I just wanted to second billstewart's, and enhance it with a bit of history about Joe Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman is (was) a Democrat who was booted from the party ticket in New Hampshire for not voting the "right" way on the Iraq war, who then proceeded to have a heavily funded Democratic adversary run against him in the primary. Ned Lamont beat him in the primary. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/senate_races/connecticut_senate_two_days_after_primary_lieberman_ahead_by_5 >He ran as an independent, and won the 'real' election. In doing so, he captured nearly all of the swing vote, and became a much more important figure locally and nationally. In an interesting quirk of fate, he was also the 50th Democratic senator, so the Democrats accepted him back into their caucus in order to maintain control of the Senate's rules, however, both sides (Republican & Democrat) court him regularly, he is often a pivotal vote, and his popularity is quite high.
Frankly, if McCain really wants to win, and isn't worried about burning bridges, he'll pick Lieberman as his Veep, and rebuild the Republican party along as pro-warhawk, moderate social policy, and tight fiscal policy without an emphasis on tax reduction. Many of the "Blue Dog" Democrats would most likely join this party. Many of the existing "Red State" Republicans would probably loose their shit over this, however, they don't really have anywhere to go (except, perhaps, to a new "Ron Paul" Campaign for Liberty style party, but that's probably me dreaming).
I don't see that happening, because I'm under the impression that McCain is strongly controlled by his Republican handlers now, however, I think that will also be his undoing.
Most American politicians these days seem to forget that the "real" swing group these days is Independents. Suburban Whites, Urban Blacks, Women, Men, Young, Old, Rich, Poor, and all the other "typical polling groups" tend to always vote in the same direction, and are extremely difficult to influence.
The real swing vote is so-called independents, reflects about 30% of the electoral vote (which is huge!) and traditionally would have been extremely attracted to both McCain and Lieberman.
Wouldn't be that complicated at all, actually. Microsoft owns, I think, Connectix? The company that used to make Virtual PC.
Take it, add in support for a Vmware "Unity" type feature, create a shim D3D/OpenGL display driver that passes D3D/OpenGL calls to the primary OS, and you're finished. Probably no more than a years work.
The question is, exactly what would MS put in the "Primary OS", and is MS up to the task of engineering an entirely new OS line. My money is on a big fat NO.
apt get remove gnome apt get remove kde apt get remove kernel apt get remove konqueror
Linux packaging management systems are generally modular, and this approach is pervasive throughout the entire system. Perhaps the only portions of it which are not package management based would be the boot code. Just about everything else (including the package manager) can be removed with the package manager.
In my state, cops have the legal right to pull you over at *any* time to verify that you have a license, and that you have insurance. I'm sure its the same way in the other 50 states.
Refusing to provide either your license, vehicle registration, or insurance card is potentially grounds for arrest.
The thing is without the large dispertion of christianity in europe and later america, do you really think you'd have more compassion in the world? What other set of beliefs other than the abrahamic religions have a strong sense of compassion, really now?
I find this offensive.
I also find that atheists are significantly more compassionate than Christians; while being less judgmental to boot.
Before you say a word, or come up with level of rationalization or logical deduction regarding the other major world religions, tell me what your first "feeling" is regarding my statement that Christians are a less compassionate bunch than atheists?
Do you, pray tell, find it offensive? Perhaps because it 'offends' some sense of knowledge and/or knowing that you have? Or perhaps its just makes you angry?
Well, that's precisely how I feel about: What other set of beliefs other than the abrahamic religions have a strong sense of compassion, really now?.
Now, I don't feel qualified to judge the "compassion" level of 'Christians', however, I do feel confident in understanding that compassion is a human quality, not a religious quality. Belief in Christ is not a necessary prerequisite.
Try not to make such inane, and offensive, statements in the future. It's not inappropriate to say that your Christian belief's help you reinforce your own personal sense of compassion; however, holding the position that your Christian belief's make your views on compassion "superior" to that of non-Christians is no less outrageous than racism or sexism. If you worked for me, and I heard anything about that at work, I'd fire you, the same way I'd fire a white supremacist, a fundamentalist Sunni, or a misogynist. I won't toot the superiority of atheism with people surrounding me, or try to convert them; you should give us the same curtsey.
