If they had stayed the course and shifted their base market of law firms over to Linux,
Highly doubtful. The only reason law firms stuck with WordPerfect for so long is that they had tons of templates/macros which they were either unwilling or unable to move over to MS Office. But you can postpone the inenvitable only for so long -- by now most of law firms already switched to MS Office.
WordPerfect is dead. Actually, it has been dead for a while and already smells a bit. Trying to push it down the throat of law firms wouldn't have helped Corel one little bit.
Yeah, yeah, I know, people will post and say "But I use it and I like it!". You and who else? Is there enough precision in a float to express WordPerfect's market share, or do I need a double?
Why the fuck DO you litter and speed? The first is antisocial in the extreme and the second can be deadly
I litter because I *am* antisocial and periodically (but not always) do not give a flying fuck about being nice, clean and tidy.
I speed sometimes for the same reasons as above and sometimes because trying to maintain a speed limit in a flow of cars moving at 15-20 mph above it is highly dangerous and considerably increases my chances of getting into a car accident, not to mention the blood pressure of everybody else on the same road.
BTW, what's jaywalking for us non-Yanks?
Jaywalking is crossing a street anywhere you please (as opposed to at an intersection, preferably with a traffic light).
What is it with the current trend to romanticising criminals and their lifestyles,
Current trend? Dashing outlaws were (and continue to be) a staple of romantic/adventure fiction since god know when. Robin Hood stories date to when? XVI century or so?
there are other books out there which both allow criminals to attempt to justify and/or glorify what they did
And what's wrong with that? Criminals are people with rights -- a fact that many conveniently forget. Why shouldn't they attempt to justify what they did? Just because they have been convicted under current laws? You mean if I get a speeding ticket I cannot talk about traffic laws? Or I am not a person any more?
criminals should not be lauded for their deeds.
It's up to each individual to decide whether he admires or despises another person, a criminal or not.
It's only a small step from there to a state in which crime becomes accepted as a fundamental part of life
Well, crime *is* a fundamental part of life. I routinely break several laws every day -- I speed, I jaywalk, sometimes I litter. I trashed my detailed US census form (which is a crime). If I were to study the current laws, I am sure I could find more that I am breaking all the time.
Not to mention that people like Mahatma Ghandi, Alexander Solzhenitzin, Nelson Mandela and the like were crimials -- weren't they? They were lawfully convicted of crimes and send to prison. Kaa
we don't have a choice that seems anywhere close to Adolf Hitler.
Heh. I run across some hysterics by Hollywood Democrats and according to them the election of Bush will inevitably lead to the collapse of the Western civilization within the next four years.
the act of me voting my conscience does indeed voice my opinion, however small that voice is.
Sure. If you treat is purely as self-expression I have no problem.
the concordat with Hitler was only effective because Catholics in Germany chose to obey.
Of course. But that goes to resistance to unjust authority, does it not? It's not a question of voicing your opinion, it's a question of doing what those in power want you to do.
General systems theory (and its bastard child, chaos theory) teaches us the opposite, that small actions can and do have large impacts on the system.
Under specific conditions, usually involving tight feedback loops. I don't think US politics qualify.
If you want your voice to be heard, go run a political site, write an editorial, draw a cartoon, publish a book. "Just" voting is a cop-out for people who want to claim they participate in the political process.
The conclusion I drew from reading this book is that my voice does matter. If for no other reason than preventing another catastrophe like the holocaust, I will go to the polls and vote.
Well, I haven't read the book but it seems that you drew the wrong conclusion (am I arrogant or what?). The lesson seems that being able to influence a lot of people leads to political consequences, some (most?) of which are unintended and unforeseen. I still don't see how you conclude from this that your individual voice counts.
In other words voting doesn't count as self-expression in my book and I am not arrogant enough to belive I personally will have any political impact.
P.S. Sorry about the dropped thread on Kuro5hin about Reformation. I had a week from hell and message boards temporarily dropped under the radar.
All students are in constant possesion of their Consititutional Rights while on school property.
It's not a question of school property, it's a question of students being minors. Minors, generally, have very little rights and not all constitutional rights apply to them (e.g. right to vote, to bear arms, etc.)
Besides your rights may be more limited than you realize. For example there is no right to wear clothes you like. School can force you to wear brown-colored suits and ankle-length skirts and there no "right" to prevent it. Similarly, there is no "right" not to be suspended on a whim of a principal, e.g. because you didn't smile at him brightly enough. If anything, it's bad publicity and lawsuits by parents that (sometimes) keep schools in check.
I may be mistaken but I do not think that Consititutionaly rights can ever be forfeited. Anyone?
