> decide that a phone is just an appliance and I can live with Apple's constraints...
Why the docile obedience? Just because it is Apple?
You buy it, you do whatever the hell you want with it! Isn't that the mantra here at Slashdot? Except when it is Apple.
I want to see someone port Iceweasel to the damned thing, post a torrent up on a server somewhere anonymously and watch Apple suffer the PR nightmare of trying to ban it. If we can't outright outlaw stupidity we can certainly make it painful.
Adn if Sun actually had a pair of dangling between their legs they would port Java and double dog dare Steve to sue. Come on, they stared Microsoft down over their mistreatment of Java, why be scared of Apple when, again, this is a case they can't lose. Because it won't ever make it to a court of law, Apple would get their asses handed to them in the court of public opinion years before the wheels of justice could turn.
> because that's what we have now. we pay our money to Washington DC and they send back nothing.
Well one option that probably wouldn't occur to a socialist such as yourself.... advocate for keeping the government's hand outta yer fricking pocket in the first place. Granted, if we all accept as a given that the government gets first dibs on over half of what we earn we should at least be trying to get some of it spent on things that effectively give us some of it back... but I don't accept that.
> what should a government do? protect the little guy? provide a safety net? ensure the safety of citizens? clean up after a disaster? > what should it do, if anything?
As to what the US Federal Government SHOULD be doing, I'd suggest you read the US Constituition, as amended. Therein you will find absolutely zero authority to 'protect the little guy' except as part of upholding the concept of everyone being equal before the law, nothing about a safety net, safety or disaster relief. Some of those things might be worth doing, but they were not, and since my copy has no amendment adding such duties aren't now, responsibilities entrusted to the Federal Government. State and local governments perhaps, private organizations etc. can do any of those duties that sufficient numbers of people in an area deem worthy.
> your government takes _your_ money and gives it to every billionaire and corporation that can afford a lobbyist. and what do you get? > nothing! and you are OKAY with that???
Hell NO I ain't happy. I want the federal government reigned in, not given yet another huge segment of the economy to screw up even worse than they haev done so far by just over regulating it.
> Jono's quite right: frame it in this context - who would you put in charge of managaing, say, the Linux kernel?
The linux kernel and the whole Linux ecosystem around it are interesting. But it is a single incident and it is unwise to attempt drawing too many conclusions from it. At best it is an example of 'getting a good king.' Everyone realizes that a good king is the best form of government possible, the problem with monarchy has always been in the method of selecting a king. For counter examples from the Free Software world one one need look no farther than the GNU Hurd fiasco.
Linux is an odd system. You have the benevolent dictator for life, but you also have the bluest of blue chip corporations up to their butts in development, working alongside hippies, anarchists and libertarians in peace and relative harmony. Lets wait until the socialogists write a few more PhD dissertations on this whole mess before we try to use it as a basis for a government, ok?
> Well, I guess the kind of models that work here are those that create sites such as Slashdot, for example.
Oh? You would like to be ruled by any crackpot who manages to get an idea modded +5 Insightful? Riiight.:)
> This is how society works, and I don't imagine you complain about it... "How come you get to be the surgeon? I want to try..."
Actually I do have serious complaints against the current system. It is horribly broken in many ways. Take medicine. The current system is heavily self regulated. i.e. rule by experts. And what have they contributed to the current mess? They forbid anyone without a medical license issued by themselves from doing much of anything. Do they do this for the good of the patients or the system? No, to control entry into the profession and keep prices high. A lot of what full doctors are now required for could be done by less trained professionals. Is there some benefit from an 'eye doctor' or dentist having a full medical degree? Yea, but does it justify the much greater cost, nope. And of course the lawyers (I'm looking at you Silky Pony) who walk back and forth between practice and writing the malpractice laws aren't doing patients, doctors or anyone else any favors.
> I take your point about paid-for bias, but Zittrain seems to me to be arguing against corporate control as much as he argues against > governmental control or arachism.
A nonsense argument. As long as government has power to hurt corporations, corporations will seek to control the government. You can't stop human nature, which is the flaw at the heart of all socialist arguments. The only solution that has ever worked (all too briefly) was the system envisioned by our Founding Fathers, which was to use greed and self interest as an integral part of a system of government by dividing power and setting the greed and self interest of each portion as a check on the other parts. But once the socialists gained enough power to control the media and the education system it was all too each to convince people to remove the safety checks.
> O rly? You'd find one heck of a lot of people in Britain who don't see it that way.
Yea, really. Name a famous hospital, one doing cutting edge work..... that isn't in the US. How many pharmacutical companies are left outside the US? That aren't just churning out generics. When someone rich gets seriously ill where do they go?
But more important, how many native born british subjects are enrolling into medical school these days? Might there be a basic market force causing British hospitals to be staffed with foreign doctors? Not that the same process isn't also happening in rural USA as well.
> A huge number of American citizens have no health insurance, causing them to miss out on essential (though not emergency) health care > that they would receive in Britain for free.
Not saying our broken system is flawless, only that the flaws are a product of too much government already, that adding more government control won't do anything except make it even worse. As demonstrated by every other country which as nationalized health care.
> Sure, British people may have to wait some time if they can't afford to pay, but the treatment will be there for them
If they don't die or become incurable during the wait.
> Social models that take into account the needs of all can work, and they make a better world.
Agreed. To date there has been one, and exactly one, model with a proven track record of doing exactly that. Freedom. Free people freely participating in free markets have worked every time they have been tried.
> That article sure uses a a lot of words to say 'the web should be communist'.
Yup. The problem is most people, even people who profess to be socialists/communists, don't understand that aspect of it.
And of course anybody with two brain cells that function should be able to spot the obvious defect in such a scheme. Who decides who gets elevated above everyone else and installed as an 'expert?'
Self selected? Right. Just look at the fiasco going on in the US right now as we hurtle along at insane speed towards a socialist takeover of a medical system that is the envy of the world currently. Look who 'self selected' as experts. Not a doctor, insurance actuary or other actual expert in the bunch. All socialist politicians pushing variations of plans that have already been tried and failed in other places.... failed to improve medical care but succeeded at increasing the power of the politicians. Ah. Now the student should understand the flaw.
