"they can slowly and steadily keep turning the screws"
Of course, this particular method is heavily dependent on, and interlinked with, the existence of a first-past-post two party system where you can consistently offer two worse alternatives.
Multi-party proportional representative systems are far less susceptible to this particular kind of corruption; there are simply far more parties to take over and/or manipulate, if a particular party becomes apparently corrupt its voters are free to defect to a non-corrupt party with similar policies, offering the voters actual choices and enabling the bitchers and moaners a chance to bitch and moan in a way that may actually matter.
A two party system is just one party away from a dictatorship.
Because he's not saying people should pay five times more than the development costs for their medicines. He's not the one saying it's more important to finance marketing than to have affordable medicines.
The price of patented goods is not set according to free market principles. Revenue maximation for monopoly goods are set as a function of available capital.
Guess what would happen if 'he paid for the fucking drugs'?
The price would _rise_. Pay more money, the price goes up. Do you get it? With monopoly controlled goods you cannot _ever_ satisfy the demand side because revenue maximization means the price will _always_ rise until a certain subset cannot afford the product.
The big pharmas are backing a system that will inherently leave some unable to pay. There are a multitude of alternative systems that would finance even more research than now while still lowering prices. This puts the pharmas squarely in the category of 'worse' in my book.
"If Linux wants the desktop, then make it easier for companies make money on the platform."
The free market isnt meant to protect the ability to make money, it's meant to reduce the amount everyone else pays.
And for that, free beats proprietary every day. You need to realize that the whole economy around opensource (and, in fact, the foundation of free market economy) is based not on _making_ money but on _saving_ money.
"Borland tried it and failed. Cray and SGI tried it and failed."
Borland, Cray and SGI failed because their potential customers obtained better products cheaper. Too bad for those particular companies, but what they lost their customers gained.
The per unit software sales model is going the way of the dodo, and the more advanced, the larger and more sophisticated the installed code base becomes, the more economically compelling it becomes to use the OSS foundation for further development.
Some developers may have to adapt to more problem driven development, but as a whole the industry will gain from the reduction of code duplication and tangential costs like marketing.
Do note that many Linux vendors do not ship proprietary drivers because of that exact GPL requirement. You're entirely free to ship the components apart (like NVidia and ATI), letting the end user do the combination, but shipping the combined work is a violation.
Supposing a loadable module functionality for Samba that would allow a reasonably 'separate' entity to exist without incursions into the Samba sourcecode it might be possible for a third party to ship such a module and let the end users do the combining. But it would fairly painful to manage.
"A copyright holder can prevent an individual or a company from having access to the GPL license."
Yes, the copyright holder could refrain from licensing the code to Novell. However, with the bog standard GPL someone else could give it to Novell instead, as the rights follows the redistribution, so without a license change you couldnt accomplish much.
However, what you _could_ do would be, for example, to include some potentially protected non-GPL code owned by, for example, RedHat, into the codebase and then sign a deal with RedHat on behalf of your first-line recepients (and/or anyone but yourself and Novell) where RedHat promises not sue them.
Thus you'd be doing exactly the same vile thing Novell has done, right back at them (and incidentally destroying more or less the whole point of opensource/free software at the same time).
"I don't think we'll see ZFS in the kernel proper either,"
I'd have to agree. Personally, while the ZFS featurelist is nice, cramming everything into the filesystem might not really be the brightest architecture choice yet.
For technical merit, I'd consider block device layering like the linux devicemapper and management ala EVMS to be far more powerful and flexible. Want a new feature? Put it in a layer, neither the devices above or below need to know about it. It leaves each component to be good at what it does (lvm for volume management, various filesystems for file management, block encryption layers to do their thing, etc) while keeping them apart and online/live replaceable and interchangeable.
Not being a ham enthusiast, I'd have to ask; arent there computer programs or even gadgets that can easily translate much, much faster than even the best skill one could even hope to achieve?
I mean, it sounds like using binary code to communicate in ASCII on IRC. It's entirely feasible, but err... so is joining the Amish...
I'd tend to agree with the GP. Consider for example if you have excessively badly named files like '-whatever' in a particular directory; cat has very few destructive ways it can go wrong, other commands may be less forgiving, and cause much more surprise.
