Oh absolutely. Everybody wants to prop up their own export market while reducing competition for domestic producers at home. America is not even the most egregious offender. France, and now all of the EU, with its huge trade-distorting export farm subsidies is particularly harmful because it makes it so that peasant-farmers in poor countries can't compete in the market. Japan is just as bad, though the harm it does is limited by the fact that it is a relatively small country. The list goes on and on.
Part of the philosophy of the WTO is multilateralism, that is, every country treat every other country equally (or at least fairly--poor countries tend to get a bit more favorable treatment than rich ones). So if you want trade in your country's exports to be free you have to make trade in your imports, which are by definition someone else's exports, free as well.
Once S. Korea starts slapping a 40% duty on Windows and Viagra, we'll start hearing Bush and Zoellick talking about how harmful trade wars are again.
This is not really surprising. America's dirty little secret about free trade is that it only wants it in industries where it has a competative advantage, namely capital intensive, low-labor industries with high barriers to entry. Witness Americas record of high tariffs and low quotas on:
* Canadian lumber * Asian and European steel * Brazilian sugar and citrus fruits * Mexican produce and logistical transport * Textiles from pretty much everywhere
Despite all the protests to the contrary, this is one of the reasons why the World Trade Organization is not always such a bad thing. It works to curb the natural inclinations of the rich and powerful (eg America) for stacking the deck in their favor. For example, American trade practices in each of the above cases have been ruled illegal by the WTO in recent years.
Although Uncle Sam may want free trade in Hollywood films, Microsoft software, Pfizer Viagra, Monsanto GMO crops, and little else. Only a fair and multilateral international trade regime will make globalization a workable system.
It's disturbing to hear about members of the government openly advocating vigilatism. Violent self-help is a danger to any society founded on the principle of the rule of law. Who gets to decide who's guilty? Who determines the punishment? Who watches for excesses and abuses? When it's every man for himself, life quickly becomes nasty, brutish, and short.
Coincidentally, I've been reading a book called "The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment" (by Franklin Zimring) that argues, among other things, that America's strong vigilate tradition, especially in the South, is one of the primary reasons it has become one of the last developed nations in the world with a death penalty; and that the values associated with vigilatism prevent Americans from critically examining the gross inequities in their capital punishment system, such as the vastly differing rates of executution of the condemned by income and race.
When I read something like this, it makes me feel like senator Hatch has a lot in common with those Good ol' Boys in the white hoods. Lets all hope that cooler heads prevail.
It's definitely coming from somewhere. Last week I observed something amazing that received amazingly little press coverage. After the reading of the latest of Osama bin Laden's apparent public statements, both Rumsfeld and Powell cited it as further evidence of a strong connection between Iraq and al Qaida. The amazing thing is that the statement specifically denounced Saddam Hussein as an infidel and denied any relationship with him. It said only that since Saddam only wants to rule Iraq while America wants to rule the whole world, that in this case, siding with Iraq is the lesser of two evils (flamers, keep in mind that I'm recapitulating the argument, not endorsing it), or to put it in terms that even George Bush could understand: Iraqi government bad. American government badder.
Now, anybody who bothered to read or listen to the statement must know this. Yet senior members of the Bush White House very clearly represented the statement as saying somthing that it very clearly did not say. The question is why? As far as I can tell, either the United States is run by a bunch of illiterate morons, which is clearly not the case; or they hoped that no one would notice, which is frankly untennable; or they simply decided to make up a lie, stick by their story and act as if they don't care whether people notice or not. Assuming it's the third, I know about how this tactic was used throughout the Cold War, and especially during the Vietnam conflict, but I had really come to believe that it had become an obsolete and discredited tactic. I was surprised and saddened to have been proven wrong.
> No one is in trouble. No one is prevented from travelling. But you have to start somewhere.
Are you aware that since September 11, 2001 thousands of people have been rounded up by the United States and cooperating governments and been jailed, interogated, in some cases tortured (yes, really), lost their jobs, been deported and generally had their lives ruined based on such tenuous correlations? Do you know that hundreds are still being held without charges or a right to protest their innocence?
No harm done?!? You have got to be kidding. Discrimination, suspicion and recriminations won't make us any safer. The only viable path to global peace and security is through universal human rights and fair treatment for everybody. The United States could make half of the global animosity toward it disappear simply by stopping its financial and military support of corrupt, oppressive regemes.
What we achieve in life is the result of an intricate interplay between nature and nurture. For people who live in poverty, suffer disease and malnutrition, lack basic education and employment and are often caught in the middle of armed conflict, achieving what those of us in the rich world have achieved is not a realistic option. Do you really think you would have become the suave sophisticate you are today if you had grown up in those conditions?