Some of them can. For example police can search your home without a warrant if you consent to search. Some of them cannot. For example you cannot agree to be a slave (err... technically speaking you can, but that promise will not enforceable).
And also those funny guys in black robes who sit on high benches in those curious buildings called "courts". Besides, the other funny guys -- ones in uniforms with guns, and batons, and an awful lot of shiny things on their clothes -- also say so.
Currently, UCITA and other bribery aside, you own software just like you own a book.
You are factually incorrect. Under the current US law, even without UCITA, you do *not* own software. You gain a limited license to use it. Thus buying software is quite different from buying a book and it is exactly this point that makes a lot of people angry.
Only if that profit was gained by curtailing my rights
You are trying to weasel out. You said "despicably large profit" which clearly implies that you have objections to an excessively large profit, by whatever means it was acquired. The size of the profit and how it was gained are two completely different things.
Personally I think it's funny that you declare an exception to your own law when it would invalidate your own comments.
I'm glad I've made you laugh. But what about you? Seeing how you like the "community" concept I doubt you would accept my law. So in response to *you* my point stands valid.
There is such a thing as a "market", there is also such a thing as "community". These are two different entities, often in conflict.
Hm... Market is not an entity, it's a mechanism by which certain things happen. I don't really understand what do you mean by conflict in this context. It's true that governments (claiming to act as proxies for communities) often tried to restrict the market to further their own aim, usually to gain more power. The results were almost uniformly disastrous (the socialist/communist countries are the most blatant example).
Personally, I look at the culture this has left us with and am sickened.
Have you tried looking at what the other way leaves you with? Seen any officially-approved Russian or Chinese movies recently?
You might like it. Variety is the spice, baby.
Sorry, honey. Been there, tried that. Didn't like it at all.
Why do you people insist on equating RMS with the abolition of intellectual property?
We people?
We people insist on it because RMS has repeated stated that he believes that intellectual property, specifically copyright, should not exist.
But he both relies on the notion of intellectual property to prevent the theft of that freedom and respects the rights of others to restrict their intellectual property.
Well, I am not an expert on Stallman, but it is my understanding that his position is that *while copyright exists* he will make use of it to achieve his ends. But he would much more prefer for the copyright not to exist at all.
I am against the increasing restrictions on fair use.
That's a fair statement with which I agree.
Congress no more created "fair use" than they created "equality". They merely passed legislation that codified the fundamentals (or the ideals, at least) of our society.
If you want to split hairs...
"Fair use" is a legal right. It has meaning only within a certain legal framework. This right is not a "natural" right. Before the Act you had no *right* to make copies for personal use, for example. This does NOT mean that you could not do it -- just that you had no *right*. For example, I have no special right to walk on the street covered with bird guano. This does not mean that I could not do it -- I could and then somebody may object or may not. But there is no special right for that. Just the same before the Act "fair use" was not a right -- it was just something that you could do and then maybe get sued or maybe not. The Act established such a right, so I think I am justified in saying that the Congress created it.
Let me also point out that "merely passing legislation" is the very act which makes things happen in the real world, and that the ideals of the society will look *very* different depending on whom you'd ask.
Reverse-engineering is...
DMCA is not about reverse-engineering (you may have been thinking UCITA -- that's a different law). DMCA is about allowing copyright owners to erect fences around their content and prohibiting anyone to meddle with these fences. I don't think it's a good idea, but this is hardly the end of human race. Remember the copy-protection schemes that were widely used in mid-80s and early 90-s? All these dongles, "special" floppies, etc? Err... I can't see them around... wonder what happened to them?
The right to property is effectively nullified.
You are confused. Software, for example, that you bought is not your property. Maybe you want it to be your property, but it's not -- it's somebody else's and that somebody else is allowing you to use it (use, but not own) subject to a number of restrictions. Again, maybe you want to change this, but this is quite outside the scope of DMCA.
Not that I like DMCA, but it's time for a reality check.
A basic freedom? Really? This "basic freedom", by which I assume you mean "fair use" provisions was created by US Congress in the late 60s with the passage of the Copyright Act.
You can argue that intellectual property is nonsense in general and should be abolished wholesale (like RMS is doing), but I don't think that's the argument you are making.
Besides, I don't really understand what is it that you want? Do you want to legally prohibit licensing (as in: "you can only sell software, not license it")? Do you want to put serious restrictions on the freedom of contract?
however, the trend has been set: hardware devices in the future will be relatively cheap, but there will be an expensive service bound to them.
So what else is new? Hardware keeps on getting cheaper and cheaper, while services rise in cost or stay the same.
Pathetic companies like DC will be allowed to leech money off of their pathetic products and they will be allowed to make a despicably large profit.