Further, the assembly line abstraction of cat as 'input the contents of these files into the beginning of my pipeline' is predictable, simple and very clear and readable. Using the filenames in the commands means you have to be certain each command will take filenames, and if you replace the first step (from a grep to an awk, for example), you have to rethink your input method semantics again.
Any typing speed gains and performance improvements you may get will probably get shot the first time some command does something unexpected, or by the extra steps of thought.
And if performance really was a serious concern you probably shouldnt be writing it as a shell script...
You misunderstand how it's done. TCP isnt involved in the traversal, it's just used as a communications channel over which to exchange the information needed to establish something that will be close enough to an UDP 'session' to 'trick' the firewall into considering the UDP exchanges to be responses to the internal machines requests.
To do that you need to get both clients sending packets to eachothers NAT'ed firewall in responses to outgoing packets packets from the respective clients. As the initial packets cannot reach the destination client (they'd get blocked), you need the inbetween server to which both are connected to tell the respective clients on which port the other client was sending packets on so they can send response packets to that port.
It's nothing new tho, it's been around pretty much since the inception of NAT, as it's more or less fundamental to ever using UDP in any extensive internet service (ie, mmorpgs, udp streaming, etc).
"A) isn't an IT geek; or B) didn't have it setup for them BY an IT geek"
That seems like it covers pretty much every Windows owner too, eh?
Particularly if you consider preloading as having it set up for them by an it geek.
Heck, for my own anecdotal evidence I can say I dont know _anyone_ at _all_ who has actually bought Windows to install on a PC. I do, however, know quite a lot of people who have downloaded Linux to install. And I do know a whole lot of people who have paid for Windows they're not using, as part of a new computer.
"it makes no sense whatsoever for HP to sell them."
Oh, BS. Reconfiguring the imaging of a system has pretty much no cost. You could even do it with stores like Best Buy; simply use a DVD-preloading image which already ships with many machines in the form of recovery DVD's. Offering the image separately would slice a fair amount of the price in the lower segments, thus increasing sales. Which _would_ make sense for HP. It just wouldnt make sense for Microsoft who would lose all the aforementioned anecdotal sales. Which is why they insist on playing the tying game.
"The drivers for said cards seem pretty proper as-is."
As long as you're not anywhere near the bleeding edge. If you are, you'd notice that the binary drivers tend to lag as compared to their OSS counterparts; default stack size change, xen compatibility and aiglx are recent examples.
"if it takes a lot of energy to create the water used to create the energy, you're headed for trouble."
And the whole point of a hydrogen carrier for energy is that there is no lack whatsoever of energy; there's a lack of energy where it's useful and an overabundance of energy where it isnt.
Coincidentally, water has the exact same problem; there's a whole bunch of it where you dont particularly need it and not enough where you do.
So put water pipeline from the atlantic to the middle of sahara, drive hydrogen plants with solar concentrator driven turbines, split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, hand out clean water to the thirsty, combine the hydrogen gas with nitrogen from the air, and pipe ammonia back. Both problems solved at once. (plus ammonia is vastly simpler to transport than hydrogen, and can be used in fuelcells).
"without being able to pop open Wikipedia whenever I'm stuck on a boring car trip"
If you keep looking at that wikipedia entry on car accidents while driving you'll soon find out first hand what it's all about.
Seriously tho, I'd be perfectly happy with a mobile terminal/webbrowser; it's just most manufacturers tend to jam their offerings so full of other crap that it eventually just isnt good enough for the things I do want to use it for.
Why not scrap the whole concept of copyright on music and replace it full out with a mandatory point-of-sale/broadcast royalty? Sure, it would drive a stake through the heart of the RIAA vampires, but it would restore competition in the sector and greatly benefit consumers and artists. Even more so for independents (and music lovers), as the removal of exclusive rights would greatly diminish the value of excessive marketing, leading to a wider diversity and more widespread distribution of royalties.
"Personally I think this whole thing is a gimmick."
No shit. At a viewing distance of ten feet, on a 32" TV, with a moving picture, I can barely tell the difference between a DVD and a good rip which is encoded to half that resolution. To see any non-imaginary difference between HD and SD I'd need a cybernetic eye upgrade.
