So in order to punish the Walmart shopping 300-lb father of eight, you are willing to punish me, a 170 lb father of one who uses his car to drive to work and to the grocery store to feed my "spawn"? Yeah, why not? You've chosen your lifestyle: pay the going rate for it. If fuel for your commute is punitively expensive, evidently you live too far from your job. Change job, move house, or pay. This seems terribly simple to me. My office is a pleasant 20 minute stroll from my home. Yes, I see how this sounds smug - but anyone can engineer their lifestyle the same way, save money and suffer less in a car.
(I do own a car -- I just don't use it for commuting)
As for your spawn - well, I understand that parenthood is extremely rewarding. Why does society have any duty to make this pleasure cheaper for you? Especially when the world's population is too high, and growing.
This is a personal bugbear for me: in the UK there's a non-means-tested 'family allowance' for parents - doesn't that just encourage people to add kids to a planet that doesn't need any more?
How about that little old lady in Michigan who has to decide between food and a heated home in January? That's not the same at all. Home heating is a basic necessity. Driving is not. This can be sorted out by providing winter fuel payments to the elderly, and by taxing the different kinds of fuel appropriately.
[quote] And if you state that there are plant-eaters too then I will (obviously) state that plants are also living things. There isn't a single animal that doesn't kill for energy. [/quote]
It's possible to feed on a plant without killing it. Indeed, you might benefit the plant by doing so. Top example: honey bees.
Nature both provides and threatens. We'd be as screwed without it as we are with it.
ask any scientist how easy it is to get funding after you publicly doubt global warming. Surely you just approach an oil company? Or if that fails, there's plenty of right wing newspapers who will happily serialise your book.
How can we claim to have reached "peak oil" when we have oil that we refuse to extract? If you assume oil availability follows a bell curve (which many analysts seem to agree it will approximate) then peak oil is the top of the curve.
So if peak oil was 2005, availability in 2030 (x+25) is the same as availability in 1980 (x-25).
That's quite comforting; 1980 wasn't so bad - mind you, the world population was about two thirds what it is now.
By the same logic, in 2060 we'll have 1950 levels of oil supply. The projected world population for 2060 is 4 times that of 1950.
We've gone from almost no reliance on oil to massive reliance, in a little over 100 years. We'll need to migrate to an alternative (or return to 18th century population levels and quality of life) at around the same rate.
As long as we can make demand match supply without too much strife, then we'll be OK. Can we?
Whether right or wrong, his point was made in answering the question "Are we going to die?" (with the assumption being because of how poorly we've treated the planet on which we live). The GP's point was that, barring war, most of us will make it to at least 70.....and very likely that our children will as well. Or, in short, his answer was "no, not any time soon". War's a start. You can add pestilence, famine and 'natural' disasters to that list.
We're already seeing people starving due to rising food costs linked to oil prices and biofuel demand.
With population levels so high, the next serious epidemic we get will be horrific.
Rising sea levels make flood disasters more likely. Look how man made infrastructure made the effects of the Chinese earthquake worse than it could have been.
That's because we as humans (in general) still view ourselves as the center of the Universe. When we need to realize that though we have a cause/effect on our surroundings, we would hate to admit that we are not a bigger part of things then we think. Well, we are the centre of our own universe. If polar bears go extinct, then only reason it matters to me, is because of direct or indirect effects on me. Otherwise it's tree falling in a forest with nobody to hear it: it doesn't make a sound.
We are both a bigger and a smaller part of things than we think.
Bigger, because our activities can certainly have enough of an impact on the planet to make ourselves very uncomfortable.
Smaller because if we wipe ourselves (and a few other species) out, life will carry on without us.
I did read your post. To paraphrase: [quote] The stated aim of environmentalists is to save fluffy animals etc. We should be worrying about human needs instead. [/quote]... and I disagreed with the first part. Most of what I read about fighting climate change, concentrates on the effects it has on human society.
I remember clearly that when the downloads became available, I decided to wait for the CD (because I'm old fashioned and like things I can touch) -- so they must have made it clear that there would be one. I did buy the CD and I was very pleased with it.
Because, frankly, the stated aims of environmentalists - improving the forests, saving the fuzzy animals, and so on, Where have you found these "stated aims"?
Most of the climate speculation I've seen concentrates on very human-centric concerns such as food production, extreme weather and the effect of rising sea levels on major cities.
The problem here is that a lot of people do think that nothing apart from money has value. Gosh, how do they spend their money? Everything must seem terribly overpriced!
