I think you're being unrealistic. Instead, I side with Scott Adams' comment on the importance of your vote: The value of your vote is actually negative if its influence on the outcome is outweighed by the time and effort spent casting it.
Throw in the fact that you can be a conscientious citizen, get yourself well informed on all the candidates and issues, and have your vote negated by some ninety-five year old lady who is voting for Al Gore because he wore the best tie... can you blame us for getting cynical?
One point: If SCO's licensing scheme becomes ubiquitous, Linux is dead anyways. SCO doesn't have the right to distribute Linux under anything but the GPL (unless their ridiculously expansive concept of "intellectual property" stands up in court, which it won't). Nobody will work on Linux just to increase SCO's revenues, and we all know how well they maintain their own Unix offering, so they won't be doing it in house.
The legal alternatives, I guess, would be HURD or the *BSDs. Maybe a GPL'ed fork of one of the BSDs.
I'm confident of one thing. If SCO wins, the current community will be brushing off their old copies of MINIX before contributing to SCO/Linux.
After watching my Mom struggle with various Windows offerings, I think the question should be rephrased, "Based on the ability of most users out there, is there any chance that we'll ever have a truly intuitive computer interface?"
Right now, I don't think there is one, even for someone who understands the concepts of files, directories, and applications.
Man, I could have written this question myself. You and I are in pretty much the same boat.
First, I would like to point out that I'm writing this in order to avoid getting any real work done.
Second, a quick rundown of the advice I've seen here, and my opinion:
-Exercise: Tentatively disagree. Exercise is great in its own right, and it may help your overall well-being. But I've had times in my life where I was putting ten or twelve hours a week into the gym. When you're done, you'll feel more relaxed and have a bit of an endorphine buzz, but it doesn't mean you're going to sit down and kick your latest project in the arse. In short, get some exercise, but don't expect it to solve all your problems.
-Psychiatric evaluation: Agree
-Self-medication: Disagree
-Just grow up, act like an adult, and get your adult things done: Bugger that. You need ideas, not a reason to beat yourself up even more.
-Stop browsing Slashdot: Wholeheartedly agree. [God, I'm a hypocrite] You admit that the computer itself is a problem, so try and limit your browsing time as much as possible. Start with 30 minutes a day. Don't beat yourself up if it doesn't go that low. It's just a guideline for evaluating individual browsing decisions. Do I really need to know the latest SCO news? Is this week's Onion really *that* funny? Personally, I've found that I can get ninety percent of the enjoyment in about a minute, just by browsing the headlines.
-Disconnect the Internet: If you can get away with it, do so. It helps if you wget any resources or APIs you find yourself using a lot. You need to construct every barrier to goofing off that you can.
-Maybe you're in the wrong field: Unless there's a "play video games for money" career field I'm unaware of, this advice is far too easy to give. Others have said that, if you find yourself retreating from your coding in order to study something like astronomy or psychology, or to do some writing, then there may be a viable option there. Give it a look, but realize that doing something for fun isn't the same as doing something as a career.
I would also add, write lists, write sublists, and keep them someplace extremely handy. Also, enlist the aid of your friends and enemies by announcing your goals and intentions. If you know that others are expecting you to perform--or waiting to see you fail--then you have more incentive. Once you're far enough along on a project that you know you're serious about it, let it be known.
I can't emphasize this enough: Put yourself in positions where results and accomplishment are simply expected. The busiest and most productive time in my life--which doesn't necessarily mean the most useful--was when I joined the Army at the ripe old age of 17. Man, 1995 seems like such a long time ago. During the year of training, I had to haul butt in every aspect of life: Exercising, learning, keeping the barracks in a drill sergeant-approved state, and dealing with all the other crap. I didn't have a choice.
Try this: Go to someone you trust, explain your problem, and ask them to let you send them a weekly status report of your current goals and projects, and the steps you're taking towards accomplishing them. If you have a major assignment, schedule time with the teacher to explain your progress. Let them shame you into working.
I wish I could say that this advice is guaranteed to work. It works for me, when I actually bother to do it. Good luck.
Generally speaking, I agree with you. The problem is, prior to this, technological improvements and automation simply moved jobs around. Now jobs are being eliminated outright. If the overall demand for human labor is eliminated or sharply reduced, it could go two ways.