No, what really matters is how you use the rest of the spectrum.
Say you allocate a reasonable, but small amount of the spectrum for free internet browsing. Saying 128 kbps - 1 Mbps per tower. Anyone can connect via whatever the protocol is (some variant of W-CDMA I'm sure), but there's a hard cap that preserves 80% of each tower's bandwidth for the companies profit making purpose. Let's say you running a voice service, or streaming IP video, or publishing mapping/condition data, or serving up purchased content ala Amazon's Kindle.
The cost of providing the relatively small amount of "free internet" is easy to absorb (just a cost of doing business, and no one will compete with you (probably), since spectrum is a finite and spoken-for resource), and "free customers" get no service guarantee (if the "free" part of the tower is congested, that's *your* problem).
Seems to me like there are a lot of business models that will work for this. Given the auction procedure, however, I'm sure some nobody company that's just a shell will end up placing a bid for it, will never pay the money, and never have the money to build out a network; but the re-auctioning of the spectrum will take 5-10 years, and by that time everyone will have forgotten about the "free internet" part of it.
There isn't much synthetic overhead when resources are unlimited, however, its not hard to argue that there is a great deal of overhead when resources are limited.
For example, applications running in Windows XP, on Parallels, on my OS X Leopard system might run at near native speed, all else being equal. However, XP itself consumers nearly 300-400 MB of Ram, and applications running under XP load all sorts of shared libraries which are not shared with OS X. Parallels uses a good 100-200 MB of ram itself, and of course the whole mess uses 10+ GB of disk space, even with just a couple of apps installed. Even on a system with 2-4 GB of ram, there is generally a significant performance deficit exposed when you've got to allocate 500-1000 MB to a single application, when running that same application in native mode might only use 100-300 MB.
That being said, I agree that virtualization is definitely the best way to deal with legacy applications, since it entails a fairly static resource cost (i.e. you're safe assuming you can virtualize XP as long as you put an extra 2 GBs of ram in the system, and thats a nice, fixed cost).
Interesting how when Steve Jobs offered OS X for free, which runs easily on low-power devices, OLPC turned them down. But MS, offering a chopped XP for $$, is welcomed?
A 2 billion ton asteroid could potentially be worth over a trillion dollars in metals. One could move a 2 billion ton asteroid with Orion. Or, one could build a factory on a 2 billion ton asteroid with orion ships, and send million ton refined chunks of it into earth orbit.
Want another capitalist rationale?
Energy. Need to fund an energy intensive industry? Put it in a far orbit. Use Solar Panels the size of Texas, or put in a nuclear reactor with 20+ GW output. Safety risks are small-to-nil, and you've got plenty of room for passive cooling/heatsinks. Drop ship the outputs. Utilize the metals from the moon or asteroids. Jettison waste on an escape trajectory.
All of this becomes possible with Orion.
Orion is not a means to an end. Orion *is* the end, at least in terms of colonizing the solar system. Any propulsion technology that generates those high levels of thrust, and capable of maintaining it for months/years puts the entire solar system into man's palm. Colonize the Moon. Colonize Mars. Colonize a few moons of Jupiter/Saturn. Build some space cities.
Space is *extremely* wealthy in terms of material resources (inorganic), and you don't have to worry about those pesky environmentalists. Hell; there's a decent argument to be made that its fine to pollute the Moon, Mars, Asteroids, or empty space, since you can alleviate the load on earth.
Cheap, high-speed space transportation is any capitalist's dream, because it is an empty, super-rich frontier. There are empires to carve out, if only we could get there.
The environmental issues aren't as serious as you make them out to be. 5-10 launches who generate a tiny fraction of the fallout that the various open-air nuclear tests generated; however, 5-10 launches would be sufficient to put hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of tons of equipment into orbit. 5-10 launches might be enough to jump start deep space exploration.
