Why don't you become an artist and find out, instead of trying to lead us to a premade conclusion?
I am an artist, and a programmer, and a musician, and a writer. Maybe not a great one, but neither is 99% of the crap out there. But I guess I just don't count unless I have the millions in backing from some mega-monopoly.
Premade? Cmon, anyone who cares enough to think about it from a perspective other than, "I wanna haphazerdly luck out on some creation and sit on my ass and collect a million bucks in royalities", is going to come to the same conclusion I did.
Trying to treat things that can be coppied freely like property that can't is simply bullshit morality, and I think by now everybody knows it, but too many people are scared to just plain say it. Maybe they don't want to hurt peoples feelings, maybe they just don't want the social stigma of the brow beaters saying "you hate artists", maybe they're just holding out hope for a "compromise" so everybody can just get along, I don't know?
Damn right, if someone can't afford to fight off the plague, let them die from it. It can't affect me, I'm *rich*. And if they die, don't *force* me to pay for removing their bloated corpse from the middle of the street, I'll move it if I want to. Oh yeah, and "street"? That's what we call the ruts where I drive most often.
And theres the whole problem right there, the attitude that noone will do (enough) good things unless forced too. Your faith that people are more hatefull and self-centered instide than not is allot more telling about yourself than everyone else. Perhaps you want the govt to force people to deal with it, cause you refuse to accept that responsibility as an individual yourself... drive on buddyo.
It is always easy to say "I told you" so after the fact, but the reality is that this failure has far more to do with the companies attitude about technology than failure of somebody to say "look out!". In fact by the sounds of it, the entire application could probably be ran on 2 souped up PS'c running in parallel in different co-locations over the internet - the hardware and infrastructure would not cost alot.
Even worse, is when these types of failures happen, then comes in the ole "policy and procedure" routine kicks in.
To tell a story, one time I went to a boarding school, and at the beginning of the year they had almost no rules, and then when ever something went wrong they added a new rule. Well needless to say at the end of the year there were so many rules, people could get repramanded for flushing the toilet twice instead of once! Not having their shoes tied left over right, etc.....
Well I grew up and found the same is true in companies, how much you wanna bet they are gonna loose more than 20 million from too many piled up policy and procedures that keep anyone from getting anything done?
The forces that are holding us back from the next generation of technology are not (though important) our sciences, or our education level, or RnD... IMHO the main thing holding us back are overbearing intellectual property laws, and over intrusive government in general. Our government simply hasn't caught up to the intellectual level of our sciences.
The first theing we need to do is get rid of copyright and patent monopolies, and drasticly reduce paperwork and tax requirements for individuals and businesses, and making it so that people and commodities can go freely from country to country and work without restriction or inteference. Yeah, I know some people are going to hate that, and others who don't get it are going to call that "too extreme." But that attitude is exactly why the US simply is going to have a bumpy ride into the information age. Too many people just don't get it and aren't willing to let go of the old ways that just don't work.
How about an answer like.... "to get real results, you could always do this... or that..." - To sum up, I guess you don't have an answer.
No, India and Mexico are out because everyone else will want that "mininum quality of life" provided at seomeone elses expense. If you want to invest your money in places where people think that you "OWE THEM!", and are willing to coercively take it from you then far be for me to interfere. It's really a slap in the face to poor people though, because they are more than cabable of taking care of themselves if they have the liberty to do so. But no, if a poor person wants to buy some product from another country, becasue it's cheaper, and will allow them to save more for their family and business - all to often there is someone out there that will say lets put tarrifs on it and drive up the price... which is basically him saying "they don't have a right to buy how they think they should, so I'm gonna beat them down so they cant have it, becaise 'I' know whats for their better good and they're too stupid and undiciplined to figure it out for themselves."
PS: I would love people to "steal" inventions and ideas from other countries. But intellectual "property" isn't property, so it restricts freedom more then it helps it. It's a poor logical argument to mix that in with other forms of trade and commerce. If you take my car, that means I won't have the origical copy, not so with "ip".
Seriously, the US is bad, but I don't see better alternatives. I really do believe that China will have economic growth, but political stability is a totally another mater, I have never seen a totaliatarian government do well in the face of prosperity because the masses get restless.
Canada, like it or not is tied to the hip with the US economy. And it doesn't seem business friendly. I've known alot of Canadians who came the the USA to start companies, but not the other way arround.
And the EURO, forget it, there economic situation is crappier that the good ole US of A. Employment in France, the UK, and Germany is more, growth is less, and debt and taxes are compairable. In fact, the only good thing is the growth of the EURO, but that's not because the EURO's growing, but more because the US is printing up a shit-load of dollars (well loaning it at low interest, same diff?)
India almost went socialist last election. Mexico looks like it will go socialist this one. There are new attacks everywhere on offshore havens, and private secure banking services. Just last year all of Europe tried to gang up on the Swiss. Sure there allot of oddball 3rd world countries out there, but that isn't stable either.
Well theres always gold. It's good to tame currency inflation, but terrible in that it just sits there and doesn't produce anything.
In sum, as crapy as the situation is, that leavs us with the dollar and not much else, not that I wouldn't love other alternatives, but that's just the way it is. At the best, investors can hope to diversify, but I can't see any way out of it.
So is the US govt pushing crap, yes, are they pushing crap more than all the other wannabe governments that would do worse if given the chance... well that remains to be seen.
Patents are directly responsible for the death of millions. They are NOT "property" and especially not free market or capitalistic (contrary to popular belief). In addition, the notion that patents help the "little guy" is a fraud, people don't invent for patents, and patents financially help lawyers far more than inventors or businesses. When it comes to R&D patents have the effect of growing a few extra big trees at the expense of killing the orchard. Patents drive up prices for consumers, and encourage practices that are harmful for the environment. Most patents are trivial and for things that are going to be invented anyhow. All patents build off of prior knowledge and invention given to people freely, yet assert the "right" to lock out everybody else. The patent system doesn't need to be "fixed" or "tweaked", it is inherently murderous and needs to be destroyed.
