There is NO evidence that deregulated markets result in more competition. Even if you go back to the father of laissez-faire capitalism, Adam Smith, he addresses this point in the Wealth of Nations and his Theory of Moral Sentiment. He explicitly talks about the need to regulate to prevent large companies. Look at the history of start-up industries in Germany at the turn of the century: conglomeration followed quickly where the companies with the largest initial capital-base bought out their competitors. You are missing the whole point: the decisions made in/by/for companies/shareholders are necessarily to benefit those people. They are not thinking of long-term advantages. A smaller company with a great, new product will very easily be bought up be a larger,richer company. This, in general is what happens. It makes a lot of sense to reward the innovators beyond their wildest dreams and thus remove them from the market and competition. Possibly they could pluckily stick by their product and attempt to fight the larger company's strangle-hold over distribution chains and economy-of-scale pricing, but it's a risk. Result? most people will and do sell out - and they are rewarded handsomely for it. You admit that the premier example of de-regulation: the baby bells are combining yet want to religiously believe that , but new players (cable telephony, internet telephony, wireless, satellite) are slowly emerging. - yeah, like AOL/TW ! At best, the closest that reality approximates to your assertions is that there are standing waves of companies gaining monopoly, pissing off their customers, failing and then their large competitors doing the same. Who wants that? There will always be a monopoly even if it's not the same one. Regulate the fuckers! Make them do what we want - set a stated goal of service to the public, don't rely religiously on a belief that a system which has been around for c.150 years is suddenly going to become better!
I shudder. I think that is a possible direction if net censorship in public institutions reaches the low that McCain et al would like. I don't know about the porn/art line myself - I think we all have our own and,as you say, censorship is NOT the answer.
I totally agree that the trick is to put in negative feedback, but not to have the disadvantages of a tyrannical government. Perhaps some "Minimal Statists" would want to comment on that.
I don't agree that In a given environment one organism/organization will tend to exploit and dominate a particular niche - environments are usually not that constant. Consider earth for example - a spadeful of soil contains millions of different species of bacteria and invertebrates. Even in simpler examples used in ecology there are complicated dynamic relationships - the simplest, perhaps apocryphal example being the Hudson's Bay trapping companies data on hares and foxes (just 2 species) that fluctuates up and down. Do either of them dominate? (Of course, if you define niche narrowly enough then you can specialize it to agree with your point).
So, I think that the trick is that the extremely limited evolutionary situation that is set up by our present market-economy is one that has effectively immortal organisms that don't need to reproduce, don't need to have varying offspring. So, right there we've removed one of the fundamental conditions that has to stand if we're going to get "evolution" (Ev = Variation + Selection). These entities are more like huge plasmodia/slugs slithering over the commercial landscape aggregating and digesting smaller companies. But that's because we've created the set of rules that provide them with an unusually stable, undisturbed environment.
A precursor technology to this was used in Soccer games in the UK a few years ago. From what I remember, they replaced the (as you rightly say: tacky) signs with billboards that had a peculiar shade of blue on them - something that didn't occur very frequently. This was then replaced with live digital images. The fans copped onto this after a while and started wearing blue of that colour and there were some pretty weird images of crowds with bits of ads spread out over them.!
What sort of competition can YOU be talking about for God's sake? Do you really think that Starbucks is a good thing for competition in the coffee world? Perhaps you like bad coffee, bad movies and bad clothes - I can see you now, nasty stains of unpalatable coffee down the front of your polyester Wal-mart shirt, yukking it up over the latest Disney release.
Big business and competitive enterprise are allowed to grow free in our country.
These two things are antithetical (that means that they're opposed to each other before you ask -it's a shorter, easier word than the long complicated phrase). That's why there are laws against it, this glorious nation decided that it's citizen would be free, not ruled by their government, but ruling it, nor yet ruled by corporations. The freedom that you talk about is your freedom to be a peon, a slave and a consumer.
Is there something wrong with "aquiring" information? Please...
Well, seeing as you ask nicely - acquiring information is fine as long as you don't stop others from also acquiring it (ever hear of something called the GPL?), because that means you can make more informed decisions and the person that makes the best free choices on the basis of this free information does better. Your scenario allows for the choice between a Big Mac and an Arbys. I would like to be able to have more choice. I would like perhaps even to do my own cooking. So, run off back to your Windows box.
