workers in india are not "new technology" a-la the farriers example.
The Indian tech workers may not be developing disruptive new technologies, but they are improving existing technologies and making them cheaper. The result is the same on a smaller scale. It is still progressing technology as a whole.
These companies make obscene profit margins
The company I work for is one of the ten largest in the world. It heavily engages in outsourcing. Yet it has a profit margin of only 2-3%. They can't sacrifice their profit margin because there's no room to sacrifice! That two to three percent may be billions, but spread out over the hundreds of thousands of employees (and even more investors), it's impossible to call it "obscene".
I don't think you grasp how corporations work. You can measure their profit margins by the dividends that flow into *your* 401k or IRA (if you have one, that is). If they don't share their profits with their investors, they would be sued out of business. I am not a fan of the public corporation, and have ranted about them on this forum before. But despite that they are not the source of all suffering you make them out to be.
At the current wages at the professional level, recent college graduates can't get enough to furnish their apartments and eat at the same time!
There's no one in my company who can't afford food. At least I've never seen any of my fellow employees starving. Not even the interns. Sure there are many of them that can't afford a nice house or spacious apartment, but that's because this is the middle of Silicon Valley where houses start at half a million dollars.
The world is not quite so horrible as you make it out to be.
Actually, you can NOT sell GPLd software. You can charge for support, for the cost of distribution, and for the cost of the media, but you can NOT sell the actual software. The GPL is quite clear on this regard. Otherwise the buyer would now own his copy of the software, and no longer be bound by your license.
Talk to my friend the farrier. He'll set you straight. Imagine what the world would be like if "labor rights" in the 1910's prevented any farrier from losing their job.
Farriers lost their jobs because of the demand for technology. The same demand for technology is driving outsourcing. If you're a staticist who wants an unchanging world, don't bitch at the corporations, bitch at the people who are demanding more technology at cheaper prices.
From my perspective, we are indeed seeing a rise in higher paying jobs in the tech sector. Heck, we're seeing high paying jobs in the manufacturing sector as well!
Everyone I personally know who got laid off due to outsourcing is now employed at a better job. A friend got laid off and three days later had another job at $20k more a year. Another friend got hired back at the same company, got his pension and seniority back, received an apology, and got a raise to boot.
But no one got the *exact* same kind of job back. If you're sitting around waiting for your old job to come back, stop wasting your time, because it won't happen.
There's nothing to say the tech industry wouldn't be even more vibrant without the outsourcing.
Actually, there's a LOT to say that it wouldn't have been. The motive force that drives economies is individual action. Taken as an aggregate, they are known as "the market". Outsourcing occurred because the market demanded more tech goods at lower prices. Given a supply of cheap tech labor in India, it was only natural that it would be used to accomplish that. This enabled more tech goods at lower prices. The market benefited, and since the market is nothing but the aggregate of its individual actors, we all benefited.
This doesn't meant that there wasn't local and temporary displacement pains. There surely were. I work for a major medical technology company. We had a lot of local temporary pain because of outsourcing. We're still getting it because we're still outsourcing (now to eastern Europe). However, because of outsourcing, your physician has better and cheaper medical technology, sooner than he would otherwise have had it.
If the government had intervened in the market, and prevented outsourcing, the result would have been less technology at higher prices. Frankly, I'm glad we're not stuck in the boom of 1999.
The pop economics promulgated by the politicians and media is static. But that's not the real economy, which is dynamic. All of the doom and gloom scenarios regarding outsourcing were the result of static thinking. But the real dynamic world is still changing and evolving and growing.
Every action changes the world. This is true whether the actions are done individually by one person, or whether they are the aggregate actions of millions. We could follow the cascade of changes that occurs when outsourcing is done. The domestic layoff increases the domestic supply of skilled technical workers, at the same time it reduces the supply of same overseas. Similar changes occur to the demand. This makes it slightly more attractive to hire domestically and slightly less to hire overseas. But more than that, the net demand for skilled technical workers has risen, and thus their net salaries as well. It doesn't happen instantly (and it doesn't happen in a vacumn), but it does happen. The outsourcing also causes development costs to drop, giving the consumer lower prices (or for the cynical among you, longer intervals between price increases). Companies that are awash in case are very few and very far inbetween. Greater profits means more investment, more research and development, and more hiring.
I could go on, but I hope you get the point by now. The economy isn't a static zero-sum game. Bob may feel intensely depressed that he got laid off, but the overall economy has improved. If Bob is still unemployed, then it's up to Bob to do something about it, because his peers have gone on to re-employ themselves at higher salaries.
p.s. I actually know a farrier. Before you go bitching about the tech sector economy, go talk to him about the farrier economy. The world changes, and you must be prepared to change along with it.
