There is no logical basis for assigning moral rights to IP. In fact, we can say that in general, there is no objective basis to rights, they are whatever we want them to be. As a result, there is no absolute, rights only extend as far as people agree that something should be a right. You can say something is absolute all day long, but if you can't get people to agree with you then it's not absolute. This should go without saying.
When evaluating whether or not something should be a right, we need to evaluate the real world ramifications of a system, and avoid asking slanted questions out of the context of reality. When looking at the real world ramifications of IP, it becomes obvious that it can definitely be improved upon.
Intellectual property is a system of rewarding creative endeavours using a metaphor for real property. There is no real evidence that this is necessary, and in fact, most observation of society shows that this lottery system of rewarding creation does nothing to effectively promote the useful arts and sciences. Effectively, the winners in this "game" are those with enough capital to hedge their bets, in other words, large corporations.
Further, when examining how things really work, we understand that most of what is created, is in fact created by everyday programmers, scientific researchers (many of whom make less than 40K), and so on, not "innovators" like Bill Gates. Many of these innovators aren't even paid by the corporations that benefit from patenting their ideas, but instead are paid directly by the government, one example being NIH funded drug research. We can come to the conlusion that in many cases, patents are nothing more than a way of handing control over ideas and markets to large coporations, not rewarding innovation. In fact, this control over markets interferes with innovation, since it effectively discourages small business and fledgling innovators from entering the market at all. Given that most innovation comes from paying people a living salary, not vast sums of money, we have to question whether the obnoxious sums of money that Bill Gates gets paid to control their work is necessary at all. When weighing the "right" of "innovators" to charge whatever they want for a product, vs the right of everyday people to have a stake in the American dream, I think that the latter should take precedence. Therefore, a system that doesn't explicitly go out of it's way to allow smaller businesses and fledgling innovators entry into the market is unworkable. A system of rewarding innovation the doesn't explicitly allow those who are underpriveledged access to the knowledge and information necessary for them to have an equal chance runs against the principles that the US was founded on, and even if it didn't, runs against basic human decency. Again, this is my opinion, clearly you think that corporate dominated society is a good thing.
So, here are some questions: 1. How often do IP laws directly benefit engineers, scientists, and researchers? vs instead massively benefiting their employers, and then giving the real innovators living wages.
2. How much innovation does IP interfere with?
3. Is promoting invention a question of massively rewarding innovators or instead providing them with the resources necessary to create? Which is more important? Don't most innovators create new products on a subsistence salary with large amounts of (currently corporate) resources? Couldn't we promote just as much innovation by making sure that everyone had at least a minimum standard of living, and then give them the resources necessary to pursue their vision?
This is in fact how I get paid. I get paid a decent salary to program. I'm not rich, not poor, but get paid an ok amount. It's highway robbery that employers are able to jack the price of software through the roof. This is not necessary to promote innovation, and makes no sense. It does nothing more than create a bigger divide between the rich and poor, and rewards "innovators" simply for owning enough capital to pay a team of developers for a year. It rewards power for it's own sake, rather than truly rewarding innovation.
Why not have a democratic way of deciding what makes a good UI, and which features belong to an interface? Linux reminds me too much of vangaurd Communism, with leaders and their huge egos taking over entire sections of the movement, and insisting that their way is the best. Then, when another big ego joins a project, a split occurs, along with all the attendant needless complexity. Why not instead use a democratic method of determining what belongs in an interface, and which features are important? Then we can have a fair method of arbitrating disputes, and programmers can write software that reflects the wishes of users, not just make wild guesses at what people want. So, we could have three levels of Linux... Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert. The interface of an app would have a different range of choices depending on what level the end user decides to install. They could then go to a configuration for each app, so that if they wanted to have on app be set at "Expert" level, they could do that. The difference between that and now is that the interface is too often decided by developers not the users.
I agree with Mr. Raymond, Microsoft does have an advantage in the sense that because they are a dictatorship, they can efficiently decide what kind of interface they want to design. However, the disadvantage that Microsoft has is that they don't allow end users to vote on what kind of interface they want. Microsoft is making wild stabs in the dark at what people want. Linux doesn't have to imitate Microsoft, but we do need to come with some system of unifying the architecture and interface design. Linux is relying too much on markets to decide, which is a bad decision, instead, we could use democracy to arbitrate how decisions are made. This would reduce the need for big egos that the movement has right now.
Because of the nature of Open Source, we can't count on competition to weed out bad UI design. There are no market pressures when the product is free. Mr. Raymond is wrong, it's not lack of expertise that's holding the Open Source movement back, it's lack of any kind of feedback mechanism to let the programmers know what the users want. Until we create a feedback mechanism (I just suggested one off the top of my head), we will continue to have these problems.
Thank you, and I think your suggestion is a good one. Concision is one thing that I definitely need work with. It's hard to know where to draw the line. I want to be concise, yet at the same time, explaining radically different viewpoints often requires facts and context that can't be expressed in a sound bite. Also, since I am usually motivated to teach as much as I am to shred, I take a bit different approach than someone who just wants to show flaws and contradictions. Half of what I wrote was explaining to him how to approach things next time, not just what he did wrong. However, I agree that perhaps that's not always the best approach, as in this case he dropped out of the discussion. I'll try to take your advice and work on balancing that out a bit in the future.
>The fact actually is that someone like Bill Gates has exactly the amount of control that his employees and consumers give him.
Is that really what gives him control? When making an observation or correlating two pieces of data, we need to ask ourselves the question of how correlating these two pieces increases our understanding of how things work. In this case, you are saying that Bill Gate's control is a function of how much control people want to give him. By not describing things in further detail, and more specificially, by using the word "the" as in, "the fact is", you are implying that his power is primarily a function of how much power people want him to have. Is this really the most accurate depiction of reality? Or, can we perhaps come up with other more accurate explanations for why Bill Gates has the control that he does. Do people really arrive at a certain level of control because other people collectively decide that they want that person to have a certain amount of power? Is that really "the fact", as you say it is?
>At any point they are allowed to get another job or use other software.
In Communist China citizens can leave their jobs at any time. Of course, this increases the likelihood that they will starve or get shot, but they could still do it. For the most part, increasing the likelihood of bad consequences has the same effect of control over choices as guaranteeing bad consequences. Even the mafia will let people off the hook every once in a while, that doesn't mean that your freedom isn't constricted by their actions.
You also say that "at any point they can get another job". In a society with millions of people unemployed, is that an accurate statement? Or, perhaps if we're telling the truth, we'll say, "Sometimes you'll be able to get another job, and in some cases, if you leave, you'll end up bankrupt and unemployed. But, you can choose to risk bankruptcy if you want." We could also say, "They can choose to invest a lot of time in other software, probably more time and money than they would lose by paying for the copy of Windows, or they can give Bill Gates their money." Isn't the second statement a more accurate description of the range of choices that people have available?
>I know it isn't a popular opinion on Slashdot, but business is good. Businesses employee people and employed people can do more of the things that they want.
By that argument, we could say that Stalin and Hitler were good, since they employed people, and German citizens that were employed by Hitler could do more of the things that they wanted than those who weren't employed.
>People who run successful business should be taxed the same as everyone else; taxing them more discourages them from being more successful.
How do the wonderful people that run businesses, such as Ken Lay, Arthur Andersen, et al. get to where they are? If taxing the rich more than the poor effectively discourages them from being successful, then why are they rich right now, after all, don't we already have progressive taxation? Is that why rich people hate taxes, because they want encouragement? Or, is there perhaps another reason that they don't want to be taxed more? Fortunately, we don't need to talk about hypothetical situations. We can look at the real world. We can look at retirement rates of ultra wealthy businessmen who live in rich countries versus those who live in poor countries. You'll find that taxes have had no effect on people's desire to hang onto their success. There have been no documented cases of anyone deciding not to be rich due to progressive taxation. If you can find one case of someone deciding not to be sucessful due to higher taxes, then perhaps I'll give merit to your argument. In the real world, there are many cases of people that decide not to be succesful because of lower taxes. They make this decision because they weren't given the educational opportunity, to name just one factor, that others were given. So, they giv
I think the answer I cut and pasted below this paragraph applies here. The poster of the article talked about freedom. It's best not to talk about freedom out of the context of reality, otherwise the discussion can become so abstract as to be devoid of all meaning. Before we can have a rational discussion about this, we need to be sure of what we mean by freedom in this context. In this context, we're talking about the "freedom" of people to discuss and plan certain highly unethical acts.) We no longer observe the "right" of people to enter into slavery (that's one freedom that we have taken away, because we understand that it results in less freedom), and in this case, it makes sense to make sure that people who frequent such websites don't try to actually eat someone. I'm not weighing in one way or another, as I haven't put a lot of thought into this particular issue, but we need to be careful not to always come down on the side of "freedom" before evaluating what we really mean by the word.
A friend asked:
"Why should people who earn more have to pay a larger percentage of taxes than someone else? Why should people be penalized for earning more?"
