Democrats have a great anti trust record... The Clinton DoJ sure stopped evil Staples & Office Max from merging! Microsoft and ExxonMobil weren't a big deal to consumers at all!
We can all breathe easy, monopolists won't be hocking pens and legal pads at inflated rates. Of course, a desktop operating system costs $200 and gas is over $2.00/gallon.
The closer your code is to a business rule the better.
In a procedural language like C or even a language that's a little more "intelligent" like Perl, alot of your time is spent dealing with the arcana of the language.
In a functional language, your focus is on the needs of the application, not reimplementing the linked list for the 1 billionth time.
You are reading into the example without absorbing the point. It has nothing to do with appealing to the "heartland". It's about demographic bands.
Think about it this way. The nation as a whole has demographic groups -- slice it by wealth, race, religion, occupation, whatever. Each state has its own set of demographics that usually deviate than the national averages.
The United States is a Federal Republic of states. Not people.
Under a system of direct presidential elections, we become a Republic of Demographic groups. With marketing down to a science, it would be easy to create a candidate that appeals to a few demographic bands to get propelled into office. It is precisely what Clear Channel did to radio... and doesn't belong in politics.
Think about it... why did Robert Kennedy and Hillary Clinton choose New York as their adopted states for the purposes of running for the Senate?
1. Large population of voting women. (Women tend to vote Democrat) 2. Democratic political machines in all cities. 3. Large population of immigrants. (Tend to vote democrat)
Are/Were Hillary and RFK brilliant people and good politicians? Yes Are/Were Hillary and RFK good representatives of NY? Absolutely Not.
That kind of politics is bad for the voters... and fortunately the framers anticipated it and designed our electoral system to prevent it.
The rules & formalities of war as established by the Geneva Convention and other treaties that were devised in the 1920's and 30's make it too expensive to have a formal war.
Think about traffic laws. We all agree that we need speed limits, but find complying with 55 mph too onerous.
Executive military adventures abroad are not a 20th Century phenomenon.
Thomas Jefferson sent an expedition to the Barbary States... Tyler and Polk messed around in Mexico prior to the Mexican War and tested the border with Canada... Grant-Wilson had a military presence in China... the examples go on and on.
You see larger engagements today because the US's role as an "imperial" power has grown since the 1900's.
The actual meaning of "War" is a specific thing, with specific responsibilities. The Congress has walked hand-in-hand with the Executive branch to allow larger and larger military engagements without a declaration of War. The congress regularly authorizes the "use of force" without going to the level of a formal "Declaration of War"
The growth of the Executive Branch has everything to do with the strengthening of national political parties. Things like the direct election of Senators, the professional civil service and income tax are all responsible for that.
No I wouldn't... I've been arguing in favor of the electoral college for about 15 years.
The electoral college transforms a presidential election into 50 state elections.
Why is this important? Without the college, a regional candidate could easily become president, to the detriment of the rest of the country. Or an ethnic candidate could create a balkanization of the Federal government.
Say a David Duke like candiate became prominent and drew large support from the white majority. A candidate like that could potentially draw a huge number of voters nationwide. But states like California, New York and Massachusetts with high populations of left-leaning whites and minorities effectivly nullify the popular appeal of a demagogue that appeals to a certain demographic spectrum.
If you don't like the white supremacist example, paste in a "hispanic candiate running on an 'open border' platform" or something similar.
The "disenfranchised" voters still elect a congressman, still elect state legislatures and still have a voice. All while the nation as a whole is shielded from the pied pipers of politics.
Fortunately, we have mechanisms in place, like the electoral college to prevent such tyranny of the majority out of the executive branch.
Consider the 2000 election, where the overwhelming population of highly populous democratic states like California and the highly corrupt states like New York were not allowed to overwhelm the rest of America.
IMHO, the worst alteration ever made to US government institutions was the direct election of Senators. Instead of the highly intellectual and conservative Senate that we had during the 18th and 19th Centuries, we are left with the political pit of the modern Senate, which was resulted in a exponential growth in the size and scope of Federal government.
What user fees are you referring to? Tolls only present on a fraction of highways and gas taxes barely scratch the surface.
The real welfare isn't getting handed out to the "scumbags" that come to your mind. Every one of those big rigs that you see barrelling down the highway are running because the taxpayers have given them a free ride.
Look at any outer suburban area. The two or three developers who build 80% of the houses had an key role in placing the highway exit in a convenient spot.
Sixty years ago, most long-haul freight was hauled by railroads. Railroads (although they were granted the land in the 19th Century) maintained their tracks themselves.
