Oh, look, you've reinvented the open source movement, right down to imagining that the most important thing in the world is the number of people using your products.
Who said anything about popularity? Economic self interest can simply be having access to the code so you can tinker for your own personal use. It is hardly limited to mass market popularity.
The Free in Free Software means freedom.
Freedom isn't just what RMS says it is. He has merely one perspective among many on what freedom is. Others see it differently. While I actually agree with him in most cases I think his tactics to achieve his stated goals are routinely stupid and/or clumsy. I admire his uncompromising stance but you can be uncompromising in subtle and clever ways. He can argue that it is a moral issue all he wants but that is an argument that is unlikely to persuade anyone not already inclined to agree with him. The GPL is a brilliant hack of our legal system but it cannot be the only tool in the tool box if your goal is actually free (as in speech) software.
Why? Do arguments become more valid when presented by someone well groomed?
Persuading people involves a great deal more than simply making an argument with airtight logic. If logic was all that mattered, organized religion would have died out centuries ago. Like it or not, how an argument is presented can often matter more than the argument itself. And yes this can extend to personal grooming habits at times. This is a concept that understandably tends to be an anathema to many engineers but it's provably true. It doesn't matter if he is factually right if no one is willing to listen to what he says. Personal grooming and presentation can matter greatly at times. There is a reason that salesmen tend to present a polished image with a friendly face - it works. There is a reason preachers in church are very good at public speaking and understand the value of ceremony and presentation. It's the sugar that helps the medicine go down.
That said, the idiot who made the comment about grooming and toejam is an imbecile. Dismissing someone's idea out of hand because you dislike their appearance is idiotic and juvenile. Whether or not RMS presents himself well has zero bearing on whether what he is saying is correct.
Nothing else matters. You can hate the man or feel inconvenienced by what he says. Nothing changes the simple fact that he's right.
I don't hate or love the man. Nothing he does inconveniences me in the least. But he's not "right" about everything. He does have many very valid points, quite a few of which are logically unassailable as far as I can tell. Tools that cannot be modified or improved are a serious hindrance to society. Human society was built on the ability to make, modify, improve, and share tools. The notion that we can write mere instructions for a machine that aren't allowed to be shared with anyone is a very dangerous and stupid idea. Imagine if scientists were prohibited from sharing discoveries and formulas and you get a good idea of the severity of the consequences.
But he also makes the mistake of making it a moral argument in places where it clearly is not. Perhaps worse, he does so in places where a moral argument is unnecessary or even counterproductive. Morals vary from person to person and society to society. This allows people who do not share his moral belief system to dismiss him easily. Much of what RMS argues for can and should be argued from an economic perspective. RMS should explain it to people why it is in their own economic self interest to have free (as in speech) software. It's FAR more likely to be persuasive and the end result is the same - more people using free software. Economic self interest is a much stronger incentive to most people than abstract morals about tools that most people barely understand how to use much less build.
I agree with RMS for the most part but let's take his work and improve on it just like he hopes we will do with code. He's done some good work but it's imperfect and its up to the rest of us to build on it and make it better.
...and I still do but I'm slowly accepting there's some wisdom in forcing the software we all rely on to be transparent.
RMS is a bit crazy and certainly could be fairly described as a fanatic. I also think he is a clumsy advocate, a terrible public speaker, and his arguments aren't always grounded in reality. He is too easy to dismiss as a loon by those who have an interest in doing so. That doesn't mean he's entirely wrong. While I think he goes off the deep end a bit with his moralizing but in practical terms he is quite right that there is a huge loss of value to society in allowing too much of our tools to be kept under lock and key.
One of the great things about owning a drill press for example is that I can open it up and tinker with it if I feel the need. Nobody can tell me that I cannot. I might void a warranty but that's my choice and I can willingly take that risk. Heck I can even sell the modified device in most cases. But with most proprietary software I cannot do the equivalent tinkering. I can't open it up (figuratively speaking) and tweak the tool to my particular needs. Free (as in speech) software remedies this problem.
I don't have a principled objection to the existence of all proprietary software but RMS is very correct that if we lack a large toolbox of software tools that we can modify and adapt and build upon then we are ultimately causing very real and measurable harm to society. Imagine where science would be today if scientists were prevented by law from sharing their discoveries. Imagine a world where tool makers weren't allowed to improve on or use tools made by others. Imagine if chemists couldn't share chemical formulas. We are at risk of the doing something incredibly stupid in making it too easy to prevent the sharing of mere instructions for machines. That's not a moral argument - it's a practical one. We're limiting our own economic future by having clumsy copyright and patent laws that allow a few to lock up much of what should be accessible to all.
production of those products is never going to come back to the US, save for regulatory pain making it easier to manufacture in the US.
FTFY.
Evidently you are unfamiliar with the story of King Canute. Regulatory pain has NOTHING to do with why labor intensive manufacturing has largely left the US. It is almost entirely about labor costs and labor costs alone. If 50% of the cost of a product is in labor then it is going to get made where labor is cheap. $15/hour US labor cannot compete with $1/hour Chinese labor on such a product even if you assume a massive productivity advantage that doesn't exist in the real world. You could have the most favorable regulations in the world and it still would make no economic sense to make the product where labor costs are high. This is economics 101 stuff and no regulations can alter economic laws like this.
US manufacturing is alive and well. That sector of the US economy is worth over $3 trillion by itself and growing robustly. But it is not going to be a source of massive jobs without an equally massive drop in average wages. If you want to put in regulations to bring labor intensive manufacturing back to the US then you are legislating millions of people into poverty wages. Doesn't sound like a very good idea to me.
The days when someone without a college degree could go straight from high school into an assembly plant and make a big wage can return with sufficient regulation.
FTFY.
You again didn't fix anything though you did prove you don't understand even basic economics. If you put up huge trade barriers or other regulations to keep foreign products out you will cost FAR more jobs than you will ever save. You are driving up the price of cars for tens of millions of people to gain at most a few tens of thousands of assembly jobs. Regulations that try to prevent economic reality result in a situation like what you seen in Venezuela right now. Huge unemployment, huge inflation, and a massive economic depression. Some regulation is good like those to ensure clean air or quality roads - these protect resources we all need to use. Regulation that defies basic economics is doomed to failure.