My initial answer was that asking questions outside of the context of reality often does not serve to increase our understanding of how things work, or which choice we should make. I followed up by asking him why I should have to have eight hours of my day controlled in a dictatorial fashion by someone else, why shouldn't I (and millions of other Americans) have complete freedom to do what I want with my working life? He tried to give an answer, but it summed up to, "that's the way things are." My second answer was, why should one man be able to be a dictator over millions of people. An example would be, why should a man, let's call him Joe, for example, be able to bark out orders to thousands of people, with the threat of them not being able to eat if they don't do what he says, and at the same time, be able to tell hundreds of millions of people what they are allowed to consume, sounds a lot like Soviet style Communism if you ask me. In this case, we'll call him Bill Gates Outside of the context of reality, such a question would make you say, "Well, one man shouldn't have dictatorial power over people, and have the choice over what they will be able to consume." Inside the context of our present day world, most would say,"Well, he's Bill Gates, and he's done X, Y, and Z, therefore, he deserves to have that control over Microsoft, which just happens to control vast portions of the software industry and just happens to have a scale of economy larger than most countries." Outside the context of reality, most people would answer my friend's question as, "Well, a man shouldn't be punished for earning more!" However, when we look at the real world situation and ask why someone in East St. Louis who can barely feed their kids and can't even afford healthcare should ever have to pay as large of a percentage of taxes as a man who has near dictatorial control over a vast region of the worldwide economy, with a company that has a net income that rivals the GDP of many 3rd world dictatorships (and democracies for that matter), we can evaluate the question properly, and say that in a society that cares about it's people, she shouldn't have to pay as large a percentage of taxes as Bill Gates.
Often times, those who win political debates are those who can spin the questions the best, so that those questions favor their own side, and make their opponent look like a fool, or unjust, cruel, etc. If we really want to reach a sane and just policy, we need to have enough facts and data, and we need to evaluate our answer in the context of those facts. Spinning arguments on their head to favor a certain ideology, while it may be a convenient way to win a debate against a lesser gifted opponent, is no way to reach a true understanding or to make an informed decision. In the lopsided version of reality that we have in America, where one man can't eat, and another gets vast sums of money, progressive taxation starts to make sense.
For whatever reason, slashdot's code eliminates the '&' that I put in front of x and y, along with both x and y, for the 3rd and 4th cases. So, just keep in mind that there should be a '&' in front of y when I assign c = y, and in front of x when I assign d = x; int a = 0; int *b = NULL; int **c = NULL; int *d = NULL; {
int x;
int *y;
y = malloc(sizeof(double));
a = x;//this is fine, we're just passing data
b = y;/*this ok too, y's block of memory is
allocated out of the heap*/
c = y;/*WRONG!! y is allocated
locally, remember, we're talking
about the address of y, not the
adress y is pointing to in this
case, the adress of y, like the adress
x, is referrencing locally allocated
data*/
d = x;/* this is also wrong, since the adress
of the data containing x, is pointing
to memory that is pushed on the
function stack*/ }
Re:Heisenbugs...
on
Debugging
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Buffer overflows tend to be less obvious than passing a pointer to a block of data that is allocated locally outside the scope within which it is created. In fact, I've never seen a bug caused by passing back a pointer to locally allocated data outside of the scope of the block (or function) in which it was created. In other words, stack based Heisenbergs seem easy to avoid. I think that this kind of bug indicates that a programmer is completely clueless about how machine code is generated. However, buffer overflows can be much less obvious, since the size of the buffer can in fact be created at run time, and can be variable. e.g. double * d = NULL;/*...later...*/ d = malloc(i*sizeof(double)); memset(d, 0x00, i*sizeof(double)); where i could be anything. In this case if i is ten, and j is 11, then the code below could trigger an exception in some cases, but not every case: double m = d[j];
The code above is not necessarily incorrect, it all depends on the values of i and j. However, passing back a pointer to any locally declared variable outside the scope of the block within which is created is always wrong. In fact, you don't need to return it, any method of referencing blocks of memory that are allocated locally outside of their scope is incorrect. The adress of a local variables always points to an address in the local data for that particular block of code, which is (usually) kept as an offset to a frame pointer. This block of memory (known as a stack frame) is deallocated after that particular block of code is left. (Note that passing back a pointer to a block of memory that is malloced inside a function is not incorrect. This uses the heap, not the function frame, to keep track of data).
So for example:
int a = 0; int *b = NULL; int **c = NULL; int *d = NULL; {
int x;
int *y;
y = malloc(sizeof(double));
a = x;//this is fine, we're just passing data
b = y;//this ok too, y's block of memory is/*allocated out of the heap*/
c =/*WRONG!! y is allocated
locally, remember, we're talking
about the address of y, not the
adress y is pointing to in this
case, the adress of y, like the adress
x, is referrencing locally allocated
data*/
d =/* this is also wrong, since the adress
of the data containing x, is pointing
to memory that is pushed on the
function stack*/ }
If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that any time you see a '&' before a right side variable that this should get your attention. I would wince right away if I saw that. My first instinct is to figure out where that variable is created.
To read more about the basics of assmebly programming, and machine, which admittedly I'm not an expert on (I do know something about C/C++), you can go here: http://www.microsoft.com/msj/0298/hood0298. aspx
According to this logic, those that live outside the US have no rights, since the "Declaration of Independence" only applies to the US (after all, it's US independence that they're declaring, right?). If one's rights are determined only by a sheet of paper, and only applicalbe depending on the geographical region that they live in, then that would seem to be evidence of the arbitrary nature of how a value is assigned the status of a "right".
Note that just because something is arbitrarily defined and agreed upon as a right doesn't make it any less so, my point was that rights are not some immutable law of nature, they are decided upon by people, not dictated by some authority. Therefore, saying that something is not a right is not an argument that it shouldn't be one. Up until recently, citizens of Iraq had no right to vote, however, that's not a good reason to deny them that right. Your argument was basically saying, "You don't have a right to a job, therefore, you shouldn't have a right to a job."
Now, of course, the citizens of right have been granted the right to vote. Why do that have that right? Because we said so, or, if they had fought for their independence, it would have been because they had demanded it. That's it, there's no "why" behind it, it's a right because it's defined as such, period. If we suddenly decided that being able to earn a subsitence living equivalent to a 3rd world farmer is a right, then that will be a right too. That's how democracy works. It seems to me like you're used to having things dictated to you, and then regurgitatiing it as an immutable fact, which, being an American citizien, shouldn't surprise me one bit.
I hear that lowest common denomonator argument quite a bit. TV is the lowest common denomenator, not the people watching it. You can't find people less informed and more misled than the majority of newscasters. By the time someone makes it to broadcast TV, they've been trained about what's news and what isn't. They are used to being censored. That's their job, to brainwash everyone else. It's not about attracting viewers, it's about shaping the way people think.
That's why here in the US, CBS wouldn't run an ad by moveon during the Super Bowl (an American football championship that's one of the most widely watched events in the US). Their stance was that they didn't want to bring politics to the event. Of course, this is corporate censorship, not state censorship, so there's no issue there. If they would turn down advertiser money (which is their sole source of income) to avoid informing people of the issues, what makes you think they wouldn't censor their own televisions shows?
1) This is beside the point. Vetos have a very obvious effect on how bills are shaped by Congress. While in theory, congress has complete control, quite a bit of policy also comes out of the White House. In theory, Bush only presides over decisions made by Congress. In reality, Bush has produced quite a bit of policy, including promoting the war on Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. If you've been paying attention, in the real world, the president is creating policy, and Congress is rubber stamping it. Labeling Clinton and Reagan
2) Really? Is trashing the environment good long term business strategy? In the short run, you are right, environmentalism is more liberal than complete laissez faire. In the long term, it's centrist at the most, if not conservative. Think about it, keeping the planet from being trashed is helpful to both business/conservative/wealthy people as it is the poor, at least in the long term. Environmental protections are centrist (arguably conservative) idea when viewed rationally and for the long term.
It's kind of like debating strategy over the war on Iraq. Only "extreme" liberals questioned the war before it happened. Most "liberals" merely questioned the strategy, not the morality of it. This should tell you how conservative things really are. A truly liberal viewpoint would have said we shouldn't go to war at all, but, we really don't have much of that in the democratic party.
In the case of environmental regulation, a truly liberal viewpoint would conclude that since corporations can't keep themselves from trashing the environment, that they should be destroyed, and that we need to come up with other institutional structures for organizing society. A moderately right of center viewpoint says, "Ok, corporations are trashing the environment, but that's not an argument against them, because everyone knows that corporations are wonderful, top down, authoritarian regimes that we want and need. So, lets discuss whether or not we should actually dare to tell them whether or not they can polute, not whether or not their behavior is evidence that they should be abolished." The people that you call "liberals" aren't really proposing much, just that we admit that maybe dumping a bunch of shit into the atmosphere might be bad for the environment. The fact that this kind of straightforward thinking is "liberal" in your eyes gives us insight into how you view the world.