Also, it isn't free. The only part of open source that is free is the part which is an infinite resource (copies of the software/code). Time and support is not free, which is why that costs money. So you're saying that the only part of 'free software' that is free is the software?
(Do remember that freedom is about more than monetary cost -- yet freedom does have value that could monetized)
If any parts of, say, a major Linux distro are 'abandoned' by their developers, I think you'll find that due to their open source nature, someeone else will pick up the reigns. Possibly even a for profit-company such as the distro maker. You buried the most important part deep in your paragraph. If you're a large corporation using OSS code that's been abandoned, you're in a much better situation than if you were using someone else's proprietary code that's abandoned.
The second part is basically a restating of the old rule that hobbyist developers will scratch THEIR itch, not that of others. SO we have a bunch of very good FOSS coding tools and server software, but usability for non-developers is still lacking, if they even try. I don't see any of this as a problem. The particular hobbyists you're referring to aren't aiming to write an app for non-developers, and hence don't write one. I don't see how that's not prefectly fine.
There *are* people writing Open Source end-user apps (Firefox, OpenOffice leap to mind). Some of them are hobbyists, some of them do it for a living. The apps end up existing either way.
The economics of OSS are a lot more complicated than 'programmer writes code; programmer gets paid'. Satisfaction, kudos, scratched itches, and money all interweave in complex ways. Some projects fail, some projects are widely successful. What's the problem?
I think they are anticipating the death of radio, which is essentially the same thing except they determine what kind of rubbish you listen to in between the ads. That's a service, not an imposition. Choosing what music to listen to is hard work, and a radio station helps you out by making that choice for you.
If it's choosing you rubbish, you need to listen to a better radio show (this is where I wish I lived in the Pacific Northwest, where I could tune into KEXP on an FM radio) but at least you make that choice fewer times.
You make the (common) mistake of treating Slashdot as a homogeneous blob of opinion.
We don't all agree on everything, and the people who believe in ad-supported content as a business model are probably not the same people who block ads indiscriminately.
Besides, just because I skip ads on TiVo, doesn't mean that ad-supported TV broadcasts aren't profitable.
No need for a flame suit, it's a fair enough question, and the answer's probably a bit harsh:
How does an author who writes 8 hours a day make a living if he gives his stuff away?
Or does he become a carpenter and write for fun an hour or two a week because writing is not a 'career path', but being a mechanic or carpenter is? Maybe he does. Nobody (sane) is saying 'you have to give away your writing'. What's being said is that economic forces driven by the availability of digital distribution are driving the price you can realistically charge for a written work towards zero. When this comes true, it's likely that the only way your brother will be able to get anyone to read his writing, is to give it away.
But we have to be very careful about what we say has lost its value. The prediction is that you'll no longer be able to strike a deal with a consumer that says 'You give me $10, and I'll give you 300 pages of good quality fiction' (because the consumer can get 300 pages of good quality fiction elsewhere for free).
That leaves all sorts of other business transactions available related to the written word: - '10,000 people read my books. I'll sell you ad space.' - '$x gets you a limited edition printed copy of my next book, and your name in the front matter of all editions' (price high - get sugar daddies) - 'Give me money - if I get $x by [date] then I'll publish the next chapter. If not you get your money back. - Publish ebooks as a loss-leader for other work (newspaper/magazine work etc.)
and so on.
And if none of these work out? Sorry. Then there are too many writers and not enough demand. Do something else for a living.
So what are you proposing, state sponsorship of all creative works? Everyone contribute what they can and take what they need? I don't think it's necessary to prescribe a 'solution'. If society needs these creative works, then it will find a way to make them continue to be produced. In a very broad sense, 'the market' will solve the problem. My instinct is that it'll become even harder to make a living as an artist than it is now, but that art (literature, etc.) will still get produced because creating is fun.
The output of creative folks is NOT a non-scarce good... it's actually extremely scarce. I would argue that it's increasingly non-scarce, and that the cheapness of distribution and production tools are contributing to this. There is more freely downloadable music of acceptable quality than I could possibly download in a lifetime. The way that music is funded varies, but in many cases it's funded by the musicians' day jobs.
Now, Steven Poole's 'Trigger Happy' is a scarce resource (if you disregard piracy), because there's only one Steven Poole, he owns the copyright, he only wrote it once. He controls its distribution and price.