Patents don't help MOST small time inventors, most small companies, or even promote innovation. Most companies get patents for two purposes only, that is to protect themselves from frivolous lawsuits, and to have something to get into cross-licensing agreements so they don't get sued. Companies almost never use patents for "protection", unless they were going bankrupt anyhow - in which case they lash out and sue everybody. At very best they help finance lawyers, and contrary to popular belief patents are the anti-thesis of a free market society. Patents have nothing to do with "property" or "incentive", and everything to do with using the leverage of heavy handed government "regulation" and monopoly to coercively control how people use innovations.
Patents are directly responsible for the murder and poor quality of life, of millions of the poor, sick, elderly, and children around the world. This is because the rat-race to lock in and monopolize a key innovation also discourages researchers around the world from collaborating, and because simple or eloquent solutions that can not be patented are often shunned for complicated ones with lots of side effects that can be. And because patent monopolies tend to drive up the price of things like AIDS medicine to the point that it is way out of reach for most 3rd world countries. Patents also tend to re-shift the industry so that all R&D is focused in the confines of a few super-funded companies rather than throughout society as a whole. Contrary to the myth that only patents allow for the massive R&D costs that are required to develop new technologies, patents devastate 1000s of small research efforts for the sake of a few large ones.
Patents are not pro technology at all, in the tech industry I know, the entire industry is defined by people who defied patents. For example, the IBM compatible PC was a drastic success for the computer industry, because it was a drastic patent failure where anybody could make an IBM compatible PC even if they weren't IBM. Silicon valley, wouldn't exist without the engineers who routinely revolted against companies who wanted to patent off their innovations, and created new startups in defiance.
In the tech industry I know, the overwhelming majority of patents were issued for innovations that were incremental, and were going to happen anyhow with or without patents. The patents didn't help anything, they just got in the way time and time again. Even worse are the thousands of patents issued for things that were obvious and could be made by any competent high school programming student, like a cursor that blinks!
One time I worked for an innovative chip maker that got bought out by a huge global multinational corporation - whose only motive was grab some key patents and lock out competition in an important area of the market. This didn't benefit the consumer who got gouged, it didn't benefit the employees who mostly got lai
Look, the very nature of "intellectual property" accepts that fact that you believe that it's "OK" to use the coercive power of government to controll waht people copy. So let there be no doubt, we are what we hold ourselves accountable to, and we are far more beholden to the forces that are pulling us apart from Microsoft that the ones that are keeping us together.
One more thing, if it's only about the technology, and not freedom. Then what's to keep Microsoft from offering key people money and benefits to influence the direction of Linux. If they don't see freedom as the end in itself, then they surely won't see anything wrong with that. The fact is, freedom matters, and in the information age the freedom to copy and distribute information that's already out there really matters.
I say, it's about time China recieved the same lack of freedoms that we have right here in the good old US of A.
I know this is just being funny, but one of the few outlets of freedom that exist in China is the culture that strongly encourages the freedom to copy things. When the pressures of the information age hit the USA, political forces pretty much guarantee that the RIAA and MPAA can never push it to the point of murder, torture, or even genocide. I wouldn't count on that in China and I think it is very dangerous for the USA to attack this part of Asian culture. I could very easially see systematic executions to "set an example".
Then you need to read more of my posts, because I clearly consider the GPL as fighting fire with fire and completely unecissary in a copyright free world. And I could never consider being a BSD proponent, because it allows that someone to fork off a closed copy, modify it, distribute it, and coercively halt others from doing the same to that fork.
You know Ely Whitney (sp) didn't make a penny off the invention of the cotton-gin because everybody coppied it, but made millions of off gun manufatcure contracts that he never would have had a chance at without it. I think that thould tell you allot about free markets and innovation.
Right now the market centers arround whatever information gets the most hype or attention, when copyrights die (which they are) then the market is going to center arround which people create the most valuable information as a service - google has created over 1000 millionaires, yet there are no copyrights on databases. Copyrights are a regulation on how people use information, and have nothing to do with free market property rights.
Please, go back up and read it the essay very very carefully again - I know where you're comming from, I spent four years considering every side of the copyright argument before I wrote it.
Well I for one intend to celebrate by reposting this....
A Bitter Protest Against Copyrights
If they said there was no incentive to do
good things unless the government could choose
your religion... or they said there is no
incentive to grow food, unless farmers
could rip up your garden... most people would
see these as the awful values that they are.
But if they say that there is no incentive to
make beneficial or creative works without the
power to restrict what people copy (copyrights),
then all too many people just take it on
faith. They don't even question it, as if
incentive makes rights, as if society would fall
apart without them. But just as much of the
Renaissance happened without copyrights so
should the information age.
Calling copyrights "intellectual property" is
intellectually dishonest. The moral and
historical foundation of property derives from
mutual respect and the fact that not everybody
can posses something at the same time. The
foundation of copyrights derives from kings who
granted publishers monopolies in return for not
publishing bad things about the monarchy.
Copyrights are about control, censorship,
and not a free market property. In fact, they
cheapen property rights by treating things that
have natural limits in supply such as food,
shelter, and medicine like information that
does not.
Worse, is how people who copy are slandered
with names such as "thief" and "pirate", as if
copying was akin to boarding a ship and
murdering people. They are even accused of
stealing food out of the mouths of starving
artists. Yet these verbal assaults
hide a cold and calculated lie, the one that
says "copyrights benefit creative people". The
truth is that for every artist or writer that
has made it "big", there are unmentioned
thousands whom copyrights haven't helped a bit,
hindered, or even destroyed. Some are even
barred or sued from sharing their own creations
in public, while others die with the world never truly
knowing their artistic genius as the mass media
drowns them out. Most creators are far better
off sharing and distributing their creations
freely to make a reputation for themselves.
