I've got a 75Mhz PI Toshiba laptop that still works. The battery has no "memory" left, but other than that it's just as good as the day it was purchased. (Better, since someone upgraded the memory to 96Mb). It's a work machine that I salvaged from the trash. I slapped a minimal Slackware on it, and use it as a portable terminal. It's a very solid machine, and I've even dropped it from desk height and it still works.
Why yes, yes I did! I put both Gentoo and FreeBSD on it. Unlike Windows, both of those ran cool enough that a battery could last two and a half hours. But beyond that, not much difference hardware-wise.
Yes, the OS makes a difference. OSX makes much better use of the video card, so that the UI is smooth and responsive (even with all eyecandy turned on) whereas the Windows UI on a much faster x86 is not. Much of this is due to the video drivers, which in Windows case, seem to be focused solely on 3D DirectX. Why can I run a fully textured Doom3 game with no problems, but moving a simple 2D window on the desktop is still jerky?
Preach it! I bought Compaq laptop last year for $500, and was very disappointed in it. I could go on an on about all its deficiencies. I sold it to my brother. Last week I bought an iBook for $999, and am extremely pleased with it. It has lower power consumption and runs cooler (it's safe for your nuts), but with zippier performance. Wifi and bluetooth are built in and work out of the box. Sleeping and waking is nearly instantaneous. And to top it off, it's only two thirds the size and half the weight. There are dozens of little things I could mention as well. Overall the quality is far superior to that of PC laptops half the price.
This is one of the main reasons I dislike Apple as a company: the arrogance.
Wow! You must really hate Microsoft as a company then too! Who the hell is Bill Gates to tell you what you can or cannot do with the software you bought from him?
p.s. I agree with your basic idea, that I should be able to do what I want with the software I have purchased (within the limits of a minimal copyright regime). It is your singling Steve Jobs out in particular that I object to.
In other words, it's okay for China to block freedom and democracy because the "West" blocks child pornography? Pardon me if I don't see the moral equivalence.
A better comparison would be France and Germany blocking certain Nazi related information. It is a better comparison because the "West" (as a whole) condemns it as well.
Supposing that they are indeed only looking for the obvious quick buck, you'd think you'd see preinstalled Linux all over the place.
But no one wants a preinstalled Linux! That's the point! Not even Linux users want it, because it will invariably be the WRONG distro. (Besides, most Linux users dual boot anyway).
Manufacturers install Windows because PC consumers want Windows. They are familiar with it, any extra hardware or software they buy will work with it, and support monkeys are a dime a dozen. You may like the idea of a preinstalled Linux, and might even publicly praise a company that did it, but would you actually go out and buy one?
Walmart used to sell a PC with preinstalled Linux. Do they still? What happened to it? It may still be around, but if so I doubt if it's flying off the shelves.
...if the market were truely free to decide the point.
But the market IS FREE to decide the point. Just because they aren't deciding it the way you want it decided is beside the point. Volume discounts are legal, ethical and moral, regardless of the size of the company. A restriction on volume discounts requires government intervention into the marketplace, which makes the market unfree. These interventions typically take the form of arbitrary anti-trust decisions.
You CAN have a free market with anti-trust in your legal framework. But you cannot have one when the anti-trust is arbitrary, as it is in the US legal system. The error in the US system is to treat competitive actions as anti-competitive.
Because no one wants them. Some manufacturers have done this in the past, but it turned out that there weren't enough buyers to make it worthwhile. This is because a pre-install is a good in its own right, and sufficiently valuable that consumers are willing to pay for it.
And don't tell me Linux isn't preinstalled because nobody wants it.
Nobody wants it.
At least, nobody wants it enough to pay a premium for it. Because a Linux pre-install is a *separate* product from the Windows pre-install, it doesn't get made for free. It actually costs the manufacturer to provide Linux pre-isntalls. If the demand for Linux pre-installs is high enough then the cost is worth it. But if not, it's a loss, and so the manufacturer stops providing that product line.
Linux users, as a whole, are perfectly capable of installing Linux on their own. Even if you did pre-install Linux, odds are the Linux user is going to slap on another distribution anyway. You might as well be marketing OS-less systems rather than Linux systems.
