I don't think its a bad assumption to make at all. People assume that since software is a digital product and copying it is almost without expense that it is a totally non-scarce material.
Once it has been made, this is true. But the development of said software still depends on limited resources, skillful programmers. Then once it is made it needs skillful maintainers. A few thousand open source contributers does not equal either. Their skill livels MAY be as good as the original developers, most often its not.
So now, Debian Linux, one of the "free'est" of the Linux distributions is demonstrating to the world the true cost and expense of developing and depending on free/open source software. The real resource is as with proprietary software, the developers and at any time in free software they can just become disenchanted or "bored" and just walk away from a project and leave it hanging. Its pure, cinderella-type fantasy to assume that every open source contributer in the world can or will even WANT to step right in and pick up the slack. We're this a company, replacement programmers could be hired and trained to take over. There's no such system in place with free software/open source. Its all so haphazard.
You are correct that in capitalism competition occurs. You are incorrect on where it occurs however. Its not between the poor and the rich. Its between two peoples of any walk of life. There is no limit on how many times you can try again. Those who are on the bottom are those who constantly fail and hardly ever succeed or those who don't even try to begin with. No one wins or loses all the time but some do win or lose most of the time. Each matchup carries potential victory for either side but if you have no skills, ambition or education then you will fail more often or not. This can make it seem like the rich always win but thats not always the case, its not that simple.
Capitalism is the fairest system though. If you are getting the short end of the stick, then improve YOURSELF. Go to school, change careers, make drastic life changes. Its either that or start your own revolutionary army because life in general is not going to improve for you just because you may be bitter and or envious. You'll have to work hard, AND smart, for what you want.
If is funny. The question now is where do we go from here? Continue to be ashamed of our intrinsic natures and stick to faulty societal models (socialism) or accept ourselves as the selfish beings that we are and finally become comfortable with capitalism?
Of course this is all assuming you accept the premise to begin with, which I do.
It might help to get your message across if you could inject some actual emotion, perhaps rage, into your comments next time. Your post was so completely devoid of personal feeling that I wonder if you even mean what you said.
The only alternatives promote nothing but misery. So if someone prefers misery as opposed to prosperity then yes I guess you are right. No issue ever has 100% agreement afterall.
It is entirely possible that there are degrees of addiction and that your degree is of the lighter variety allowing you to self-correct. If this is true then there are those who have heavier types of addiction and need help. Leaving it as a judgement based issue doesn't actually fix things, because we all know how effective lectures and holier than though positions are at fixing problems.
I'd rather have science give it a try and try to come up with some new solutions.
On its own merits and not because its happening, Globalization IS a good thing. Unless of course your one of those folks who prefers whole regions of the earth remain impoverished for some unknown reason.
As a fellow liberal has the situation you just presented ever made you wonder if perhaps far left liberal ideas just have next to no appeal among the majority of Americans? Far right ideas seem to but far left ideas don't. I'm sure if Democrats thought far left positions could win them elections you'd see them stumping for gay marriage and drive thru abortions but they don't seem to be because the public doesn't seem to want it.
How great of a picture can a professional photojournalist take of an event he's not there to cover? Would it be better or worse than the picture the amatuer IS there to capture?
The role of professional photographers will be greatly deminished by orders of magnitude if their careers are limited to going to places where they can be killed because no one else will risk it. On every OTHER part of the planet the amatuers will rule.
You know its funny but I thought the job of government was to do whatever the hell the people told it to do. So if that includes tacking on extra things to the core duties of protecting citizens, then so be it.
There's nothing wrong with me. There is however something wrong with people who place the interests/well-being of strangers over the interests of their fellow citizens.
"It's not a military problem to control the situation they created? Yeah I suppose that about sums up America. Believe it or not, there is more to a war than the initial occupation. But then when has America ever managed to subdue anything bigger than a small Caribbean island?"
Japan? Germany? Italy? The South Eastern United States?
I can see from the fact that the AC I am responding too has been modded "insightful" that there are no shortage of smart asses and smart ass admirers on Slashdot. But lets not kid ourselves, its only human nature for a country to care about its own soldiers and their well being vs the casualties of anyone who is a foreigner. Its not an American trait, or a British trait or an Iraqi trait, its a human trait.
So yes, to Americans the 3,000 coalition deaths are a bit more important than the 650,000 Iraqi deaths.
Knock it off with the shame. You'd be an idiot if you expect our country, under either party's control to hand over this software. Its a national security issue. You don't hand over control codes to your best military hardware so that other nations will LOOK UP TO YOU. Jesus Herbert Christ on a stick.
Its not a weak argument. Without repurchasing all your movies into the new HD format, there's very little reason to own an HD-DVD/Blue-Ray player. Why would I spend $600 or more just to watch the same DVDs on the new player? As for new movies, they'll continue to be released on regular DVDs for many years so why pay the premium for the next gen player right now?
Mark Hurd is the guy who turned HP around. After their many many under-performing choices for CEO pre Hurd they know how hard it is to get a competent guy in the top job. They're not going to be getting rid of Hurd anytime soon.
You wouldn't have an aristocracy anyway. Most families lose their wealth in a few generations due to bad spending habits. Also just because a family is rich does not mean they are politically involved or even competent. For example, I seriously doubt the Hiltons are weighing in on foreign policy behind closed doors.
Please. 50 guys with guns wins against 1 guy with a gun everytime. Especially if you give those 50 guys with guns great pay and a favored status in society.
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I don't think its a bad assumption to make at all. People assume that since software is a digital product and copying it is almost without expense that it is a totally non-scarce material.
Once it has been made, this is true. But the development of said software still depends on limited resources, skillful programmers. Then once it is made it needs skillful maintainers. A few thousand open source contributers does not equal either. Their skill livels MAY be as good as the original developers, most often its not.