Copyrights not only cause them to be drowned out
in a sea of hype, but do so deceptively.
However, these aren't the only problems
related to copyrights. They are just a
sample of many that are constantly blown off,
glossed over, or ignored. Like the failures of
Hollywood culture, the failures of big media to
offer quality material, the failures of the
market to offer competitively priced books
for college students while tabloids are dirt
cheap, and massive anti-trust behavior in the
software industry to name a few. Their
hypocritical pleas like, "how will we make
money without copyrights?" is like a mobster
asking "how will I make money with out victims
to extort?"
The burdens of imposing copyrights might have
been bearable a quarter century ago when the
biggest issue was copy machines. But today in
the information age there is no technical
distinction between copyright content and free
speech content. Information is so easy to copy
and manipulate, there can be no "middle ground".
Our society must make a choice: Our
communications will either have to be monitored
or free, our privacy will either have to
intruded or protected. Our speech, writing, and
free expression will either have to be abridged
or unabridged. Any institution that has the
power to control one, must have the power to
control all. Copyrights are like a vine that
will never stop growing to choke off our
freedoms until we cut it off at the root!
Consider parallels to other periods of
transition like the industrial revolution:
History teaches that during the 1800's
there were many people who believed that the
entire meaning and purpose of the industrial
revolution was to leverage inventions like the
cotton gin to expand their plantations for
unlimited growth and profit. Ironically just the
opposite was
... The government has nothing whatsoever to do with making that decision.
what the hell, when you say that you have the right to sue and press criminal charges on people who copy - that requires the cppoeration of the coercive power of government unless you're trying to do it like the mafia. Please don't patronize me... you know what I'm talking about.
... part of that deal is that I don't spread it around..... Certainly I don't feel restricted, because I already got what I paid for.....
Maybe you could send me 100 dollars in the mail with a note attached that says "by opening this you owe me 200". Perhaps I might even feel I got what I paid for and that it supports americas industry and commerce - you'd be stupid to try it though.
Not at all. The guy I was responding to was complaining that Windows treats "the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate information over the internet as a threat." And of course my point is that we, and the information tools that use do need to start out with some presumed controls over information access, and need to be thinking, even during rhetorical excercises, about who should have control over what information, and by what means.
Wrong. With privacy and trade secrets, you're responsible for controlling them and securing them - and if they get blasted out all over the world, then even when it is wrong that is tough. The cat is out of the bag. With copyrights, you claim to have the right to distribute it all over the planet - and claim the right to coerce and sue anyone who doesn't get that information on your terms - that's just wrong and bullshit, the social cost of enforcement might have been bearable when the only copying was done by hand or press or even xerox machine, but now it's DOA no matter how "cheap" you think everyone else is. It's sad to see people can't deal with that.
Well, the first part many people already answered. Copyrights are more like a government regulation that controlls how people use information than a free market property right. People actually try to pretend that there is no difference between physical property and copyright monopolies, well excuse me, the emperor has no clothes.
If, by "information" you mean songs that some people want to hear, by artists they say they like (just not well enough to pay them for their work), perhaps. Or movies that you want to see, but just not badly enough to actually pay the price for. But I'm sitting here right now using XP, connected to the internet, freely exchanging this information with you. Now, how is it exactly that Microsoft is restricting me? Of course, we're not freely exchanging this information, because the folks a slashdot have to pay for this conversation.
Well, if you don't feel restricted, try sharing 10000 coppies of office 2000 over the internet and you soon will. And the first part is bullshit, people pay millions to go to concerts every year - people are more than happy to pay the price for real services. Hell I paid 5K to get a RCHE cause I got sick of being craped all over. It's not about cost, but controll.
Speaking of free, please point me to where your personal financial data is, and any and all academic papers you've ever written, and any sensitive information used by the members of your family or any friends that are in business in any way. I'm sure they'll agree with you that information should be free and unrestricted, and will help you serve it all up. Maybe you've got a friend or family member that makes wine, or runs a restaurant, or has spent a lifetime developing a way to do something difficult? I'll help you out with some web hosting where you can put up all of their inside information they use to run their businesses or create their artwork. Hopefully you've got a family member that's almost done with a great novel, biography, or excellent article for an industry journal of some sort (which, of course, they would have written on a Linux machine - goes without saying). Please have them forward a copy of that manuscript so that we can get together and post it online for free, and that way that writer doesn't have to get his or her hands all dirty with making an actual living or anything by getting income from their work. I'm sure they want nothing to do with "market forces," though you're sure those will still have an important role in fixing anything in Linux that needs a little attention.
First, this starts out with a red herring. There is a big difference between privacy / trade secrets / and copyrights - if you really want to go there, I'll be happy to agrue it.
Second off, most creators would be far better off putting the content they create on-line. Copyrights only help large monopolized interests "eg Madonna", the little guy who tries to fence off his creations is simply screwing himself out of much needed publicity and reputation. It it very easy to look arround at the real world and see how many "average" people copyrights have helped - hint for every 1 that makes it big, 10000 get nowhere.
... that this is a pissing contest, and it has nothing to do with the real issue. The core issue is that Linux is compatable with the information age, because it treats the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate itself over the internet like a benefit. Windows is not, becuase it trys to treat information like "intellectual property" and sees the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate information over the internet as a threat and "piracy". They (MS) have simply held themselves accountable to a paradigm that has no place in the information age, and they're trying to shift the argument to issues like "tco", and "features", and "hidded costs" to avoid it. In the long term, this is all totally irrelavent as to who wins. It doesn't matter what's Linux's flaws are - they will be remedied by market forces sooner or later.
Putting an ad-blocker (pop-ups are fair game) on something as popular as IE would cause very serious disruptions to many, many websites (ie their revenue stream gets completely cut). Not to mention the inevitable lawsuit if doubleclick.net was in by default.