So don't give free internet to some "welfare scumbag" but give millions to the politically connected. Great idea.
If the government didn't merrily absorb most of the costs associated with large scale commuting via car, that car would have remained the rich man's toy and utility vehicles that they were.
The Soviets had some of the most brilliant mathematicians and engineers in the world. There is absolutely no question about that.
But Soviets were living in 1944... "heavy" industry was the mantra of the Soviets. While the US spent billions on developing computer technology, the Soviets built tractor plants and tanks.
The boom of the late 90's was an economic bubble caused by investors who removed rationality from the investment process.
Phoney bologna companies like Webvan and Flooz had billion dollar valuations and increased IT salaries to an untenable level. Programmers are great, but there is no way that some random sysadmin or analyst is worth $90/yr+stock
I actually work for an organ of a large state government that just completed implementation of a huge statewide fiber network. Despite the aggrivating slowness and general fucked-up-ness of state government, the government network is 70% cheaper, an order of magnitude faster (with 2% fiber utilization) and at least 5x more reliable from a trouble ticket perspective than the frame relay network that it replaced.
Speaking of fiber to the home... my parents live in the countryside, where Verizon spent ungodly amounts of money to run fiber up a 5 mile throughout the town (including my parents 4 mile long gravel road) in 1994, yet in 2004 still no DSL or high speed internet.
Even funnier, one of the few remaining local telephone companies about 30 miles from my parents delivers high speed DSL, cable and telephone service to the home, and has a high speed wireless network as well. Farmers surf the net while their tractors spread seeds on autopilot.
The problem with Los Angeles is that real estate interests influenced the construction of the ridiculous freeway system to begin with.
The New York City metropolitan area was the first urban area to have an integrated highway system. The results were clear after about ten years: more highways spawn more traffic. Of course the person behind the New York system, Mr. Robert Moses, made it exceedingly difficult to see the NY highway system as anything but an unqualified success.
Had the powers that be in Los Angeles built a responsible combination of expressways and public transit rather than hundreds of miles of unmaintainable highways, Los Angeles wouldn't be the posterchild of urban sprawl that it is today.
The telecom companies are less progressive than any local government. They've made trillions of dollars over the years overcharging for analog lines and are fighting desperately to preserve their monopoly.
One of the key ideas of economics is that scarce products are worth more.
Asserting your rights as a copyright holder allows you to make the supply of your product less than or equal to the demand for it.
Software has minimal physical costs, but lots of development and overhead costs. Do you work for free? Does the owner of the office building that you work at work for free?
Giving your product away for free leaves you with consulting as a moneymaker.
Me being the capitalist pig that I am would rather sell 10,000 copies of a software package for x dollars AND sell consulting services than give away 100,000 copies and sell consulting services.
What you are forgetting is that most programmers are overhead. The majority of companies are not in the computer business and would rather hire another salesman or product development person than one more useless programmer.
The leftist point of view is that the government makes those decisions. Evil corporations want to profit, but government only has the interests of the people in mind. (ha!)
That kind of wealth will come from investing and smart business decisions.
Not to be a smartass, but buying a bigger house instead of $70,000 worth of cars that will be worth $20k in four years would have been a better business decision.
Consulting does not produce sufficient revenue to keep a multinational corporation alive. Employees in western countries are too expensive to sell. Hence outsourcing to India and China.
The other problem with people is that you do not own them. One of the problems that I see with IBM Global Services is that once one of their people becomes particularly skilled at something, they ditch the 50-80k IBM gig and go solo. They often contract back to IBM at a higher rate. So instead of paying $70k + benefits for an employee, they are paying $150-170k annually without being able to raise their billing rate too much.
The purpose of a business is to profit. Selling scarce resources allows one to profit from the sale.
Selling free software is akin to setting up optional tollbooths on bridges. "Open Source" companies like RedHat or Suse discovered that nobody will stop at the optional tollbooth. They make money by selling a scarce resource called "professional services" or "support". So they profit.
Why is it wrong for an author or creator of software to profit from the fruits of his labor?
Slashdot Mirror
What do you mean? Kerry is a great guy... he's going to "roll back" the tax cut for the rich!
Too bad a single guy making $60k/yr is "rich".
Oh yeah... rah rah democrats...
Democrats have a great anti trust record... The Clinton DoJ sure stopped evil Staples & Office Max from merging! Microsoft and ExxonMobil weren't a big deal to consumers at all!
We can all breathe easy, monopolists won't be hocking pens and legal pads at inflated rates. Of course, a desktop operating system costs $200 and gas is over $2.00/gallon.
If you don't want people to profit from your work, don't release it as BSD.
