Yes, my friend, Hitler was a practicing Catholic (look it up). In fact, atheism repulsed him as something only a wimpy rootless intellectual (precisely the kind of person he felt most threatened by) would take seriously. In his political views Hitler was sort of a Buchanan on steroids. And with power. Religion, traditional family, a return to a glorified past, and fear of the outsiders were all big themes in his rhetoric. The highest award a Nazi soldier could ever receive was in the shape of a cross.
Now about Christianity and Western Civilization. Surprisingly enough, our civilization was born long before Christ appeared on the scene. In fact, the introduction of Christianity into Europe coincided with an enourmous cultural and economic decline known to us as the Dark Ages. Europe's population reached its pre-Christian (Roman) levels almost a thousand years after that disaster, its culture was only resuscitated during the Renaissance. While Christianity was not the cause of what happened to the Roman Empire, it was certainly a symptom of it - a simpler, more brutish world view that fit simpler, more brutish times. A culture that never before fought because of religion (A Greek city-state could not care less about what its citizens believed) started devouring itself based on how many fingers you used when making a sign of the cross and other such nonsense. Just one religious episode - The Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants - killed 8 million people (a third of Germanny's population) in the 1600's. So please learn a bit of history before drawing any lessons from it
First, I would like to say that I've never doubted for a minute that geekyness exists. It is a set of behaviors, a non-standard view of the world, that's shared by a small, but not insignificant percentage of people, mostly men. While I do not know if geekyness ("Asperger's) is inborn or acquired in infancy, I AM sure of one thing: psychiatrists should be the last people on earth to be trusted with the answer, or even more frighteningly, the "treatment". Remember, this is a "science" that until quite recently advocated electric shocks, applied directly to the brain, as a way of treating schitzophrenia. I've actually known someone who survived this, and to my knowledge the morons who thought this up have never been punished in any socially accepted way. Once, out of curiosity, I actually tried looking up what their definition of "schitzophrenia" was. Guess what? It's all mush! Basically, if you're "crazy", you're a schirzophreniac to them. The brain is an incredibly complex structure, and like all such structures, it can fail in many complex ways. The only ones modern psychiatry is really sure of are direct and simple. Example: if a person gets hit in this area of the skull, their speech may get slurred. Hmmm, that is probably where the "speech" area is (I'm not joking).
So if you're looking for science in psychiatry, you've come to the wrong place at the wrong time. This wouldn't be so tragic if they were not constantly insisting on "treating" innocent people like you and me. I could think of lots of scientific fields that are pure speculation. Cosmobiology sounds like fun for example. But there is no financial incentive that I know of to apply cosmobiology to real life. Unfortunately, there IS a financial incentive to "treating" crazy people. So the story of all quacks who've come before them gets repeated one more time, and "bad humours" become "chemical imbalances", "being posessed by the devil" becomes "schitzofrenia", and "exorcism" gets a direct charge out of the wall socket. The fact that these quacks have now set their sights on us (and even gave our condition a name) cannot be good news.
I bought a 1958 Scientific American recently and was fascinated by the ads as much as the articles. Many were for missle-related technology - the space program hadn't really gotten off the ground yet (he-he)
The space program had gotten off the ground in October, 1957 in Baikonur, Russia. But I'm sure you knew that.
Glorifying criminals is not a world wide phenomenon. You have to remember here that the US was for a long time a penal colony of Britain. It's hard to imagine this history not influencing America's culture in at least some perceptible way.
Examples: gory Hollywood movies, the wide availablity of guns, an unimaginable murder rate, etc., etc.
1. Right click on it
2. Choose "Configure"
3. Click the "Options" tab
4. Select "Auto Hide Panel"
Now it will only show up if you move the cursor over its former place (the bottom of the screen in my case). Alt+F1 acts like the Windows button in (what else?) Windows: it calls up the K menu, so you could always find the apps through there.
I also got rid of the taskbar at the top of the screen and use Alt+Tab to switch between applications - saves screen space and cuts down on mouse usage.
Haven't downloaded KDE 2.0 yet, but it would probably work there too.
Even if that were true (and it probably isn't), why exactly would that be wrong?
In my experience, the "C" word only scares dumb American hicks. It's a legacy of decades of state propaganda (corporations own the state and communism is their biggest fear), a failing educational system (repeating recieved knowledge as opposed to thinking for yourself), and plain old ignorance.
I also cannnot remember the last time Spielberg cut a deal with Taco Bell.
Have people already forgotten Jurassic Park? It's sequel, The Lost World? Or even better, ET (which had a tie-in with a certain candy manufacturer IN ITS PLOT).
If product placement had its Academy Awards, Spielberg would probably win life time achievement.
For the last time, modulo, a Soviet is not a person, it's a place (usually a modernist building with a statue of Lenin or the town's founder in front of it). It's what most Americans would call a city council (a village council), only a bit more democratic. The Russian word for teacher is "uchitel".
Your assertions about the Russian language are just as false and uninformed as the rest of your posts, but I thought that at least this one was easier to disprove than others, since it's so straightforward. Guess I didn't count on the stubborness.
I fail to see how this relates. Windows is not patented, it is copyrighted
While I completely mixed up my references, what I was trying to say there is that a financial incentive (be it a restrictive copyright or a patent) does not necessarily produce the best product. Linux doesn't have either, and it's actually a better product than Windows, which does.