On a 64" TV at the same distance it would be different. But that isnt on the purchasing plan for the foreseeable future.
Copyright, however, isnt about the possession of the object, it's the right to prevent anyone else from possessing a copy of that object.
If you're a carpenter and make a great chair it doesnt pass into the public domain, but you cannot prevent your neighbour from making a chair just like it, nor do you have the right to prevent anyone who purchases the chair to pay another carpenter to copy it.
"It's basically judicial theft."
Except it's the other way around. Preventing the neighbour or customer from making a chair just like the original means you're depriving them of the right to do what they wish with their property.
The value of copyright does not come out of nowhere; it derives its value by depriving others of value and rights. From an ethical point of view it's just the same as other taxation methods; you're depriving one group of people to give to another. Wether that's good or bad is arguable, and mostly a question of public utility.
Actually, I'd suspect the answer is most. The vast majority of actual artists and writers do not get much out of the current system; the current system is heavily biased towards those who can buy the commercial channels like radio, do media blitzes and appropriate the vast majority of capital flowing in through various copyright related levies. Many artists and artists/composers gain most income through touring; something they'd actually get more money out of if they didnt have to compete with the conglomerate media machines.
And frankly, I find the idea that whoever can afford to buy the most media coverage is the most 'important' abhorrent; as would, I suspect, pretty much everyone who actually looks up their music rather than get it fed to them.
"In the absence of copyright, is it possible for a culturally significant number of musicians to make music their primary career?"
As many artists are today making music as a career without significant copyright related revenue, why shouldnt they?
And nobody is saying we need to get rid of methods of paying artists; removing copyright could very well be accompanied by instead taxing the media companies (and anyone else actually making money off the sales of music), effectively replacing the crap contracts most artists get with a much higher mandatory percentage of end sales revenue, thus both increasing revenue to artists and composers while restoring competition in the production and distribution chains. Consumers and artists would both win.
There are several other (entirely 'legit') sites with DRM free music; emusic and audiolunchbox jump to the mind.
They even come with the advantages of good music and with pre-screened no RIAA labels. I'm not sure I really appreciate EMI going for the drm-free business; now I might have to start screening again to make sure my money isnt going to quasi-fascists. They may be out to quash freedom with their jackboots, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for it.
"Goods and services will all of a sudden cost more"
Um, no. The total amount of 'money' would remain the same, so you get no increased inflation. Further, on a competetive market, prices fall towards the cost of production, so prices do not rise to follow disposable capital. The rising efficiency and falling production costs and lower relative pricing is the very foundation of the actual wealth increase we've seen since the beginning of industrialization.
Of course, on a truly competetive market, it would be more or less impossible to concentrate wealth in the way we see; competition ensures that ROI will constantly fall and wealth become naturally distributed again. However, between legal monopolies like intellectual 'property' and various other anti-competetive practices and rent seeking we have nothing like an actual free market.
"Well, not invent, actually, because your design is much too expensive to implement with what you have in the bank."
See, here's where that argument looses contact with reality. Innovation in a communicative world isnt done in hundred-mil multi-decade steps, it's done in small increments on a vast pool of a hundred million other small $1 increments.
"Is that morally repugnant?"
Reality is that everyone else does the 99,999,999 steps, your business man finances one $1 step, gets the patent, and can prevent anyone else doing the other steps from implementing or reaping any benefit from their part.
Personally, I'm very interested in seeing artists and composers compensated, so when will we see the Warner CEO admit that he's been stealing the artists money?
If the production of positive value material requires the production of negative value material, maybe the specific financing aspects should be reconsidered. There are several alternate methods for financing content.
As advertisements specifically is a negative value product the consumer does not want, I'd suggest we start by reporting money spent on advertizing as a negative value on gross domestic product.
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"they can slowly and steadily keep turning the screws"
Of course, this particular method is heavily dependent on, and interlinked with, the existence of a first-past-post two party system where you can consistently offer two worse alternatives.
Multi-party proportional representative systems are far less susceptible to this particular kind of corruption; there are simply far more parties to take over and/or manipulate, if a particular party becomes apparently corrupt its voters are free to defect to a non-corrupt party with similar policies, offering the voters actual choices and enabling the bitchers and moaners a chance to bitch and moan in a way that may actually matter.