3) These are known as unfunded mandates. This is where you need to separate rhetoric from reality. Bush talks like a Centrist, but walks like an ultra-conservative. Many of his more "liberal" ideas are pork barrel spending at it's worst, and are simply packaged as an idea that the Democrats might have. So, of the money that is set aside for the "prescription drug benefit", half of that 400 billion is money that's just given to drug companies. Nothing is expected in return, no strings attached. It's just free money that they are given. The other half is used to actually purchase drugs from those companies. But there's more, the drug companies are allowed to ask for as much money as they want for their products. In other words, of the other half, that is actually going to be used for prescription drugs, Bush said that Medicare is not allowed to bargain for lower prices on those drugs, but has to pay the price that drug companies set. Insurance companies can bargain but apparently medicare can't under Bush's new program. So basically, it's a big hand off of $$$$$$$:), yeah, that's great. A big gravy train for drug companies, that's what we need, more gravy for the rich, they aren't fat enough yet. Bush makes the excuse that the drug companies need the money for research, but if you've been paying attention, I already talked about how the government pays for most drug research through University NIH grants. So, people like my girlfriend, who is an MD/Phd, get paid less than 30K a year to do research on diseases, and they write papers, and then when the research actually p
The funny thing is, when I evaluate my own actions, not my beliefs, I'm fairly conservative. But, it's more of a survival mode type of conservativism. It's not a matter of not wanting to help people, it's a matter of there not being enough of a safety net for me to be able to afford to (at least not in any meaningful way). That's the way most Americans actually operate, it's driven by a survival instinct, with no choice of being able to help people. People like my brother on the other hand, who holds very conservative values, actually on the surface seems to behave in a more liberal manner. The inconsistency doesn't make much sense, until you realize that for someone who earns $200K and above every year, and has a net worth over a million, giving 1K a year to the poor amounts to little more than good PR and a tax-break. This is of course why most of the wealthy in the US give money to charity, it's just good Public Relations, it helps keep poor people from getting too pissed off and rebelling. Most of them would never actually take an approach that would permanently fix the problem, as that would also (likely) mean that they would have to give up some of their power and status too.
That's what most people are trained not to notice though, is that reality and rhetoric often do not correlate very well. The Soviet Union was never anything remotely resembling Communism. On the other hand, we don't resemble free market Capitalism either (and we're getting further away every day). Both systems have the same problem, they have no checks and balances for preventing power from being transferred to the hands of a few. While the rhetoric of Communism is clearly against concentration of power, the system itself doesn't really do anything to keep power out of the hands of dictators.
Capitalism has the same flaw. Just because capitalism doesn't necessarily result in a dictatorship doesn't mean that it won't. But, you're not supposed to notice that. Much like the Soviets were encouraged to keep going after the ideal of Communism no matter how bad things got, we are encouraged to go after the ideal of a "free" market, even though we've been at it for centuries, no matter how bad things get here in the US. You aren't supposed to notice that the statistics are showing that poverty is increasing and wealth is concentrating at the top. (This mean, of course, that on average, if you are born poor, you will die with even less than what you started with.) You aren't supposed to notice that, you're supposed to only notice the case of "rags to riches" like Bill Gates, where he went from "rags", which is apparently a free ride at Harvard, to "riches", which is apparently a dictatorship over a vast section of the economy. His thirst for power and money is enough to make Saddam Hussein blush, but that's the American way. You also aren't supposed to notice that the only reason wealth was as evenly distributed as it was in the US is because land was given away to the poor, which has nothing to do with capitalism, and actually resembles socialism in a way. But again, I digress.
Oh, and the other reason is that liberal and conservative are no longer attached to any meaningful criteria, at least not when they are used by the Bush administration. So, whether someone is a "liberal" or a "conservative" is pretty much a matter of what they call themselves, or in this case, what Bush calls them. This has the purpose of dissociating one's perception of politics from the real world. So, for example, when the Bush administration replies that the scientists seem biased and partisan, people have no objective way of determing whether or not the scientists are in fact biased in the liberal direction, since, after all, we have no objective criteria for being liberal or conservative. It's all relative on planet Bush.
If one wants to gain back their sanity, they need to remember that liberalism and conservatism are attached to well-defined criteria, and that people often don't call themselves what they really are. There is actually a defniition for left and right conservatism and liberalism, it's not relative. Most of the actions of "liberals" in the US are in fact centrist at best, not left-leaning. For example, Clinton dismantled (read, "reformed") the welfare system, slashed social security, and balanced the budget at the expense of many social programs. These are the actions of a fairly conservative centrist, no matter what the rhetoric at the time was. Bush has went into a huge deficit spending money on the rich, worked hard to destroy social programs, and brought about an unprecedented attack on the poor while handing billions to the rich. He is a big government Republican, something we haven't seen since the last time the a Republican took charge. These are the actions of an extreme conservative on a quest for power and domination. His rhetoric may be approaching centrism (i.e. wanting to be a uniter, not a divider), but his actions are decidely less so. To sum things up, if you want to evaluate whether someone is a liberal or a conservative, look at their actions, not their words, and evaluate things in the context of well-defined values, not relative ones (i.e. stay aware of the fact that "left" has a real meaning, not just "to the left of Bush", and same goes for the meaning of the word "right").
Part of the reason that college professor's and scientists seem so liberal is that in the context of America today, anything approaching rationality or lack of bias will appear "liberal". In other words, unless you're a reactionary conservative, you're liberal in the eyes of the Bush administratino. So, if you are highly educated and able to think in a scientific and balanced manner, then chances are that you will be labeled a "liberal" by the Bush administration, and perhaps even labeled that by the "liberal" media.
Actually, if one puts about 30 seconds of thought into this, he'll realize that this is yet another example of how our government subsidizes large corporations. It's very likely that the technology described is a "dual use" technology that will wind up in diet products. This is where a lot of our defense and NIH money goes to. It goes to funding research that large corporations can use to make $$. I'm not saying that subsidy of technology is bad, it's quite likely we wouldn't have computers or the net without DARPA, but we at least need to be honest and admit that it's not capitalism that's creating all these great ideas. It's capitalists that steal the ideas and profit from them. If one is aware of the fact that most of our "defense" and NIH spending is in fact corporate subsidy, then he'll question the idea that poor people shouldn't get welfare. We'll also question whether capitalism is in fact such a great economic system.
It's safe to say that most of our software problems of today are caused by the inefficient use of developers, as well as the antisocial tendencies that capitalism brings out of the companies that produce software (i.e. company's are not motivated to provide the best solution, since that would discourage a permanent revenue stream). In other words, most of the hurdles the software, computer, tech industry face are caused by our market based economic system, not fixed by it. The same goes for compatibility problems. The majority of the issues that we struggle with in the tech sector has to do with compatibility, and compatibility problems are due to the fact that the market will create a duplicity of choices for a product that for all practical purposes does the same thing, and as a result of wastes all that effort producing many (often meaningless and arbitrary) variations of the same thing, leaves off the choice of fewer, higher quality products, as well as discouraging an meaningful decision making (companies would much rather paint their product blue to diffrentitate, than spend extra $$$ and make a better product for the same price). Markets encourage antisocial behavior, so vendors are encouraged to keep things hidden, which is another problem with compatitiblity. We can go on down the line, the majority of our problems aren't the tech, or inherent in computers, but instead are a result of the way we do it. But I digress....:)
They're putting the "right" of a select few to maintain dictatorship(s) over a section of the world economy that is greater than the GDP of many nations ahead of the right of people to acquire and use free software. (Microsoft's profits rival and exceed the GDP of many countries and apparently the US cares more about this than freedom). In other words, the US is promoting the limitation of freedom in favor of dictatorships over vast areas of the technology sector. They care more about the power of a priveledged few than freedom. The idea that our freedom is being taken away should concern anyone that understands the concept of freedom. If you don't think the idea of software patents is a threat, then you need to do more research. Anyone who argues that this is being done for average Americans should ask themselves the extremely obvious question, "What happens when all of the obvious ideas are patented? How does the little guy or small business enter the market after that?" This is a very obvious question that anyone who has put more than 30 seconds of thought into the idea of software patents should have already asked themselves.
Well, I'm in the top 10%, not doing quite as well as you, but good enough for the time being, and my family definitely was not rich.
What I'm talking about isn't so much for me. I'll do fine. However, just becasue people like you and I do fine isn't saying much. Intelligent, resourceful people can do well just about anywhere, China, Cuba, and Iraq, would all love to have guys like us (well, ok, I would be a big enough pain in the ass that I would get shot, but other than that, I could probably live a good life as long as I stayed out of politics.). But, this is beside the point. Intelligent people can have the good life just about anywhere. The measure of a country isn't how it treats it's best and brightest, but how it treats it's poor an disadvantaged. Telling everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps is similar to tell them to eat cake. All the poor people in the US suddenly can't start going to Harvard, there's not enough room. They probably can't get in at the other schools either, again, not enough room. What about that million dollar job at the big corporation, again, there's room for only one or two of those, the rest will have to clean toilets or take a ticket at the unemployment line (ok, that's an overstatement, but you get the point, SOMEONE has to do the crappy jobs). We can't all be rich, someone has to clean toilets, someone has to build the houses that the "successful" sleep in, grow their food, and build the cars that they drive. In a just society, we would be as concerned for their welfare, as those who are "successful". That is, if we hope to be better than Communist China. I'm not saying China is good, my point is that we've sunk pretty low.
You mention: "A job isn't a right. The pursuit of a job is a right!"
Here's a question, what makes something a right? Why do we have rights?
Why is the pursuit of a job a right? Couldn't one use the same justification to also make having a job a right?