Well, that's sorta the whole point though. MS is working under the pretense of being a service to their customers, not a service to industry honchos. If that's what they really want, then fine lets force them to be honest about it.
I think the request for it being GPL'd is wishful thinking too. Maybe you need to calm down
I know they will never do that too. But once again, there the ones freaking out about how the proprietary coercive model gives more value to the customers than the open free one. Well, I call bullshit, show me how making IE closed adds more value to the customers... especially for linux users, mac users, and others. I'd really just love to hear it.
Oh no you don't... the only people who would mod this parent a troll would half to work for Microsoft! I'm sorry if they don't like the facts as I see it, but that's not my problem.... please go read the moderator guidelines.
First quit stuffing this proprietary crap down my throat, at least have the decency to put it under the GPL.
Second, please don't default load to the msn page, WTF, google.com would be much nicer.
Third, could you actually put something in there to block ads and popups, and any other crap that I don't want on my screen. Al least temporairly. Eg NO AD.DOUBBLECLICK.NET !!!!!
Fourth, last time I looked default IE has over ONE GIG of cache in the settings... excuse me!!!!
Fifth, could you actually make it work with java?????.... no I mean the real java from Sun. And the same with the "real" javascript too now that I'm thinking about it.
Sixth, don't renember all my crap - I want privacy and security - and when I close the browser I want the option to not only take out the cache, cookies, and history of web sites visited, but also want it to TRUELY ERASE IT... eg... overwrite the blocks on the hard drive with random data. Get it!
Seventh, oh and this really pisses me off, PLEASE PLEASE when I hit the reload button - I want it to actually reload the data from the URL over the internet not reload a bunch of cache!!!
Eigth, can't you natively render PDF's. Why do I half to deal with all this over bloated adobe crap????... and the same with crapromedia now that I'm thinking of it.
Ninth, please put something in there that makes it easy for me to "steal" (GASP!!!) someone's "intellectual property". Yeah I know that's hideous to you, but that's what I want so get with it or get over it and get lost.
Actually, forget this, mozilla's not perfict, but at least it's going in the right directions.
Isn't this going to be the version with DRM and all the other copy "protection" crap.
I'm sure it won't work like linux, eg you can copy it, maniuplate it, move it arround from pc to pc, store it on your local servers for quick downloads and access, without a license, with out a phonecall to microsoft.
Linux will work wether I have a CD, DVD, USB, network access, or even bootstrap floppy without much effort.
Linux will work as a terminal or a server right out of the box.
Linux will work on 32mb ram with a 400 mb disk and a tty text console.
Linux will work on a 2048 node supercomputer parallel cluster.
Linux will work on x86, x86-64, dec, sparc, mips, power-pc, and even ARM.
GNU/Linux will work for editing, spread sheets, graphics, office productivity, mail servers, database servers, web servers, dns servers, smb servers, and development in over 10 different languages right out if the box.
So how is microsift claming "it just works" again?
I think the problem is that allot of us are used to dealing with paradigms in the physical world. If you have a house, car, food, etc... and let everybody use it - that will deprive you of its use for yourself and your beliefs and opinions of how things should be used and done. But in the world of inventions and creation - that logic is just the opposite, sharing deprives you of nothing but rather increases your value as more people seek you out for applications that have physical world value. All to often it is all to tempting to revert back to physical world paradigms when dealing with information, inventions, and ideas, and the government encourages it with artificial monopolies like copyright and patent. But on average in the big picture controlling information limits your options... especially if you are the "little guy", small business, starting musician, or independent inventor.
It will force news gathering and dissamation away from central media sources to a more distributed outlets that are harder to manipulate and have more direct accountability as a whole. It will also bring more individuality and integrity to the news process.
I can't count how many times I've seen the same old garbage re-hashed by diferent reporters who didn't know a damn thing about the story other than what the AP report told them. Hell, why didn't they just cut out the middleman and let me read the AP story myself without all the spin and personal BS opinions.
The truth is, what this is really about is the media industry living in a wet-dream that says "nobody should get reliable news free of charge, tracking, or advertizements" - well I hate to tell them this, but they can and they should... and if the big media industry dies becasue of it, then that is their problem, not mine.
In a normal world the software that is well designed, would also be a very pretty and asthetic too. But we don't live in a normal world, we live in a world where people try to controll information and try to force "ownership" like it is physical property.
In this kind of world, it is in financial best interest of proprietary software companies to expeidate what looks good at the expense of what is good - wether it be good as in engineering, design, security, or good as in just plain ole freedom (eg the freedom to copy without being legally assulted)
One example, when UNIX was no longer free to copy, innovation in the X-windows gui space came to a schreaching halt, and then when linux came onto the scene with a free license - it picked right back up again. That growth rate will eventually blow away apple too.
Uh well, I think he is actually that ignorant (or lost is more like it). This is the guy who started mp3.com and thought that the music industry was going to give him a big pat on the back for it and let them into their billionaires club. Even worse is how he down-talks illegal copying like it's a back-alley dirty activity, when in truth nobody is doing any worse than he has been, is, and will likely continue to do for the rest of his life. IMHO, he is the epitomy of blind love for evil systems. No matter how poor it is, evil it is, he throws himself at it with pure optimisim and glossy eyes.
Because Dell looked at the numbers and determined that the exclusively-Intel price discount that Dell gets is more valuable than the potential revenue they'd get by offering AMD.
It's more likely because some Dell executives looked at the numbers and determined that the exclusively-Intel price kickbacks that Dell's worth is more valuable to their swiss bank accounts than the potential revenue they'd get by offering AMD. These same Dell execs then proceeded to come up with bullshit excuses of why they couldn't possibly afford to go with AMD. For chrissake, this is slashdot - if Dell was really listening to the marketplace and to customers - it would never have come to this.