People must take responsibility for their own lives, but they need a decent environment in which to do it. Many of the rich, comfortable people don't seem to understand this. Rich-world governments perpetuate policies that make the lives of the most miserable even worse, and yet are shocked when those same people don't behave rationally and lash out angrily and despirately. What the hell do they expect? We all have a responsibility to make life livable for everybody. If we don't, it will come back to haunt us eventually.
I think you're missing the point. You could just as easily say that Red Hat took stuff from GNU, X11, KDE, GNOME, etc., and that "most of the work was already done for them" as well.
The fact is that Mandrake has contributed quite a few high quality original programs to the free software ecosystem (their graphical configuration tools are particularly nice) and that their employees, like those of other distros, help us all by filing bug reports with upstream maintainers, sending patches, participating in mailing lists and conferences, compiling binary packages, and engaging in advocacy.
Most people who have actually used Mandrake would probably agree that it's a fairly well done distribution. Personally, it's the one I recommend first to newbies or "switchers" or whatever we call them these days. They do a lot of good work and it will be all our losses if they fail.
That said, if they want to continue to operate as a commercial entity, as opposed to a non-profit organization like the Free Software Foundation or Debian, they need to come up with a business model in which revenues meet or exceed expenses. It's just simple economics.
I will go over and donate a few more bucks to them today, but I'm not very optimistic about this as a long-term business model.
okay, maybe this is a little off-topic, but what about audio support? these network-transparent windowing systems are great and all, but it only stands to reason that if a program i'm running produces audio output that i'd want that output directed to the same host that is managing my display. with all the current implementations that i'm aware of, redirecting audio to follow the display is a huge pain in the ass. i wish fresco or x had an integrated audio mixer and transport scheme to transparently sent the noises to the same place as the pictures.
I think it would be instructive to consider the purpose of this law. Is it to protect children from abuse and exploitation, or is it to criminalize conduct that offends our sensibilities? The former is a right, and indeed, a responsibility of government. While the latter is incompatible with a free society because it violates an even more fundimental duty of government: to not abridge people's freedom so long as their actions do not violate the rights of others (or due gross harm to the environment, wildlife, etc).
While its defenders try to portray its purpose as the former, upon inspection, it seems clear that its effect would be the latter. That makes it a bad law, and its defeat just.
Basically, there are two main complaints when it comes to Microsoft:
1) its products are generally of poor quality
2) despite (1) it dominates the market through unscrupulous and sometimes illegal business practices
The only one that has the right or responsibility to change (1) is Microsoft itself. If it does this through adopting a more open development model, fine. If it does it by better training its developers and Q.A. personnel, fine. If it does it by hiring another company to find and fix its bugs, fine. And if it doesn't do it at all, that's fine too. People can vote with their feet and with their dollars and simply get their software from somebody else.
Except they can't, because of (2). And this is where antitrust law comes in and this is the thing that people should really care about.
People who want to see Microsoft compelled to reveal their source code are only distracting the issue. It's not as though Microsoft is the only company or organization that is capable of producing the kind of software people want. Ask any developer that is trying to write software for Windows and they'll tell you they don't want to know how Microsoft's software does what it does, rather they want to know how how to be able to make their software do what they want it to do. For this they need complete and accurate documentation of Microsoft's APIs and the information they need to be able to make informed decisions about performance, compatability, security, etc.
It's not as though the only way that anyone else can compete with Microsoft is by copying from its source code like some lazy student, who hasn't been coming to class all semester and only now realizes that the only way (s)he can finish the assignment is to cheat off the smart kids.
Most of the smart people always work for someone else, and this is as true of Microsoft as it is of any other company. If competitors are given equal access to the interfaces then they will make great software, and Microsoft knows this this. All this talk of forcing them to open their code simply obscures the issues, which I would summarize as follows:
1) Microsoft monopolizes information about the interfaces of its operating system, putting application-level competitors at an unfair disadvantage
2) Microsoft uses its dominant operating system market share to coerce hardware vendors to withold support for other operating systems, putting OS-level competitors at an unfair disadvantage.
Compelling Microsoft to divulge bits of source code here and there will do little to remedy (1) and nothing at all to address (2). But then again, neither will any of the proposed remedies from any of the antitrust suits.
Perhaps the majority of/.ers just thought Gore was a better candidate for the job than Bush. I'm just speculating here, but maybe they thought he was more qualified, intelligent, knowledgable in foreign affairs, mentally stable, etc.
You don't need to sell your soul to the lesser of two devils (or in this case, duopolistic political parties) to make a rational choice between their devil's compacts (i.e. candidates).
