Here's a pardox for you! Schools will censor things like religious elements of Christmas programs, and prayer in schools. But jails and prisons will allow ministers to come in and basically have church, preaching, distributing Bibles, the works. That's a captive audience if I've ever heard of one! It doesn't seem make sense that these elements would be stripped from the schools and welcomed into the prisons. I support welcoming them in both arenas rather than excluding them from both.
I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes we miss the forest for the trees. We forget what goal it is that we're trying to accomplish. And we confuse the means for the end. We start with the desire to train children in a healthy environment, and before everything is said and done, we're censoring the U.S. Constitution and the Bible. That may be accidental--the SmartFilter may simply not have been as smart as someone thought it was--but the fervor for this kind of artificial control is what drove something like that to be installed. I agree with Joshua (jerodd) on this point. The V-chips and SmartFilters are artificial. Parenting is where it's at. I'm afraid the problem is to complex to solve it by simply saying, "Parents...DO BETTER!" What is the root of this problem? Are there solutions more effective than V-chips and SmartFilters?
Respectfully,
There's no place anywhere near this place that's anything like this place, so this must be the place.
I don't know about "gift economy," but I'll go along with the idea that this "product" that would be the resource of the new IT economy (that I'm basically dreaming up) would be intagible and would be basically human--the ideas--the intellectual manpower. If software is free and nobody can make significant profits from fallen prices in the hardware market, perhaps the support, the information, the idea, the motivation, the application, the endeavor--these would be the profitable things. The irony of that argument would be that while lots of people (mainly ones that don't know anything) say that computers will take over the world (Saturday Night Live's commerical for "Robot Insurance for the Elderly"), this new economy would emphasis the value of the human asset. And not just the manpower (like assembly line stuff), but motivated, intuitive, innovative brain-power. Now wouldn't that be interesting. Hey, if that makes guys like us rich, bring it on!
There's no place anywhere near this place that's anything like this place, so this must be the place.
Actually, it's been too long since government class, but I think that if communism is an apple, then capitalism is an orange. That would make republicanism and democracy apples and would make socialism an orange. I could be wrong (always a likely option). But the point I'd like to make is that there is something important about the economics of this thing. Even if you think about it in reference to a model of supply and demand, you can move into some interesting fields of thought.
Demand for Linux has been expressed in the fact that our market share grew like 212% in 1998. It is also expressed in all of these reports about Dell and Compaq customers "demanding" Linux stuff. And in this WSJ article, we see demand expressed in the standing ovation that was received at the announcement that HP would "sharply expand" support for Linux--and these (according to the article) were HP's big clients! That's demand!
As far as supply goes...well I don't know how it goes. The cost of the stuff could be free, or it could cost lots, depending on the value added by a given distributor and whatever people are willing to pay for the added support. According to many Econ texts, increasing technology increases supply curves, which may change the price of whatever it is that we're drawing these curves for, depending on what happens with demand and lots of other things (I realize that this part is ambiguous). With Linux, people can supply even more for even less cost. And with demand going through the roof (or as it _appears_ to be going through the roof), there has to be some kind of economic ramifications for the software industry. This may affect the way the IT industry makes its money. And that is at least worthy of appearing in WSJ, even though the author of this article doesn't appear to take that approach.
So a change in capitalism? I don't know about that. But an economic impact of some sort? I'd say definitely, without a doubt, and in a big way! And that has got to make somebody out there re-think something--an ideal motivated community is majorly impacting the economics of the whole industry. It seems there's something rather weighty about that!
There's no place anywhere near this place that's anything like this place, so this must be the place.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a pardox for you! Schools will censor things like religious elements of Christmas programs, and prayer in schools. But jails and prisons will allow ministers to come in and basically have church, preaching, distributing Bibles, the works. That's a captive audience if I've ever heard of one! It doesn't seem make sense that these elements would be stripped from the schools and welcomed into the prisons. I support welcoming them in both arenas rather than excluding them from both.
I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes we miss the forest for the trees. We forget what goal it is that we're trying to accomplish. And we confuse the means for the end. We start with the desire to train children in a healthy environment,
and before everything is said and done, we're censoring the U.S. Constitution and the Bible. That may be accidental--the SmartFilter may simply not have been as smart as someone thought it was--but the fervor for this kind of artificial control is what drove something like that to be installed. I agree with Joshua (jerodd) on this point. The V-chips and SmartFilters are artificial. Parenting is where it's at. I'm afraid the problem is to complex to solve it by simply saying, "Parents...DO BETTER!" What is the root of this problem? Are there solutions more effective than V-chips and SmartFilters?
Respectfully,
There's no place anywhere near this place that's anything like this place, so this must be the place.
I don't know about "gift economy," but I'll go along with the idea that this "product" that would be the resource of the new IT economy (that I'm basically dreaming up) would be intagible and would be basically human--the ideas--the intellectual manpower. If software is free and nobody can make significant profits from fallen prices in the hardware market, perhaps the support, the information, the idea, the motivation, the application, the endeavor--these would be the profitable things. The irony of that argument would be that while lots of people (mainly ones that don't know anything) say that computers will take over the world (Saturday Night Live's commerical for "Robot Insurance for the Elderly"),
this new economy would emphasis the value of the
human asset. And not just the manpower (like assembly line stuff), but motivated, intuitive,
innovative brain-power. Now wouldn't that be
interesting. Hey, if that makes guys like us rich, bring it on!
There's no place anywhere near this place that's anything like this place, so this must be the place.
Actually, it's been too long since government class, but I think that if communism is an apple, then capitalism is an orange. That would make republicanism and
democracy apples and would make socialism an orange. I could be wrong (always a likely option). But the point I'd like to make is that there is something important about the economics of this thing. Even if you think about it in reference to a model of supply and demand, you can move into some interesting fields of thought.
Demand for Linux has been expressed in the fact that our market share grew like 212% in 1998. It is also expressed in all of these reports about Dell and Compaq customers "demanding" Linux stuff. And in this WSJ article, we see demand expressed in the standing ovation that was received at the announcement that HP would "sharply expand" support for Linux--and these (according to the article) were HP's big clients! That's demand!
As far as supply goes...well I don't know how it goes. The cost of the stuff could be free, or it could cost lots, depending on the value added by a given distributor and whatever people are willing to pay for the added support. According to many Econ texts, increasing technology increases supply curves, which may change the price of whatever it is that we're drawing these curves for, depending on what happens with demand and lots of other things (I realize that this part is ambiguous). With Linux, people can supply even more for even less cost. And with demand going through the roof (or as it _appears_ to be going through the roof), there has to be some kind of economic ramifications for the software industry. This may affect the way the IT industry makes its money. And that is at least worthy of appearing in WSJ, even though the author of this article doesn't appear to take that approach.
So a change in capitalism? I don't know about that. But an economic impact of some sort? I'd say definitely, without a doubt, and in a big way!
And that has got to make somebody out there re-think something--an ideal motivated community is majorly impacting the economics of the whole industry. It seems there's something rather weighty about that!
There's no place anywhere near this place that's anything like this place, so this must be the place.