The world your parents and grandparents grew up in no longer exists. To pretend we can recreate the circumstances of that time is both false and foolish. You can learn to live with today's reality or you can get passed by those who will.
While a lot of the rhetoric about job loss in the Rust Belt has centered on such outsourcing, one study from Ball State University found that only 13 percent of manufacturing job losses are attributable to trade, and the rest to automation.
This could only possibly be true if one utterly fails to recognize the difference between labor intensive manufacturing and capital intensive manufacturing. Labor intensive means that labor costs are a relatively high proportion of the total cost of the product. Capital intensive is the converse. The vast majority of job losses for labor intensive products (textiles, basic assembly, etc) are entirely due to production moving to low labor costs locations. For capital intensive manufacturing, automation is the big driver. US manufacturing has been capital intensive for several decades now so further job losses will often be due to automation.
Any time you hear a politician talking about "bringing back manufacturing jobs" they are almost always talking about bringing back labor intensive production. Problem is that unless US wages fall by a LOT, production of those products is never going to come back to the US. They will be made wherever labor costs are lowest and no amount of politician's promises will change that fact. The days when someone without a college degree could go straight from high school into an assembly plant and make a big wage are long gone.
Chicago is less than 30% more expensive than Indianapolis.
That depends on what part you are living in. Here are some actual numbers on the subject. These are averages which may vary by specific location.
Simple fact is that the cost of living difference is substantial and wages often aren't enough higher in the bigger city to compensate.
Add in the intangible benefits of more culture / entertainment, better food, and overall more job opportunities, it's not surprising that major cities attract the best and brightest in our society.
People in big cities far too often seem to think they are better than the people who chose to avoid them. New Yorkers seem to be particularly full of themselves in my experience. Big cities do not universally attract the best and brightest, merely a percentage of them and only for certain industries. Finance? Sure you probably want a big city. Agriculture? Not so much. Manufacturing? Depends on the product. You also conveniently ignore the drawbacks of big cities. Congestion, high prices, cramped living conditions, lack of green spaces, pollution, etc. And I would disagree that the food is universally better in cities or that there is better entertainment. It depends on what suits you. I live in a semi-rural area and I guarantee you I get better produce than almost any restaurant in NYC right off the farm. Same with meat if I want it.
Or for the dollar to fall. But that would be bad for WalMart and others who manufacture in China.
The dollar falling would make imports more expensive and exports cheaper but it won't bring more than a marginal number of labor intensive manufacturing jobs back to the US unless it falls by scary huge amounts. The US dollar would have to positively plummet to make it worth the effort to bring that manufacturing back to the US. The economic hardship that would result in the interim would be horrifying. A slightly weaker dollar is not necessarily bad but for it to fall enough to make it worthwhile to bring labor intensive manufacturing jobs to the US something very bad would have to happen.
Basically the assembly line jobs that didn't require a college degree from the 1950s-1970s are gone forever. People lust for them out of misplaced nostalgia but it's a world that no longer exists. We still have a huge and growing manufacturing economy but like farming it employs a relatively small percent of the population and it is likely to shrink further as a percent of the total workforce. The stuff we make is capital intensive rather than labor intensive. The future of the US manufacturing economy isn't in making little toys you buy at Walmart. It's in making complicated advanced products. The important thing is to not let new capital intensive manufacturing jobs leave the country. We need to encourage as many highly educated immigrants to come to the US as possible. Fund as much research as possible. That is the only way the US will avoid a reversion to the mean during the next century economically.
That's the weird thing about the Trumpster. He's a big talker and most of the things that he says are BS, but he's probably made more progress with getting companies to bring US jobs back to this country than the Obama administration did in the last 4 years.
Trump hasn't brought any meaningful number of jobs back to the US. He has however falsely taken credit for a bunch of decisions he had effectively nothing to do with. He certainly hasn't done more than Obama because he has done a reasonable approximation of nothing.
Trump's whole promise to bring back manufacturing jobs is based on a false premise. The only way to bring back substantial numbers of manufacturing jobs to the US would be for wages to fall relative to elsewhere. US manufacturing is alive and well but it's not labor intensive manufacturing. We make jumbo jets, not happy meal toys. The only way you get massive number of assembly line workers back to work is to drop wages by a LOT. Since that won't happen, Trump is telling yet another lie.
That doesn't mean that I like him or his policies, but I have to give credit where it's due.
When he actually does something to deserve credit then you should start doing that. No credit due so far.
And I'm not against green energy, just against stupid catch all remarks that say something is better than something else or has some specific ROI without taking into account any specifics.
We are in accord on that point.
Residential wind hasn't taken off for a simple reason, it is incredibly inefficient.
Again, whether residential wind power is useful is circumstance dependent. Sometimes it makes perfect sense as a supplement even on a home installation. I know a few local hobby farms that have smallish wind turbines which were economically sensible for their location. And who said it had to be residential? Communities can install large wind turbines and share the power. If rooftop solar doesn't work and the geography doesn't work for residential wind, then get the neighbors together for a large wind turbine. Battery systems for both home and grid scale are starting to become a real thing too.
Where my house is located (near the upper Great Lakes) wind doesn't make much sense but both grid and residential turbines make a ton of sense just 80 miles from my house and in fact are used. Conversely our local power company and a fair number of houses have solar installations which work great. Just our local geography. No one power source fits every circumstance and location.
No one here said anything like that, read through the thread again.
The claim was "Except solar definitely does not in the wonderful cloudy parts of the world near the north sea." which has nothing specifically to do with residential. Furthermore my statement was something of a more general statement aimed towards the people who invariably and unhelpfully point out that the sun doesn't shine 24/7.
i think the Dyson sphere concept is cool, but I wonder if there is enough accessible mass in the solar system to build one??
No there is not. Not even close. Even if you used all the mass in the solar system, much/most of it isn't usable for such a project. The entire mass of the asteroid belt is about 4% of the mass of the moon. The entire Oort cloud might be something like 5 earth masses.
Dyson spheres are fun thought experiments but they are an utter fail unless you assume we possess a level of technology that modern humans would consider near god like.
Except solar definitely does not in the wonderful cloudy parts of the world near the north sea.
You mean those locations with cloudy skies and lots of wind? So use wind power if your specific location isn't ideal for solar. Last I checked there was no lack of wind in the North Sea.