You know, there is such a thing as "market". Generally, pathetic companies like DC are not allowed to grab people off the street and empty their wallets. They have to persuade people to make a voluntary exchange: goods or services for money. Now, people (regardless of my.sig and no, Microsoft is not a good counterexample) are usually not so willing to part with their money in exchange for pathetic products. I don't see how DMCA is going to affect this.
And as to "allowing" people to make profit, I am not so sure what you mean. Do you think that any profit greater than X% (X determined by you) is amoral and should be confiscated by the government -- that is, "not allowed"?
If this isn't grounds for a revolution, then I don't know what is.
Read history and try not to make an idiot out of yourself in public.
Here is a little story, about three weeks old, about my experience with my friendly @home ISP.
OK, I cannot connect to the 'net. First reaction: ping the gateway. It responds. Nose around -- a-ha, it's their DNS servers that are down.
Wait a day, they're still down. Fine, I find myself a public DNS server, plug it in and I have a working 'net connection. Still, I want the @home DNS servers back...
Call the customer service. Spend some time explaining to the first "tech" what DNS is and why it's useful. Got some info: he can ping the servers, the're up. So it's likely a routing or a connectivity problem. However he cannot fix anything or actually do anything because his database is down. Oh well, call tomorrow.
Tomorrow: rinse, repeat.
Next day: rinse, repeat. But I acquired a useful piece of knowledge: whey you get your first 'tech' say the magic words "escalate me to tier two". It generally works and I don't have to spend half an hour explaining what a nameserver is and why do I need it.
Next day: talking to tier two guy. He has no clue what's wrong. Tries to reset my cable modem from their end, tell me to call tomorrow.
Next day: finally somebody who seems to have a clue. He checks some permissions on some routers, updates them, tells me that it'll take a couple of hours for the changes to propagate and I'll be fine.
Next day: he lied. DNS servers are still not pingable from me (BTW, no machine on that subnet is pingable, a clear routing problem). Call again, bitch and whine, be told that there is nothing more they can do.
Next day: Going through the usual rigamarole when the tech notices that I do my pings, etc. not from a Windows machine. The fact that it's OpenBSD throws him off stride in a major way. I spend half an hour arguing with him (he: we don't support non-Windows OS; I: I don't want you to support my OS, I want you to fix your routing problems). So he goes off to find a supervisor, returns, tells me that no, they don't support anything.
OK, I offer him to reboot the machine to Windows (it's dual-boot) if he thinks (hah!) it will help. He goes away to consult with a supervisor again and returns to tell me that they don't support dual-boot machines. At this point my jaw starts bouncing on the floor and I spend some time trying to understand his logic. His (that is, his supervisor's) position was: Wipe out the hard drive, reinstall Windows, and then we'll support it!!! At that point I gave up trying to communicate.
Next day: magically, the DNS servers appeared back, I could ping them, access them, etc. I have no doubt that somebody accidentally/normally/for-some-other-purpose just rebooted something and as a side-effect fixed my routing problem.
Jesus Christ, you just got citizenship and don't care about voting?
So what's so earth-shattering about it? "When in Rome do as Romans do";-)
What the fuck are you doing here?
Living, probably.
I can at least ignore the apathetic people who live here by accident of birth,
Ignoring, what, at least 40% of the population is a mightly accomplishment. I congratulate you on your determination.
but to go through all the trouble of becoming a citizen just so you can be one more apathetic statistic is unbelievable.
People generally don't go through all that trouble to become a statistic. They go through all that trouble so that they can safely live and work in the US not depending on the whim of a bureacrat from INS. Voting has nothing to do with it.
Besides, can I vote against all? If so, I'll go. But I don't think I have this choice.
Non. At least, not completely. You can easily avoid property taxes by transfering your wealth to another form (e.g. money). Rather, as their name shows, they are taxes on a specific form of property. But I agree in that they are similar to wealth taxes in that they tax "static" value instead of income.
Which ought to mean that if the top 10% have 90% of the wealth, then they should be paying MORE than 90% of the taxes.
You seem to be confused between tax on wealth and tax on income.
Under progressive income tax (as in, e.g. US), the rich pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes compared to the middle and lower classes.
Wealth taxes are quite rare. There is none on federal level in the US, although I believe a couple of states do have some variety of wealth tax in place.
And, of course, fairness is a matter of morality, not of economics. Some people would find a flat tax fair, others would find punitive taxation fair (e.g. 98% income tax in the >$500,000 bracket. Has been tried in Europe long time ago).
This is one of thos commonly cited ideas, this notion that because the top 10% pays 1/3 of all taxes, that they're disproportionately taxed, and it's true. They should pay more. After all, they also receive more than 1/3 of the income.
