If you eliminated the
minimum wage and allowed wages to get lower, yes it would reduce the cost of certain things. But they would lose
more by making less money than they would save by having reduced costs.
Suppose all your assertions are true (many of which I disagree with, and may respond to in a second follow-up if I get around to it). Why do think that transfer payments couldn't handle it?
If production is increased (because the artificial unemployment due to minimum wage is eliminated and, therefore, there really is more work getting done), then there is more wealth available for transfer payments. Theoretically, you could even have a system where everyone was at least as well off as with minimum wage (not actually practical, since you can't individually know what each person's future would have been, but there would be enough goods and services produced to do it).
Now assume
that there are a surplus of workers out there just like Bob - are wages going to stabilize at $1500 or $500?
Bob will ultimately try to maximize his wages, beyond his "needs." Likewise, for Bob, working for less than his "needs" is better than not working (he can extend his savings longer, have more time to acquire new job skills, look for a better job, start a business, etc.).
Bob's needs are only relevant to long term employment by employers who consider turnover to be expensive, at least if such an employer thinks that Bob is likely continue to search for a job after being hired, and do so more earnestly, if his needs are not being met. If Bob's needs are high, then it will be most profitable for a long term employer either to pay enough to meet his "needs" or not hire him at all, depending on the employer's alternatives.
The question of what happens to Bob if he runs out of money exists with or without minimum wage, since, even with a minimum wage, Bob can lose his job, and is arguably a lot more likely to do so if there is a minimum wage.
By using transfer payments instead of a minimum wage, I think we could reduce unemployment and artificially high prices brought about the real inefficiencies caused by minimum wage.
Look at the situation from a bird's eye view. Without minimum wage, more people work, and more stuff is produced in total. So, you have more wealth available for transfer payments. If you design the transfer payments so that people can keep most of the money they get from finding a job or switching to a higher paying job, then most people will continue to make the same job choices as they would without it.
It's also worth noting that the non-medical
needs that you listed are themselves heavily dependent on local labor costs (importing food still requies a lot of local handling, likewise for building material for shelter).
Medical care is another matter. Nobody has "enough" medical care. Even the wealthiest person alive can get into a medical situtation where some heroic measure will be unaffordable. One thing that I believe, however, is that if we had transfer payments instead of the minimum wage, the increased production would give us more wealth to spend on things like medical care if desired.
Workers willing to work a given job is a non-decreasing function of the pay rate. For example, the number of people willing to work at recycling computers for $20 per computer is greater than or equal to the number of people willing to do the same for $10 per computer.
The number of jobs that potential employers offer is a non-increasing function of the pay rate. For example, the number of people who would consider it the very most profitable investment of their money to create a computer recycling business if they have to pay their workers $20 per computer is less than or equal to the number of people would make make similar investments if the labor cost were $10 per computer.
As an introductory textbook in economics will show you (at least mine did), these curves can be graphed as a big "X". The number of people actually working when the prevailing wage is at a certain point, is the minimum of the two curves, the lower legs of the "X".
Unless there is something like a minimum wage law, competition among workers and competition among employers causes wages to move toward where the lines cross. On this graph, this is also where the number of people employed is maximized. This does not necessarily mean that total wages are maximized at this wage rate, but it does mean that total production is, and money is basically a way to distribute what is produced. So, it seems to me that transfer payments would create a lot less unemployment than the minimum wage, as long as the transfer payments are structured so that people still make substantially more money if they take a higher paying job.
IT people typically do not work at wages near the US minimum wage, but we pay for it when we pay triple the cost of food, clothing, and housing that people pay for the same quality goods in China.
I believe that the people in our ghettos also pay for the minimum wage. I think their unemployment is largely because it is illegal to locate a business that would profit from the fact that some people are willing to work for less than the current US minimum wage in the US. A lot of "working class" Americans also miss out on the opportuntity to create little businesses, which is so much easier than in the United States when there is no minimum wage. I am talking about businesses such as virtually all forms of recycling, food delivery, food kiosks, taxi service, and even small factories.
If the US eliminated its minimium wage, I would not expect unskilled labor prices to fall to quite the level of third world countries, because our workforce is more skilled, so perhaps we'd see a drop of only a factor of two for completely unskilled labor. Also, currently employed minimum wage people might be effected less than those applying for new jobs because our current minimum wage employers at least have had the luxury of picking the best employees available.
What I would expect is that a lot of currently unemployed people would gradually become employed in newly created jobs doing things that would increase the buying power of our dollars.
So, I think that if we were to eliminate the minimum wage, it would allow US IT people to achieve a higher standard of living and compete more effectively in the global market.
The only analysis the guy did was figuring out what their proprietary source did instruction for instruction in a higher level language. Sure it took
analysis, but the most complex analysis he had there was figuring out how the various branching calls mapped to higher level flow control calls. He
didn't create anything he copied their work verbatim.
The only adverb defintion for verbatim given in Webster's Diectionary says, in its entirety, "in the exact words : word for word." Your first two sentences argue that verbatim copying did not occur.
[...] He cannot use this code in his own software, it flat out doesn't belong to him. [...]
