Not quite, no. It's a wrapper that turns Win32 calls into X calls. Basically, it is an implementation of the Win32 API. No emulation is actually done because none is necessary -- x86 applications running on an x86 -- the only thing Linux lacks is the API. Wine brings the API to Linux. By your logic, XFree86 is an X11 emulator.
I just find it strange that when USians criticise stuff about the UK, they usually miss the easy targets (sclerotic planning permissions, lack of investment in R&D, splits over Europe, etc.)
Most Americans are too stupid to know that. Heck, a lot of Americans can't even find the UK on a map.:)
straight line speed is not the be-all and end-all in a sports car,
Offtopic, I know, but this difference is the product of the differences in roads between the US and the UK. In the U.S., due mostly to the vast amount of land we have, most roads are laid out in a grid-like fashion in straight lines, while in most of Europe, the roads are very curvy. Not that we don't have curvy roads and you don't have straight roads, but I'm speaking in generalized terms here.
While I understand that the situation in the US is that if you stop at a house to ask for directions, you can be shot on sight, the UK has or at least used to have different laws.
Well, only if they kill you. Otherwise you can successfully sue them.:-P (fscked up, eh?;)
If you want to extend the analogy to hacking, if someone puts their info on a web server with default security set to "serve all files to anyone who asks", that should not be a crime to view. If you are creating a special stack-smashing packet that happens to kill version 2.78.2a of a web server, that might be another matter.
Most cases aren't so clear cut. What if there's a password on those files on the webserver but it's set to 'password'? What if it's set to ''? What if the passwords are sent in cleartext (ala 'basic authentication' with.htaccess files) and someone grabs them with a packet sniffer?
Just because the door is unlocked doesn't mean you don't have turn the handle.
In legal terms, that's called "intent." I would say that probably in most criminal cases (IANAL), you have to prove intent. In the case of breaking and entry, intent is easy to prove that it's not even much of a consideration...the only way I could see NOT being charged is if you were somehow *thrown* into someone else's house against you will...then and only then would there be no intent.
There is also a crime committed with lack of intent, but when the person didn't exercise due care and caution... that's called negligence. If you connect to your neighbor's wireless network accidentally, that's one thing, but if you KNOW that your neighbor has a wireless network, and your PDA starts connecting to it 'accidentally' and causes some sort of harm to your neighbor's network that's negligence.
The question is: does this law remove your negligence? I would like a legal expert to answer that, if possible.
Waitaminute. What you're saying -- in essence -- is that you think it should be *legal* for people to enter your house without your permission if you're too stupid/lazy to keep your door unlocked. I'm sorry, I have to disagree with you. Unlawful entry is unlawful entry, and unlawful hacking is unlawful hacking.
That being said, I think it's completely different with wireless networks precisely because you don't even know what network you're picking up -- and you can pick up the network completely by accident. This is in effect similar to the case where an non-scrambled phone conversation is picked up via a scanner accidentally...perfectly legal to listen in, at least in most states.
"I've been ordered to interview you about unemployment insurance. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to interview you about unemployment insurance. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."
*LOL* That's what *I* said when I first heard the name was MARVIN.:) I figured that the guy *had* to have read THHGTG.
Exactly. In Michigan you don't have to interview with a live person. You interview with MARVIN -- Michigan Automated Response Voice Interactive Network (or something like that). You dial a 1-800 phone number on a specific day, and a computer asks you the questions an interviewer would ask. You enter your answers using the telephone keypad. I think you can collect unemployment for up to 2 years in Michigan -- it depends on how long you were employed, I think. Generally you get some percentage of your pay or $400, whichever is less. For most IT people in Michigan, you'll be at the cap which is $400.
If you miss *one* telephone interview with Marvin, you get the chance to make it up on a Thursday or Friday, but if you miss your makeup day, then you have to go in and explain your case. It's easy to do it though because you can interview anywhere you have a touch tone phone, and you can even do it on a cell phone with the caveat that if you get disconnected in the middle of the interview, Marvin will mark your interview as incomplete and then you have to go into the office.
