It makes a tremendous amount of difference how a company becames the monopolist.
Not in the long run: a monopolist is a monopolist. Unregulated monopolies by their very nature will abuse their power and must be broken up for the sake of the country's health. Heavily regulated monopolies may work (like the old AT&T), but libertarians of course would hate the regulation.
It is irrelevant how Standard Oil grew, whether by being more efficient or by being violently ruthless. The reality is that it was both.
The relevant fact is that John D. Rockefeller's monopoly became strong enough to threaten the country, and therefore it had to be broken up.
It is also irrelevant whether the population of the country realized the danger to the Republic; the danger was real, and therefore something had to be done.
Libertarians fully believe in government that exists to prevent coercion, of which the blowing up factories would fall.
Really? There are no trillionaires today, but a libertarian paradise would have one: such a laissez faire society would be incapable of preventing the formation of monopolies and oligopolies.
One libertarian motto is "taxation is theft". Without taxes, how would the libertarians finance a government strong enough to enforce the peace against a trillionaire's armies? The government would have to be far richer than the trillionaire -- in fact, richer and stronger than any conceivable gang of trillionaires -- and that is not happening without taxes. The popular proposals -- to finance the govenment with lotteries or gifts -- are total jokes against a ruthless trillionaire.
So I stand by my position, to wit, that the libertarian dream is a short sighted path to monopoly and feudalism.
Copyrights and patents can create monopolies, but monopolies can and have formed without them. For example, Standard Oil was NOT created by government. It had to be broken up because its power to corrupt the country had become too great. Monopolies are natural, inevitable consequences of raw capitalism.
In a liberarian "utopia" without any form of governmental leash, the robber barons would have nearly unlimited power to defend their turf; they would not need anything as feeble as copyrights and patents (and courts) when their goons could blow up a competitor's factories. Who's to stop them? Certainly not the government, which doesn't exist in this libertarian paradise.
Face it, libertarians. If your dreams came true, you would have freedom all right -- very briefly. Then the Tony Sopranos of the world would take over, and you would be forced to call them Lord. You would have feudalism, not freedom. Is this what you really want?
The Chinese SLBMs will probably be MIRVed, just like everybody else's. With 6 subs and 16 missiles per sub, the total number of warheads would be 64n, where n is the number of warheads per missile; this usually ranges from 6 to 10. So expect anywhere from 384 to 640 warheads from the Chinese boomer fleet.
It's a surprise to see you back here after so long.
Here's a question for you: Why are you insisting that either of these (life expectancy or per capita GDP) are controlled by a single factor - type of health care system?
I made no such claim, and I do not appreciate having my arguments misrepresented. I was merely puncturing your central thesis by pointing out an inconvenient truth: that it is possible to have socialized medical systems and still be wealthier than the U.S.
And please stop pointing out that Luxembourg enjoys special economic circumstances -- because the U.S. economy has plenty of hocus pocus of its own. For example, the trillions of dollars that George W. Bush pulled out of the air in order to "pay" for imports from Asia. So the economic numbers of Luxembourg and Norway are actually more credible than those of the U.S.
What I have been saying is simple: as the experience of more than 20 countries is proving, it is quite possible to spend half what the U.S. does on health care and still have a much better life expectancy.
So I ask again: why do you want to pay double for the priviledge of dying early? Why are you such a sucker?
What if the degree of economic prosperity is tied to type of health care system?
You are guessing, aren't you, in a feeble attempt to justify an unjustifiable and downright evil system. Because your own link on GDP per capita contradicts your hypothesis. Luxembourg and Norway are even richer, per capita, than the USA, so by your reasoning their health care systems should be even more brutally Darwinian, right? Look again. Both Luxembourg and Norway have socialized health care, like any other reasonably wealthy advanced country -- with the notorious, singular exception of the US.
Do you enjoy spending twice as much on healthcare so that you can die a few years sooner? Either you're a sucker for HMO propaganda, or you really have a death wish. Maybe both.