Free from outside influence? Only if nobody cares what is being decided. ISO did solid work when setting standards where nobody had much of an ax to grind as to exactly what was in a standard, but everybody stood to benefit from having A standard. But observe what happened when billions of dollars was on the line with MS-OOXML. Suddenly those dispasionate experts were for sale to the highest bidder, stacking the meetings with paid for warm bodies, etc.
So again, who is going to pick the experts and how does one keep them from undue influence? Answer, you can't. Any scheme which could pick the experts would itself have to exhibit the sort of dispasionate expertise and freedom from outside influence that would make it directly suitable as a system of governance.
This recurring dream stems from a basic dream. The truth is that a wise and just king is the best form of government possible. But they only occur rarely and nobody has ever produced a working system to get such men on thrones at even the rate they occur at random nature. And the converse is also true. A bad king/tyrant (which occures more frequently than good ones) is the more common variety, which is why few will make the argument for monarchy. But the unspoken yearning for an all wise philosopher king is what drives most left thinking these days. Witness the uproar over the Obamessiah.
>...would the introduction of EFI bring greater barriers to this sort of exploit...
EFI is more complex than the simple boot block / partition table that fits in a single disk sector. More complex means fewer people who will fully understand it, more bad implementations in firmware with potential security problems, etc.
Of course there are good reasons for it to replace the MBR/partion table, like running into a brick wall on the max drive size.
> So does this mean that slashdot has graduated to MainStream Media status?
Nah, they still have a way to fall. They are still just misunderstanding things. When they start deciding what the story will be and going forth to find some facts to support it they will be getting close. But to reach NYT levels of 'journalism' they will need to start just reaching up their asses and pulling stories out. But the most important part of 'professional journalism' isn't in the reporting, it is in knowing what NOT to report. The very best lies are ones of omission, not commission, and thus very immune from criticism.
> The amount of gross margin in Cisco gear makes this activity extremely profitable.
It isn't just that. In any other tech industry you would see 'legit' clones, i.e. ones that were sold AS clones, with someone else's name on it. But you can't do that with Cisco gear. If you put any non-cisco stuff in one it voids the service contract. No service contract no bug fixes. Unpatched gear is an accident waiting to happen.
Personally I'm happy as hell. We don't have much Cisco gear and I didn't buy it (donated) but it has been enough of a PITA that I absolutely HATE Cisco. When I had to scrounge up some extra ports I certainly hope I managed to get the knockoffs and avoid giving those rat bastards one cent more than absoluteley required. Had to put the unit back under a service contract before I could get a IOS with device drivers. Tell me, who still charges for (basically) device drivers and security fixes?
Adn their hardware is so pathetic. Open one up sometimes and check out just how little is inside one. Ponder just how little they are paying those Chinese contract manufacturers for the hardware they then jackup to such stupid prices. And don't tell me it is the software either, they used to just be running BSD with the serial numbers filed off and with the volume they do they can afford some software devels. As for support it ain't in the price of the product, they sell that as a extra and for all intents and purposes only to those who have also paid em a crapload to get their people certified.
By being able to milk hardware, software and support they probably make Gates & Balmer jealous.
> If they have to pay maintenance fees to keep their rights, then it's extortion. > No one has to pay a maintenance fee to keep their right to free speech.
Copyrights and Patents aren't a matter of free speech, rights or property. It is nothing more than a government granted monopoly issued to advance an industrial policy set by Congress. They can, should and do charge fees. Congress could, by simple majority vote, cease issuing, change the duration or the fees for either or both tomorrow. Which pretty much demonstrates that they aren't fundamental rights.
> Property taxes pay for services that the government provides to land owners... > but what services does the government provide to IP owners?
The government enforces the monopoly they granted you by using it's monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of force. You would be paying the government to send it's goons against any who violated your copyright.
But copyright ain't property, at least it ain't in the US. Our Constituition only grants Congress the option to pass out copyrights/monopolies to promote science and the useful arts. It they were property, for one thing they wouldn't be 'for limited times.' Property implies moral issues but since Congress could by simple majority vote cease issuing any new ones it can't be a property right. Nope, Copyrights and Patents are just a form of 'Industrial policy' for the creative trades. Same as any other Industrial Policy, Farm Policy, Blah Blah. It can and should be adjusted to get the maximum benefit to those in the industry, the country at large and yes, the federal treasury.
I'd suggest something along the following lines:
No more automatic copyright. Screw Berne. Register it or it doesn't exist. Copyrights would have a registration number assigned and they should be international; something like year-country prefix-number. That would allow people to actually KNOW when a copyright had expired by looking the number up in an online database. As things currently stand you needs lots of research to know if a work is actually in the public domain.
Registering should cost a non-trivial amount and it should vary by some sort of catagory chart. Not fair? Who said it was supposed to be fair, it's Industrial policy remember? Articles and books at low rates, television programs at a higher one and movies at a percentage of gross. Good for three years, renewable. Renewal rates set to discourage hoarding low value content while allowing marketable franchises to be milked a bit. After all, creating something of lasting interest in this short attention span culture should be rewarded. But make each successive renewal more exensive on a log scale. Yes, Disney could keep the mouse for a century but the price for a copyright that long should be expressly punitive.
> Back in the mid 1980s when Microsoft blew past the Unix folks and Apple, they did it with better sales and > marketing, not with a technically superior product, and not because they were commercial rather than FOSS.
No, they beat everyone else because everyone else was overly greedy and stupid. And considering the evil and stupidity at Microsoft that is saying something. Remember, back then Universities were passing around UNIX but AT&T was forbidden to sell it (consent decree) but had to do wierd deals like XENIX to get around the feds. Guess whose copyright notices were all over XENIX? Yup, Microsoft. Guess that explains why it was never a viable competitor to DOS but if you had huge sacks of cash you get a UNIX like system. Apple, by the Mac era was resigned to occupying the small niche Microsoft allowed them to have and to rape their limited customer base for every dollar they could wring from them. We all (us old timers at least) remember the incredible greed and stupidity that sunk Apple, Commodore and Tandy.
The illegal OEM bundling deals pretty much ensured no viable competitor would emerge on the PC platform so once all the other platforms imploded Microsoft was totally secure in their monopoly..... until Free Software changed the rules.
> so this guy sounds like a complete idiot. "Look, I'm the guy that made Tetris, and open source is BAAAAAD!"