This has to be the best thing that I've read on/. for a while. I hadn't realized that point about the blacklists being hidden before I read this. I got a great first-person view point from this story - I can imagine McCain not getting it when questioned! Probably his bill was drafted "with the aid" of some aides and advisors from the AFA. Nice work
Melodrama maybe, but there is a point.
on
AOL Nation
·
· Score: 2
So, would you be happy with Microsoft merging with Intel and AMD? The argument that a
better bottom line, which is a major objective of corporations
totally misses the point. What other things would you allow corporations to pursue to make money? Perhaps genocide or slavery? What about snuffing out their business competitors? How about reaching a critical mass that makes them so able to leverage deals, discourage competitive entry to their market, that the only response for other corporations is to merge to become a similar size? The only logical evolutionary result of an unchecked, unregulated industry is conglomeration, aggregation and a smaller number of large companies. There is at least one good historical example of this in the dawn of modern technology - the "electrical" companies that sprang up at the tail end of the 19th century, especially in Germany. There were many of these (Einstein's father was involved in one) and they innovated and competed like mad. But they discovered that there were economies of scale and gradually accumulated until there were giants like Siemens. Lack of regulation leads to unfair competition, that is what the U.S. has found historically, that's why the laws against monopolies are there - because people generations before you saw it happening in the Steel and Mining industries and in Wood pulp and Newspapers and realized that unchecked competition leads to a shitty deal for those not in the companies.
...I usually don't like the "it's not the sort of thing that should be on/." tenor of anti-Katz folk (should those be Dogz?;-) ) but Christ - who cares who called _our-own_ pundit? I can imagine the major networks holding their breath to here what the guru has to say - I hope that isn't true! Still I suppose that they found it hard to figure out the implications of this without the insight of an "Open Source Journalist". It's interesting too how he perceives Linux as having been validated by it's adoption by IBM. Sort of makes you wonder whether he got the picture.
First, I don't understand how blocking out a competitor's logo could be ethical. It might not be a big deal, but ethical?
Assuming that you meant to s/ethical/unethical/g I can suggest what is wrong with this: up till the advent of this technology an advertiser on a billboard could be assumed to be buying not just the immediate real-life presence, but also knock-on advertising when images of real-life were propagated over TV or in newspaper photos. Now the goal-posts have been moved. Real-life advertising slots have in a sense, been devalued. The commodity has been further carved up and developed - a previously overlooked, unclaimed, implicit part of the commodity has now been staked out and put up for sale. One can imagine feelings of irritation if one were an advertiser (don't get me wrong, I have little or no sympathy for them!). So I don't think this is to do necessarily with blocking out a competitor's logo - also you make it sound as though you consider that competition mitigates any actions taken - is that really an argument?
Second, I think most of us know that pictures cannot be trusted, anyway. This has been true for a long time for photographs (especially on magazine covers), and is also true for most media reports (they can be edited without you being able to tell)
The free! article linked here makes a big deal about the fact that there are guidelines in operation at the station that prohibit the digital manipulation of news-images, and the spokesperson explained that this was a new, unregulated thing that they were doing that didn't seem to be covered by the letter of the law of those prohibitions. Also, they point out that Nat.Geog. had a huge amount of flack when they altered their magazine covers.
I guess what I'm saying is that it looks as though the biggest point here is that they are trying to commodify even more things. If we say "what's the big deal" it's just advertising and the people that deliver most of our information to most of the people are just a company and companies have to make money...etc. then we are in danger of not opposing the invasion of what used to be a previously un-sold "thing". What would the logical conclusion of this -it's all commerce- attitude be? Perhaps we shall watch disaster survivors being carried into Redcross ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h Nike-swoosh ambulances? Or at the olympics we'll be able to watch the intertwined Coke/Pepsi cans floating above the medallists (oh, didn't something like that happen already?). Or perhaps during presidential inaugurations we could watch (whoever) standing proudly beneath the golden arches.
Disclaimer: I am a math person and not a biology person, but someone gave a coloquim recently tring to talk lots of us math type into getting interested in math biology problems.
