Because I have professional standards that are pretty high.
That is not a religion, it is professionalism. I will not compromise my profesionalism for the sake of following the flock.
If a client insists on using something after I have given my expert opinion, that is fine, but that is why I am an expert in the field, I am aware of the reputations of the different companies and can recommend with confidence the ones that will provide you with a good service or the ones that may be out to screw you.
MS IMHO have amply demonstrated that they don't care about their costumers and have broken the law in several places around the world.
YOu are happy to negotiate with them, fine, just don;t defend your shoddy professional standards pretending that people with principles and care for their costumers are some kind of religious zealots.
Those people work and contribute to the economic wealth of your contry, risking even their lives in the pursuit of the betterment of them and their families. That deserves at the very least respect and in an ideal world politicians and citizenry that would recognize the economic realities creating this situation, would stop believing in old prejudices based mostly in racist perceptions and would legislate accordingly (there is NAFTA, but there is no free movement of labour, so in reality there is no free trade at all).
You guys in the US are too much talk and little action, you talk about free markets, commerce, capitalism and freedom, but do all what is in your might to avoid many of the more difficult consequences of being free, capitalist and rich, because deep inside you you know you need that cheap labour, but the pragmatist inside you is always shouted out by the little racist many of you have cohabiting your inner conscience.
Fact: you have millions of people that are going to do labour cheaply.
You have 2 choices: let the cheap labour in or outsource production of cheap goods elsewhere.
When you outsource there is a smaller benefit for your local economy, since those salaries and profits are spent elsewhere. When tha cheap labor is local, they contribute to the local economy by means of spending and taxes.
As a rich country you have no choice but to become employment agency for the poor of the world. It is simply economics: you have money and will not clean your own toilet (or do your own garden, or clean your own house, or whatever). People from poor countries will do it for you. You may decide not to hire illegal workers, economics is working against you and most people with money will take advantage of the cheap labour. That is a fact, not a delussional statement.
Western Europe "opened the floodgates" first to Portugal, Spain and Ireland, and in typical fashion, the alarmists feared that their country would be invaded by poor foreigners.
WHat happened in reality is that those countries became more propsperous, becuase their emigrees could earn decent wages in richer countries, and feedback disposable income and expertise back in their home countries, this created bigger markets for products made in the rich countries, whose economies grew.
Nowadays some of the countries that send most tourists to the UK and Germany are Spain, Ireland and Portugal, whose economies are quite prosperous and are sending now far less workers to foreing countries than when they joined the EU.
You argument about thrid world conditions is spurious, racist and devoid of any base in facts learned from similar situations elsewhere.
When people emigrate from African or Asian countries to EU ones they don't build mud huts and raise cattle, they get a cheap flat with proper sanitation services and get a safe job with all the proper social benefits. Exactly the opposite of what your blantantly racist statement is suggesting may happen.
People will do anything to be in front of a TV camera, and that is the work that is not cheap to hire for (ridicule in national level is something one should be properly compensated for).
Remove that and the equation changes completely, since I am pretty certain nobody would pay the amounts they paid for doing a job that has no TV coverage and is degrading on the extreme.
What is the right compensation anyway? The right compensation is not what you think you should earn, or what you think somebody else should earn.
The right compensation is what the market bears, and in the case of illegal workers, the market is completely messed up by politicians, but not for the reasons you are stating.
You say that only big corps benefit from cheap labour. Last time I checked all those gardeners and baby sitters, domestic cleaners and carers, construction workers, most of them were working for an individual or a small company, which benefit by reducing their costs.
It is quite rich to say that high earners are impacted, first of all illegal immigrants pay taxes (VAT and others) and get nothing or very little in return, so I fail to see how your precious rich person taxes are waisted, and as for them lowring the general level of wages, in some mistireous way, frankly is ludicrous, the fact that they pay the poor sod clenaning toilets $5/hour has never affected my salary or yours, your explanation reads suspicisoulsy as an attempt to split hairs in a cut and dry issue: the inhumane treatment of illegl immigrants in complicity with goivernment officials that prefer to turn a blind eye rather than face the criticism of the closeted racists in the US.
A military force is based upmost in politics, not gun onwership.
Look at Afghanistan, they all have guns but you have no political direction. What ensues is chaos, fundamentalism and poppy cultivation, not a representative, democratic government.
Repeat after me: politics, politics, politics.
Your guns are worth squat without coherent politics to back them up, and politics is what a dictatorial government will throw at you up to the whazoo.