Slashdot Mirror
Why don't you become an artist and find out, instead of trying to lead us to a premade conclusion?
I am an artist, and a programmer, and a musician, and a writer. Maybe not a great one, but neither is 99% of the crap out there. But I guess I just don't count unless I have the millions in backing from some mega-monopoly.
Premade? Cmon, anyone who cares enough to think about it from a perspective other than, "I wanna haphazerdly luck out on some creation and sit on my ass and collect a million bucks in royalities", is going to come to the same conclusion I did.
Trying to treat things that can be coppied freely like property that can't is simply bullshit morality, and I think by now everybody knows it, but too many people are scared to just plain say it. Maybe they don't want to hurt peoples feelings, maybe they just don't want the social stigma of the brow beaters saying "you hate artists", maybe they're just holding out hope for a "compromise" so everybody can just get along, I don't know?
Damn right, if someone can't afford to fight off the plague, let them die from it. It can't affect me, I'm *rich*. And if they die, don't *force* me to pay for removing their bloated corpse from the middle of the street, I'll move it if I want to. Oh yeah, and "street"? That's what we call the ruts where I drive most often.
And theres the whole problem right there, the attitude that noone will do (enough) good things unless forced too. Your faith that people are more hatefull and self-centered instide than not is allot more telling about yourself than everyone else. Perhaps you want the govt to force people to deal with it, cause you refuse to accept that responsibility as an individual yourself ... drive on buddyo.
It is always easy to say "I told you" so after the fact, but the reality is that this failure has far more to do with the companies attitude about technology than failure of somebody to say "look out!". In fact by the sounds of it, the entire application could probably be ran on 2 souped up PS'c running in parallel in different co-locations over the internet - the hardware and infrastructure would not cost alot.
.....
Even worse, is when these types of failures happen, then comes in the ole "policy and procedure" routine kicks in.
To tell a story, one time I went to a boarding school, and at the beginning of the year they had almost no rules, and then when ever something went wrong they added a new rule. Well needless to say at the end of the year there were so many rules, people could get repramanded for flushing the toilet twice instead of once! Not having their shoes tied left over right, etc
Well I grew up and found the same is true in companies, how much you wanna bet they are gonna loose more than 20 million from too many piled up policy and procedures that keep anyone from getting anything done?
The forces that are holding us back from the next generation of technology are not (though important) our sciences, or our education level, or RnD ... IMHO the main thing holding us back are overbearing intellectual property laws, and over intrusive government in general. Our government simply hasn't caught up to the intellectual level of our sciences.
The first theing we need to do is get rid of copyright and patent monopolies, and drasticly reduce paperwork and tax requirements for individuals and businesses, and making it so that people and commodities can go freely from country to country and work without restriction or inteference. Yeah, I know some people are going to hate that, and others who don't get it are going to call that "too extreme." But that attitude is exactly why the US simply is going to have a bumpy ride into the information age. Too many people just don't get it and aren't willing to let go of the old ways that just don't work.
How about an answer like .... "to get real results, you could always do this ... or that ..." - To sum up, I guess you don't have an answer.
... which is basically him saying "they don't have a right to buy how they think they should, so I'm gonna beat them down so they cant have it, becaise 'I' know whats for their better good and they're too stupid and undiciplined to figure it out for themselves."
No, India and Mexico are out because everyone else will want that "mininum quality of life" provided at seomeone elses expense. If you want to invest your money in places where people think that you "OWE THEM!", and are willing to coercively take it from you then far be for me to interfere. It's really a slap in the face to poor people though, because they are more than cabable of taking care of themselves if they have the liberty to do so. But no, if a poor person wants to buy some product from another country, becasue it's cheaper, and will allow them to save more for their family and business - all to often there is someone out there that will say lets put tarrifs on it and drive up the price
PS: I would love people to "steal" inventions and ideas from other countries. But intellectual "property" isn't property, so it restricts freedom more then it helps it. It's a poor logical argument to mix that in with other forms of trade and commerce. If you take my car, that means I won't have the origical copy, not so with "ip".
Seriously, the US is bad, but I don't see better alternatives. I really do believe that China will have economic growth, but political stability is a totally another mater, I have never seen a totaliatarian government do well in the face of prosperity because the masses get restless.
... well that remains to be seen.
Canada, like it or not is tied to the hip with the US economy. And it doesn't seem business friendly. I've known alot of Canadians who came the the USA to start companies, but not the other way arround.
And the EURO, forget it, there economic situation is crappier that the good ole US of A. Employment in France, the UK, and Germany is more, growth is less, and debt and taxes are compairable. In fact, the only good thing is the growth of the EURO, but that's not because the EURO's growing, but more because the US is printing up a shit-load of dollars (well loaning it at low interest, same diff?)
India almost went socialist last election. Mexico looks like it will go socialist this one. There are new attacks everywhere on offshore havens, and private secure banking services. Just last year all of Europe tried to gang up on the Swiss. Sure there allot of oddball 3rd world countries out there, but that isn't stable either.
Well theres always gold. It's good to tame currency inflation, but terrible in that it just sits there and doesn't produce anything.
In sum, as crapy as the situation is, that leavs us with the dollar and not much else, not that I wouldn't love other alternatives, but that's just the way it is. At the best, investors can hope to diversify, but I can't see any way out of it.
So is the US govt pushing crap, yes, are they pushing crap more than all the other wannabe governments that would do worse if given the chance
A Violent Protest Against Patents
Patents are directly responsible for the death of millions. They are
NOT "property" and especially not free market or capitalistic (contrary
to popular belief). In addition, the notion that patents help the "little
guy" is a fraud, people don't invent for patents, and patents financially
help lawyers far more than inventors or businesses. When it comes to R&D
patents have the effect of growing a few extra big trees at the
expense of killing the orchard. Patents drive up prices for consumers,
and encourage practices that are harmful for the environment. Most
patents are trivial and for things that are going to be invented anyhow.