I wonder, however, whether the source code to all the software written for the government in the former USSR was made available to the general public. The problem is essentially the same; the source code stays within the organisation
One of the main features of the Russian economy under Communism was that everyone worked for the government. Although I'm definitely not talking from any kind of experience here, it's hard to imagine one arm of the government denying source code to another one on legal grounds.
I think however, you'll find that because of it's exceptional circumstances, Russia is the exception rather than the norm for capitalist systems. Take a look at Canada, Great Britain and France, and what you'll see is very different. Granted that Canada and France have more socialist tendencies than the States, but they are, nonetheless, 'controlled' capitalisms.
There are many reasons why Western Europe and North America have obtained such a high standard of living compared to other parts of the world. This has probably more to do with the Industrial Revolution and its consequences than the degree to which their economies were managed by governments. What's certain is that there are a lot of poor countries that have free market economies - most of Latin America is an example of that. In fact, much of the capitalist world is as poor, if not poorer, than modern Russia - from Indonesia to Romania to the Phillipins economies are both backward and free-market. What makes Russia unique, in my opinion, is a comparison of two wildly different economic systems working in the same environment. As I see it, only one of them worked well. This doesn't necessarily prove anything, since there are no controlled experiments in history, but it did force me to look at these things with a different perspective. You start noticing things - like the fact that the most successful capitalist economies (of which Canada is one) are the ones that restrain the market, as opposed to emphasizing it. Does an affluent society naturally abhor the excesses of Capitalism? Or does a more sanely managed economic system produce these affluent societies in the first place? That's an interesting question to have an answer to, in my opinion.
I just wanted to say that my comments were not based on being "a part of the nomenklatura" (because I was certainly not that), but on comparing Russia before and after market reforms. And the standard of living for average Russians is a lot lower today then it was a decade ago. This may not be true of Poland, since Poland did suffer from Russian imperilaism during the whole Communist period, but it is certainly true of Russia and the rest of the former Soviet republics. The life expectancy is down, the GDP is down, and crime is up - you just can't say that these things are not true about Russia right now.
. First, in a communism, all the power rests with a small handful of elites. As can be seen from almost any communist government, there are very high levels of corruption (not to say that capitalist governments can't be corrupt either), and the distribution of wealth soon becomes not equal, but skewed. You want to get something done? Take a brown paper envelope to the local government representative and you're set.
I can't say that there was no corruption in Communist Russia (just that there was less of it than now, under the market system). But first, I should probably describe what that corruption looked like. If an average Russian family lived in a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment (not luxury, but totaly adequate), a corrupt official might have obtained a 4 bedroom one in the same neighbourhood. I actually saw the Moscow apartment house where Leonid Brezhnev (The Soviet leader for 18 years) lived, and while opulent, there was nothing special about it by American standards. It is totally ludicrous to imply that the distribution of wealth was more skewed in Communist Russia than in the Capitalist world. If you've compared the two (like I did), this notion would seem to you like a sick joke.
As to the patent issue. If patents promote innovation, why does the Windows partition of my computer constantly crash, but the Linux part (where almost everything is GPL'ed) is stable? The answer, in my opinion, is that very little creativity is actually stimulated by financial return. People write good software for the same reason others write good music, or participate in any kind of work that is not mindlessly dull - they enjoy the process. And under communism, they could actually get paid for doing that, by the government, for whom almost everybody worked. In my opinion, the removal of market pressure can potentially mean more creativity, not less.
I'd be curious to know just how much of this was spoon-fed to the citizens of Russia to stir anti-capitalist sentiment
Were my views influenced by 17 years spent living in Russia? Sure. Some of my opinions may have been spoon fed in school and somehow remained until today. But I can say the exact same thing about your assertion that the distribution of wealth in the Soviet Union was horribly skewed by corruption. In reality, while not being totally equal (nothing in life is that neat), it was pretty close to equlity.
The previous comment had so many inaccuracies, that I really don't know where to start. First, the easy ones:
1. The word Soviet means counsel, in 2 senses of this word: "advice" and "commeetee". A Soviet is basically a City Counsel, or its rural equivalent. Since representative local government was a Communist innovation in Russia, people started associating Soviets (counsels) with the whole system, hence the name.
2. There was more than one brand of television sets in the Soviet Union (I should know that since I've actually had more than one brand in my apartment). They were lower quality than Japanese models, but you could say that about American made TV's too. In fact, low quality is why they stopped making American TV's altogether.
3. Examples of Soviet innovations: first artificial Earth satellite, first man in space, the kind of eye surgery that removes the need for glasses (the guy who invented that was named Sviatoslav Fyodorov, and no, he didn't get rich because of that), and lots and lots of other things. The next time you play Tetris, look in Help/About. At least in the M$ version, they show the name of the Soviet inventor.
4. Watching you rationalize the stock market was interesting. How can you explain the utulity of gambling? There is entertainment value for those who play, and there is a huge misallocation of resources as a result (money goes to people who did nothing to earn it), but that's it. Saying that the stock market helps average people is kind of pathetic.
5. The standard of living issue. Have you ever noticed that the richest societies on Earth (Scandinavia, Japan, the Netherlands, etc.) have very liberal economic policies? And yet Mexico is even more free market than the US? In fact, if you look carefully, the full spectrum of wealth in this world is almost precisely matched by the degree to which the economy is managed. There's no socialism in Africa (it's a total free for all where economy is concerned), but there's loads of it in Sweden. I think I've said enough.