Given the voting patterns of US people, it would not surprise me if a dictatorial government arised in the US and 50% or more of the people in the US would vote for it. In other instances when a dictatorial government has arised it always finds enough support to make any oposition questionable, which naturally weakens it.
You also count guns (do USians solve all their problems counting guns?) as if that was the sign of military might. What about tanks, jeeps, communications equipment, the air force and the navy, not to mention the supply chain already in the field of conflict?
What would protect you from an opressive government is politics, not guns. But based on current evidence of how the US political system works, it is clear that the US citizens have no apetite to protect their freedoms and the democratic process by convinced political involvement in party politics.
Software is for all intents and purposes reproducible at will.
Normal matter isn't.
When we get device that reorganize matter in any way we want in order to copy physical objects, then you may have a point, but for the time being, we will take you as a raving lunatic.
The good guys are the ones that keep these fundamental freedoms. The bad guys would be the ones limiting our computing infrastructure choices and imposing artificial lock ins.
Fill in the blanks as appropriate.
I don't care which commercial deals are agreed between the different entitites supporting differen software projects, if they want to trade first borns it is up to them, I just want software I can migrate if necessary and that does not kidnap my data by following and encouraging industry wide standards.
Now everybody and his dog is in MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, 2nd life or many other myriads of websites in which you get in touch with other people.
This very often leads to meet people with similar interests in meatspace.
A society that needs the TV in order to keep family values and family socialization going I think should stop and look at itself carefuly since something may have gone amiss in the last few decades since the introduction of TV.
You want your entertainment to be controlled completely by others, "legislating through the backdoor" about your rights? (you do have the rights to make copies and to time shift, did you know that?)
Well, then you have made the correct choice.
Some of us are willing to put a bit of effort to do do what in the long term is more beneficial for us, and the rest of society.
So a guy that envisioned space travel, submarines, underwater cities, the aqualung at times when the fastest moving thing was a train and most sea faring things were submerged only when lost in a wreckage?
To think that somebody describing such alien mechanisms for his time, would get all accurately correct from a scientific point of view is completely bogus.
You praise HG Wells but clearly chose to ignore the all too glaring mistakes on his predictions. Jut for starters, there is no life on Mars for example.
Talk about a selective, most likely jingoistic view....
I have never seen books cheaper or more expensive depending on the length of time the author invest on writting them.
A book value's is determined by the market, does not matter if the writer swated blood in order to get the book done (what about if the book is without any merit?).
It is easy to be cavallier about making money touring becuase that is a real job.
Recording in a studio and then sitting in your fat ass waiting fo the money to roll for years to come is not a job, and people should not be compensated for that.
You can't copyright general, hazy ideas (as plots for books).
Copyright protects stuff being copyed verbatim, not being referred to, or used as a base for something else (Western Literature and Classical Music would be dead if that was the case).
"if I can copy it I should be able to" is just a description of fact in regards to the phisical world.
Something that can't be copyied is only artificially stopped to being copied by social conventions.
An inventor, writer, musician, or whatever has no natural right to stop other people copying what he does. In many societies, in many different historical situations, copying has been the norm.
It is most unwise to base social conventions based in a completely unworkable assumption, namely that knowledge can somehow be controlled by means of legal or social cohercion.
It is the year 2007, we have seen multiple examples of why this does not work, but here we are, disucssing this again because the people that have benefitted for a couple hundred yers from an historical anomaly want to continu milking the systme for all what it it worth.
And that MS is turning to their legal department for new sources of income.
Flat share price for years paired with a new strategy to defend their "IP portfolio". MS can try to massage things, hide numbers, play hide and seek.
The reality is that the people trusted with making investments are not buying the MS food (and they have not bought the marketing for years now) and MS is beginning to act like a certain Darl who lives and "works" in Utha.
It is the sheer lack of cojones from the PC manufacturers what keeps the current situation as is, if one or two of them would come forward MS would be found, once again, lacking in the ethical and perhaps legal departments.
They are basically being owned by MS and they have no alternative but to trust their bussiness models to a 3rd party.
Slashdot Mirror
Because I have professional standards that are pretty high.
That is not a religion, it is professionalism. I will not compromise my profesionalism for the sake of following the flock.
If a client insists on using something after I have given my expert opinion, that is fine, but that is why I am an expert in the field, I am aware of the reputations of the different companies and can recommend with confidence the ones that will provide you with a good service or the ones that may be out to screw you.
MS IMHO have amply demonstrated that they don't care about their costumers and have broken the law in several places around the world.
YOu are happy to negotiate with them, fine, just don;t defend your shoddy professional standards pretending that people with principles and care for their costumers are some kind of religious zealots.
