If people are willing to do something for free and provide customers with a service for free -- however they do it, so long as they do it of their own free will -- that is a good.
Microsoft, as a private entity, should be able to do with their property as they please; they should be able to give it away for free, for $10, or for $10,000 if they so please. If you don't like it, don't buy their product. The whole argument that "consumers got hurt" is bullshit. It's competitors (like Netscape and their bloatware) who get "hurt", because MS is able to out-compete them by providing superior products at superior prices. No-one has the "right" to make a profit, only to try.
If Microsoft's competitors can't hack it, that's tough for them (of course, I'm also anti-copyright and anti-patent, as those are just grants of monopoly priviledges, but all software companies have those grants, thus are on approximately equal footing with one-another). They don't have a right to make a profit anymore than MS does. Nor do they have a "right" to have their products installed by default on the computers of OEMs, or offered in various stores. This would be a violation of the rights of OEMs to their property.
If you don't like MS, you have the option not to use their products. It is simple as that. Personally, I think their products aren't worth the price when there's equivalently good software (imo) available for free. Obviously, the vast majority of people don't think that, otherwise they'd be using Linux (or they simply don't want to go to the bother). If you can't find a computer that comes installed with the OS of your choice by default, you can hire someone to do that for you. There really are no excuses. What you can't and shouldn't be allowed to do is to force others to engage in an involuntary transaction by providing you with the options you want at what you arbitrarily deem to be a "reasonable" price.
What you apparently want to do is prevent voluntary transactions from occuring and violate the property rights of others.
I'd suggest you read some articles about anti-trust laws. They are nothing but a bunch of humbug.
My last paragraph was sarcastic. The point was to show the bullshit that is anti-trust laws. Companies can't win. No-matter how they price their products, they can be accused of some evil practice. A particularly heinous example is when companies raise the price of things like umbrellas during natural disasters; they're then accused of "price-gouging". The idi
I was being sarcastic in that last paragraph. If someone likes to program, they should be able to do that. No voluntary transactions should be prohibited.
It is not a bad thing per se if jobs are eliminated. Open source software can be looked at as simply a technological improvement, with improved efficiency over proprietary software. Now, if this happens to eliminate the jobs of some proprietary developers, that is a good thing for the economy. Previously wasteful labor is no-longer being employed, so resources are being used more efficiently. The former-programmer must find a new job, doing something that the market values more highly than what he formerly did.
For example, consider the following situation:
Microsoft employs 100 people to work on Internet Explorer and all of its problems. These individuals work 40 hours a week and are paid $50,000 a year. All is well. Microsoft has a team which works on fixing problems in IE, the team-member get paid, and customers get a security update in IE every blue moon or so.
Now, along comes another group, Mozilla. They give away source code to the gecko core and get a small group of volunteers to work on Phoenix for free. These individuals choose to do this in their spare time, off of the job. They produce a browser which is arguably superior to IE.
Now, lets say that Phoenix drives IE out of the market, and Microsoft thus has to can it's IE project, meaning the workers get fired. Is this a bad thing? Well, obviously MS and their employees don't like it. But it is still good for society over-all.
Previously, customers had to pay money to MS for a browser. Now, they don't. They can conserve the resources (money) that they would have spent on the browser, and spend it elsewhere, on their highest valued use.
And what of Microsoft and the workers? Well, either they can make their product good enough that people will pay for it over a free alternative, or they have to eliminate the product-line or sell it off to whoever will buy it. What about the former MS employees working on IE? Well, it is unfortunate for them, but no-one has the right to be employed. Certainly, consumers in such a case would have demonstrated that they aren't willing to pay a higher price for an inferior product.
If they are laid off, they can find jobs else-where, where their labor will go towards a use more highly valued by consumers than what they had been doing. This is simply the reallocation of labor from less highly-valued uses to more highly-valued uses, resulting in greater overall efficiency.
If any programmer here is going to complain, I would ask you this: Given two computer-systems, both of the same quality in your estimation, would you buy the one that is priced higher or priced lower? The answer is you'd buy the one that's priced lower. Now, why would you expect anyone to pay more for a product of the same or lesser quality, when they can pay less for a product of the same or greater quality? It is hypocrisy to ask others to pay more money for inferior products.