You might say, "a right to a job would infringe on certain people's property rights." Yes, we could make that argument, but then I suppose that you could also say that someone's right to life also interferes with my ability to use my property as I see fit (in this a case, a gun), but we don't make any quibbles about that. We could also say that by outlawing slavery, we are interfering with people rights to sell themselves into slavery. There are in fact cases right now in the US, where people would willingly sell themselves into slavery, i.e. their kid needs surgery and they have no way to pay for it. You don't see libertarians arguing for the right to be a slave. Why not? It would seem to me, that the things we say are "rights" is rather arbitrary then, would it not? Why are certain consequences, (i.e. the rich man's inability to control his property allowed as an argument against "right to work" laws), but other consequences such "some people might starve if they can't find work" quickly addressed with handwaving when it's used to justify things like unemployment insurance, welfare, etc.?
Is it necessary for every right to protect all groups equally, or is it ok for certain rights to address class inequality in such a way as to allow one class to live with the same amount of freedom and opportunity as another?
If we are to ignore class and race divisions when assigning rights, and only allow rights to be assigned that are able to protect people equally (i.e. allow right to life, but don't allow affirmative action laws, since they are applied disprortionately) then what happens when one group is treated unfairly by another? It seems to me that you are promoting subservience, and that people "get used to it.", rather than telling people to fight for what they want.
Here's my answer. What we define as rights is often arbitrary, and rights are a starting place for what we deem as desirable in society. Rights will often conflict with each other, and in that case, we need to address problems on a case by case basis. These things can only be addressed in the real world, not in some ideological discussion. One could ask, "Why can't a business owner be allowed to run a business as they see fit?" That could be followed up with, "Why should it be legal for one man to control another man's working life any more than it is to enslave another man?" Askign these questions outside of reality makes no sense, only by evaluating them within context can we get a real grasp for what is going on. I'll cut and paste some text I wrote last week:
A friend asked:
"Why should people who earn more have to pay a larger percentage of taxes than someone else? Why should people be penalized for earning more?"
My initial answer was that asking questions outside of the context of reality often does not serve to increase our understanding of how things work, or which choice we should make. I followed up by asking him why I should have to have eight hours of my day controlled in a dictatorial fashion by someone else, why shouldn't I (and millions of other Americans) have complete freedom to do what I want with my working life? He tried to give an answer, but it summed up to, "that's the way things are." My second answer was, why should one man be able to be a dictator over millions of people. An example would be, why should a man, let's call him Joe, for example, be able to bark out orders to thousands of people, with the threat of them not being able to eat if they don't do what he says, and at the same time, be able to tell hundreds of millions of people what they are allowed to consume, sounds a lot like Soviet style Communism if you ask me. In this case, we'll call him Bill Gates Outside of the context of re
I agree, the government isn't the answer, we are the answer. And, yes, according to you, we're supposed to understand that only Kings and those that live like kings have any rights, and that everyone else is supposed to conveniently starve and die if they can't find a job. The reason I'm supposed to starve and die is because somone else told me to, and I need to subserviently accept the rules of the system as they are presented. Nevermind that they don't work in my favor, I need to show proper subordination to my masters.
I agree that government doesn't solve problems, you will never convince a blueblood aristocrat politician to help you. However, a million people standing in one spot, now that says something. There is a reason why the politicians in Europe are so much more liberal than they are in the US, and it's not because they are "weak". It's because the will of the working class is much stronger than it is over here. There is a very strong anti-aristocratic sentiment over there. The reason, is because they've had masters for centuries, they were called kings, and they know what games the powerful play to keep their power. France, one of the most liberal countries in the EU, had the most bloody revolution, and is known for inventing the guillotine. So, do you want to know why France is so liberal? It's not because the politicians care, it's due to the fact that when they see a million Frenchmen lined up in the capital, they say to themselves,"Oh shit! They aren't going to get out the guillotine again are they?" This is something that the rich and powerful understand, which is why organized (non-violent) protest works. It works because if enough people stand together on an issue, even the most powerful men in the world will back down. If you see a million men standing outside your house, even in a peaceful protest, it says something without saying a word at all. It says,"We're not going to take it anymore." The thing to remember, is that we do have the power to change the rules. If the rules of the current system result in slavery, or injustice, or are unfair, we have a right to do something about it.
We don't like the rules, and so we should change them. That's all we're saying. And, we're in the majority, not you.
Haha, I couldn't have said it better myself. That article has come in handy on several occasions.:) That co-worker that I mentioned below, was able to write a plug-in that would model the flow of water over terrain, in about 45 minutes. That included drawing the fluid on the screen in 3D as modelling it's flow over the terrain, and writing the interface code for the plug-in API (he had a template for everything) in about 45 minutes. That's a fairly complex problem, but his model worked fairly well, and was able to approximately model the flow of a fluid. I don't know many people that could do that. This guy probably couldn't find the power button in 45 minutes.
Yeah, well, I can fold up a paper airplane and get it to fly in about 30 seconds, so therefore, aerospace engineering must be easy. You'd better watch out, because I'm coming for your job. The point is, nothing with millions of lines of code is easy. It really depends on what you are doing, software is arbitrarily complex, and therefore, is not always easy. Programming in and of itself, is not NECESSARILY difficult, but writing a "Hello World" program and solving an extremely complex problem are orders of magnitude apart in terms of difficulty.
Until you've written 100,000 lines of high quality code in 6 months, please shut up. BTW, I'm not quite that good, that's my co-workers record, mine is 23,000 lines in 2 months, when writing a generalized Animation toolkit (consisting of about a dozen objects), that included physics modeling, cubic splining, and intuitive interface code. His app was a 3D model editing application (again, highly modular, not spaghetti code) that gave users (general users, not artists/animators) an easy and intutitive way of creating arbitrarily complex 3D models as well a way of easily mapping those textures to that surface, it's a bit more complex than the CAD programs that a schmuck like you would use in your everyday experience. More importantly, unlike you, I didn't have a college prof spoon feeding me the math and physics necessary to do such a task.
Do we want our lives to be traded as commodities to be moved and shuffled about at the whim of the free market? I'm just going to state a few opinions here. Markets should serve people, not the other way around. When freedom of choice (in this case, where to live), is superceded by the freedom of markets we have a problem. Markets are in theory, supposed to maximize freedom. I don't see how forcing a bunch of people to travel across the world just to eat is an example of "freedom". Instead, it's the commoditizing of humanity. I'd be curious, if we were to interview these travelling workers, what their response would be if they were given a choice between working that job over in India vs America. I'd imagine that they would choose to work closer to home. Imagine if we had a choice, any at all. Imagine if democracy (in other words, allowing those who are affected most by a decision, to make that decision) were placed above capitalism. Instead, what we have is the market being rigged to serve a priveledged few, at the expense of everyone else. There is nothing "free" about being forced to transplant oneself every few years just to eat. Freedom from means nothing without freedom to.
Do you want black and white television instead of color? How about UHF, perhaps you would like to do away with that too? At one point, these were mandated as well. Perhaps you would like to set things "right" again by going back to them.
At some point, you have to sacrifice the immediate term desires of short-term market thinking for long-term future planning. Ask people 30 years from now if they want (to go back to) NTSC. It's a balancing act, of some short term, very mild pain, for long term gain. You are saying that we should sacrifice the future of television for a small minority of people who can't see past next year. That's a problem with the market, is that it encourages short-term thinking. As a society, we need to balance this with the question of, "What would our kids want? What do we want for our future?" And, if I were you, I wouldn't be so sure that "everyone" agrees with you.
You are correct about most people being happy with television, but having to spend %50-100 on a digital tuner, which will be compatible with their current tv, is not going to keep people from watching TV. Keep in mind, $50 is less than the price of my cable bill, which is broadband with basic analog service. Let's not lose track of reality, this isn't going to keep people from using their TV, will provide much better reception, and be an advancement in our use of the broadcast spectrum. The airwaves are a scarce resource, and the government's desire to maximize usage of that resource by mandating an upgrade to digital makes perfect sense.
Currently broadcasts are happening both digitally and on analog in all major cities, and chances are the FCC will extend this deadline past 2007, since will not remove analog broadcasting until 95% of the market switches to digital. Therefore, you are preaching to the choir (the choir in this case being the FCC). The FCC is NOT going to shut off analog broadcasts until the majority of people have switched. At that point your argument will be moot, since the rest of us shouldn't have to allow our airwaves to be used up just because 5% doesn't want to upgrade. There really is very little pain (if any, chances are that you will buy a new set in the next 20 years, and it will have a digital tunner built-in, thanks to the FCC) involved for the average consumer, the benefits are clear, and your whining is really unnecessary.
Cite three examples of HDTV 1920x1080 with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound receivers that are cheaper than otherwise identical NTSC receivers.
Identical?
You make a good point, they are more expensive, in the year 2003. However, the price will come down. For the majority that uses plain old cable or satellite, this will be a non-issue. It's only for those people who use the airwaves for reception of local channels that this is a problem. Even then, we have to upgrade at some point. Cable has upgraded to digital, satellite is digital, and people don't bitch about that, but suddenly when OTA switches to digital, it's a big deal. Why is it ok for the cable company to charge you for digital cable, but not ok for the government to promote progress on the public airwaves? It would be kind of like complaining about roads that allowed transportation to move 6 times quicker because you might have to buy a new vehicle to use them. "I like my old car, I've had it for years, screw progress."
