is one where new technologies bring fabrication and "the factory" into the home. Many astute business men will see this as an opportunity to make "unlimited profit" by licensing pantents to the people of the world. They will extend patents to last forever, and punish patnet violations suverely. If you don't think that's possible, all you half to do is see how the death of copyrights is playing out. I guess we should be thankfull that imposing copyrights doesn't require physical controll too.
What I think is that Microsoft wants to compete on the technical merits by making sure they have a bunch of patents that Linux can't use. In this sense it is very advantageous of them to be a budy budy with Linux as possible, and actually start making honest technical compairisons.
Also, Microsoft is going thru great efforts to tone down the "religious war" with Linux. Meaning, we don't want people to place any appreciative value on free as in freedom. This also plays into their strategy very well.
Another thing they will be big on is TCO, which is a nice way of saying they system we give you will have the best TCO out there at the time, but forget it when it comes to capitalizing on improvements and changes after we get you'r revenue stream locked into our patented technology.
Finally, MS has realized that they can't beat Linux in the market place, so they will half to co-opt it. But the truth is that the forces that pull us apart (freedom and opportunity) are greater than the forces that hold us together. (busines and commerce)
First off, there was nothing community orientated or sociable about the USSR or any other system that uses the coercive power of government to make people do their will and distribute wealth and property. Communisim and socialisim were hijacked words.
But Linux is very pro community and it is more free market based than proprietary software because information has no natural limits in supply and demand, services and the time people use to create stuff does. MS makes money by using the force of law to create artificial restrictions for the former, Linux makes money via the latter outright.
The USSR has everything to do with centralized authoritarian controll, Linux has nothing to do with centralized authoritarian controll. You're catagorizing things in a way that are too generalized.
If the stock market crashes again, which it looks poised to do, then it would be very wise to get as much equity out of your stocks now while you have the chance. The folks at google, I'm sure, are no dummies when it cones to the market.
The bottom line is that the housing market is about to collapse (soft landing, yeah right, where have we herd that before), the bond market is way over inflated, the dollar is looking really crappy in the currency markets, the debt levels are extremely high and savings extremely low, and most stocks (like google) still have high P/Es. Fundamentals wise, this is a doomsday scenario if there ever was one. If things continue on the same course then look out for the worst of the great depression of the 30's and the worst inflation of the 80's combined!
Have people been blind to prices lately? I hate to burst peoples bubble, but the price of oil relative to other commodities hasn't risen that much - it is the US dollar that is going to hell! Not oil! - as everyone keeps thinking the cause is some kind of oil supply problem.
IMHO, I would recommend to google and anyone else, to sieze any gains, cut any losses, and start very seriously considering copper, gold, and silver assets and mining stocks.
One of the greatest things about Linux, hands down, is that you don't need to go thru 10 layers of approval, and notify 5 different departments that you are using it. You just get the CD, install, and run. She seems to imply that that's a problem, trust me, it is not. Linux is not only free as in cost, it is free as in that frees people to be productive without being centralized.
To understand how centralized systems slow down productivity, just check out the USSR. Sure, MS would like all license tracking to be centralized to manimize controll, but that controll is in the best interest of preserving their power - not ours. There is a difference between effective managment and controll freaks, Linux enhaces the former.
I agree with you in that "homesteading" of spectrum is a lot better than the FCC is now, but really - people are more than motivated for spectrum not to intefere anyhow. If you want to communicate wirelessly - you can't likely do so in a way that interferes with them with out them interfering with your communications as well - there is plenty of motivation for things to work out naturally without any rules at all. Even if you just spew interference to be a jerk or jam people, that wasts your time effort and money and is vulnerable to technical work arrounds and rf improvements.
In fact, to see how silly both homesteading and the FCC are, consider the spectrum frequencies we are the most familiar with.... VISIBLE LIGHT! The Sun spews trillions of watts of spectrum interference every second, yet we are still able to communicate visually without any problem at all. In fact, we expolit the sun light as an advnatage. In fact, you can shoot 20 zillion lazer beams across the city and chances are they wouldn't intefere at all, and if they did the information they transmit could still be easially mathematically seperated. There is no scarcity problem with spectrum, only with peoples will to effectively utilize it. Save free markets for the later, not artificial ones for the former.