All patents build off of prior knowledge and invention given to people
freely, yet assert the "right" to lock out everybody else. The patent
system doesn't need to be "fixed" or "tweaked", it is inherently
murderous and needs to be destroyed.
Patents don't help MOST small time inventors, most small companies, or even
promote innovation. Most companies get patents for two purposes only,
that is to protect themselves from frivolous lawsuits, and to have something
to get into cross-licensing agreements so they don't get sued. Companies
almost never use patents for "protection", unless they were going bankrupt
anyhow - in which case they lash out and sue everybody. At very best they
help finance lawyers, and contrary to popular belief patents are the
anti-thesis of a free market society. Patents have nothing to do with
"property" or "incentive", and everything to do with using the leverage
of heavy handed government "regulation" and monopoly to coercively
control how people use innovations.
Patents are directly responsible for the murder and poor quality of life,
of millions of the poor, sick, elderly, and children around the world.
This is because the rat-race to lock in and monopolize a key innovation also
discourages researchers around the world from collaborating, and because
simple or eloquent solutions that can not be patented are often shunned
for complicated ones with lots of side effects that can be. And because
patent monopolies tend to drive up the price of things like AIDS medicine
to the point that it is way out of reach for most 3rd world countries.
Patents also tend to re-shift the industry so that all R&D is focused in
the confines of a few super-funded companies rather than throughout society
as a whole. Contrary to the myth that only patents allow for the massive
R&D costs that are required to develop new technologies, patents devastate
1000s of small research efforts for the sake of a few large ones.
Patents are not pro technology at all, in the tech industry I know, the
entire industry is defined by people who defied patents. For example,
the IBM compatible PC was a drastic success for the computer industry,
because it was a drastic patent failure where anybody could make an IBM
compatible PC even if they weren't IBM. Silicon valley, wouldn't exist
without the engineers who routinely revolted against companies who wanted
to patent off their innovations, and created new startups in defiance.
In the tech industry I know, the overwhelming majority of patents were issued
for innovations that were incremental, and were going to happen anyhow with
or without patents. The patents didn't help anything, they just got in the
way time and time again. Even worse are the thousands of patents issued for
things that were obvious and could be made by any competent high school
programming student, like a cursor that blinks!
One time I worked for an innovative chip maker that got bought out by a
huge global multinational corporation - whose only motive was grab
some key patents and lock out competition in an important area of the
market. This didn't benefit the consumer who got gouged, it didn't benefit
the employees who mostly got lai
Look, the very nature of "intellectual property" accepts that fact that you believe that it's "OK" to use the coercive power of government to controll waht people copy. So let there be no doubt, we are what we hold ourselves accountable to, and we are far more beholden to the forces that are pulling us apart from Microsoft that the ones that are keeping us together.
One more thing, if it's only about the technology, and not freedom. Then what's to keep Microsoft from offering key people money and benefits to influence the direction of Linux. If they don't see freedom as the end in itself, then they surely won't see anything wrong with that. The fact is, freedom matters, and in the information age the freedom to copy and distribute information that's already out there really matters.
I say, it's about time China recieved the same lack of freedoms that we have right here in the good old US of A.
I know this is just being funny, but one of the few outlets of freedom that exist in China is the culture that strongly encourages the freedom to copy things. When the pressures of the information age hit the USA, political forces pretty much guarantee that the RIAA and MPAA can never push it to the point of murder, torture, or even genocide. I wouldn't count on that in China and I think it is very dangerous for the USA to attack this part of Asian culture. I could very easially see systematic executions to "set an example".
Then you need to read more of my posts, because I clearly consider the GPL as fighting fire with fire and completely unecissary in a copyright free world. And I could never consider being a BSD proponent, because it allows that someone to fork off a closed copy, modify it, distribute it, and coercively halt others from doing the same to that fork.
You know Ely Whitney (sp) didn't make a penny off the invention of the cotton-gin because everybody coppied it, but made millions of off gun manufatcure contracts that he never would have had a chance at without it. I think that thould tell you allot about free markets and innovation.
Right now the market centers arround whatever information gets the most hype or attention, when copyrights die (which they are) then the market is going to center arround which people create the most valuable information as a service - google has created over 1000 millionaires, yet there are no copyrights on databases. Copyrights are a regulation on how people use information, and have nothing to do with free market property rights.
Please, go back up and read it the essay very very carefully again - I know where you're comming from, I spent four years considering every side of the copyright argument before I wrote it.
Well I for one intend to celebrate by reposting this ....
A Bitter Protest Against Copyrights
If they said there was no incentive to do good things unless the government could choose your religion ... or they said there is no
incentive to grow food, unless farmers
could rip up your garden ... most people would
see these as the awful values that they are.
But if they say that there is no incentive to
make beneficial or creative works without the
power to restrict what people copy (copyrights),
then all too many people just take it on
faith. They don't even question it, as if
incentive makes rights, as if society would fall
apart without them. But just as much of the
Renaissance happened without copyrights so
should the information age.
Calling copyrights "intellectual property" is intellectually dishonest. The moral and historical foundation of property derives from mutual respect and the fact that not everybody can posses something at the same time. The foundation of copyrights derives from kings who granted publishers monopolies in return for not publishing bad things about the monarchy. Copyrights are about control, censorship, and not a free market property. In fact, they cheapen property rights by treating things that have natural limits in supply such as food, shelter, and medicine like information that does not.
Worse, is how people who copy are slandered with names such as "thief" and "pirate", as if copying was akin to boarding a ship and murdering people. They are even accused of stealing food out of the mouths of starving artists. Yet these verbal assaults hide a cold and calculated lie, the one that says "copyrights benefit creative people". The truth is that for every artist or writer that has made it "big", there are unmentioned thousands whom copyrights haven't helped a bit, hindered, or even destroyed. Some are even barred or sued from sharing their own creations in public, while others die with the world never truly knowing their artistic genius as the mass media drowns them out. Most creators are far better off sharing and distributing their creations freely to make a reputation for themselves. Copyrights not only cause them to be drowned out in a sea of hype, but do so deceptively.