If there is no law making something illegal, it's generally legal (although some broadly written laws can theoretically make a lot of things illegal). You haven't quoted a law that defines a penalty on which he could be prosecuted, nor have you identified a law that creates a private right of action on which he could be sued. Indeed, you haven't quoted or even identified a single law, court decision or any other reference in this entire discussion. I don't know what you mean by "belong" in this theory, given that copyrights in the United States are not derived from a theory of property, but rather from a power of congress in article 1 section 8 of the
US Constitution, "The Congress shall have power [...] To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries; [...]."
"Sweat of the brow" copyright theory has been explicity rejected by the Supreme Court (Feist v. Rural). One can imagine all sorts of legal systems that might be possible, and that might be useful for writing science fiction, but that is not a substitute for information about what our laws happen to be.
However, I am not a lawyer, so one should still not rely on anything I've said as legal advice.
I am not a lawyer, so do not use what I say as legal advic.e My understanding is that verbatim copying of a program will usually involve copying expression of other creative aspects of the software (beyond those covered by fair use, merger, scenes a faire, etc.), which would be copyright infringement.
However, you ask a really good question that has been asked since the beginning of copyrighting software and the CONTU panel. Here is one
reference
to it:
"By 1974, Congress saw a need for investigation into the effects of technology on copyright issues. The National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyright Works (CONTU) was created and given the task to study problems that were arising. CONTU presented their findings and recommendations in 1978. Their suggestion was for the enactment of an amendment that would clarify the scope of copyright protection on computer software. This recommendation resulted in the Computer Software Copyright Act of 1980. This amendment added the definition of a computer program and a new
section 117 concerning an owner's exclusive rights of computer programs."
All this guy did was duplicate line for line the code, that is copying.
The author of the article did much more analysis than that, but even that were all he did, I think that would still be legal given the purposes for which he did it. Not all copying is copyright infringement.
"[...] the fair
use of a copyrighted work, including such as by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that
section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting,
teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use),
scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."
Title 17, section 107.
I put the second "such as" in bold to emphasize that the list is just some examples. It is not intended to be complete. This point is covered The Nature of Copyright: A Law of User's Rights by L. Ray Patterson and Stanley W. Lindberg.
See also the doctrines of Scenes A Faire and, more importantly, Merger, which establish that when there is a limited number of ways to do something (I think poking bits in hardware registers qualifies), copyright shall not restrict expression of those ways.
From a web search, "[...] the 'merger doctrine' of the United States indicates that the expression is not copyrightable if the idea embodied in the expression can only be effectively expressed in one or limited number of ways. One thing worth noticing is that this doctrine does not apply to fictional works. [...]"
I am not a lawyer. Do not use this as legal advice.
Who taught anyone that dissassembling someone's proprietary code and doing a line for line port then publishing the result was in any way legitimate?
"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work".
United States Code, Title 17, section 102(b).
Has anyone else heard that story? I heard it 10 years ago, and it still hasn't happened.
For several years, people talked about how that year would be "the year of LAN", when ethernet would become standard equipment in offices. The "year of the LAN" eventually did come. I remember
waiting years for CD-ROM drives to drop below $300, and reading columns about how CD-ROM's had failed to catch on. We're already at least three years into the wireless "revolution." Even incremental technologies like DVD's, new DRAM formats, the PCI bus, universal serial bus, and maybe the web (incremental enhancement of the internet), which have had faster adoption cycles, have still taken years to become so common that it is unusual not to have these things.
I remember listening to a talk at Software Entrepreneurs Forum about five years ago, in which Bob Glass (Chief Scientist, Sun Microsystems) talked about how they had studied the history of numerous technical "revolutions" and determined that they had taken an average of seven years each from the start of development to widespread adoption.
Today, many people do use notebook computers as replacements for desktop. This year, the dollar volume of notebook computer sales in the United States are expeced to exceed that of Desktops. (Granted, that means that the unit volume of desktops probably still exceeds that of notebooks for now, but it shows that notebooks are catching up.) There is a new product category that people talk about, "Desknote", for cheaper notebook form factor computers with no battery capability. Fry's Electronics sold at least of these models the last time I checked.
I think that the ergonomic advantages of a detached keyboard and a really big flat panel make it unlikely that 100% of desktop computers will ever be replaced by notebooks, but I think that it's fair to say that in many cases notebooks are replacing desktops, for example as the primary computer of people whose jobs involve a lot of travel or meetings, such as many salespeople.
According to
this page, Murphy's law is named after Air Force Captain Edward A. Murphy, Jr. for some 1949 medicial research involving strapping a person into a rocket powered sled. According to
this page, Murphy worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, but the incident for which his "law" is named occurred, at Edwards Air Force Base, in California, which I believe is about 200 miles from Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The projects are vaguely similar: California, the military, testing, explosive materials. It's an off chance, but somehow this makes me wonder if the Michael Murphy managing this project might be related to the Murphy from Murphy's law.
I was about to moderate your posting up because I think that careless or incompetent authorship indicates a higher likelihood of technical or factual carelessness or incompetence. However, when I checked the article for uses of "its" and "it's", I only found one incorrect use. I don't think one typographical error warrants calling the author an idiot.
Here is a list of all four uses of "it's" in the article. Only one of them should have been "its",
the possessive of "it." The other three cases correctly use "it's" as a contraction for "it is" or "it has", both of which are given in the definition of "it's" at webster.com.
1. "I put my ear next to the drive - there's no sound - it's not even spinning up." Correct it is.