You are a person that does not apply any ethical principles to their choice of software.
If that hurts you it is your fault, not ours. I and others are stating a matter of fact based on what you are saying.
It is not a matter of "religion".
It is a matter of principles.
I have some, do you have any?
No wonder most code nowadays is complete crap.
Those people work and contribute to the economic wealth of your contry, risking even their lives in the pursuit of the betterment of them and their families. That deserves at the very least respect and in an ideal world politicians and citizenry that would recognize the economic realities creating this situation, would stop believing in old prejudices based mostly in racist perceptions and would legislate accordingly (there is NAFTA, but there is no free movement of labour, so in reality there is no free trade at all).
You guys in the US are too much talk and little action, you talk about free markets, commerce, capitalism and freedom, but do all what is in your might to avoid many of the more difficult consequences of being free, capitalist and rich, because deep inside you you know you need that cheap labour, but the pragmatist inside you is always shouted out by the little racist many of you have cohabiting your inner conscience.
Fact: you have millions of people that are going to do labour cheaply.
You have 2 choices: let the cheap labour in or outsource production of cheap goods elsewhere.
When you outsource there is a smaller benefit for your local economy, since those salaries and profits are spent elsewhere. When tha cheap labor is local, they contribute to the local economy by means of spending and taxes.
As a rich country you have no choice but to become employment agency for the poor of the world. It is simply economics: you have money and will not clean your own toilet (or do your own garden, or clean your own house, or whatever). People from poor countries will do it for you. You may decide not to hire illegal workers, economics is working against you and most people with money will take advantage of the cheap labour. That is a fact, not a delussional statement.
Western Europe "opened the floodgates" first to Portugal, Spain and Ireland, and in typical fashion, the alarmists feared that their country would be invaded by poor foreigners.
WHat happened in reality is that those countries became more propsperous, becuase their emigrees could earn decent wages in richer countries, and feedback disposable income and expertise back in their home countries, this created bigger markets for products made in the rich countries, whose economies grew.
Nowadays some of the countries that send most tourists to the UK and Germany are Spain, Ireland and Portugal, whose economies are quite prosperous and are sending now far less workers to foreing countries than when they joined the EU.
You argument about thrid world conditions is spurious, racist and devoid of any base in facts learned from similar situations elsewhere.
When people emigrate from African or Asian countries to EU ones they don't build mud huts and raise cattle, they get a cheap flat with proper sanitation services and get a safe job with all the proper social benefits. Exactly the opposite of what your blantantly racist statement is suggesting may happen.
People will do anything to be in front of a TV camera, and that is the work that is not cheap to hire for (ridicule in national level is something one should be properly compensated for).
Remove that and the equation changes completely, since I am pretty certain nobody would pay the amounts they paid for doing a job that has no TV coverage and is degrading on the extreme.
What is the right compensation anyway? The right compensation is not what you think you should earn, or what you think somebody else should earn.
The right compensation is what the market bears, and in the case of illegal workers, the market is completely messed up by politicians, but not for the reasons you are stating.
You say that only big corps benefit from cheap labour. Last time I checked all those gardeners and baby sitters, domestic cleaners and carers, construction workers, most of them were working for an individual or a small company, which benefit by reducing their costs.
It is quite rich to say that high earners are impacted, first of all illegal immigrants pay taxes (VAT and others) and get nothing or very little in return, so I fail to see how your precious rich person taxes are waisted, and as for them lowring the general level of wages, in some mistireous way, frankly is ludicrous, the fact that they pay the poor sod clenaning toilets $5/hour has never affected my salary or yours, your explanation reads suspicisoulsy as an attempt to split hairs in a cut and dry issue: the inhumane treatment of illegl immigrants in complicity with goivernment officials that prefer to turn a blind eye rather than face the criticism of the closeted racists in the US.
A military force is based upmost in politics, not gun onwership.
Look at Afghanistan, they all have guns but you have no political direction. What ensues is chaos, fundamentalism and poppy cultivation, not a representative, democratic government.
Repeat after me: politics, politics, politics.
Your guns are worth squat without coherent politics to back them up, and politics is what a dictatorial government will throw at you up to the whazoo.
Given the voting patterns of US people, it would not surprise me if a dictatorial government arised in the US and 50% or more of the people in the US would vote for it. In other instances when a dictatorial government has arised it always finds enough support to make any oposition questionable, which naturally weakens it.
You also count guns (do USians solve all their problems counting guns?) as if that was the sign of military might. What about tanks, jeeps, communications equipment, the air force and the navy, not to mention the supply chain already in the field of conflict?