Slashdot Mirror
There is no logical basis for assigning moral rights to IP. In fact, we can say that in general, there is no objective basis to rights, they are whatever we want them to be. As a result, there is no absolute, rights only extend as far as people agree that something should be a right. You can say something is absolute all day long, but if you can't get people to agree with you then it's not absolute. This should go without saying.
When evaluating whether or not something should be a right, we need to evaluate the real world ramifications of a system, and avoid asking slanted questions out of the context of reality. When looking at the real world ramifications of IP, it becomes obvious that it can definitely be improved upon.
Intellectual property is a system of rewarding creative endeavours using a metaphor for real property. There is no real evidence that this is necessary, and in fact, most observation of society shows that this lottery system of rewarding creation does nothing to effectively promote the useful arts and sciences. Effectively, the winners in this "game" are those with enough capital to hedge their bets, in other words, large corporations.
Further, when examining how things really work, we understand that most of what is created, is in fact created by everyday programmers, scientific researchers (many of whom make less than 40K), and so on, not "innovators" like Bill Gates. Many of these innovators aren't even paid by the corporations that benefit from patenting their ideas, but instead are paid directly by the government, one example being NIH funded drug research. We can come to the conlusion that in many cases, patents are nothing more than a way of handing control over ideas and markets to large coporations, not rewarding innovation. In fact, this control over markets interferes with innovation, since it effectively discourages small business and fledgling innovators from entering the market at all. Given that most innovation comes from paying people a living salary, not vast sums of money, we have to question whether the obnoxious sums of money that Bill Gates gets paid to control their work is necessary at all. When weighing the "right" of "innovators" to charge whatever they want for a product, vs the right of everyday people to have a stake in the American dream, I think that the latter should take precedence. Therefore, a system that doesn't explicitly go out of it's way to allow smaller businesses and fledgling innovators entry into the market is unworkable. A system of rewarding innovation the doesn't explicitly allow those who are underpriveledged access to the knowledge and information necessary for them to have an equal chance runs against the principles that the US was founded on, and even if it didn't, runs against basic human decency. Again, this is my opinion, clearly you think that corporate dominated society is a good thing.
So, here are some questions:
1. How often do IP laws directly benefit engineers, scientists, and researchers? vs instead massively benefiting their employers, and then giving the real innovators living wages.
2. How much innovation does IP interfere with?
3. Is promoting invention a question of massively rewarding innovators or instead providing them with the resources necessary to create? Which is more important? Don't most innovators create new products on a subsistence salary with large amounts of (currently corporate) resources? Couldn't we promote just as much innovation by making sure that everyone had at least a minimum standard of living, and then give them the resources necessary to pursue their vision?
This is in fact how I get paid. I get paid a decent salary to program. I'm not rich, not poor, but get paid an ok amount. It's highway robbery that employers are able to jack the price of software through the roof. This is not necessary to promote innovation, and makes no sense. It does nothing more than create a bigger divide between the rich and poor, and rewards "innovators" simply for owning enough capital to pay a team of developers for a year. It rewards power for it's own sake, rather than truly rewarding innovation.
Why not have a democratic way of deciding what makes a good UI, and which features belong to an interface? Linux reminds me too much of vangaurd Communism, with leaders and their huge egos taking over entire sections of the movement, and insisting that their way is the best. Then, when another big ego joins a project, a split occurs, along with all the attendant needless complexity. Why not instead use a democratic method of determining what belongs in an interface, and which features are important? Then we can have a fair method of arbitrating disputes, and programmers can write software that reflects the wishes of users, not just make wild guesses at what people want. So, we could have three levels of Linux... Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert. The interface of an app would have a different range of choices depending on what level the end user decides to install. They could then go to a configuration for each app, so that if they wanted to have on app be set at "Expert" level, they could do that. The difference between that and now is that the interface is too often decided by developers not the users.
I agree with Mr. Raymond, Microsoft does have an advantage in the sense that because they are a dictatorship, they can efficiently decide what kind of interface they want to design. However, the disadvantage that Microsoft has is that they don't allow end users to vote on what kind of interface they want. Microsoft is making wild stabs in the dark at what people want. Linux doesn't have to imitate Microsoft, but we do need to come with some system of unifying the architecture and interface design. Linux is relying too much on markets to decide, which is a bad decision, instead, we could use democracy to arbitrate how decisions are made. This would reduce the need for big egos that the movement has right now.
Because of the nature of Open Source, we can't count on competition to weed out bad UI design. There are no market pressures when the product is free. Mr. Raymond is wrong, it's not lack of expertise that's holding the Open Source movement back, it's lack of any kind of feedback mechanism to let the programmers know what the users want. Until we create a feedback mechanism (I just suggested one off the top of my head), we will continue to have these problems.
Thank you, and I think your suggestion is a good one. Concision is one thing that I definitely need work with. It's hard to know where to draw the line. I want to be concise, yet at the same time, explaining radically different viewpoints often requires facts and context that can't be expressed in a sound bite. Also, since I am usually motivated to teach as much as I am to shred, I take a bit different approach than someone who just wants to show flaws and contradictions. Half of what I wrote was explaining to him how to approach things next time, not just what he did wrong. However, I agree that perhaps that's not always the best approach, as in this case he dropped out of the discussion. I'll try to take your advice and work on balancing that out a bit in the future.
enough said.
We can look at retirement rates of ultra wealthy businessmen who live in rich countries versus those who live in poor countries.
should be...
We can look at retirement rates of ultra wealthy businessmen who live in countries with high taxes versus those who live in countries with low taxes.
>The fact actually is that someone like Bill Gates has exactly the amount of control that his employees and consumers give him.
Is that really what gives him control? When making an observation or correlating two pieces of data, we need to ask ourselves the question of how correlating these two pieces increases our understanding of how things work. In this case, you are saying that Bill Gate's control is a function of how much control people want to give him. By not describing things in further detail, and more specificially, by using the word "the" as in, "the fact is", you are implying that his power is primarily a function of how much power people want him to have. Is this really the most accurate depiction of reality? Or, can we perhaps come up with other more accurate explanations for why Bill Gates has the control that he does. Do people really arrive at a certain level of control because other people collectively decide that they want that person to have a certain amount of power? Is that really "the fact", as you say it is?
>At any point they are allowed to get another job or use other software.
In Communist China citizens can leave their jobs at any time. Of course, this increases the likelihood that they will starve or get shot, but they could still do it. For the most part, increasing the likelihood of bad consequences has the same effect of control over choices as guaranteeing bad consequences. Even the mafia will let people off the hook every once in a while, that doesn't mean that your freedom isn't constricted by their actions.
You also say that "at any point they can get another job". In a society with millions of people unemployed, is that an accurate statement? Or, perhaps if we're telling the truth, we'll say, "Sometimes you'll be able to get another job, and in some cases, if you leave, you'll end up bankrupt and unemployed. But, you can choose to risk bankruptcy if you want." We could also say, "They can choose to invest a lot of time in other software, probably more time and money than they would lose by paying for the copy of Windows, or they can give Bill Gates their money." Isn't the second statement a more accurate description of the range of choices that people have available?
>I know it isn't a popular opinion on Slashdot, but business is good. Businesses employee people and employed people can do more of the things that they want.
By that argument, we could say that Stalin and Hitler were good, since they employed people, and German citizens that were employed by Hitler could do more of the things that they wanted than those who weren't employed.
>People who run successful business should be taxed the same as everyone else; taxing them more discourages them from being more successful.
How do the wonderful people that run businesses, such as Ken Lay, Arthur Andersen, et al. get to where they are? If taxing the rich more than the poor effectively discourages them from being successful, then why are they rich right now, after all, don't we already have progressive taxation? Is that why rich people hate taxes, because they want encouragement? Or, is there perhaps another reason that they don't want to be taxed more? Fortunately, we don't need to talk about hypothetical situations. We can look at the real world. We can look at retirement rates of ultra wealthy businessmen who live in rich countries versus those who live in poor countries. You'll find that taxes have had no effect on people's desire to hang onto their success. There have been no documented cases of anyone deciding not to be rich due to progressive taxation. If you can find one case of someone deciding not to be sucessful due to higher taxes, then perhaps I'll give merit to your argument. In the real world, there are many cases of people that decide not to be succesful because of lower taxes. They make this decision because they weren't given the educational opportunity, to name just one factor, that others were given. So, they giv
I think the answer I cut and pasted below this paragraph applies here. The poster of the article talked about freedom. It's best not to talk about freedom out of the context of reality, otherwise the discussion can become so abstract as to be devoid of all meaning. Before we can have a rational discussion about this, we need to be sure of what we mean by freedom in this context. In this context, we're talking about the "freedom" of people to discuss and plan certain highly unethical acts.) We no longer observe the "right" of people to enter into slavery (that's one freedom that we have taken away, because we understand that it results in less freedom), and in this case, it makes sense to make sure that people who frequent such websites don't try to actually eat someone. I'm not weighing in one way or another, as I haven't put a lot of thought into this particular issue, but we need to be careful not to always come down on the side of "freedom" before evaluating what we really mean by the word.
A friend asked:
"Why should people who earn more have to pay a larger percentage of taxes than someone else? Why should people be penalized for earning more?"