More importantly, creating Tetris makes him a one hit wonder puzzle inventor while saying almost nothing regarding his skills in programming, IT, computer science or economics. His inability to understand the economics powering the Open Source/Free Software model hints he ain't a genius economist. And anybody who couldn't slam out yet another Tetris clone in a weekend of beer and pizza has no future in software so he has made no mark on the software field by creating Tetris. So why would we give any weight to his thoughts on ideas beyond his grasp?
> Baloo had it about right - the bare necessities should be enough for anyone.
Of course pretty much the entirety of human progress has come from the restless minority who couldn't settle for doing the minimum, doing things like everyone else. Progress comes from discontent, excessive curiosity, an urge to push harder, go where no man has gone before, etc. From being the kind of arrogant rat bastard who, when his vision differs from everyone else believes everyone else is wrong. All things that tend to get you sent to the camps when the caring compasionate socialists get power.
> I specifically stated I could not make a judgment in this situation as I do not > know the individual... As a political Libertarian....
Sorry, there is only one acceptable Libertarian position on a subject like this: Any deal entered into willingly by both parties is by definition fair and proper. No further knowledge of individuals or circumstances required. No force or fraud, no foul.
As for bailing on MSFT, a) such poaching of executives has been standard operating procedure there since the 1980's at least and b) if they had an employment contract forbidding such it is a certainty that lawyers would be tossing paper at each other by now.
This small point is where it all hinges. Copyright infringement is violating a government granted monopoly, and only that. So it IS illegal but only immoral in the sense that a moral person shouldn't violate the law except in exceptional circumstances, especially in a nation that remains mostly self governed. (Although Obama will certainly be planning some CHANGES in that department... and the next revolution comes ever closer.)
But copyright infringement can't be theft or even considered fundamentally immoral. It is just a government policy decision and is no more moral or immoral than tax policy or some obscure OSHA regulation could be. Because Congress could abolish the whole mess tommorrow on a bare majority vote with no worries about what the courts might say. And the new copyright free reality would be exactly as moral as what we live in now. Whereas if it were 'property' the idea that Congress could legislate a legitimate property right out of existence on a mere 51-49 vote would be cause for loading up the sporting goods.
> Oh, and the order that items appear in the Constitution is not any indication of priority.
And just picking nits.... but order within the Consitiuition isn't important at all, but the order of Amendments is VERY important. They are basically patches, and if you don't apply yer patches in the right order unexpected things can happen.
Of course one interesting side effect I suspect hasn't been pondered a lot would be what impact does the 1st Amendment have on the copyright clause? If you have this absolute right to print granted by the 1st and it runs into a government granted monopoly putting whole swaths of creative output out of print and UNPRINTABLE for a century and growing every time Mickey Mouse nears the public domain.... might make for an interesting case to watch the Supremes ponder.
> Whoa....wait. What are you saying? That a person should only be making enough money to basically... >get by...and if you make much more than that...it is a bad thing?????
Yes, that is exactly what they mean. And by implication they consider themselves such superior beings that THEY should be given the power to make the decision as to exactly how much you should make and to remove the excess to dispose of by their superior, more enlightened you see, wisdom to those who don't have 'enough'.. again defined by their superior wisdom. In other words, a 'shepherd' type Democrat.
Democrats only come in two basic types you see:
Sheep, who know (believe) themselves to be helpless, unable to feed or to cloth themselves in an uncaring world run by wicked greedy Republicans... except for their mighty protectors. They take care of their every need and all they ask in return is them taking a few minutes every year or two to go vote for the Democrat.
Shepherds are the elite (self selected of course) higher beings, deriving their self esteem (and valuing said self esteem above all else) from their certainty that they are the select, elect and chosen leaders, without whose enlightened leadership the poor masses of misfits would resort to cannibalism or simply sit and starve in their own feces.
Of course in any country where the shepherds actually achieve power the result is starvation, poverty and mass graves.
Feh. Both of them leave me uncaring. I'd have expected more benefit from SSD in the runtime dept for the price premium it carries. But on the other hand the Apple is too much compromise in function to achieve 'cool factor' for my taste. If I really wanted to optimize the size (while still keeping something close to a real keyboard) over everything else I'd grab an eeepc.
> Here's one basic, freakin' obvious rule: if a human, at any time at all, has to read or manually edit an XML document, you're doing it wrong.
Amen! Which is why I absolutely HATE HATE HATE XML config files. Because they aren't human readable and editing one is an invitation to disaster. There are no editors so XML is only useful for apps to communicate with each other. And there are equally useful ways for that to be implemented.
Seriously, there is no editor. I'm told you can buy them for Windows if you spend insane quantities of cash, but I don't do Windows. Comglomerate claims to be working toward the ability to edit XML for *NIX but I only tried it once. Installed an RPM and fed it a Fedora comps.xml file.... and waited. Until the OOM killer put it out of my misery.
> (as conservative talk-shows show us) some people will believe anything.
I really don't get why you had to drop that into an otherwise not very political thread. Guess some moonbats can't stop their BDS twitches anymore.
But since you brought it up, here is a clue for ya. I didn't need Rush or Hannity's help to decide months ago that there were two candidates running on the Republican side I wouldn't be able to vote for. Paul is a good solid Libertarian except he went Idiotarian and thus became ineligable for my support. And McCain/Feingold by itself puts John McCain into the 'menace to the Republic' catagory. Either the man is too illiterate to understand the plain language of the 1st Amendment or too wicked to care. The Huckster was pretty damned scary but I could have held my nose and pushed his button because that he is the sort who would be susceptable to party discpline to moderate some of his more extreme populist impulses... unlike 'Mr. Maverick.'
In being able to support Huck I differ from Rush's analysis, but I do understand the argument he was making and concede that if Huck had made POTUS Rush might have been proven right. But hell, it's a bad crop of candidates we had to pick from this time... on both sides.
Obviously BHO is right out as are all Marxists. (HRC is toast, no need to worry about that horrible bitch anymore... or her rapist husband.)
Re:So when do we get its successor?
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X Power Tools
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· Score: 5, Insightful
> Look, I know this is the standard FOSS fanboy answer to any criticisms about anything and everything, > but it's gotten tiresome - it doesn't actually address the criticism at all.
Actually it is more response than the original poster deserved. Go reread it, he complaimed that it is old. No specific complaint, no suggested solution.