6. No part of your argument was as illogical as the one about homeless people. If Socialism produced a society without homelessness (and it did), why would less socialism mean less homelessness? I'll chalk up the total heartlessness of your attitude to the fact that you're probably a kid, but the lack of logic can't really be explained here.
7. Among other things, you've managed to say that I must have been rich while I was living in the Soviet Union. Wrong again. In fact, I grew up in a standard 2 bedroom apartment in Moscow. If you compare it to American suburbs, it probably wouldn't seem very flashy, but on the bright side, Russia under Communism had no slums, or trailer parks. So the average probably wasn't that different.
8. While saying something vague about "total utility", you've totally avoided the 2 examples of market inefficiency I've talked about in my original post: advertising and copyright. Saying that advertising makes you feel good is totally irrelevant, by the way. And no, I never feel especially happy when the Energiser bunny comes on the tube. Cynical, yes, but definitely not happy. It tells me nothing about the product (when I need batteries, I just go to a store and buy whatever's there), and it increases the product's price while spoiling my TV viewing experience because I still can't forget watching TV without ads whe I was a kid.
9. You're completely correct about corruption in post-Soviet Russia. In a society that's based on "everyone for himself" as opposed to "equal benefit to all", it's kind of illogical not to be corrupt. If you don't take it, someone else will. That never happened under Communism, because if you can't get rich, and actually enjoy your excess wealth, why steal? The whole moral basis behind Communist ideology was the belief that for every winner there's a loser, so it tried to avoid both.
10. Your comments about crime in Russia totally reflect the post Communist reality, not what came before it. Having actually lived there, I don't remember any crime until about 1990-1991, but I'm sure you know more about my homeland than I do, since you could even translate the word "Soviet" for everyone;-)
Even now, after 10 years of a chaotic market system, the Russian murder rate is still lower than that of the US. It's still unacceptably high (several times the rate of Western Europe or Japan), but let's not get carried away here: Russia is not, and has never been as dangerous to live in as the United States. It has a totally different culture and almost no guns. Crime in Russia is rarely random and mostly organized. What usually happens is that "businessmen" kill other "businessmen" (we've adopted an English word for that concept), with others watching it in news reports on TV. So if you're not a thief, sorry, businessman, you're pretty safe. Yes, it's barbaric, and no, it didn't exist under the Communist system.
I think capitalism works against the common good all the time. A few examples:
A company sells widgets. To sell them in a market society, they have to advertise, which increases the cost of the product to consumers (the majority), while potentially benefiting only the widget producer (and even that isn't certain). Having grown up in a Communist country (Russia), I've seen a society withlout advertising, and it worked fine. There were no homeless people either (and that's in Moscow, a city of 9 million), but that's another story.
Another, less trivial example of capitalism's inefficiency: suppose you invent something. In a market society you maximize the return on your invention by guarding it a secret and monopolizing production (see: US pharmaceutical companies). Under Socialism the inventor worked for the government and any innovation was instantly published, increasing what you've just called "the greatest good for the greatest number of people".
There are lots and lots of other examples like that. Since capitalism usually works on the principle "everyone for himself", you can always get ahead in a market system by inconveniencing others. Under Communism (and I speak from experience here), the common good was always the first consideration. In Russia's case it produced a society without crime, poverty, unemployment or homelessness (the first time I saw an actual homeless person, I was around 16, and the Socialist system was beeing already dismantled then). What happened to Russia under capitalism? Life expectancy fell by about 6 years in the last decade (in a market system doctors are capitalists too), GDP has dropped by 60%, and crime went up from almost nonexistant to American levels and higher.
In theory, capitalism works fine: producers competing on quality, benefiting both themselves and the consumer. But, since it's a lot easier to compete on advertising, or through the introduction of incompatible standards, this almost never works. Every time you buy Pepsi, or call long distance, or buy a computer you pay for the ads. Why? because AT&T and MCI do not want to compete on quality or prices. Each believes they can outspend each other on ads, driving their competitor under, while increasing prices (someone has to pay for those Michael Jordan endorsements, remember?).
A huge example of capitalism's inefficiency is the stock market. By speculating in pieces of paper (which adds to the common good exactly zero), you can become insanely rich. Now, if you accept that money is a claim for somebody's labor (I give you a thousand dollars, you build me a web page), this person has just won the right to lots and lots of other people's labor without contributing anything to anyone. The fact that this doesn't seem wrong to most Americans just underscores the problem.
If Capitalism is so inefficient, what does it still exist? Well, the reason has to do with the question "for whom?". For the people who run this society, capitalism is enourmously efficient. Since money attracts money (it's a lot easier to make a second billion than the first $1000), they're almost guaranteed continued success. When an average person tries to get ahead by beating down others, he will rarely succeed as spectacularly as a trust fund kid who went to Harvard. You just don't get as many opportunities to screw people over, if you're not rich in the first place. The career of William H. Gates III (whose great grand father was a rich banker in Seattle and whose mother knew IBM's chairman through some corporate board they were serving on) should have tought us that.
I think more than anything, this story shows the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Repuiblican Party in this country. They're never afraid of kids having access to guns, but what ARE they afraid of - science!
The theory of evolution has been proven a thousand times. Not in a mathematical sense (life doesn't easily come down to an equation), but in every other possible sense it is beyond reasonable doubt. God, on the other hand, is a human invention (most modern religions were created in historical times, for which tons of historical documentation exists). To treat science (a serious inquiry into the nature of the world we live in) and religion (a collection of ignorant superstitions) as equals is insane. This is just another sign of the general cultural decline we're living through right now.