First, the new increase in wealth made possible by automation could be directed back towards the population at large. In this case, it would be a huge blessing.
In the second scenario, the elimination of jobs will also eliminate any obligation by the owners of wealth-creating corporations to distribute any of that wealth to anybody. Right now, workers have to be compensated because only they can do the labor. Having your workforce starve to death destroys productivity. But if you can replace humans with machines that requires no compensation at all, then many people will have no way of obtaining a living.
My doomsday scenario sees a few hundred thousand ultra-rich people trading vast quantities of goods and services within gated communities, while everyone else starves outside. It doesn't have to be that way, but with the current attitudes of our corporate masters, it's not implausible either.
Point taken. However, many people simply haven't had the experience of being creative. They're too busy juggling two minimum wage jobs, a family (which they're botching to hell because they don't have the time left to do it right), and trying to keep their wrecked tin can with 250K miles out of the shop. I'm not saying that these people are all Shakespeares' and Van Goghs' waiting to be unleashed, but if they had the time and freedom to educate themselves, take up hobbies, and still have time to interact with the kids in a non-screaming capacity, some of them might surprise you.
Others, of course, will get bored and set fire to things. Them's the risks.
This is one of those times when a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. Yes, robots would be another in a long string of technological overhauls that we've performed on our own society. But this will be the first time that a new invention has come along that does more than displace a certain segment of the workforce. If the article is correct--and I have a hunch that it's pretty accurate--then robots will obsolete broad swaths of the economic landscape: "manual labor," "selling things to people," "repairing things," "driving vehicles," "guarding areas," and so on.
Prior to this, such economic changes amounted to reshuffling everyone, with the result being everyone was producing more. But this is the sort of reshuffling that could drop many people out of the deck entirely. Since there are very few ways for the average sixteen year old rice-rocket fanatic to contribute to the economy, and most of those will be done cheaper by machines, you can expect--at the very minimum--to see a huge rise in loitering among former Wendy's employees.
It cost Mike Tyson $3 million (he forfeited 10% of the fight purse) when he bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear in a boxing match. Assuming that piece of ear weighed about 1/2 an ounce, Bill could afford to eat 336.81 pounds of Evander Holyfield if he were so inclined. (Thanks to George J Rickle II for the (somewhat sick) suggestion.)
I thought the timescale was pretty reasonable, possibly even conservative. From a social/technological standpoint, the changes he's talking about aren't that far from the amount of change we've seen since 1950. OTOH, it's entirely possible that Moore's Law will collapse sometime within the next ten to twenty years, which would delay these predictions indefinitely.
The only place I think he stumbles is where he tries to predict the consequences of this increased automation. The predictions of massive unemployment may be offset by the jobs generated by the manufacture and repair of robots. But even those jobs could be automated somewhat, and the new jobs will almost inevitably require greater technical skills than the jobs they replace. Sad to say, such skills are beyond the capacities of a significant segment of our population.
So unemployment is bound to rise, and rise dramatically. The way corporations are currently run, I would see this unemployment much the way the author describes.
But--and this particular 'but' requires a complete overhaul of modern capitalism--it could also become a form of emancipation. As the system stands now, the owner of a grocery store that switched over to automated stockers and registers would simply pocket the savings. Now, earlier in the automation trend, this was acceptable because anything you did to replace jobs in one area correlated with an increase in jobs in another area. But when it gets to the point where an employer can take an expensive human off the clock and drop in a much cheaper robot, our attitude towards the whole work==compensation equation.
Also, this whole debate seems to gloss over a couple of very important questions: First, what are the consequences of making an autonomous, semi-intelligent "worker class?" What sort of ethical concerns should we be thinking about? Second, when the vast majority of work is done by robots, what is left for humans to do? How do we justify our own existence?
I got into a long discussion with my brother-in-law. He took the position that work is inherently ennobling, while I claimed it was a necessary evil. His view, which I found unreasonable, was that some jobs should never be automated, to give people a way to "earn their keep."
The attitude that a person can simply sit around on his or her butt all day, and expect to be rewarded for it horrifies me. What horrifies me more is the idea that, in this predicted world of vast wealth, a very few could feel entitled to almost all of it, simply because they've taken away the means by which people traditionally "earned their share" of it.
As I said earlier, if such a world ever comes about, we need to rewrite the traditional equation. I would start with a guaranteed minimum standard of living for the whole world. Food, housing, medical care, and education would all become inalienable rights.