In short, the absence of Linux pre-installs on desktop machines from the large OEMs is not evidence of a dastardly conspiracy.
Bandwidth is cheap, but so is processing power. My client systems are now more powerful than many servers. For some *types* of applications, client/server still makes sense. But to suggest that the client should only be used for rendering remote apps is stupid.
I want my data to be local, as well as the software that manipulates it.
If there is a market for bandwidth, then let the market solve this problem. Unfortunately, too many people on BOTH sides of the issue don't want the market involved.
Charging Google for their bandwidth usage is as silly as a State Department of Roads sending Walmart a bill for their customer's highway usage. That's because Google isn't the the user of the bandwidth.
Way back in the beginning of internet time, if things had coalesced so that individual users paid for their individual bandwidth use, there wouls be no problem today. There have been attempts to do this since, but the users have gotten too used to the flat fee structure to give it up. People now expect that their $29.95 ISP fee entitles them to unlimited bandwidth.
But what about the next level up? What about charging ISPs for their bandwidth usage? Many are also bandwidth providers themselves. If the rates for one router get too high, just route around it. You'll have actual competition between routes, backbones and networks, so prices would tend towards an equilibrium. Charge too much and see your customers drop away.
Wow, talk about wrong. RMS does want software to be free, true, because he believes that sharing code is morally right.
First of all, your reply is a non sequitur. It does not follow my statement about software ownership. RMS has indeed said, and repeatedly said, that software should not be owned. In fact, he even has a complete essay with the title "Software Should Not Be Owned."
But in reply to your reply, RMS believes that sharing code should be a moral obligation. He believes that the mere act of giving someone a copy of software morally obligates them to make the source code available as well. A free man places obligations upon himself. An unfree man has obligations placed on him by others.
...unlike his competition who passed the DMCA and routinely lobby the government to shut him down.
Untrue. His competition has never lobbied to "shut him down". Some people may have lobbied for copyright extensions and DMCA and UCITA and stuff like that, but no one has ever lobbied to "shut him down". Darl McBride has said some loopy stuff about constitutionality, to be sure, but even he hasn't lobbied congress to "shut him down". Where do you come up with shit like this?
...the proprietary vendors are trying to steal code.
There once was a fabulous apple tree. No matter how many apples one would take from it, there were just as many as before! When this was heard by the villagers they all rushed to the apple tree and took apples. But no matter how many they took, there were just as many apples as before. But some of them came and took apples and locked them within a chest, so that none could steal them. And they laughed at the other villagers, saying, "Look, they do not protect their apples. Surely a thief will come and steal them."
Re:Of course time travel is possible!
on
No Time Travel, Sorry
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Only change: Alfred E. Neuman has been elected. Twice.
Funny - we don't have any laws requiring that the hoods on cars not be welded shut, yet no commercially available vehicle comes with its hood welded shut.
But we do have automobile parts that are welded shut, usually with stickers on them saying "warranty void if opened". But even if hoods were welded shut, I still can't imagine RMS going off an a moral crusade to eliminate welding. His goal isn't to make his own software the way he wants it, his goal is to make ALL software EVERYWHERE the way he wants it.
That's funny, considering that RMS's argument on the point is that a free market is all that is necessary, very much the opposite of Marxism.
But RMS rejects a free market in software. He rejects the private ownership of software, and rejects the freedom to buy and sell closed software. RMS would not grant me the right to sell a program without its source code.
His ideal is a socialism of software. After the need for coercive copyleft "withers away", all software will be owned in common. One would be allowed to buy and sell services and warranties and support contracts, but one would not be allowed to buy or sell software, because software will not be a property that can be owned.
What makes RMS different than Marx is that he rejects the use of violence to get his way, and seems (mostly) content with volunteerist avenues.
The only freedom that the GPL restricts is the freedom to restrict someone else's freedom.
But I am NOT restricting your freedom. That is what you fail to understand. If I hoarde my own code and keep it secret, that is between me and my users, and not you. So stop butting in like some moral policeman. But even if I hoarde YOUR code and keep it secret, it only violates your authorial privilege, it does not restrict your freedom.
I mentioned Apple because it is the most prominent and visible use of the BSD code base. But there are hundreds of others contributing back without being asked.