I would support the speaker on that at any rate - there is a real shortage of mathematicians that are working on biological problems. It is also true that there are some really good mathematicians and statisticians - especially in the area of phylogeny and protein-folding problems - oh, and don't forget population genetics: R.A.Fisher was responsible for a lot of the foundations of genetics and statistics.
Is it possible that the speaker was talking about A,B and Z-DNA? Anyway, if it's handy I would like to know what he was talking about. Cheers, Crush.
Contrary to popular beleive science dose contain something like ``dogma.'' Example 1: Biology only reacently (10 years) showed that DNA really is a double helix, but most biologists and the public believed this almost blindly long before it was really shown to be true. They concluded it was a double helix from scatering experiments which showed it had a ``shadow'' consistant with a double helix and a double helix seemed like a good idea for other inconclusive reasons. (Biologits even call this the central dogma)
The latter part of this statement is untrue - the "Central dogma" of molecular biology is that DNA makes RNA makes protein. This use of "Central dogma" was coined, I think, by Crick. I think he may have been using it to emphasize the fact that this was a fundamental principle for molecular biology.
As to the idea that this was only conclusively demonstrated 10 years ago - I really don't know about that. If you are dismissing all the other "inconclusive", yet highly consistent, evidence that cohered with the idea that it was a double-helix then I don't know what you would accept as reasonable evidence. What was the conclusive demonstration?
As an extremely succesful exponent of one of the most reductionist fields of science, do you feel that there are advantages to trying to pursue other methodological tactics? You would appear to hint, on your webpage, that you feel that particle physics is a foundation or basis to other sciences:
All other sciences - materials science, chemistry, biology - ultimately must rest on the basic laws of nature that govern the behavior of the elementary particles.
While not disputing this, I would question its usefulness as a perspective for those engaged in the study of biology, for example. The elucidation of biological laws is accomplishable at a level of investigation far above particle physics and would actually be hampered by a consideration of the most fundamental stuff of nature - so, this is an example of where reductionism would get it wrong. Do you think that there may be other methodological/epistemological pitfalls in the atom-smashing approach?
Well, it can't be happening that often for them. Reason I say this? The most you are liable for on a creditcard is $50, anything larger than this is their loss. So, unless we are being nickel-and-dimed in a cunning low key way (which would take a long time to return a profit and thus be vulnerable to audits) the risk/loss would be too great for the credit companies. They would be upping the amount we are liable for considerably. Perhaps I'm just naive. Why is the liability so high?;)
But aren't all those things necessary with a monolithic kernel too? Isn't there a lot of IPC, signals, etc going on? And doesn't X run as a separate server already? Thanks for the answer.
Thanks for the informative post. I realize that the following question is probably easy to ask and complicated to answer (a case of the biggest fool etc.), but why is micro-kernel performance theoretically inferior to monolithic? Is it just that there is too much extra adminatrivia to be done?
Well...do you really care about "market penetration"? Hurd sounds cool - lots of interesting new ways of doing things, it sounds as though its design makes it easier to experiment with and to develop for.
Likewise for "significantly larger market presence", "fragmentation" etc., who cares? It should be encouraged. You may be right about the company trying to market a distro with a new feature, but what's wrong with that? It'll give more people a chance to play with it at the expense of a fraction of their disk-space.
I can see HURD be used in larger server workstation with slower adaptation to new hardwares and devices.
It would seem that part of the microkernel design is to facilitate the exact opposite of what you suggest: is should provide for quicker, easier development of drivers for new hardware as these are individually testable. From what they claim on their web-page it would be much easier then the current "loadable modules" system that Linux uses. It should still be a win-win though as you say. Choice is good and allows competition - I hope that they get 0.3 out soon.
Is there a difference between what you term as "multi-cpu" and what "symmetric multiprocessors" mean? If not then this is from the GNU/Hurd page as one of the reasons why it is useful:
The Hurd implementation is aggressively multithreaded so that it runs efficiently on both single processors and symmetric multiprocessors. The Hurd interfaces are designed to allow transparent network clusters (collectives), although this feature has not yet been implemented
in the article. While it is understandable that security checks should be made for those working on sensitive systems the article seems to hinting that Chinese citizens are the prime target - it also quotes a specific number for their category. I hope this isn't going to turn into embarrassing hysteria similar to the supposed nuclear secrets leak where people get targetted unreasonably and are not allowed due process
Slashdot Mirror
Moderation by the people of the people.... ;-) ...what you need is to merge with 20 or so other moderators!