2. "[...] lovely new drive in it's clamshell [...]" This is the mistake. This should use the possessive of "it", "its."
3. "[...] It's the right firmware!" Correct it is.
4. "Yep, it's got the same firmware." This is also correct use, a contraction for "it has."
Granted, some things about the article feel a bit idiotic. The article is nowhere near enough of a technical accomplishment to warrant putting it on the front page, but that is a slashdot editor's idiocy, not the author's or even the slashdot submitter's. Also, when I learned composition, I was taught to avoid contractions in essays for reasons I don't actually remember, but I expect that contractions at least make a document harder to understand for people whose first language is not English, but I don't think this infraction rises to the level of making the author an idiot either.
But how did those things pose a threat to the general public?
Although some of the benefits that I listed actually reduced threats (better Hurricane warnings and better communications save lives, for example), your question is irrelevant. The increased risks of launching rockets or having automobiles (the comparison you use) may be justified by benefits regardless of whether those benefits are in the form of ameliorating existing threats to life and limb.
The argument that there is
acceptable loss because other industries have acceptable loss is not adequate - those other industries provide a benefit (percieved or real) to
the geneneral population, whereas it's hard to see what long term benefit (if any at all) the general population will get out of this.
I never said "there is acceptable loss because other industries have acceptable loss." I listed numerous benefits of space transportation and then said, "Cheaper access to space could improve all of these services and probably make feasible many new ones."
You can argue there is some long term benefit to this program, but the benefit is mostly to the people involved, and companies who might someday benefit from that technology, and when pigs fly those companies will pass on the savings to their customers.
Competition leads to a lot of these benefits being passed on to customers. Also, even monopolies often have to pass on a lot of savings to their customers, depending on the shape of the demand curve and a monopolieis inability to charge different prices based on each customer's willingness to pay.
The public has benefitted from better hurricane warnings, more accurate weather prediction, video of news happening around the world in real time, earlier affordable phone and internet service to obscure locations (these get replaced by cables, but satelite links often are far more economical for the first decade and build the volume that makes it profitable to lay the cable). Even things like better prospecting for oil and other natural resources provides environmental benefits from not having to do as much drilling or mining. One could go on for pages about these benefits, just look at the recent Slashdot article on the Global Positioning System for one minor example.
Cheaper access to space could improve all of these services and probably make feasible many new ones.
Just having faster deployments of GPS upgrades would go a long way toward facilitating highway autopilot for cars or affordable internet access from airplanes.
It seems to me that, historically, space has benefitted more than just "the people involved, and companies who might someday benefit from that technology." You have presented no evidence about why that trend is likely to be different in the future.
Besides, even if you show that more than 50% of the surplus value would be retained by sellers ("the benefit is mostly to the people involved [...]"), is not relevant to arguing acceptable risks. Instead, the relative information is how much benefit the public might get in absolute terms, regardless of what proportion of the total surplus value that constitutes.
A stray rocket landing on an elementary school wouldn't be "worth it" under any circumstances.
To me, whether such a scenario is "worth it" definitely depends on the circumstances, and I will vote accordingly. I suspect lots of model rockets have landed on schools, although the circumstances were probably that school was usually not when they were in session at the time, just because school athletic fields often make good launching areas for students, perhaps some from school activities. Even in the case of a high powered rocket landing on a school that is in session, I could be convinced that that was "worth it" to the same extent that a truck plowing into a school in session would be "worth it", depending on statistical likelihood and benefits of the technology.
If coyprights were accelerated to the 14 years duration of the Copyright Act of 1790 (USA) and the Statute of Anne (England), then the original copyrights on Battlestar Galactica would now be expired and we might have more competition in Galactica sequels (which would have their own copyrights begining when they would be made).
I am not a lawyer, so do not rely on this as legal advice.
I believe that 3DLabs is committing contributory
copyright infringement (in the United States) by distributing
lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/char/drm/wildc at.o without providing freely redistributable source code to this file, because the only substantial use for some of the contents of this file is to produce a kernel in memory that is not permitted by the copyright permissions under which some parts of the Linux kernel included in that image are are distributed--i.e., the GNU General Public License.
I am aware of the additional permission that Linus Torvalds has given for linking proprietary modules, but he is only able to give such permission with respect to code for which he owns the copyright. I, for one, never granted such additional permissions.
To my knowledge, the proprietary XFree86 drivers are legal. I believe that 3DLabs only needs to release source code (under GPL-compatible terms) for their wildcat.o kernel module.
They sold census-tabulating machines, that's true. It's not as if the Germans said "Hi, we'd like some machines to help us exterminate Jews please". Every nation takes censuses periodically, so there was nothing to raise a red flag.
Dehomag and other IBM subsidiaries custom-designed the applications. [...] Moreover, the fragile machines were serviced on site about once per month, even when that site was in or near a concentration camp. [....]
pages 9-10
IBM Germany invented the racial census--listing not just religious affiliation, but bloodline going back generations.
page 10.
Just meters from the Belsen crematorium, off to the left, near the kitchens and cisterns, down a muddy path, stood the block leader's house. Inmates sometimes called this place "the lion's den." With "the lion's den" was a room for the Arbeitsdienstfuhrer, the Labor Service Leader. That is where the Hollerith punch cards were processed. [....]