To use different words: It's referred to as a property right because what it does is defend your rights to your property.
You're working off the false premise that government can create property rights, or at least the false one that property revolves arround feelings and not things like natural limits in supply and demand. As nice as it is to see artists make it, society doesn't owe anyone a distribution monopoly.
Also, you cant have it both ways. First it's declared that open copying is illegal, and then when it's pointed out that that the law is unenforcable, then it's declared that open copying is immoral because artists can't make it, and then when it's pointed out that they can, then the next thing declared is this.....
The government's not "offering" to do that any more than it is any time two people have a disagreement about any contract. If two people enter into a contract, and someone decides to blow off the terms of that contract, then the injured party (to stay legal) can only turn to the courts for relief. The only other alternatives are to say that contracts mean nothing, or that enforcement of them should be left up to private action, which would be nothing but trouble.
I don't renember signing any contract. I don't renenber any 2 way binding agreements. First it's called a "property" right, and then when that turns out to be bogus it's called a contract? Well Fine. Keep the information private to yourself, and your buddies who agree to the terms of the contract - and if you don't then you're violating those terms and I can do whatever the hell I want with information that comes my way.
The problem is that information reproduction has been commoditized, not creation.....
That premise doesn't make any sense, so neither do the conclusions that follow.
Information became commodotozed when there was more money to be made from selling information services than selling information. Content producers are more than free to participate in that service, and in fact are better positioned than most. Madonna is still free to give concerts, book writers are free to be high paid consultants in their field, etc...
Google and IBM use Linux because its license offers them technical and business advantages over other licenses, both closed source and open source. With Linux they get the ease of an open source backbone, while still maintaining many of the proprietary rights of their own code.
Well, sounds to me like Linux and FOSS are more acountable to free market forces and are slowly displacing the closed source methods.
It's not about embracing unrestricted copying, it's about figuring out how to make it work.
That's a logical fallicy. It is just another way of promoting that if they can't make as much money as with their old distribution monopolies than we should figure out a way to make it work for them, and it totally ignores the moral implications of allowing one set of people to controll how another set of people use information at their disposal.
The information age demands the free flow of information just as the industrial revolution demanded the free flow of labor and the death of controlled labor like the plantation system. There were those who wanted the free states to just get along with the slave states. They didn't get it - slavery was not about property, but controll. Copyrights are not about "intellectual" property, they are about controll of how other people use information at their disposal.
Let there be no uncertain terms about it. Copyright monopolies are not property, they are not just, they deserve to die because they controll people, they need to die for society to enter the information age, and they will die because forces that are bigger than life are going to force them to die. Thank God, I can't wait.
People who create information for a living do not benefit when they cannot be paid for their work...
You don't get the information age. If your information is wanted, you create far more opportunity for yourself by putting it out in the world freely with your name on it. For example, a small artist is far better off doing every thing possible to have his music creations distributed freely to make a name for himself than suing the crap out of anyone who coppies hopeing that he gets some kind of million dollar record deal. Sure the music industry would like you to believe that, but if you do you're playing their game and you'd both be full of it.
.... make people feel better about ripping off artists?....
This is sorta knee jerkish, see above.
Copyrights aren't government regulation, because the copyright holder can do whatever they want with it, including waive it entirely. It is a property right, because it protects that which people have created - their property - should they choose to exercise that right.
The right to controll information you have created is a privacy right, not a property right.
Once the cat is out of the bag, then it is no longer about controlling information, but controlling people. It is no longer about allocating resources that have natural limits in supply and demand, it's about distribution monopoly. Information has no natural limits in supply and demand, the time and efforts of people who create it do. If you believe in free markets then the natural limits of latter should determine price, not artifically creating scarcity for the former by thugisim and law. Translation, charge by the hour, charge for a concert, charge for public speaking, teaching, make a reputation for yourself... I'm sure if you're smart enough to create something usefull for society, then you're smart enough to figure out a way to capitalize on it without a government regulation that microcontrolls how everyone uses information at their disposal.
...Why would you consider creative work a commodity?....
You don't understand. Commoditisation of a market happens when the service of that market becomes more valuable than the item that market is dealing with. For example, when there is more money to be made from selling information services than selling information.