It irks me that we are willing to contaminate the environment for weapons, but we aren't willing to embrace a small but known risk.
We were willing to detonate nuclear bombs to show off our military penises. Wouldn't it have been better to detonate some nuclear bombs to jumpstart orbital construction deep space exploration? 1-2 million tons or equipment on the moon would be sufficient, I think.
Cancel NASA, and stop space exploration. It's a big waste of time/money. Military needs can be handled by military budgets.
NASA, the U.S. populace, and the world in general have no real interest in propulsion systems capable of realistically lifting large payloads into space economically. We've done everything we can in space with the toy payloads we currently lift, and the only real economic sectors which benefit from continued exploration is orbital satellites, something which NASA handles very poorly (i.e. expensively).
Until someone has the balls to restart Project Orion, I don't see why we should even bother. The technology to put cities in orbit, not to mention on other planets, is readily available and understood. And cheap (on a per kilo basis). So why are we still playing chemical rockets?
It's a waste of time. The silly little experiments done on the ISS are pointless. Until someone invents a drive that can lift 100s (or thousands, or millions) of tons into orbit (or beyond) economically, we should stop bothering and try and let private enterprise come up with something.
The turn away from Project Orion in 1963 represented the end of man's technological development when it came to interplanetary space travel, and commercial space utilization. We dropped the reigns, and walked away (as a race). The current efforts at space travel are a gimmick and a waste of taxpayer dollars, and will continue to be unless we are willing to switch from chemical to nuclear propulsion. That's the truth of the matter.
What about the Stac Electronics case? What about the ongoing EU sanctions for not releasing protocol documentation? What about the falsified videos Microsoft presented to the court regarding the possibility of removing IE from Windows 95? What about Microsoft's anticompetitive and illegal tactics regarding DR-DOS?
I'm sure I could keep going, but that's just a few highlights. Nothing evil/illegal/immoral going on there, huh? I would probably agree that the rank-n-file is monitored for legality, however, there is quite a bit of evidence that the upper management at your organization has no problem flouting the law.
To avoid any Microsoft product with the term "Live!" in the title?
Sure, actually, you should avoid all MS products, period. But especially the "Live!" Products. There's like... 200 of them on Wikipedia, and I've heard of maybe 10.
Economics covers _everything_. Repeat after me. "EVERYTHING IS ECONOMIC IN NATURE" "EVERYTHING IS ECONOMIC IN NATURE" "EVERYTHING IS ECONOMIC IN NATURE".
If you aren't studying political/social movements under an Economic lens, you aren't really studying them at all.
First of all, let me say that the companies we are talking about in the context of the article (FLOSS companies) are most definitely selling something. They may not have a copyright monopoly on what they are selling (MySQL, Linux Desktops, whatever), but they are selling software+service. Are they using a different business model than the Microsofts of the world? Of course. But these are for-profit business.
Second of all, I can think of _many_ industries where participants are handing away their work for free. My cable company, WOW Internet and Cable, is quite willing to do free technical repairs (wire replacements indoors, splitter replacements, etc . . ), while Comcast charges for these things. The company I work for, BioGenesis Enterprises, is quite happy to give away service-style consulting as long as there's a possibility we'll make a chemical sale. I've seen many a mechanic who will check things out free, and refer you away to another organization (or nothing at all) if that's warranted, and not make a dime. And that doesn't even come close to covering the huge amount of work done in the private academic and non-profit spheres, sectors of our capitalist economy which filter down into commercial develops without needing patents/copyrights.
Simply put, there are many, many people out there who are willing to "give away intellectual work" 'for free', as long as their making money somehow. Google Engineers probably have no problem working on FLOSS projects, because A) It builds their resume, B) Their encouraged to work on it during company time, and C) It is a form of creativity and self-expression.
Take a look at the Linux kernel. Fully 60% of contributions are directly "big company" corporate sponsored, and if I'm reading the chart correctly only ~25% of the contributions are not corporate funded (and half of that is in the "unknown" category").