Next, I would place a hard cap on the amount of property a single person can own, probably expressed as a percentage of total world production, or maybe some multiple of the minimum. It would be high enough that people would have an incentive to get off their butts and do something, but low enough that we don't have "gods among insects" like these guys.
I realize I'm turning into a communist wacko even as I write this. But if it gets to the point where the owners of the companies that create wealth no longer have any reason to distribute any of it as wages, I think it would be only a matter of time until such harebrained ideas suddenly appeared very desirable.
Sure, some jobs will be opened up--especially in the field of on-site robot repair. The problem is, when a labor intensive job is automated, the jobs it might open up generally require more intelligence and specialized training. I think this trend will only get worse, and our options are A) create make-work jobs for the otherwise unemployable, B) expand the welfare system by a factor of twenty, or C) just let people die in the streets.
Personally, I think the economy will collapse when there just aren't enough smart people to go around.
"Sometimes meditation classes are offered as a gesture of thanks for a job well done. Consider AOL Time Warner Inc., where the sales and marketing group was reduced from 850 to 500 people three years ago. Meditation classes were incorporated to help employees deal with the new 12-hour days.
You want to reduce stress in the workplace? Why not start by not giving your employees twelve hour work days?
Have to disagree with your disagreeing. Whether the Internet started with ideological intent or not, it has a structure that supports certain ideologies.
Look at it this way. When America's founding fathers got together and tried to come up with a government, they looked at creating structures and institutions that could safeguard freedoms and rein in abuse. They knew they couldn't control the content of the laws that Congress would pass, so they gave the president veto power. They also balanced things by splitting Congress down the middle.
In the same way, the Internet could have been created in a more restrictive way, where every communication was recorded, audited, and reported to The Powers that Be. Such a structure would not support certain ideals like freedom and anonymity.
The Internet isn't merely a tool. It's an expression of certain values, whether those values were intended or not. Nor are those freedoms inalienable. The decisions that went into the Internet could have been decided differently. In fact, it is slowly being forced away from that original freedom.
Read either of Lawrence Lessig's books. He says basically the same thing. Unlike me, he makes it sound reasonable, so don't take my word for it.
If Microsoft can pay part of their fine in the form of software, should Doubleclick be forced to serve out a few billion more ads?
At first I was doing this just to be silly. But then I thought, wait a minute. Free advertising for non-profit groups like the Red Cross, United Way, etc. might be a useful form of punishment.
Still no replacement for losing a whopping big bag of cash, though.
The reason McDonalds served its coffee hot enough to scald is simple: It allowed them to use lower quality beans, without people noticing. In short, they were able to profit by making their products more dangerous for customers.
You may as well say that we can't protect people from being duped by Ponzi schemes, so why not make them legal? The fact is, these are false advertisements, designed to convince the recipient that there is something wrong with his or her computer. This should be outlawed, and I'm hard pressed to see how such a rule violates anyone's freedom of speech.
Is California really stupid? Or just avidly pro-consumer?
"English-speaking people don't bitch about "rendez-vous", "à propos", etc. This french habit is just arrogance."
From henceforth, please refrain from using the word rendzevous. Instead, please use the more patriotic "freedom meeting." Furthermore, please avoid using accenting characters in words like apropos and resume (a short account of one's career and qualifications prepared typically by an applicant for a position) as such accents give them an inappropriate, un-American character. By doing so, you will be doing your part to fight terrorism at home and abroad.
"I believe the last number I heard was that Clear Channel own 1400 stations. If they want to own 3000 stations, and can do it and be profitable, then why should they be stopped?"
Because they're using my airwaves.
Simply put, we have determined the electromagnetic spectrum to be a public resource. By this rationale, which I fully support, the airwaves should be regulated so as to provide maximum benefit to the public. This means a diversity of offerings and a diversity of viewpoints.
Allowing one company to monopolize the airwaves, maximizing profitability while destroying radio's value as a communication medium, is not in the public interest. The only entity benefitted by such a situation is Clearchannel itself.
There is also the very real problem of monopolies in general. From your questions, it seems that A) You do not believe that monopolies can exist, or B) you do not believe that monopolies are harmful. Or perhaps C) you don't believe that any harm done by monopolies would outweigh the harm done by regulating them.