(I work in the auto industry, so I've got lots of experience with MARVIN.;)
Another one: If you want a fix now, we may need to perform better, but you know where to go. There is nobody to turn to if you as a (Linux) customer says, 'I need this.' You can't turn to IBM. They don't write the thing. It's not like IBM can support Linux the way they support the mainframe operating system. They don't write the code for it. All they can say is, 'You can call us and ask us a question, but if you actually want something done we can't do it.'
Actually, they can and in some cases, maybe they do. Duh. They HAVE THE SOURCE, and more importantly, the RIGHT TO MODIFY AND REDISTRIBUTE THE MODIFIED VERSION. If the change affects enough customers, or big enough customers, then they probably will make the change to the code. This is no different than in a closed source model really, except that anyone can make the change.
Obviously Mr. Balmer can't separate the ideas of Open Source and *ahem* Shared Source.
I'd be very impressed if Microsoft actually came out with a command-line only version. The fact that "it's a very tangled subsystem" makes me wonder how possible that would be.
" Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years old. That's what it is. That is what you can get today, a clone of a 20-year-old system. I'm not saying that it doesn't have some place for some customers, but that is not an innovative proposition."
So just because the basic design is old, it's not "innovative?" I think this guy needs to spend more time with his programmers!
Hmmm...Windows 2003 is based on Windows XP, which is based on Windows 2000, which is based on Windows NT, which came out in 1993 (?) That's 10 years old, except, wait! The internals of Windows NT are based on VMS! Which makes Windows 2003 a clone of at least a 20 year old OS!
BTW--Linux is not a clone of the original 20 year-old OS. It's a MODERN Unix clone. It's based on POSIX standards which is actually quite a bit newer.
They'd catch you, just like they catch card counters. People have devised various methods for making it look like they aren't cheating, but the casinos catch on almost every time. For one, there are cameras *everywhere*. There's always someone watching every table, all the time.
The big problem is that even if they don't catch you using the device, people who cheat often get greedy. And it shows in the betting patterns. Casinos *know* what 'normal' betting patterns look like. Anyone getting luckier than usual is immediately placed under suspicion and then is under constant watch until they either leave the casino or they get caught cheating (in which case they'll be leaving the casino anyway -- the hard way;)
The parent company of DirecTV is Hughes Electronics, not Hughes Satellite. The parent company of Hughes Electronics was Hughes Satellite, but is (currently) General Motors.
I will be switching to Verizon as soon as Cellsocket [cellsocket.com] announces their new models. I am tired of Sprint dropping my calls, and being in spots without coverage.
Dammit! Why is that everytime I have an idea, someone else comes out with it first? Argh! I had this idea 3 years ago when I first got my cell phone -- wire a regular phone into the cell for home use, since, even then, long distance via cell is cheaper than landline LD service when you figure in *all* of the costs of making LD calls on the landline. I should've moved on it then I guess.:( *sigh*
Hopefully, if PCs are to rule the CAD market, the vendors will have the sense to begin using Linux-based or BSD-based systems (I've read Pro/E will be available for Red Hat sometime, which is encouraging).
I hope the same thing. I really think it's a no-brainer: if you have the app compiled on Sun already (Unigraphics in fact has a version for Solaris x86), and it works with OpenGL, it should be zero problem to port the thing to Linux.
The thing is that although UG has a Solaris x86 version, people aren't using it. They figure if they're going with x86 hardware, they're going to run Windows. Why? Why? Why? I don't know. I hate it.
A few of us are vicous and evil. Which is why a system must be designed so "someone" can never be in charge. But most of us are honest, hard working, good people. And collectively we're stronger than the few that would prefer to rule over us.
That's what Marx said. Then Stalin came along and killed a bunch of people. It takes only one Stalin to spoil the pot. Promises of power, luxuries beyond what everyone else has is all it takes to get people to cooperate with a Stalin or a Hitler.
Are you saying is costs more to manufacture a jaguar than a dodge or chevy? If everyone wants a jaguar build jaguars. Its just some wood, plastic, steel, rubber and various other materials put together by a very specific algorithm. That algorithm and can be built into a factory so very few humans need to do any work to make jaguars. So again you entirely missed my whole point about not having money or property not being worth any value. You can't break the common assumption that people are not equal.
