Inalienable rights are those that do not require a government to enforce. You have them. A government or an individual can act in ways that take away one's inalienable rights
No, inalienable rights are those that no legitimate Power can take away. Paraphrasing the US founders, you were given certain natural rights by God, amoung those rights are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and governments are created to secure them, not to create them. Governments may not remove those rights (which is what these founders were claiming the King was doing) without losing the consent of the governed, and thus becoming illegitimate. Or put far better than I ever could:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. -- Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
There is no inalienable right to property. The thing that we called property "rights" is an artificial creation.
The right to property extends from the right to life (specifically that you own your own body, you therefore own the effects of your body, and you have the right to secure those things necessary to live, e.g., shelter, food, etc. though your industry). If you are claiming that the government actually owns your body, well, perhaps you should be living in a slightly different country from me, thanks!
There is a huge difference between coding games for multiple platforms and encoding music in a file format that multiple media players can read. Microsoft released WMA and WMV for a wide array of audio and audio/video players. Why can't Apple?
Sun released Java for a wide array of computing devices. Therefore M$ should code all their games in java, to make them cross-hardware compatiable.
Oh, I agree. $1 per ipod in exchange for indemnification against any and all claims of copyright infringement by anyone anywhere at anytime is a very small bit of insurance to pay. That's kind of like getting a music rental service, except it only costs $1 forever. Consumers will love it... Universal will just have to split that $1 with all the other copyright holders everywhere, but who died and made them the only ones with something lost through piracy.
Even better, $1 for my router - anything passing through it is indemnified against copyright or trademark infringement. In either direction, if you really want to see a "creative commons" happen fast.
I wonder, do you think this might have some effect beyond screwing music publishers? Nah. Pointless worry, I'm sure.
Irrelevant. This change still means the APSL no longer fits the Open Source Definition, because it discriminates against developers whose "field of endeavor" is running OS X on non-Apple hardware.
"Field of Endeavor": You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Always is a long time. DRM from 2078 will be unbreakable: it will erase your own memory at the end of each experience, and you'll pay for each play not having remembered paying for it the last time.
Oh, but I'm not a java head. I'm a Lisp hacker. And we've been "telling you so" since 1958...
Now all you need are macros (the ability to manipulate code as data so you can write code for the compiler, say) and you kids'll be all set. Of course, you'll need a more regular syntax and semantics for that... I know, how about something mathmatically based, like the lambda calculus?:-)
I think the wikipedia article you cite does not distinguish between simulation, emulation, and other techniques. Wine is only an emulator if it does things a particular way.
This latest blurb from Mircosoft is an attempt to stop PCs from becoming generic commodities
I don't think so...
Microsoft has thrived on the notion that you can buy your PC from anyone; what counts is that you are using the M$ OS. Thus they can charge a premium for the OS and the commodity PC makers have to duke it out with each other. The ascendency of Dell's model is a testament to that - the cheapest is the best in that kind of market.
I think M$ is hoping for something different here. Specifically, if the market for PCs is saturated, you can't increase sales by selling PCs to folks who don't have them, you have to sell to folks who already have them. There are two ways to increase sales to your existing customer base - get them to want to have more PCs for convenience, or *style* - just as the Ma Bell of yore made beaucoup bux selling princess phones for the bedroom... or introduce a factor that makes consumers want to junk an otherwise perfectly workable system for a new one. Detroit, cell phone manufactures, and clothing manufacturers all figured out the answer to that one too, and the answer to that is *fashion*.
"Nothing is so ugly as fashion - that's why it changes every six months." Since OEM copies of Windows are or will be locked to a particular machine, every new machine sold is a sale for M$. Introduce fashion on top of cheap computers, and that's a lot of turnover, each buying a new license to windows.