When you look at copyrights like a government regulation that controlls how people use information, rather than some kind of "property" right. Then it becomes clear that Linux is truely more accountable to free market paradigms, and in the information age - as information becomes commoditized, that will be even more so - as the companies that treat unrestricted copying over the internet like a threat will loose, and those that treat it like an advantage will win.
You must be one hell of an economist. The worst in over 200 years you say. Wow, that is bad. I thought things were rough in the seventies. Double digit inflation, mortgage rates around 20%. From what I hear there was a period in the 1930's that was a bit rough, what did they call it, the great depression. Unemployment of 25% vs. @ 5% now. We definitely have it bad. What do you suggest we do to save ourselves? Do you have any other brilliant advice for us?
Yes, you herd me, that is exactly what I am saying. It's too bad you posted AC, because this is a serious reply. If you take all the federal, state, housing, commercial, credit-card, misc, and trade debt that comes to about 400K for every family in the USA. Then take all the long term public obligations like Social Security, Medicade, Public schools etc... that comes to about another 400K for family. It doesn't take much of an imagination to figure out that they are never make it happen without default or printing up money.
Now take a look at the housing bubble, going up over 20% per year in San Diego where I live! WTF? Pay isn't going up 20% per year, the eonomy isn't growing 20% per year, population and other forces aren't growing 20% per year. Now the news is saying that the savings rate is statistically at 0 , and trade into the ports has drastically dropped off, large layofs are happening everywhere, and inside stock holders at large home building companies are selling off large stakes. It doesn't take much of a genius to figure out that housing is on schedule to crash hard, and it will take down half the over leveraged banks in the USA with it.
And I didn't even mention the over 70 trillion in derivatives or risks/consequences of loosing the dollar as the world reserve currency.
As I said. We are heading full speed toward a hyperinflationary depression. The worst economic failure in US history. And I do have advice. get the f**k out of variable rate debt no matter what and the housing market and the bond market and most all stocks, and buy lots of silver and gold - or almost any other commodity that is not leveraged in debt right now.
The retailers have average products, and are having financial troubble - so they are trying to blame the customer. All the other stuff is just excuses.
Sure theres a con or two, but it seems to me that everytime a retailer starts to get "tough" on the customer, it's usually not long before they go out of business.
The whole economy is in a really crappy situation right now, and the mid-term outlook is the worst in over 200 years, so I wouldn't be supprised at all to see a lot of retailers go out of business all together.
Ok, the deal is that Microsoft has deicded that they can't beat Linux in the market place if they attack it head on, so instead they have decided to co-opt it. The problem is that sooner or later Linux and FOSS alternatives are going to be eating into every one of Microsotfs main revenue streams and the pressure for Microsoft to "do something" about it will be insane. I doubt they will sit there and happily get along as billions in revenue streams are slowly chocked off.
I'm not really compairing to China here, they are not a real threat for at least 15 years and only to serve as a distraction from the real problems here at home.
My point is that we shouldn't be saying, "oh my God - China is getting better than us", but rather, "oh my God - look at all the freedoms we've been loosing". Just because it's not bad relative to China is a poor reason for complacency.
The main thing holding back the US is not science, but freedom and government. While our sciences are well into the 21st century, our freedoms, especially our economic freedom has been on the decline for nearly 95 years and has not advanced at the same rate.
It's true, we don't have the freedom infrastructure necassary to keep up with the science infrastructure over the long term - but this is just another symptom of the freedom problem playing itself out in the public school system. A socialist system we are forced to pay for no matter how incompetent or top heavy they are.
If you want people to use your forum and add value to your service, then they need to trust that insightfull comments that they make will be appreciated and moded insightfull - and even more so they need to trust that they have reasonable protections from large corporate interests that might try to manipulate a forum's discussion or content.
Translation. You need to do something about the relentless modding down of anybody who attacks Microsoft and Microsoft's "intellectual property" regime. I have been posting here since 98 and have made over 1300 posts and know a baised interest when I see it, and at least since 2002 almost every post, without fail, that questions Microsoft's "intellectual property" regime has been attacked without reguard to how truthfull or insightfull it is. I'm sorry, but in this case it seems like the moderation system is just not working.
