You think the economy isn't democratic? But you vote in the market *every* time you spend your money. Whereas a political vote only happens once every couple of years. In-between the only way you can get heard is by spending money. Typically you have a choice between two politicians likely to get elected. This is by design, to ensure that you don't have a politician who was elected by a minority of the voters. However, markets support many more than just two companies. Coke/Pepsi, sure, but there's Jolt, R/C, and many store brands. Even when there's a monopoly, you still can choose NOT to buy. But even if you don't vote, someone gets elected. -russ
You have cause and effect backwards. The US is a republic because its laws are (supposed to be) neutral. When the law is fair, it doesn't matter who gets to vote on it. It is only when the law starts to favor one party over another that you see people want to replace a republic by a democracy. -russ
So why do Internet political polls always generate results which are more skewed towards the libertarian philosophy? Is it because they don't "count" and so people feel more free to vote how they feel? Or is it because people who are drawn to the net value freedom more than security (insert obligatory Benj. Franklin quote here)? -russ
Indians have an NIH complex. They'd do a lot better to just buy in foreign technology, except that they have to pay a 45% tariff. Their own government does to them in peacetime what an enemy would like to do in wartime (blockade them). -russ
The first time Williams ran fiber, they used a decomissioned gas pipeline. Only later did they figure out that fiber was safer from backhoes when near *working* gas pipelines.
All around the gas pipeline The backhoe dug a trench. The trench got too close to the fiber. Pop goes the backhoe. -russ
I'm not saying that you're wrong -- companies may indeed prefer two for less the salary of one, but the economics are against them.
Two employees for $30,000 cost substantially more than one employee for $70,000. First, you have the overhead of an additional employee: desk, telephone, space, social security, pension, accounting. Second, you have the communication cost. You now have to people to manage, and two people to communicate with effectively. Remember Brook's law: adding people to a late project makes it later.
I know I am much more productive than any whippersnapper straight out of school. Why? My breadth of experience. I've written compilers, interpreters, games, assembly language, microcode, embedded systems, CGI's, OO C code, heck even OO assembly code.
Yeah, I charge a lot. But I also get a lot done. -russ
Surfing the net takes far more bandwidth than a 2.4Kbps real-time bidirectional audio link. If you're that short on bandwidth, STOP READING THE COMMENTS! -russ
Cost me about $600 to terminate and test two runs of cat-5 in every room of my house. That counts jacks, and a 110 block at the other end. Total of 11 pairs of runs. -russ
Every room in my house has two runs of cat-5 to it, one for telephone, one for Ethernet. I've got five runs of conduit so I can run fiber-optic cable later. And I've got 18 pair of telephone drops, of which I'm using five. If I was going to do it again, I would have just run conduit to every room:
I wouldn't have had to buy the expensive jacks.
I wouldn't have had to worry about the cat5 getting damaged.
Sheesh! They didn't get a patent, they got a trademark. And it only applies to tennis balls, so you're free to get a trademark on computers that smell of newly-mown grass, if you want. There's fourty-some-odd fields of enterprise, each of which has its own trademark namespace, so to speak. -russ
Sounds like a call for action against death penalties.
Oh, and which Bible do you intend to copyright? And what do you plan to do with the fair use clause? Just throw it out? There's a very good reason why religion and state are separated. -russ
Politicians have something to sell
on
At The Crossroads
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· Score: 2
Yup. Corporations fund the political system because politicians have something to sell. They only have it to sell because we allow them to sell it. We must oppose ALL government interference in the economy, because it will inevitably be taken over by those we intend to regulate. -russ
It's an economic thing; you wouldn't understand.
on
At The Crossroads
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· Score: 2
The ability to extract royalties depends on them being cheaper than copying. Copying is no longer uneconomic. What are you gonna do about it? Put your head in the sand? Copy"right" is now an economically useless thing to have. -russ
You miss the whole point. It's not that musicians *should* be able to make money off every copy. It's that musicians are no longer *able* to make money off every copy. There is no way to stop copying other than to shut down the net.