I think a case can be made for damages based on what would have happened in the meantime if the source code had been properly made available.
Also, from a copyright standpoint, if Linksys was in violation of the GPL, then they were infringing many parties' copyrights by distributing the GPL'ed software. Those who registered the copyrights could sue for at least statutory damages, between $750 and $25k per copy, as I understand it (and, again, I'm not a lawyer, so don't rely on this as legal advice).
More importantly, I believe a civil court can do more than just
award money. I would expect the court would order Linksys to provide the complete source code without requiring people to identify specific modules (or Linksys would have to pay contempt of court fines and so on). This might result in publication of some new free software, such as 802.11g drivers (even if they turned out to be a user level program linked into BusyBox). These benefits are not "pointless" to the users who are already asking for such software.
As a practical matter, I think Linksys was simply trying to move quickly in assembling their first pass at GPL compliance. I suspect that they'll soon offer complete source without making people jump through hoops. I haven't heard of Linksys being obnoxious to the developer community before. If anything, I think they've been rather pro-nerd, providing detachable antennas, using the documented Intersil 802.11b chips. I think they realize that it's in their enlightened self-interest if Linux users and other developers can make more use of their product, because those users are more likely to buy the products or even specify them in larger purchases.
You may be right, but it could be that they'd be perfectly happy with a request like "please send me all GPL software that's used in my Linksys Wireless 4-port Cable/DSL Router."
Sorry if I was unclear. I too would be perfectly happy with that.
Likewise, I also think it would also be fine if they required that I tell them which 4-port Cable/DSL Router model I was referring to.
"You can have any GPL code you request, but you must name the module you want."
The point of my posting was that I think that "but you must name the module you want" is unreasonable if they won't tell you what all of those modules are, and that I think a court would agree under something like the Four Corners Rule, even if it "complies with the letter of the license." In other words, I think it's legally implicit that people must be given enough information in the offer to take advantage of it.
If Linksys were to list the modules that I could just copy into my request, then I think such a restriction problably would not unduly inhibit one from taking advantage of their offer.
Note that I am not a lawyer, so please do not rely on this or my original message as legal advice.
2. You have to request the code for the specific modules you want. It is not valid to issue a request for any "code you may be using."
Section 3 of version 2 of the GNU General Public License provides three options for those wishing to distribute GPL'ed software: (a) "Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code [...]" (as I understand it, Linksys did not do this), (b) "Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party , for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code [...]", or, (c) an option available "allowed only for noncommercial distribution" (not the case of Linksys). So, I infer that Linksys is now trying to get close to following option (b).
The problem that I see with Linksys's claim that "It is not valid to issue a request for any 'code you may be using.'" is that without written offers that specifically identify exactly what GPL'ed software Linksys is using, and without source code to begin with, we cannot be sure that we know all of the source code that Linksys is using. For example, we don't know everything that was linked into their busybox image, and we might not even know every kernel device driver they use.
It seems that Linksys sees two different specificity requirements in the GPL. Firstly, they seem to think that a blanket offer to provide code without identifying the source code that they are referring to satisifies the written offer requirements of section 3b. Secondly, they seem to think that they are not obliged to fulfill the acceptance of that offer when it is made with the same level of specificity. Linksys seems to think that they are fulfilling the GPL's requirements if they provide an offer to do x, but refuse to actually do it if someone simply says, "okay, I accept your offer." In other words, Linksys is not providing enough information in their offer for people to fully avail themselves of it. This is similar to offering to provide source code, but providing no contact information by which people can accept the offer. I expect that under some sort of "reasonable man" standard, a court would decide that these shenanigans are not in the intended meaning of the GPL.
If I were in Linksys's shoes, I'd just dump of all of the GPL'ed source code involved into a CD image, send out CD's as needed, and also put it on an FTP site, which would probably reduce the requests for physical media to about a dozen (and, besides, the media costs less than postage and it's useful to have a mailing list of likely Linux wireless access point developers).
Personally, I am mostly interested in the 802.11g drivers, although I suspect that some useful software may have been linked into busybox, which might be helpful to have too. I am glad that Linksys is trying to conform to the requirements of the GNU General Public License. Hopefully we can help them actually achieve that.
By the way, I just sent info@linksys.com a request for the source code to the kernel and any software linked against BusyBox. I sure wish I knew what other GPL'ed software is in the WRT54G.
I agree. Although the claims attributed to FEAD still sound much too good to be true on average, data compression has improved in the past decade or so with techniques like Prediction by Partial Match with
unbuonded length, made more practical by
Esko Ukkonen's algorithm
(published in the early 90's) for constructing
suffix trees in linear time and linear space,
making it much easier to find repeating substrings, and the Burrows-Wheeler transformation (discovered in the 80's, published in the early 90's).
I'm not an algorithms expert, so I'll not try to explain the jargon in the preceding paragraph. Instead, I'll just cop out and say that now you know what terms feed a search engine. I will, however, provide this link to
bwtzip
an experimental compressor covered by the GNU General Public License that uses the Burrows-Wheeler transformation, and this
link page, mostly about suffix trees.