Okay, so all the cars are Jaguars. But then everyone wants the *black* jaguar. So they make all the Jaguars black. Then someone bitches that black Jags are too hot in the summer time, so they make a few red Jags. Everyone wants the red jags now because there are a 100 black jags only 3 red jags. Don't you see? People will categorize *anything* and inevitably there will be only a scarce number of items in one of the categories, which means everyone will want *that* one.
Children in a family are a lot like a communist system, in a way. Everything is provided for by the parents (the "government" -- someone has to make the rules, so there HAS to be a government, right?). When I was growing up, my mother had two different spoon sets. There were like a whole bunch of one kind of spoon which had a wildflower pattern on them, and a few spoons that had a rose pattern (or whatever) on them. There were no differences between the spoons. They were both very fine, well-made stainless steel spoons. They were all in excellent condition (my mother kept everything in excellent condition). But the spoons with the rose pattern were just *cooler* so my sister and I would fight over them if there were like 10 wildflower spoons and 1 rose spoon left, we'd fight over the stupid rose spoon. We had no concept of money, no concept of work. So the one with the rose spoon had the power. That person could trade the rose spoon for something else -- an extra TV privilege or a blue crayon or whatever.
There will ALWAYS be one thing that is better than the rest. And that will always be valueable. Hence, there will always be "money."
I'm guessing you do not. And that, my friend, is the problem.
It's not that I don't love my fellow humans. It's that my fellow humans don't always love me.
I'm curious why it would fail for Apple but not Sun. Sun, for many years, has sold x86-based motherboards on a PCI or SBus card for running Windows. They integrate nicely with CDE, put Windows where it belongs (in an CDE window and in a flat-file emulated hard drive), allow mounting Solaris UFS directories as network drives, among other useful things.
The CAD and scientific workstation markets. It used to be that you had to spend $25K on a Sun workstation in order to do high-end CAD or scientific applications. The idea was space savings and to some extent cost savings. You could have your workstation apps and your Microsoft Office running on the same box. Now with desktop PCs rivaling the performance of high-end RISC-based workstations, this is no longer necessary -- all those things can now run on the same processor even. Unfortunately, more often than not, the OS ends up being Windows NT/2000/XP.:(
As far as the rest of your comment goes, I have to say that you contradict yourself. It isn't possible to have property and not have money.
So what you're saying is I can't own a CD without having money?
Yes and no. If you own the CD, and other people want the CD (and anything that can be owned, someone else will want), and there is no money, then the CD *becomes* money.
You've never been to jail in the U.S., I take it? (I haven't, but I've had friends in jail.) There's no money in jail, because they don't let you have it. So what becomes money are things of value that they *will* let you have that you can't get from the jail itself: cigarettes, certain food types, sex, etc. Cigarettes are the big one. You can trade cigarettes for just about anything in jail.
Owning a toothbrush and owning a car are two entirely different things. A car could be shared and easily replaced. A toothbrush is far more personal.
Then you base money off the work people do then money is equal to physical labor or mental labor or sometimes social status with execs. When you build a factory to build your products you create an automated industry that, after the initial costs of building the factory, only costs the energy to run it and the resources to create those products. The factory and the automated industry can be refined, modularized, and made environmentally friendly when you put enough thought behind its design. In other words if all factories are designed in the open with many many additional engineers lending their imput it should be possible to build modular factories that are easy to build, maintain and retool, etc.
Social status is based on money. Who has what. In a communist system there IS no social status, everyone is equal. But obviously you haven't read George Orwell's Animal Farm. In a communist system, sure everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others, right? Because someone's gotta be in charge, right? It boils down to power. Humans have a natural tendency to want power over others. Power exists in nature. Watch a pride of lions as they fight each other to decide who is the leader of the pack. Then you will know what I'm talking about. That basic instinct is *part* of who we are.
I think most people would love to have access to a shared car lot with thousands of really nice cars that are always properly maintained than owning an old broken down wreck that ends up right next to all the others in your front yard.