How do you adjust to this new reality? By denying it? Go ahead, try. -russ
Not true. A free market monopoly that is earned by merit is good. It's good because some monopolies are economically efficient, and because the inferior products have been driven out of the market. And because it's a free market monopoly, it's subject to failure, like certain Bellevue behemoths, when it ceases to provide the best solution. -russ
And FreeBSD is immune to this effect? How can this be? Even if 50% of all FreeBSD users are experts, and 10% of all Linux users are experts, there is still (as I said earlier and it's still not a troll) more Linux expertise. -russ
If Redhat is not charging for their software, neither is Microsoft. One of the things you get when you buy a Microsoft product is a license for the software. In effect you get the same thing when you buy Redhat. Redhat includes the source for everything in their distribution. Therefore, when you buy from Redhat, you are also (in essence) buying a license to redistribute the software. You have a "get out of jail free" card as far as the GPL is concerned. You may think this doesn't matter, but if you're installing a hundred copies of one Redhat, you can be sure that the company's legal department will want to know that you can do that.
Profanity is the mark of intellectual failure. Even the few facts you can manage to marshall are wrong facts. Redhat has made a profit in some years. That they have not in the past year is simply an indication of ongoing investment in the face of competition. -russ "dumbfuck" nelson
How can Redhat charge for the same thing people can download for zero cost? That disproves Bertrand's assumption number one. Software isn't expensive to produce if people do it for pleasure -- it's fully paid-for by the fun. That's his wrong assumption number two. Economics can't be overriden by ethics -- the most efficient result is just that regardless of how you feel about it. You may choose an inefficient result for ethical reasons, but that's your choice. That's wrong assumption number three. And the ethical principle behind libre software is (possibly overriding an efficient result; possibly not) that copyright is unethical -- that it is wrong a priori to use violence (the coercion of the state -- copyright violations can be a criminal offense) to stop something which is not harming you, and indeed, you may not be able to detect. If you gave me a copy of his software, and I was not in the market for it, how does that harm him? How is he ethically justified in bringing in the long arm of the law?
The first reason Bertrand is in a muddle is because he contradicts himself. He says that you shouldn't worry about the source of ideas -- that the Nazis building of the autobahn does not bring approbriation on all highways. Then he goes on to talk about ESR's gun advocacy.
The second reason is that he claims that ethics should overrule economics, then he uses an economics argument to overrule Stallman's ethics. Bertrand is just confused, and his writing reflects that. He's speaking from the partisan position of a proprietary software producer. Small wonder he doesn't like open source -- it threatens his business model. -russ
Slashdot Mirror
You think the economy isn't democratic? But you vote in the market *every* time you spend your money. Whereas a political vote only happens once every couple of years. In-between the only way you can get heard is by spending money. Typically you have a choice between two politicians likely to get elected. This is by design, to ensure that you don't have a politician who was elected by a minority of the voters. However, markets support many more than just two companies. Coke/Pepsi, sure, but there's Jolt, R/C, and many store brands. Even when there's a monopoly, you still can choose NOT to buy. But even if you don't vote, someone gets elected.
-russ
You have cause and effect backwards. The US is a republic because its laws are (supposed to be) neutral. When the law is fair, it doesn't matter who gets to vote on it. It is only when the law starts to favor one party over another that you see people want to replace a republic by a democracy.
-russ
So why do Internet political polls always generate results which are more skewed towards the libertarian philosophy? Is it because they don't "count" and so people feel more free to vote how they feel? Or is it because people who are drawn to the net value freedom more than security (insert obligatory Benj. Franklin quote here)?
-russ
Indians have an NIH complex. They'd do a lot better to just buy in foreign technology, except that they have to pay a 45% tariff. Their own government does to them in peacetime what an enemy would like to do in wartime (blockade them).
-russ
The first time Williams ran fiber, they used a decomissioned gas pipeline. Only later did they figure out that fiber was safer from backhoes when near *working* gas pipelines.
All around the gas pipeline
The backhoe dug a trench.
The trench got too close to the fiber.
Pop goes the backhoe.
-russ
I'm not saying that you're wrong -- companies may indeed prefer two for less the salary of one, but the economics are against them.