Capitalism assumes that everyone wants to be compensated for their work, but that doesn't mean we are all lawyers that demand itemized compensation for every little activity we've ever conducted. That's a slimy, nickel-n-dime model that is surprisingly inefficient. The better capitalist model is where people do the work they way to do, and receive sufficient pay for their total set of efforts sufficient to pay the bills, and have a moderate sum left over at the end of the month. In fact, that's how capitalist markets work when you don't have monopolies; like the copyright monopoly, or patent monopolies. Think about it: When you go to a small consultant, or a local general mechanic, or HVAC person, you can negotiate with them. You come up with a price that doesn't represent a direct itemization of time/parts+margin, but rather is a fair "market" price between your demand and their supply. That's how FLOSS works.
While I don't think they are saintly, Google hasn't pulled half of the shady shit Microsoft has. In terms of business ethics, Microsoft is really right up there with the uglier oil companies and tobacco company. They don't think in terms of what is legal; they think in terms of opportunity cost to illegal actions, with a healthy dosage of risk.
One should suspect all companies, as they are built on profit motives, however, Microsoft has a very very shady track record to boot.
When you replace process "A" with process "B", and achieve a 10x fold reduction in cost, you've increased efficiency.
So, open source software development is literally 10x cheaper than closed source software development; and that also goes for maintenance, procurement, service, yadda yadda. Sounds like "Total Cost of Ownership" to me.
No one would ever, ever argue that a new way of producing solar cells at an order of magnitude cost savings would be a bad thing; so why is it bad in the IT world. Look at it this way, if most of these customers are budget constrained, cutting their costs significantly means they'll purchase more IT products/services. Sure, some of the money will be saved and go into profit or other budget priorities, but this is the very definition of efficiency in a capitalist economy. All it really means is what I've been saying for a long time, that Open Source is an effective tool to reduce the monopoly profits which are generated by holding prominent software copyrights. And, as everyone already knows, monopoly profits are economic inefficiency.
Bravo, FLOSS community. We know we are on the path to victory when our interest are aligned with capitalism, and all we have to do now is make sure that no government intervenes on the behalf of yesteryear's White Elephants.
In the real world, the U.S. taxcode is extremely progressive. The rich pay a far greater share of ALL taxes than anyone else.
The data shows the progressive tax structure of the U.S. federal income tax system on individuals that reduces the tax incidence of people with smaller incomes, as they shift the incidence disproportionately to those with higher incomes - the top 0.1% of taxpayers by income pay 17.4% of federal income taxes (earning 9.1% of the income), the top 1% with gross income of $328,049 or more pay 36.9% (earning 19%), the top 5% with gross income of $137,056 or more pay 57.1% (earning 33.4%), and the bottom 50% with gross income of $30,122 or less pay 3.3% (earning 13.4%).[9][10]
The internet is a growth industry. It's one of the few sectors of the American economy that is growing well right now (along with exports), and low-and-behold, the Democrats want to tax it.
It blows my mind that anyone can get away with talk about raising taxes with a recession looming. The correct response to recession is tax cuts, not tax increases. Raise taxes when growth is high, as way to counter inflation. Not to counter recession.
Slashdot Mirror
I just wanted to second billstewart's, and enhance it with a bit of history about Joe Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman is (was) a Democrat who was booted from the party ticket in New Hampshire for not voting the "right" way on the Iraq war, who then proceeded to have a heavily funded Democratic adversary run against him in the primary. Ned Lamont beat him in the primary. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/senate_races/connecticut_senate_two_days_after_primary_lieberman_ahead_by_5
>He ran as an independent, and won the 'real' election. In doing so, he captured nearly all of the swing vote, and became a much more important figure locally and nationally. In an interesting quirk of fate, he was also the 50th Democratic senator, so the Democrats accepted him back into their caucus in order to maintain control of the Senate's rules, however, both sides (Republican & Democrat) court him regularly, he is often a pivotal vote, and his popularity is quite high.