So now, Debian Linux, one of the "free'est" of the Linux distributions is demonstrating to the world the true cost and expense of developing and depending on free/open source software. The real resource is as with proprietary software, the developers and at any time in free software they can just become disenchanted or "bored" and just walk away from a project and leave it hanging. Its pure, cinderella-type fantasy to assume that every open source contributer in the world can or will even WANT to step right in and pick up the slack. We're this a company, replacement programmers could be hired and trained to take over. There's no such system in place with free software/open source. Its all so haphazard.
You are correct that in capitalism competition occurs. You are incorrect on where it occurs however. Its not between the poor and the rich. Its between two peoples of any walk of life. There is no limit on how many times you can try again. Those who are on the bottom are those who constantly fail and hardly ever succeed or those who don't even try to begin with. No one wins or loses all the time but some do win or lose most of the time. Each matchup carries potential victory for either side but if you have no skills, ambition or education then you will fail more often or not. This can make it seem like the rich always win but thats not always the case, its not that simple.
Capitalism is the fairest system though. If you are getting the short end of the stick, then improve YOURSELF. Go to school, change careers, make drastic life changes. Its either that or start your own revolutionary army because life in general is not going to improve for you just because you may be bitter and or envious. You'll have to work hard, AND smart, for what you want.
If is funny. The question now is where do we go from here? Continue to be ashamed of our intrinsic natures and stick to faulty societal models (socialism) or accept ourselves as the selfish beings that we are and finally become comfortable with capitalism?
Of course this is all assuming you accept the premise to begin with, which I do.
It might help to get your message across if you could inject some actual emotion, perhaps rage, into your comments next time. Your post was so completely devoid of personal feeling that I wonder if you even mean what you said.
The Zune costs pretty much the same as a comparable iPod. Cost is not a factor here. What planet are you on?
Thats the entire POINT of the Dr. Who franchise. Its SUPPOSED to look campy!
The only alternatives promote nothing but misery. So if someone prefers misery as opposed to prosperity then yes I guess you are right. No issue ever has 100% agreement afterall.
It is entirely possible that there are degrees of addiction and that your degree is of the lighter variety allowing you to self-correct. If this is true then there are those who have heavier types of addiction and need help. Leaving it as a judgement based issue doesn't actually fix things, because we all know how effective lectures and holier than though positions are at fixing problems.
I'd rather have science give it a try and try to come up with some new solutions.
On its own merits and not because its happening, Globalization IS a good thing. Unless of course your one of those folks who prefers whole regions of the earth remain impoverished for some unknown reason.
As a fellow liberal has the situation you just presented ever made you wonder if perhaps far left liberal ideas just have next to no appeal among the majority of Americans? Far right ideas seem to but far left ideas don't. I'm sure if Democrats thought far left positions could win them elections you'd see them stumping for gay marriage and drive thru abortions but they don't seem to be because the public doesn't seem to want it.
What do you think?
How great of a picture can a professional photojournalist take of an event he's not there to cover? Would it be better or worse than the picture the amatuer IS there to capture?
The role of professional photographers will be greatly deminished by orders of magnitude if their careers are limited to going to places where they can be killed because no one else will risk it. On every OTHER part of the planet the amatuers will rule.
Classholes? Are you for real?
Like seriously?
Alternatively do you think people in the US are willing to pay more for software in the US in order to employ US workers?
You know its funny but I thought the job of government was to do whatever the hell the people told it to do. So if that includes tacking on extra things to the core duties of protecting citizens, then so be it.
Guess I was wrong about democracy huh?
There's nothing inhuman about it. We go to great lengths to lessen collateral damage. If we intended to kill civilians there wouldn't be any left.
There's nothing wrong with me. There is however something wrong with people who place the interests/well-being of strangers over the interests of their fellow citizens.
"It's not a military problem to control the situation they created? Yeah I suppose that about sums up America. Believe it or not, there is more to a war than the initial occupation. But then when has America ever managed to subdue anything bigger than a small Caribbean island?"
Japan? Germany? Italy? The South Eastern United States?
Those big enough for you?
I can see from the fact that the AC I am responding too has been modded "insightful" that there are no shortage of smart asses and smart ass admirers on Slashdot. But lets not kid ourselves, its only human nature for a country to care about its own soldiers and their well being vs the casualties of anyone who is a foreigner. Its not an American trait, or a British trait or an Iraqi trait, its a human trait.
So yes, to Americans the 3,000 coalition deaths are a bit more important than the 650,000 Iraqi deaths.
Knock it off with the shame. You'd be an idiot if you expect our country, under either party's control to hand over this software. Its a national security issue. You don't hand over control codes to your best military hardware so that other nations will LOOK UP TO YOU. Jesus Herbert Christ on a stick.
Its not a weak argument. Without repurchasing all your movies into the new HD format, there's very little reason to own an HD-DVD/Blue-Ray player. Why would I spend $600 or more just to watch the same DVDs on the new player? As for new movies, they'll continue to be released on regular DVDs for many years so why pay the premium for the next gen player right now?
Why on earth would I want to use a limited dumb client and not be able to see all the stuff I can see right now on my regular computer?
Mark Hurd is the guy who turned HP around. After their many many under-performing choices for CEO pre Hurd they know how hard it is to get a competent guy in the top job. They're not going to be getting rid of Hurd anytime soon.
You wouldn't have an aristocracy anyway. Most families lose their wealth in a few generations due to bad spending habits. Also just because a family is rich does not mean they are politically involved or even competent. For example, I seriously doubt the Hiltons are weighing in on foreign policy behind closed doors.
Please. 50 guys with guns wins against 1 guy with a gun everytime. Especially if you give those 50 guys with guns great pay and a favored status in society.
Explain how air conditioning is unhealthy.