No, M$ loves the fact that PCs are commodity products. Their fear and loathing of FSF Gnu/Linux is exactly because Gnu makes the OS a commodity, and that's not a place they want to go. They want PC hardware to become even more like commodities, but with a very limited lifespan. They want fashionable PCs, which is a segement of the market only Apple (of the major manufacturers) has been able to tread (and not without many missteps), because fashion is a very jealous mistress. And here is where I think some of the other posters are right - M$ is only getting 1/2 of the equation. There is no consistent design to Windows. It's a hodgepodge of functionality that may be great for the masses, but those who have more discerning tastes (or those who will aquire them when the market shifts to be more fashionable) aren't going to want to caught dead running Vista on their machine. It's too mainstream, too common, too bland. M$ really hasn't thought through where this will head, but I think it's a blunder, and one Gates would not have made if he were still involved in such decisions.
In my experience, although MS operating sytems have the multitude of problems that/. screams about every 20 seconds, MS *hardware* has been excellent. For a long time MS was the best mouse manufacturer out there, and I'd quite happily use MS mice or keyboards, although I don't at the moment.
It is funny that MS's highest quality products is their hardware (Mice, Xbox, etc.), despite being a software company, and Apple's highest quality products is their software, (e.g., OS X, Garageband, iTunes, etc.) despite being a hardware company.
1) The really rich can say "the dark blue one" because the assistant already knew it would be a Rolls.
2) Now when your assistant asks you what kind of computer you want you can say "a black one" and they'll know which
to get. They already knew it would be a Mac.
Nevertheless, appeals are a matter of law and not of fact. On appeal, they have to show that the trial judge misapplied the law, not that the judge "reached the wrong conclusion" based on the facts presented.
"Hey, you mean you can play GAMES on this thing?!?" OS X might suddenly not look so attractive and his next purchase be a lower-priced PC.
Since when is a dual processor, dual/bonded video card, wide screen, portable, multi-gig PC "lower-priced"? What kinds of games do you think are going to cause PC envy, exactly, and what kind of cheap PC do you think can run them?
* What I've never understood is why the conventional wisdom is that Enron, which was a shell game from top to bottom, had a handful of criminals running it and everyone else was a victim, but everyone at Andersen, 99.9% of whom had nothing at all to do with Enron, deserved to lose their jobs.
Andersen is a corporate "person" who got the death penalty. Yes, it is unfortunate that some body parts had to transition to new corporate entities, but it was hardly a death sentence. Far worse for the innocent epithelial cells, organs, etc. connected to an individual convicted murderer, when only a few neurons are really to blame, eh? Sorry, muscles, "just following orders" hasn't cut it since Nuremberg.
How do you work out of a 100 ft office? That's one-dimensional, which gets uncomfortable quite quickly.
When speaking of yachts, one generally refers only to the length. Landlubbers just don't quite get it. Of course, if you don't have $5M or so to spend on your office...
RMS also goes on to say that liberating software in the way vendors think of as "theft" probably won't be terribly effective, because the vendors will be in a position to suppress the use of the liberated code. What would be more effective would be for even just one country somewhere in the world to enshrine the Four Freedoms in law. And I do not believe that is too improbable.
You're probably right: I think the country you are looking for is North Korea.
The internet has become a contest to see who can be a bigger troll/whore than John Dvorak.
Nobody can be a bigger troll/whore than John Dvorak! His chief weapon is stupidity...stupidity and inanity...inanity and stupidity.... His two weapons are inanity and stupidity...and ruthless promiscuity.... His *three* weapons are inanity, stupidity and ruthless promiscuity...and an almost fanatical devotion to Bill Gates.... His *four*...no... *Amongst* his weapons.... Amongst his weaponry...are such elements as inanity, stupidity.... I'll come in again.
I will finish up by saying that Apple cannot win this battle. The x86 market is far too large for people not to tinker.
So I'm curious. Since many of us (some of us?) here would like to see Apple survive and continue to innovate, rather than be relegated to M$ boxen in the future, how do you suggest Apple protect itself? Their business strategy is to sell hardware that is enhanced with software unavailable elsewhere, and as you correctly note, they probably will not be able to prevent that software from becoming available at least illegally. So what should they do?