Almost any system has a few good outcomes; I'm sure that even the Mafia has saved a life or two. The point is not whether there is any good but whether the good outweighs the bad. Americans spend twice as much on healthcare, relative to Canadians -- and despite all that lavish expenditure, Americans die sooner. This tells me that the bad outweighs the good, by far, in the U.S. system.
I don't understand why the existing system has so many supporters. Why do you want to die earlier than necessary? Do you all have a death wish?
// FIXME: This won't work if a candidate ever gets more than 255 votes, // but that'll probably never happen
Nobody should take the 255-vote "limitation" seriously, of course. An 8-bit CPU like the 8080 can use multi-precision arithmetic to count as high as it needs to, with no delay perceptible to the voter. All the voters in the universe could not exhaust the counting ability of a single 8080 chip.
Simplify the hardware; you don't need the latest, fanciest CPU if all you want to do is count.
Buy a batch of Z-80s or even 8080s; they are still being made. The design is so old that it's unlikely to have been compromised; but if you are really paranoid, the circuitry of an 8-bit CPU is simple enough that you could easily verify it by hand. Build a little voting box around one of those chips, and you're done.
The design would take half a year and cost less than a $1 million -- which is peanuts when the goal is to ensure the honesty of a democracy's most important event.
Infighting within the free software community was probably a concern, but likely not the only one. Novell has leverage, you see: they have an overwhelmingly strong case in the SCO lawsuit, but they can cave if they choose. Worse, Novell can give the ownership of Unix to SCO -- and then the IBM/SCO case may possibly blow up.
You can add a wrapper. You say the code is under the Foo Public Licence. In that, you refer to the GPL.
Right, you can distribute a new program under any license you choose, including a modified GPL. But to be clear, you can only do that if you are the author of the program in question. If you receive a GPL'd program from somebody else, then the only way you can redistribute the program is under the unmodified GPL; that is the really clever feature of the license.
Somewhat insecure, aren't you? A more confident person would have laughed off my little sally -- just as I am laughing at you now.
Nothing cuts congress out of the picture. You see, the president CANNOT make something and have it automatically become law.
Not normally, no. But NSPD 51 is for emergencies -- and this particular directive completely bypasses Congress. Perhaps it can be countermanded by Congress in time, or perhaps not; that is not my point. My point is that Bush has made this particular potential power grab when he didn't have to -- he already has ample scope in an emergency. So why did he do it?
Enough people are now sufficiently alert, so Bush may not succeed in implementing NSPD 51. And that is the point of Thomas Jefferson's famous dictum: we must always be vigilant.
If you took an educated man from 1907 and brought him to 2007, he'd be able to understand just about everything we have except for our computational devices. They even understood a bit about nuclear energy.
Hmmm... how about the technology we have for seeing and manipulating single atoms?
Could our man of 1907 have foreseen that light could be slowed and even halted?
Quarks?
Dark energy?
Bose Einstein Condensates?
Or even the humble laser, the basis of most of our entertainment these days? Quantum mechanics wasn't around in 1907.
Now consider some wonders that we could see 100 to 1000 years from now. A mature nanotechnology. Extended lifespan. Gravitational engineering. Nearly unbreakable materials bound together by the strong force. I don't think we have begun to explore the possible.
Here's another point I forgot to mention. If Bush needs to declare martial law, the National Emergencies Act already gives him the power to do that. So why would he need to issue NSPD 51? The only answer is that he hopes to be able to use it.
NSPD 51 makes him answerable to nobody -- not even Congress -- and that is the very definition of a dictator. Bush would be a dictator who likes torture.
I will say it once more: if this doesn't scare you, you don't deserve to live in a democracy.
You are certainly living up to your nickname. The National Emergencies Act already provides for martial law -- but retains Congress as a check on presidential power.
National Security Presidential Directive 51 (aka Homeland Security Presidential Directive) basically cuts Congress completely out of the picture. If this directive goes unchallenged, Bush can declare himself a dictator whenever he decides a "national emergency" (i.e. a Reichstag fire) has occurred.