I don't get why some people keep arguing that solar isn't good in general because it doesn't work for every circumstance everywhere. Solar works fine and it's now economic in a huge number of cases. Better yet it's going to continue to get cheaper and more efficient with time. Yes if you live somewhere where it is foggy 300+ days a year solar is probably not for you. That doesn't describe most places where people live.
Still waiting for solar to pass its commercial viability test and I suspect wind power is a similar story.
Either you are willfully ignoring facts or you don't understand them. Solar has been economically viable in a wide variety of circumstances for quite a few years now. It's not the cheapest option everywhere (nothing is) but it's easily competitive in a great many places. Even better it's cost per unit of power generated has been dropping very rapidly with no evidence of an end in sight.
So far it only succeeds here in the UK because of government subsidies.
I could say the same thing about oil and gas in the UK. The UK subsidizes fossil fuels to the tune of billions per year directly, not to mention the indirect subsidy of not requiring coal and oil to pay the full cost of their emissions. Solar is already competitive with coal and oil in many situations and it is easily competitive if you compare the full cost of each which folks like yourself arguing against solar tend not to do.
If I pay for and install my own 5kWh solar system the returns over 20 years don't cover the cost of the initial installation, let alone a replacement inverter after 10 years or any other maintenance.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Even if we take your statement at face value (and we shouldn't), it doesn't follow that there are no solar installations anywhere (UK or elsewhere) that do not recoup their costs. It is a trivial exercise to find examples of solar installations that pay for themselves within their operational lifespan.
Of course, the key "relevant" country is the home country, in this case, the US. It should be simple for the IRS to simply say that the accounting sleight of hand will not be recognized, as is often done for other tax sheltering strategies.
Easier said than done. In principle you are quite correct. The problem is that any accountant worth his salary can make it very difficult to prove that the transfer "price" isn't a good approximation of correct. Seriously, I'm a certified accountant and I'm telling you point blank that the IRS would have a very difficult time proving that a company like Apple is engaging in fraudulent transfer pricing unless they were incredibly clumsy about how they did it. The IRS simply doesn't have the resources to do an audit deep enough to uncover the truth of the matter in most cases when we are talking about large multinationals.
And transfer pricing is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hiding profits and other tax dodging schemes. Large corporations hire huge teams of accountants and lawyers whose entire job it is to find clever legal loopholes in the tax laws and exploit them. The profit for doing so is in the billions of dollars so expecting them to stop is unrealistic.
DRM are a necessary evil if you want a rental market.
The concept of "renting" an intangible product with near-as-makes-no-difference zero marginal cost to reproduce is more than a little absurd. If you need DRM to protect your product then your product is overpriced and you will induce piracy. A from Princess Leia seems to fit here rather well.
With the ability to easily copy and distribute digital media, it is hard to tell if extra copies are being made unlawfully.
Doesn't necessarily matter if they make extra copies. It matters if they DISTRIBUTE extra copies. It's not hard to determine if someone has a the legal right to distribute a given bit of copyrighted material. They have an absolute right to so-called fair use copying. DRM is a problem in large part because it attacks the wrong issue. It is an effort to inappropriately control distribution via controlling copying but copying is not the same thing as distribution. DRM is a blunt instrument that restricts all copying whether or not it is legal or desirable.
So, I know DRM is evil and we do not want that. What are the alternatives that can keep traditional shops open? I am all ears.
Implicit in your question is that we should care about keeping "traditional shops" open. I'm not convinced that is an important consideration.
I think you still have it the wrong way around. Neither hydrogen powered cars nor flying cars are new ideas.
No they aren't new ideas but they also aren't feasible ideas. Particularly flying cars.
When Elon Musk decided to get into the car business, he was already against hydrogen powered and flying cars and went the electric way.
That's because both hydrogen cars and flying cars have (so far) irreducible problems limiting their market potential. Hydrogen cars has a fueling infrastructure problem we are in no danger of solving as well as some fuel storage problems that are similarly challenging. Flying cars aren't a thing because we lack A) a power source with an adequate power/weight ratio, B) the control systems to use them safely, C) the infrastructure to make them practical. It's not that we can't make either one but that we can't make one with sufficient economic utility to make it worth the bother.
By comparison electric cars are now good enough that they are selling in meaningful numbers. EVs have some technical hurdles yet to overcome but there is reasonable grounds to believe these will be conquered in the near future and the vehicles are already good enough for many people in their current form. The same cannot be said of hydrogen power and flying cars.
Musk makes a very good point when he says that to get a 3 dimensional traffic system it is a lot more practical to dig than to try to fly, particularly in large cities where there would be the most need for a 3 dimensional traffic system. That's why we have subways. We know how to build tunnels and there is no science fiction technology required to make it happen. Like the other problems Musk has been working on at Tesla and SpaceX it's really more of a cost reduction problem than one of inventing new technology.
Increased security my ass. People don't give a shit about security. Ordinary users are fucking lazy, and are "willingly gravitating" towards anything that can do everything for them without lifting a finger.
Not true at all. They care about security to a reasonable degree. The problem is that A) security isn't their only or most pressing concern and B) most of them are not security experts nor should they be expected to be. Too many programmers write system that fail to assume that the computer will be utilized by someone who does not understand security and cannot reasonably be expected to understand it even if they wanted to.
My parents are delightful people who are smart and capable and they certainly aren't lazy. But expecting them to be well versed in the nuances of computer security is both naive and unrealistic. It has nothing to do with laziness but simply where their competencies lie and what time they have available. You would do a shit job at what they do for a living most likely. That doesn't mean you are lazy or stupid but merely that you have focused your energies elsewhere.
Furthermore there is NOTHING wrong with the expectation that the software you use be designed to be secure and to make your life simpler. If your software doesn't do that for users it will eventually be replaced by software that does and rightfully so.
Voice activated assistants and press-to-order buttons hanging on the wall are two prime examples of just how lazy people have become. Getting online to search and order a product manually is considered hard labor for the Siri generation.
That's akin to arguing that people are lazy for not wanting to drive to the store to do their shopping. Spending your time efficiently isn't sloth - it's just smart. Spending more time than absolutely required to do a task is idiotic and wasteful. Time is the most precious resource any of us have and wasting it bothering with navigating unnecessary websites out of some misplaced idea of what laziness is is foolish. Maybe you enjoy spending your time jumping through extra hurdles to order something. Personally I have better things to do with my time. I'd rather spend even that modest amount of time doing something that adds value to my life.