Consider the lifetime of the patent compared to the inventors lifetime. Inventors aren't living shorter lives, and the idea that a major breakthrouh should provide enough income for some large fraction of the inventors lifetime seems to me to be something that should not be lost.
No, the real harm are application patents - these are patents that don't describe new technology, but just the application of technology. The patents in this discussion would be in that category, as would a lot of patents that help "lock up industries" to a particular holder. If it doesn't matter, in detail, HOW you do something, just THAT you do something, I would call that an "application patent" and I don't think they should be allowed.
I think you may be confusing "evil" with "wicked". Evil, I think does not care about personal ambition - the 'goal' as it were is to harm someone else, regardless of the cost. The wicked are those who participate in one or more of the seven deadly sins, and are willing to trample on others in the pursuit of their own (current/temporal) happiness.
Thus the C.S.Lewis notion that evil is characterized by lack of concern or care - you care nothing for yourself and certainly for no one else. Wickedness, on the other hand has great concern for the self's short term improvement, and ignores longer term benefits. Corporations focused on the current quarter or week, thus, exhibit wicked, but not evil, behaviors.
Rational and evil are therefore somewhat mutually exclusive. To be rational is to judiciously apply your resources and selecting actions that maximize the likelihood your goals will be acheived. Restrictions (pragmatic constraints) on the application of resources or action selection may be relaxed by the wicked, but the evil do not act as if they have any (particular) goals or restrictions, other than perhaps a general goal of causing pain (discomfort); the action selection process appears almost random, and only in extreme cases can be considered to be "rationally" applied to the maximization of pain (e.g., perhaps a Sadist could be so classified, but such an example is also then confusable with "wicked" behavior as described above).
The rich seem to be getting richer and the poor poorer (relatively) under the current tax system, so this is a criticim of flat taxes how?
As I recall, Kerry and wife paid less federal tax (under 13%) on a percentage basis than most of us (in 03). Pretty much all tax-free bond income, etc. so no AMT either. Legal, but hardly progressive.
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Oh, I agree. $1 per ipod in exchange for indemnification against any and all claims of copyright infringement by anyone anywhere at anytime is a very small bit of insurance to pay. That's kind of like getting a music rental service, except it only costs $1 forever. Consumers will love it... Universal will just have to split that $1 with all the other copyright holders everywhere, but who died and made them the only ones with something lost through piracy.
Even better, $1 for my router - anything passing through it is indemnified against copyright or trademark infringement. In either direction, if you really want to see a "creative commons" happen fast.
I wonder, do you think this might have some effect beyond screwing music publishers? Nah. Pointless worry, I'm sure.
Oh, but I'm not a java head. I'm a Lisp hacker. And we've been "telling you so" since 1958...
:-)
Now all you need are macros (the ability to manipulate code as data so you can write code for the compiler, say) and you kids'll be all set. Of course, you'll need a more regular syntax and semantics for that... I know, how about something mathmatically based, like the lambda calculus?
I think the wikipedia article you cite does not distinguish between simulation, emulation, and other techniques. Wine is only an emulator if it does things a particular way.
Microsoft has thrived on the notion that you can buy your PC from anyone; what counts is that you are using the M$ OS. Thus they can charge a premium for the OS and the commodity PC makers have to duke it out with each other. The ascendency of Dell's model is a testament to that - the cheapest is the best in that kind of market.
I think M$ is hoping for something different here. Specifically, if the market for PCs is saturated, you can't increase sales by selling PCs to folks who don't have them, you have to sell to folks who already have them. There are two ways to increase sales to your existing customer base - get them to want to have more PCs for convenience, or *style* - just as the Ma Bell of yore made beaucoup bux selling princess phones for the bedroom... or introduce a factor that makes consumers want to junk an otherwise perfectly workable system for a new one. Detroit, cell phone manufactures, and clothing manufacturers all figured out the answer to that one too, and the answer to that is *fashion*.