In short, Lieberman, also feared/hated by 'his' party (like McCain), would probably be an excellent veep pick for McCain.
Frankly, if McCain really wants to win, and isn't worried about burning bridges, he'll pick Lieberman as his Veep, and rebuild the Republican party along as pro-warhawk, moderate social policy, and tight fiscal policy without an emphasis on tax reduction. Many of the "Blue Dog" Democrats would most likely join this party. Many of the existing "Red State" Republicans would probably loose their shit over this, however, they don't really have anywhere to go (except, perhaps, to a new "Ron Paul" Campaign for Liberty style party, but that's probably me dreaming).
I don't see that happening, because I'm under the impression that McCain is strongly controlled by his Republican handlers now, however, I think that will also be his undoing.
Most American politicians these days seem to forget that the "real" swing group these days is Independents. Suburban Whites, Urban Blacks, Women, Men, Young, Old, Rich, Poor, and all the other "typical polling groups" tend to always vote in the same direction, and are extremely difficult to influence.
The real swing vote is so-called independents, reflects about 30% of the electoral vote (which is huge!) and traditionally would have been extremely attracted to both McCain and Lieberman.
As everyone else says, check out FreeNX
It's simply fantastic. Works great over low bandwidth connections, easy to setup, supports suspending sessions.
It's awesome. Check it out.
Yeah, install OpenSuSE 11
Just came out, and its really slick. No problems with Flash, Wine, etc . .. in 64-bit mode.
Wouldn't be that complicated at all, actually. Microsoft owns, I think, Connectix? The company that used to make Virtual PC.
Take it, add in support for a Vmware "Unity" type feature, create a shim D3D/OpenGL display driver that passes D3D/OpenGL calls to the primary OS, and you're finished. Probably no more than a years work.
The question is, exactly what would MS put in the "Primary OS", and is MS up to the task of engineering an entirely new OS line. My money is on a big fat NO.
There are even better examples than VLC.
apt get remove gnome
apt get remove kde
apt get remove kernel
apt get remove konqueror
Linux packaging management systems are generally modular, and this approach is pervasive throughout the entire system. Perhaps the only portions of it which are not package management based would be the boot code. Just about everything else (including the package manager) can be removed with the package manager.
Are you kidding?
In my state, cops have the legal right to pull you over at *any* time to verify that you have a license, and that you have insurance. I'm sure its the same way in the other 50 states.
Refusing to provide either your license, vehicle registration, or insurance card is potentially grounds for arrest.
Papers, please, indeed.
A big impediment to this happening is the iPhone being tied to AT&T.
Until that agreement expires, the iPhone will not reach those levels of dominance, and competitors such as Android might.
Just use FreeNX+OpenOffice.org. Free, works great with Linux, does the job at least as good as Citrix, if not better.
X11 is a wonderful thing, and extensions to it like FreeNX are quite incredible.
The thing is without the large dispertion of christianity in europe and later america, do you really think you'd have more compassion in the world? What other set of beliefs other than the abrahamic religions have a strong sense of compassion, really now?
I find this offensive.
I also find that atheists are significantly more compassionate than Christians; while being less judgmental to boot.
Before you say a word, or come up with level of rationalization or logical deduction regarding the other major world religions, tell me what your first "feeling" is regarding my statement that Christians are a less compassionate bunch than atheists?
Do you, pray tell, find it offensive? Perhaps because it 'offends' some sense of knowledge and/or knowing that you have? Or perhaps its just makes you angry?
Well, that's precisely how I feel about: What other set of beliefs other than the abrahamic religions have a strong sense of compassion, really now?.
Now, I don't feel qualified to judge the "compassion" level of 'Christians', however, I do feel confident in understanding that compassion is a human quality, not a religious quality. Belief in Christ is not a necessary prerequisite.