I don't think he's talking about income tax, rather sales tax. I doubt that he wants all this wonderful tax revenue to come from him, rather you.
Re:Wow, lets make laws for everything!
on
SSSCA Hearing
·
· Score: 1
You laugh, but the state of Indiana once deliberated a bill that would have legislated the value of Pi to be 3.2. Think of all the circles that would have been in violation.
(See http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aux/pi.html for this amusing story)
Lets hope that the honorable Mr. Holling's bill meets with the same ignoble fate.
That's not the point. Anybody with a clue (Valenti's lawyers and consultants, if not the man himself) knows that they cannot actually control what people do with their own property in the privacy of their own homes. The point is to criminalize the people who aren't willing to play the game by their rules.
To see the effects of this you need look no further than the treatment of Ed Felton, Dmitri Sklyarov, Eric Corley, Jon Johansen, etc under laws like the DMCA.
If they get this law passed then they will have an excuse to harass people doing things they don't like. Old Jack will be able co call up the F.B.I. and report an anonymous tip that some foreigner from eastern europe (he might even be a terrorist) in San Francisco named Linus is trafficking in an interactive digital device that does not enforce copy protection, and the jack-booted thugs will be able to kick down his door, confiscate everything he owns with a microchip in it and then take him down to the San Jose jail (a three week trip in shackles via Oklahoma City), where he'll be charged with a misdemeanor and released.
Well okay, they probably won't do this to Linus. He's rich and famous. But you're probably not.
question: Should the US prohibit the export of high-encryption software?
No. It is idiotic to believe that if the U.S. doesn't export it, people outside the U.S. won't be able to get it and use it to evil ends. If this were the case, the U.S. would be much better off banning the export of military hardware. But of course that will never happen because the American arms dealers have the American Congress in their pockets. But which do you think does more harm in the world, Apache webservers with HTTPS extensions or Apache attack helicopters with Hellfire missiles? Maybe we should lobby the U.S. Congress to make Boeing sell their "export" Apache attack helicopters to their more brutal allies with Nerf missiles instead. I'd be all for that.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh absolutely. Everybody wants to prop up their own export market while reducing competition for domestic producers at home. America is not even the most egregious offender. France, and now all of the EU, with its huge trade-distorting export farm subsidies is particularly harmful because it makes it so that peasant-farmers in poor countries can't compete in the market. Japan is just as bad, though the harm it does is limited by the fact that it is a relatively small country. The list goes on and on.
Part of the philosophy of the WTO is multilateralism, that is, every country treat every other country equally (or at least fairly--poor countries tend to get a bit more favorable treatment than rich ones). So if you want trade in your country's exports to be free you have to make trade in your imports, which are by definition someone else's exports, free as well.
Once S. Korea starts slapping a 40% duty on Windows and Viagra, we'll start hearing Bush and Zoellick talking about how harmful trade wars are again.
This is not really surprising. America's dirty little secret about free trade is that it only wants it in industries where it has a competative advantage, namely capital intensive, low-labor industries with high barriers to entry. Witness Americas record of high tariffs and low quotas on:
* Canadian lumber
* Asian and European steel
* Brazilian sugar and citrus fruits
* Mexican produce and logistical transport
* Textiles from pretty much everywhere
Despite all the protests to the contrary, this is one of the reasons why the World Trade Organization is not always such a bad thing. It works to curb the natural inclinations of the rich and powerful (eg America) for stacking the deck in their favor. For example, American trade practices in each of the above cases have been ruled illegal by the WTO in recent years.
Although Uncle Sam may want free trade in Hollywood films, Microsoft software, Pfizer Viagra, Monsanto GMO crops, and little else. Only a fair and multilateral international trade regime will make globalization a workable system.
It's disturbing to hear about members of the government openly advocating vigilatism. Violent self-help is a danger to any society founded on the principle of the rule of law. Who gets to decide who's guilty? Who determines the punishment? Who watches for excesses and abuses? When it's every man for himself, life quickly becomes nasty, brutish, and short.
Coincidentally, I've been reading a book called "The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment" (by Franklin Zimring) that argues, among other things, that America's strong vigilate tradition, especially in the South, is one of the primary reasons it has become one of the last developed nations in the world with a death penalty; and that the values associated with vigilatism prevent Americans from critically examining the gross inequities in their capital punishment system, such as the vastly differing rates of executution of the condemned by income and race.
When I read something like this, it makes me feel like senator Hatch has a lot in common with those Good ol' Boys in the white hoods. Lets all hope that cooler heads prevail.