Sure, but everyone wants the only Jaguar on the lot? Who gets it?
See, that's exactly it. The elite should not exist in communism. Everyone is EQUAL. What's wrong with you people? Why can't you understand a very simple idea? That everyone can be equal without money. With money they have something to hold over your head, a status symbol that means they are worth more than you, they are above you. Without that and with the proper rules everyone gets an equal share of the profits and the economics of trickle down theory never need to be brought up again.
But without money, there still IS money. Everyone wants the Jaguar on the shared lot. Guess what? The right to use the Jaguar for the day *becomes* money. Anything scarce is money. Hence gold is money. Hence diamonds are money, albeit through artificial scarcity.
It all boils down to basic human instinct. Are we as a society ready to shed our basic human instinct? Nah, we've got a *long* ways to go.
So what could all this possibly point to? Apple has given us a system that can basically run software from three different operating systems: the classic Mac OS, Mas OS X (the Next OS), and Unix. They recently brought the Unix world closer with the release of X11. Wouldn't it be amazing if hardware in the near-future included an "add-on" chip (something like Altivec that works in conjuction with the PPC processor) that emulated the x86 hardware? Maybe it would give Mac users the ability to run Windows and PC software, not via software emulation, but with hardware assistance. Imagine the interest Apple could draw if they presented the world with a machine that runs the Classic, OS X, Unix and Windows applications... all in one environment and almost seamlessly.
Ummm...I'm pretty sure Apple already tried this once. They sold some PowerMacs with cards that had 486 processors on them so you could write Windows on it. Wasn't that thing a dismal failure?
Re:In related news...
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Linus on DRM
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JLG? Jean-Louis Gassée? The guy sent Apple down the toilet?
That's why I don't agree with the term most people use to refer to communism. Communism in my mind is a system built around the people. People in this system don't use money and nobody owns a significant amount of property more than anyone else. Not that people can't own property, but in a communist society, one that is not based on money, there should never be any concerns about money or property. Everyone should be given everything they
I had a high school teacher, I don't remember his actual name, but everyone called him Father[*] Moe because he was a Native American from the Northwest (i.e., an Eskimo).
He taught a class called 'Social Justice', which really should have been called 'everything you ever wanted to know about liberal politics.' It was -- interestingly enough for a high school run by the largest Christian organization in the world -- a required class for juniors. This was a number of years ago. (I'm 30;)
Fr. Moe said something that has stuck with me ever since. He said Communism works -- but only on a small scale and only if nobody cheats. Which is true if you think about it. That's the problem you're faced with: it's *human nature* to cheat. It's human nature to be greedy and try and beat the system.
[*] I went to a Catholic high school.
As far as the rest of your comment goes, I have to say that you contradict yourself. It isn't possible to have property and not have money.
Little history lesson for you. There was a time when there was no money. People had to barter for what they wanted. "You want my cow? I'll trade her for 5 of your goats." Well, after a while this doesn't work out so well because if you don't have what your potential trading partner needs, (i.e., you have no goats, but everyone who has cows wants goats), you starve. So people came up with the intermediary system of money -- you work, you get a token. Then you can exchange that token for something you want, and that person can exchange the token you gave him for a goat.
Yeah, yeah, get to the point, right? You say that people can own property in a truely communist system. No, no one can own any property in a truely communist system. The whole idea of communism is that everybody owns everything. Which is where the cheating comes in because if everyone owns everything, what happens if someone hordes? And it will happen...greed is simply part of human nature.
Which is exactly what caused the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union. The elite horded everything so that they could afford to fight the Cold War.
Don't get me wrong. If I could make communism work on any scale, I'd be the first in line to sign up. But the human race isn't ready for it and may never be.
Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you'd like to carry this debate on, as this story is likely to close pretty soon.:)
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Not quite, no. It's a wrapper that turns Win32 calls into X calls. Basically, it is an implementation of the Win32 API. No emulation is actually done because none is necessary -- x86 applications running on an x86 -- the only thing Linux lacks is the API. Wine brings the API to Linux. By your logic, XFree86 is an X11 emulator.