A two party system is just one party away from a dictatorship.
"How are you better than the big pharmas?"
Because he's not saying people should pay five times more than the development costs for their medicines. He's not the one saying it's more important to finance marketing than to have affordable medicines.
The price of patented goods is not set according to free market principles. Revenue maximation for monopoly goods are set as a function of available capital.
Guess what would happen if 'he paid for the fucking drugs'?
The price would _rise_. Pay more money, the price goes up. Do you get it? With monopoly controlled goods you cannot _ever_ satisfy the demand side because revenue maximization means the price will _always_ rise until a certain subset cannot afford the product.
The big pharmas are backing a system that will inherently leave some unable to pay. There are a multitude of alternative systems that would finance even more research than now while still lowering prices. This puts the pharmas squarely in the category of 'worse' in my book.
"If Linux wants the desktop, then make it easier for companies make money on the platform."
The free market isnt meant to protect the ability to make money, it's meant to reduce the amount everyone else pays.
And for that, free beats proprietary every day. You need to realize that the whole economy around opensource (and, in fact, the foundation of free market economy) is based not on _making_ money but on _saving_ money.
"Borland tried it and failed. Cray and SGI tried it and failed."
Borland, Cray and SGI failed because their potential customers obtained better products cheaper. Too bad for those particular companies, but what they lost their customers gained.
The per unit software sales model is going the way of the dodo, and the more advanced, the larger and more sophisticated the installed code base becomes, the more economically compelling it becomes to use the OSS foundation for further development.
Some developers may have to adapt to more problem driven development, but as a whole the industry will gain from the reduction of code duplication and tangential costs like marketing.
Confidential means it may cost the politicians votes.
Secret means it may land the politicians in jail.
Do note that many Linux vendors do not ship proprietary drivers because of that exact GPL requirement. You're entirely free to ship the components apart (like NVidia and ATI), letting the end user do the combination, but shipping the combined work is a violation.
Supposing a loadable module functionality for Samba that would allow a reasonably 'separate' entity to exist without incursions into the Samba sourcecode it might be possible for a third party to ship such a module and let the end users do the combining. But it would fairly painful to manage.
"A copyright holder can prevent an individual or a company from having access to the GPL license."
Yes, the copyright holder could refrain from licensing the code to Novell. However, with the bog standard GPL someone else could give it to Novell instead, as the rights follows the redistribution, so without a license change you couldnt accomplish much.
However, what you _could_ do would be, for example, to include some potentially protected non-GPL code owned by, for example, RedHat, into the codebase and then sign a deal with RedHat on behalf of your first-line recepients (and/or anyone but yourself and Novell) where RedHat promises not sue them.
Thus you'd be doing exactly the same vile thing Novell has done, right back at them (and incidentally destroying more or less the whole point of opensource/free software at the same time).
"I don't think we'll see ZFS in the kernel proper either,"
I'd have to agree. Personally, while the ZFS featurelist is nice, cramming everything into the filesystem might not really be the brightest architecture choice yet.
For technical merit, I'd consider block device layering like the linux devicemapper and management ala EVMS to be far more powerful and flexible. Want a new feature? Put it in a layer, neither the devices above or below need to know about it. It leaves each component to be good at what it does (lvm for volume management, various filesystems for file management, block encryption layers to do their thing, etc) while keeping them apart and online/live replaceable and interchangeable.
Not being a ham enthusiast, I'd have to ask; arent there computer programs or even gadgets that can easily translate much, much faster than even the best skill one could even hope to achieve?
I mean, it sounds like using binary code to communicate in ASCII on IRC. It's entirely feasible, but err... so is joining the Amish...
I'd tend to agree with the GP. Consider for example if you have excessively badly named files like '-whatever' in a particular directory; cat has very few destructive ways it can go wrong, other commands may be less forgiving, and cause much more surprise.
Further, the assembly line abstraction of cat as 'input the contents of these files into the beginning of my pipeline' is predictable, simple and very clear and readable. Using the filenames in the commands means you have to be certain each command will take filenames, and if you replace the first step (from a grep to an awk, for example), you have to rethink your input method semantics again.