However, these aren't the only problems related to copyrights. They are just a sample of many that are constantly blown off, glossed over, or ignored. Like the failures of Hollywood culture, the failures of big media to offer quality material, the failures of the market to offer competitively priced books for college students while tabloids are dirt cheap, and massive anti-trust behavior in the software industry to name a few. Their hypocritical pleas like, "how will we make money without copyrights?" is like a mobster asking "how will I make money with out victims to extort?"
The burdens of imposing copyrights might have been bearable a quarter century ago when the biggest issue was copy machines. But today in the information age there is no technical distinction between copyright content and free speech content. Information is so easy to copy and manipulate, there can be no "middle ground". Our society must make a choice: Our communications will either have to be monitored or free, our privacy will either have to intruded or protected. Our speech, writing, and free expression will either have to be abridged or unabridged. Any institution that has the power to control one, must have the power to control all. Copyrights are like a vine that will never stop growing to choke off our freedoms until we cut it off at the root!
Consider parallels to other periods of transition like the industrial revolution:
History teaches that during the 1800's there were many people who believed that the entire meaning and purpose of the industrial revolution was to leverage inventions like the cotton gin to expand their plantations for unlimited growth and profit. Ironically just the opposite was
... The government has nothing whatsoever to do with making that decision.
what the hell, when you say that you have the right to sue and press criminal charges on people who copy - that requires the cppoeration of the coercive power of government unless you're trying to do it like the mafia. Please don't patronize me ... you know what I'm talking about.
... part of that deal is that I don't spread it around. .... Certainly I don't feel restricted, because I already got what I paid for. ....
Maybe you could send me 100 dollars in the mail with a note attached that says "by opening this you owe me 200". Perhaps I might even feel I got what I paid for and that it supports americas industry and commerce - you'd be stupid to try it though.
Not at all. The guy I was responding to was complaining that Windows treats "the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate information over the internet as a threat." And of course my point is that we, and the information tools that use do need to start out with some presumed controls over information access, and need to be thinking, even during rhetorical excercises, about who should have control over what information, and by what means.
Wrong. With privacy and trade secrets, you're responsible for controlling them and securing them - and if they get blasted out all over the world, then even when it is wrong that is tough. The cat is out of the bag. With copyrights, you claim to have the right to distribute it all over the planet - and claim the right to coerce and sue anyone who doesn't get that information on your terms - that's just wrong and bullshit, the social cost of enforcement might have been bearable when the only copying was done by hand or press or even xerox machine, but now it's DOA no matter how "cheap" you think everyone else is. It's sad to see people can't deal with that.
Well, the first part many people already answered. Copyrights are more like a government regulation that controlls how people use information than a free market property right. People actually try to pretend that there is no difference between physical property and copyright monopolies, well excuse me, the emperor has no clothes.
If, by "information" you mean songs that some people want to hear, by artists they say they like (just not well enough to pay them for their work), perhaps. Or movies that you want to see, but just not badly enough to actually pay the price for. But I'm sitting here right now using XP, connected to the internet, freely exchanging this information with you. Now, how is it exactly that Microsoft is restricting me? Of course, we're not freely exchanging this information, because the folks a slashdot have to pay for this conversation.
Well, if you don't feel restricted, try sharing 10000 coppies of office 2000 over the internet and you soon will. And the first part is bullshit, people pay millions to go to concerts every year - people are more than happy to pay the price for real services. Hell I paid 5K to get a RCHE cause I got sick of being craped all over. It's not about cost, but controll.
Speaking of free, please point me to where your personal financial data is, and any and all academic papers you've ever written, and any sensitive information used by the members of your family or any friends that are in business in any way. I'm sure they'll agree with you that information should be free and unrestricted, and will help you serve it all up. Maybe you've got a friend or family member that makes wine, or runs a restaurant, or has spent a lifetime developing a way to do something difficult? I'll help you out with some web hosting where you can put up all of their inside information they use to run their businesses or create their artwork. Hopefully you've got a family member that's almost done with a great novel, biography, or excellent article for an industry journal of some sort (which, of course, they would have written on a Linux machine - goes without saying). Please have them forward a copy of that manuscript so that we can get together and post it online for free, and that way that writer doesn't have to get his or her hands all dirty with making an actual living or anything by getting income from their work. I'm sure they want nothing to do with "market forces," though you're sure those will still have an important role in fixing anything in Linux that needs a little attention.
First, this starts out with a red herring. There is a big difference between privacy / trade secrets / and copyrights - if you really want to go there, I'll be happy to agrue it.
Second off, most creators would be far better off putting the content they create on-line. Copyrights only help large monopolized interests "eg Madonna", the little guy who tries to fence off his creations is simply screwing himself out of much needed publicity and reputation. It it very easy to look arround at the real world and see how many "average" people copyrights have helped - hint for every 1 that makes it big, 10000 get nowhere.
... that this is a pissing contest, and it has nothing to do with the real issue. The core issue is that Linux is compatable with the information age, because it treats the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate itself over the internet like a benefit. Windows is not, becuase it trys to treat information like "intellectual property" and sees the unrestricted ability to copy and manipulate information over the internet as a threat and "piracy". They (MS) have simply held themselves accountable to a paradigm that has no place in the information age, and they're trying to shift the argument to issues like "tco", and "features", and "hidded costs" to avoid it. In the long term, this is all totally irrelavent as to who wins. It doesn't matter what's Linux's flaws are - they will be remedied by market forces sooner or later.
Putting an ad-blocker (pop-ups are fair game) on something as popular as IE would cause very serious disruptions to many, many websites (ie their revenue stream gets completely cut). Not to mention the inevitable lawsuit if doubleclick.net was in by default.