I just find it strange that when USians criticise stuff about the UK, they usually miss the easy targets (sclerotic planning permissions, lack of investment in R&D, splits over Europe, etc.)
:)
Most Americans are too stupid to know that. Heck, a lot of Americans can't even find the UK on a map.
straight line speed is not the be-all and end-all in a sports car,
Offtopic, I know, but this difference is the product of the differences in roads between the US and the UK. In the U.S., due mostly to the vast amount of land we have, most roads are laid out in a grid-like fashion in straight lines, while in most of Europe, the roads are very curvy. Not that we don't have curvy roads and you don't have straight roads, but I'm speaking in generalized terms here.
While I understand that the situation in the US is that if you stop at a house to ask for directions, you can be shot on sight, the UK has or at least used to have different laws.
:-P (fscked up, eh? ;)
.htaccess files) and someone grabs them with a packet sniffer?
Well, only if they kill you. Otherwise you can successfully sue them.
If you want to extend the analogy to hacking, if someone puts their info on a web server with default security set to "serve all files to anyone who asks", that should not be a crime to view. If you are creating a special stack-smashing packet that happens to kill version 2.78.2a of a web server, that might be another matter.
Most cases aren't so clear cut. What if there's a password on those files on the webserver but it's set to 'password'? What if it's set to ''? What if the passwords are sent in cleartext (ala 'basic authentication' with
Just because the door is unlocked doesn't mean you don't have turn the handle.
Ermmm..minor point: Wine Is NOT an Emulator. :)
In legal terms, that's called "intent." I would say that probably in most criminal cases (IANAL), you have to prove intent. In the case of breaking and entry, intent is easy to prove that it's not even much of a consideration...the only way I could see NOT being charged is if you were somehow *thrown* into someone else's house against you will...then and only then would there be no intent.
... that's called negligence. If you connect to your neighbor's wireless network accidentally, that's one thing, but if you KNOW that your neighbor has a wireless network, and your PDA starts connecting to it 'accidentally' and causes some sort of harm to your neighbor's network that's negligence.
There is also a crime committed with lack of intent, but when the person didn't exercise due care and caution
The question is: does this law remove your negligence? I would like a legal expert to answer that, if possible.
Oh no...I can see it now...the next version will be called 3.1, then 3.11 and finally WineX 95! It's happening again! Argh!
Waitaminute. What you're saying -- in essence -- is that you think it should be *legal* for people to enter your house without your permission if you're too stupid/lazy to keep your door unlocked. I'm sorry, I have to disagree with you. Unlawful entry is unlawful entry, and unlawful hacking is unlawful hacking.
That being said, I think it's completely different with wireless networks precisely because you don't even know what network you're picking up -- and you can pick up the network completely by accident. This is in effect similar to the case where an non-scrambled phone conversation is picked up via a scanner accidentally...perfectly legal to listen in, at least in most states.
Particularly when doing a frist psot, right? ;)
"I've been ordered to interview you about unemployment insurance. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to interview you about unemployment insurance. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't."
:) I figured that the guy *had* to have read THHGTG.
*LOL* That's what *I* said when I first heard the name was MARVIN.
Exactly. In Michigan you don't have to interview with a live person. You interview with MARVIN -- Michigan Automated Response Voice Interactive Network (or something like that). You dial a 1-800 phone number on a specific day, and a computer asks you the questions an interviewer would ask. You enter your answers using the telephone keypad. I think you can collect unemployment for up to 2 years in Michigan -- it depends on how long you were employed, I think. Generally you get some percentage of your pay or $400, whichever is less. For most IT people in Michigan, you'll be at the cap which is $400.
;)
If you miss *one* telephone interview with Marvin, you get the chance to make it up on a Thursday or Friday, but if you miss your makeup day, then you have to go in and explain your case. It's easy to do it though because you can interview anywhere you have a touch tone phone, and you can even do it on a cell phone with the caveat that if you get disconnected in the middle of the interview, Marvin will mark your interview as incomplete and then you have to go into the office.