Please, again, I'm dying for anyone for anyone to explain to me how my parent post is redundant or overrated. And please, if you don't like what I'm saying, or think I'm just a loud mouth, then I beg you, kick me off of slashdot - it wouldn't hurt me to have an excuse to start my own blog.
If you look at copyrights as a microregulatory controll on how people use information, and not a free market property right like mindless mob would have you believe. Then it becomes clear that the real harm comes from that poor belief system, and all the rest is just a natural consequence of it being brought to it's logical conclusion.
'redefining the buying power of a gram of gold' can only be done when the supply/demand ratio of gold is changed. It won't get redefined, other than from mining, and even then, that only increases supply by 1-2% per year which is adaquete (at least in the US) for population growth.
Gold doesn't help rich people sit on wealth. A rich person who doesn't spend their gold looses out on opportunities to increase profit. Also rich people are far more flexable to play the Fed's game by shifting investments than poor people. Fixed currency standards will force them to make money thru means other than money shifting games. And as you said, currency is mostly used for a medium of exchange so most poor people will not be effected, unlike with paper money where they half to get contstnt pay raises to keep up.
When you use currency as an exchange medium, and not a store of value, then what happens is that people don't save money (hmm, look at the US savings rate) and hance have less security. And what you say about paper currency being backed by everybody is simply not true. Paper money is backed by nobody, and forced on everybody.
The history of paper currency is well understood, and has not stopped the economic problems it promised to in the USA, and has caused prermanent disasters in countless smaller undeveloped countries. No unbacked paper currency in the history of human kind has survived more than a few years, no manipulated currency in the history of human kind has led to stable economic growth. Soon they will half to manipulate the US dollar to pay off all the debt that we will never be able to pay off, and when they do the countries of the world will dump it as the world reserve currency and all hell will break loose.
You're right. Facts change my mind, not envy/hatred/jealousy/whatever of the rich.
... "gold has some magical property that defines value," and "anyone who's unemployed must be so by choice."...
The "magical property" that gold has is that governments can't print it up on a whim (or under the guise of loaning it out). Sure, you can mine it, but expanding the gold supply is still hard!
And yes it is true, in a society that has economic freedom, people are unemployed mostly by the coices they make. The moral isn't that that's a wrong cliche, the moral is that the USA is loosing economic freedom and that has consequences.
As for the Phillips curve and the Austrian model, I think the bottom line here is that if I gave you a check for $100, and you brought it to the bank and I only allowed them to pay you $90 - then that would be a fraud, stealing, I'd be excercising "rights" that I don't have morally, and letting people like me have that kind of power and letting people like me get away with it would have massive negative social and economic consequences.
Well, the government ^h^h^h^h^h oops, I mean the fed has that kind of power, and they have constantly used and abused it, and they have gotten away with it, and letting them do it has led to stock bubbles, and more recently a real estate bubble that is going to collapse, that is going to lead to a great depression, that is going to be delt with by hyperinflation. Please bookmark this page and check it again 2 years from now.
Also, force is not abused by both individuals and governments, it is only abused by individuals who often use government as a tool of force. That is why the best way to deal with these inviduals is to limit the power of government to only social defense and legal justice.
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I think it's time for a paradigm change when it comes to secret information.
How about making all information available freely with the expectation that free coumtries and societies will be able to make better use of it than tyrrinical centralized ones. It would also do a lot to keep governments honest, transparent, and accountable, which to me is a far greater threat then the Chineese.
IMHO, we have recently become more vulnerable to the Chineese, not because they have become stronger - but because we have become weaker.
(especially economics wise)
Agreed. I just don't think people understand how close to the edge of the cliff we realy are. I just don't think people understand how bad it can really get. Too many people have lived a cozy life in the US and never experienced Argentina style economics.
The US is better than that, and I never said that the US economy is going to totally fail, but I have serious doubts about the US financial system and the survivability of US dollar over these next few years, and housing IS going to crash very hard no matter what they say.
Actually, the opposite is true, we became the worlds largest super power with honest money, money that was backed by presious metals and not "the good faith of the federal government". The further we have moved away from that, the more we have weakened ourselves.
Housing is about to take a major hit, and it will affect all sorts of ways that money is used in the economy. That and derivatives. Double whammy bad mojo.