And you fail to understand the FOSS idea. The line between users and developers doesn't exist. If you don't like it you are free to fix it. Iven if you aren't a uber coder who can write GL drivers in their sleep you can at least learn enough to make good guggestions, bug reports or hell, contribute some better documentation. If you can't code or at least understand the system enough to make constructive criticisms and suggestions for improvements then you really should just shut up and accept what you get because talking from ignorance just reduces the signal to noise and makes it harder for those who do have a clue to get on with improving the stuff you use.
10 to one both you and the original poster don't even realize GNOME and KDE aren't even part of X. That sort of ignorance is what makes every thread about X devolve into silly rants about GUI usability and brings out the Mac fanbois. X itself is just fine now and with some of the current improvements working their way towards mainstream it will only get better.
>..but $150 players are only a recent phenomenon and it's effect on the market remains to be seen.
I suspect the $150 players were the result of the retail channel seeing what was happening and deciding that the Xmas season was their last chance to unload inventory that was about to be worthless. Add in a little inside info paranoia and deliberate postponing of the studio shifting, etc to allow retails time to dump and things make a lot more sense.
Everyone knew that only one would survive and at the first hint that the market was picking a winner the desire not to be left holding a big stack of dead inventory created a huge bandwagon effect. If I had to guess it was the PS3 finally starting to sell as the price dropped. It became obvious there was soon going to be far more BD players just on the strength of the PS3, one studio flips camps (actually just stopped doing both) and it snowballed. At this point I doubt even Sony can manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Me, I haven't even bought a HD set yet and haven't owned a console since the 2600. Waiting for the pricing to plateau out, no sense getting in a hurry to go HD just to be able to pick from a few dozen crap/blockbuster titles.:)
Silly ronulan, you just described the Democrats
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Has Ron Paul Quit?
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· Score: 1
> Yes, libertarianism for how to use a military and conduct some foreign policy and the domestic policy ala new deal.
Hmm. Surrender in the war and new deal domestic policies.... I'd swear I had heard another, more popular leader than Dr. Paul, making just that pitch. I think his nsme is Hussein or something.... wait.... AH! Barack Hussein Omaba was the guy I saw on the TV talking that way. Perhaps you should check him out, sounds like a candidate right up your alley and a lot more electable than Ron Paul. Although HIllary Clinton is also 90% what you are looking for so be sure to check out her website as well.
> Telnet is dead, long live SSH. Like he said, it's easy to install telnet if you need it.
Said the n00b who doesn't do IT for a living in the real world. When all of the equipment vendors support ssh AND all of the old stuff is retired telnet will be dead. But I'm not expecting that to happen for at least another decade. And the article itself pointed out the use of telnet to connect to other ports, like port 80 to manually investigate http servers.
Circuit City shoppers ARE typical Windows users
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Hostile ta Vista, Baby
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· Score: 2, Insightful
> Facebook doesnt work because facebook's website is broken.
No, sounds like their DNS was broken. But anyway.....
This guy sounds like a typical above average end user. What is typically referred to as a 'power user' in that he knows the basics and is probably the go to guy for everyone else in his peer group. And all of his complaints about capricious changes in the Vista interface vs XP are valid for bith his group and the induhviduals at the bottom of the user pyramid. Change == bad pretty much sums it up.
Which is why the penguin ain't ever going to capture that set of users through conversions. The only way is through new product niches like the eee pc, handhelds, etc. Get enough penguins out that folks like him slowly become used to linux conventions and thus won't be afraid of them on a desktop anymore.
Oh, and for the guy's complaint about being told to use find... bad advice. That is using a sledgehammer to drive a nail. Locate is what ya need for that. Except because linux distributers (I'm looking at you Fedora/RH) keep wanting to appeal to Windows n00bs who don't want Linux instead of Unix folk who DO.... so they disable locate out of the box requiring new users to become root and edit scary text files to reenable it.
> What if I believe that Islamic terrorists are likely to cause trouble but that they lack > the ability to even approach destroying western civiliation and that for every X people > they might kill, we can save 10X people by spending the money on something besides war?
You are perfectly entitled to that position. Thanks for being one the rare war opponents who can rationally state a different position without going off the tracks (groan) into Bush Derangement Syndrome.
However I'd like to argue the opposite because I think it is the stronger side. Western Civilization, by definition, is open and thus vulnerable to terrorism. I'd submit 9/11 as the perfect example. A low tech operation carried out by a small group of fanatics crippled one our major cities. But that was actually the lessor damage. It took Bush ramming through a extreme tax cut to prevent the whole world economy from suffering a cascade failure. The problem with tax cuts on that scale is it can't be repeated all that many times. If we let up on AQ they will regroup and give it another go. No it won't be airliners again, that was trick that can only work once; but I'm not an expert and can think of a dozen similar antics that would cause as much or more damage... both physical and TERROR. How many hits can we take and remain Western Civilization?
Bush (with the broad support of Congress I would remind the audience.. including HRC) opted for a proactive response. It was his call and I (along with most voters at the time) supported his decision. Just ending the Taliban was not going to get the job done, a bigger message was needed. Saddam was an ongoing threat anyway so it made sense to pick Iraq for the 'drain the swamp' plan because it wasn't going to be possible to pick anywhere else without first dealing with the likelyhood of Iraq making mischief.
Personally I'm dubious on W's faith in planting the notion of self government in that part of the world on anything like the timeframe we are likely to have the will to stay in the area. But it was his call, not mine. And besides I haven't heard of a plan with better odds of success that is otherwise acceptable. Note the past tense. Objecting, opposing or offering alternatives were all honorable and patrotic (nay, it was a DUTY if you believed it unwise) right up until the vote was taken to launch a War. Once that happened it was all moot, Wars don't end they are Won or Lost and rooting for us to lose (you guys call it ending the war) should be punishable by law.
Consider the alternative. Ms. Coulter's "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them all to Christianity." would work though, and the moral objections would disappear pretty quick if a major US city went FOOM! I'd really rather things didn't get that extreme, how about you?
And finally consider this: The odds of the current plan succeeding are directly proportional to our perceived unity of purpose, because the belief we will retreat if they can only pile up enough corpses for the TV cameras is the only thing keeping the terrorists hopes alive right now in Iraq. You guys better pray to whatever supreme being you worship that you never develop a conscience because all you people will have no honorable option but suicide if you ever develop one; and realize just how much blood (American and Iraqi) is on your hands because you have helped drag this war out for political purposes.