(I work in the auto industry, so I've got lots of experience with MARVIN.
Let me know how it goes, okay? ;)
Another one:
If you want a fix now, we may need to perform better, but you know where to go. There is nobody to turn to if you as a (Linux) customer says, 'I need this.' You can't turn to IBM. They don't write the thing. It's not like IBM can support Linux the way they support the mainframe operating system. They don't write the code for it. All they can say is, 'You can call us and ask us a question, but if you actually want something done we can't do it.'
Actually, they can and in some cases, maybe they do. Duh. They HAVE THE SOURCE, and more importantly, the RIGHT TO MODIFY AND REDISTRIBUTE THE MODIFIED VERSION. If the change affects enough customers, or big enough customers, then they probably will make the change to the code. This is no different than in a closed source model really, except that anyone can make the change.
Obviously Mr. Balmer can't separate the ideas of Open Source and *ahem* Shared Source.
I'd be very impressed if Microsoft actually came out with a command-line only version. The fact that "it's a very tangled subsystem" makes me wonder how possible that would be.
;)
They did already. It's called Microsoft LAN Manager.
I quote Mr. Balmer:
" Linux itself is a clone of an operating system that is 20-plus years old. That's what it is. That is what you can get today, a clone of a 20-year-old system. I'm not saying that it doesn't have some place for some customers, but that is not an innovative proposition."
So just because the basic design is old, it's not "innovative?" I think this guy needs to spend more time with his programmers!
Hmmm...Windows 2003 is based on Windows XP, which is based on Windows 2000, which is based on Windows NT, which came out in 1993 (?) That's 10 years old, except, wait! The internals of Windows NT are based on VMS! Which makes Windows 2003 a clone of at least a 20 year old OS!
BTW--Linux is not a clone of the original 20 year-old OS. It's a MODERN Unix clone. It's based on POSIX standards which is actually quite a bit newer.
They'd catch you, just like they catch card counters. People have devised various methods for making it look like they aren't cheating, but the casinos catch on almost every time. For one, there are cameras *everywhere*. There's always someone watching every table, all the time.
;)
The big problem is that even if they don't catch you using the device, people who cheat often get greedy. And it shows in the betting patterns. Casinos *know* what 'normal' betting patterns look like. Anyone getting luckier than usual is immediately placed under suspicion and then is under constant watch until they either leave the casino or they get caught cheating (in which case they'll be leaving the casino anyway -- the hard way
The parent company of DirecTV is Hughes Electronics, not Hughes Satellite. The parent company of Hughes Electronics was Hughes Satellite, but is (currently) General Motors.
I will be switching to Verizon as soon as Cellsocket [cellsocket.com] announces their new models. I am tired of Sprint dropping my calls, and being in spots without coverage.
:( *sigh*
Dammit! Why is that everytime I have an idea, someone else comes out with it first? Argh! I had this idea 3 years ago when I first got my cell phone -- wire a regular phone into the cell for home use, since, even then, long distance via cell is cheaper than landline LD service when you figure in *all* of the costs of making LD calls on the landline. I should've moved on it then I guess.
And what do you think the Windows users did? And why do you think they hated the Mac?
:-P
Three words: one mouse button.
Hopefully, if PCs are to rule the CAD market, the vendors will have the sense to begin using Linux-based or BSD-based systems (I've read Pro/E will be available for Red Hat sometime, which is encouraging).
I hope the same thing. I really think it's a no-brainer: if you have the app compiled on Sun already (Unigraphics in fact has a version for Solaris x86), and it works with OpenGL, it should be zero problem to port the thing to Linux.
The thing is that although UG has a Solaris x86 version, people aren't using it. They figure if they're going with x86 hardware, they're going to run Windows. Why? Why? Why? I don't know. I hate it.
A few of us are vicous and evil. Which is why a system must be designed so "someone" can never be in charge. But most of us are honest, hard working, good people. And collectively we're stronger than the few that would prefer to rule over us.
That's what Marx said. Then Stalin came along and killed a bunch of people. It takes only one Stalin to spoil the pot. Promises of power, luxuries beyond what everyone else has is all it takes to get people to cooperate with a Stalin or a Hitler.