You would be wrong on any of those counts. Just go back and look at the events which led to the passing of the Sherman Anti-Trust bill.
Simply incorporating doesn't make you evil. You can use your little corporation for whatever purposes you, as an individual, see fit.
The problem is when corporations go public. I understand the financial reasons for doing so, but the point is, once the corporation goes public, the directors are legally required to "maximize shareholder value." It doesn't matter what other principles the corporation originally embodied; such principles are just crying out for a lawsuit.
I dumped MSN for a small Utah ISP called Networld back in 1999, after meeting their CEO at a trade show.
I can't say I have no complaints. I get a lot of busy signals in the evenings, and over the last few years there have been two times when the whole service went down for a couple of days. But they do provide you with e-mail accounts and web space. No stupid ads, and you don't have to use the software they provide if you don't want to.
Last I checked, they had a rule about not having your connection on for more than eight hours a day (averaged over a month). I'm a pretty heavy user, and I've never been dinged on it.
Unlike the ISPs in the story, Networld doesn't look like it's going out of business anytime soon, and I've always had good experiences with their tech support folks. I'd say $100 a year for two nines reliability is pretty impressive, and I would definitely recommend them to any penny pinchers in Utah.
It sounds more and more like AOL is cutting ties with the Mozilla project, first with the Mozilla Foundation and now dumping their development team. But as I understand the Mozilla Public License, all contributions are still owned by AOL, and they have the right to create a closed-source fork of Mozilla any time they feel like it.
So my question is, who owns the copyright to the code base now? AOL or the Mozilla Foundation? More important, does this fact mean that AOL can continue to use it as a hedge against Microsoft, even as they pass on all development costs to the community at large?
If that's the case, it sounds like a raw deal. Does anyone know? If someone understands the ins and outs of the MPL, and how it affects the new relationship between AOL and the Mozilla Project, I think a lot of people would be interested.
There's nothing wrong with using client-side Javascript for checking values. You simply have to remember that its only purpose is to avoid wasting the server's time dishing out error messages.
Where you get into trouble is when you start assuming that the information coming from the client doesn't need to be verified. Client side verification is meant to conserve resources, and shouldn't be a replacement for real security.
I've never heard of this tactic before: the article says that Peoplesoft is promising to reimburse their customers for five times the costs of any products they buy, if they end up getting bought out. It seems like a very clever tactic, since it boosts sales and makes them vastly more expensive to buy out, without otherwise affecting their bottom line.
Any idea if this is legal, or if Oracle would have to honor commitments like these?
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're being unrealistic. Instead, I side with Scott Adams' comment on the importance of your vote: The value of your vote is actually negative if its influence on the outcome is outweighed by the time and effort spent casting it.
Throw in the fact that you can be a conscientious citizen, get yourself well informed on all the candidates and issues, and have your vote negated by some ninety-five year old lady who is voting for Al Gore because he wore the best tie... can you blame us for getting cynical?
One point: If SCO's licensing scheme becomes ubiquitous, Linux is dead anyways. SCO doesn't have the right to distribute Linux under anything but the GPL (unless their ridiculously expansive concept of "intellectual property" stands up in court, which it won't). Nobody will work on Linux just to increase SCO's revenues, and we all know how well they maintain their own Unix offering, so they won't be doing it in house.
The legal alternatives, I guess, would be HURD or the *BSDs. Maybe a GPL'ed fork of one of the BSDs.
I'm confident of one thing. If SCO wins, the current community will be brushing off their old copies of MINIX before contributing to SCO/Linux.
After watching my Mom struggle with various Windows offerings, I think the question should be rephrased, "Based on the ability of most users out there, is there any chance that we'll ever have a truly intuitive computer interface?"
Right now, I don't think there is one, even for someone who understands the concepts of files, directories, and applications.
So, um, Open Source is like Communism, right?
/me watches Bruce's face scrunch up and redden, right before his head explodes.
Man, I could have written this question myself. You and I are in pretty much the same boat.
First, I would like to point out that I'm writing this in order to avoid getting any real work done.
Second, a quick rundown of the advice I've seen here, and my opinion:
-Exercise: Tentatively disagree. Exercise is great in its own right, and it may help your overall well-being. But I've had times in my life where I was putting ten or twelve hours a week into the gym. When you're done, you'll feel more relaxed and have a bit of an endorphine buzz, but it doesn't mean you're going to sit down and kick your latest project in the arse. In short, get some exercise, but don't expect it to solve all your problems.