As I have said before, if this doesn't scare you, you don't deserve to live in a democracy.
You're talking now; I'm talking a generation from now, when Bush's huge deficits really start to bite.
And before you bash Bush please to learn that he has doubled NIH funding since coming into office. Doubled it!
He's robbing your children to do it. As I said, Bush is spending money like a drunken sailor, adding $trillions to the total national debt. Increasing the NIH budget by $3.7 billion is just a trifle in comparison.
At some point, the debt must be repaid.... either that or the currency starts hyperinflating. See the history of Weimar Germany for what happens next. Would the world's best and brightest want to come to the U.S. during this dismal period? Hell no!
Why will the best foreign scientists want to come? Remember, nearly all the corporate "blue sky" research labs are gone. And Bush is squandering federal budget like a drunkard, so the federal funding for pure science will be hurting for generations to come. As the situation for scientists in the U.S. continues to worsen, the best and brighest abroad will stay abroad. In fact, any future brain drain will likely hurt the U.S.
do you realize that conspiracy nut cakes have claimed the last 4 presidents were going to suspend the constitution and become a dictator.
That doesn't mean we can relax this time. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." -- Thomas Jefferson
This time, we really do have serious reason to fear. National Security Directive 51 does exist, and it does give Bush the power to seize the government in toto under certain conditions, said conditions to be defined by Bush. If this doesn't scare you, you don't deserve to live in a democracy.
On the contrary, it appears I understand it vastly better than you do, since you seem convinced that the computing requirements of today are going to remain static while the "per-$100" specifications of computers rise to meet (or exceed) them.
You are just hoping. What evidence do you have that business computing requirements will explode? (No, 3D eye candy is not a "requirement".) We should be seeing some hints of any such demand today. If you are betting on some software breakthrough that is far beyond the horizon, then you are really dreaming.
On the other hand, I am betting on a virtual certainty: that the $100 machines available in the very near future will be more than a match for today's business needs.
Lowering the price is hardly cheating (usually). I would love to see Microsoft permanently cut the true prices of Windows and Office to 50 cents a copy. I dare them to shrink their company voluntarily!
Corruption is the form of cheating I expect Microsoft to try.
I understand it perfectly well.
You certainly haven't shown it.
The $100 PC isn't likely to take over the world. Expand it ? Yes. Replace the significant proportion of machines that sit into the same price brackets as the Mac Mini and the iMac ? No chance.
What you consistently refuse to understand is that technology does not stand still. Sneer at the OLPC all you want. But $100 computers will not stay flimsy and underpowered forever; soon, their hardware will be everything that 99% of businesses will ever need, and their software will be free. When that happens, these machines will flood the market, and Microsoft will be in trouble.
Microsoft are a long, long way from the peril people like you would like to pretend they're in.
As I have said before, we shall see, won't we? The laws of economics are iron.
Slashdot Mirror
Not in the long run: a monopolist is a monopolist. Unregulated monopolies by their very nature will abuse their power and must be broken up for the sake of the country's health. Heavily regulated monopolies may work (like the old AT&T), but libertarians of course would hate the regulation.
The relevant fact is that John D. Rockefeller's monopoly became strong enough to threaten the country, and therefore it had to be broken up.
It is also irrelevant whether the population of the country realized the danger to the Republic; the danger was real, and therefore something had to be done.
Really? There are no trillionaires today, but a libertarian paradise would have one: such a laissez faire society would be incapable of preventing the formation of monopolies and oligopolies.
One libertarian motto is "taxation is theft". Without taxes, how would the libertarians finance a government strong enough to enforce the peace against a trillionaire's armies? The government would have to be far richer than the trillionaire -- in fact, richer and stronger than any conceivable gang of trillionaires -- and that is not happening without taxes. The popular proposals -- to finance the govenment with lotteries or gifts -- are total jokes against a ruthless trillionaire.