Are you saying is costs more to manufacture a jaguar than a dodge or chevy? If everyone wants a jaguar build jaguars. Its just some wood, plastic, steel, rubber and various other materials put together by a very specific algorithm. That algorithm and can be built into a factory so very few humans need to do any work to make jaguars. So again you entirely missed my whole point about not having money or property not being worth any value. You can't break the common assumption that people are not equal.
Okay, so all the cars are Jaguars. But then everyone wants the *black* jaguar. So they make all the Jaguars black. Then someone bitches that black Jags are too hot in the summer time, so they make a few red Jags. Everyone wants the red jags now because there are a 100 black jags only 3 red jags. Don't you see? People will categorize *anything* and inevitably there will be only a scarce number of items in one of the categories, which means everyone will want *that* one.
Children in a family are a lot like a communist system, in a way. Everything is provided for by the parents (the "government" -- someone has to make the rules, so there HAS to be a government, right?). When I was growing up, my mother had two different spoon sets. There were like a whole bunch of one kind of spoon which had a wildflower pattern on them, and a few spoons that had a rose pattern (or whatever) on them. There were no differences between the spoons. They were both very fine, well-made stainless steel spoons. They were all in excellent condition (my mother kept everything in excellent condition). But the spoons with the rose pattern were just *cooler* so my sister and I would fight over them if there were like 10 wildflower spoons and 1 rose spoon left, we'd fight over the stupid rose spoon. We had no concept of money, no concept of work. So the one with the rose spoon had the power. That person could trade the rose spoon for something else -- an extra TV privilege or a blue crayon or whatever.
There will ALWAYS be one thing that is better than the rest. And that will always be valueable. Hence, there will always be "money."
I'm guessing you do not. And that, my friend, is the problem.
It's not that I don't love my fellow humans. It's that my fellow humans don't always love me.
I'm curious why it would fail for Apple but not Sun. Sun, for many years, has sold x86-based motherboards on a PCI or SBus card for running Windows. They integrate nicely with CDE, put Windows where it belongs (in an CDE window and in a flat-file emulated hard drive), allow mounting Solaris UFS directories as network drives, among other useful things.
:(
The CAD and scientific workstation markets. It used to be that you had to spend $25K on a Sun workstation in order to do high-end CAD or scientific applications. The idea was space savings and to some extent cost savings. You could have your workstation apps and your Microsoft Office running on the same box. Now with desktop PCs rivaling the performance of high-end RISC-based workstations, this is no longer necessary -- all those things can now run on the same processor even. Unfortunately, more often than not, the OS ends up being Windows NT/2000/XP.
As far as the rest of your comment goes, I have to say that you contradict yourself. It isn't possible to have property and not have money.
So what you're saying is I can't own a CD without having money?
Yes and no. If you own the CD, and other people want the CD (and anything that can be owned, someone else will want), and there is no money, then the CD *becomes* money.
You've never been to jail in the U.S., I take it? (I haven't, but I've had friends in jail.) There's no money in jail, because they don't let you have it. So what becomes money are things of value that they *will* let you have that you can't get from the jail itself: cigarettes, certain food types, sex, etc. Cigarettes are the big one. You can trade cigarettes for just about anything in jail.
Owning a toothbrush and owning a car are two entirely different things. A car could be shared and easily replaced. A toothbrush is far more personal.
Then you base money off the work people do then money is equal to physical labor or mental labor or sometimes social status with execs. When you build a factory to build your products you create an automated industry that, after the initial costs of building the factory, only costs the energy to run it and the resources to create those products. The factory and the automated industry can be refined, modularized, and made environmentally friendly when you put enough thought behind its design. In other words if all factories are designed in the open with many many additional engineers lending their imput it should be possible to build modular factories that are easy to build, maintain and retool, etc.
Social status is based on money. Who has what. In a communist system there IS no social status, everyone is equal. But obviously you haven't read George Orwell's Animal Farm. In a communist system, sure everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others, right? Because someone's gotta be in charge, right? It boils down to power. Humans have a natural tendency to want power over others. Power exists in nature. Watch a pride of lions as they fight each other to decide who is the leader of the pack. Then you will know what I'm talking about. That basic instinct is *part* of who we are.