Was that last paragraph harsh? Yup. If it is too much Truth for ya, tough noogies.
Slashdot Mirror
> decide that a phone is just an appliance and I can live with Apple's constraints...
Why the docile obedience? Just because it is Apple?
You buy it, you do whatever the hell you want with it! Isn't that the mantra here at Slashdot? Except when it is Apple.
I want to see someone port Iceweasel to the damned thing, post a torrent up on a server somewhere anonymously and watch Apple suffer the PR nightmare of trying to ban it. If we can't outright outlaw stupidity we can certainly make it painful.
Adn if Sun actually had a pair of dangling between their legs they would port Java and double dog dare Steve to sue. Come on, they stared Microsoft down over their mistreatment of Java, why be scared of Apple when, again, this is a case they can't lose. Because it won't ever make it to a court of law, Apple would get their asses handed to them in the court of public opinion years before the wheels of justice could turn.
> because that's what we have now. we pay our money to Washington DC and they send back nothing.
Well one option that probably wouldn't occur to a socialist such as yourself.... advocate for keeping the government's hand outta yer fricking pocket in the first place. Granted, if we all accept as a given that the government gets first dibs on over half of what we earn we should at least be trying to get some of it spent on things that effectively give us some of it back... but I don't accept that.
> what should a government do? protect the little guy? provide a safety net? ensure the safety of citizens? clean up after a disaster?
> what should it do, if anything?
As to what the US Federal Government SHOULD be doing, I'd suggest you read the US Constituition, as amended. Therein you will find absolutely zero authority to 'protect the little guy' except as part of upholding the concept of everyone being equal before the law, nothing about a safety net, safety or disaster relief. Some of those things might be worth doing, but they were not, and since my copy has no amendment adding such duties aren't now, responsibilities entrusted to the Federal Government. State and local governments perhaps, private organizations etc. can do any of those duties that sufficient numbers of people in an area deem worthy.
> your government takes _your_ money and gives it to every billionaire and corporation that can afford a lobbyist. and what do you get?
> nothing! and you are OKAY with that???
Hell NO I ain't happy. I want the federal government reigned in, not given yet another huge segment of the economy to screw up even worse than they haev done so far by just over regulating it.
> Jono's quite right: frame it in this context - who would you put in charge of managaing, say, the Linux kernel?
The linux kernel and the whole Linux ecosystem around it are interesting. But it is a single incident and it is unwise to attempt drawing too many conclusions from it. At best it is an example of 'getting a good king.' Everyone realizes that a good king is the best form of government possible, the problem with monarchy has always been in the method of selecting a king. For counter examples from the Free Software world one one need look no farther than the GNU Hurd fiasco.
Linux is an odd system. You have the benevolent dictator for life, but you also have the bluest of blue chip corporations up to their butts in development, working alongside hippies, anarchists and libertarians in peace and relative harmony. Lets wait until the socialogists write a few more PhD dissertations on this whole mess before we try to use it as a basis for a government, ok?
> Well, I guess the kind of models that work here are those that create sites such as Slashdot, for example.
:)
Oh? You would like to be ruled by any crackpot who manages to get an idea modded +5 Insightful? Riiight.
> This is how society works, and I don't imagine you complain about it... "How come you get to be the surgeon? I want to try..."
Actually I do have serious complaints against the current system. It is horribly broken in many ways. Take medicine. The current system is heavily self regulated. i.e. rule by experts. And what have they contributed to the current mess? They forbid anyone without a medical license issued by themselves from doing much of anything. Do they do this for the good of the patients or the system? No, to control entry into the profession and keep prices high. A lot of what full doctors are now required for could be done by less trained professionals. Is there some benefit from an 'eye doctor' or dentist having a full medical degree? Yea, but does it justify the much greater cost, nope. And of course the lawyers (I'm looking at you Silky Pony) who walk back and forth between practice and writing the malpractice laws aren't doing patients, doctors or anyone else any favors.
> I take your point about paid-for bias, but Zittrain seems to me to be arguing against corporate control as much as he argues against
> governmental control or arachism.
A nonsense argument. As long as government has power to hurt corporations, corporations will seek to control the government. You can't stop human nature, which is the flaw at the heart of all socialist arguments. The only solution that has ever worked (all too briefly) was the system envisioned by our Founding Fathers, which was to use greed and self interest as an integral part of a system of government by dividing power and setting the greed and self interest of each portion as a check on the other parts. But once the socialists gained enough power to control the media and the education system it was all too each to convince people to remove the safety checks.
> O rly? You'd find one heck of a lot of people in Britain who don't see it that way.
Yea, really. Name a famous hospital, one doing cutting edge work..... that isn't in the US. How many pharmacutical companies are left outside the US? That aren't just churning out generics. When someone rich gets seriously ill where do they go?
But more important, how many native born british subjects are enrolling into medical school these days? Might there be a basic market force causing British hospitals to be staffed with foreign doctors? Not that the same process isn't also happening in rural USA as well.
> A huge number of American citizens have no health insurance, causing them to miss out on essential (though not emergency) health care
> that they would receive in Britain for free.
Not saying our broken system is flawless, only that the flaws are a product of too much government already, that adding more government control won't do anything except make it even worse. As demonstrated by every other country which as nationalized health care.
> Sure, British people may have to wait some time if they can't afford to pay, but the treatment will be there for them
If they don't die or become incurable during the wait.
> Social models that take into account the needs of all can work, and they make a better world.
Agreed. To date there has been one, and exactly one, model with a proven track record of doing exactly that. Freedom. Free people freely participating in free markets have worked every time they have been tried.
> That article sure uses a a lot of words to say 'the web should be communist'.
Yup. The problem is most people, even people who profess to be socialists/communists, don't understand that aspect of it.
And of course anybody with two brain cells that function should be able to spot the obvious defect in such a scheme. Who decides who gets elevated above everyone else and installed as an 'expert?'
Self selected? Right. Just look at the fiasco going on in the US right now as we hurtle along at insane speed towards a socialist takeover of a medical system that is the envy of the world currently. Look who 'self selected' as experts. Not a doctor, insurance actuary or other actual expert in the bunch. All socialist politicians pushing variations of plans that have already been tried and failed in other places.... failed to improve medical care but succeeded at increasing the power of the politicians. Ah. Now the student should understand the flaw.