Try not to make such inane, and offensive, statements in the future. It's not inappropriate to say that your Christian belief's help you reinforce your own personal sense of compassion; however, holding the position that your Christian belief's make your views on compassion "superior" to that of non-Christians is no less outrageous than racism or sexism. If you worked for me, and I heard anything about that at work, I'd fire you, the same way I'd fire a white supremacist, a fundamentalist Sunni, or a misogynist. I won't toot the superiority of atheism with people surrounding me, or try to convert them; you should give us the same curtsey.
No, what really matters is how you use the rest of the spectrum.
Say you allocate a reasonable, but small amount of the spectrum for free internet browsing. Saying 128 kbps - 1 Mbps per tower. Anyone can connect via whatever the protocol is (some variant of W-CDMA I'm sure), but there's a hard cap that preserves 80% of each tower's bandwidth for the companies profit making purpose. Let's say you running a voice service, or streaming IP video, or publishing mapping/condition data, or serving up purchased content ala Amazon's Kindle.
The cost of providing the relatively small amount of "free internet" is easy to absorb (just a cost of doing business, and no one will compete with you (probably), since spectrum is a finite and spoken-for resource), and "free customers" get no service guarantee (if the "free" part of the tower is congested, that's *your* problem).
Seems to me like there are a lot of business models that will work for this. Given the auction procedure, however, I'm sure some nobody company that's just a shell will end up placing a bid for it, will never pay the money, and never have the money to build out a network; but the re-auctioning of the spectrum will take 5-10 years, and by that time everyone will have forgotten about the "free internet" part of it.
call me a cynic.
There isn't much synthetic overhead when resources are unlimited, however, its not hard to argue that there is a great deal of overhead when resources are limited.
For example, applications running in Windows XP, on Parallels, on my OS X Leopard system might run at near native speed, all else being equal. However, XP itself consumers nearly 300-400 MB of Ram, and applications running under XP load all sorts of shared libraries which are not shared with OS X. Parallels uses a good 100-200 MB of ram itself, and of course the whole mess uses 10+ GB of disk space, even with just a couple of apps installed. Even on a system with 2-4 GB of ram, there is generally a significant performance deficit exposed when you've got to allocate 500-1000 MB to a single application, when running that same application in native mode might only use 100-300 MB.
That being said, I agree that virtualization is definitely the best way to deal with legacy applications, since it entails a fairly static resource cost (i.e. you're safe assuming you can virtualize XP as long as you put an extra 2 GBs of ram in the system, and thats a nice, fixed cost).
Interesting how when Steve Jobs offered OS X for free, which runs easily on low-power devices, OLPC turned them down. But MS, offering a chopped XP for $$, is welcomed?
Doesn't compute to me.
A capitalist rationale?
I've got a better one. With Orion, Moon/Asteroid mining is reasonable. Cheap, even.
Take a look.
A 2 billion ton asteroid could potentially be worth over a trillion dollars in metals. One could move a 2 billion ton asteroid with Orion. Or, one could build a factory on a 2 billion ton asteroid with orion ships, and send million ton refined chunks of it into earth orbit.
Want another capitalist rationale?
Energy. Need to fund an energy intensive industry? Put it in a far orbit. Use Solar Panels the size of Texas, or put in a nuclear reactor with 20+ GW output. Safety risks are small-to-nil, and you've got plenty of room for passive cooling/heatsinks. Drop ship the outputs. Utilize the metals from the moon or asteroids. Jettison waste on an escape trajectory.
All of this becomes possible with Orion.
Orion is not a means to an end. Orion *is* the end, at least in terms of colonizing the solar system. Any propulsion technology that generates those high levels of thrust, and capable of maintaining it for months/years puts the entire solar system into man's palm. Colonize the Moon. Colonize Mars. Colonize a few moons of Jupiter/Saturn. Build some space cities.
Space is *extremely* wealthy in terms of material resources (inorganic), and you don't have to worry about those pesky environmentalists. Hell; there's a decent argument to be made that its fine to pollute the Moon, Mars, Asteroids, or empty space, since you can alleviate the load on earth.