I wouldn't be surprised if next thing, Bill Gates is going to file lawsuite against FOSS developers. After all, they are undercutting their competitors, and this is an evil anti-competitive strategy. Of course, if they price their products at the same price, they can be accused of collusion; and heaven forbid if they price them higher, then they're accused of price-gouging.
Descent 2 is still a great game, even though there's now Descent 3 (which is better). A game like that feels much more realistic than a "person" game, because you have what feels like complete, perfect, and natural control over yoru ship. Furthermore, there's so much talent required, due to all the degrees of freedom. If you play against good players, Descent never really gets boring.
The game has a simplicity which is graceful. Elements of stealth, dogfighting, and close-quarters tunnel fighting are all built-in, as is hit-and-run.
I'm a long-time Descent player. There are essentially three styles of play, which can be integrated: dogfighting, tunnel-fighting, and hit-and-run. All often use some element of camping. The dogfighter is often patrolling "his room". Of course, everyone knows this, so it's not so lame. But camping isn't a viable long-term strategy. Works once or twice, then people start doing clever things like using smart-missiles to kill campers.
If Kasparov was alive when Lasker was playing, he wouldn't have had the benefit of all that had been developed since Lasker.
Lasker has had a bad reputation, due to a comment made about him by Bobby Fischer ("a bad player...a coffee-house player"). However, if you analyze the games he played, you'll find they are extremely brilliant.
Lasker was probably the best chess-player ever, better than Kasparov, better than Fischer. Translated into today's rankings, he would have ranked about 3000. In tournaments of all of the strongest chess-players in the world at the time, he dominated brilliantly. He was the world champion for, what, 28 years? And chess wasn't even his main profession. I think that if Lasker had played Fischer or Kasparov, he would have won...and I don't think it would have been very close either.
has to post a comment about "Go" everytime that Chess is mentioned? Go is a great game, but obviously not as popular as Chess. Maybe it won't ever be, maybe it will. Get over it.
I agree (I should, I'm the parent-poster). Though I don't use OpenBSD, doubt I'll ever use it for my desktop (I use Debian/Gentoo), if you have something where security is vitally important, OS' other than OpenBSD just don't hack it.
Firstly, regarding anti-trust laws, they were instituted specifically to benefit inefficient competitors. Before the anti-trust laws took effect, Rockefeller was systematically increasing the output of oil and decreasing the price.
Your "justification" for violating property rights is nonsense. Simply because some law prohibits something doesn't mean that that law is justified. The Nazi's had lots of laws too. Didn't mean any of them should have been respected.
Your idiotic idea of why corporations exist is non-sense. They were not created by States. They were created by individuals voluntarily interacting with one-another.
Your moral relativism is also non-sense. We cannot legislate morality, or natural law. Whether or not the US Constitution recognizes it, it is criminal to violate property rights.
By the way, did you read any of the links I referenced? I realize they're rather lengthy, but for a brief summary of the problems with anti-trust laws, see my notes from the Mises University: Monopoly and Competition. I'm also going to (eventually) be posting DiLorezno's lecture on The Case Against All Anti-Trust Legislation. There's signicant literature on it here.
One of the great fallacies of anti-trust is comparing what exists to what would exist in never-never-land (if we had "perfect competition). This is called the nirvana fallacy. What we really should be doing is comparing what we've got to zero, which is what we'd get without the company.
Regarding the comment on MS and "getting away" with shipping software with your OS...
MS should have the right to ship their software any way they like. If you don't like that, don't buy MS software. "But, I'm *forced* to use MS software at work". No, you're not. If it means that much to you, quit your job and look for an employer that uses FOSS. The complete lack of respect for the rights of others on Slashdot is amazing to me, sometimes. According to/., MS has some kind of obligation to help out its competitors and provide customers with zillions of options. No, they don't. They can put out their product and package it in any way they want. If you don't like it, tough. Don't buy the package.
Microsoft isn't a monopoly and never has been, except in the sense that they have a few monopoly priviledges (patents, copyrights) that are granted by the State, and would not exist otherwise. However, all software companies have copyrights and patents, and FOSS developers have copyrights as well.
A monopoly does not occur when one firm has a huge market-share, or even 100% market-share. In the classical (and true) sense of the word -- before Statists started redefining it -- a monopoly only exists when the State creates artificial barriers to entry, making one firm the protected only provider of a service. The best example of a monopoly would be the State. See:
(1) Airwaves would have to be homesteaded. You can't simply say "all of the airwaves are mine". You have to actually do something with them. That is, you have to "mix your labor" with the airwaves.