As someone who's lived in Russia most of his life, I completely agree with the previous poster's overview of Russian history. For the record:
The tradition of sending prisoners to Siberia was started by Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Known by many names, it continues to this day.
Stalin was a traditional Russian despot in the manner of many of the czars. Lenin on the other hand was an intellectual, probably the only one to ever rule a major country.
Immediately after coming to power Lenin pulled Russia out of World War I, undoubtedly saving millions of lives.
The Civil War was started by the Whites (contra-revolutionaries). They fought for monarchy and the return of land to rich landowners (land reform was one of the first Bolshevik achievements).
After being shot in 1918 Lenin went through a series of illnesses. He became completely incapacitated in 1922, and died in 1924. Things took a completely different turn after that.
Nevertheless:
As late as 1929 Russia had a total freedom of the press and the New Economic Policy (Lenin's attempt at a regulated market system) was still active. That's the year when Stalin took over, killing most of Lenin's ideas and instituting his cult of personality.
Although Stalin was not technically a Russian (he came from a region known as the Caucasus), the major features of his rule would be very familiar to anyone who knows Russian history: centralized government control, imperialism, and brutal repression of any kind of opposition. All of this has existed in Russia centuries before Communism was ever concieved. To call these things Communist is to really misunderstand the point IMO.
Having grown up in Russia, I know a lot of this history, and I couldn't agree more about the similarities. One of the eeriest things is that Lenin spent a lot of time in Finland just before the Revolution. If you think I'm kidding, check the history books
Well, I grew up in a Communist country (Russia), and I remember a society without crime, poverty, or unemployment. The first time I saw a homeless person I was about 16, and the Communist system was already being dismantled then.
For anyone who's actually experienced the change from a Socialist system towards one based on markets and private ownership of production a few things are clear: the standard of living goes down (in Russia life expectancy decreased by 6 years in the first decade of a market economy), production goes down (GDP fell by about 60%), and crime goes up (from practically nonexistant to American levels and higher). Some other changes - deterioration of public schools, hospitals, roads, pretty much anything that wasn't making money, but existed to be used by the public. And yes, corruption went up too, for a very simple reason - if a society is based on "everyone for himself", as opposed to "equal benefit to all", you can't really blame people for trying to get a larger slice. If they don't take it, someone else will. Well, Communism (Socialism, whatever you want to call it) was the first system that eliminated this Wild West attitude to life. It was a managed society, as opposed to one where a person can get rich from speculating in stocks (paper essentially), or remain poor in spite of having worked all his life.
As with any large system, Communism had its drawbacks (e.g. there was no real freedom of speech during the whole Communist period in Russia), but in my opinion they were far outweighed by the benefits. It was a sanely designed, humane society, which is probably gone now forever.
When people criticize Communist systems, they don't usually take account of what came before them. It is true that the Chinese, or the Russian version of Communism excluded free speech or voting, but neither of these things have ever existed in Russia or China before. Prior to the Comunist revolution Russia was poor, authoritarian and corrupt. Then there was a period when it was middle class, authoritarian, and extremely law abiding. Well, guess what, it's now returned to its original state of chaos, poverty and authoritarianism. The reason this hasn't really happened to China yet is that China is so enourmous, and any change is bound to be slow. But from what I hear, things are moving in the same direction there too.
I'll finish my off-topic rant with this thought: imagine a society without ads. Anywhere. Not a single one. No one trying to sell you something against your will, or scheming to make money from you in other ways. Yes, Communism really was like that.
Earning (in the real sense of this word) comes from working, not speculating in stocks. Buying and selling paper is not a productive activity, and therefore should be taxed at much higher rates than real work.
The only reason this is not the case in this country is the control the rich enjoy over the US political system (financial contributions to candidates' reelection commetees, buying of votes, etc).
The idea that BG "earned" $90 billion is ludicrous since it implies that his contribution was millions of times more valuable than that of the average person. Anyone who knows anything about software would evaluate his contributions to it as a negative number.
To flamers: if you want to defend the right of the rich to walk all over you, you're free to do it in response to this post. Masochism is not a desease, it involves a conscious choice made by the victim
Bill Gates has become a monopolist not because he was ambitious or driven, but because of that contract he signed with IBM many years ago. In effect, they gave their monopoly away without him or them knowing it at the time
Even if he was an ambitious guy (which he obviously isn't), why would that necessarily be good? You could say Hitler was ambitious - look how much he achieved. By the way, that last thing was supposed to be a joke, but it does illustrate my point. You can't admire someone just for being successful. That is a typically American trait that frightens people all over the world.
So... are you jealous of the crack dealer down the street driving the brand new Mercedes? He sure is a shrewd businessman! If you criticize him, you must just be jealous!
That's a great analogy! Although coming from a different social background, Gates is not unlike a street gangster who thinks he will get respect by dominating others. They even called that movie Pirats of Silicon Valley. I guess a private school and a few years at Harvard prevent you from actually TAKING money from people, but the motivation remains the same.
Slashdot Mirror
Was he referring to Mike Meyers of the A+ and Network+ certifications books? What's the "GoF" then?