-Psychiatric evaluation: Agree
-Self-medication: Disagree
-Just grow up, act like an adult, and get your adult things done: Bugger that. You need ideas, not a reason to beat yourself up even more.
-Stop browsing Slashdot: Wholeheartedly agree. [God, I'm a hypocrite] You admit that the computer itself is a problem, so try and limit your browsing time as much as possible. Start with 30 minutes a day. Don't beat yourself up if it doesn't go that low. It's just a guideline for evaluating individual browsing decisions. Do I really need to know the latest SCO news? Is this week's Onion really *that* funny? Personally, I've found that I can get ninety percent of the enjoyment in about a minute, just by browsing the headlines.
-Disconnect the Internet: If you can get away with it, do so. It helps if you wget any resources or APIs you find yourself using a lot. You need to construct every barrier to goofing off that you can.
-Maybe you're in the wrong field: Unless there's a "play video games for money" career field I'm unaware of, this advice is far too easy to give. Others have said that, if you find yourself retreating from your coding in order to study something like astronomy or psychology, or to do some writing, then there may be a viable option there. Give it a look, but realize that doing something for fun isn't the same as doing something as a career.
I would also add, write lists, write sublists, and keep them someplace extremely handy. Also, enlist the aid of your friends and enemies by announcing your goals and intentions. If you know that others are expecting you to perform--or waiting to see you fail--then you have more incentive. Once you're far enough along on a project that you know you're serious about it, let it be known.
I can't emphasize this enough: Put yourself in positions where results and accomplishment are simply expected. The busiest and most productive time in my life--which doesn't necessarily mean the most useful--was when I joined the Army at the ripe old age of 17. Man, 1995 seems like such a long time ago. During the year of training, I had to haul butt in every aspect of life: Exercising, learning, keeping the barracks in a drill sergeant-approved state, and dealing with all the other crap. I didn't have a choice.
Try this: Go to someone you trust, explain your problem, and ask them to let you send them a weekly status report of your current goals and projects, and the steps you're taking towards accomplishing them. If you have a major assignment, schedule time with the teacher to explain your progress. Let them shame you into working.
I wish I could say that this advice is guaranteed to work. It works for me, when I actually bother to do it. Good luck.
Generally speaking, I agree with you. The problem is, prior to this, technological improvements and automation simply moved jobs around. Now jobs are being eliminated outright. If the overall demand for human labor is eliminated or sharply reduced, it could go two ways.
First, the new increase in wealth made possible by automation could be directed back towards the population at large. In this case, it would be a huge blessing.
In the second scenario, the elimination of jobs will also eliminate any obligation by the owners of wealth-creating corporations to distribute any of that wealth to anybody. Right now, workers have to be compensated because only they can do the labor. Having your workforce starve to death destroys productivity. But if you can replace humans with machines that requires no compensation at all, then many people will have no way of obtaining a living.
My doomsday scenario sees a few hundred thousand ultra-rich people trading vast quantities of goods and services within gated communities, while everyone else starves outside. It doesn't have to be that way, but with the current attitudes of our corporate masters, it's not implausible either.
Point taken. However, many people simply haven't had the experience of being creative. They're too busy juggling two minimum wage jobs, a family (which they're botching to hell because they don't have the time left to do it right), and trying to keep their wrecked tin can with 250K miles out of the shop. I'm not saying that these people are all Shakespeares' and Van Goghs' waiting to be unleashed, but if they had the time and freedom to educate themselves, take up hobbies, and still have time to interact with the kids in a non-screaming capacity, some of them might surprise you.
Others, of course, will get bored and set fire to things. Them's the risks.
This is one of those times when a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind. Yes, robots would be another in a long string of technological overhauls that we've performed on our own society. But this will be the first time that a new invention has come along that does more than displace a certain segment of the workforce. If the article is correct--and I have a hunch that it's pretty accurate--then robots will obsolete broad swaths of the economic landscape: "manual labor," "selling things to people," "repairing things," "driving vehicles," "guarding areas," and so on.