My initial answer was that asking questions outside of the context of reality often does not serve to increase our understanding of how things work, or which choice we should make. I followed up by asking him why I should have to have eight hours of my day controlled in a dictatorial fashion by someone else, why shouldn't I (and millions of other Americans) have complete freedom to do what I want with my working life? He tried to give an answer, but it summed up to, "that's the way things are." My second answer was, why should one man be able to be a dictator over millions of people. An example would be, why should a man, let's call him Joe, for example, be able to bark out orders to thousands of people, with the threat of them not being able to eat if they don't do what he says, and at the same time, be able to tell hundreds of millions of people what they are allowed to consume, sounds a lot like Soviet style Communism if you ask me. In this case, we'll call him Bill Gates Outside of the context of reality, such a question would make you say, "Well, one man shouldn't have dictatorial power over people, and have the choice over what they will be able to consume." Inside the context of our present day world, most would say,"Well, he's Bill Gates, and he's done X, Y, and Z, therefore, he deserves to have that control over Microsoft, which just happens to control vast portions of the software industry and just happens to have a scale of economy larger than most countries." Outside the context of reality, most people would answer my friend's question as, "Well, a man shouldn't be punished for earning more!" However, when we look at the real world situation and ask why someone in East St. Louis who can barely feed their kids and can't even afford healthcare should ever have to pay as large of a percentage of taxes as a man who has near dictatorial control over a vast region of the worldwide economy, with a company that has a net income that rivals the GDP of many 3rd world dictatorships (and democracies for that matter), we can evaluate the question properly, and say that in a society that cares about it's people, she shouldn't have to pay as large a percentage of taxes as Bill Gates.
Often times, those who win political debates are those who can spin the questions the best, so that those questions favor their own side, and make their opponent look like a fool, or unjust, cruel, etc. If we really want to reach a sane and just policy, we need to have enough facts and data, and we need to evaluate our answer in the context of those facts. Spinning arguments on their head to favor a certain ideology, while it may be a convenient way to win a debate against a lesser gifted opponent, is no way to reach a true understanding or to make an informed decision. In the lopsided version of reality that we have in America, where one man can't eat, and another gets vast sums of money, progressive taxation starts to make sense.
For whatever reason, slashdot's code eliminates the '&' that I put in front of x and y, along with both x and y, for the 3rd and 4th cases. So, just keep in mind that there should be a '&' in front of y when I assign c = y, and in front of x when I assign d = x; //this is fine, we're just passing data /*this ok too, y's block of memory is
int a = 0;
int *b = NULL;
int **c = NULL;
int *d = NULL;
{
int x;
int *y;
y = malloc(sizeof(double));
a = x;
b = y;
allocated out of the heap*/
c = y;/*WRONG!! y is allocated
locally, remember, we're talking
about the address of y, not the
adress y is pointing to in this
case, the adress of y, like the adress
x, is referrencing locally allocated
data*/
d = x;/* this is also wrong, since the adress
of the data containing x, is pointing
to memory that is pushed on the
function stack*/
}
Buffer overflows tend to be less obvious than passing a pointer to a block of data that is allocated locally outside the scope within which it is created. In fact, I've never seen a bug caused by passing back a pointer to locally allocated data outside of the scope of the block (or function) in which it was created. In other words, stack based Heisenbergs seem easy to avoid. I think that this kind of bug indicates that a programmer is completely clueless about how machine code is generated. However, buffer overflows can be much less obvious, since the size of the buffer can in fact be created at run time, and can be variable. e.g. /*...later...*/
//this is fine, we're just passing data //this ok too, y's block of memory is /*allocated out of the heap*/ /*WRONG!! y is allocated /* this is also wrong, since the adress
. aspx
double * d = NULL;
d = malloc(i*sizeof(double));
memset(d, 0x00, i*sizeof(double));
where i could be anything.
In this case if i is ten, and j is 11, then the code below could trigger an exception in some cases, but not every case:
double m = d[j];
The code above is not necessarily incorrect, it all depends on the values of i and j. However, passing back a pointer to any locally declared variable outside the scope of the block within which is created is always wrong. In fact, you don't need to return it, any method of referencing blocks of memory that are allocated locally outside of their scope is incorrect. The adress of a local variables always points to an address in the local data for that particular block of code, which is (usually) kept as an offset to a frame pointer. This block of memory (known as a stack frame) is deallocated after that particular block of code is left. (Note that passing back a pointer to a block of memory that is malloced inside a function is not incorrect. This uses the heap, not the function frame, to keep track of data).
So for example:
int a = 0;
int *b = NULL;
int **c = NULL;
int *d = NULL;
{
int x;
int *y;
y = malloc(sizeof(double));
a = x;
b = y;
c =
locally, remember, we're talking
about the address of y, not the
adress y is pointing to in this
case, the adress of y, like the adress
x, is referrencing locally allocated
data*/
d =
of the data containing x, is pointing
to memory that is pushed on the
function stack*/
}
If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that any time you see a '&' before a right side variable that this should get your attention. I would wince right away if I saw that. My first instinct is to figure out where that variable is created.
To read more about the basics of assmebly programming, and machine, which admittedly I'm not an expert on (I do know something about C/C++), you can go here:
http://www.microsoft.com/msj/0298/hood0298
According to this logic, those that live outside the US have no rights, since the "Declaration of Independence" only applies to the US (after all, it's US independence that they're declaring, right?). If one's rights are determined only by a sheet of paper, and only applicalbe depending on the geographical region that they live in, then that would seem to be evidence of the arbitrary nature of how a value is assigned the status of a "right".
Note that just because something is arbitrarily defined and agreed upon as a right doesn't make it any less so, my point was that rights are not some immutable law of nature, they are decided upon by people, not dictated by some authority. Therefore, saying that something is not a right is not an argument that it shouldn't be one. Up until recently, citizens of Iraq had no right to vote, however, that's not a good reason to deny them that right. Your argument was basically saying, "You don't have a right to a job, therefore, you shouldn't have a right to a job."
Now, of course, the citizens of right have been granted the right to vote. Why do that have that right? Because we said so, or, if they had fought for their independence, it would have been because they had demanded it. That's it, there's no "why" behind it, it's a right because it's defined as such, period. If we suddenly decided that being able to earn a subsitence living equivalent to a 3rd world farmer is a right, then that will be a right too. That's how democracy works. It seems to me like you're used to having things dictated to you, and then regurgitatiing it as an immutable fact, which, being an American citizien, shouldn't surprise me one bit.
I hear that lowest common denomonator argument quite a bit. TV is the lowest common denomenator, not the people watching it. You can't find people less informed and more misled than the majority of newscasters. By the time someone makes it to broadcast TV, they've been trained about what's news and what isn't. They are used to being censored. That's their job, to brainwash everyone else. It's not about attracting viewers, it's about shaping the way people think.
That's why here in the US, CBS wouldn't run an ad by moveon during the Super Bowl (an American football championship that's one of the most widely watched events in the US). Their stance was that they didn't want to bring politics to the event. Of course, this is corporate censorship, not state censorship, so there's no issue there. If they would turn down advertiser money (which is their sole source of income) to avoid informing people of the issues, what makes you think they wouldn't censor their own televisions shows?
1) This is beside the point. Vetos have a very obvious effect on how bills are shaped by Congress. While in theory, congress has complete control, quite a bit of policy also comes out of the White House. In theory, Bush only presides over decisions made by Congress. In reality, Bush has produced quite a bit of policy, including promoting the war on Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. If you've been paying attention, in the real world, the president is creating policy, and Congress is rubber stamping it. Labeling Clinton and Reagan
:), yeah, that's great. A big gravy train for drug companies, that's what we need, more gravy for the rich, they aren't fat enough yet. Bush makes the excuse that the drug companies need the money for research, but if you've been paying attention, I already talked about how the government pays for most drug research through University NIH grants. So, people like my girlfriend, who is an MD/Phd, get paid less than 30K a year to do research on diseases, and they write papers, and then when the research actually p
2) Really? Is trashing the environment good long term business strategy? In the short run, you are right, environmentalism is more liberal than complete laissez faire. In the long term, it's centrist at the most, if not conservative. Think about it, keeping the planet from being trashed is helpful to both business/conservative/wealthy people as it is the poor, at least in the long term. Environmental protections are centrist (arguably conservative) idea when viewed rationally and for the long term.
It's kind of like debating strategy over the war on Iraq. Only "extreme" liberals questioned the war before it happened. Most "liberals" merely questioned the strategy, not the morality of it. This should tell you how conservative things really are. A truly liberal viewpoint would have said we shouldn't go to war at all, but, we really don't have much of that in the democratic party.
In the case of environmental regulation, a truly liberal viewpoint would conclude that since corporations can't keep themselves from trashing the environment, that they should be destroyed, and that we need to come up with other institutional structures for organizing society. A moderately right of center viewpoint says, "Ok, corporations are trashing the environment, but that's not an argument against them, because everyone knows that corporations are wonderful, top down, authoritarian regimes that we want and need. So, lets discuss whether or not we should actually dare to tell them whether or not they can polute, not whether or not their behavior is evidence that they should be abolished." The people that you call "liberals" aren't really proposing much, just that we admit that maybe dumping a bunch of shit into the atmosphere might be bad for the environment. The fact that this kind of straightforward thinking is "liberal" in your eyes gives us insight into how you view the world.