Yes, my friend, Hitler was a practicing Catholic (look it up). In fact, atheism repulsed him as something only a wimpy rootless intellectual (precisely the kind of person he felt most threatened by) would take seriously. In his political views Hitler was sort of a Buchanan on steroids. And with power. Religion, traditional family, a return to a glorified past, and fear of the outsiders were all big themes in his rhetoric. The highest award a Nazi soldier could ever receive was in the shape of a cross.
Now about Christianity and Western Civilization. Surprisingly enough, our civilization was born long before Christ appeared on the scene. In fact, the introduction of Christianity into Europe coincided with an enourmous cultural and economic decline known to us as the Dark Ages. Europe's population reached its pre-Christian (Roman) levels almost a thousand years after that disaster, its culture was only resuscitated during the Renaissance. While Christianity was not the cause of what happened to the Roman Empire, it was certainly a symptom of it - a simpler, more brutish world view that fit simpler, more brutish times. A culture that never before fought because of religion (A Greek city-state could not care less about what its citizens believed) started devouring itself based on how many fingers you used when making a sign of the cross and other such nonsense. Just one religious episode - The Thirty Years' War between Catholics and Protestants - killed 8 million people (a third of Germanny's population) in the 1600's. So please learn a bit of history before drawing any lessons from it
First, I would like to say that I've never doubted for a minute that geekyness exists. It is a set of behaviors, a non-standard view of the world, that's shared by a small, but not insignificant percentage of people, mostly men. While I do not know if geekyness ("Asperger's) is inborn or acquired in infancy, I AM sure of one thing: psychiatrists should be the last people on earth to be trusted with the answer, or even more frighteningly, the "treatment". Remember, this is a "science" that until quite recently advocated electric shocks, applied directly to the brain, as a way of treating schitzophrenia. I've actually known someone who survived this, and to my knowledge the morons who thought this up have never been punished in any socially accepted way. Once, out of curiosity, I actually tried looking up what their definition of "schitzophrenia" was. Guess what? It's all mush! Basically, if you're "crazy", you're a schirzophreniac to them. The brain is an incredibly complex structure, and like all such structures, it can fail in many complex ways. The only ones modern psychiatry is really sure of are direct and simple. Example: if a person gets hit in this area of the skull, their speech may get slurred. Hmmm, that is probably where the "speech" area is (I'm not joking).
So if you're looking for science in psychiatry, you've come to the wrong place at the wrong time. This wouldn't be so tragic if they were not constantly insisting on "treating" innocent people like you and me. I could think of lots of scientific fields that are pure speculation. Cosmobiology sounds like fun for example. But there is no financial incentive that I know of to apply cosmobiology to real life. Unfortunately, there IS a financial incentive to "treating" crazy people. So the story of all quacks who've come before them gets repeated one more time, and "bad humours" become "chemical imbalances", "being posessed by the devil" becomes "schitzofrenia", and "exorcism" gets a direct charge out of the wall socket. The fact that these quacks have now set their sights on us (and even gave our condition a name) cannot be good news.
And the US version, of course, just had to have a more violent sounding name (it's a war, dude!)
I bought a 1958 Scientific American recently and was fascinated by the ads as much as the articles. Many were for missle-related technology - the space program hadn't really gotten off the ground yet (he-he)
The space program had gotten off the ground in October, 1957 in Baikonur, Russia. But I'm sure you knew that.
Glorifying criminals is not a world wide phenomenon. You have to remember here that the US was for a long time a penal colony of Britain. It's hard to imagine this history not influencing America's culture in at least some perceptible way.
Examples: gory Hollywood movies, the wide availablity of guns, an unimaginable murder rate, etc., etc.
To hide the panel in KDE 1.1.2:
1. Right click on it
2. Choose "Configure"
3. Click the "Options" tab
4. Select "Auto Hide Panel"
Now it will only show up if you move the cursor over its former place (the bottom of the screen in my case). Alt+F1 acts like the Windows button in (what else?) Windows: it calls up the K menu, so you could always find the apps through there.
I also got rid of the taskbar at the top of the screen and use Alt+Tab to switch between applications - saves screen space and cuts down on mouse usage.
Haven't downloaded KDE 2.0 yet, but it would probably work there too.
Even if that were true (and it probably isn't), why exactly would that be wrong?
In my experience, the "C" word only scares dumb American hicks. It's a legacy of decades of state propaganda (corporations own the state and communism is their biggest fear), a failing educational system (repeating recieved knowledge as opposed to thinking for yourself), and plain old ignorance.
I also cannnot remember the last time Spielberg cut a deal with Taco Bell.
Have people already forgotten Jurassic Park? It's sequel, The Lost World? Or even better, ET (which had a tie-in with a certain candy manufacturer IN ITS PLOT).
If product placement had its Academy Awards, Spielberg would probably win life time achievement.
I think the most useful part of this article was the address of the Linux Mwave petition. If you haven't signed it, e-mail here
That petition info is on this page.
For the last time, modulo, a Soviet is not a person, it's a place (usually a modernist building with a statue of Lenin or the town's founder in front of it). It's what most Americans would call a city council (a village council), only a bit more democratic. The Russian word for teacher is "uchitel".
Your assertions about the Russian language are just as false and uninformed as the rest of your posts, but I thought that at least this one was easier to disprove than others, since it's so straightforward. Guess I didn't count on the stubborness.
I fail to see how this relates. Windows is not patented, it is copyrighted
While I completely mixed up my references, what I was trying to say there is that a financial incentive (be it a restrictive copyright or a patent) does not necessarily produce the best product. Linux doesn't have either, and it's actually a better product than Windows, which does.