Ahem. This would be true under a flat tax. However, because USA and most all Western countries have a progressive tax system, the rich pay a higher percent of their income as taxes compared to the middle and the lower classes.
Brin seems to think that no individuals really own anything. The unstated assumption behind his reasoning is that it's the government (Brin would say society, but it amounts to the same thing in a democracy) who REALLY owns everything, and because of it's benevolence it lets individuals call something their own -- for a time.
Why does Brin find it so unfair that rich kids will, maybe, go to prep schools and will not have to work for a living? Basically, because it's NOT THEIR money. It's the government's (society's) money that their parents were allowed to hold on for a while. But what government giveth, government taketh back, and "allowing to own" is personal and ends at the person's death. I would bet that economics and politics aside, Brin believes that in a really fair and ideal world inheritance taxes would be 100% -- so that everybody starts in the same position: poor. This actually makes some sense in a social Darwinism sort of way, but the resulting world won't be pretty.
A "social" reason Brin gives for maintaining the inheritance taxes is that it forces massive transfer of wealth to charities. And what's so good about that? Charities, especially large ones, are notoriously inefficient and spend a large percentage of their money on supporting their own bureacracy. I am not arguing that charities are useless, but Brin himself points out that Europeans contribute vastly smaller amounts to charity than Americans, and they seem to do quite all right.
In the classic balance of power between the group (commune, society, government) and the individual Brin's ideology falls heavily on the group's side. This is evident from his writings and from this comes his opposition to inheritance, which, after all, over time tends to create powerful individuals which the government sometimes has hard time dealing with.
Am I surprised? No. Do I disagree with Brin? Hell, yes!
Gold does not have intrinsic value. Like everything else, it has value based on supply and demand.
You seem to be confused. The normal usage of "intrinsic value" in economics is that people find it valuable even in the absence of laws/regulations/common consent/consensual hallucinations. Gold DOES have intrinsic value (it's pretty, resistant to corrosion, conducts heat very very well, etc.), as opposed, say, to paper US dollars which do not.
The fact that the price of gold depends on the supply and demand has nothing to do with it. The price of everything depends on supply and demand.
And then what happens when, say, Russia floods the world with cheap gold from their huge reserves?
Russia does not have huge reserves and its gold isn't cheap (meaning the costs of production are quite comparable with the West/Australia/South Africa).
Besides, WHAT would happen? The worst is that we'll have a bit of inflation, not much at all compared to paper dollars inflation that we had in the 70s and the 80s. The supply of gold in the world is quite limited, as opposed to the capacity of the government printing presses.
Note that I am not arguing for the return to a gold standard -- this is an idea the time of which has passed long, long time ago. I just want to point out that if you want to argue about a subject, it helps to have some clue about it.
What is "unknown" risk? Let's say I gamble by flipping a coin. There is a 50% chance of me losing. Is it a risk? Sure. Is it unknown? No. Is it insurable? Of course.
Statistically I have an N% chance of having a heart attack while being insured by FooBar Insurance Group. Is the risk known? Sure, FooBar knows it, that's how they set their premiums.
If you know a risk exists, and the insurance company does [not]... then you are RIPPING the insurance company off.
Bullshit. The point of insurance is spreading the risk across the pool of population. How large should the pool be is an issue of social policy and what's perceived as justice, rather than a pure economics problems. Economically, each pool should be the size of one -- each person's expected health expenses should be evaluated individually and he should be charged that number + profit margin. However the great majority of people would not consider this an acceptable scenario.
Geez, guys, learn something about economics before you comment on an economics issue.
Geez, dude, learn to recognize a non-economic issue when it bites you on the ass. Economically the pool size should be set to one. Economically, also, all felons should be shot right after the trial (jails are expensive), terminally ill people should be denied medical care (they'll die soon anyway), and children with serious genetic defects should be put to death (they just suck off economic resources).
Slashdot Mirror
If they had stayed the course and shifted their base market of law firms over to Linux,
Highly doubtful. The only reason law firms stuck with WordPerfect for so long is that they had tons of templates/macros which they were either unwilling or unable to move over to MS Office. But you can postpone the inenvitable only for so long -- by now most of law firms already switched to MS Office.
WordPerfect is dead. Actually, it has been dead for a while and already smells a bit. Trying to push it down the throat of law firms wouldn't have helped Corel one little bit.
Yeah, yeah, I know, people will post and say "But I use it and I like it!". You and who else? Is there enough precision in a float to express WordPerfect's market share, or do I need a double?