3) These are known as unfunded mandates. This is where you need to separate rhetoric from reality. Bush talks like a Centrist, but walks like an ultra-conservative. Many of his more "liberal" ideas are pork barrel spending at it's worst, and are simply packaged as an idea that the Democrats might have. So, of the money that is set aside for the "prescription drug benefit", half of that 400 billion is money that's just given to drug companies. Nothing is expected in return, no strings attached. It's just free money that they are given. The other half is used to actually purchase drugs from those companies. But there's more, the drug companies are allowed to ask for as much money as they want for their products. In other words, of the other half, that is actually going to be used for prescription drugs, Bush said that Medicare is not allowed to bargain for lower prices on those drugs, but has to pay the price that drug companies set. Insurance companies can bargain but apparently medicare can't under Bush's new program. So basically, it's a big hand off of $$$$$$$
The funny thing is, when I evaluate my own actions, not my beliefs, I'm fairly conservative. But, it's more of a survival mode type of conservativism. It's not a matter of not wanting to help people, it's a matter of there not being enough of a safety net for me to be able to afford to (at least not in any meaningful way). That's the way most Americans actually operate, it's driven by a survival instinct, with no choice of being able to help people. People like my brother on the other hand, who holds very conservative values, actually on the surface seems to behave in a more liberal manner. The inconsistency doesn't make much sense, until you realize that for someone who earns $200K and above every year, and has a net worth over a million, giving 1K a year to the poor amounts to little more than good PR and a tax-break. This is of course why most of the wealthy in the US give money to charity, it's just good Public Relations, it helps keep poor people from getting too pissed off and rebelling. Most of them would never actually take an approach that would permanently fix the problem, as that would also (likely) mean that they would have to give up some of their power and status too.
That's what most people are trained not to notice though, is that reality and rhetoric often do not correlate very well. The Soviet Union was never anything remotely resembling Communism. On the other hand, we don't resemble free market Capitalism either (and we're getting further away every day). Both systems have the same problem, they have no checks and balances for preventing power from being transferred to the hands of a few. While the rhetoric of Communism is clearly against concentration of power, the system itself doesn't really do anything to keep power out of the hands of dictators.
Capitalism has the same flaw. Just because capitalism doesn't necessarily result in a dictatorship doesn't mean that it won't. But, you're not supposed to notice that. Much like the Soviets were encouraged to keep going after the ideal of Communism no matter how bad things got, we are encouraged to go after the ideal of a "free" market, even though we've been at it for centuries, no matter how bad things get here in the US. You aren't supposed to notice that the statistics are showing that poverty is increasing and wealth is concentrating at the top. (This mean, of course, that on average, if you are born poor, you will die with even less than what you started with.) You aren't supposed to notice that, you're supposed to only notice the case of "rags to riches" like Bill Gates, where he went from "rags", which is apparently a free ride at Harvard, to "riches", which is apparently a dictatorship over a vast section of the economy. His thirst for power and money is enough to make Saddam Hussein blush, but that's the American way. You also aren't supposed to notice that the only reason wealth was as evenly distributed as it was in the US is because land was given away to the poor, which has nothing to do with capitalism, and actually resembles socialism in a way. But again, I digress.
Oh, and the other reason is that liberal and conservative are no longer attached to any meaningful criteria, at least not when they are used by the Bush administration. So, whether someone is a "liberal" or a "conservative" is pretty much a matter of what they call themselves, or in this case, what Bush calls them. This has the purpose of dissociating one's perception of politics from the real world. So, for example, when the Bush administration replies that the scientists seem biased and partisan, people have no objective way of determing whether or not the scientists are in fact biased in the liberal direction, since, after all, we have no objective criteria for being liberal or conservative. It's all relative on planet Bush.
If one wants to gain back their sanity, they need to remember that liberalism and conservatism are attached to well-defined criteria, and that people often don't call themselves what they really are. There is actually a defniition for left and right conservatism and liberalism, it's not relative. Most of the actions of "liberals" in the US are in fact centrist at best, not left-leaning. For example, Clinton dismantled (read, "reformed") the welfare system, slashed social security, and balanced the budget at the expense of many social programs. These are the actions of a fairly conservative centrist, no matter what the rhetoric at the time was. Bush has went into a huge deficit spending money on the rich, worked hard to destroy social programs, and brought about an unprecedented attack on the poor while handing billions to the rich. He is a big government Republican, something we haven't seen since the last time the a Republican took charge. These are the actions of an extreme conservative on a quest for power and domination. His rhetoric may be approaching centrism (i.e. wanting to be a uniter, not a divider), but his actions are decidely less so. To sum things up, if you want to evaluate whether someone is a liberal or a conservative, look at their actions, not their words, and evaluate things in the context of well-defined values, not relative ones (i.e. stay aware of the fact that "left" has a real meaning, not just "to the left of Bush", and same goes for the meaning of the word "right").
Part of the reason that college professor's and scientists seem so liberal is that in the context of America today, anything approaching rationality or lack of bias will appear "liberal". In other words, unless you're a reactionary conservative, you're liberal in the eyes of the Bush administratino. So, if you are highly educated and able to think in a scientific and balanced manner, then chances are that you will be labeled a "liberal" by the Bush administration, and perhaps even labeled that by the "liberal" media.
Actually, if one puts about 30 seconds of thought into this, he'll realize that this is yet another example of how our government subsidizes large corporations. It's very likely that the technology described is a "dual use" technology that will wind up in diet products. This is where a lot of our defense and NIH money goes to. It goes to funding research that large corporations can use to make $$. I'm not saying that subsidy of technology is bad, it's quite likely we wouldn't have computers or the net without DARPA, but we at least need to be honest and admit that it's not capitalism that's creating all these great ideas. It's capitalists that steal the ideas and profit from them. If one is aware of the fact that most of our "defense" and NIH spending is in fact corporate subsidy, then he'll question the idea that poor people shouldn't get welfare. We'll also question whether capitalism is in fact such a great economic system.
:)
It's safe to say that most of our software problems of today are caused by the inefficient use of developers, as well as the antisocial tendencies that capitalism brings out of the companies that produce software (i.e. company's are not motivated to provide the best solution, since that would discourage a permanent revenue stream). In other words, most of the hurdles the software, computer, tech industry face are caused by our market based economic system, not fixed by it. The same goes for compatibility problems. The majority of the issues that we struggle with in the tech sector has to do with compatibility, and compatibility problems are due to the fact that the market will create a duplicity of choices for a product that for all practical purposes does the same thing, and as a result of wastes all that effort producing many (often meaningless and arbitrary) variations of the same thing, leaves off the choice of fewer, higher quality products, as well as discouraging an meaningful decision making (companies would much rather paint their product blue to diffrentitate, than spend extra $$$ and make a better product for the same price). Markets encourage antisocial behavior, so vendors are encouraged to keep things hidden, which is another problem with compatitiblity. We can go on down the line, the majority of our problems aren't the tech, or inherent in computers, but instead are a result of the way we do it. But I digress....
They're putting the "right" of a select few to maintain dictatorship(s) over a section of the world economy that is greater than the GDP of many nations ahead of the right of people to acquire and use free software. (Microsoft's profits rival and exceed the GDP of many countries and apparently the US cares more about this than freedom). In other words, the US is promoting the limitation of freedom in favor of dictatorships over vast areas of the technology sector. They care more about the power of a priveledged few than freedom. The idea that our freedom is being taken away should concern anyone that understands the concept of freedom. If you don't think the idea of software patents is a threat, then you need to do more research. Anyone who argues that this is being done for average Americans should ask themselves the extremely obvious question, "What happens when all of the obvious ideas are patented? How does the little guy or small business enter the market after that?" This is a very obvious question that anyone who has put more than 30 seconds of thought into the idea of software patents should have already asked themselves.
Well, I'm in the top 10%, not doing quite as well as you, but good enough for the time being, and my family definitely was not rich.
What I'm talking about isn't so much for me. I'll do fine. However, just becasue people like you and I do fine isn't saying much. Intelligent, resourceful people can do well just about anywhere, China, Cuba, and Iraq, would all love to have guys like us (well, ok, I would be a big enough pain in the ass that I would get shot, but other than that, I could probably live a good life as long as I stayed out of politics.). But, this is beside the point. Intelligent people can have the good life just about anywhere. The measure of a country isn't how it treats it's best and brightest, but how it treats it's poor an disadvantaged. Telling everyone to pull themselves up by their bootstraps is similar to tell them to eat cake. All the poor people in the US suddenly can't start going to Harvard, there's not enough room. They probably can't get in at the other schools either, again, not enough room. What about that million dollar job at the big corporation, again, there's room for only one or two of those, the rest will have to clean toilets or take a ticket at the unemployment line (ok, that's an overstatement, but you get the point, SOMEONE has to do the crappy jobs). We can't all be rich, someone has to clean toilets, someone has to build the houses that the "successful" sleep in, grow their food, and build the cars that they drive. In a just society, we would be as concerned for their welfare, as those who are "successful". That is, if we hope to be better than Communist China. I'm not saying China is good, my point is that we've sunk pretty low.
You mention:
"A job isn't a right. The pursuit of a job is a right!"
Here's a question, what makes something a right? Why do we have rights?
Why is the pursuit of a job a right? Couldn't one use the same justification to also make having a job a right?