I wish I could find it, but I recently read a paper that showed a pretty impressive comparison between some compressor that used a Prediction by Partial Match variant and arithmetic coding (probably not truely free, due to software patents on arithmetic coding) versus gzip and some other compressors.
some big multinationals have had/16's pulled out from under them
I have done a cursory web search and haven't
been able to find a definition of a "multinational",
which I assume from this context is a multinational business, as opposed to, say, "big multinational" meaning a fat person with citizenship in more than one country.
Are all businesses with web sites that do not exclude orders outside of their home countries "multinationals?" How about a business that has a physical office in another country? How about a business that wholly owns a subsidiary incorporated in another country? Does a business have to be corporation in order to be a "multinational?" I would be interested in any reasonably authorative references.
Sorry, I should have proofread better. In the last sentence, "might be better of" should read "might be better off", and "something that might create in the future" should read "something that might create jobs in the future."
eliminating UI would make society less stable in general though. It's better to have people get a bit of money for a few months to cover a temporary gap in employment than to have them lose their house. The goal is to have few people on the welfare rolls.
"Society less stable in general" is too vague to be meaningful, so I'll just respond about yrour claim that mortgage foreclosures would increase.
There are already private credit insurance services,
even though the market for such services is limited by the government forcing people to also buy the government's competing service. When people buy houses they plan a cushion for these things, and you can expect that banks would adjust their qualification criteria anyhow because foreclosure is generally quite unprofitable for them, since foreclosure involves doing a lot of work only to collect the money that is owed, and often less is collected. (By the way, for this reason, banks are also generally slow to kick someone out of his or her house when the bank is entitled to do so.)
In comparison, with unemployment insurance, we have the overhead of the government having to verify people's UI claims, seasonal companies optimizing their layoffs so their workers can collect full UI each year, a proably less competitive competitive labor force implementing the service (typically government workers are AFSCME members), and a lot of people paying for this service when they could better spend the money in more effective ways. For example, a person who has been employed for a long time and has saved enough for a job change, might be better of spending some of that money on classes or starting a side business (something that might create in the future).
Slashdot Mirror
Suppose all your assertions are true (many of which I disagree with, and may respond to in a second follow-up if I get around to it). Why do think that transfer payments couldn't handle it?
If production is increased (because the artificial unemployment due to minimum wage is eliminated and, therefore, there really is more work getting done), then there is more wealth available for transfer payments. Theoretically, you could even have a system where everyone was at least as well off as with minimum wage (not actually practical, since you can't individually know what each person's future would have been, but there would be enough goods and services produced to do it).
Bob will ultimately try to maximize his wages, beyond his "needs." Likewise, for Bob, working for less than his "needs" is better than not working (he can extend his savings longer, have more time to acquire new job skills, look for a better job, start a business, etc.).
Bob's needs are only relevant to long term employment by employers who consider turnover to be expensive, at least if such an employer thinks that Bob is likely continue to search for a job after being hired, and do so more earnestly, if his needs are not being met. If Bob's needs are high, then it will be most profitable for a long term employer either to pay enough to meet his "needs" or not hire him at all, depending on the employer's alternatives.
The question of what happens to Bob if he runs out of money exists with or without minimum wage, since, even with a minimum wage, Bob can lose his job, and is arguably a lot more likely to do so if there is a minimum wage.
By using transfer payments instead of a minimum wage, I think we could reduce unemployment and artificially high prices brought about the real inefficiencies caused by minimum wage. Look at the situation from a bird's eye view. Without minimum wage, more people work, and more stuff is produced in total. So, you have more wealth available for transfer payments. If you design the transfer payments so that people can keep most of the money they get from finding a job or switching to a higher paying job, then most people will continue to make the same job choices as they would without it.
It's also worth noting that the non-medical needs that you listed are themselves heavily dependent on local labor costs (importing food still requies a lot of local handling, likewise for building material for shelter).
Medical care is another matter. Nobody has "enough" medical care. Even the wealthiest person alive can get into a medical situtation where some heroic measure will be unaffordable. One thing that I believe, however, is that if we had transfer payments instead of the minimum wage, the increased production would give us more wealth to spend on things like medical care if desired.
Workers willing to work a given job is a non-decreasing function of the pay rate. For example, the number of people willing to work at recycling computers for $20 per computer is greater than or equal to the number of people willing to do the same for $10 per computer.
The number of jobs that potential employers offer is a non-increasing function of the pay rate. For example, the number of people who would consider it the very most profitable investment of their money to create a computer recycling business if they have to pay their workers $20 per computer is less than or equal to the number of people would make make similar investments if the labor cost were $10 per computer.
As an introductory textbook in economics will show you (at least mine did), these curves can be graphed as a big "X". The number of people actually working when the prevailing wage is at a certain point, is the minimum of the two curves, the lower legs of the "X".
Unless there is something like a minimum wage law, competition among workers and competition among employers causes wages to move toward where the lines cross. On this graph, this is also where the number of people employed is maximized. This does not necessarily mean that total wages are maximized at this wage rate, but it does mean that total production is, and money is basically a way to distribute what is produced. So, it seems to me that transfer payments would create a lot less unemployment than the minimum wage, as long as the transfer payments are structured so that people still make substantially more money if they take a higher paying job.
IT people typically do not work at wages near the US minimum wage, but we pay for it when we pay triple the cost of food, clothing, and housing that people pay for the same quality goods in China.