> ...the largest Intel-based high- performance computer site in the world...
Outside the NSA, maybe.
> Also, doesn't such a device emit CO2 and/or water in the process of generating electricity ? where do the exausts go ?
Don't you emit quite a lot of CO2 and water (vapor) in the process of generating lots of heat and maybe a little bit of useful work (on a good day)?
In this regard, carrying around a fuel-cell phone or PDA whould be no more harmful than doing a few jumping-jacks per day.
It's definitely coming from somewhere. Last week I observed something amazing that received amazingly little press coverage. After the reading of the latest of Osama bin Laden's apparent public statements, both Rumsfeld and Powell cited it as further evidence of a strong connection between Iraq and al Qaida. The amazing thing is that the statement specifically denounced Saddam Hussein as an infidel and denied any relationship with him. It said only that since Saddam only wants to rule Iraq while America wants to rule the whole world, that in this case, siding with Iraq is the lesser of two evils (flamers, keep in mind that I'm recapitulating the argument, not endorsing it), or to put it in terms that even George Bush could understand: Iraqi government bad. American government badder.
Now, anybody who bothered to read or listen to the statement must know this. Yet senior members of the Bush White House very clearly represented the statement as saying somthing that it very clearly did not say. The question is why? As far as I can tell, either the United States is run by a bunch of illiterate morons, which is clearly not the case; or they hoped that no one would notice, which is frankly untennable; or they simply decided to make up a lie, stick by their story and act as if they don't care whether people notice or not. Assuming it's the third, I know about how this tactic was used throughout the Cold War, and especially during the Vietnam conflict, but I had really come to believe that it had become an obsolete and discredited tactic. I was surprised and saddened to have been proven wrong.
> No one is in trouble. No one is prevented from travelling. But you have to start somewhere.
Are you aware that since September 11, 2001 thousands of people have been rounded up by the United States and cooperating governments and been jailed, interogated, in some cases tortured (yes, really), lost their jobs, been deported and generally had their lives ruined based on such tenuous correlations? Do you know that hundreds are still being held without charges or a right to protest their innocence?
No harm done?!? You have got to be kidding. Discrimination, suspicion and recriminations won't make us any safer. The only viable path to global peace and security is through universal human rights and fair treatment for everybody. The United States could make half of the global animosity toward it disappear simply by stopping its financial and military support of corrupt, oppressive regemes.
What we achieve in life is the result of an intricate interplay between nature and nurture. For people who live in poverty, suffer disease and malnutrition, lack basic education and employment and are often caught in the middle of armed conflict, achieving what those of us in the rich world have achieved is not a realistic option. Do you really think you would have become the suave sophisticate you are today if you had grown up in those conditions?
People must take responsibility for their own lives, but they need a decent environment in which to do it. Many of the rich, comfortable people don't seem to understand this. Rich-world governments perpetuate policies that make the lives of the most miserable even worse, and yet are shocked when those same people don't behave rationally and lash out angrily and despirately. What the hell do they expect? We all have a responsibility to make life livable for everybody. If we don't, it will come back to haunt us eventually.
I think you're missing the point. You could just as easily say that Red Hat took stuff from GNU, X11, KDE, GNOME, etc., and that "most of the work was already done for them" as well.
The fact is that Mandrake has contributed quite a few high quality original programs to the free software ecosystem (their graphical configuration tools are particularly nice) and that their employees, like those of other distros, help us all by filing bug reports with upstream maintainers, sending patches, participating in mailing lists and conferences, compiling binary packages, and engaging in advocacy.
Most people who have actually used Mandrake would probably agree that it's a fairly well done distribution. Personally, it's the one I recommend first to newbies or "switchers" or whatever we call them these days. They do a lot of good work and it will be all our losses if they fail.
That said, if they want to continue to operate as a commercial entity, as opposed to a non-profit organization like the Free Software Foundation or Debian, they need to come up with a business model in which revenues meet or exceed expenses. It's just simple economics.
I will go over and donate a few more bucks to them today, but I'm not very optimistic about this as a long-term business model.
okay, maybe this is a little off-topic, but what about audio support? these network-transparent windowing systems are great and all, but it only stands to reason that if a program i'm running produces audio output that i'd want that output directed to the same host that is managing my display. with all the current implementations that i'm aware of, redirecting audio to follow the display is a huge pain in the ass. i wish fresco or x had an integrated audio mixer and transport scheme to transparently sent the noises to the same place as the pictures.