"Nothing is so ugly as fashion - that's why it changes every six months." Since OEM copies of Windows are or will be locked to a particular machine, every new machine sold is a sale for M$. Introduce fashion on top of cheap computers, and that's a lot of turnover, each buying a new license to windows.
No, M$ loves the fact that PCs are commodity products. Their fear and loathing of FSF Gnu/Linux is exactly because Gnu makes the OS a commodity, and that's not a place they want to go. They want PC hardware to become even more like commodities, but with a very limited lifespan. They want fashionable PCs, which is a segement of the market only Apple (of the major manufacturers) has been able to tread (and not without many missteps), because fashion is a very jealous mistress. And here is where I think some of the other posters are right - M$ is only getting 1/2 of the equation. There is no consistent design to Windows. It's a hodgepodge of functionality that may be great for the masses, but those who have more discerning tastes (or those who will aquire them when the market shifts to be more fashionable) aren't going to want to caught dead running Vista on their machine. It's too mainstream, too common, too bland. M$ really hasn't thought through where this will head, but I think it's a blunder, and one Gates would not have made if he were still involved in such decisions.
1) The really rich can say "the dark blue one" because the assistant already knew it would be a Rolls.
2) Now when your assistant asks you what kind of computer you want you can say "a black one" and they'll know which
to get. They already knew it would be a Mac.
Nevertheless, appeals are a matter of law and not of fact. On appeal, they have to show that the trial judge misapplied the law, not that the judge "reached the wrong conclusion" based on the facts presented.
No kidding. It's like a couple of guys with broken noses coming into you restauraunt trying to sell you insurance for only a few thou a week.
"(Sniff, sniff), smell a fire?"
I'm sorry, $150. is the upgrade price. You want retail Mac OS X? It starts at $500.00 and we throw in free hardware to run it on!
Consider the lifetime of the patent compared to the inventors lifetime. Inventors aren't living shorter lives, and the idea that a major breakthrouh should provide enough income for some large fraction of the inventors lifetime seems to me to be something that should not be lost.
No, the real harm are application patents - these are patents that don't describe new technology, but just the application of technology. The patents in this discussion would be in that category, as would a lot of patents that help "lock up industries" to a particular holder. If it doesn't matter, in detail, HOW you do something, just THAT you do something, I would call that an "application patent" and I don't think they should be allowed.
I think you may be confusing "evil" with "wicked". Evil, I think does not care about personal ambition - the 'goal' as it were is to harm someone else, regardless of the cost. The wicked are those who participate in one or more of the seven deadly sins, and are willing to trample on others in the pursuit of their own (current/temporal) happiness.
Thus the C.S.Lewis notion that evil is characterized by lack of concern or care - you care nothing for yourself and certainly for no one else. Wickedness, on the other hand has great concern for the self's short term improvement, and ignores longer term benefits. Corporations focused on the current quarter or week, thus, exhibit wicked, but not evil, behaviors.
Rational and evil are therefore somewhat mutually exclusive. To be rational is to judiciously apply your resources and selecting actions that maximize the likelihood your goals will be acheived. Restrictions (pragmatic constraints) on the application of resources or action selection may be relaxed by the wicked, but the evil do not act as if they have any (particular) goals or restrictions, other than perhaps a general goal of causing pain (discomfort); the action selection process appears almost random, and only in extreme cases can be considered to be "rationally" applied to the maximization of pain (e.g., perhaps a Sadist could be so classified, but such an example is also then confusable with "wicked" behavior as described above).
The rich seem to be getting richer and the poor poorer (relatively) under the current tax system, so this is a criticim of flat taxes how?
As I recall, Kerry and wife paid less federal tax (under 13%) on a percentage basis than most of us (in 03). Pretty much all tax-free bond income, etc. so no AMT either. Legal, but hardly progressive.