I wonder, however, whether the source code to all the software written for the government in the former USSR was made available to the general public. The problem is essentially the same; the source code stays within the organisation
One of the main features of the Russian economy under Communism was that everyone worked for the government. Although I'm definitely not talking from any kind of experience here, it's hard to imagine one arm of the government denying source code to another one on legal grounds.
I think however, you'll find that because of it's exceptional circumstances, Russia is the exception rather than the norm for capitalist systems. Take a look at Canada, Great Britain and France, and what you'll see is very different. Granted that Canada and France have more socialist tendencies than the States, but they are, nonetheless, 'controlled' capitalisms.
There are many reasons why Western Europe and North America have obtained such a high standard of living compared to other parts of the world. This has probably more to do with the Industrial Revolution and its consequences than the degree to which their economies were managed by governments. What's certain is that there are a lot of poor countries that have free market economies - most of Latin America is an example of that. In fact, much of the capitalist world is as poor, if not poorer, than modern Russia - from Indonesia to Romania to the Phillipins economies are both backward and free-market. What makes Russia unique, in my opinion, is a comparison of two wildly different economic systems working in the same environment. As I see it, only one of them worked well. This doesn't necessarily prove anything, since there are no controlled experiments in history, but it did force me to look at these things with a different perspective. You start noticing things - like the fact that the most successful capitalist economies (of which Canada is one) are the ones that restrain the market, as opposed to emphasizing it. Does an affluent society naturally abhor the excesses of Capitalism? Or does a more sanely managed economic system produce these affluent societies in the first place? That's an interesting question to have an answer to, in my opinion.
I just wanted to say that my comments were not based on being "a part of the nomenklatura" (because I was certainly not that), but on comparing Russia before and after market reforms. And the standard of living for average Russians is a lot lower today then it was a decade ago. This may not be true of Poland, since Poland did suffer from Russian imperilaism during the whole Communist period, but it is certainly true of Russia and the rest of the former Soviet republics. The life expectancy is down, the GDP is down, and crime is up - you just can't say that these things are not true about Russia right now.
. First, in a communism, all the power rests with a small handful of elites. As can be seen from almost any communist government, there are very high levels of corruption (not to say that capitalist governments can't be corrupt either), and the distribution of wealth soon becomes not equal, but skewed. You want to get something done? Take a brown paper envelope to the local government representative and you're set.
I can't say that there was no corruption in Communist Russia (just that there was less of it than now, under the market system). But first, I should probably describe what that corruption looked like. If an average Russian family lived in a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment (not luxury, but totaly adequate), a corrupt official might have obtained a 4 bedroom one in the same neighbourhood. I actually saw the Moscow apartment house where Leonid Brezhnev (The Soviet leader for 18 years) lived, and while opulent, there was nothing special about it by American standards. It is totally ludicrous to imply that the distribution of wealth was more skewed in Communist Russia than in the Capitalist world. If you've compared the two (like I did), this notion would seem to you like a sick joke.
As to the patent issue. If patents promote innovation, why does the Windows partition of my computer constantly crash, but the Linux part (where almost everything is GPL'ed) is stable? The answer, in my opinion, is that very little creativity is actually stimulated by financial return. People write good software for the same reason others write good music, or participate in any kind of work that is not mindlessly dull - they enjoy the process. And under communism, they could actually get paid for doing that, by the government, for whom almost everybody worked. In my opinion, the removal of market pressure can potentially mean more creativity, not less.
I'd be curious to know just how much of this was spoon-fed to the citizens of Russia to stir anti-capitalist sentiment
Were my views influenced by 17 years spent living in Russia? Sure. Some of my opinions may have been spoon fed in school and somehow remained until today. But I can say the exact same thing about your assertion that the distribution of wealth in the Soviet Union was horribly skewed by corruption. In reality, while not being totally equal (nothing in life is that neat), it was pretty close to equlity.
The previous comment had so many inaccuracies, that I really don't know where to start. First, the easy ones:
;-)
1. The word Soviet means counsel, in 2 senses of this word: "advice" and "commeetee". A Soviet is basically a City Counsel, or its rural equivalent. Since representative local government was a Communist innovation in Russia, people started associating Soviets (counsels) with the whole system, hence the name.
2. There was more than one brand of television sets in the Soviet Union (I should know that since I've actually had more than one brand in my apartment). They were lower quality than Japanese models, but you could say that about American made TV's too. In fact, low quality is why they stopped making American TV's altogether.
3. Examples of Soviet innovations: first artificial Earth satellite, first man in space, the kind of eye surgery that removes the need for glasses (the guy who invented that was named Sviatoslav Fyodorov, and no, he didn't get rich because of that), and lots and lots of other things. The next time you play Tetris, look in Help/About. At least in the M$ version, they show the name of the Soviet inventor.
4. Watching you rationalize the stock market was interesting. How can you explain the utulity of gambling? There is entertainment value for those who play, and there is a huge misallocation of resources as a result (money goes to people who did nothing to earn it), but that's it. Saying that the stock market helps average people is kind of pathetic.
5. The standard of living issue. Have you ever noticed that the richest societies on Earth (Scandinavia, Japan, the Netherlands, etc.) have very liberal economic policies? And yet Mexico is even more free market than the US? In fact, if you look carefully, the full spectrum of wealth in this world is almost precisely matched by the degree to which the economy is managed. There's no socialism in Africa (it's a total free for all where economy is concerned), but there's loads of it in Sweden. I think I've said enough.