Free from outside influence? Only if nobody cares what is being decided. ISO did solid work when setting standards where nobody had much of an ax to grind as to exactly what was in a standard, but everybody stood to benefit from having A standard. But observe what happened when billions of dollars was on the line with MS-OOXML. Suddenly those dispasionate experts were for sale to the highest bidder, stacking the meetings with paid for warm bodies, etc.
So again, who is going to pick the experts and how does one keep them from undue influence? Answer, you can't. Any scheme which could pick the experts would itself have to exhibit the sort of dispasionate expertise and freedom from outside influence that would make it directly suitable as a system of governance.
This recurring dream stems from a basic dream. The truth is that a wise and just king is the best form of government possible. But they only occur rarely and nobody has ever produced a working system to get such men on thrones at even the rate they occur at random nature. And the converse is also true. A bad king/tyrant (which occures more frequently than good ones) is the more common variety, which is why few will make the argument for monarchy. But the unspoken yearning for an all wise philosopher king is what drives most left thinking these days. Witness the uproar over the Obamessiah.
> ...would the introduction of EFI bring greater barriers to this sort of exploit...
EFI is more complex than the simple boot block / partition table that fits in a single disk sector. More complex means fewer people who will fully understand it, more bad implementations in firmware with potential security problems, etc.
Of course there are good reasons for it to replace the MBR/partion table, like running into a brick wall on the max drive size.
> So does this mean that slashdot has graduated to MainStream Media status?
Nah, they still have a way to fall. They are still just misunderstanding things. When they start deciding what the story will be and going forth to find some facts to support it they will be getting close. But to reach NYT levels of 'journalism' they will need to start just reaching up their asses and pulling stories out. But the most important part of 'professional journalism' isn't in the reporting, it is in knowing what NOT to report. The very best lies are ones of omission, not commission, and thus very immune from criticism.
> The amount of gross margin in Cisco gear makes this activity extremely profitable.
It isn't just that. In any other tech industry you would see 'legit' clones, i.e. ones that were sold AS clones, with someone else's name on it. But you can't do that with Cisco gear. If you put any non-cisco stuff in one it voids the service contract. No service contract no bug fixes. Unpatched gear is an accident waiting to happen.
Personally I'm happy as hell. We don't have much Cisco gear and I didn't buy it (donated) but it has been enough of a PITA that I absolutely HATE Cisco. When I had to scrounge up some extra ports I certainly hope I managed to get the knockoffs and avoid giving those rat bastards one cent more than absoluteley required. Had to put the unit back under a service contract before I could get a IOS with device drivers. Tell me, who still charges for (basically) device drivers and security fixes?
Adn their hardware is so pathetic. Open one up sometimes and check out just how little is inside one. Ponder just how little they are paying those Chinese contract manufacturers for the hardware they then jackup to such stupid prices. And don't tell me it is the software either, they used to just be running BSD with the serial numbers filed off and with the volume they do they can afford some software devels. As for support it ain't in the price of the product, they sell that as a extra and for all intents and purposes only to those who have also paid em a crapload to get their people certified.
By being able to milk hardware, software and support they probably make Gates & Balmer jealous.
> If they have to pay maintenance fees to keep their rights, then it's extortion.
> No one has to pay a maintenance fee to keep their right to free speech.
Copyrights and Patents aren't a matter of free speech, rights or property. It is nothing more than a government granted monopoly issued to advance an industrial policy set by Congress. They can, should and do charge fees. Congress could, by simple majority vote, cease issuing, change the duration or the fees for either or both tomorrow. Which pretty much demonstrates that they aren't fundamental rights.
> Property taxes pay for services that the government provides to land owners...
> but what services does the government provide to IP owners?
The government enforces the monopoly they granted you by using it's monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of force. You would be paying the government to send it's goons against any who violated your copyright.
But copyright ain't property, at least it ain't in the US. Our Constituition only grants Congress the option to pass out copyrights/monopolies to promote science and the useful arts. It they were property, for one thing they wouldn't be 'for limited times.' Property implies moral issues but since Congress could by simple majority vote cease issuing any new ones it can't be a property right. Nope, Copyrights and Patents are just a form of 'Industrial policy' for the creative trades. Same as any other Industrial Policy, Farm Policy, Blah Blah. It can and should be adjusted to get the maximum benefit to those in the industry, the country at large and yes, the federal treasury.
I'd suggest something along the following lines:
No more automatic copyright. Screw Berne. Register it or it doesn't exist. Copyrights would have a registration number assigned and they should be international; something like year-country prefix-number. That would allow people to actually KNOW when a copyright had expired by looking the number up in an online database. As things currently stand you needs lots of research to know if a work is actually in the public domain.
Registering should cost a non-trivial amount and it should vary by some sort of catagory chart. Not fair? Who said it was supposed to be fair, it's Industrial policy remember? Articles and books at low rates, television programs at a higher one and movies at a percentage of gross. Good for three years, renewable. Renewal rates set to discourage hoarding low value content while allowing marketable franchises to be milked a bit. After all, creating something of lasting interest in this short attention span culture should be rewarded. But make each successive renewal more exensive on a log scale. Yes, Disney could keep the mouse for a century but the price for a copyright that long should be expressly punitive.
> Back in the mid 1980s when Microsoft blew past the Unix folks and Apple, they did it with better sales and
> marketing, not with a technically superior product, and not because they were commercial rather than FOSS.
No, they beat everyone else because everyone else was overly greedy and stupid. And considering the evil and stupidity at Microsoft that is saying something. Remember, back then Universities were passing around UNIX but AT&T was forbidden to sell it (consent decree) but had to do wierd deals like XENIX to get around the feds. Guess whose copyright notices were all over XENIX? Yup, Microsoft. Guess that explains why it was never a viable competitor to DOS but if you had huge sacks of cash you get a UNIX like system. Apple, by the Mac era was resigned to occupying the small niche Microsoft allowed them to have and to rape their limited customer base for every dollar they could wring from them. We all (us old timers at least) remember the incredible greed and stupidity that sunk Apple, Commodore and Tandy.
The illegal OEM bundling deals pretty much ensured no viable competitor would emerge on the PC platform so once all the other platforms imploded Microsoft was totally secure in their monopoly..... until Free Software changed the rules.
> so this guy sounds like a complete idiot. "Look, I'm the guy that made Tetris, and open source is BAAAAAD!"