You might say, "a right to a job would infringe on certain people's property rights." Yes, we could make that argument, but then I suppose that you could also say that someone's right to life also interferes with my ability to use my property as I see fit (in this a case, a gun), but we don't make any quibbles about that. We could also say that by outlawing slavery, we are interfering with people rights to sell themselves into slavery. There are in fact cases right now in the US, where people would willingly sell themselves into slavery, i.e. their kid needs surgery and they have no way to pay for it. You don't see libertarians arguing for the right to be a slave. Why not? It would seem to me, that the things we say are "rights" is rather arbitrary then, would it not? Why are certain consequences, (i.e. the rich man's inability to control his property allowed as an argument against "right to work" laws), but other consequences such "some people might starve if they can't find work" quickly addressed with handwaving when it's used to justify things like unemployment insurance, welfare, etc.?
Is it necessary for every right to protect all groups equally, or is it ok for certain rights to address class inequality in such a way as to allow one class to live with the same amount of freedom and opportunity as another?
If we are to ignore class and race divisions when assigning rights, and only allow rights to be assigned that are able to protect people equally (i.e. allow right to life, but don't allow affirmative action laws, since they are applied disprortionately) then what happens when one group is treated unfairly by another? It seems to me that you are promoting subservience, and that people "get used to it.", rather than telling people to fight for what they want.
Here's my answer. What we define as rights is often arbitrary, and rights are a starting place for what we deem as desirable in society. Rights will often conflict with each other, and in that case, we need to address problems on a case by case basis. These things can only be addressed in the real world, not in some ideological discussion. One could ask, "Why can't a business owner be allowed to run a business as they see fit?" That could be followed up with, "Why should it be legal for one man to control another man's working life any more than it is to enslave another man?" Askign these questions outside of reality makes no sense, only by evaluating them within context can we get a real grasp for what is going on. I'll cut and paste some text I wrote last week:
A friend asked:
"Why should people who earn more have to pay a larger percentage of taxes than someone else? Why should people be penalized for earning more?"
My initial answer was that asking questions outside of the context of reality often does not serve to increase our understanding of how things work, or which choice we should make. I followed up by asking him why I should have to have eight hours of my day controlled in a dictatorial fashion by someone else, why shouldn't I (and millions of other Americans) have complete freedom to do what I want with my working life? He tried to give an answer, but it summed up to, "that's the way things are." My second answer was, why should one man be able to be a dictator over millions of people. An example would be, why should a man, let's call him Joe, for example, be able to bark out orders to thousands of people, with the threat of them not being able to eat if they don't do what he says, and at the same time, be able to tell hundreds of millions of people what they are allowed to consume, sounds a lot like Soviet style Communism if you ask me. In this case, we'll call him Bill Gates Outside of the context of re
I agree, the government isn't the answer, we are the answer. And, yes, according to you, we're supposed to understand that only Kings and those that live like kings have any rights, and that everyone else is supposed to conveniently starve and die if they can't find a job. The reason I'm supposed to starve and die is because somone else told me to, and I need to subserviently accept the rules of the system as they are presented. Nevermind that they don't work in my favor, I need to show proper subordination to my masters.
I agree that government doesn't solve problems, you will never convince a blueblood aristocrat politician to help you. However, a million people standing in one spot, now that says something. There is a reason why the politicians in Europe are so much more liberal than they are in the US, and it's not because they are "weak". It's because the will of the working class is much stronger than it is over here. There is a very strong anti-aristocratic sentiment over there. The reason, is because they've had masters for centuries, they were called kings, and they know what games the powerful play to keep their power. France, one of the most liberal countries in the EU, had the most bloody revolution, and is known for inventing the guillotine. So, do you want to know why France is so liberal? It's not because the politicians care, it's due to the fact that when they see a million Frenchmen lined up in the capital, they say to themselves,"Oh shit! They aren't going to get out the guillotine again are they?" This is something that the rich and powerful understand, which is why organized (non-violent) protest works. It works because if enough people stand together on an issue, even the most powerful men in the world will back down. If you see a million men standing outside your house, even in a peaceful protest, it says something without saying a word at all. It says,"We're not going to take it anymore." The thing to remember, is that we do have the power to change the rules. If the rules of the current system result in slavery, or injustice, or are unfair, we have a right to do something about it.
We don't like the rules, and so we should change them. That's all we're saying. And, we're in the majority, not you.
Haha, I couldn't have said it better myself. That article has come in handy on several occasions. :) That co-worker that I mentioned below, was able to write a plug-in that would model the flow of water over terrain, in about 45 minutes. That included drawing the fluid on the screen in 3D as modelling it's flow over the terrain, and writing the interface code for the plug-in API (he had a template for everything) in about 45 minutes. That's a fairly complex problem, but his model worked fairly well, and was able to approximately model the flow of a fluid. I don't know many people that could do that. This guy probably couldn't find the power button in 45 minutes.
Yeah, well, I can fold up a paper airplane and get it to fly in about 30 seconds, so therefore, aerospace engineering must be easy. You'd better watch out, because I'm coming for your job. The point is, nothing with millions of lines of code is easy. It really depends on what you are doing, software is arbitrarily complex, and therefore, is not always easy. Programming in and of itself, is not NECESSARILY difficult, but writing a "Hello World" program and solving an extremely complex problem are orders of magnitude apart in terms of difficulty.
Until you've written 100,000 lines of high quality code in 6 months, please shut up. BTW, I'm not quite that good, that's my co-workers record, mine is 23,000 lines in 2 months, when writing a generalized Animation toolkit (consisting of about a dozen objects), that included physics modeling, cubic splining, and intuitive interface code. His app was a 3D model editing application (again, highly modular, not spaghetti code) that gave users (general users, not artists/animators) an easy and intutitive way of creating arbitrarily complex 3D models as well a way of easily mapping those textures to that surface, it's a bit more complex than the CAD programs that a schmuck like you would use in your everyday experience. More importantly, unlike you, I didn't have a college prof spoon feeding me the math and physics necessary to do such a task.
Do we really want this?
Do we want our lives to be traded as commodities to be moved and shuffled about at the whim of the free market? I'm just going to state a few opinions here. Markets should serve people, not the other way around. When freedom of choice (in this case, where to live), is superceded by the freedom of markets we have a problem. Markets are in theory, supposed to maximize freedom. I don't see how forcing a bunch of people to travel across the world just to eat is an example of "freedom". Instead, it's the commoditizing of humanity. I'd be curious, if we were to interview these travelling workers, what their response would be if they were given a choice between working that job over in India vs America. I'd imagine that they would choose to work closer to home. Imagine if we had a choice, any at all. Imagine if democracy (in other words, allowing those who are affected most by a decision, to make that decision) were placed above capitalism. Instead, what we have is the market being rigged to serve a priveledged few, at the expense of everyone else. There is nothing "free" about being forced to transplant oneself every few years just to eat. Freedom from means nothing without freedom to.
Do you want black and white television instead of color? How about UHF, perhaps you would like to do away with that too? At one point, these were mandated as well. Perhaps you would like to set things "right" again by going back to them.
At some point, you have to sacrifice the immediate term desires of short-term market thinking for long-term future planning. Ask people 30 years from now if they want (to go back to) NTSC. It's a balancing act, of some short term, very mild pain, for long term gain. You are saying that we should sacrifice the future of television for a small minority of people who can't see past next year. That's a problem with the market, is that it encourages short-term thinking. As a society, we need to balance this with the question of, "What would our kids want? What do we want for our future?" And, if I were you, I wouldn't be so sure that "everyone" agrees with you.
You are correct about most people being happy with television, but having to spend %50-100 on a digital tuner, which will be compatible with their current tv, is not going to keep people from watching TV. Keep in mind, $50 is less than the price of my cable bill, which is broadband with basic analog service. Let's not lose track of reality, this isn't going to keep people from using their TV, will provide much better reception, and be an advancement in our use of the broadcast spectrum. The airwaves are a scarce resource, and the government's desire to maximize usage of that resource by mandating an upgrade to digital makes perfect sense.
Currently broadcasts are happening both digitally and on analog in all major cities, and chances are the FCC will extend this deadline past 2007, since will not remove analog broadcasting until 95% of the market switches to digital. Therefore, you are preaching to the choir (the choir in this case being the FCC). The FCC is NOT going to shut off analog broadcasts until the majority of people have switched. At that point your argument will be moot, since the rest of us shouldn't have to allow our airwaves to be used up just because 5% doesn't want to upgrade. There really is very little pain (if any, chances are that you will buy a new set in the next 20 years, and it will have a digital tunner built-in, thanks to the FCC) involved for the average consumer, the benefits are clear, and your whining is really unnecessary.
Cite three examples of HDTV 1920x1080 with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound receivers that are cheaper than otherwise identical NTSC receivers.
Identical?
You make a good point, they are more expensive, in the year 2003. However, the price will come down. For the majority that uses plain old cable or satellite, this will be a non-issue. It's only for those people who use the airwaves for reception of local channels that this is a problem. Even then, we have to upgrade at some point. Cable has upgraded to digital, satellite is digital, and people don't bitch about that, but suddenly when OTA switches to digital, it's a big deal. Why is it ok for the cable company to charge you for digital cable, but not ok for the government to promote progress on the public airwaves? It would be kind of like complaining about roads that allowed transportation to move 6 times quicker because you might have to buy a new vehicle to use them. "I like my old car, I've had it for years, screw progress."