6. No part of your argument was as illogical as the one about homeless people. If Socialism produced a society without homelessness (and it did), why would less socialism mean less homelessness? I'll chalk up the total heartlessness of your attitude to the fact that you're probably a kid, but the lack of logic can't really be explained here.
7. Among other things, you've managed to say that I must have been rich while I was living in the Soviet Union. Wrong again. In fact, I grew up in a standard 2 bedroom apartment in Moscow. If you compare it to American suburbs, it probably wouldn't seem very flashy, but on the bright side, Russia under Communism had no slums, or trailer parks. So the average probably wasn't that different.
8. While saying something vague about "total utility", you've totally avoided the 2 examples of market inefficiency I've talked about in my original post: advertising and copyright. Saying that advertising makes you feel good is totally irrelevant, by the way. And no, I never feel especially happy when the Energiser bunny comes on the tube. Cynical, yes, but definitely not happy. It tells me nothing about the product (when I need batteries, I just go to a store and buy whatever's there), and it increases the product's price while spoiling my TV viewing experience because I still can't forget watching TV without ads whe I was a kid.
9. You're completely correct about corruption in post-Soviet Russia. In a society that's based on "everyone for himself" as opposed to "equal benefit to all", it's kind of illogical not to be corrupt. If you don't take it, someone else will. That never happened under Communism, because if you can't get rich, and actually enjoy your excess wealth, why steal? The whole moral basis behind Communist ideology was the belief that for every winner there's a loser, so it tried to avoid both.
10. Your comments about crime in Russia totally reflect the post Communist reality, not what came before it. Having actually lived there, I don't remember any crime until about 1990-1991, but I'm sure you know more about my homeland than I do, since you could even translate the word "Soviet" for everyone
Even now, after 10 years of a chaotic market system, the Russian murder rate is still lower than that of the US. It's still unacceptably high (several times the rate of Western Europe or Japan), but let's not get carried away here: Russia is not, and has never been as dangerous to live in as the United States. It has a totally different culture and almost no guns. Crime in Russia is rarely random and mostly organized. What usually happens is that "businessmen" kill other "businessmen" (we've adopted an English word for that concept), with others watching it in news reports on TV. So if you're not a thief, sorry, businessman, you're pretty safe. Yes, it's barbaric, and no, it didn't exist under the Communist system.
I think capitalism works against the common good all the time. A few examples:
A company sells widgets. To sell them in a market society, they have to advertise, which increases the cost of the product to consumers (the majority), while potentially benefiting only the widget producer (and even that isn't certain). Having grown up in a Communist country (Russia), I've seen a society withlout advertising, and it worked fine. There were no homeless people either (and that's in Moscow, a city of 9 million), but that's another story.
Another, less trivial example of capitalism's inefficiency: suppose you invent something. In a market society you maximize the return on your invention by guarding it a secret and monopolizing production (see: US pharmaceutical companies). Under Socialism the inventor worked for the government and any innovation was instantly published, increasing what you've just called "the greatest good for the greatest number of people".
There are lots and lots of other examples like that. Since capitalism usually works on the principle "everyone for himself", you can always get ahead in a market system by inconveniencing others. Under Communism (and I speak from experience here), the common good was always the first consideration. In Russia's case it produced a society without crime, poverty, unemployment or homelessness (the first time I saw an actual homeless person, I was around 16, and the Socialist system was beeing already dismantled then). What happened to Russia under capitalism? Life expectancy fell by about 6 years in the last decade (in a market system doctors are capitalists too), GDP has dropped by 60%, and crime went up from almost nonexistant to American levels and higher.
In theory, capitalism works fine: producers competing on quality, benefiting both themselves and the consumer. But, since it's a lot easier to compete on advertising, or through the introduction of incompatible standards, this almost never works. Every time you buy Pepsi, or call long distance, or buy a computer you pay for the ads. Why? because AT&T and MCI do not want to compete on quality or prices. Each believes they can outspend each other on ads, driving their competitor under, while increasing prices (someone has to pay for those Michael Jordan endorsements, remember?).
A huge example of capitalism's inefficiency is the stock market. By speculating in pieces of paper (which adds to the common good exactly zero), you can become insanely rich. Now, if you accept that money is a claim for somebody's labor (I give you a thousand dollars, you build me a web page), this person has just won the right to lots and lots of other people's labor without contributing anything to anyone. The fact that this doesn't seem wrong to most Americans just underscores the problem.
If Capitalism is so inefficient, what does it still exist? Well, the reason has to do with the question "for whom?". For the people who run this society, capitalism is enourmously efficient. Since money attracts money (it's a lot easier to make a second billion than the first $1000), they're almost guaranteed continued success. When an average person tries to get ahead by beating down others, he will rarely succeed as spectacularly as a trust fund kid who went to Harvard. You just don't get as many opportunities to screw people over, if you're not rich in the first place. The career of William H. Gates III (whose great grand father was a rich banker in Seattle and whose mother knew IBM's chairman through some corporate board they were serving on) should have tought us that.
I think more than anything, this story shows the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Repuiblican Party in this country. They're never afraid of kids having access to guns, but what ARE they afraid of - science!