I believe that the people in our ghettos also pay for the minimum wage. I think their unemployment is largely because it is illegal to locate a business that would profit from the fact that some people are willing to work for less than the current US minimum wage in the US. A lot of "working class" Americans also miss out on the opportuntity to create little businesses, which is so much easier than in the United States when there is no minimum wage. I am talking about businesses such as virtually all forms of recycling, food delivery, food kiosks, taxi service, and even small factories.
If the US eliminated its minimium wage, I would not expect unskilled labor prices to fall to quite the level of third world countries, because our workforce is more skilled, so perhaps we'd see a drop of only a factor of two for completely unskilled labor. Also, currently employed minimum wage people might be effected less than those applying for new jobs because our current minimum wage employers at least have had the luxury of picking the best employees available.
What I would expect is that a lot of currently unemployed people would gradually become employed in newly created jobs doing things that would increase the buying power of our dollars. So, I think that if we were to eliminate the minimum wage, it would allow US IT people to achieve a higher standard of living and compete more effectively in the global market.
The only adverb defintion for verbatim given in Webster's Diectionary says, in its entirety, "in the exact words : word for word." Your first two sentences argue that verbatim copying did not occur.
[...] He cannot use this code in his own software, it flat out doesn't belong to him. [...]
If there is no law making something illegal, it's generally legal (although some broadly written laws can theoretically make a lot of things illegal). You haven't quoted a law that defines a penalty on which he could be prosecuted, nor have you identified a law that creates a private right of action on which he could be sued. Indeed, you haven't quoted or even identified a single law, court decision or any other reference in this entire discussion. I don't know what you mean by "belong" in this theory, given that copyrights in the United States are not derived from a theory of property, but rather from a power of congress in article 1 section 8 of the US Constitution, "The Congress shall have power [...] To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; [...]." "Sweat of the brow" copyright theory has been explicity rejected by the Supreme Court (Feist v. Rural). One can imagine all sorts of legal systems that might be possible, and that might be useful for writing science fiction, but that is not a substitute for information about what our laws happen to be.
However, I am not a lawyer, so one should still not rely on anything I've said as legal advice.
However, you ask a really good question that has been asked since the beginning of copyrighting software and the CONTU panel. Here is one reference to it:
The author of the article did much more analysis than that, but even that were all he did, I think that would still be legal given the purposes for which he did it. Not all copying is copyright infringement.
"[...] the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such as by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." Title 17, section 107.
I put the second "such as" in bold to emphasize that the list is just some examples. It is not intended to be complete. This point is covered The Nature of Copyright: A Law of User's Rights by L. Ray Patterson and Stanley W. Lindberg.
See also the doctrines of Scenes A Faire and, more importantly, Merger, which establish that when there is a limited number of ways to do something (I think poking bits in hardware registers qualifies), copyright shall not restrict expression of those ways. From a web search, "[...] the 'merger doctrine' of the United States indicates that the expression is not copyrightable if the idea embodied in the expression can only be effectively expressed in one or limited number of ways. One thing worth noticing is that this doctrine does not apply to fictional works. [...]"
I am not a lawyer. Do not use this as legal advice.
"In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work". United States Code, Title 17, section 102(b).
Events to support almost any theory will happen if you wait long enough.
For several years, people talked about how that year would be "the year of LAN", when ethernet would become standard equipment in offices. The "year of the LAN" eventually did come. I remember waiting years for CD-ROM drives to drop below $300, and reading columns about how CD-ROM's had failed to catch on. We're already at least three years into the wireless "revolution." Even incremental technologies like DVD's, new DRAM formats, the PCI bus, universal serial bus, and maybe the web (incremental enhancement of the internet), which have had faster adoption cycles, have still taken years to become so common that it is unusual not to have these things.
I remember listening to a talk at Software Entrepreneurs Forum about five years ago, in which Bob Glass (Chief Scientist, Sun Microsystems) talked about how they had studied the history of numerous technical "revolutions" and determined that they had taken an average of seven years each from the start of development to widespread adoption.
Today, many people do use notebook computers as replacements for desktop. This year, the dollar volume of notebook computer sales in the United States are expeced to exceed that of Desktops. (Granted, that means that the unit volume of desktops probably still exceeds that of notebooks for now, but it shows that notebooks are catching up.) There is a new product category that people talk about, "Desknote", for cheaper notebook form factor computers with no battery capability. Fry's Electronics sold at least of these models the last time I checked.
I think that the ergonomic advantages of a detached keyboard and a really big flat panel make it unlikely that 100% of desktop computers will ever be replaced by notebooks, but I think that it's fair to say that in many cases notebooks are replacing desktops, for example as the primary computer of people whose jobs involve a lot of travel or meetings, such as many salespeople.
According to this page, Murphy's law is named after Air Force Captain Edward A. Murphy, Jr. for some 1949 medicial research involving strapping a person into a rocket powered sled. According to this page, Murphy worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, but the incident for which his "law" is named occurred, at Edwards Air Force Base, in California, which I believe is about 200 miles from Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The projects are vaguely similar: California, the military, testing, explosive materials. It's an off chance, but somehow this makes me wonder if the Michael Murphy managing this project might be related to the Murphy from Murphy's law.
Here is a list of all four uses of "it's" in the article. Only one of them should have been "its", the possessive of "it." The other three cases correctly use "it's" as a contraction for "it is" or "it has", both of which are given in the definition of "it's" at webster.com.