Prior to this, such economic changes amounted to reshuffling everyone, with the result being everyone was producing more. But this is the sort of reshuffling that could drop many people out of the deck entirely. Since there are very few ways for the average sixteen year old rice-rocket fanatic to contribute to the economy, and most of those will be done cheaper by machines, you can expect--at the very minimum--to see a huge rise in loitering among former Wendy's employees.
From The Bill Gates Net Worth Page:
I thought the timescale was pretty reasonable, possibly even conservative. From a social/technological standpoint, the changes he's talking about aren't that far from the amount of change we've seen since 1950. OTOH, it's entirely possible that Moore's Law will collapse sometime within the next ten to twenty years, which would delay these predictions indefinitely.
The only place I think he stumbles is where he tries to predict the consequences of this increased automation. The predictions of massive unemployment may be offset by the jobs generated by the manufacture and repair of robots. But even those jobs could be automated somewhat, and the new jobs will almost inevitably require greater technical skills than the jobs they replace. Sad to say, such skills are beyond the capacities of a significant segment of our population.
So unemployment is bound to rise, and rise dramatically. The way corporations are currently run, I would see this unemployment much the way the author describes.
But--and this particular 'but' requires a complete overhaul of modern capitalism--it could also become a form of emancipation. As the system stands now, the owner of a grocery store that switched over to automated stockers and registers would simply pocket the savings. Now, earlier in the automation trend, this was acceptable because anything you did to replace jobs in one area correlated with an increase in jobs in another area. But when it gets to the point where an employer can take an expensive human off the clock and drop in a much cheaper robot, our attitude towards the whole work==compensation equation.
Also, this whole debate seems to gloss over a couple of very important questions: First, what are the consequences of making an autonomous, semi-intelligent "worker class?" What sort of ethical concerns should we be thinking about? Second, when the vast majority of work is done by robots, what is left for humans to do? How do we justify our own existence?
I got into a long discussion with my brother-in-law. He took the position that work is inherently ennobling, while I claimed it was a necessary evil. His view, which I found unreasonable, was that some jobs should never be automated, to give people a way to "earn their keep."
The attitude that a person can simply sit around on his or her butt all day, and expect to be rewarded for it horrifies me. What horrifies me more is the idea that, in this predicted world of vast wealth, a very few could feel entitled to almost all of it, simply because they've taken away the means by which people traditionally "earned their share" of it.
As I said earlier, if such a world ever comes about, we need to rewrite the traditional equation. I would start with a guaranteed minimum standard of living for the whole world. Food, housing, medical care, and education would all become inalienable rights.
Next, I would place a hard cap on the amount of property a single person can own, probably expressed as a percentage of total world production, or maybe some multiple of the minimum. It would be high enough that people would have an incentive to get off their butts and do something, but low enough that we don't have "gods among insects" like these guys.
I realize I'm turning into a communist wacko even as I write this. But if it gets to the point where the owners of the companies that create wealth no longer have any reason to distribute any of it as wages, I think it would be only a matter of time until such harebrained ideas suddenly appeared very desirable.
Sure, some jobs will be opened up--especially in the field of on-site robot repair. The problem is, when a labor intensive job is automated, the jobs it might open up generally require more intelligence and specialized training. I think this trend will only get worse, and our options are A) create make-work jobs for the otherwise unemployable, B) expand the welfare system by a factor of twenty, or C) just let people die in the streets.
Personally, I think the economy will collapse when there just aren't enough smart people to go around.
Have to disagree with your disagreeing. Whether the Internet started with ideological intent or not, it has a structure that supports certain ideologies.
Look at it this way. When America's founding fathers got together and tried to come up with a government, they looked at creating structures and institutions that could safeguard freedoms and rein in abuse. They knew they couldn't control the content of the laws that Congress would pass, so they gave the president veto power. They also balanced things by splitting Congress down the middle.
In the same way, the Internet could have been created in a more restrictive way, where every communication was recorded, audited, and reported to The Powers that Be. Such a structure would not support certain ideals like freedom and anonymity.
The Internet isn't merely a tool. It's an expression of certain values, whether those values were intended or not. Nor are those freedoms inalienable. The decisions that went into the Internet could have been decided differently. In fact, it is slowly being forced away from that original freedom.
Read either of Lawrence Lessig's books. He says basically the same thing. Unlike me, he makes it sound reasonable, so don't take my word for it.