Which is far far longer than any third world nation. Their cultures may have been around longer, but its rare to find a stable government of theirs older than one generation.
If you believe that a "constitutionally-bound Republican government" will end suffering and poverty, I recommend you descend from your ivory tower and walk among the ghettos and homeless shelters of your local city sometime. That you visit some truly poor and struggling families.
I have looked around. I have lived in those neighborhoods in fact. There is indeed poverty here. *BUT* it is nothing like the destitution that exists in most third world nations. Compare the poor nieghborhoods of San Diego to the poor neighborhoods of Tijuana a mere ten miles to the south in Mexico. There is no comparison! The poor in the US, Canada and western Europe are wealthy compared to the poor elsewhere.
When you look at those countries with the highest mean standard of living, they all have something in common: western style political and economic liberalism. Even the so-called "socialist" nations of Scandanavia are really liberal capitalist beneath the surface. Even though the west is far from perfect, it's a much better place to be poor than the third world.
The DMCA IS Copyright! But even in pre-DMCA copyright law, you're still not allowed to willfully facilitate copyright infringement (just as you're not allowed to willfully facilitate any crime).
Granted, these are patches and copyright probably hasn't been violated on the other side of the link. But the key word is "probably", and legal prudence says to take the links down rather than listen to the ranters on Slashdot.
If you have evidence that the Clinton administration actually violated wiretapping laws, as the Bush administration seems to have done, a lot of people would like to see it.
Ummm, the point is, neither one of them violated any wiretapping laws. As much as I may dislike warrantless wiretapping, they are allowed to the POTUS under certain circumstances.
A) There should not be preferences in distros towards are against any particular video hardware, ESPECIALLY the ones with Open Source drivers.
B) My laptop has an ATI mobile chipset, and its graphics runs rings around anything I've ever seen on Windows/Nvidia laptop. Of course, my laptop is a Mac iBook...
What's also missing is the "zero-user" configurability that Windows has
Just because Windows tends to be easier to configure than Unix/Linux/BSD, doesn't mean that it has "zero-user" configurability. If you buy an OEM machine with an OEM Windows, then you don't need to configure it. But anything else and you're going to have to occasionally put on your "tech" hat.
If you reject the terms of Apple's license, but obtain a copy of their software anyway (whether by downloading it from a P2P network or going to a store and paying for a boxed copy), you are not permitted to use the software.
But you are permitted to use it! Even on non-Apple hardware! What you are not permitted to do is to violate copyright law (in its incarnation as DMCA) by publicly posting patches to facilitate others to do the same.
And it also clearly states that one MUST agree to it before gaining any privileges contained in it. In those cases where the software links to non-GPL libraries, you can't even *run* the software without entering into a contractual relationship with the author.
That isn't answering the question. The question instead is: would you have no concerns about violating the terms of the GPL if there was no intention of using FOSS "support"?
I think it is a very fair question. Everytime there is even the faintest rumour that the GPL might have been violated, the GPL advocates start screaming rape. Yet when Apple goes after some guys who violate their license, the same people (yes, the same people) say its unfair that Apple is enforcing its license.
Life isn't a one-way street. The rights you demand for yourself must be given to everyone. When you assert the validity of copyright for yourself (since the GPL is based wholly on copyright) you must assert its validity on everyone else.
How true. The left acts as if Bush invented wiretaps without judicial oversight, but it was done during the Clinton administration as well. And the right acts as if pork is a Democrat sin, while the biggest pork purveyors are Republicans.
But the OS still knows that it is an executable. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to execute it. It is not the "icon" which is the problem, it is that Mail.app (apparently) lets you run an executable.
On Linux MIME scanning is used to make this type of attack significantly harder. A files icon is assigned by the operating system according to what type of file it actually appears to be, and executables cannot choose their own icons.
I don't know what Linux you are using, but that's not the way it works with any Linux I have ever used. The file icon gets assigned by the desktop and/or file manager, typically as the result of an included.desktop file in the case of packaged executables. Granted, the icon is not embedded in the file like it is in Windows or OSX, but neither is it significantly difficult to fool an unalert Linux/BSD/Unix user.
For example, I could distribute a.desktop file with the title of "sexypic.jpg", an executable field specifying bash and a -e command, and specifying the system jpg icon for its icon. Tada! A Linux executable masquerading as a jpg file, complete with jpg icon.
Slashdot Mirror
workers in india are not "new technology" a-la the farriers example.
The Indian tech workers may not be developing disruptive new technologies, but they are improving existing technologies and making them cheaper. The result is the same on a smaller scale. It is still progressing technology as a whole.
These companies make obscene profit margins
The company I work for is one of the ten largest in the world. It heavily engages in outsourcing. Yet it has a profit margin of only 2-3%. They can't sacrifice their profit margin because there's no room to sacrifice! That two to three percent may be billions, but spread out over the hundreds of thousands of employees (and even more investors), it's impossible to call it "obscene".