So I stand by my position, to wit, that the libertarian dream is a short sighted path to monopoly and feudalism.
In a liberarian "utopia" without any form of governmental leash, the robber barons would have nearly unlimited power to defend their turf; they would not need anything as feeble as copyrights and patents (and courts) when their goons could blow up a competitor's factories. Who's to stop them? Certainly not the government, which doesn't exist in this libertarian paradise.
Face it, libertarians. If your dreams came true, you would have freedom all right -- very briefly. Then the Tony Sopranos of the world would take over, and you would be forced to call them Lord. You would have feudalism, not freedom. Is this what you really want?
The software is stored in flash memory, and the computer has automatic networking. Updating the software should be easy.
The Chinese SLBMs will probably be MIRVed, just like everybody else's. With 6 subs and 16 missiles per sub, the total number of warheads would be 64n, where n is the number of warheads per missile; this usually ranges from 6 to 10. So expect anywhere from 384 to 640 warheads from the Chinese boomer fleet.
I made no such claim, and I do not appreciate having my arguments misrepresented. I was merely puncturing your central thesis by pointing out an inconvenient truth: that it is possible to have socialized medical systems and still be wealthier than the U.S.
And please stop pointing out that Luxembourg enjoys special economic circumstances -- because the U.S. economy has plenty of hocus pocus of its own. For example, the trillions of dollars that George W. Bush pulled out of the air in order to "pay" for imports from Asia. So the economic numbers of Luxembourg and Norway are actually more credible than those of the U.S.
What I have been saying is simple: as the experience of more than 20 countries is proving, it is quite possible to spend half what the U.S. does on health care and still have a much better life expectancy.
So I ask again: why do you want to pay double for the priviledge of dying early? Why are you such a sucker?
You are guessing, aren't you, in a feeble attempt to justify an unjustifiable and downright evil system. Because your own link on GDP per capita contradicts your hypothesis. Luxembourg and Norway are even richer, per capita, than the USA, so by your reasoning their health care systems should be even more brutally Darwinian, right? Look again. Both Luxembourg and Norway have socialized health care, like any other reasonably wealthy advanced country -- with the notorious, singular exception of the US.
Do you enjoy spending twice as much on healthcare so that you can die a few years sooner? Either you're a sucker for HMO propaganda, or you really have a death wish. Maybe both.
I don't understand why the existing system has so many supporters. Why do you want to die earlier than necessary? Do you all have a death wish?
Nobody should take the 255-vote "limitation" seriously, of course. An 8-bit CPU like the 8080 can use multi-precision arithmetic to count as high as it needs to, with no delay perceptible to the voter. All the voters in the universe could not exhaust the counting ability of a single 8080 chip.
Buy a batch of Z-80s or even 8080s; they are still being made. The design is so old that it's unlikely to have been compromised; but if you are really paranoid, the circuitry of an 8-bit CPU is simple enough that you could easily verify it by hand. Build a little voting box around one of those chips, and you're done.
The design would take half a year and cost less than a $1 million -- which is peanuts when the goal is to ensure the honesty of a democracy's most important event.
Infighting within the free software community was probably a concern, but likely not the only one. Novell has leverage, you see: they have an overwhelmingly strong case in the SCO lawsuit, but they can cave if they choose. Worse, Novell can give the ownership of Unix to SCO -- and then the IBM/SCO case may possibly blow up.
Right, you can distribute a new program under any license you choose, including a modified GPL. But to be clear, you can only do that if you are the author of the program in question. If you receive a GPL'd program from somebody else, then the only way you can redistribute the program is under the unmodified GPL; that is the really clever feature of the license.
No soil. They're talking about using hydroponics or aeroponics.
Nothing cuts congress out of the picture. You see, the president CANNOT make something and have it automatically become law.
Not normally, no. But NSPD 51 is for emergencies -- and this particular directive completely bypasses Congress. Perhaps it can be countermanded by Congress in time, or perhaps not; that is not my point. My point is that Bush has made this particular potential power grab when he didn't have to -- he already has ample scope in an emergency. So why did he do it?