My only nitpick would be that NASA has been getting along without heavy lift capability since the Saturn-V was retired.
That's true but I'm not convinced it is a relevant issue. We gave up our heavy lift capability because the powers-that-be many decades ago decided the shuttle was the way to go and they couldn't get funding for both given the politics of the day. In hindsight that was a mistake but at the time the best path forward wasn't so clear. So you have to ask the question whether lacking heavy life capability was good policy or an error in planning? I would argue that we've been "getting along" without heavy lift because there wasn't any heavy lift to be had. The government was the only organization until recently in a position to fund development of such a beast and for various reasons congress decided other items (like the shuttle) should take priority. I see it more as an error in planning rather than a lack of any need.
It's kind of a chicken-vs-egg question. You cannot utilize heavy lift capabilities that don't exist and it's hard to justify building heavy lift rockets until you can prove there is demand for them. Nobody is going to design something to go into space that requires a launch vehicle that doesn't (and won't) exist.
Think how much money probably could have been saved in construction of the ISS if we had heavy launch capability? It likely could have cut the number of launches or improved the capabilities significantly.
That is why I still give at least equal weight to the "pork-barrel" theory for SLS.
Oh have no doubt that pork is a piece of the puzzle but I just think it is a smaller piece in regards to SLS than many think it is. Nothing government funded gets done without some amount of pork. The problem as I see it is that in the best case scenario SpaceX and Blue Origin come out with wildly successful launch vehicles. Then congress will see that and ask NASA why they needed to spend billions on a redundant launch vehicle which makes NASA look worse than they deserve. It's hard to sell the idea that we needed to spend billions just in case SpaceX fails.
SLS has always been a make-work program to preserve legacy jobs at Space Shuttle contractors.
Perhaps in part but it also serves a few other purposes. Probably the most important one is that it gives NASA a path to getting heavy lift capabilities in the event that the private enterprises working on the problem fail. It's a hedge of a sort, albeit an expensive one. Let's say hypothetically that SpaceX cannot get their Falcon Heavy to work for some reason. If NASA put all their eggs in that basket they could reasonably end up with no heavy launch vehicle. With SLS in the works NASA won't find themselves without options no matter what the private sector does.
Remember that as recently as a few years ago it wasn't at all clear that private companies like SpaceX would be as successful as they have been so far. It was uncharted territory and when you go into uncharted territory it's sensible to have a backup plan in place just in case things go wrong. Things are looking better by the day for private launch companies but there is still time for things to go tits up before SLS is operational.
I have a running bet with some friends on how many times the SLS will fly (if ever). My money's on two flights before it gets the axe.
I think it will depend heavily on how successful companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin turn out to be. You may very well be right but I would regard that as a best possible scenario. If SLS ends up seeing a lot of use it means that SpaceX and the rest failed.
True. I hadn't thought of that. But I'd note that Ariane-5 was developed in the mid-90s, and was based on the Ariane-4, which also had SRBs. I wonder if they would make the same design choices today?
Perhaps not but sometimes the best path forward is to not try to relive the past. Perfect can be the enemy of good. Something can be very useful without being optimal. The computer you are typing this on has a lot of historical cruft in it but removing that cruft is generally more expensive than simply building around it. If it is economically not viable in the face of some new technology then eventually it will get replaced (see SpaceX) but if it is "good enough" compared with the available alternatives then there is no point in reinventing the wheel. SRBs may not be perfect but they demonstrably have been economically useful.
I'm not arguing for or against SRBs but merely pointing out that if the expensive work of development has already been done then it makes sense to keep using them until something truly better comes along to replace them in the market. Whatever replaces them has to provide a substantial cost/performance savings or there is little point.
There is a difference between wasting your own money and taking other people's money by gunpoint and wasting it.
Private enterprise doesn't need something as crude as a gun to take your money from you. They convince idiots such as yourself to give it to them willingly, sometimes even when you know you are being cheated. And the meme that taxation = theft is tired, false, and stupid. If you really believe that then move to one of the locations where they do not tax you. Quite a few exist though they aren't pleasant places to live. But you don't get to take your roads, police, health care, utilities, fire department, military, etc with you. You get to fund those all yourself with "your money".
Seriously, get over the notion that you don't depend on other people and that you have no shared responsibility to society.
No. The difference is. The private sector isn't wasting MY MONEY.
Oh but it is. All the time and in vast quantities. People routinely waste money on crap products all the time from private enterprises. Private enterprise engages in fraud and waste on a scale that would make any government blush. If you need evidence of this see the behavior of the banks in the housing bubble leading up to the crash in 2008. The notion that private enterprise doesn't lie, cheat, steal, or waste your money can only be believed if you are an imbecile or are selling something yourself.
Private enterprise wastes VAST amounts of your money with little to no accountability for most of it. In many cases private enterprise is the least worst option but in many cases government is the least worst option too. Good luck building roads, maintaining first responder services, providing health care for everyone, etc without getting the government involved. Government solves the problems where markets fail and does so far more cost effectively than private enterprise does.
Yeah, the parent is young and the reasoning on this is very naive... at the time there were many many reason to store dates that way. also computing was so new that no one anticipated it being an issue... until it was....
The parent (me) is neither young nor naive. I wrote my first code before most of the people who will read this were born. Most of the code that was fixed in Y2K remediation was code written well after the point when using 2 digit years was necessary or appropriate. The Y2K problem was known about for decades before the year 2000. I remember people talking about it as early as the late 80s and many were aware of it long before that. It had nothing to do with "computing being new" and everything to do with lazy and/or incompetent programming, especially for anything written after approximately 1985. By then computers had plenty of memory and hard drive space to no longer need abbreviated dates to save space and it certainly didn't save money.
I suspect you're relatively young as there were valid reasons to only store 2 digits for the year.
I'm old enough to have programmed with punch cards and I predate the PC by a lot. Old enough for you? Very early on there were sensible reasons to only store two digits for a year but programmers continued the practice well beyond the point when it was no longer necessary. If I'm being incredibly generous there really was no excuse for the practice after the mid 1980s at the latest. But vast numbers of programs were written after that point which used two digit years. Most of the code that was fixed in Y2K remediation was not 20+ year old code and it certainly wasn't on punch cards.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, look, you've reinvented the open source movement, right down to imagining that the most important thing in the world is the number of people using your products.