More importantly, creating Tetris makes him a one hit wonder puzzle inventor while saying almost nothing regarding his skills in programming, IT, computer science or economics. His inability to understand the economics powering the Open Source/Free Software model hints he ain't a genius economist. And anybody who couldn't slam out yet another Tetris clone in a weekend of beer and pizza has no future in software so he has made no mark on the software field by creating Tetris. So why would we give any weight to his thoughts on ideas beyond his grasp?
> Baloo had it about right - the bare necessities should be enough for anyone.
Of course pretty much the entirety of human progress has come from the restless minority who couldn't settle for doing the minimum, doing things like everyone else. Progress comes from discontent, excessive curiosity, an urge to push harder, go where no man has gone before, etc. From being the kind of arrogant rat bastard who, when his vision differs from everyone else believes everyone else is wrong. All things that tend to get you sent to the camps when the caring compasionate socialists get power.
> I specifically stated I could not make a judgment in this situation as I do not
> know the individual... As a political Libertarian....
Sorry, there is only one acceptable Libertarian position on a subject like this: Any deal entered into willingly by both parties is by definition fair and proper. No further knowledge of individuals or circumstances required. No force or fraud, no foul.
As for bailing on MSFT, a) such poaching of executives has been standard operating procedure there since the 1980's at least and b) if they had an employment contract forbidding such it is a certainty that lawyers would be tossing paper at each other by now.
> Congress can repeal copyright at any time.
This small point is where it all hinges. Copyright infringement is violating a government granted monopoly, and only that. So it IS illegal but only immoral in the sense that a moral person shouldn't violate the law except in exceptional circumstances, especially in a nation that remains mostly self governed. (Although Obama will certainly be planning some CHANGES in that department... and the next revolution comes ever closer.)
But copyright infringement can't be theft or even considered fundamentally immoral. It is just a government policy decision and is no more moral or immoral than tax policy or some obscure OSHA regulation could be. Because Congress could abolish the whole mess tommorrow on a bare majority vote with no worries about what the courts might say. And the new copyright free reality would be exactly as moral as what we live in now. Whereas if it were 'property' the idea that Congress could legislate a legitimate property right out of existence on a mere 51-49 vote would be cause for loading up the sporting goods.
> Oh, and the order that items appear in the Constitution is not any indication of priority.
And just picking nits.... but order within the Consitiuition isn't important at all, but the order of Amendments is VERY important. They are basically patches, and if you don't apply yer patches in the right order unexpected things can happen.
Of course one interesting side effect I suspect hasn't been pondered a lot would be what impact does the 1st Amendment have on the copyright clause? If you have this absolute right to print granted by the 1st and it runs into a government granted monopoly putting whole swaths of creative output out of print and UNPRINTABLE for a century and growing every time Mickey Mouse nears the public domain.... might make for an interesting case to watch the Supremes ponder.
> Whoa....wait. What are you saying? That a person should only be making enough money to basically...
>get by...and if you make much more than that...it is a bad thing?????
Yes, that is exactly what they mean. And by implication they consider themselves such superior beings that THEY should be given the power to make the decision as to exactly how much you should make and to remove the excess to dispose of by their superior, more enlightened you see, wisdom to those who don't have 'enough'.. again defined by their superior wisdom. In other words, a 'shepherd' type Democrat.
Democrats only come in two basic types you see:
Sheep, who know (believe) themselves to be helpless, unable to feed or to cloth themselves in an uncaring world run by wicked greedy Republicans... except for their mighty protectors. They take care of their every need and all they ask in return is them taking a few minutes every year or two to go vote for the Democrat.
Shepherds are the elite (self selected of course) higher beings, deriving their self esteem (and valuing said self esteem above all else) from their certainty that they are the select, elect and chosen leaders, without whose enlightened leadership the poor masses of misfits would resort to cannibalism or simply sit and starve in their own feces.
Of course in any country where the shepherds actually achieve power the result is starvation, poverty and mass graves.
Feh. Both of them leave me uncaring. I'd have expected more benefit from SSD in the runtime dept for the price premium it carries. But on the other hand the Apple is too much compromise in function to achieve 'cool factor' for my taste. If I really wanted to optimize the size (while still keeping something close to a real keyboard) over everything else I'd grab an eeepc.
> Here's one basic, freakin' obvious rule: if a human, at any time at all, has to read or manually edit an XML document, you're doing it wrong.
Amen! Which is why I absolutely HATE HATE HATE XML config files. Because they aren't human readable and editing one is an invitation to disaster. There are no editors so XML is only useful for apps to communicate with each other. And there are equally useful ways for that to be implemented.
Seriously, there is no editor. I'm told you can buy them for Windows if you spend insane quantities of cash, but I don't do Windows. Comglomerate claims to be working toward the ability to edit XML for *NIX but I only tried it once. Installed an RPM and fed it a Fedora comps.xml file.... and waited. Until the OOM killer put it out of my misery.
> (as conservative talk-shows show us) some people will believe anything.
I really don't get why you had to drop that into an otherwise not very political thread. Guess some moonbats can't stop their BDS twitches anymore.
But since you brought it up, here is a clue for ya. I didn't need Rush or Hannity's help to decide months ago that there were two candidates running on the Republican side I wouldn't be able to vote for. Paul is a good solid Libertarian except he went Idiotarian and thus became ineligable for my support. And McCain/Feingold by itself puts John McCain into the 'menace to the Republic' catagory. Either the man is too illiterate to understand the plain language of the 1st Amendment or too wicked to care. The Huckster was pretty damned scary but I could have held my nose and pushed his button because that he is the sort who would be susceptable to party discpline to moderate some of his more extreme populist impulses... unlike 'Mr. Maverick.'
In being able to support Huck I differ from Rush's analysis, but I do understand the argument he was making and concede that if Huck had made POTUS Rush might have been proven right. But hell, it's a bad crop of candidates we had to pick from this time... on both sides.
Obviously BHO is right out as are all Marxists. (HRC is toast, no need to worry about that horrible bitch anymore... or her rapist husband.)
> Look, I know this is the standard FOSS fanboy answer to any criticisms about anything and everything,
> but it's gotten tiresome - it doesn't actually address the criticism at all.
Actually it is more response than the original poster deserved. Go reread it, he complaimed that it is old. No specific complaint, no suggested solution.