But if they didn't, so what? Stop spending so much time tallying moral ledgerboooks. Stop being selfish! You should be sharing your code without any concern whether other people are sharing back. You should be content with your own morality, and let others worry about themselves.
Compare and contrast Muslim and Christian reactions to insults against their religion.
In 1989, Salman Rushdie released "Satanic Verses" and Martin Scorcese released "Last Temptation of Christ". Guess which person received death threats and had to go into hiding.
One religion engages in violence, attacks embassies, riots in the streets, beheads foreigners, and straps bombs to their children. The other peacefully urges boycotts through newsletters. Guess which one is which.
If that Danish cartoon had been of the Pope, Rome would not be rioting. If it had been of Joseph Smith, Salt Lake City would not be rioting.
Yes, there is plenty of violence in Christianity's past. The difference is that we are now in the present. Christianity has given up violence, and when it does happen in Christ's name, it is thoroughly condemned. But Islam as a whole has returned to the violent eighth century.
But if you use his "free" software in a manner he does not like, he WILL use the coercive power of government to stop you. He has repeatedly threatened legal action against violators of his license. He has even gone so far as to advocate taxes to support "free" software.
If all he were doing was promulgating ideas, there would be no problem. But the temptation of government power is too strong for him, and he resorts to coercive copyright to enforce his license. His concept of "copyleft" cannot exist without a foundation of coercive legal enforcement. His argument that copyleft wouldn't be needed if there weren't copyright is specious, and not much different than Marx's argument that proletarian dictatorships wouldn't be needed if there weren't authoritarian governments.
Of course not! RMS is a master of redefining words to make them mean what he wants them to mean. Unfortunately he has managed to convince a significant number of people into using his redefinitions. In his worldview, freedom cannot exist without restriction, and common goods cannot exist without controlling ownership. It is an Orwellian "GNUspeak".
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I've got a 75Mhz PI Toshiba laptop that still works. The battery has no "memory" left, but other than that it's just as good as the day it was purchased. (Better, since someone upgraded the memory to 96Mb). It's a work machine that I salvaged from the trash. I slapped a minimal Slackware on it, and use it as a portable terminal. It's a very solid machine, and I've even dropped it from desk height and it still works.
Did you try a different OS on it?
Why yes, yes I did! I put both Gentoo and FreeBSD on it. Unlike Windows, both of those ran cool enough that a battery could last two and a half hours. But beyond that, not much difference hardware-wise.
Yes, the OS makes a difference. OSX makes much better use of the video card, so that the UI is smooth and responsive (even with all eyecandy turned on) whereas the Windows UI on a much faster x86 is not. Much of this is due to the video drivers, which in Windows case, seem to be focused solely on 3D DirectX. Why can I run a fully textured Doom3 game with no problems, but moving a simple 2D window on the desktop is still jerky?
Unix mainframes and minis were great...
Unix mainframes? What Unix mainframes? Unix caught on because it ran on cheap minis. Unix on minis did to mainframes what PCs did to minis.
Preach it! I bought Compaq laptop last year for $500, and was very disappointed in it. I could go on an on about all its deficiencies. I sold it to my brother. Last week I bought an iBook for $999, and am extremely pleased with it. It has lower power consumption and runs cooler (it's safe for your nuts), but with zippier performance. Wifi and bluetooth are built in and work out of the box. Sleeping and waking is nearly instantaneous. And to top it off, it's only two thirds the size and half the weight. There are dozens of little things I could mention as well. Overall the quality is far superior to that of PC laptops half the price.
This is one of the main reasons I dislike Apple as a company: the arrogance.
Wow! You must really hate Microsoft as a company then too! Who the hell is Bill Gates to tell you what you can or cannot do with the software you bought from him?
p.s. I agree with your basic idea, that I should be able to do what I want with the software I have purchased (within the limits of a minimal copyright regime). It is your singling Steve Jobs out in particular that I object to.
In other words, it's okay for China to block freedom and democracy because the "West" blocks child pornography? Pardon me if I don't see the moral equivalence.
A better comparison would be France and Germany blocking certain Nazi related information. It is a better comparison because the "West" (as a whole) condemns it as well.
Supposing that they are indeed only looking for the obvious quick buck, you'd think you'd see preinstalled Linux all over the place.