Who said anything about popularity? Economic self interest can simply be having access to the code so you can tinker for your own personal use. It is hardly limited to mass market popularity.
The Free in Free Software means freedom.
Freedom isn't just what RMS says it is. He has merely one perspective among many on what freedom is. Others see it differently. While I actually agree with him in most cases I think his tactics to achieve his stated goals are routinely stupid and/or clumsy. I admire his uncompromising stance but you can be uncompromising in subtle and clever ways. He can argue that it is a moral issue all he wants but that is an argument that is unlikely to persuade anyone not already inclined to agree with him. The GPL is a brilliant hack of our legal system but it cannot be the only tool in the tool box if your goal is actually free (as in speech) software.
Why? Do arguments become more valid when presented by someone well groomed?
Persuading people involves a great deal more than simply making an argument with airtight logic. If logic was all that mattered, organized religion would have died out centuries ago. Like it or not, how an argument is presented can often matter more than the argument itself. And yes this can extend to personal grooming habits at times. This is a concept that understandably tends to be an anathema to many engineers but it's provably true. It doesn't matter if he is factually right if no one is willing to listen to what he says. Personal grooming and presentation can matter greatly at times. There is a reason that salesmen tend to present a polished image with a friendly face - it works. There is a reason preachers in church are very good at public speaking and understand the value of ceremony and presentation. It's the sugar that helps the medicine go down.
That said, the idiot who made the comment about grooming and toejam is an imbecile. Dismissing someone's idea out of hand because you dislike their appearance is idiotic and juvenile. Whether or not RMS presents himself well has zero bearing on whether what he is saying is correct.
Nothing else matters. You can hate the man or feel inconvenienced by what he says. Nothing changes the simple fact that he's right.
I don't hate or love the man. Nothing he does inconveniences me in the least. But he's not "right" about everything. He does have many very valid points, quite a few of which are logically unassailable as far as I can tell. Tools that cannot be modified or improved are a serious hindrance to society. Human society was built on the ability to make, modify, improve, and share tools. The notion that we can write mere instructions for a machine that aren't allowed to be shared with anyone is a very dangerous and stupid idea. Imagine if scientists were prohibited from sharing discoveries and formulas and you get a good idea of the severity of the consequences.
But he also makes the mistake of making it a moral argument in places where it clearly is not. Perhaps worse, he does so in places where a moral argument is unnecessary or even counterproductive. Morals vary from person to person and society to society. This allows people who do not share his moral belief system to dismiss him easily. Much of what RMS argues for can and should be argued from an economic perspective. RMS should explain it to people why it is in their own economic self interest to have free (as in speech) software. It's FAR more likely to be persuasive and the end result is the same - more people using free software. Economic self interest is a much stronger incentive to most people than abstract morals about tools that most people barely understand how to use much less build.
I agree with RMS for the most part but let's take his work and improve on it just like he hopes we will do with code. He's done some good work but it's imperfect and its up to the rest of us to build on it and make it better.
...and I still do but I'm slowly accepting there's some wisdom in forcing the software we all rely on to be transparent.
RMS is a bit crazy and certainly could be fairly described as a fanatic. I also think he is a clumsy advocate, a terrible public speaker, and his arguments aren't always grounded in reality. He is too easy to dismiss as a loon by those who have an interest in doing so. That doesn't mean he's entirely wrong. While I think he goes off the deep end a bit with his moralizing but in practical terms he is quite right that there is a huge loss of value to society in allowing too much of our tools to be kept under lock and key.
One of the great things about owning a drill press for example is that I can open it up and tinker with it if I feel the need. Nobody can tell me that I cannot. I might void a warranty but that's my choice and I can willingly take that risk. Heck I can even sell the modified device in most cases. But with most proprietary software I cannot do the equivalent tinkering. I can't open it up (figuratively speaking) and tweak the tool to my particular needs. Free (as in speech) software remedies this problem.
I don't have a principled objection to the existence of all proprietary software but RMS is very correct that if we lack a large toolbox of software tools that we can modify and adapt and build upon then we are ultimately causing very real and measurable harm to society. Imagine where science would be today if scientists were prevented by law from sharing their discoveries. Imagine a world where tool makers weren't allowed to improve on or use tools made by others. Imagine if chemists couldn't share chemical formulas. We are at risk of the doing something incredibly stupid in making it too easy to prevent the sharing of mere instructions for machines. That's not a moral argument - it's a practical one. We're limiting our own economic future by having clumsy copyright and patent laws that allow a few to lock up much of what should be accessible to all.
production of those products is never going to come back to the US, save for regulatory pain making it easier to manufacture in the US.
FTFY.
Evidently you are unfamiliar with the story of King Canute. Regulatory pain has NOTHING to do with why labor intensive manufacturing has largely left the US. It is almost entirely about labor costs and labor costs alone. If 50% of the cost of a product is in labor then it is going to get made where labor is cheap. $15/hour US labor cannot compete with $1/hour Chinese labor on such a product even if you assume a massive productivity advantage that doesn't exist in the real world. You could have the most favorable regulations in the world and it still would make no economic sense to make the product where labor costs are high. This is economics 101 stuff and no regulations can alter economic laws like this.
US manufacturing is alive and well. That sector of the US economy is worth over $3 trillion by itself and growing robustly. But it is not going to be a source of massive jobs without an equally massive drop in average wages. If you want to put in regulations to bring labor intensive manufacturing back to the US then you are legislating millions of people into poverty wages. Doesn't sound like a very good idea to me.
The days when someone without a college degree could go straight from high school into an assembly plant and make a big wage can return with sufficient regulation.
FTFY.
You again didn't fix anything though you did prove you don't understand even basic economics. If you put up huge trade barriers or other regulations to keep foreign products out you will cost FAR more jobs than you will ever save. You are driving up the price of cars for tens of millions of people to gain at most a few tens of thousands of assembly jobs. Regulations that try to prevent economic reality result in a situation like what you seen in Venezuela right now. Huge unemployment, huge inflation, and a massive economic depression. Some regulation is good like those to ensure clean air or quality roads - these protect resources we all need to use. Regulation that defies basic economics is doomed to failure.
The world your parents and grandparents grew up in no longer exists. To pretend we can recreate the circumstances of that time is both false and foolish. You can learn to live with today's reality or you can get passed by those who will.