If you are so vain that you are willing to spend thousands of dollars to sue to have your name placed on something, have fun.
The closer your code is to a business rule the better.
In a procedural language like C or even a language that's a little more "intelligent" like Perl, alot of your time is spent dealing with the arcana of the language.
In a functional language, your focus is on the needs of the application, not reimplementing the linked list for the 1 billionth time.
You are reading into the example without absorbing the point. It has nothing to do with appealing to the "heartland". It's about demographic bands.
Think about it this way. The nation as a whole has demographic groups -- slice it by wealth, race, religion, occupation, whatever. Each state has its own set of demographics that usually deviate than the national averages.
The United States is a Federal Republic of states. Not people.
Under a system of direct presidential elections, we become a Republic of Demographic groups. With marketing down to a science, it would be easy to create a candidate that appeals to a few demographic bands to get propelled into office. It is precisely what Clear Channel did to radio... and doesn't belong in politics.
Think about it... why did Robert Kennedy and Hillary Clinton choose New York as their adopted states for the purposes of running for the Senate?
1. Large population of voting women. (Women tend to vote Democrat)
2. Democratic political machines in all cities.
3. Large population of immigrants. (Tend to vote democrat)
Are/Were Hillary and RFK brilliant people and good politicians? Yes
Are/Were Hillary and RFK good representatives of NY? Absolutely Not.
That kind of politics is bad for the voters... and fortunately the framers anticipated it and designed our electoral system to prevent it.
The rules & formalities of war as established by the Geneva Convention and other treaties that were devised in the 1920's and 30's make it too expensive to have a formal war.
Think about traffic laws. We all agree that we need speed limits, but find complying with 55 mph too onerous.
Executive military adventures abroad are not a 20th Century phenomenon.
Thomas Jefferson sent an expedition to the Barbary States... Tyler and Polk messed around in Mexico prior to the Mexican War and tested the border with Canada... Grant-Wilson had a military presence in China... the examples go on and on.
You see larger engagements today because the US's role as an "imperial" power has grown since the 1900's.
The actual meaning of "War" is a specific thing, with specific responsibilities. The Congress has walked hand-in-hand with the Executive branch to allow larger and larger military engagements without a declaration of War. The congress regularly authorizes the "use of force" without going to the level of a formal "Declaration of War"
The growth of the Executive Branch has everything to do with the strengthening of national political parties. Things like the direct election of Senators, the professional civil service and income tax are all responsible for that.
No I wouldn't... I've been arguing in favor of the electoral college for about 15 years.
The electoral college transforms a presidential election into 50 state elections.
Why is this important? Without the college, a regional candidate could easily become president, to the detriment of the rest of the country. Or an ethnic candidate could create a balkanization of the Federal government.
Say a David Duke like candiate became prominent and drew large support from the white majority. A candidate like that could potentially draw a huge number of voters nationwide. But states like California, New York and Massachusetts with high populations of left-leaning whites and minorities effectivly nullify the popular appeal of a demagogue that appeals to a certain demographic spectrum.
If you don't like the white supremacist example, paste in a "hispanic candiate running on an 'open border' platform" or something similar.
The "disenfranchised" voters still elect a congressman, still elect state legislatures and still have a voice. All while the nation as a whole is shielded from the pied pipers of politics.
Fortunately, we have mechanisms in place, like the electoral college to prevent such tyranny of the majority out of the executive branch.
Consider the 2000 election, where the overwhelming population of highly populous democratic states like California and the highly corrupt states like New York were not allowed to overwhelm the rest of America.
IMHO, the worst alteration ever made to US government institutions was the direct election of Senators. Instead of the highly intellectual and conservative Senate that we had during the 18th and 19th Centuries, we are left with the political pit of the modern Senate, which was resulted in a exponential growth in the size and scope of Federal government.
He probally had the gall to load a .pdf document is his browser.
When doing that, Firefox/bird and recent Mozilla Suites lock up the explorer.exe process for some reason.
So the OS doesn't lock up, but a locked explorer.exe is a big deal.
During the 40's the Nazis had plans to do the same. We built our rockets based on German designs.
Getting a ballistic rocket to land within half a mile of a target isn't as difficult as it sounds. (If you're a rocket scientist anyway)
What user fees are you referring to? Tolls only present on a fraction of highways and gas taxes barely scratch the surface.
The real welfare isn't getting handed out to the "scumbags" that come to your mind. Every one of those big rigs that you see barrelling down the highway are running because the taxpayers have given them a free ride.