But 'competently written prose about video games' is by no means scarce. It's a lot less scarce now that it was 8 years ago when the book was written (and I bought it). And hence the market drives the price of competently written prose about video games towards zero.
In 2008, what's a consumer more likely to do? Pay $10 for Poole's book, or read The Escapist magazine for free online? Even if The Escapist were only half as good as Trigger Happy, I bet the gratis read wins in the free market.
Before digital distribution, we needed publishers because they were the only way to link creators to consumers. And we paid for that service. That's increasingly unnecessary. Along the way, publishers controlled what they released, to cause artificial scarcity. If 20 Steven Poole-alikes pitched an intelligent book about videogames in the same quarter, no way would all 20 get published.
Books, for a while to come, have an advantage in that people prefer the form factor. Sooner or later someone will solve that, and they'll lose that small foothold. It'll be really interesting.
I am allowed to draw a picture, for my own pleasure, and share it without charging money. That's not business. Why does software have to be any different from that?
Software *can* be business, but that doesn't mean it *must* be.
Notice is for sallies, real men just quit. After all -- do they give you notice when your going to be let go? No. In countries with civilised employment law, they have to.
While I don't disagree, I can't help but wonder how things would have gone if the statement was "The Anglican church is a dangerous cult." You'd get ignored as a harmless loony.
Software you are talking about is business, or should be business. I fundamentally disagree with this statement. Business is part of the software ecosystem. But software, including operating systems, can and should be written, distributed and used outside of a business context.
In the museum by the Grand Coulee Dam, there's actually film footage of them tying string onto live mice and using a cat to scare them into carrying through conduit.
Assuming they compiled mplayer right (and why wouldn't they, since this is basically an ad), the MPEG4 decoding will be happening in the graphics hardware. So the CPU is hardly being taxed. Have it run 'primes'; then I'll be happy.
Still an extremely attractive piece of hardware. When my TiVo Series One finally gives up, I'll be shopping for a quiet VIA box.
Slashdot Mirror
(I do own a car -- I just don't use it for commuting)
As for your spawn - well, I understand that parenthood is extremely rewarding. Why does society have any duty to make this pleasure cheaper for you? Especially when the world's population is too high, and growing.
This is a personal bugbear for me: in the UK there's a non-means-tested 'family allowance' for parents - doesn't that just encourage people to add kids to a planet that doesn't need any more? How about that little old lady in Michigan who has to decide between food and a heated home in January? That's not the same at all. Home heating is a basic necessity. Driving is not. This can be sorted out by providing winter fuel payments to the elderly, and by taxing the different kinds of fuel appropriately.
[quote]
And if you state that there are plant-eaters too then I will (obviously) state that plants are also living things. There isn't a single animal that doesn't kill for energy.
[/quote]
It's possible to feed on a plant without killing it. Indeed, you might benefit the plant by doing so. Top example: honey bees.
Nature both provides and threatens. We'd be as screwed without it as we are with it.
So if peak oil was 2005, availability in 2030 (x+25) is the same as availability in 1980 (x-25).
That's quite comforting; 1980 wasn't so bad - mind you, the world population was about two thirds what it is now.
By the same logic, in 2060 we'll have 1950 levels of oil supply. The projected world population for 2060 is 4 times that of 1950.
We've gone from almost no reliance on oil to massive reliance, in a little over 100 years. We'll need to migrate to an alternative (or return to 18th century population levels and quality of life) at around the same rate.
As long as we can make demand match supply without too much strife, then we'll be OK. Can we?
You can add pestilence, famine and 'natural' disasters to that list.
We're already seeing people starving due to rising food costs linked to oil prices and biofuel demand.
With population levels so high, the next serious epidemic we get will be horrific.
Rising sea levels make flood disasters more likely. Look how man made infrastructure made the effects of the Chinese earthquake worse than it could have been.
We are both a bigger and a smaller part of things than we think.
Bigger, because our activities can certainly have enough of an impact on the planet to make ourselves very uncomfortable.
Smaller because if we wipe ourselves (and a few other species) out, life will carry on without us.
I did read your post. To paraphrase: ... and I disagreed with the first part. Most of what I read about fighting climate change, concentrates on the effects it has on human society.
[quote]
The stated aim of environmentalists is to save fluffy animals etc. We should be worrying about human needs instead.
[/quote]
How was the In Rainbows CD a volte-face?
I remember clearly that when the downloads became available, I decided to wait for the CD (because I'm old fashioned and like things I can touch) -- so they must have made it clear that there would be one. I did buy the CD and I was very pleased with it.