The problem isn't just the housing and derivitaves which will cause the entire economy to collapse. The problem is that they will take out every financial institution in the USA with them, who will hyperinflate the dollar out of existence in their last dying gasp!
The US will have no choice but to move to a gold economy or die. If I were VC's I would be getting into the gold and precious metals transaction business like it's doomsday, because it is! And for their sake, I hope they have a lot of that venture money of theirs stored in precious metals, commodities, and their resprctive unhedged mining companies.
God help us with derivatives and housing, all hell is going to break loose before the end of the year. By christmas, people will be saying WTF?, by feburary, people will be in outright panic!
In fact, both the IRS and the Fed are in heavy competition for your business:)
They're going at war again?
I realise that this is just taking a jab at the war in Iraq, but seriously, over the long term using patents to physically controll how people use inventions will lead to deadly violence for many of the same reasons that the plantation systems attempts to physically controll labor blew up into the "bloodiest" war in history.
And yes, the civil war was more bloody than WW1, WW2, VietNam, Korean war, and the Iraqui war combined. It was at a time in history where we were just learning about new technologies like the machine gun, but had little understanding of appropiate defences like trench warfare.
Anyhow, in the long term, imposition of patents requires physical controll, which means escaping their breach of freedom will involve physical violence. The scenario I see is one where new technologies bring fabrication and "the factory" into the home. Many astute business men will see this as an opportunity to make "unlimited profit" by licensing pantents to the people of the world. They will extend patents to last forever, and punish patnet violations suverely. If you don't think that's possible, all you half to do is see how the death of copyrights is playing out. I guess we should be thankfull that imposing copyrights doesn't require physical controll too.
What I think is that Microsoft wants to compete on the technical merits by making sure they have a bunch of patents that Linux can't use. In this sense it is very advantageous of them to be a budy budy with Linux as possible, and actually start making honest technical compairisons.
Also, Microsoft is going thru great efforts to tone down the "religious war" with Linux. Meaning, we don't want people to place any appreciative value on free as in freedom. This also plays into their strategy very well.
Another thing they will be big on is TCO, which is a nice way of saying they system we give you will have the best TCO out there at the time, but forget it when it comes to capitalizing on improvements and changes after we get you'r revenue stream locked into our patented technology.
Finally, MS has realized that they can't beat Linux in the market place, so they will half to co-opt it. But the truth is that the forces that pull us apart (freedom and opportunity) are greater than the forces that hold us together. (busines and commerce)
First off, there was nothing community orientated or sociable about the USSR or any other system that uses the coercive power of government to make people do their will and distribute wealth and property. Communisim and socialisim were hijacked words.
But Linux is very pro community and it is more free market based than proprietary software because information has no natural limits in supply and demand, services and the time people use to create stuff does. MS makes money by using the force of law to create artificial restrictions for the former, Linux makes money via the latter outright.
The USSR has everything to do with centralized authoritarian controll, Linux has nothing to do with centralized authoritarian controll. You're catagorizing things in a way that are too generalized.
If the stock market crashes again, which it looks poised to do, then it would be very wise to get as much equity out of your stocks now while you have the chance. The folks at google, I'm sure, are no dummies when it cones to the market.
The bottom line is that the housing market is about to collapse (soft landing, yeah right, where have we herd that before), the bond market is way over inflated, the dollar is looking really crappy in the currency markets, the debt levels are extremely high and savings extremely low, and most stocks (like google) still have high P/Es. Fundamentals wise, this is a doomsday scenario if there ever was one. If things continue on the same course then look out for the worst of the great depression of the 30's and the worst inflation of the 80's combined!
Have people been blind to prices lately? I hate to burst peoples bubble, but the price of oil relative to other commodities hasn't risen that much - it is the US dollar that is going to hell! Not oil! - as everyone keeps thinking the cause is some kind of oil supply problem.
IMHO, I would recommend to google and anyone else, to sieze any gains, cut any losses, and start very seriously considering copper, gold, and silver assets and mining stocks.
One of the greatest things about Linux, hands down, is that you don't need to go thru 10 layers of approval, and notify 5 different departments that you are using it. You just get the CD, install, and run. She seems to imply that that's a problem, trust me, it is not. Linux is not only free as in cost, it is free as in that frees people to be productive without being centralized.