The theory of evolution has been proven a thousand times. Not in a mathematical sense (life doesn't easily come down to an equation), but in every other possible sense it is beyond reasonable doubt. God, on the other hand, is a human invention (most modern religions were created in historical times, for which tons of historical documentation exists). To treat science (a serious inquiry into the nature of the world we live in) and religion (a collection of ignorant superstitions) as equals is insane. This is just another sign of the general cultural decline we're living through right now.
As someone who's lived in Russia most of his life, I completely agree with the previous poster's overview of Russian history. For the record:
The tradition of sending prisoners to Siberia was started by Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Known by many names, it continues to this day.
Stalin was a traditional Russian despot in the manner of many of the czars. Lenin on the other hand was an intellectual, probably the only one to ever rule a major country.
Immediately after coming to power Lenin pulled Russia out of World War I, undoubtedly saving millions of lives.
The Civil War was started by the Whites (contra-revolutionaries). They fought for monarchy and the return of land to rich landowners (land reform was one of the first Bolshevik achievements).
After being shot in 1918 Lenin went through a series of illnesses. He became completely incapacitated in 1922, and died in 1924. Things took a completely different turn after that.
Nevertheless:
As late as 1929 Russia had a total freedom of the press and the New Economic Policy (Lenin's attempt at a regulated market system) was still active. That's the year when Stalin took over, killing most of Lenin's ideas and instituting his cult of personality.
Although Stalin was not technically a Russian (he came from a region known as the Caucasus), the major features of his rule would be very familiar to anyone who knows Russian history: centralized government control, imperialism, and brutal repression of any kind of opposition. All of this has existed in Russia centuries before Communism was ever concieved. To call these things Communist is to really misunderstand the point IMO.
Having grown up in Russia, I know a lot of this history, and I couldn't agree more about the similarities. One of the eeriest things is that Lenin spent a lot of time in Finland just before the Revolution. If you think I'm kidding, check the history books
Well, I grew up in a Communist country (Russia), and I remember a society without crime, poverty, or unemployment. The first time I saw a homeless person I was about 16, and the Communist system was already being dismantled then.
For anyone who's actually experienced the change from a Socialist system towards one based on markets and private ownership of production a few things are clear: the standard of living goes down (in Russia life expectancy decreased by 6 years in the first decade of a market economy), production goes down (GDP fell by about 60%), and crime goes up (from practically nonexistant to American levels and higher). Some other changes - deterioration of public schools, hospitals, roads, pretty much anything that wasn't making money, but existed to be used by the public. And yes, corruption went up too, for a very simple reason - if a society is based on "everyone for himself", as opposed to "equal benefit to all", you can't really blame people for trying to get a larger slice. If they don't take it, someone else will. Well, Communism (Socialism, whatever you want to call it) was the first system that eliminated this Wild West attitude to life. It was a managed society, as opposed to one where a person can get rich from speculating in stocks (paper essentially), or remain poor in spite of having worked all his life.
As with any large system, Communism had its drawbacks (e.g. there was no real freedom of speech during the whole Communist period in Russia), but in my opinion they were far outweighed by the benefits. It was a sanely designed, humane society, which is probably gone now forever.
When people criticize Communist systems, they don't usually take account of what came before them. It is true that the Chinese, or the Russian version of Communism excluded free speech or voting, but neither of these things have ever existed in Russia or China before. Prior to the Comunist revolution Russia was poor, authoritarian and corrupt. Then there was a period when it was middle class, authoritarian, and extremely law abiding. Well, guess what, it's now returned to its original state of chaos, poverty and authoritarianism. The reason this hasn't really happened to China yet is that China is so enourmous, and any change is bound to be slow. But from what I hear, things are moving in the same direction there too.
I'll finish my off-topic rant with this thought: imagine a society without ads. Anywhere. Not a single one. No one trying to sell you something against your will, or scheming to make money from you in other ways. Yes, Communism really was like that.
Earning (in the real sense of this word) comes from working, not speculating in stocks. Buying and selling paper is not a productive activity, and therefore should be taxed at much higher rates than real work.
The only reason this is not the case in this country is the control the rich enjoy over the US political system (financial contributions to candidates' reelection commetees, buying of votes, etc).
The idea that BG "earned" $90 billion is ludicrous since it implies that his contribution was millions of times more valuable than that of the average person. Anyone who knows anything about software would evaluate his contributions to it as a negative number.
To flamers: if you want to defend the right of the rich to walk all over you, you're free to do it in response to this post. Masochism is not a desease, it involves a conscious choice made by the victim
Calling Gates's $90 billion "working wealth" is an insult to workers everywhere.
Bill Gates has become a monopolist not because he was ambitious or driven, but because of that contract he signed with IBM many years ago. In effect, they gave their monopoly away without him or them knowing it at the time
Even if he was an ambitious guy (which he obviously isn't), why would that necessarily be good? You could say Hitler was ambitious - look how much he achieved. By the way, that last thing was supposed to be a joke, but it does illustrate my point. You can't admire someone just for being successful. That is a typically American trait that frightens people all over the world.
So... are you jealous of the crack dealer down the street driving the brand new Mercedes? He sure is a shrewd businessman! If you criticize him, you must just be jealous!
That's a great analogy! Although coming from a different social background, Gates is not unlike a street gangster who thinks he will get respect by dominating others. They even called that movie Pirats of Silicon Valley. I guess a private school and a few years at Harvard prevent you from actually TAKING money from people, but the motivation remains the same.