Most of the climate speculation I've seen concentrates on very human-centric concerns such as food production, extreme weather and the effect of rising sea levels on major cities.
The first RepRap was built from a RepStrap.
It's a bit like bootstrapping a compiler.
Perhaps your definition of Shareware is different from mine.
Mine is: non-free commercial software that users are encouraged to distribute among themselves, before paying to unlock non-trial features.
DOOM!, for example, was shareware. I don't see that Shareware has anything to do with scratching itches.
(Do remember that freedom is about more than monetary cost -- yet freedom does have value that could monetized)
There *are* people writing Open Source end-user apps (Firefox, OpenOffice leap to mind). Some of them are hobbyists, some of them do it for a living. The apps end up existing either way.
The economics of OSS are a lot more complicated than 'programmer writes code; programmer gets paid'. Satisfaction, kudos, scratched itches, and money all interweave in complex ways. Some projects fail, some projects are widely successful. What's the problem?
If it's choosing you rubbish, you need to listen to a better radio show (this is where I wish I lived in the Pacific Northwest, where I could tune into KEXP on an FM radio) but at least you make that choice fewer times.
You make the (common) mistake of treating Slashdot as a homogeneous blob of opinion.
We don't all agree on everything, and the people who believe in ad-supported content as a business model are probably not the same people who block ads indiscriminately.
Besides, just because I skip ads on TiVo, doesn't mean that ad-supported TV broadcasts aren't profitable.
Or does he become a carpenter and write for fun an hour or two a week because writing is not a 'career path', but being a mechanic or carpenter is? Maybe he does. Nobody (sane) is saying 'you have to give away your writing'. What's being said is that economic forces driven by the availability of digital distribution are driving the price you can realistically charge for a written work towards zero. When this comes true, it's likely that the only way your brother will be able to get anyone to read his writing, is to give it away.
But we have to be very careful about what we say has lost its value. The prediction is that you'll no longer be able to strike a deal with a consumer that says 'You give me $10, and I'll give you 300 pages of good quality fiction' (because the consumer can get 300 pages of good quality fiction elsewhere for free).
That leaves all sorts of other business transactions available related to the written word:
- '10,000 people read my books. I'll sell you ad space.'
- '$x gets you a limited edition printed copy of my next book, and your name in the front matter of all editions' (price high - get sugar daddies)
- 'Give me money - if I get $x by [date] then I'll publish the next chapter. If not you get your money back.
- Publish ebooks as a loss-leader for other work (newspaper/magazine work etc.)
and so on.
And if none of these work out? Sorry. Then there are too many writers and not enough demand. Do something else for a living.
Now, Steven Poole's 'Trigger Happy' is a scarce resource (if you disregard piracy), because there's only one Steven Poole, he owns the copyright, he only wrote it once. He controls its distribution and price.
But 'competently written prose about video games' is by no means scarce. It's a lot less scarce now that it was 8 years ago when the book was written (and I bought it). And hence the market drives the price of competently written prose about video games towards zero.
In 2008, what's a consumer more likely to do? Pay $10 for Poole's book, or read The Escapist magazine for free online? Even if The Escapist were only half as good as Trigger Happy, I bet the gratis read wins in the free market.
Before digital distribution, we needed publishers because they were the only way to link creators to consumers. And we paid for that service. That's increasingly unnecessary. Along the way, publishers controlled what they released, to cause artificial scarcity. If 20 Steven Poole-alikes pitched an intelligent book about videogames in the same quarter, no way would all 20 get published.
Books, for a while to come, have an advantage in that people prefer the form factor. Sooner or later someone will solve that, and they'll lose that small foothold. It'll be really interesting.
I am allowed to draw a picture, for my own pleasure, and share it without charging money. That's not business. Why does software have to be any different from that?
Software *can* be business, but that doesn't mean it *must* be.
Anonymous get noticed because they're right.
In the museum by the Grand Coulee Dam, there's actually film footage of them tying string onto live mice and using a cat to scare them into carrying through conduit.
Fact!
Assuming they compiled mplayer right (and why wouldn't they, since this is basically an ad), the MPEG4 decoding will be happening in the graphics hardware. So the CPU is hardly being taxed. Have it run 'primes'; then I'll be happy.
Still an extremely attractive piece of hardware. When my TiVo Series One finally gives up, I'll be shopping for a quiet VIA box.