If Microsoft can pay part of their fine in the form of software, should Doubleclick be forced to serve out a few billion more ads?
At first I was doing this just to be silly. But then I thought, wait a minute. Free advertising for non-profit groups like the Red Cross, United Way, etc. might be a useful form of punishment.
Still no replacement for losing a whopping big bag of cash, though.
The reason McDonalds served its coffee hot enough to scald is simple: It allowed them to use lower quality beans, without people noticing. In short, they were able to profit by making their products more dangerous for customers.
You may as well say that we can't protect people from being duped by Ponzi schemes, so why not make them legal? The fact is, these are false advertisements, designed to convince the recipient that there is something wrong with his or her computer. This should be outlawed, and I'm hard pressed to see how such a rule violates anyone's freedom of speech.
Is California really stupid? Or just avidly pro-consumer?
Thank you,
The Department of Homeland Security
Simply put, we have determined the electromagnetic spectrum to be a public resource. By this rationale, which I fully support, the airwaves should be regulated so as to provide maximum benefit to the public. This means a diversity of offerings and a diversity of viewpoints.
Allowing one company to monopolize the airwaves, maximizing profitability while destroying radio's value as a communication medium, is not in the public interest. The only entity benefitted by such a situation is Clearchannel itself.
There is also the very real problem of monopolies in general. From your questions, it seems that A) You do not believe that monopolies can exist, or B) you do not believe that monopolies are harmful. Or perhaps C) you don't believe that any harm done by monopolies would outweigh the harm done by regulating them.
You would be wrong on any of those counts. Just go back and look at the events which led to the passing of the Sherman Anti-Trust bill.
s/corporations/publicly\ traded\ corporations/
Simply incorporating doesn't make you evil. You can use your little corporation for whatever purposes you, as an individual, see fit.
The problem is when corporations go public. I understand the financial reasons for doing so, but the point is, once the corporation goes public, the directors are legally required to "maximize shareholder value." It doesn't matter what other principles the corporation originally embodied; such principles are just crying out for a lawsuit.
I dumped MSN for a small Utah ISP called Networld back in 1999, after meeting their CEO at a trade show.
I can't say I have no complaints. I get a lot of busy signals in the evenings, and over the last few years there have been two times when the whole service went down for a couple of days. But they do provide you with e-mail accounts and web space. No stupid ads, and you don't have to use the software they provide if you don't want to.
Last I checked, they had a rule about not having your connection on for more than eight hours a day (averaged over a month). I'm a pretty heavy user, and I've never been dinged on it.
Unlike the ISPs in the story, Networld doesn't look like it's going out of business anytime soon, and I've always had good experiences with their tech support folks. I'd say $100 a year for two nines reliability is pretty impressive, and I would definitely recommend them to any penny pinchers in Utah.
An Onerous Coward
Mostly Satisfied Customer
The cartoon is taking way too long to load up. Could you please e-mail it to me?
Of course, to over-extend your analogy, the fan is buying their latest album with my money!
It sounds more and more like AOL is cutting ties with the Mozilla project, first with the Mozilla Foundation and now dumping their development team. But as I understand the Mozilla Public License, all contributions are still owned by AOL, and they have the right to create a closed-source fork of Mozilla any time they feel like it.
So my question is, who owns the copyright to the code base now? AOL or the Mozilla Foundation? More important, does this fact mean that AOL can continue to use it as a hedge against Microsoft, even as they pass on all development costs to the community at large?
If that's the case, it sounds like a raw deal. Does anyone know? If someone understands the ins and outs of the MPL, and how it affects the new relationship between AOL and the Mozilla Project, I think a lot of people would be interested.
There's nothing wrong with using client-side Javascript for checking values. You simply have to remember that its only purpose is to avoid wasting the server's time dishing out error messages.
Where you get into trouble is when you start assuming that the information coming from the client doesn't need to be verified. Client side verification is meant to conserve resources, and shouldn't be a replacement for real security.
I've never heard of this tactic before: the article says that Peoplesoft is promising to reimburse their customers for five times the costs of any products they buy, if they end up getting bought out. It seems like a very clever tactic, since it boosts sales and makes them vastly more expensive to buy out, without otherwise affecting their bottom line.
Any idea if this is legal, or if Oracle would have to honor commitments like these?
I couldn't stand working with a system like this constantly. But for training? It sounds pretty schweet.