Kaa
Why the fuck DO you litter and speed? The first is antisocial in the extreme and the second can be deadly
I litter because I *am* antisocial and periodically (but not always) do not give a flying fuck about being nice, clean and tidy.
I speed sometimes for the same reasons as above and sometimes because trying to maintain a speed limit in a flow of cars moving at 15-20 mph above it is highly dangerous and considerably increases my chances of getting into a car accident, not to mention the blood pressure of everybody else on the same road.
BTW, what's jaywalking for us non-Yanks?
Jaywalking is crossing a street anywhere you please (as opposed to at an intersection, preferably with a traffic light).
Kaa
What is it with the current trend to romanticising criminals and their lifestyles,
Current trend? Dashing outlaws were (and continue to be) a staple of romantic/adventure fiction since god know when. Robin Hood stories date to when? XVI century or so?
there are other books out there which both allow criminals to attempt to justify and/or glorify what they did
And what's wrong with that? Criminals are people with rights -- a fact that many conveniently forget. Why shouldn't they attempt to justify what they did? Just because they have been convicted under current laws? You mean if I get a speeding ticket I cannot talk about traffic laws? Or I am not a person any more?
criminals should not be lauded for their deeds.
It's up to each individual to decide whether he admires or despises another person, a criminal or not.
It's only a small step from there to a state in which crime becomes accepted as a fundamental part of life
Well, crime *is* a fundamental part of life. I routinely break several laws every day -- I speed, I jaywalk, sometimes I litter. I trashed my detailed US census form (which is a crime). If I were to study the current laws, I am sure I could find more that I am breaking all the time.
Not to mention that people like Mahatma Ghandi, Alexander Solzhenitzin, Nelson Mandela and the like were crimials -- weren't they? They were lawfully convicted of crimes and send to prison.
Kaa
we don't have a choice that seems anywhere close to Adolf Hitler.
Heh. I run across some hysterics by Hollywood Democrats and according to them the election of Bush will inevitably lead to the collapse of the Western civilization within the next four years.
the act of me voting my conscience does indeed voice my opinion, however small that voice is.
Sure. If you treat is purely as self-expression I have no problem.
the concordat with Hitler was only effective because Catholics in Germany chose to obey.
Of course. But that goes to resistance to unjust authority, does it not? It's not a question of voicing your opinion, it's a question of doing what those in power want you to do.
General systems theory (and its bastard child, chaos theory) teaches us the opposite, that small actions can and do have large impacts on the system.
Under specific conditions, usually involving tight feedback loops. I don't think US politics qualify.
If you want your voice to be heard, go run a political site, write an editorial, draw a cartoon, publish a book. "Just" voting is a cop-out for people who want to claim they participate in the political process.
Kaa
The conclusion I drew from reading this book is that my voice does matter. If for no other reason than preventing another catastrophe like the holocaust, I will go to the polls and vote.
Well, I haven't read the book but it seems that you drew the wrong conclusion (am I arrogant or what?). The lesson seems that being able to influence a lot of people leads to political consequences, some (most?) of which are unintended and unforeseen. I still don't see how you conclude from this that your individual voice counts.
In other words voting doesn't count as self-expression in my book and I am not arrogant enough to belive I personally will have any political impact.
P.S. Sorry about the dropped thread on Kuro5hin about Reformation. I had a week from hell and message boards temporarily dropped under the radar.
Kaa
I don't vote. It only encourages them.
Kaa
All students are in constant possesion of their Consititutional Rights while on school property.
It's not a question of school property, it's a question of students being minors. Minors, generally, have very little rights and not all constitutional rights apply to them (e.g. right to vote, to bear arms, etc.)
Besides your rights may be more limited than you realize. For example there is no right to wear clothes you like. School can force you to wear brown-colored suits and ankle-length skirts and there no "right" to prevent it. Similarly, there is no "right" not to be suspended on a whim of a principal, e.g. because you didn't smile at him brightly enough. If anything, it's bad publicity and lawsuits by parents that (sometimes) keep schools in check.
I may be mistaken but I do not think that Consititutionaly rights can ever be forfeited. Anyone?
Some of them can. For example police can search your home without a warrant if you consent to search. Some of them cannot. For example you cannot agree to be a slave (err... technically speaking you can, but that promise will not enforceable).
Kaa
Says who? Only the people who sell software.
And also those funny guys in black robes who sit on high benches in those curious buildings called "courts". Besides, the other funny guys -- ones in uniforms with guns, and batons, and an awful lot of shiny things on their clothes -- also say so.
Currently, UCITA and other bribery aside, you own software just like you own a book.
You are factually incorrect. Under the current US law, even without UCITA, you do *not* own software. You gain a limited license to use it. Thus buying software is quite different from buying a book and it is exactly this point that makes a lot of people angry.