Moderation by the people of the people.... ;-) ...what you need is to merge with another moderator!
the market will adjust.
self-correcting.
slowly emerging
There is NO evidence that deregulated markets result in more competition. Even if you go back to the father of laissez-faire capitalism, Adam Smith, he addresses this point in the Wealth of Nations and his Theory of Moral Sentiment. He explicitly talks about the need to regulate to prevent large companies. Look at the history of start-up industries in Germany at the turn of the century: conglomeration followed quickly where the companies with the largest initial capital-base bought out their competitors. You are missing the whole point: the decisions made in/by/for companies/shareholders are necessarily to benefit those people. They are not thinking of long-term advantages. A smaller company with a great, new product will very easily be bought up be a larger,richer company. This, in general is what happens. It makes a lot of sense to reward the innovators beyond their wildest dreams and thus remove them from the market and competition. Possibly they could pluckily stick by their product and attempt to fight the larger company's strangle-hold over distribution chains and economy-of-scale pricing, but it's a risk. Result? most people will and do sell out - and they are rewarded handsomely for it. You admit that the premier example of de-regulation: the baby bells are combining yet want to religiously believe that , but new players (cable telephony, internet telephony, wireless, satellite) are slowly emerging. - yeah, like AOL/TW ! At best, the closest that reality approximates to your assertions is that there are standing waves of companies gaining monopoly, pissing off their customers, failing and then their large competitors doing the same. Who wants that? There will always be a monopoly even if it's not the same one. Regulate the fuckers! Make them do what we want - set a stated goal of service to the public, don't rely religiously on a belief that a system which has been around for c.150 years is suddenly going to become better!
I shudder. I think that is a possible direction if net censorship in public institutions reaches the low that McCain et al would like. I don't know about the porn/art line myself - I think we all have our own and ,as you say, censorship is NOT the answer.
I don't agree that In a given environment one organism/organization will tend to exploit and dominate a particular niche - environments are usually not that constant. Consider earth for example - a spadeful of soil contains millions of different species of bacteria and invertebrates. Even in simpler examples used in ecology there are complicated dynamic relationships - the simplest, perhaps apocryphal example being the Hudson's Bay trapping companies data on hares and foxes (just 2 species) that fluctuates up and down. Do either of them dominate? (Of course, if you define niche narrowly enough then you can specialize it to agree with your point).
So, I think that the trick is that the extremely limited evolutionary situation that is set up by our present market-economy is one that has effectively immortal organisms that don't need to reproduce, don't need to have varying offspring. So, right there we've removed one of the fundamental conditions that has to stand if we're going to get "evolution" (Ev = Variation + Selection). These entities are more like huge plasmodia/slugs slithering over the commercial landscape aggregating and digesting smaller companies. But that's because we've created the set of rules that provide them with an unusually stable, undisturbed environment.
A precursor technology to this was used in Soccer games in the UK a few years ago. From what I remember, they replaced the (as you rightly say: tacky) signs with billboards that had a peculiar shade of blue on them - something that didn't occur very frequently. This was then replaced with live digital images. The fans copped onto this after a while and started wearing blue of that colour and there were some pretty weird images of crowds with bits of ads spread out over them.!
Big business and competitive enterprise are allowed to grow free in our country.
These two things are antithetical (that means that they're opposed to each other before you ask -it's a shorter, easier word than the long complicated phrase). That's why there are laws against it, this glorious nation decided that it's citizen would be free, not ruled by their government, but ruling it, nor yet ruled by corporations. The freedom that you talk about is your freedom to be a peon, a slave and a consumer.
Is there something wrong with "aquiring" information? Please...