I think it would be instructive to consider the purpose of this law. Is it to protect children from abuse and exploitation, or is it to criminalize conduct that offends our sensibilities? The former is a right, and indeed, a responsibility of government. While the latter is incompatible with a free society because it violates an even more fundimental duty of government: to not abridge people's freedom so long as their actions do not violate the rights of others (or due gross harm to the environment, wildlife, etc).
While its defenders try to portray its purpose as the former, upon inspection, it seems clear that its effect would be the latter. That makes it a bad law, and its defeat just.
Basically, there are two main complaints when it comes to Microsoft:
1) its products are generally of poor quality
2) despite (1) it dominates the market through unscrupulous and sometimes illegal business practices
The only one that has the right or responsibility to change (1) is Microsoft itself. If it does this through adopting a more open development model, fine. If it does it by better training its developers and Q.A. personnel, fine. If it does it by hiring another company to find and fix its bugs, fine. And if it doesn't do it at all, that's fine too. People can vote with their feet and with their dollars and simply get their software from somebody else.
Except they can't, because of (2). And this is where antitrust law comes in and this is the thing that people should really care about.
People who want to see Microsoft compelled to reveal their source code are only distracting the issue. It's not as though Microsoft is the only company or organization that is capable of producing the kind of software people want. Ask any developer that is trying to write software for Windows and they'll tell you they don't want to know how Microsoft's software does what it does, rather they want to know how how to be able to make their software do what they want it to do. For this they need complete and accurate documentation of Microsoft's APIs and the information they need to be able to make informed decisions about performance, compatability, security, etc.
It's not as though the only way that anyone else can compete with Microsoft is by copying from its source code like some lazy student, who hasn't been coming to class all semester and only now realizes that the only way (s)he can finish the assignment is to cheat off the smart kids.
Most of the smart people always work for someone else, and this is as true of Microsoft as it is of any other company. If competitors are given equal access to the interfaces then they will make great software, and Microsoft knows this this. All this talk of forcing them to open their code simply obscures the issues, which I would summarize as follows:
1) Microsoft monopolizes information about the interfaces of its operating system, putting application-level competitors at an unfair disadvantage
2) Microsoft uses its dominant operating system market share to coerce hardware vendors to withold support for other operating systems, putting OS-level competitors at an unfair disadvantage.
Compelling Microsoft to divulge bits of source code here and there will do little to remedy (1) and nothing at all to address (2). But then again, neither will any of the proposed remedies from any of the antitrust suits.
Perhaps the majority of /.ers just thought Gore was a better candidate for the job than Bush. I'm just speculating here, but maybe they thought he was more qualified, intelligent, knowledgable in foreign affairs, mentally stable, etc.
You don't need to sell your soul to the lesser of two devils (or in this case, duopolistic political parties) to make a rational choice between their devil's compacts (i.e. candidates).
I don't think he's talking about income tax, rather sales tax. I doubt that he wants all this wonderful tax revenue to come from him, rather you.
You laugh, but the state of Indiana once deliberated a bill that would have legislated the value of Pi to be 3.2. Think of all the circles that would have been in violation.
l for this amusing story)
(See http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aux/pi.htm
Lets hope that the honorable Mr. Holling's bill meets with the same ignoble fate.
That's not the point. Anybody with a clue (Valenti's lawyers and consultants, if not the man himself) knows that they cannot actually control what people do with their own property in the privacy of their own homes. The point is to criminalize the people who aren't willing to play the game by their rules.
To see the effects of this you need look no further than the treatment of Ed Felton, Dmitri Sklyarov, Eric Corley, Jon Johansen, etc under laws like the DMCA.
If they get this law passed then they will have an excuse to harass people doing things they don't like. Old Jack will be able co call up the F.B.I. and report an anonymous tip that some foreigner from eastern europe (he might even be a terrorist) in San Francisco named Linus is trafficking in an interactive digital device that does not enforce copy protection, and the jack-booted thugs will be able to kick down his door, confiscate everything he owns with a microchip in it and then take him down to the San Jose jail (a three week trip in shackles via Oklahoma City), where he'll be charged with a misdemeanor and released.
Well okay, they probably won't do this to Linus. He's rich and famous. But you're probably not.
Just some food for thought.
No. It is idiotic to believe that if the U.S. doesn't export it, people outside the U.S. won't be able to get it and use it to evil ends. If this were the case, the U.S. would be much better off banning the export of military hardware. But of course that will never happen because the American arms dealers have the American Congress in their pockets. But which do you think does more harm in the world, Apache webservers with HTTPS extensions or Apache attack helicopters with Hellfire missiles? Maybe we should lobby the U.S. Congress to make Boeing sell their "export" Apache attack helicopters to their more brutal allies with Nerf missiles instead. I'd be all for that.