(2) Before The State seized control of the airwaves, private courts were working out matters of ownership. "Polluting" the airwaves from one side of the US to another would be considered a violation of property rights. (albeit, you can homestead an *easement* to polluting the airwaves; if you were polluting them before anyone else homesteaded them, then you would have the right to continue doing such at the current level).
(3) Non-radio applications that encroached on traditional bands would be considered to be violating property rights, assuming someone had homesteaded that bandwidth prior to the point in time where the encroachment began.
(4) Simply mounting the loudest transmitters would not do. You actually have to *do* something with the airwaves. You can't simply transmit static and then say "I own this airwave".
It seems like people are always looking for reasons why The State needs to come in and seize resources from private ownership (via emminent domain, "monopoly" theory, "public" goods theory, and a host of other interventionist/socialist non-sense that is economically false). We should be looking for ways to solve problems privately, without using the immoral coercive force of the State, without violating property rights, and without stealing from everyone else via taxes and inflation.
Please read the reference before you respond again.
The reason we have the problems we have is because the airwaves have been socialized. What should occur is that the State shouldn't be involved in leasing out the airwaves and regulating them. Rather, we should allow the airwaves to be homesteaded and privately owned. This solves the "pornography" problem quite easily. Someone who doesn't like porn doesn't have to allow it on the airwaves which constitute their property. See For a New Liberty: Personal Liberty.Murray N. Rothbard. Refer to the section Freedom of Radio and Television and Pornography.
Simply because a bunch of bureaucrats say something doesn't make it meaningful. The "people" at FASB and the SEC are a bunch of idiots whio are constantly behind the free market trying to catch up. It should be up to the free market to decide how to deal with stock-options. If you don't want to invest in companies that don't expense stock-options -- fine. Otherwise, shut your trap.
If optionees purchase stocks for less than market value, so what? If the company actually bought stock from the open market to allow for such, then that is an expense. If they simply dilute the number of shares, then it is not an expense.
Perhaps you are too stupid to understand what an expense is. An expense has to be made using an asset. Unless the company actually owns shares (via purchasing), then the shares are not an asset to that company. They represent ownership in that company. By printing out extra shares for their company, they are not incurring an expense, because they are not using an asset.
Because you are apparently too stupid to read what I linked too, I'll quote from it again:
If Intel were to give all of its employees 100 shares of stock, should the company record a compensation expense?
The answer to this question is that not enough information is given. In particular, are the 100 shares of stock Intel stock, or Microsoft stock?
There is no possibility of getting the right answer by a valid argument unless you understand how and why the two cases MUST be distinguished.
In either case, if the share prices were the same, the immediate benefit to the employee would be the same, neglecting tax treatment differences. This would be true even if the employees didn't know which company's stock they received.
However, in one case the shareholders suffer dilution in their proportional ownership of Intel, and in the other case they suffer a reduction in the value of the company itself as it has given up an economic asset. OTOH, a company cannot count its own shares among its economic assets.
This fact IS accepted by the FASB, and is explained by two independent arguments.
First, a company's own shares have no scarcity value to the company as it can create new ones effectively at will without significant cost.
Secondly, a company cannot own itself, as all internally held shares are actually owned by the external shareholders and whose existence is thus of no economic consequence to anyone.
No matter what argument supporters of stock and option expensing may produce, if it doesn't account for the differences between company and non-company stock, it carries no weight.
Shareholders can be diluted in their ownership, OR they can experience a loss in the value of what it is that they own, but trying to pile one loss upon the other is simply absurd.
I'm sorry if you -- and the morons in the State you worship -- are too stupid to understand what is an asset and what is not. Outside of those shares a company actually purchases on the market, it's own shares are not an asset to that company. It can print out shares at will without incurring any expenses. What it is doing is diluting ownership, and using those newly printed shares as a form of compensation (it may even give them to employees for free). It doesn't matter whether the employee pays 0% or 100% of the price of those shares (via his or her option). The company still has not -- not one iota of it -- incurred an expense.
because it is not an asset which you are using to buy something. It is ownership of the company itself. Shares of the company are not an asset to that company. The whole could-of sold the option on the open market argument is non-sense, as the links I refer to make note of. Quoting from the article I referenced:
in one case the shareholders suffer dilution in their proportional ownership of Intel, and in the other case they suffer a reduction in the value of the company itself as it has given up an economic asset. OTOH, a company cannot count its own shares among its economic assets.