Well, seeing as you ask nicely - acquiring information is fine as long as you don't stop others from also acquiring it (ever hear of something called the GPL?), because that means you can make more informed decisions and the person that makes the best free choices on the basis of this free information does better. Your scenario allows for the choice between a Big Mac and an Arbys. I would like to be able to have more choice. I would like perhaps even to do my own cooking. So, run off back to your Windows box.
This has to be the best thing that I've read on /. for a while. I hadn't realized that point about the blacklists being hidden before I read this. I got a great first-person view point from this story - I can imagine McCain not getting it when questioned! Probably his bill was drafted "with the aid" of some aides and advisors from the AFA. Nice work
better bottom line, which is a major objective of corporations
totally misses the point. What other things would you allow corporations to pursue to make money? Perhaps genocide or slavery? What about snuffing out their business competitors? How about reaching a critical mass that makes them so able to leverage deals, discourage competitive entry to their market, that the only response for other corporations is to merge to become a similar size? The only logical evolutionary result of an unchecked, unregulated industry is conglomeration, aggregation and a smaller number of large companies. There is at least one good historical example of this in the dawn of modern technology - the "electrical" companies that sprang up at the tail end of the 19th century, especially in Germany. There were many of these (Einstein's father was involved in one) and they innovated and competed like mad. But they discovered that there were economies of scale and gradually accumulated until there were giants like Siemens. Lack of regulation leads to unfair competition, that is what the U.S. has found historically, that's why the laws against monopolies are there - because people generations before you saw it happening in the Steel and Mining industries and in Wood pulp and Newspapers and realized that unchecked competition leads to a shitty deal for those not in the companies.
...I usually don't like the "it's not the sort of thing that should be on /." tenor of anti-Katz folk (should those be Dogz? ;-) ) but Christ - who cares who called _our-own_ pundit? I can imagine the major networks holding their breath to here what the guru has to say - I hope that isn't true! Still I suppose that they found it hard to figure out the implications of this without the insight of an "Open Source Journalist". It's interesting too how he perceives Linux as having been validated by it's adoption by IBM. Sort of makes you wonder whether he got the picture.
First, I don't understand how blocking out a competitor's logo could be ethical. It might not be a big deal, but ethical?
Assuming that you meant to s/ethical/unethical/g I can suggest what is wrong with this: up till the advent of this technology an advertiser on a billboard could be assumed to be buying not just the immediate real-life presence, but also knock-on advertising when images of real-life were propagated over TV or in newspaper photos. Now the goal-posts have been moved. Real-life advertising slots have in a sense, been devalued. The commodity has been further carved up and developed - a previously overlooked, unclaimed, implicit part of the commodity has now been staked out and put up for sale. One can imagine feelings of irritation if one were an advertiser (don't get me wrong, I have little or no sympathy for them!). So I don't think this is to do necessarily with blocking out a competitor's logo - also you make it sound as though you consider that competition mitigates any actions taken - is that really an argument?
Second, I think most of us know that pictures cannot be trusted, anyway. This has been true for a long time for photographs (especially on magazine covers), and is also true for most media reports (they can be edited without you being able to tell)
The free! article linked here makes a big deal about the fact that there are guidelines in operation at the station that prohibit the digital manipulation of news-images, and the spokesperson explained that this was a new, unregulated thing that they were doing that didn't seem to be covered by the letter of the law of those prohibitions. Also, they point out that Nat.Geog. had a huge amount of flack when they altered their magazine covers.
I guess what I'm saying is that it looks as though the biggest point here is that they are trying to commodify even more things. If we say "what's the big deal" it's just advertising and the people that deliver most of our information to most of the people are just a company and companies have to make money...etc. then we are in danger of not opposing the invasion of what used to be a previously un-sold "thing". What would the logical conclusion of this -it's all commerce- attitude be? Perhaps we shall watch disaster survivors being carried into Redcross ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h Nike-swoosh ambulances? Or at the olympics we'll be able to watch the intertwined Coke/Pepsi cans floating above the medallists (oh, didn't something like that happen already?). Or perhaps during presidential inaugurations we could watch (whoever) standing proudly beneath the golden arches.
The download plugin link on the Sony webpage only caters to Windows and Mac.....does that mean they won't be supporting the display under Linux?