Cheap, high-speed space transportation is any capitalist's dream, because it is an empty, super-rich frontier. There are empires to carve out, if only we could get there.
The environmental issues aren't as serious as you make them out to be. 5-10 launches who generate a tiny fraction of the fallout that the various open-air nuclear tests generated; however, 5-10 launches would be sufficient to put hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of tons of equipment into orbit. 5-10 launches might be enough to jump start deep space exploration.
It irks me that we are willing to contaminate the environment for weapons, but we aren't willing to embrace a small but known risk.
We were willing to detonate nuclear bombs to show off our military penises. Wouldn't it have been better to detonate some nuclear bombs to jumpstart orbital construction deep space exploration? 1-2 million tons or equipment on the moon would be sufficient, I think.
Cancel NASA, and stop space exploration. It's a big waste of time/money. Military needs can be handled by military budgets.
NASA, the U.S. populace, and the world in general have no real interest in propulsion systems capable of realistically lifting large payloads into space economically. We've done everything we can in space with the toy payloads we currently lift, and the only real economic sectors which benefit from continued exploration is orbital satellites, something which NASA handles very poorly (i.e. expensively).
Until someone has the balls to restart Project Orion, I don't see why we should even bother. The technology to put cities in orbit, not to mention on other planets, is readily available and understood. And cheap (on a per kilo basis). So why are we still playing chemical rockets?
It's a waste of time. The silly little experiments done on the ISS are pointless. Until someone invents a drive that can lift 100s (or thousands, or millions) of tons into orbit (or beyond) economically, we should stop bothering and try and let private enterprise come up with something.
The turn away from Project Orion in 1963 represented the end of man's technological development when it came to interplanetary space travel, and commercial space utilization. We dropped the reigns, and walked away (as a race). The current efforts at space travel are a gimmick and a waste of taxpayer dollars, and will continue to be unless we are willing to switch from chemical to nuclear propulsion. That's the truth of the matter.
This must be a new state of affairs, then.
What about the Stac Electronics case?
What about the ongoing EU sanctions for not releasing protocol documentation?
What about the falsified videos Microsoft presented to the court regarding the possibility of removing IE from Windows 95?
What about Microsoft's anticompetitive and illegal tactics regarding DR-DOS?
I'm sure I could keep going, but that's just a few highlights. Nothing evil/illegal/immoral going on there, huh? I would probably agree that the rank-n-file is monitored for legality, however, there is quite a bit of evidence that the upper management at your organization has no problem flouting the law.
To avoid any Microsoft product with the term "Live!" in the title?
Sure, actually, you should avoid all MS products, period. But especially the "Live!" Products. There's like... 200 of them on Wikipedia, and I've heard of maybe 10.
Looks like you didn't take Economics 101 to me.
Economics covers _everything_. Repeat after me. "EVERYTHING IS ECONOMIC IN NATURE" "EVERYTHING IS ECONOMIC IN NATURE" "EVERYTHING IS ECONOMIC IN NATURE".
If you aren't studying political/social movements under an Economic lens, you aren't really studying them at all.
Willing to give work away for free?
First of all, let me say that the companies we are talking about in the context of the article (FLOSS companies) are most definitely selling something. They may not have a copyright monopoly on what they are selling (MySQL, Linux Desktops, whatever), but they are selling software+service. Are they using a different business model than the Microsofts of the world? Of course. But these are for-profit business.
Second of all, I can think of _many_ industries where participants are handing away their work for free. My cable company, WOW Internet and Cable, is quite willing to do free technical repairs (wire replacements indoors, splitter replacements, etc . . ), while Comcast charges for these things. The company I work for, BioGenesis Enterprises, is quite happy to give away service-style consulting as long as there's a possibility we'll make a chemical sale. I've seen many a mechanic who will check things out free, and refer you away to another organization (or nothing at all) if that's warranted, and not make a dime. And that doesn't even come close to covering the huge amount of work done in the private academic and non-profit spheres, sectors of our capitalist economy which filter down into commercial develops without needing patents/copyrights.