To understand how centralized systems slow down productivity, just check out the USSR. Sure, MS would like all license tracking to be centralized to manimize controll, but that controll is in the best interest of preserving their power - not ours. There is a difference between effective managment and controll freaks, Linux enhaces the former.
I agree with you in that "homesteading" of spectrum is a lot better than the FCC is now, but really - people are more than motivated for spectrum not to intefere anyhow. If you want to communicate wirelessly - you can't likely do so in a way that interferes with them with out them interfering with your communications as well - there is plenty of motivation for things to work out naturally without any rules at all. Even if you just spew interference to be a jerk or jam people, that wasts your time effort and money and is vulnerable to technical work arrounds and rf improvements.
.... VISIBLE LIGHT! The Sun spews trillions of watts of spectrum interference every second, yet we are still able to communicate visually without any problem at all. In fact, we expolit the sun light as an advnatage. In fact, you can shoot 20 zillion lazer beams across the city and chances are they wouldn't intefere at all, and if they did the information they transmit could still be easially mathematically seperated. There is no scarcity problem with spectrum, only with peoples will to effectively utilize it. Save free markets for the later, not artificial ones for the former.
In fact, to see how silly both homesteading and the FCC are, consider the spectrum frequencies we are the most familiar with
To use different words: It's referred to as a property right because what it does is defend your rights to your property.
You're working off the false premise that government can create property rights, or at least the false one that property revolves arround feelings and not things like natural limits in supply and demand. As nice as it is to see artists make it, society doesn't owe anyone a distribution monopoly.
Also, you cant have it both ways. First it's declared that open copying is illegal, and then when it's pointed out that that the law is unenforcable, then it's declared that open copying is immoral because artists can't make it, and then when it's pointed out that they can, then the next thing declared is this .....
The government's not "offering" to do that any more than it is any time two people have a disagreement about any contract. If two people enter into a contract, and someone decides to blow off the terms of that contract, then the injured party (to stay legal) can only turn to the courts for relief. The only other alternatives are to say that contracts mean nothing, or that enforcement of them should be left up to private action, which would be nothing but trouble.
I don't renember signing any contract. I don't renenber any 2 way binding agreements. First it's called a "property" right, and then when that turns out to be bogus it's called a contract? Well Fine. Keep the information private to yourself, and your buddies who agree to the terms of the contract - and if you don't then you're violating those terms and I can do whatever the hell I want with information that comes my way.
The problem is that information reproduction has been commoditized, not creation.....
That premise doesn't make any sense, so neither do the conclusions that follow. Information became commodotozed when there was more money to be made from selling information services than selling information. Content producers are more than free to participate in that service, and in fact are better positioned than most. Madonna is still free to give concerts, book writers are free to be high paid consultants in their field, etc ...
Google and IBM use Linux because its license offers them technical and business advantages over other licenses, both closed source and open source. With Linux they get the ease of an open source backbone, while still maintaining many of the proprietary rights of their own code.
Well, sounds to me like Linux and FOSS are more acountable to free market forces and are slowly displacing the closed source methods.
It's not about embracing unrestricted copying, it's about figuring out how to make it work.
That's a logical fallicy. It is just another way of promoting that if they can't make as much money as with their old distribution monopolies than we should figure out a way to make it work for them, and it totally ignores the moral implications of allowing one set of people to controll how another set of people use information at their disposal.
The information age demands the free flow of information just as the industrial revolution demanded the free flow of labor and the death of controlled labor like the plantation system. There were those who wanted the free states to just get along with the slave states. They didn't get it - slavery was not about property, but controll. Copyrights are not about "intellectual" property, they are about controll of how other people use information at their disposal.
Let there be no uncertain terms about it. Copyright monopolies are not property, they are not just, they deserve to die because they controll people, they need to die for society to enter the information age, and they will die because forces that are bigger than life are going to force them to die. Thank God, I can't wait.
People who create information for a living do not benefit when they cannot be paid for their work...
You don't get the information age. If your information is wanted, you create far more opportunity for yourself by putting it out in the world freely with your name on it. For example, a small artist is far better off doing every thing possible to have his music creations distributed freely to make a name for himself than suing the crap out of anyone who coppies hopeing that he gets some kind of million dollar record deal. Sure the music industry would like you to believe that, but if you do you're playing their game and you'd both be full of it.