This fact IS accepted by the FASB, and is explained by two independent arguments.
First, a company's own shares have no scarcity value to the company as it can create new ones effectively at will without significant cost.
Secondly, a company cannot own itself, as all internally held shares are actually owned by the external shareholders and whose existence is thus of no economic consequence to anyone.
No matter what argument supporters of stock and option expensing may produce, if it doesn't account for the differences between company and non-company stock, it carries no weight.
Shareholders can be diluted in their ownership, OR they can experience a loss in the value of what it is that they own, but trying to pile one loss upon the other is simply absurd.
Stock-options are a share-dilution. They are not an expense. You cannot count stock-options as both an expense and a dilution of shares; that's double-accounting for them.
What should happen is that the FCC should be eliminated. Private individuals and companies should then be allowed to homestead the airwaves -- by using them -- just like people homestead unowned land. If I start using a certain bandwidth frequency within a certain radius, I've homesteaded the use fo that bandwidth frequency within that radius, and courts can enforce property rights in that.
Firstly, I have to commend Tannenbaum for being a real stand-up guy, and defending Linus Torvalds against unwarranted charges of "stealing code", despite all of the disagreements between AZT and Linus about what makes for better kernel design.
The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is a half-assed supporter of economic freedom and liberty, and unfortunately negatively reflects on free-market ideas. In fact, they don't really support freedom at all. They are enemies of freedom, like Milton Friedman was critical in the development of the witholding tax. Far from being a libertarian, free-market supporter, and laissez faire supporter -- like his son, David Friedman, or Murray Rothbard -- Milton Friedman is a technician of the State, who works to make it more efficient in its task of robbing from and stealing from its victims (the tax-payers). The de Tocqueville Institution is a State-supporting Institution, supporting State grants of monopoly priviledge (patents/copyrights).
Unfortunately, there is this general opinion out there that the institution is a champion of capitalism. The de Toqueville institution is a champion of Statist Intervention.
For a real libertarian analysis of intellectual property "rights", see:
Microsoft is a business. They do not exist to make Slashdot users happy, or provide people with cheap products. They can charge whatever they want for their products, be it $10, or $10,000. Of course, if they charge prices too high, people won't buy their products or services.
What makes everyone here think that Microsoft is somehow obligated to run their business so as to help their competitors out, or provide products at whatever price a bunch of computer-enthusiasts arbitrarily deem is "appropriate"?
If you don't like Microsoft, you are welcomed *not* to use Microsoft products. See Articles on Microsoft.
a lot of times, newcomers to a field discuss how their product stacks up against more enrenched stallwarts. E.g., on the Weider Crossbow page, they discuss how it stacks up to Bowflex.
Good point, but your talking about cummulative phenomena that are much different. When an application loads in 2 seconds, a 10% improvement is going to be 0.2seconds, or 1/5 of a second. That's not going to be particularly noticeable, and even if it is, it's not particularly impressive for the end user. If the end-users at a point where he or she can notice a 10% improvement in load-time, then you're program loads way too slowly to start out with.
Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft, as a private entity, should be able to do with their property as they please; they should be able to give it away for free, for $10, or for $10,000 if they so please. If you don't like it, don't buy their product. The whole argument that "consumers got hurt" is bullshit. It's competitors (like Netscape and their bloatware) who get "hurt", because MS is able to out-compete them by providing superior products at superior prices. No-one has the "right" to make a profit, only to try.
If Microsoft's competitors can't hack it, that's tough for them (of course, I'm also anti-copyright and anti-patent, as those are just grants of monopoly priviledges, but all software companies have those grants, thus are on approximately equal footing with one-another). They don't have a right to make a profit anymore than MS does. Nor do they have a "right" to have their products installed by default on the computers of OEMs, or offered in various stores. This would be a violation of the rights of OEMs to their property.