Look at any outer suburban area. The two or three developers who build 80% of the houses had an key role in placing the highway exit in a convenient spot.
Sixty years ago, most long-haul freight was hauled by railroads. Railroads (although they were granted the land in the 19th Century) maintained their tracks themselves.
So don't give free internet to some "welfare scumbag" but give millions to the politically connected. Great idea.
If the government didn't merrily absorb most of the costs associated with large scale commuting via car, that car would have remained the rich man's toy and utility vehicles that they were.
You display your complete ignorance of the USSR.
The Soviets had some of the most brilliant mathematicians and engineers in the world. There is absolutely no question about that.
But Soviets were living in 1944... "heavy" industry was the mantra of the Soviets. While the US spent billions on developing computer technology, the Soviets built tractor plants and tanks.
Because markets do not function that way.
The boom of the late 90's was an economic bubble caused by investors who removed rationality from the investment process.
Phoney bologna companies like Webvan and Flooz had billion dollar valuations and increased IT salaries to an untenable level. Programmers are great, but there is no way that some random sysadmin or analyst is worth $90/yr+stock
I think that we are arguing the same point here :)
I actually work for an organ of a large state government that just completed implementation of a huge statewide fiber network. Despite the aggrivating slowness and general fucked-up-ness of state government, the government network is 70% cheaper, an order of magnitude faster (with 2% fiber utilization) and at least 5x more reliable from a trouble ticket perspective than the frame relay network that it replaced.
Speaking of fiber to the home... my parents live in the countryside, where Verizon spent ungodly amounts of money to run fiber up a 5 mile throughout the town (including my parents 4 mile long gravel road) in 1994, yet in 2004 still no DSL or high speed internet.
Even funnier, one of the few remaining local telephone companies about 30 miles from my parents delivers high speed DSL, cable and telephone service to the home, and has a high speed wireless network as well. Farmers surf the net while their tractors spread seeds on autopilot.
Anarchists don't fall into the political system. They like to fuck hot women and blow things up from time to time, and that's about it.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but its no way to run a society.
The problem with Los Angeles is that real estate interests influenced the construction of the ridiculous freeway system to begin with.
The New York City metropolitan area was the first urban area to have an integrated highway system. The results were clear after about ten years: more highways spawn more traffic. Of course the person behind the New York system, Mr. Robert Moses, made it exceedingly difficult to see the NY highway system as anything but an unqualified success.
Had the powers that be in Los Angeles built a responsible combination of expressways and public transit rather than hundreds of miles of unmaintainable highways, Los Angeles wouldn't be the posterchild of urban sprawl that it is today.
The telecom companies are less progressive than any local government. They've made trillions of dollars over the years overcharging for analog lines and are fighting desperately to preserve their monopoly.
One of the key ideas of economics is that scarce products are worth more.
Asserting your rights as a copyright holder allows you to make the supply of your product less than or equal to the demand for it.
Software has minimal physical costs, but lots of development and overhead costs. Do you work for free? Does the owner of the office building that you work at work for free?
Giving your product away for free leaves you with consulting as a moneymaker.
Me being the capitalist pig that I am would rather sell 10,000 copies of a software package for x dollars AND sell consulting services than give away 100,000 copies and sell consulting services.
What you are forgetting is that most programmers are overhead. The majority of companies are not in the computer business and would rather hire another salesman or product development person than one more useless programmer.
You are assuming that the boomtime job market of a few years ago is the norm. It isn't.
Compare employment numbers to 1995 figures and I'll agree with your point.
The leftist point of view is that the government makes those decisions. Evil corporations want to profit, but government only has the interests of the people in mind. (ha!)
Not to be a smartass, but buying a bigger house instead of $70,000 worth of cars that will be worth $20k in four years would have been a better business decision.
Consulting does not produce sufficient revenue to keep a multinational corporation alive. Employees in western countries are too expensive to sell. Hence outsourcing to India and China.
The other problem with people is that you do not own them. One of the problems that I see with IBM Global Services is that once one of their people becomes particularly skilled at something, they ditch the 50-80k IBM gig and go solo. They often contract back to IBM at a higher rate. So instead of paying $70k + benefits for an employee, they are paying $150-170k annually without being able to raise their billing rate too much.
No, you are making a fatal mistake.
The purpose of a business is to profit. Selling scarce resources allows one to profit from the sale.
Selling free software is akin to setting up optional tollbooths on bridges. "Open Source" companies like RedHat or Suse discovered that nobody will stop at the optional tollbooth. They make money by selling a scarce resource called "professional services" or "support". So they profit.
Why is it wrong for an author or creator of software to profit from the fruits of his labor?