1. "I put my ear next to the drive - there's no sound - it's not even spinning up." Correct it is.
2. "[...] lovely new drive in it's clamshell [...]" This is the mistake. This should use the possessive of "it", "its."
3. "[...] It's the right firmware!" Correct it is.
4. "Yep, it's got the same firmware." This is also correct use, a contraction for "it has."
Granted, some things about the article feel a bit idiotic. The article is nowhere near enough of a technical accomplishment to warrant putting it on the front page, but that is a slashdot editor's idiocy, not the author's or even the slashdot submitter's. Also, when I learned composition, I was taught to avoid contractions in essays for reasons I don't actually remember, but I expect that contractions at least make a document harder to understand for people whose first language is not English, but I don't think this infraction rises to the level of making the author an idiot either.
Although some of the benefits that I listed actually reduced threats (better Hurricane warnings and better communications save lives, for example), your question is irrelevant. The increased risks of launching rockets or having automobiles (the comparison you use) may be justified by benefits regardless of whether those benefits are in the form of ameliorating existing threats to life and limb.
The argument that there is acceptable loss because other industries have acceptable loss is not adequate - those other industries provide a benefit (percieved or real) to the geneneral population, whereas it's hard to see what long term benefit (if any at all) the general population will get out of this.
I never said "there is acceptable loss because other industries have acceptable loss." I listed numerous benefits of space transportation and then said, "Cheaper access to space could improve all of these services and probably make feasible many new ones."
Competition leads to a lot of these benefits being passed on to customers. Also, even monopolies often have to pass on a lot of savings to their customers, depending on the shape of the demand curve and a monopolieis inability to charge different prices based on each customer's willingness to pay.
The public has benefitted from better hurricane warnings, more accurate weather prediction, video of news happening around the world in real time, earlier affordable phone and internet service to obscure locations (these get replaced by cables, but satelite links often are far more economical for the first decade and build the volume that makes it profitable to lay the cable). Even things like better prospecting for oil and other natural resources provides environmental benefits from not having to do as much drilling or mining. One could go on for pages about these benefits, just look at the recent Slashdot article on the Global Positioning System for one minor example.
Cheaper access to space could improve all of these services and probably make feasible many new ones. Just having faster deployments of GPS upgrades would go a long way toward facilitating highway autopilot for cars or affordable internet access from airplanes.
It seems to me that, historically, space has benefitted more than just "the people involved, and companies who might someday benefit from that technology." You have presented no evidence about why that trend is likely to be different in the future.
Besides, even if you show that more than 50% of the surplus value would be retained by sellers ("the benefit is mostly to the people involved [...]"), is not relevant to arguing acceptable risks. Instead, the relative information is how much benefit the public might get in absolute terms, regardless of what proportion of the total surplus value that constitutes.
A stray rocket landing on an elementary school wouldn't be "worth it" under any circumstances.
To me, whether such a scenario is "worth it" definitely depends on the circumstances, and I will vote accordingly. I suspect lots of model rockets have landed on schools, although the circumstances were probably that school was usually not when they were in session at the time, just because school athletic fields often make good launching areas for students, perhaps some from school activities. Even in the case of a high powered rocket landing on a school that is in session, I could be convinced that that was "worth it" to the same extent that a truck plowing into a school in session would be "worth it", depending on statistical likelihood and benefits of the technology.
If coyprights were accelerated to the 14 years duration of the Copyright Act of 1790 (USA) and the Statute of Anne (England), then the original copyrights on Battlestar Galactica would now be expired and we might have more competition in Galactica sequels (which would have their own copyrights begining when they would be made).
I believe that 3DLabs is committing contributory copyright infringement (in the United States) by distributing lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/char/drm/wildc at.o without providing freely redistributable source code to this file, because the only substantial use for some of the contents of this file is to produce a kernel in memory that is not permitted by the copyright permissions under which some parts of the Linux kernel included in that image are are distributed--i.e., the GNU General Public License.
I am aware of the additional permission that Linus Torvalds has given for linking proprietary modules, but he is only able to give such permission with respect to code for which he owns the copyright. I, for one, never granted such additional permissions.
To my knowledge, the proprietary XFree86 drivers are legal. I believe that 3DLabs only needs to release source code (under GPL-compatible terms) for their wildcat.o kernel module.
"The machines were [...] regularly maintained and upgraded by only one source: IBM." --Edwin Black, IBM and The Holocaust, page 9.
From IBM and The Holocaust by Edwin Black:
pages 9-10 page 10. page 20.Also, from a copyright standpoint, if Linksys was in violation of the GPL, then they were infringing many parties' copyrights by distributing the GPL'ed software. Those who registered the copyrights could sue for at least statutory damages, between $750 and $25k per copy, as I understand it (and, again, I'm not a lawyer, so don't rely on this as legal advice).
More importantly, I believe a civil court can do more than just award money. I would expect the court would order Linksys to provide the complete source code without requiring people to identify specific modules (or Linksys would have to pay contempt of court fines and so on). This might result in publication of some new free software, such as 802.11g drivers (even if they turned out to be a user level program linked into BusyBox). These benefits are not "pointless" to the users who are already asking for such software.