I don't think you grasp how corporations work. You can measure their profit margins by the dividends that flow into *your* 401k or IRA (if you have one, that is). If they don't share their profits with their investors, they would be sued out of business. I am not a fan of the public corporation, and have ranted about them on this forum before. But despite that they are not the source of all suffering you make them out to be.
At the current wages at the professional level, recent college graduates can't get enough to furnish their apartments and eat at the same time!
There's no one in my company who can't afford food. At least I've never seen any of my fellow employees starving. Not even the interns. Sure there are many of them that can't afford a nice house or spacious apartment, but that's because this is the middle of Silicon Valley where houses start at half a million dollars.
The world is not quite so horrible as you make it out to be.
Actually, you can NOT sell GPLd software. You can charge for support, for the cost of distribution, and for the cost of the media, but you can NOT sell the actual software. The GPL is quite clear on this regard. Otherwise the buyer would now own his copy of the software, and no longer be bound by your license.
So in other words, you would want the Chinese people to regress back to $1/day wages, just so you can keep a cushy tech job. What a fucking racist!
Talk to my friend the farrier. He'll set you straight. Imagine what the world would be like if "labor rights" in the 1910's prevented any farrier from losing their job.
Farriers lost their jobs because of the demand for technology. The same demand for technology is driving outsourcing. If you're a staticist who wants an unchanging world, don't bitch at the corporations, bitch at the people who are demanding more technology at cheaper prices.
From my perspective, we are indeed seeing a rise in higher paying jobs in the tech sector. Heck, we're seeing high paying jobs in the manufacturing sector as well!
Everyone I personally know who got laid off due to outsourcing is now employed at a better job. A friend got laid off and three days later had another job at $20k more a year. Another friend got hired back at the same company, got his pension and seniority back, received an apology, and got a raise to boot.
But no one got the *exact* same kind of job back. If you're sitting around waiting for your old job to come back, stop wasting your time, because it won't happen.
There's nothing to say the tech industry wouldn't be even more vibrant without the outsourcing.
Actually, there's a LOT to say that it wouldn't have been. The motive force that drives economies is individual action. Taken as an aggregate, they are known as "the market". Outsourcing occurred because the market demanded more tech goods at lower prices. Given a supply of cheap tech labor in India, it was only natural that it would be used to accomplish that. This enabled more tech goods at lower prices. The market benefited, and since the market is nothing but the aggregate of its individual actors, we all benefited.
This doesn't meant that there wasn't local and temporary displacement pains. There surely were. I work for a major medical technology company. We had a lot of local temporary pain because of outsourcing. We're still getting it because we're still outsourcing (now to eastern Europe). However, because of outsourcing, your physician has better and cheaper medical technology, sooner than he would otherwise have had it.
If the government had intervened in the market, and prevented outsourcing, the result would have been less technology at higher prices. Frankly, I'm glad we're not stuck in the boom of 1999.
The pop economics promulgated by the politicians and media is static. But that's not the real economy, which is dynamic. All of the doom and gloom scenarios regarding outsourcing were the result of static thinking. But the real dynamic world is still changing and evolving and growing.
Every action changes the world. This is true whether the actions are done individually by one person, or whether they are the aggregate actions of millions. We could follow the cascade of changes that occurs when outsourcing is done. The domestic layoff increases the domestic supply of skilled technical workers, at the same time it reduces the supply of same overseas. Similar changes occur to the demand. This makes it slightly more attractive to hire domestically and slightly less to hire overseas. But more than that, the net demand for skilled technical workers has risen, and thus their net salaries as well. It doesn't happen instantly (and it doesn't happen in a vacumn), but it does happen. The outsourcing also causes development costs to drop, giving the consumer lower prices (or for the cynical among you, longer intervals between price increases). Companies that are awash in case are very few and very far inbetween. Greater profits means more investment, more research and development, and more hiring.
I could go on, but I hope you get the point by now. The economy isn't a static zero-sum game. Bob may feel intensely depressed that he got laid off, but the overall economy has improved. If Bob is still unemployed, then it's up to Bob to do something about it, because his peers have gone on to re-employ themselves at higher salaries.
p.s. I actually know a farrier. Before you go bitching about the tech sector economy, go talk to him about the farrier economy. The world changes, and you must be prepared to change along with it.
I'm not forgetting that. The only thing I fear from freedom are the hordes of unemployed bureaucrats rioting.
We've been around for barely over 200 years...
Which is far far longer than any third world nation. Their cultures may have been around longer, but its rare to find a stable government of theirs older than one generation.
If you believe that a "constitutionally-bound Republican government" will end suffering and poverty, I recommend you descend from your ivory tower and walk among the ghettos and homeless shelters of your local city sometime. That you visit some truly poor and struggling families.