If you don't like MS, you have the option not to use their products. It is simple as that. Personally, I think their products aren't worth the price when there's equivalently good software (imo) available for free. Obviously, the vast majority of people don't think that, otherwise they'd be using Linux (or they simply don't want to go to the bother). If you can't find a computer that comes installed with the OS of your choice by default, you can hire someone to do that for you. There really are no excuses. What you can't and shouldn't be allowed to do is to force others to engage in an involuntary transaction by providing you with the options you want at what you arbitrarily deem to be a "reasonable" price.
What you apparently want to do is prevent voluntary transactions from occuring and violate the property rights of others.
I'd suggest you read some articles about anti-trust laws. They are nothing but a bunch of humbug.
My last paragraph was sarcastic. The point was to show the bullshit that is anti-trust laws. Companies can't win. No-matter how they price their products, they can be accused of some evil practice. A particularly heinous example is when companies raise the price of things like umbrellas during natural disasters; they're then accused of "price-gouging". The idi
I was being sarcastic in that last paragraph. If someone likes to program, they should be able to do that. No voluntary transactions should be prohibited.
It is not a bad thing per se if jobs are eliminated. Open source software can be looked at as simply a technological improvement, with improved efficiency over proprietary software. Now, if this happens to eliminate the jobs of some proprietary developers, that is a good thing for the economy. Previously wasteful labor is no-longer being employed, so resources are being used more efficiently. The former-programmer must find a new job, doing something that the market values more highly than what he formerly did.
For example, consider the following situation:
Microsoft employs 100 people to work on Internet Explorer and all of its problems. These individuals work 40 hours a week and are paid $50,000 a year. All is well. Microsoft has a team which works on fixing problems in IE, the team-member get paid, and customers get a security update in IE every blue moon or so.
Now, along comes another group, Mozilla. They give away source code to the gecko core and get a small group of volunteers to work on Phoenix for free. These individuals choose to do this in their spare time, off of the job. They produce a browser which is arguably superior to IE.
Now, lets say that Phoenix drives IE out of the market, and Microsoft thus has to can it's IE project, meaning the workers get fired. Is this a bad thing? Well, obviously MS and their employees don't like it. But it is still good for society over-all.
Previously, customers had to pay money to MS for a browser. Now, they don't. They can conserve the resources (money) that they would have spent on the browser, and spend it elsewhere, on their highest valued use.
And what of Microsoft and the workers? Well, either they can make their product good enough that people will pay for it over a free alternative, or they have to eliminate the product-line or sell it off to whoever will buy it. What about the former MS employees working on IE? Well, it is unfortunate for them, but no-one has the right to be employed. Certainly, consumers in such a case would have demonstrated that they aren't willing to pay a higher price for an inferior product.
If they are laid off, they can find jobs else-where, where their labor will go towards a use more highly valued by consumers than what they had been doing. This is simply the reallocation of labor from less highly-valued uses to more highly-valued uses, resulting in greater overall efficiency.
If any programmer here is going to complain, I would ask you this: Given two computer-systems, both of the same quality in your estimation, would you buy the one that is priced higher or priced lower? The answer is you'd buy the one that's priced lower. Now, why would you expect anyone to pay more for a product of the same or lesser quality, when they can pay less for a product of the same or greater quality? It is hypocrisy to ask others to pay more money for inferior products.
I wouldn't be surprised if next thing, Bill Gates is going to file lawsuite against FOSS developers. After all, they are undercutting their competitors, and this is an evil anti-competitive strategy. Of course, if they price their products at the same price, they can be accused of collusion; and heaven forbid if they price them higher, then they're accused of price-gouging.
Descent 2 is still a great game, even though there's now Descent 3 (which is better). A game like that feels much more realistic than a "person" game, because you have what feels like complete, perfect, and natural control over yoru ship. Furthermore, there's so much talent required, due to all the degrees of freedom. If you play against good players, Descent never really gets boring.
The game has a simplicity which is graceful. Elements of stealth, dogfighting, and close-quarters tunnel fighting are all built-in, as is hit-and-run.
If it's a strategy that works, it works.
I'm a long-time Descent player. There are essentially three styles of play, which can be integrated: dogfighting, tunnel-fighting, and hit-and-run. All often use some element of camping. The dogfighter is often patrolling "his room". Of course, everyone knows this, so it's not so lame. But camping isn't a viable long-term strategy. Works once or twice, then people start doing clever things like using smart-missiles to kill campers.