While a lot of the rhetoric about job loss in the Rust Belt has centered on such outsourcing, one study from Ball State University found that only 13 percent of manufacturing job losses are attributable to trade, and the rest to automation.
This could only possibly be true if one utterly fails to recognize the difference between labor intensive manufacturing and capital intensive manufacturing. Labor intensive means that labor costs are a relatively high proportion of the total cost of the product. Capital intensive is the converse. The vast majority of job losses for labor intensive products (textiles, basic assembly, etc) are entirely due to production moving to low labor costs locations. For capital intensive manufacturing, automation is the big driver. US manufacturing has been capital intensive for several decades now so further job losses will often be due to automation.
Any time you hear a politician talking about "bringing back manufacturing jobs" they are almost always talking about bringing back labor intensive production. Problem is that unless US wages fall by a LOT, production of those products is never going to come back to the US. They will be made wherever labor costs are lowest and no amount of politician's promises will change that fact. The days when someone without a college degree could go straight from high school into an assembly plant and make a big wage are long gone.
Chicago is less than 30% more expensive than Indianapolis.
That depends on what part you are living in. Here are some actual numbers on the subject. These are averages which may vary by specific location.
Simple fact is that the cost of living difference is substantial and wages often aren't enough higher in the bigger city to compensate.
Add in the intangible benefits of more culture / entertainment, better food, and overall more job opportunities, it's not surprising that major cities attract the best and brightest in our society.
People in big cities far too often seem to think they are better than the people who chose to avoid them. New Yorkers seem to be particularly full of themselves in my experience. Big cities do not universally attract the best and brightest, merely a percentage of them and only for certain industries. Finance? Sure you probably want a big city. Agriculture? Not so much. Manufacturing? Depends on the product. You also conveniently ignore the drawbacks of big cities. Congestion, high prices, cramped living conditions, lack of green spaces, pollution, etc. And I would disagree that the food is universally better in cities or that there is better entertainment. It depends on what suits you. I live in a semi-rural area and I guarantee you I get better produce than almost any restaurant in NYC right off the farm. Same with meat if I want it.
Or for the dollar to fall. But that would be bad for WalMart and others who manufacture in China.
The dollar falling would make imports more expensive and exports cheaper but it won't bring more than a marginal number of labor intensive manufacturing jobs back to the US unless it falls by scary huge amounts. The US dollar would have to positively plummet to make it worth the effort to bring that manufacturing back to the US. The economic hardship that would result in the interim would be horrifying. A slightly weaker dollar is not necessarily bad but for it to fall enough to make it worthwhile to bring labor intensive manufacturing jobs to the US something very bad would have to happen.
Basically the assembly line jobs that didn't require a college degree from the 1950s-1970s are gone forever. People lust for them out of misplaced nostalgia but it's a world that no longer exists. We still have a huge and growing manufacturing economy but like farming it employs a relatively small percent of the population and it is likely to shrink further as a percent of the total workforce. The stuff we make is capital intensive rather than labor intensive. The future of the US manufacturing economy isn't in making little toys you buy at Walmart. It's in making complicated advanced products. The important thing is to not let new capital intensive manufacturing jobs leave the country. We need to encourage as many highly educated immigrants to come to the US as possible. Fund as much research as possible. That is the only way the US will avoid a reversion to the mean during the next century economically.
That's the weird thing about the Trumpster. He's a big talker and most of the things that he says are BS, but he's probably made more progress with getting companies to bring US jobs back to this country than the Obama administration did in the last 4 years.
Trump hasn't brought any meaningful number of jobs back to the US. He has however falsely taken credit for a bunch of decisions he had effectively nothing to do with. He certainly hasn't done more than Obama because he has done a reasonable approximation of nothing.
Trump's whole promise to bring back manufacturing jobs is based on a false premise. The only way to bring back substantial numbers of manufacturing jobs to the US would be for wages to fall relative to elsewhere. US manufacturing is alive and well but it's not labor intensive manufacturing. We make jumbo jets, not happy meal toys. The only way you get massive number of assembly line workers back to work is to drop wages by a LOT. Since that won't happen, Trump is telling yet another lie.
That doesn't mean that I like him or his policies, but I have to give credit where it's due.
When he actually does something to deserve credit then you should start doing that. No credit due so far.
And I'm not against green energy, just against stupid catch all remarks that say something is better than something else or has some specific ROI without taking into account any specifics.
We are in accord on that point.
Residential wind hasn't taken off for a simple reason, it is incredibly inefficient.
Again, whether residential wind power is useful is circumstance dependent. Sometimes it makes perfect sense as a supplement even on a home installation. I know a few local hobby farms that have smallish wind turbines which were economically sensible for their location. And who said it had to be residential? Communities can install large wind turbines and share the power. If rooftop solar doesn't work and the geography doesn't work for residential wind, then get the neighbors together for a large wind turbine. Battery systems for both home and grid scale are starting to become a real thing too.
Where my house is located (near the upper Great Lakes) wind doesn't make much sense but both grid and residential turbines make a ton of sense just 80 miles from my house and in fact are used. Conversely our local power company and a fair number of houses have solar installations which work great. Just our local geography. No one power source fits every circumstance and location.
No one here said anything like that, read through the thread again.
The claim was "Except solar definitely does not in the wonderful cloudy parts of the world near the north sea." which has nothing specifically to do with residential. Furthermore my statement was something of a more general statement aimed towards the people who invariably and unhelpfully point out that the sun doesn't shine 24/7.
i think the Dyson sphere concept is cool, but I wonder if there is enough accessible mass in the solar system to build one??
No there is not. Not even close. Even if you used all the mass in the solar system, much/most of it isn't usable for such a project. The entire mass of the asteroid belt is about 4% of the mass of the moon. The entire Oort cloud might be something like 5 earth masses.
Dyson spheres are fun thought experiments but they are an utter fail unless you assume we possess a level of technology that modern humans would consider near god like.
Except solar definitely does not in the wonderful cloudy parts of the world near the north sea.
You mean those locations with cloudy skies and lots of wind? So use wind power if your specific location isn't ideal for solar. Last I checked there was no lack of wind in the North Sea.
I don't get why some people keep arguing that solar isn't good in general because it doesn't work for every circumstance everywhere. Solar works fine and it's now economic in a huge number of cases. Better yet it's going to continue to get cheaper and more efficient with time. Yes if you live somewhere where it is foggy 300+ days a year solar is probably not for you. That doesn't describe most places where people live.