Any typing speed gains and performance improvements you may get will probably get shot the first time some command does something unexpected, or by the extra steps of thought.
And if performance really was a serious concern you probably shouldnt be writing it as a shell script...
You misunderstand how it's done. TCP isnt involved in the traversal, it's just used as a communications channel over which to exchange the information needed to establish something that will be close enough to an UDP 'session' to 'trick' the firewall into considering the UDP exchanges to be responses to the internal machines requests.
To do that you need to get both clients sending packets to eachothers NAT'ed firewall in responses to outgoing packets packets from the respective clients. As the initial packets cannot reach the destination client (they'd get blocked), you need the inbetween server to which both are connected to tell the respective clients on which port the other client was sending packets on so they can send response packets to that port.
It's nothing new tho, it's been around pretty much since the inception of NAT, as it's more or less fundamental to ever using UDP in any extensive internet service (ie, mmorpgs, udp streaming, etc).
"A) isn't an IT geek; or B) didn't have it setup for them BY an IT geek"
That seems like it covers pretty much every Windows owner too, eh?
Particularly if you consider preloading as having it set up for them by an it geek.
Heck, for my own anecdotal evidence I can say I dont know _anyone_ at _all_ who has actually bought Windows to install on a PC. I do, however, know quite a lot of people who have downloaded Linux to install. And I do know a whole lot of people who have paid for Windows they're not using, as part of a new computer.
"it makes no sense whatsoever for HP to sell them."
Oh, BS. Reconfiguring the imaging of a system has pretty much no cost. You could even do it with stores like Best Buy; simply use a DVD-preloading image which already ships with many machines in the form of recovery DVD's. Offering the image separately would slice a fair amount of the price in the lower segments, thus increasing sales. Which _would_ make sense for HP. It just wouldnt make sense for Microsoft who would lose all the aforementioned anecdotal sales. Which is why they insist on playing the tying game.
"The drivers for said cards seem pretty proper as-is."
As long as you're not anywhere near the bleeding edge. If you are, you'd notice that the binary drivers tend to lag as compared to their OSS counterparts; default stack size change, xen compatibility and aiglx are recent examples.
"if it takes a lot of energy to create the water used to create the energy, you're headed for trouble."
And the whole point of a hydrogen carrier for energy is that there is no lack whatsoever of energy; there's a lack of energy where it's useful and an overabundance of energy where it isnt.
Coincidentally, water has the exact same problem; there's a whole bunch of it where you dont particularly need it and not enough where you do.
So put water pipeline from the atlantic to the middle of sahara, drive hydrogen plants with solar concentrator driven turbines, split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, hand out clean water to the thirsty, combine the hydrogen gas with nitrogen from the air, and pipe ammonia back. Both problems solved at once. (plus ammonia is vastly simpler to transport than hydrogen, and can be used in fuelcells).
"My point was that generally your anode and cathode will corrode pretty quickly"
Which, of course, is why you use non-corrosive electrodes. Like graphite. Or whatever.
"without being able to pop open Wikipedia whenever I'm stuck on a boring car trip"
If you keep looking at that wikipedia entry on car accidents while driving you'll soon find out first hand what it's all about.
Seriously tho, I'd be perfectly happy with a mobile terminal/webbrowser; it's just most manufacturers tend to jam their offerings so full of other crap that it eventually just isnt good enough for the things I do want to use it for.
Why not scrap the whole concept of copyright on music and replace it full out with a mandatory point-of-sale/broadcast royalty? Sure, it would drive a stake through the heart of the RIAA vampires, but it would restore competition in the sector and greatly benefit consumers and artists. Even more so for independents (and music lovers), as the removal of exclusive rights would greatly diminish the value of excessive marketing, leading to a wider diversity and more widespread distribution of royalties.
"without mentioning that the UK's strategic deterrent is already in the hands of another country."
Essentially, it boils down to saying 'can we please pay for part of your arsenal, and host it at our expense?'.
The most fascinating thing about it is that they keep falling for it. Makes one wonder.
"So even if there was an HD TV here"
Well, many monitors qualify, so...