But no one wants a preinstalled Linux! That's the point! Not even Linux users want it, because it will invariably be the WRONG distro. (Besides, most Linux users dual boot anyway).
Manufacturers install Windows because PC consumers want Windows. They are familiar with it, any extra hardware or software they buy will work with it, and support monkeys are a dime a dozen. You may like the idea of a preinstalled Linux, and might even publicly praise a company that did it, but would you actually go out and buy one?
Walmart used to sell a PC with preinstalled Linux. Do they still? What happened to it? It may still be around, but if so I doubt if it's flying off the shelves.
A: Everyone does it != OK.
Why is it not ok? What is it about bulk/bundle sales that is immoral or unethical?
p.s. And before you reply "it reduces competition", realize that *every* competitive action reduces competition.
I don't know. How come I can't buy an automobile without tires?
...if the market were truely free to decide the point.
But the market IS FREE to decide the point. Just because they aren't deciding it the way you want it decided is beside the point. Volume discounts are legal, ethical and moral, regardless of the size of the company. A restriction on volume discounts requires government intervention into the marketplace, which makes the market unfree. These interventions typically take the form of arbitrary anti-trust decisions.
You CAN have a free market with anti-trust in your legal framework. But you cannot have one when the anti-trust is arbitrary, as it is in the US legal system. The error in the US system is to treat competitive actions as anti-competitive.
And why not do this?
Because no one wants them. Some manufacturers have done this in the past, but it turned out that there weren't enough buyers to make it worthwhile. This is because a pre-install is a good in its own right, and sufficiently valuable that consumers are willing to pay for it.
And don't tell me Linux isn't preinstalled because nobody wants it.
Nobody wants it.
At least, nobody wants it enough to pay a premium for it. Because a Linux pre-install is a *separate* product from the Windows pre-install, it doesn't get made for free. It actually costs the manufacturer to provide Linux pre-isntalls. If the demand for Linux pre-installs is high enough then the cost is worth it. But if not, it's a loss, and so the manufacturer stops providing that product line.
Linux users, as a whole, are perfectly capable of installing Linux on their own. Even if you did pre-install Linux, odds are the Linux user is going to slap on another distribution anyway. You might as well be marketing OS-less systems rather than Linux systems.
In short, the absence of Linux pre-installs on desktop machines from the large OEMs is not evidence of a dastardly conspiracy.
Broadband welfare for the masses!
Bandwidth is cheap, but so is processing power. My client systems are now more powerful than many servers. For some *types* of applications, client/server still makes sense. But to suggest that the client should only be used for rendering remote apps is stupid.
I want my data to be local, as well as the software that manipulates it.
If there is a market for bandwidth, then let the market solve this problem. Unfortunately, too many people on BOTH sides of the issue don't want the market involved.
Charging Google for their bandwidth usage is as silly as a State Department of Roads sending Walmart a bill for their customer's highway usage. That's because Google isn't the the user of the bandwidth.
Way back in the beginning of internet time, if things had coalesced so that individual users paid for their individual bandwidth use, there wouls be no problem today. There have been attempts to do this since, but the users have gotten too used to the flat fee structure to give it up. People now expect that their $29.95 ISP fee entitles them to unlimited bandwidth.
But what about the next level up? What about charging ISPs for their bandwidth usage? Many are also bandwidth providers themselves. If the rates for one router get too high, just route around it. You'll have actual competition between routes, backbones and networks, so prices would tend towards an equilibrium. Charge too much and see your customers drop away.
Java: "Write once, cross your fingers everywhere."
Wow, talk about wrong. RMS does want software to be free, true, because he believes that sharing code is morally right.
...unlike his competition who passed the DMCA and routinely lobby the government to shut him down.
...the proprietary vendors are trying to steal code.
First of all, your reply is a non sequitur. It does not follow my statement about software ownership. RMS has indeed said, and repeatedly said, that software should not be owned. In fact, he even has a complete essay with the title "Software Should Not Be Owned."
But in reply to your reply, RMS believes that sharing code should be a moral obligation. He believes that the mere act of giving someone a copy of software morally obligates them to make the source code available as well. A free man places obligations upon himself. An unfree man has obligations placed on him by others.