What would protect you from an opressive government is politics, not guns. But based on current evidence of how the US political system works, it is clear that the US citizens have no apetite to protect their freedoms and the democratic process by convinced political involvement in party politics.
The US army would be the first one in the world that does not obey orders.
You belive too blindly in your exceptionality...
Software is for all intents and purposes reproducible at will.
Normal matter isn't.
When we get device that reorganize matter in any way we want in order to copy physical objects, then you may have a point, but for the time being, we will take you as a raving lunatic.
You lose, game over.
But by an idiot like you losing the argument, I have no pleasure in declare myself the winner.
Is the software free (as per FSF's definition?)
The good guys are the ones that keep these fundamental freedoms. The bad guys would be the ones limiting our computing infrastructure choices and imposing artificial lock ins.
Fill in the blanks as appropriate.
I don't care which commercial deals are agreed between the different entitites supporting differen software projects, if they want to trade first borns it is up to them, I just want software I can migrate if necessary and that does not kidnap my data by following and encouraging industry wide standards.
Now everybody and his dog is in MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, 2nd life or many other myriads of websites in which you get in touch with other people.
This very often leads to meet people with similar interests in meatspace.
A society that needs the TV in order to keep family values and family socialization going I think should stop and look at itself carefuly since something may have gone amiss in the last few decades since the introduction of TV.
You want your entertainment to be controlled completely by others, "legislating through the backdoor" about your rights? (you do have the rights to make copies and to time shift, did you know that?)
Well, then you have made the correct choice.
Some of us are willing to put a bit of effort to do do what in the long term is more beneficial for us, and the rest of society.
We just say it is a logical falacy to quiet our concience in the presence of human tragedy, very often generated by people acting in our own behalf.
It is using a well known sentence to make a completely different point.
At no moment did the poster compare the Holocaust with the situation of people opposing MS's tactics.
Do you want some ketchup in your freedom fries?
So a guy that envisioned space travel, submarines, underwater cities, the aqualung at times when the fastest moving thing was a train and most sea faring things were submerged only when lost in a wreckage?
To think that somebody describing such alien mechanisms for his time, would get all accurately correct from a scientific point of view is completely bogus.
You praise HG Wells but clearly chose to ignore the all too glaring mistakes on his predictions. Jut for starters, there is no life on Mars for example.
Talk about a selective, most likely jingoistic view....
It is called patent trolling.
I have never seen books cheaper or more expensive depending on the length of time the author invest on writting them.
A book value's is determined by the market, does not matter if the writer swated blood in order to get the book done (what about if the book is without any merit?).
It is easy to be cavallier about making money touring becuase that is a real job.
Recording in a studio and then sitting in your fat ass waiting fo the money to roll for years to come is not a job, and people should not be compensated for that.
You can't copyright general, hazy ideas (as plots for books).
Copyright protects stuff being copyed verbatim, not being referred to, or used as a base for something else (Western Literature and Classical Music would be dead if that was the case).
"if I can copy it I should be able to" is just a description of fact in regards to the phisical world.
Something that can't be copyied is only artificially stopped to being copied by social conventions.
An inventor, writer, musician, or whatever has no natural right to stop other people copying what he does. In many societies, in many different historical situations, copying has been the norm.
It is most unwise to base social conventions based in a completely unworkable assumption, namely that knowledge can somehow be controlled by means of legal or social cohercion.
It is the year 2007, we have seen multiple examples of why this does not work, but here we are, disucssing this again because the people that have benefitted for a couple hundred yers from an historical anomaly want to continu milking the systme for all what it it worth.
This: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5y&s=MSFT&l=on&z=m &q=l&c=goog
And that MS is turning to their legal department for new sources of income.
Flat share price for years paired with a new strategy to defend their "IP portfolio". MS can try to massage things, hide numbers, play hide and seek.
The reality is that the people trusted with making investments are not buying the MS food (and they have not bought the marketing for years now) and MS is beginning to act like a certain Darl who lives and "works" in Utha.
It is the sheer lack of cojones from the PC manufacturers what keeps the current situation as is, if one or two of them would come forward MS would be found, once again, lacking in the ethical and perhaps legal departments.
They are basically being owned by MS and they have no alternative but to trust their bussiness models to a 3rd party.
This group of bullies just started threatening patent war agains the FOSS community and you have the face to congratulate them.
Honestly, I do not know in which planet you live, but surely seems to be one very nice to monopolists, bullies and unethical entitities.