If Kasparov was alive when Lasker was playing, he wouldn't have had the benefit of all that had been developed since Lasker.
Lasker has had a bad reputation, due to a comment made about him by Bobby Fischer ("a bad player...a coffee-house player"). However, if you analyze the games he played, you'll find they are extremely brilliant.
Lasker was probably the best chess-player ever, better than Kasparov, better than Fischer. Translated into today's rankings, he would have ranked about 3000. In tournaments of all of the strongest chess-players in the world at the time, he dominated brilliantly. He was the world champion for, what, 28 years? And chess wasn't even his main profession. I think that if Lasker had played Fischer or Kasparov, he would have won...and I don't think it would have been very close either.
has to post a comment about "Go" everytime that Chess is mentioned? Go is a great game, but obviously not as popular as Chess. Maybe it won't ever be, maybe it will. Get over it.
I agree (I should, I'm the parent-poster). Though I don't use OpenBSD, doubt I'll ever use it for my desktop (I use Debian/Gentoo), if you have something where security is vitally important, OS' other than OpenBSD just don't hack it.
But if you want to have as much security by default as is possible, there's always OpenBSD.
Firstly, regarding anti-trust laws, they were instituted specifically to benefit inefficient competitors. Before the anti-trust laws took effect, Rockefeller was systematically increasing the output of oil and decreasing the price.
Your "justification" for violating property rights is nonsense. Simply because some law prohibits something doesn't mean that that law is justified. The Nazi's had lots of laws too. Didn't mean any of them should have been respected.
Your idiotic idea of why corporations exist is non-sense. They were not created by States. They were created by individuals voluntarily interacting with one-another.
Your moral relativism is also non-sense. We cannot legislate morality, or natural law. Whether or not the US Constitution recognizes it, it is criminal to violate property rights.
By the way, did you read any of the links I referenced? I realize they're rather lengthy, but for a brief summary of the problems with anti-trust laws, see my notes from the Mises University: Monopoly and Competition. I'm also going to (eventually) be posting DiLorezno's lecture on The Case Against All Anti-Trust Legislation. There's signicant literature on it here.
One of the great fallacies of anti-trust is comparing what exists to what would exist in never-never-land (if we had "perfect competition). This is called the nirvana fallacy. What we really should be doing is comparing what we've got to zero, which is what we'd get without the company.
MS should have the right to ship their software any way they like. If you don't like that, don't buy MS software. "But, I'm *forced* to use MS software at work". No, you're not. If it means that much to you, quit your job and look for an employer that uses FOSS. The complete lack of respect for the rights of others on Slashdot is amazing to me, sometimes. According to /., MS has some kind of obligation to help out its competitors and provide customers with zillions of options. No, they don't. They can put out their product and package it in any way they want. If you don't like it, tough. Don't buy the package.
Microsoft isn't a monopoly and never has been, except in the sense that they have a few monopoly priviledges (patents, copyrights) that are granted by the State, and would not exist otherwise. However, all software companies have copyrights and patents, and FOSS developers have copyrights as well.
A monopoly does not occur when one firm has a huge market-share, or even 100% market-share. In the classical (and true) sense of the word -- before Statists started redefining it -- a monopoly only exists when the State creates artificial barriers to entry, making one firm the protected only provider of a service. The best example of a monopoly would be the State. See:
Monopoly and Competition (part a)
Monopoly and Competition (part b)
Monopoly and Competition (part c)
Monopoly and Competition (part d)
Monopoly and Competition (part e)
a href=
(1) Airwaves would have to be homesteaded. You can't simply say "all of the airwaves are mine". You have to actually do something with them. That is, you have to "mix your labor" with the airwaves.
(2) Before The State seized control of the airwaves, private courts were working out matters of ownership. "Polluting" the airwaves from one side of the US to another would be considered a violation of property rights. (albeit, you can homestead an *easement* to polluting the airwaves; if you were polluting them before anyone else homesteaded them, then you would have the right to continue doing such at the current level).
(3) Non-radio applications that encroached on traditional bands would be considered to be violating property rights, assuming someone had homesteaded that bandwidth prior to the point in time where the encroachment began.
(4) Simply mounting the loudest transmitters would not do. You actually have to *do* something with the airwaves. You can't simply transmit static and then say "I own this airwave".