I think most people would love to have access to a shared car lot with thousands of really nice cars that are always properly maintained than owning an old broken down wreck that ends up right next to all the others in your front yard.
Sure, but everyone wants the only Jaguar on the lot? Who gets it?
See, that's exactly it. The elite should not exist in communism. Everyone is EQUAL. What's wrong with you people? Why can't you understand a very simple idea? That everyone can be equal without money. With money they have something to hold over your head, a status symbol that means they are worth more than you, they are above you. Without that and with the proper rules everyone gets an equal share of the profits and the economics of trickle down theory never need to be brought up again.
But without money, there still IS money. Everyone wants the Jaguar on the shared lot. Guess what? The right to use the Jaguar for the day *becomes* money. Anything scarce is money. Hence gold is money. Hence diamonds are money, albeit through artificial scarcity.
It all boils down to basic human instinct. Are we as a society ready to shed our basic human instinct? Nah, we've got a *long* ways to go.
So what could all this possibly point to? Apple has given us a system that can basically run software from three different operating systems: the classic Mac OS, Mas OS X (the Next OS), and Unix. They recently brought the Unix world closer with the release of X11. Wouldn't it be amazing if hardware in the near-future included an "add-on" chip (something like Altivec that works in conjuction with the PPC processor) that emulated the x86 hardware? Maybe it would give Mac users the ability to run Windows and PC software, not via software emulation, but with hardware assistance. Imagine the interest Apple could draw if they presented the world with a machine that runs the Classic, OS X, Unix and Windows applications... all in one environment and almost seamlessly.
Ummm...I'm pretty sure Apple already tried this once. They sold some PowerMacs with cards that had 486 processors on them so you could write Windows on it. Wasn't that thing a dismal failure?
JLG? Jean-Louis Gassée? The guy sent Apple down the toilet?
That's why I don't agree with the term most people use to refer to communism. Communism in my mind is a system built around the people. People in this system don't use money and nobody owns a significant amount of property more than anyone else. Not that people can't own property, but in a communist society, one that is not based on money, there should never be any concerns about money or property. Everyone should be given everything they
;)
:)
I had a high school teacher, I don't remember his actual name, but everyone called him Father[*] Moe because he was a Native American from the Northwest (i.e., an Eskimo).
He taught a class called 'Social Justice', which really should have been called 'everything you ever wanted to know about liberal politics.' It was -- interestingly enough for a high school run by the largest Christian organization in the world -- a required class for juniors. This was a number of years ago. (I'm 30
Fr. Moe said something that has stuck with me ever since. He said Communism works -- but only on a small scale and only if nobody cheats. Which is true if you think about it. That's the problem you're faced with: it's *human nature* to cheat. It's human nature to be greedy and try and beat the system.
[*] I went to a Catholic high school.
As far as the rest of your comment goes, I have to say that you contradict yourself. It isn't possible to have property and not have money.
Little history lesson for you. There was a time when there was no money. People had to barter for what they wanted. "You want my cow? I'll trade her for 5 of your goats." Well, after a while this doesn't work out so well because if you don't have what your potential trading partner needs, (i.e., you have no goats, but everyone who has cows wants goats), you starve. So people came up with the intermediary system of money -- you work, you get a token. Then you can exchange that token for something you want, and that person can exchange the token you gave him for a goat.
Yeah, yeah, get to the point, right? You say that people can own property in a truely communist system. No, no one can own any property in a truely communist system. The whole idea of communism is that everybody owns everything. Which is where the cheating comes in because if everyone owns everything, what happens if someone hordes? And it will happen...greed is simply part of human nature.
Which is exactly what caused the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union. The elite horded everything so that they could afford to fight the Cold War.
Don't get me wrong. If I could make communism work on any scale, I'd be the first in line to sign up. But the human race isn't ready for it and may never be.
Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you'd like to carry this debate on, as this story is likely to close pretty soon.