Enough people are now sufficiently alert, so Bush may not succeed in implementing NSPD 51. And that is the point of Thomas Jefferson's famous dictum: we must always be vigilant.
Hmmm... how about the technology we have for seeing and manipulating single atoms?
Could our man of 1907 have foreseen that light could be slowed and even halted?
Quarks?
Dark energy?
Bose Einstein Condensates?
Or even the humble laser, the basis of most of our entertainment these days? Quantum mechanics wasn't around in 1907.
Now consider some wonders that we could see 100 to 1000 years from now. A mature nanotechnology. Extended lifespan. Gravitational engineering. Nearly unbreakable materials bound together by the strong force. I don't think we have begun to explore the possible.
NSPD 51 makes him answerable to nobody -- not even Congress -- and that is the very definition of a dictator. Bush would be a dictator who likes torture.
I will say it once more: if this doesn't scare you, you don't deserve to live in a democracy.
National Security Presidential Directive 51 (aka Homeland Security Presidential Directive) basically cuts Congress completely out of the picture. If this directive goes unchallenged, Bush can declare himself a dictator whenever he decides a "national emergency" (i.e. a Reichstag fire) has occurred.
As I have said before, if this doesn't scare you, you don't deserve to live in a democracy.
You're talking now; I'm talking a generation from now, when Bush's huge deficits really start to bite.
And before you bash Bush please to learn that he has doubled NIH funding since coming into office. Doubled it!
He's robbing your children to do it. As I said, Bush is spending money like a drunken sailor, adding $trillions to the total national debt. Increasing the NIH budget by $3.7 billion is just a trifle in comparison.
At some point, the debt must be repaid.... either that or the currency starts hyperinflating. See the history of Weimar Germany for what happens next. Would the world's best and brightest want to come to the U.S. during this dismal period? Hell no!
Also, look at the U.S. emblem. Now look at the Roman eagle.
Why will the best foreign scientists want to come? Remember, nearly all the corporate "blue sky" research labs are gone. And Bush is squandering federal budget like a drunkard, so the federal funding for pure science will be hurting for generations to come. As the situation for scientists in the U.S. continues to worsen, the best and brighest abroad will stay abroad. In fact, any future brain drain will likely hurt the U.S.
That doesn't mean we can relax this time. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." -- Thomas Jefferson
This time, we really do have serious reason to fear. National Security Directive 51 does exist, and it does give Bush the power to seize the government in toto under certain conditions, said conditions to be defined by Bush. If this doesn't scare you, you don't deserve to live in a democracy.
The above posting was mine. Forgot to log in.
You are just hoping. What evidence do you have that business computing requirements will explode? (No, 3D eye candy is not a "requirement".) We should be seeing some hints of any such demand today. If you are betting on some software breakthrough that is far beyond the horizon, then you are really dreaming.
On the other hand, I am betting on a virtual certainty: that the $100 machines available in the very near future will be more than a match for today's business needs.
I prefer my odds.
Lowering the price is hardly cheating (usually). I would love to see Microsoft permanently cut the true prices of Windows and Office to 50 cents a copy. I dare them to shrink their company voluntarily!
Corruption is the form of cheating I expect Microsoft to try.
I understand it perfectly well.
You certainly haven't shown it.
The $100 PC isn't likely to take over the world. Expand it ? Yes. Replace the significant proportion of machines that sit into the same price brackets as the Mac Mini and the iMac ? No chance.
What you consistently refuse to understand is that technology does not stand still. Sneer at the OLPC all you want. But $100 computers will not stay flimsy and underpowered forever; soon, their hardware will be everything that 99% of businesses will ever need, and their software will be free. When that happens, these machines will flood the market, and Microsoft will be in trouble.
Microsoft are a long, long way from the peril people like you would like to pretend they're in.
As I have said before, we shall see, won't we? The laws of economics are iron.