This is sorta knee jerkish, see above.
Copyrights aren't government regulation, because the copyright holder can do whatever they want with it, including waive it entirely. It is a property right, because it protects that which people have created - their property - should they choose to exercise that right.
The right to controll information you have created is a privacy right, not a property right. Once the cat is out of the bag, then it is no longer about controlling information, but controlling people. It is no longer about allocating resources that have natural limits in supply and demand, it's about distribution monopoly. Information has no natural limits in supply and demand, the time and efforts of people who create it do. If you believe in free markets then the natural limits of latter should determine price, not artifically creating scarcity for the former by thugisim and law. Translation, charge by the hour, charge for a concert, charge for public speaking, teaching, make a reputation for yourself ... I'm sure if you're smart enough to create something usefull for society, then you're smart enough to figure out a way to capitalize on it without a government regulation that microcontrolls how everyone uses information at their disposal.
You don't understand. Commoditisation of a market happens when the service of that market becomes more valuable than the item that market is dealing with. For example, when there is more money to be made from selling information services than selling information.
When you look at copyrights like a government regulation that controlls how people use information, rather than some kind of "property" right. Then it becomes clear that Linux is truely more accountable to free market paradigms, and in the information age - as information becomes commoditized, that will be even more so - as the companies that treat unrestricted copying over the internet like a threat will loose, and those that treat it like an advantage will win.
You must be one hell of an economist. The worst in over 200 years you say. Wow, that is bad. I thought things were rough in the seventies. Double digit inflation, mortgage rates around 20%. From what I hear there was a period in the 1930's that was a bit rough, what did they call it, the great depression. Unemployment of 25% vs. @ 5% now. We definitely have it bad. What do you suggest we do to save ourselves? Do you have any other brilliant advice for us?
Yes, you herd me, that is exactly what I am saying. It's too bad you posted AC, because this is a serious reply. If you take all the federal, state, housing, commercial, credit-card, misc, and trade debt that comes to about 400K for every family in the USA. Then take all the long term public obligations like Social Security, Medicade, Public schools etc ... that comes to about another 400K for family. It doesn't take much of an imagination to figure out that they are never make it happen without default or printing up money.
Now take a look at the housing bubble, going up over 20% per year in San Diego where I live! WTF? Pay isn't going up 20% per year, the eonomy isn't growing 20% per year, population and other forces aren't growing 20% per year. Now the news is saying that the savings rate is statistically at 0 , and trade into the ports has drastically dropped off, large layofs are happening everywhere, and inside stock holders at large home building companies are selling off large stakes. It doesn't take much of a genius to figure out that housing is on schedule to crash hard, and it will take down half the over leveraged banks in the USA with it.
And I didn't even mention the over 70 trillion in derivatives or risks/consequences of loosing the dollar as the world reserve currency.
As I said. We are heading full speed toward a hyperinflationary depression. The worst economic failure in US history. And I do have advice. get the f**k out of variable rate debt no matter what and the housing market and the bond market and most all stocks, and buy lots of silver and gold - or almost any other commodity that is not leveraged in debt right now.
The retailers have average products, and are having financial troubble - so they are trying to blame the customer. All the other stuff is just excuses.
Sure theres a con or two, but it seems to me that everytime a retailer starts to get "tough" on the customer, it's usually not long before they go out of business.
The whole economy is in a really crappy situation right now, and the mid-term outlook is the worst in over 200 years, so I wouldn't be supprised at all to see a lot of retailers go out of business all together.
Ok, the deal is that Microsoft has deicded that they can't beat Linux in the market place if they attack it head on, so instead they have decided to co-opt it. The problem is that sooner or later Linux and FOSS alternatives are going to be eating into every one of Microsotfs main revenue streams and the pressure for Microsoft to "do something" about it will be insane. I doubt they will sit there and happily get along as billions in revenue streams are slowly chocked off.
I'm not really compairing to China here, they are not a real threat for at least 15 years and only to serve as a distraction from the real problems here at home.
My point is that we shouldn't be saying, "oh my God - China is getting better than us", but rather, "oh my God - look at all the freedoms we've been loosing". Just because it's not bad relative to China is a poor reason for complacency.