It seems like people are always looking for reasons why The State needs to come in and seize resources from private ownership (via emminent domain, "monopoly" theory, "public" goods theory, and a host of other interventionist/socialist non-sense that is economically false). We should be looking for ways to solve problems privately, without using the immoral coercive force of the State, without violating property rights, and without stealing from everyone else via taxes and inflation.
Please read the reference before you respond again.
The reason we have the problems we have is because the airwaves have been socialized. What should occur is that the State shouldn't be involved in leasing out the airwaves and regulating them. Rather, we should allow the airwaves to be homesteaded and privately owned. This solves the "pornography" problem quite easily. Someone who doesn't like porn doesn't have to allow it on the airwaves which constitute their property. See For a New Liberty: Personal Liberty. Murray N. Rothbard. Refer to the section Freedom of Radio and Television and Pornography.
If optionees purchase stocks for less than market value, so what? If the company actually bought stock from the open market to allow for such, then that is an expense. If they simply dilute the number of shares, then it is not an expense.
Perhaps you are too stupid to understand what an expense is. An expense has to be made using an asset. Unless the company actually owns shares (via purchasing), then the shares are not an asset to that company. They represent ownership in that company. By printing out extra shares for their company, they are not incurring an expense, because they are not using an asset.
Because you are apparently too stupid to read what I linked too, I'll quote from it again:
I'm sorry if you -- and the morons in the State you worship -- are too stupid to understand what is an asset and what is not. Outside of those shares a company actually purchases on the market, it's own shares are not an asset to that company. It can print out shares at will without incurring any expenses. What it is doing is diluting ownership, and using those newly printed shares as a form of compensation (it may even give them to employees for free). It doesn't matter whether the employee pays 0% or 100% of the price of those shares (via his or her option). The company still has not -- not one iota of it -- incurred an expense.
he's more stupid than the people at FASB. The word "smart" does not belong in a sentence with him and FASB.
Stock options (and issuing new shares) is not an expense. It is the dilution of existing shares. In short, it is share-inflation.
See The Great Accounting System
The Stock Market, Profits, and Credit Expansion
Accounting for the Austrian School
Should Stock Options Be Expensed
See For a New Liberty: The New Libertarian Manifesto -- Personal Liberty. Murray N. Rothbard. Search for "Freedom of Radio and Television"
The Alexis de Tocqueville Institution is a half-assed supporter of economic freedom and liberty, and unfortunately negatively reflects on free-market ideas. In fact, they don't really support freedom at all. They are enemies of freedom, like Milton Friedman was critical in the development of the witholding tax. Far from being a libertarian, free-market supporter, and laissez faire supporter -- like his son, David Friedman, or Murray Rothbard -- Milton Friedman is a technician of the State, who works to make it more efficient in its task of robbing from and stealing from its victims (the tax-payers). The de Tocqueville Institution is a State-supporting Institution, supporting State grants of monopoly priviledge (patents/copyrights).
Unfortunately, there is this general opinion out there that the institution is a champion of capitalism. The de Toqueville institution is a champion of Statist Intervention.
For a real libertarian analysis of intellectual property "rights", see:
Against Intellectual Property. Stephan Kinsella.. Journal of Libertarian Studies, vol 15(2).
Finally, lest you think that free-market advocates are anti-GNU/Linux, see:
Maybe the reason no-one's cracked it for 250 years is because *THERE IS NO CODE*. Maybe it's just a big prank, them fucking with people's minds.
What makes everyone here think that Microsoft is somehow obligated to run their business so as to help their competitors out, or provide products at whatever price a bunch of computer-enthusiasts arbitrarily deem is "appropriate"?
If you don't like Microsoft, you are welcomed *not* to use Microsoft products. See Articles on Microsoft.
a lot of times, newcomers to a field discuss how their product stacks up against more enrenched stallwarts. E.g., on the Weider Crossbow page, they discuss how it stacks up to Bowflex.
Good point, but your talking about cummulative phenomena that are much different. When an application loads in 2 seconds, a 10% improvement is going to be 0.2seconds, or 1/5 of a second. That's not going to be particularly noticeable, and even if it is, it's not particularly impressive for the end user. If the end-users at a point where he or she can notice a 10% improvement in load-time, then you're program loads way too slowly to start out with.