"Personally I think this whole thing is a gimmick."
No shit. At a viewing distance of ten feet, on a 32" TV, with a moving picture, I can barely tell the difference between a DVD and a good rip which is encoded to half that resolution. To see any non-imaginary difference between HD and SD I'd need a cybernetic eye upgrade.
On a 64" TV at the same distance it would be different. But that isnt on the purchasing plan for the foreseeable future.
"if you make something, it belongs to you"
Copyright, however, isnt about the possession of the object, it's the right to prevent anyone else from possessing a copy of that object.
If you're a carpenter and make a great chair it doesnt pass into the public domain, but you cannot prevent your neighbour from making a chair just like it, nor do you have the right to prevent anyone who purchases the chair to pay another carpenter to copy it.
"It's basically judicial theft."
Except it's the other way around. Preventing the neighbour or customer from making a chair just like the original means you're depriving them of the right to do what they wish with their property.
The value of copyright does not come out of nowhere; it derives its value by depriving others of value and rights. From an ethical point of view it's just the same as other taxation methods; you're depriving one group of people to give to another. Wether that's good or bad is arguable, and mostly a question of public utility.
"The answer is almost none."
Actually, I'd suspect the answer is most. The vast majority of actual artists and writers do not get much out of the current system; the current system is heavily biased towards those who can buy the commercial channels like radio, do media blitzes and appropriate the vast majority of capital flowing in through various copyright related levies. Many artists and artists/composers gain most income through touring; something they'd actually get more money out of if they didnt have to compete with the conglomerate media machines.
And frankly, I find the idea that whoever can afford to buy the most media coverage is the most 'important' abhorrent; as would, I suspect, pretty much everyone who actually looks up their music rather than get it fed to them.
"In the absence of copyright, is it possible for a culturally significant number of musicians to make music their primary career?"
As many artists are today making music as a career without significant copyright related revenue, why shouldnt they?
And nobody is saying we need to get rid of methods of paying artists; removing copyright could very well be accompanied by instead taxing the media companies (and anyone else actually making money off the sales of music), effectively replacing the crap contracts most artists get with a much higher mandatory percentage of end sales revenue, thus both increasing revenue to artists and composers while restoring competition in the production and distribution chains. Consumers and artists would both win.
There are several other (entirely 'legit') sites with DRM free music; emusic and audiolunchbox jump to the mind.
They even come with the advantages of good music and with pre-screened no RIAA labels. I'm not sure I really appreciate EMI going for the drm-free business; now I might have to start screening again to make sure my money isnt going to quasi-fascists. They may be out to quash freedom with their jackboots, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for it.
"Goods and services will all of a sudden cost more"
Um, no. The total amount of 'money' would remain the same, so you get no increased inflation. Further, on a competetive market, prices fall towards the cost of production, so prices do not rise to follow disposable capital. The rising efficiency and falling production costs and lower relative pricing is the very foundation of the actual wealth increase we've seen since the beginning of industrialization.
Of course, on a truly competetive market, it would be more or less impossible to concentrate wealth in the way we see; competition ensures that ROI will constantly fall and wealth become naturally distributed again. However, between legal monopolies like intellectual 'property' and various other anti-competetive practices and rent seeking we have nothing like an actual free market.
"Well, not invent, actually, because your design is much too expensive to implement with what you have in the bank."
See, here's where that argument looses contact with reality. Innovation in a communicative world isnt done in hundred-mil multi-decade steps, it's done in small increments on a vast pool of a hundred million other small $1 increments.
"Is that morally repugnant?"
Reality is that everyone else does the 99,999,999 steps, your business man finances one $1 step, gets the patent, and can prevent anyone else doing the other steps from implementing or reaping any benefit from their part.
And that is morally repugnant.
Personally, I'm very interested in seeing artists and composers compensated, so when will we see the Warner CEO admit that he's been stealing the artists money?
"not for the production of all the content."
If the production of positive value material requires the production of negative value material, maybe the specific financing aspects should be reconsidered. There are several alternate methods for financing content.
As advertisements specifically is a negative value product the consumer does not want, I'd suggest we start by reporting money spent on advertizing as a negative value on gross domestic product.