Well, that's sorta the whole point though. MS is working under the pretense of being a service to their customers, not a service to industry honchos. If that's what they really want, then fine lets force them to be honest about it.
I think the request for it being GPL'd is wishful thinking too. Maybe you need to calm down
I know they will never do that too. But once again, there the ones freaking out about how the proprietary coercive model gives more value to the customers than the open free one. Well, I call bullshit, show me how making IE closed adds more value to the customers ... especially for linux users, mac users, and others. I'd really just love to hear it.
Oh no you don't ... the only people who would mod this parent a troll would half to work for Microsoft! I'm sorry if they don't like the facts as I see it, but that's not my problem .... please go read the moderator guidelines.
First quit stuffing this proprietary crap down my throat, at least have the decency to put it under the GPL.
... excuse me!!!!
.... no I mean the real java from Sun. And the same with the "real" javascript too now that I'm thinking about it.
... eg ... overwrite the blocks on the hard drive with random data. Get it!
... and the same with crapromedia now that I'm thinking of it.
Second, please don't default load to the msn page, WTF, google.com would be much nicer.
Third, could you actually put something in there to block ads and popups, and any other crap that I don't want on my screen. Al least temporairly. Eg NO AD.DOUBBLECLICK.NET !!!!!
Fourth, last time I looked default IE has over ONE GIG of cache in the settings
Fifth, could you actually make it work with java?????
Sixth, don't renember all my crap - I want privacy and security - and when I close the browser I want the option to not only take out the cache, cookies, and history of web sites visited, but also want it to TRUELY ERASE IT
Seventh, oh and this really pisses me off, PLEASE PLEASE when I hit the reload button - I want it to actually reload the data from the URL over the internet not reload a bunch of cache!!!
Eigth, can't you natively render PDF's. Why do I half to deal with all this over bloated adobe crap????
Ninth, please put something in there that makes it easy for me to "steal" (GASP!!!) someone's "intellectual property". Yeah I know that's hideous to you, but that's what I want so get with it or get over it and get lost.
Actually, forget this, mozilla's not perfict, but at least it's going in the right directions.
Isn't this going to be the version with DRM and all the other copy "protection" crap.
I'm sure it won't work like linux, eg you can copy it, maniuplate it, move it arround from pc to pc, store it on your local servers for quick downloads and access, without a license, with out a phonecall to microsoft.
Linux will work wether I have a CD, DVD, USB, network access, or even bootstrap floppy without much effort.
Linux will work as a terminal or a server right out of the box.
Linux will work on 32mb ram with a 400 mb disk and
a tty text console.
Linux will work on a 2048 node supercomputer parallel cluster.
Linux will work on x86, x86-64, dec, sparc, mips, power-pc, and even ARM.
GNU/Linux will work for editing, spread sheets, graphics, office productivity, mail servers, database servers, web servers, dns servers, smb servers, and development in over 10 different languages right out if the box.
So how is microsift claming "it just works" again?
I think the problem is that allot of us are used to dealing with paradigms in the physical world. If you have a house, car, food, etc ... and let everybody use it - that will deprive you of its use for yourself and your beliefs and opinions of how things should be used and done. But in the world of inventions and creation - that logic is just the opposite, sharing deprives you of nothing but rather increases your value as more people seek you out for applications that have physical world value. All to often it is all to tempting to revert back to physical world paradigms when dealing with information, inventions, and ideas, and the government encourages it with artificial monopolies like copyright and patent. But on average in the big picture controlling information limits your options ... especially if you are the "little guy", small business, starting musician, or independent inventor.
It will force news gathering and dissamation away from central media sources to a more distributed outlets that are harder to manipulate and have more direct accountability as a whole. It will also bring more individuality and integrity to the news process.
... and if the big media industry dies becasue of it, then that is their problem, not mine.
I can't count how many times I've seen the same old garbage re-hashed by diferent reporters who didn't know a damn thing about the story other than what the AP report told them. Hell, why didn't they just cut out the middleman and let me read the AP story myself without all the spin and personal BS opinions.
The truth is, what this is really about is the media industry living in a wet-dream that says "nobody should get reliable news free of charge, tracking, or advertizements" - well I hate to tell them this, but they can and they should
In a normal world the software that is well designed, would also be a very pretty and asthetic too. But we don't live in a normal world, we live in a world where people try to controll information and try to force "ownership" like it is physical property.
In this kind of world, it is in financial best interest of proprietary software companies to expeidate what looks good at the expense of what is good - wether it be good as in engineering, design, security, or good as in just plain ole freedom (eg the freedom to copy without being legally assulted)
One example, when UNIX was no longer free to copy, innovation in the X-windows gui space came to a schreaching halt, and then when linux came onto the scene with a free license - it picked right back up again. That growth rate will eventually blow away apple too.
Uh well, I think he is actually that ignorant (or lost is more like it). This is the guy who started mp3.com and thought that the music industry was going to give him a big pat on the back for it and let them into their billionaires club. Even worse is how he down-talks illegal copying like it's a back-alley dirty activity, when in truth nobody is doing any worse than he has been, is, and will likely continue to do for the rest of his life. IMHO, he is the epitomy of blind love for evil systems. No matter how poor it is, evil it is, he throws himself at it with pure optimisim and glossy eyes.
Because Dell looked at the numbers and determined that the exclusively-Intel price discount that Dell gets is more valuable than the potential revenue they'd get by offering AMD.
It's more likely because some Dell executives looked at the numbers and determined that the exclusively-Intel price kickbacks that Dell's worth is more valuable to their swiss bank accounts than the potential revenue they'd get by offering AMD. These same Dell execs then proceeded to come up with bullshit excuses of why they couldn't possibly afford to go with AMD. For chrissake, this is slashdot - if Dell was really listening to the marketplace and to customers - it would never have come to this.