Check your facts.
Kaa
Only if that profit was gained by curtailing my rights
You are trying to weasel out. You said "despicably large profit" which clearly implies that you have objections to an excessively large profit, by whatever means it was acquired. The size of the profit and how it was gained are two completely different things.
Personally I think it's funny that you declare an exception to your own law when it would invalidate your own comments.
I'm glad I've made you laugh. But what about you? Seeing how you like the "community" concept I doubt you would accept my law. So in response to *you* my point stands valid.
There is such a thing as a "market", there is also such a thing as "community". These are two different entities, often in conflict.
Hm... Market is not an entity, it's a mechanism by which certain things happen. I don't really understand what do you mean by conflict in this context. It's true that governments (claiming to act as proxies for communities) often tried to restrict the market to further their own aim, usually to gain more power. The results were almost uniformly disastrous (the socialist/communist countries are the most blatant example).
Personally, I look at the culture this has left us with and am sickened.
Have you tried looking at what the other way leaves you with? Seen any officially-approved Russian or Chinese movies recently?
You might like it. Variety is the spice, baby.
Sorry, honey. Been there, tried that. Didn't like it at all.
Kaa
Why do you people insist on equating RMS with the abolition of intellectual property?
We people?
We people insist on it because RMS has repeated stated that he believes that intellectual property, specifically copyright, should not exist.
But he both relies on the notion of intellectual property to prevent the theft of that freedom and respects the rights of others to restrict their intellectual property.
Well, I am not an expert on Stallman, but it is my understanding that his position is that *while copyright exists* he will make use of it to achieve his ends. But he would much more prefer for the copyright not to exist at all.
Kaa
I am against the increasing restrictions on fair use.
...
That's a fair statement with which I agree.
Congress no more created "fair use" than they created "equality". They merely passed legislation that codified the fundamentals (or the ideals, at least) of our society.
If you want to split hairs...
"Fair use" is a legal right. It has meaning only within a certain legal framework. This right is not a "natural" right. Before the Act you had no *right* to make copies for personal use, for example. This does NOT mean that you could not do it -- just that you had no *right*. For example, I have no special right to walk on the street covered with bird guano. This does not mean that I could not do it -- I could and then somebody may object or may not. But there is no special right for that. Just the same before the Act "fair use" was not a right -- it was just something that you could do and then maybe get sued or maybe not. The Act established such a right, so I think I am justified in saying that the Congress created it.
Let me also point out that "merely passing legislation" is the very act which makes things happen in the real world, and that the ideals of the society will look *very* different depending on whom you'd ask.
Reverse-engineering is
DMCA is not about reverse-engineering (you may have been thinking UCITA -- that's a different law). DMCA is about allowing copyright owners to erect fences around their content and prohibiting anyone to meddle with these fences. I don't think it's a good idea, but this is hardly the end of human race. Remember the copy-protection schemes that were widely used in mid-80s and early 90-s? All these dongles, "special" floppies, etc? Err... I can't see them around... wonder what happened to them?
The right to property is effectively nullified.
You are confused. Software, for example, that you bought is not your property. Maybe you want it to be your property, but it's not -- it's somebody else's and that somebody else is allowing you to use it (use, but not own) subject to a number of restrictions. Again, maybe you want to change this, but this is quite outside the scope of DMCA.
Kaa
denied the right to exercise a basic freedom
Not that I like DMCA, but it's time for a reality check.
A basic freedom? Really? This "basic freedom", by which I assume you mean "fair use" provisions was created by US Congress in the late 60s with the passage of the Copyright Act.
You can argue that intellectual property is nonsense in general and should be abolished wholesale (like RMS is doing), but I don't think that's the argument you are making.
Besides, I don't really understand what is it that you want? Do you want to legally prohibit licensing (as in: "you can only sell software, not license it")? Do you want to put serious restrictions on the freedom of contract?
Kaa
however, the trend has been set: hardware devices in the future will be relatively cheap, but there will be an expensive service bound to them.
.sig and no, Microsoft is not a good counterexample) are usually not so willing to part with their money in exchange for pathetic products. I don't see how DMCA is going to affect this.
So what else is new? Hardware keeps on getting cheaper and cheaper, while services rise in cost or stay the same.
Pathetic companies like DC will be allowed to leech money off of their pathetic products and they will be allowed to make a despicably large profit.
You know, there is such a thing as "market". Generally, pathetic companies like DC are not allowed to grab people off the street and empty their wallets. They have to persuade people to make a voluntary exchange: goods or services for money. Now, people (regardless of my
And as to "allowing" people to make profit, I am not so sure what you mean. Do you think that any profit greater than X% (X determined by you) is amoral and should be confiscated by the government -- that is, "not allowed"?