Still waiting for solar to pass its commercial viability test and I suspect wind power is a similar story.
Either you are willfully ignoring facts or you don't understand them. Solar has been economically viable in a wide variety of circumstances for quite a few years now. It's not the cheapest option everywhere (nothing is) but it's easily competitive in a great many places. Even better it's cost per unit of power generated has been dropping very rapidly with no evidence of an end in sight.
So far it only succeeds here in the UK because of government subsidies.
I could say the same thing about oil and gas in the UK. The UK subsidizes fossil fuels to the tune of billions per year directly, not to mention the indirect subsidy of not requiring coal and oil to pay the full cost of their emissions. Solar is already competitive with coal and oil in many situations and it is easily competitive if you compare the full cost of each which folks like yourself arguing against solar tend not to do.
If I pay for and install my own 5kWh solar system the returns over 20 years don't cover the cost of the initial installation, let alone a replacement inverter after 10 years or any other maintenance.
The plural of anecdote is not data. Even if we take your statement at face value (and we shouldn't), it doesn't follow that there are no solar installations anywhere (UK or elsewhere) that do not recoup their costs. It is a trivial exercise to find examples of solar installations that pay for themselves within their operational lifespan.
Of course, the key "relevant" country is the home country, in this case, the US. It should be simple for the IRS to simply say that the accounting sleight of hand will not be recognized, as is often done for other tax sheltering strategies.
Easier said than done. In principle you are quite correct. The problem is that any accountant worth his salary can make it very difficult to prove that the transfer "price" isn't a good approximation of correct. Seriously, I'm a certified accountant and I'm telling you point blank that the IRS would have a very difficult time proving that a company like Apple is engaging in fraudulent transfer pricing unless they were incredibly clumsy about how they did it. The IRS simply doesn't have the resources to do an audit deep enough to uncover the truth of the matter in most cases when we are talking about large multinationals.
And transfer pricing is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hiding profits and other tax dodging schemes. Large corporations hire huge teams of accountants and lawyers whose entire job it is to find clever legal loopholes in the tax laws and exploit them. The profit for doing so is in the billions of dollars so expecting them to stop is unrealistic.
DRM are a necessary evil if you want a rental market.
The concept of "renting" an intangible product with near-as-makes-no-difference zero marginal cost to reproduce is more than a little absurd. If you need DRM to protect your product then your product is overpriced and you will induce piracy. A from Princess Leia seems to fit here rather well.
With the ability to easily copy and distribute digital media, it is hard to tell if extra copies are being made unlawfully.
Doesn't necessarily matter if they make extra copies. It matters if they DISTRIBUTE extra copies. It's not hard to determine if someone has a the legal right to distribute a given bit of copyrighted material. They have an absolute right to so-called fair use copying. DRM is a problem in large part because it attacks the wrong issue. It is an effort to inappropriately control distribution via controlling copying but copying is not the same thing as distribution. DRM is a blunt instrument that restricts all copying whether or not it is legal or desirable.
So, I know DRM is evil and we do not want that. What are the alternatives that can keep traditional shops open? I am all ears.
Implicit in your question is that we should care about keeping "traditional shops" open. I'm not convinced that is an important consideration.
I think you still have it the wrong way around. Neither hydrogen powered cars nor flying cars are new ideas.
No they aren't new ideas but they also aren't feasible ideas. Particularly flying cars.
When Elon Musk decided to get into the car business, he was already against hydrogen powered and flying cars and went the electric way.
That's because both hydrogen cars and flying cars have (so far) irreducible problems limiting their market potential. Hydrogen cars has a fueling infrastructure problem we are in no danger of solving as well as some fuel storage problems that are similarly challenging. Flying cars aren't a thing because we lack A) a power source with an adequate power/weight ratio, B) the control systems to use them safely, C) the infrastructure to make them practical. It's not that we can't make either one but that we can't make one with sufficient economic utility to make it worth the bother.
By comparison electric cars are now good enough that they are selling in meaningful numbers. EVs have some technical hurdles yet to overcome but there is reasonable grounds to believe these will be conquered in the near future and the vehicles are already good enough for many people in their current form. The same cannot be said of hydrogen power and flying cars.
Musk makes a very good point when he says that to get a 3 dimensional traffic system it is a lot more practical to dig than to try to fly, particularly in large cities where there would be the most need for a 3 dimensional traffic system. That's why we have subways. We know how to build tunnels and there is no science fiction technology required to make it happen. Like the other problems Musk has been working on at Tesla and SpaceX it's really more of a cost reduction problem than one of inventing new technology.
Increased security my ass. People don't give a shit about security. Ordinary users are fucking lazy, and are "willingly gravitating" towards anything that can do everything for them without lifting a finger.
Not true at all. They care about security to a reasonable degree. The problem is that A) security isn't their only or most pressing concern and B) most of them are not security experts nor should they be expected to be. Too many programmers write system that fail to assume that the computer will be utilized by someone who does not understand security and cannot reasonably be expected to understand it even if they wanted to.
My parents are delightful people who are smart and capable and they certainly aren't lazy. But expecting them to be well versed in the nuances of computer security is both naive and unrealistic. It has nothing to do with laziness but simply where their competencies lie and what time they have available. You would do a shit job at what they do for a living most likely. That doesn't mean you are lazy or stupid but merely that you have focused your energies elsewhere.
Furthermore there is NOTHING wrong with the expectation that the software you use be designed to be secure and to make your life simpler. If your software doesn't do that for users it will eventually be replaced by software that does and rightfully so.
Voice activated assistants and press-to-order buttons hanging on the wall are two prime examples of just how lazy people have become. Getting online to search and order a product manually is considered hard labor for the Siri generation.
That's akin to arguing that people are lazy for not wanting to drive to the store to do their shopping. Spending your time efficiently isn't sloth - it's just smart. Spending more time than absolutely required to do a task is idiotic and wasteful. Time is the most precious resource any of us have and wasting it bothering with navigating unnecessary websites out of some misplaced idea of what laziness is is foolish. Maybe you enjoy spending your time jumping through extra hurdles to order something. Personally I have better things to do with my time. I'd rather spend even that modest amount of time doing something that adds value to my life.