As a practical matter, I think Linksys was simply trying to move quickly in assembling their first pass at GPL compliance. I suspect that they'll soon offer complete source without making people jump through hoops. I haven't heard of Linksys being obnoxious to the developer community before. If anything, I think they've been rather pro-nerd, providing detachable antennas, using the documented Intersil 802.11b chips. I think they realize that it's in their enlightened self-interest if Linux users and other developers can make more use of their product, because those users are more likely to buy the products or even specify them in larger purchases.
Sorry if I was unclear. I too would be perfectly happy with that.
Likewise, I also think it would also be fine if they required that I tell them which 4-port Cable/DSL Router model I was referring to.
The point of my posting was that I think that "but you must name the module you want" is unreasonable if they won't tell you what all of those modules are, and that I think a court would agree under something like the Four Corners Rule, even if it "complies with the letter of the license." In other words, I think it's legally implicit that people must be given enough information in the offer to take advantage of it.
If Linksys were to list the modules that I could just copy into my request, then I think such a restriction problably would not unduly inhibit one from taking advantage of their offer.
Note that I am not a lawyer, so please do not rely on this or my original message as legal advice.
Section 3 of version 2 of the GNU General Public License provides three options for those wishing to distribute GPL'ed software: (a) "Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code [...]" (as I understand it, Linksys did not do this), (b) "Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party , for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code [...]", or, (c) an option available "allowed only for noncommercial distribution" (not the case of Linksys). So, I infer that Linksys is now trying to get close to following option (b).
The problem that I see with Linksys's claim that "It is not valid to issue a request for any 'code you may be using.'" is that without written offers that specifically identify exactly what GPL'ed software Linksys is using, and without source code to begin with, we cannot be sure that we know all of the source code that Linksys is using. For example, we don't know everything that was linked into their busybox image, and we might not even know every kernel device driver they use.
It seems that Linksys sees two different specificity requirements in the GPL. Firstly, they seem to think that a blanket offer to provide code without identifying the source code that they are referring to satisifies the written offer requirements of section 3b. Secondly, they seem to think that they are not obliged to fulfill the acceptance of that offer when it is made with the same level of specificity. Linksys seems to think that they are fulfilling the GPL's requirements if they provide an offer to do x, but refuse to actually do it if someone simply says, "okay, I accept your offer." In other words, Linksys is not providing enough information in their offer for people to fully avail themselves of it. This is similar to offering to provide source code, but providing no contact information by which people can accept the offer. I expect that under some sort of "reasonable man" standard, a court would decide that these shenanigans are not in the intended meaning of the GPL.
If I were in Linksys's shoes, I'd just dump of all of the GPL'ed source code involved into a CD image, send out CD's as needed, and also put it on an FTP site, which would probably reduce the requests for physical media to about a dozen (and, besides, the media costs less than postage and it's useful to have a mailing list of likely Linux wireless access point developers).
Personally, I am mostly interested in the 802.11g drivers, although I suspect that some useful software may have been linked into busybox, which might be helpful to have too. I am glad that Linksys is trying to conform to the requirements of the GNU General Public License. Hopefully we can help them actually achieve that.
By the way, I just sent info@linksys.com a request for the source code to the kernel and any software linked against BusyBox. I sure wish I knew what other GPL'ed software is in the WRT54G.
I'm not an algorithms expert, so I'll not try to explain the jargon in the preceding paragraph. Instead, I'll just cop out and say that now you know what terms feed a search engine. I will, however, provide this link to bwtzip an experimental compressor covered by the GNU General Public License that uses the Burrows-Wheeler transformation, and this link page, mostly about suffix trees.
I wish I could find it, but I recently read a paper that showed a pretty impressive comparison between some compressor that used a Prediction by Partial Match variant and arithmetic coding (probably not truely free, due to software patents on arithmetic coding) versus gzip and some other compressors.
I have done a cursory web search and haven't been able to find a definition of a "multinational", which I assume from this context is a multinational business, as opposed to, say, "big multinational" meaning a fat person with citizenship in more than one country.
Are all businesses with web sites that do not exclude orders outside of their home countries "multinationals?" How about a business that has a physical office in another country? How about a business that wholly owns a subsidiary incorporated in another country? Does a business have to be corporation in order to be a "multinational?" I would be interested in any reasonably authorative references.
Sorry, I should have proofread better. In the last sentence, "might be better of" should read "might be better off", and "something that might create in the future" should read "something that might create jobs in the future."
"Society less stable in general" is too vague to be meaningful, so I'll just respond about yrour claim that mortgage foreclosures would increase. There are already private credit insurance services, even though the market for such services is limited by the government forcing people to also buy the government's competing service. When people buy houses they plan a cushion for these things, and you can expect that banks would adjust their qualification criteria anyhow because foreclosure is generally quite unprofitable for them, since foreclosure involves doing a lot of work only to collect the money that is owed, and often less is collected. (By the way, for this reason, banks are also generally slow to kick someone out of his or her house when the bank is entitled to do so.)
In comparison, with unemployment insurance, we have the overhead of the government having to verify people's UI claims, seasonal companies optimizing their layoffs so their workers can collect full UI each year, a proably less competitive competitive labor force implementing the service (typically government workers are AFSCME members), and a lot of people paying for this service when they could better spend the money in more effective ways. For example, a person who has been employed for a long time and has saved enough for a job change, might be better of spending some of that money on classes or starting a side business (something that might create in the future).