If this isn't grounds for a revolution, then I don't know what is.
Read history and try not to make an idiot out of yourself in public.
Kaa
Here is a little story, about three weeks old, about my experience with my friendly @home ISP.
OK, I cannot connect to the 'net. First reaction: ping the gateway. It responds. Nose around -- a-ha, it's their DNS servers that are down.
Wait a day, they're still down. Fine, I find myself a public DNS server, plug it in and I have a working 'net connection. Still, I want the @home DNS servers back...
Call the customer service. Spend some time explaining to the first "tech" what DNS is and why it's useful. Got some info: he can ping the servers, the're up. So it's likely a routing or a connectivity problem. However he cannot fix anything or actually do anything because his database is down. Oh well, call tomorrow.
Tomorrow: rinse, repeat.
Next day: rinse, repeat. But I acquired a useful piece of knowledge: whey you get your first 'tech' say the magic words "escalate me to tier two". It generally works and I don't have to spend half an hour explaining what a nameserver is and why do I need it.
Next day: talking to tier two guy. He has no clue what's wrong. Tries to reset my cable modem from their end, tell me to call tomorrow.
Next day: finally somebody who seems to have a clue. He checks some permissions on some routers, updates them, tells me that it'll take a couple of hours for the changes to propagate and I'll be fine.
Next day: he lied. DNS servers are still not pingable from me (BTW, no machine on that subnet is pingable, a clear routing problem). Call again, bitch and whine, be told that there is nothing more they can do.
Next day: Going through the usual rigamarole when the tech notices that I do my pings, etc. not from a Windows machine. The fact that it's OpenBSD throws him off stride in a major way. I spend half an hour arguing with him (he: we don't support non-Windows OS; I: I don't want you to support my OS, I want you to fix your routing problems). So he goes off to find a supervisor, returns, tells me that no, they don't support anything.
OK, I offer him to reboot the machine to Windows (it's dual-boot) if he thinks (hah!) it will help. He goes away to consult with a supervisor again and returns to tell me that they don't support dual-boot machines. At this point my jaw starts bouncing on the floor and I spend some time trying to understand his logic. His (that is, his supervisor's) position was: Wipe out the hard drive, reinstall Windows, and then we'll support it!!! At that point I gave up trying to communicate.
Next day: magically, the DNS servers appeared back, I could ping them, access them, etc. I have no doubt that somebody accidentally/normally/for-some-other-purpose just rebooted something and as a side-effect fixed my routing problem.
Do I like @home customer service? Guess!...
Kaa
I'm not the original poster, but...
;-)
Jesus Christ, you just got citizenship and don't care about voting?
So what's so earth-shattering about it? "When in Rome do as Romans do"
What the fuck are you doing here?
Living, probably.
I can at least ignore the apathetic people who live here by accident of birth,
Ignoring, what, at least 40% of the population is a mightly accomplishment. I congratulate you on your determination.
but to go through all the trouble of becoming a citizen just so you can be one more apathetic statistic is unbelievable.
People generally don't go through all that trouble to become a statistic. They go through all that trouble so that they can safely live and work in the US not depending on the whim of a bureacrat from INS. Voting has nothing to do with it.
Besides, can I vote against all? If so, I'll go. But I don't think I have this choice.
Kaa
Like asking what is the sound of green? It doesn't apply (unless you are stoned).
Can anybody stoned and reading this discussion please post the answers to the questions we all here are worrying about?
Kaa
What?! Solaris was written 40 years ago (1959-60), but Lem was by no means russian, but polish!
Lem, of course, is Polish, but his works were translated into Russian much earlier than into English.
Kaa
Uhh, it ISN'T their money. It's the parents'. The kids didn't earn it, I don't see that they have an inherent right to it.
Okay, I'm a parent. Is it my money? Can I do with it as I please? Can I give it to my kids?
It's not a question of kids' rights to get the money. It's a question of parents' rights to dispose of it (including giving to the kids).
Kaa
Property taxes are wealth taxes, n'est pas?
Non. At least, not completely. You can easily avoid property taxes by transfering your wealth to another form (e.g. money). Rather, as their name shows, they are taxes on a specific form of property. But I agree in that they are similar to wealth taxes in that they tax "static" value instead of income.
Kaa
Which ought to mean that if the top 10% have 90% of the wealth, then they should be paying MORE than 90% of the taxes.
You seem to be confused between tax on wealth and tax on income.
Under progressive income tax (as in, e.g. US), the rich pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes compared to the middle and lower classes.