Simply put, there are many, many people out there who are willing to "give away intellectual work" 'for free', as long as their making money somehow. Google Engineers probably have no problem working on FLOSS projects, because A) It builds their resume, B) Their encouraged to work on it during company time, and C) It is a form of creativity and self-expression.
Take a look at the Linux kernel. Fully 60% of contributions are directly "big company" corporate sponsored, and if I'm reading the chart correctly only ~25% of the contributions are not corporate funded (and half of that is in the "unknown" category").
Capitalism assumes that everyone wants to be compensated for their work, but that doesn't mean we are all lawyers that demand itemized compensation for every little activity we've ever conducted. That's a slimy, nickel-n-dime model that is surprisingly inefficient. The better capitalist model is where people do the work they way to do, and receive sufficient pay for their total set of efforts sufficient to pay the bills, and have a moderate sum left over at the end of the month. In fact, that's how capitalist markets work when you don't have monopolies; like the copyright monopoly, or patent monopolies. Think about it: When you go to a small consultant, or a local general mechanic, or HVAC person, you can negotiate with them. You come up with a price that doesn't represent a direct itemization of time/parts+margin, but rather is a fair "market" price between your demand and their supply. That's how FLOSS works.
While I don't think they are saintly, Google hasn't pulled half of the shady shit Microsoft has. In terms of business ethics, Microsoft is really right up there with the uglier oil companies and tobacco company. They don't think in terms of what is legal; they think in terms of opportunity cost to illegal actions, with a healthy dosage of risk.
One should suspect all companies, as they are built on profit motives, however, Microsoft has a very very shady track record to boot.
Fascinating.
When you replace process "A" with process "B", and achieve a 10x fold reduction in cost, you've increased efficiency.
So, open source software development is literally 10x cheaper than closed source software development; and that also goes for maintenance, procurement, service, yadda yadda. Sounds like "Total Cost of Ownership" to me.
No one would ever, ever argue that a new way of producing solar cells at an order of magnitude cost savings would be a bad thing; so why is it bad in the IT world. Look at it this way, if most of these customers are budget constrained, cutting their costs significantly means they'll purchase more IT products/services. Sure, some of the money will be saved and go into profit or other budget priorities, but this is the very definition of efficiency in a capitalist economy. All it really means is what I've been saying for a long time, that Open Source is an effective tool to reduce the monopoly profits which are generated by holding prominent software copyrights. And, as everyone already knows, monopoly profits are economic inefficiency.
Bravo, FLOSS community. We know we are on the path to victory when our interest are aligned with capitalism, and all we have to do now is make sure that no government intervenes on the behalf of yesteryear's White Elephants.
IIRC its near 10% now. Nearly 20% of laptop sales, too.
I know its 25% of laptop sales by revenue, but I'm not sure on the unit counts.
In the real world, the U.S. taxcode is extremely progressive. The rich pay a far greater share of ALL taxes than anyone else.
The data shows the progressive tax structure of the U.S. federal income tax system on individuals that reduces the tax incidence of people with smaller incomes, as they shift the incidence disproportionately to those with higher incomes - the top 0.1% of taxpayers by income pay 17.4% of federal income taxes (earning 9.1% of the income), the top 1% with gross income of $328,049 or more pay 36.9% (earning 19%), the top 5% with gross income of $137,056 or more pay 57.1% (earning 33.4%), and the bottom 50% with gross income of $30,122 or less pay 3.3% (earning 13.4%).[9][10]
From Wikipedia.
It's bullshit to say that taxation in the U.S. is somehow regressive, or that the poor pay for everything.
The internet is a growth industry. It's one of the few sectors of the American economy that is growing well right now (along with exports), and low-and-behold, the Democrats want to tax it.
It blows my mind that anyone can get away with talk about raising taxes with a recession looming. The correct response to recession is tax cuts, not tax increases. Raise taxes when growth is high, as way to counter inflation. Not to counter recession.
Fucking idiots.
Accordingly, does that mean he outsources to China now?