Thank you very much. I'm going to go search for any pubs he has. Thanks for taking the time! Regards, Crush
Disclaimer: I am a math person and not a biology person, but someone gave a coloquim recently tring to talk lots of us math type into getting interested in math biology problems.
I would support the speaker on that at any rate - there is a real shortage of mathematicians that are working on biological problems. It is also true that there are some really good mathematicians and statisticians - especially in the area of phylogeny and protein-folding problems - oh, and don't forget population genetics: R.A.Fisher was responsible for a lot of the foundations of genetics and statistics.
Is it possible that the speaker was talking about A,B and Z-DNA? Anyway, if it's handy I would like to know what he was talking about. Cheers, Crush.
Contrary to popular beleive science dose contain something like ``dogma.'' Example 1: Biology only reacently (10 years) showed that DNA really is a double helix, but most biologists and the public believed this almost blindly long before it was really shown to be true. They concluded it was a double helix from scatering experiments which showed it had a ``shadow'' consistant with a double helix and a double helix seemed like a good idea for other inconclusive reasons. (Biologits even call this the central dogma)
The latter part of this statement is untrue - the "Central dogma" of molecular biology is that DNA makes RNA makes protein. This use of "Central dogma" was coined, I think, by Crick. I think he may have been using it to emphasize the fact that this was a fundamental principle for molecular biology.
As to the idea that this was only conclusively demonstrated 10 years ago - I really don't know about that. If you are dismissing all the other "inconclusive", yet highly consistent, evidence that cohered with the idea that it was a double-helix then I don't know what you would accept as reasonable evidence. What was the conclusive demonstration?
All other sciences - materials science, chemistry, biology - ultimately must rest on the basic laws of nature that govern the behavior of the elementary particles.
While not disputing this, I would question its usefulness as a perspective for those engaged in the study of biology, for example. The elucidation of biological laws is accomplishable at a level of investigation far above particle physics and would actually be hampered by a consideration of the most fundamental stuff of nature - so, this is an example of where reductionism would get it wrong. Do you think that there may be other methodological/epistemological pitfalls in the atom-smashing approach?
Well, it can't be happening that often for them. Reason I say this? The most you are liable for on a creditcard is $50, anything larger than this is their loss. So, unless we are being nickel-and-dimed in a cunning low key way (which would take a long time to return a profit and thus be vulnerable to audits) the risk/loss would be too great for the credit companies. They would be upping the amount we are liable for considerably. Perhaps I'm just naive. Why is the liability so high? ;)
But aren't all those things necessary with a monolithic kernel too? Isn't there a lot of IPC, signals, etc going on? And doesn't X run as a separate server already? Thanks for the answer.
Thanks for the informative post. I realize that the following question is probably easy to ask and complicated to answer (a case of the biggest fool etc.), but why is micro-kernel performance theoretically inferior to monolithic? Is it just that there is too much extra adminatrivia to be done?
Likewise for "significantly larger market presence", "fragmentation" etc., who cares? It should be encouraged. You may be right about the company trying to market a distro with a new feature, but what's wrong with that? It'll give more people a chance to play with it at the expense of a fraction of their disk-space.
I can see HURD be used in larger server workstation with slower adaptation to new hardwares and devices.
It would seem that part of the microkernel design is to facilitate the exact opposite of what you suggest: is should provide for quicker, easier development of drivers for new hardware as these are individually testable. From what they claim on their web-page it would be much easier then the current "loadable modules" system that Linux uses. It should still be a win-win though as you say. Choice is good and allows competition - I hope that they get 0.3 out soon.
The Hurd implementation is aggressively multithreaded so that it runs efficiently on both single processors and symmetric multiprocessors. The Hurd interfaces are designed to allow transparent network clusters (collectives), although this feature has not yet been implemented
in the article. While it is understandable that security checks should be made for those working on sensitive systems the article seems to hinting that Chinese citizens are the prime target - it also quotes a specific number for their category. I hope this isn't going to turn into embarrassing hysteria similar to the supposed nuclear secrets leak where people get targetted unreasonably and are not allowed due process
..the un-affected readers?
they could just swipe the stars'n'stripes top-hat that Uncle Sam is usually shown wearing...."Your OS Wants You!"