My only nitpick would be that NASA has been getting along without heavy lift capability since the Saturn-V was retired.
That's true but I'm not convinced it is a relevant issue. We gave up our heavy lift capability because the powers-that-be many decades ago decided the shuttle was the way to go and they couldn't get funding for both given the politics of the day. In hindsight that was a mistake but at the time the best path forward wasn't so clear. So you have to ask the question whether lacking heavy life capability was good policy or an error in planning? I would argue that we've been "getting along" without heavy lift because there wasn't any heavy lift to be had. The government was the only organization until recently in a position to fund development of such a beast and for various reasons congress decided other items (like the shuttle) should take priority. I see it more as an error in planning rather than a lack of any need.
It's kind of a chicken-vs-egg question. You cannot utilize heavy lift capabilities that don't exist and it's hard to justify building heavy lift rockets until you can prove there is demand for them. Nobody is going to design something to go into space that requires a launch vehicle that doesn't (and won't) exist.
Think how much money probably could have been saved in construction of the ISS if we had heavy launch capability? It likely could have cut the number of launches or improved the capabilities significantly.
That is why I still give at least equal weight to the "pork-barrel" theory for SLS.
Oh have no doubt that pork is a piece of the puzzle but I just think it is a smaller piece in regards to SLS than many think it is. Nothing government funded gets done without some amount of pork. The problem as I see it is that in the best case scenario SpaceX and Blue Origin come out with wildly successful launch vehicles. Then congress will see that and ask NASA why they needed to spend billions on a redundant launch vehicle which makes NASA look worse than they deserve. It's hard to sell the idea that we needed to spend billions just in case SpaceX fails.
SLS has always been a make-work program to preserve legacy jobs at Space Shuttle contractors.
Perhaps in part but it also serves a few other purposes. Probably the most important one is that it gives NASA a path to getting heavy lift capabilities in the event that the private enterprises working on the problem fail. It's a hedge of a sort, albeit an expensive one. Let's say hypothetically that SpaceX cannot get their Falcon Heavy to work for some reason. If NASA put all their eggs in that basket they could reasonably end up with no heavy launch vehicle. With SLS in the works NASA won't find themselves without options no matter what the private sector does.
Remember that as recently as a few years ago it wasn't at all clear that private companies like SpaceX would be as successful as they have been so far. It was uncharted territory and when you go into uncharted territory it's sensible to have a backup plan in place just in case things go wrong. Things are looking better by the day for private launch companies but there is still time for things to go tits up before SLS is operational.
I have a running bet with some friends on how many times the SLS will fly (if ever). My money's on two flights before it gets the axe.
I think it will depend heavily on how successful companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin turn out to be. You may very well be right but I would regard that as a best possible scenario. If SLS ends up seeing a lot of use it means that SpaceX and the rest failed.
Did anyone seriously think they would kick the thing off on time? This is a govt. project.
You say that as if private enterprise projects never miss a deadline...
True. I hadn't thought of that. But I'd note that Ariane-5 was developed in the mid-90s, and was based on the Ariane-4, which also had SRBs. I wonder if they would make the same design choices today?
Perhaps not but sometimes the best path forward is to not try to relive the past. Perfect can be the enemy of good. Something can be very useful without being optimal. The computer you are typing this on has a lot of historical cruft in it but removing that cruft is generally more expensive than simply building around it. If it is economically not viable in the face of some new technology then eventually it will get replaced (see SpaceX) but if it is "good enough" compared with the available alternatives then there is no point in reinventing the wheel. SRBs may not be perfect but they demonstrably have been economically useful.
I'm not arguing for or against SRBs but merely pointing out that if the expensive work of development has already been done then it makes sense to keep using them until something truly better comes along to replace them in the market. Whatever replaces them has to provide a substantial cost/performance savings or there is little point.
There is a difference between wasting your own money and taking other people's money by gunpoint and wasting it.
Private enterprise doesn't need something as crude as a gun to take your money from you. They convince idiots such as yourself to give it to them willingly, sometimes even when you know you are being cheated. And the meme that taxation = theft is tired, false, and stupid. If you really believe that then move to one of the locations where they do not tax you. Quite a few exist though they aren't pleasant places to live. But you don't get to take your roads, police, health care, utilities, fire department, military, etc with you. You get to fund those all yourself with "your money".
Seriously, get over the notion that you don't depend on other people and that you have no shared responsibility to society.
No. The difference is. The private sector isn't wasting MY MONEY.
Oh but it is. All the time and in vast quantities. People routinely waste money on crap products all the time from private enterprises. Private enterprise engages in fraud and waste on a scale that would make any government blush. If you need evidence of this see the behavior of the banks in the housing bubble leading up to the crash in 2008. The notion that private enterprise doesn't lie, cheat, steal, or waste your money can only be believed if you are an imbecile or are selling something yourself.
Private enterprise wastes VAST amounts of your money with little to no accountability for most of it. In many cases private enterprise is the least worst option but in many cases government is the least worst option too. Good luck building roads, maintaining first responder services, providing health care for everyone, etc without getting the government involved. Government solves the problems where markets fail and does so far more cost effectively than private enterprise does.
Yeah, the parent is young and the reasoning on this is very naive... at the time there were many many reason to store dates that way. also computing was so new that no one anticipated it being an issue... until it was....
The parent (me) is neither young nor naive. I wrote my first code before most of the people who will read this were born. Most of the code that was fixed in Y2K remediation was code written well after the point when using 2 digit years was necessary or appropriate. The Y2K problem was known about for decades before the year 2000. I remember people talking about it as early as the late 80s and many were aware of it long before that. It had nothing to do with "computing being new" and everything to do with lazy and/or incompetent programming, especially for anything written after approximately 1985. By then computers had plenty of memory and hard drive space to no longer need abbreviated dates to save space and it certainly didn't save money.
I suspect you're relatively young as there were valid reasons to only store 2 digits for the year.
I'm old enough to have programmed with punch cards and I predate the PC by a lot. Old enough for you? Very early on there were sensible reasons to only store two digits for a year but programmers continued the practice well beyond the point when it was no longer necessary. If I'm being incredibly generous there really was no excuse for the practice after the mid 1980s at the latest. But vast numbers of programs were written after that point which used two digit years. Most of the code that was fixed in Y2K remediation was not 20+ year old code and it certainly wasn't on punch cards.