Wealth taxes are quite rare. There is none on federal level in the US, although I believe a couple of states do have some variety of wealth tax in place.
And, of course, fairness is a matter of morality, not of economics. Some people would find a flat tax fair, others would find punitive taxation fair (e.g. 98% income tax in the >$500,000 bracket. Has been tried in Europe long time ago).
Kaa
This is one of thos commonly cited ideas, this notion that because the top 10% pays 1/3 of all taxes, that they're disproportionately taxed, and it's true. They should pay more. After all, they also receive more than 1/3 of the income.
Ahem. This would be true under a flat tax. However, because USA and most all Western countries have a progressive tax system, the rich pay a higher percent of their income as taxes compared to the middle and the lower classes.
Kaa
Brin seems to think that no individuals really own anything. The unstated assumption behind his reasoning is that it's the government (Brin would say society, but it amounts to the same thing in a democracy) who REALLY owns everything, and because of it's benevolence it lets individuals call something their own -- for a time.
Why does Brin find it so unfair that rich kids will, maybe, go to prep schools and will not have to work for a living? Basically, because it's NOT THEIR money. It's the government's (society's) money that their parents were allowed to hold on for a while. But what government giveth, government taketh back, and "allowing to own" is personal and ends at the person's death. I would bet that economics and politics aside, Brin believes that in a really fair and ideal world inheritance taxes would be 100% -- so that everybody starts in the same position: poor. This actually makes some sense in a social Darwinism sort of way, but the resulting world won't be pretty.
A "social" reason Brin gives for maintaining the inheritance taxes is that it forces massive transfer of wealth to charities. And what's so good about that? Charities, especially large ones, are notoriously inefficient and spend a large percentage of their money on supporting their own bureacracy. I am not arguing that charities are useless, but Brin himself points out that Europeans contribute vastly smaller amounts to charity than Americans, and they seem to do quite all right.
In the classic balance of power between the group (commune, society, government) and the individual Brin's ideology falls heavily on the group's side. This is evident from his writings and from this comes his opposition to inheritance, which, after all, over time tends to create powerful individuals which the government sometimes has hard time dealing with.
Am I surprised? No. Do I disagree with Brin? Hell, yes!
Kaa
Why can't I play ALL games from the CD with no install?
Consider I/O of a CD-ROM drive vs. I/O of a hard drive.
Kaa
Gold does not have intrinsic value. Like everything else, it has value based on supply and demand.
You seem to be confused. The normal usage of "intrinsic value" in economics is that people find it valuable even in the absence of laws/regulations/common consent/consensual hallucinations. Gold DOES have intrinsic value (it's pretty, resistant to corrosion, conducts heat very very well, etc.), as opposed, say, to paper US dollars which do not.
The fact that the price of gold depends on the supply and demand has nothing to do with it. The price of everything depends on supply and demand.
And then what happens when, say, Russia floods the world with cheap gold from their huge reserves?
Russia does not have huge reserves and its gold isn't cheap (meaning the costs of production are quite comparable with the West/Australia/South Africa).
Besides, WHAT would happen? The worst is that we'll have a bit of inflation, not much at all compared to paper dollars inflation that we had in the 70s and the 80s. The supply of gold in the world is quite limited, as opposed to the capacity of the government printing presses.
Note that I am not arguing for the return to a gold standard -- this is an idea the time of which has passed long, long time ago. I just want to point out that if you want to argue about a subject, it helps to have some clue about it.
Kaa
Insurance is for covering unknown risk.
... then you are RIPPING the insurance company off.
What is "unknown" risk? Let's say I gamble by flipping a coin. There is a 50% chance of me losing. Is it a risk? Sure. Is it unknown? No. Is it insurable? Of course.
Statistically I have an N% chance of having a heart attack while being insured by FooBar Insurance Group. Is the risk known? Sure, FooBar knows it, that's how they set their premiums.
If you know a risk exists, and the insurance company does [not]
Bullshit. The point of insurance is spreading the risk across the pool of population. How large should the pool be is an issue of social policy and what's perceived as justice, rather than a pure economics problems. Economically, each pool should be the size of one -- each person's expected health expenses should be evaluated individually and he should be charged that number + profit margin. However the great majority of people would not consider this an acceptable scenario.
Geez, guys, learn something about economics before you comment on an economics issue.
Geez, dude, learn to recognize a non-economic issue when it bites you on the ass. Economically the pool size should be set to one. Economically, also, all felons should be shot right after the trial (jails are expensive), terminally ill people should be denied medical care (they'll die soon anyway), and children with serious genetic defects should be put to death (they just suck off economic resources).
Kaa