The main thing holding back the US is not science, but freedom and government. While our sciences are well into the 21st century, our freedoms, especially our economic freedom has been on the decline for nearly 95 years and has not advanced at the same rate.
It's true, we don't have the freedom infrastructure necassary to keep up with the science infrastructure over the long term - but this is just another symptom of the freedom problem playing itself out in the public school system. A socialist system we are forced to pay for no matter how incompetent or top heavy they are.
If you want people to use your forum and add value to your service, then they need to trust that insightfull comments that they make will be appreciated and moded insightfull - and even more so they need to trust that they have reasonable protections from large corporate interests that might try to manipulate a forum's discussion or content.
Translation. You need to do something about the relentless modding down of anybody who attacks Microsoft and Microsoft's "intellectual property" regime. I have been posting here since 98 and have made over 1300 posts and know a baised interest when I see it, and at least since 2002 almost every post, without fail, that questions Microsoft's "intellectual property" regime has been attacked without reguard to how truthfull or insightfull it is. I'm sorry, but in this case it seems like the moderation system is just not working.
Please, again, I'm dying for anyone for anyone to explain to me how my parent post is redundant or overrated. And please, if you don't like what I'm saying, or think I'm just a loud mouth, then I beg you, kick me off of slashdot - it wouldn't hurt me to have an excuse to start my own blog.
I'm sorry, but only a Microsoft shill would mod this parent redundant as is now at the time of this post.
If you look at copyrights as a microregulatory controll on how people use information, and not a free market property right like mindless mob would have you believe. Then it becomes clear that the real harm comes from that poor belief system, and all the rest is just a natural consequence of it being brought to it's logical conclusion.
'redefining the buying power of a gram of gold' can only be done when the supply/demand ratio of gold is changed. It won't get redefined, other than from mining, and even then, that only increases supply by 1-2% per year which is adaquete (at least in the US) for population growth.
Gold doesn't help rich people sit on wealth. A rich person who doesn't spend their gold looses out on opportunities to increase profit. Also rich people are far more flexable to play the Fed's game by shifting investments than poor people. Fixed currency standards will force them to make money thru means other than money shifting games. And as you said, currency is mostly used for a medium of exchange so most poor people will not be effected, unlike with paper money where they half to get contstnt pay raises to keep up.
When you use currency as an exchange medium, and not a store of value, then what happens is that people don't save money (hmm, look at the US savings rate) and hance have less security. And what you say about paper currency being backed by everybody is simply not true. Paper money is backed by nobody, and forced on everybody.
The history of paper currency is well understood, and has not stopped the economic problems it promised to in the USA, and has caused prermanent disasters in countless smaller undeveloped countries. No unbacked paper currency in the history of human kind has survived more than a few years, no manipulated currency in the history of human kind has led to stable economic growth. Soon they will half to manipulate the US dollar to pay off all the debt that we will never be able to pay off, and when they do the countries of the world will dump it as the world reserve currency and all hell will break loose.
You're right. Facts change my mind, not envy/hatred/jealousy/whatever of the rich.
The "magical property" that gold has is that governments can't print it up on a whim (or under the guise of loaning it out). Sure, you can mine it, but expanding the gold supply is still hard!
And yes it is true, in a society that has economic freedom, people are unemployed mostly by the coices they make. The moral isn't that that's a wrong cliche, the moral is that the USA is loosing economic freedom and that has consequences.
As for the Phillips curve and the Austrian model, I think the bottom line here is that if I gave you a check for $100, and you brought it to the bank and I only allowed them to pay you $90 - then that would be a fraud, stealing, I'd be excercising "rights" that I don't have morally, and letting people like me have that kind of power and letting people like me get away with it would have massive negative social and economic consequences.
Well, the government ^h^h^h^h^h oops, I mean the fed has that kind of power, and they have constantly used and abused it, and they have gotten away with it, and letting them do it has led to stock bubbles, and more recently a real estate bubble that is going to collapse, that is going to lead to a great depression, that is going to be delt with by hyperinflation. Please bookmark this page and check it again 2 years from now.
Also, force is not abused by both individuals and governments, it is only abused by individuals who often use government as a tool of force. That is why the best way to deal with these inviduals is to limit the power of government to only social defense and legal justice.