And you fail to understand the FOSS idea. The line between users and developers doesn't exist. If you don't like it you are free to fix it. Iven if you aren't a uber coder who can write GL drivers in their sleep you can at least learn enough to make good guggestions, bug reports or hell, contribute some better documentation. If you can't code or at least understand the system enough to make constructive criticisms and suggestions for improvements then you really should just shut up and accept what you get because talking from ignorance just reduces the signal to noise and makes it harder for those who do have a clue to get on with improving the stuff you use.
10 to one both you and the original poster don't even realize GNOME and KDE aren't even part of X. That sort of ignorance is what makes every thread about X devolve into silly rants about GUI usability and brings out the Mac fanbois. X itself is just fine now and with some of the current improvements working their way towards mainstream it will only get better.
> ..but $150 players are only a recent phenomenon and it's effect on the market remains to be seen.
:)
I suspect the $150 players were the result of the retail channel seeing what was happening and deciding that the Xmas season was their last chance to unload inventory that was about to be worthless. Add in a little inside info paranoia and deliberate postponing of the studio shifting, etc to allow retails time to dump and things make a lot more sense.
Everyone knew that only one would survive and at the first hint that the market was picking a winner the desire not to be left holding a big stack of dead inventory created a huge bandwagon effect. If I had to guess it was the PS3 finally starting to sell as the price dropped. It became obvious there was soon going to be far more BD players just on the strength of the PS3, one studio flips camps (actually just stopped doing both) and it snowballed. At this point I doubt even Sony can manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Me, I haven't even bought a HD set yet and haven't owned a console since the 2600. Waiting for the pricing to plateau out, no sense getting in a hurry to go HD just to be able to pick from a few dozen crap/blockbuster titles.
> Yes, libertarianism for how to use a military and conduct some foreign policy and the domestic policy ala new deal.
Hmm. Surrender in the war and new deal domestic policies.... I'd swear I had heard another, more popular leader than Dr. Paul, making just that pitch. I think his nsme is Hussein or something.... wait.... AH! Barack Hussein Omaba was the guy I saw on the TV talking that way. Perhaps you should check him out, sounds like a candidate right up your alley and a lot more electable than Ron Paul. Although HIllary Clinton is also 90% what you are looking for so be sure to check out her website as well.
> Telnet is dead, long live SSH. Like he said, it's easy to install telnet if you need it.
Said the n00b who doesn't do IT for a living in the real world. When all of the equipment vendors support ssh AND all of the old stuff is retired telnet will be dead. But I'm not expecting that to happen for at least another decade. And the article itself pointed out the use of telnet to connect to other ports, like port 80 to manually investigate http servers.
> Facebook doesnt work because facebook's website is broken.
No, sounds like their DNS was broken. But anyway.....
This guy sounds like a typical above average end user. What is typically referred to as a 'power user' in that he knows the basics and is probably the go to guy for everyone else in his peer group. And all of his complaints about capricious changes in the Vista interface vs XP are valid for bith his group and the induhviduals at the bottom of the user pyramid. Change == bad pretty much sums it up.
Which is why the penguin ain't ever going to capture that set of users through conversions. The only way is through new product niches like the eee pc, handhelds, etc. Get enough penguins out that folks like him slowly become used to linux conventions and thus won't be afraid of them on a desktop anymore.
Oh, and for the guy's complaint about being told to use find... bad advice. That is using a sledgehammer to drive a nail. Locate is what ya need for that. Except because linux distributers (I'm looking at you Fedora/RH) keep wanting to appeal to Windows n00bs who don't want Linux instead of Unix folk who DO.... so they disable locate out of the box requiring new users to become root and edit scary text files to reenable it.
> What if I believe that Islamic terrorists are likely to cause trouble but that they lack
> the ability to even approach destroying western civiliation and that for every X people
> they might kill, we can save 10X people by spending the money on something besides war?
You are perfectly entitled to that position. Thanks for being one the rare war opponents who can rationally state a different position without going off the tracks (groan) into Bush Derangement Syndrome.
However I'd like to argue the opposite because I think it is the stronger side. Western Civilization, by definition, is open and thus vulnerable to terrorism. I'd submit 9/11 as the perfect example. A low tech operation carried out by a small group of fanatics crippled one our major cities. But that was actually the lessor damage. It took Bush ramming through a extreme tax cut to prevent the whole world economy from suffering a cascade failure. The problem with tax cuts on that scale is it can't be repeated all that many times. If we let up on AQ they will regroup and give it another go. No it won't be airliners again, that was trick that can only work once; but I'm not an expert and can think of a dozen similar antics that would cause as much or more damage... both physical and TERROR. How many hits can we take and remain Western Civilization?
Bush (with the broad support of Congress I would remind the audience.. including HRC) opted for a proactive response. It was his call and I (along with most voters at the time) supported his decision. Just ending the Taliban was not going to get the job done, a bigger message was needed. Saddam was an ongoing threat anyway so it made sense to pick Iraq for the 'drain the swamp' plan because it wasn't going to be possible to pick anywhere else without first dealing with the likelyhood of Iraq making mischief.
Personally I'm dubious on W's faith in planting the notion of self government in that part of the world on anything like the timeframe we are likely to have the will to stay in the area. But it was his call, not mine. And besides I haven't heard of a plan with better odds of success that is otherwise acceptable. Note the past tense. Objecting, opposing or offering alternatives were all honorable and patrotic (nay, it was a DUTY if you believed it unwise) right up until the vote was taken to launch a War. Once that happened it was all moot, Wars don't end they are Won or Lost and rooting for us to lose (you guys call it ending the war) should be punishable by law.
Consider the alternative. Ms. Coulter's "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them all to Christianity." would work though, and the moral objections would disappear pretty quick if a major US city went FOOM! I'd really rather things didn't get that extreme, how about you?
And finally consider this: The odds of the current plan succeeding are directly proportional to our perceived unity of purpose, because the belief we will retreat if they can only pile up enough corpses for the TV cameras is the only thing keeping the terrorists hopes alive right now in Iraq. You guys better pray to whatever supreme being you worship that you never develop a conscience because all you people will have no honorable option but suicide if you ever develop one; and realize just how much blood (American and Iraqi) is on your hands because you have helped drag this war out for political purposes.
Was that last paragraph harsh? Yup. If it is too much Truth for ya, tough noogies.