I have looked around. I have lived in those neighborhoods in fact. There is indeed poverty here. *BUT* it is nothing like the destitution that exists in most third world nations. Compare the poor nieghborhoods of San Diego to the poor neighborhoods of Tijuana a mere ten miles to the south in Mexico. There is no comparison! The poor in the US, Canada and western Europe are wealthy compared to the poor elsewhere.
When you look at those countries with the highest mean standard of living, they all have something in common: western style political and economic liberalism. Even the so-called "socialist" nations of Scandanavia are really liberal capitalist beneath the surface. Even though the west is far from perfect, it's a much better place to be poor than the third world.
People would take you more seriously if you didn't spit so much when you talk...
It only violates the DMCA.
The DMCA IS Copyright! But even in pre-DMCA copyright law, you're still not allowed to willfully facilitate copyright infringement (just as you're not allowed to willfully facilitate any crime).
Granted, these are patches and copyright probably hasn't been violated on the other side of the link. But the key word is "probably", and legal prudence says to take the links down rather than listen to the ranters on Slashdot.
If you have evidence that the Clinton administration actually violated wiretapping laws, as the Bush administration seems to have done, a lot of people would like to see it.
Ummm, the point is, neither one of them violated any wiretapping laws. As much as I may dislike warrantless wiretapping, they are allowed to the POTUS under certain circumstances.
A) There should not be preferences in distros towards are against any particular video hardware, ESPECIALLY the ones with Open Source drivers.
B) My laptop has an ATI mobile chipset, and its graphics runs rings around anything I've ever seen on Windows/Nvidia laptop. Of course, my laptop is a Mac iBook...
What's also missing is the "zero-user" configurability that Windows has
Just because Windows tends to be easier to configure than Unix/Linux/BSD, doesn't mean that it has "zero-user" configurability. If you buy an OEM machine with an OEM Windows, then you don't need to configure it. But anything else and you're going to have to occasionally put on your "tech" hat.
Why is it passing it to bash to execute if it doesn't think it's an executable?
If you reject the terms of Apple's license, but obtain a copy of their software anyway (whether by downloading it from a P2P network or going to a store and paying for a boxed copy), you are not permitted to use the software.
But you are permitted to use it! Even on non-Apple hardware! What you are not permitted to do is to violate copyright law (in its incarnation as DMCA) by publicly posting patches to facilitate others to do the same.
The GPL clearly states that it is not a contract
And it also clearly states that one MUST agree to it before gaining any privileges contained in it. In those cases where the software links to non-GPL libraries, you can't even *run* the software without entering into a contractual relationship with the author.
That isn't answering the question. The question instead is: would you have no concerns about violating the terms of the GPL if there was no intention of using FOSS "support"?
I think it is a very fair question. Everytime there is even the faintest rumour that the GPL might have been violated, the GPL advocates start screaming rape. Yet when Apple goes after some guys who violate their license, the same people (yes, the same people) say its unfair that Apple is enforcing its license.
Life isn't a one-way street. The rights you demand for yourself must be given to everyone. When you assert the validity of copyright for yourself (since the GPL is based wholly on copyright) you must assert its validity on everyone else.
If this isn't a corporation stomping on a little guy, I don't know what is.
But what if were the reverse? What if it were a little guy forcing Big Evil(tm) Apple to remove copyright violating links from its site?
How true. The left acts as if Bush invented wiretaps without judicial oversight, but it was done during the Clinton administration as well. And the right acts as if pork is a Democrat sin, while the biggest pork purveyors are Republicans.
I find Camino to be more real-world-compatible than Safari
In other words, it renders pages the way Microsoft wants them rendered.
But the OS still knows that it is an executable. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to execute it. It is not the "icon" which is the problem, it is that Mail.app (apparently) lets you run an executable.
Clicking on the executable will also prompt you with the "you haven't run this application before" dialog.
On Linux MIME scanning is used to make this type of attack significantly harder. A files icon is assigned by the operating system according to what type of file it actually appears to be, and executables cannot choose their own icons.
.desktop file in the case of packaged executables. Granted, the icon is not embedded in the file like it is in Windows or OSX, but neither is it significantly difficult to fool an unalert Linux/BSD/Unix user.
.desktop file with the title of "sexypic.jpg", an executable field specifying bash and a -e command, and specifying the system jpg icon for its icon. Tada! A Linux executable masquerading as a jpg file, complete with jpg icon.
I don't know what Linux you are using, but that's not the way it works with any Linux I have ever used. The file icon gets assigned by the desktop and/or file manager, typically as the result of an included
For example, I could distribute a
Mac admin accounts are not like Windows admin accounts. They are not root accounts. You still have to sudo to do any root-level administration.