Untrue. His competition has never lobbied to "shut him down". Some people may have lobbied for copyright extensions and DMCA and UCITA and stuff like that, but no one has ever lobbied to "shut him down". Darl McBride has said some loopy stuff about constitutionality, to be sure, but even he hasn't lobbied congress to "shut him down". Where do you come up with shit like this?
There once was a fabulous apple tree. No matter how many apples one would take from it, there were just as many as before! When this was heard by the villagers they all rushed to the apple tree and took apples. But no matter how many they took, there were just as many apples as before. But some of them came and took apples and locked them within a chest, so that none could steal them. And they laughed at the other villagers, saying, "Look, they do not protect their apples. Surely a thief will come and steal them."
Only change: Alfred E. Neuman has been elected. Twice.
And his wife might get elected in 2008 as well...
Funny - we don't have any laws requiring that the hoods on cars not be welded shut, yet no commercially available vehicle comes with its hood welded shut.
But we do have automobile parts that are welded shut, usually with stickers on them saying "warranty void if opened". But even if hoods were welded shut, I still can't imagine RMS going off an a moral crusade to eliminate welding. His goal isn't to make his own software the way he wants it, his goal is to make ALL software EVERYWHERE the way he wants it.
That's funny, considering that RMS's argument on the point is that a free market is all that is necessary, very much the opposite of Marxism.
But RMS rejects a free market in software. He rejects the private ownership of software, and rejects the freedom to buy and sell closed software. RMS would not grant me the right to sell a program without its source code.
His ideal is a socialism of software. After the need for coercive copyleft "withers away", all software will be owned in common. One would be allowed to buy and sell services and warranties and support contracts, but one would not be allowed to buy or sell software, because software will not be a property that can be owned.
What makes RMS different than Marx is that he rejects the use of violence to get his way, and seems (mostly) content with volunteerist avenues.
The only freedom that the GPL restricts is the freedom to restrict someone else's freedom.
But I am NOT restricting your freedom. That is what you fail to understand. If I hoarde my own code and keep it secret, that is between me and my users, and not you. So stop butting in like some moral policeman. But even if I hoarde YOUR code and keep it secret, it only violates your authorial privilege, it does not restrict your freedom.
I mentioned Apple because it is the most prominent and visible use of the BSD code base. But there are hundreds of others contributing back without being asked.
But if they didn't, so what? Stop spending so much time tallying moral ledgerboooks. Stop being selfish! You should be sharing your code without any concern whether other people are sharing back. You should be content with your own morality, and let others worry about themselves.
Compare and contrast Muslim and Christian reactions to insults against their religion.
In 1989, Salman Rushdie released "Satanic Verses" and Martin Scorcese released "Last Temptation of Christ". Guess which person received death threats and had to go into hiding.
One religion engages in violence, attacks embassies, riots in the streets, beheads foreigners, and straps bombs to their children. The other peacefully urges boycotts through newsletters. Guess which one is which.
If that Danish cartoon had been of the Pope, Rome would not be rioting. If it had been of Joseph Smith, Salt Lake City would not be rioting.
Yes, there is plenty of violence in Christianity's past. The difference is that we are now in the present. Christianity has given up violence, and when it does happen in Christ's name, it is thoroughly condemned. But Islam as a whole has returned to the violent eighth century.
But if you use his "free" software in a manner he does not like, he WILL use the coercive power of government to stop you. He has repeatedly threatened legal action against violators of his license. He has even gone so far as to advocate taxes to support "free" software.
If all he were doing was promulgating ideas, there would be no problem. But the temptation of government power is too strong for him, and he resorts to coercive copyright to enforce his license. His concept of "copyleft" cannot exist without a foundation of coercive legal enforcement. His argument that copyleft wouldn't be needed if there weren't copyright is specious, and not much different than Marx's argument that proletarian dictatorships wouldn't be needed if there weren't authoritarian governments.
Is that honestly what freedom means?
Of course not! RMS is a master of redefining words to make them mean what he wants them to mean. Unfortunately he has managed to convince a significant number of people into using his redefinitions. In his worldview, freedom cannot exist without restriction, and common goods cannot exist without controlling ownership. It is an Orwellian "GNUspeak".
"Enforced freedom" is an oxymoron.