Two employees for $30,000 cost substantially more than one employee for $70,000. First, you have the overhead of an additional employee: desk, telephone, space, social security, pension, accounting. Second, you have the communication cost. You now have to people to manage, and two people to communicate with effectively. Remember Brook's law: adding people to a late project makes it later.
I know I am much more productive than any whippersnapper straight out of school. Why? My breadth of experience. I've written compilers, interpreters, games, assembly language, microcode, embedded systems, CGI's, OO C code, heck even OO assembly code.
Yeah, I charge a lot. But I also get a lot done.
-russ
Download the .avi's and play them with xanim. Works great, unlike the vast majority of movies I download.
-russ
The Yopy *is* basically an Itsy, modulo the accellerometer interface, and heck, we can hack one into it.
Surfing the net takes far more bandwidth than a 2.4Kbps real-time bidirectional audio link. If you're that short on bandwidth, STOP READING THE COMMENTS!
-russ
Run conduit. I ran some, but not enough. I should have run it to every room.
-russ
Cost me about $600 to terminate and test two runs of cat-5 in every room of my house. That counts jacks, and a 110 block at the other end. Total of 11 pairs of runs.
-russ
Yeah, I was going to wire my bathrooms too, but my wife nixed that.
-russ
K-Mart(tm) Clue: how do you enforce a ban on activity that you cannot detect?
You're talking about "should". I'm talking about "is".
-russ
Sheesh! They didn't get a patent, they got a trademark. And it only applies to tennis balls, so you're free to get a trademark on computers that smell of newly-mown grass, if you want. There's fourty-some-odd fields of enterprise, each of which has its own trademark namespace, so to speak.
-russ
"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
Sounds like a call for action against death penalties.
Oh, and which Bible do you intend to copyright? And what do you plan to do with the fair use clause? Just throw it out? There's a very good reason why religion and state are separated.
-russ
Yup. Corporations fund the political system because politicians have something to sell. They only have it to sell because we allow them to sell it. We must oppose ALL government interference in the economy, because it will inevitably be taken over by those we intend to regulate.
-russ
The ability to extract royalties depends on them being cheaper than copying. Copying is no longer uneconomic. What are you gonna do about it? Put your head in the sand? Copy"right" is now an economically useless thing to have.
-russ
You miss the whole point. It's not that musicians *should* be able to make money off every copy. It's that musicians are no longer *able* to make money off every copy. There is no way to stop copying other than to shut down the net.
How do you adjust to this new reality? By denying it? Go ahead, try.
-russ
any monopoly is bad monopoly,
Not true. A free market monopoly that is earned by merit is good. It's good because some monopolies are economically efficient, and because the inferior products have been driven out of the market. And because it's a free market monopoly, it's subject to failure, like certain Bellevue behemoths, when it ceases to provide the best solution.
-russ
And FreeBSD is immune to this effect? How can this be? Even if 50% of all FreeBSD users are experts, and 10% of all Linux users are experts, there is still (as I said earlier and it's still not a troll) more Linux expertise.
-russ
If Redhat is not charging for their software, neither is Microsoft. One of the things you get when you buy a Microsoft product is a license for the software. In effect you get the same thing when you buy Redhat. Redhat includes the source for everything in their distribution. Therefore, when you buy from Redhat, you are also (in essence) buying a license to redistribute the software. You have a "get out of jail free" card as far as the GPL is concerned. You may think this doesn't matter, but if you're installing a hundred copies of one Redhat, you can be sure that the company's legal department will want to know that you can do that.
Value is subjective.
-russ
---Slashdot Posting Rules--------------------------------------------- -
1. Stay on topic.
2. Don't flame people.
3. Don't be a potty mouth.
Profanity is the mark of intellectual failure. Even the few facts you can manage to marshall are wrong facts. Redhat has made a profit in some years. That they have not in the past year is simply an indication of ongoing investment in the face of competition.
-russ "dumbfuck" nelson
How can Redhat charge for the same thing people can download for zero cost? That disproves Bertrand's assumption number one. Software isn't expensive to produce if people do it for pleasure -- it's fully paid-for by the fun. That's his wrong assumption number two. Economics can't be overriden by ethics -- the most efficient result is just that regardless of how you feel about it. You may choose an inefficient result for ethical reasons, but that's your choice. That's wrong assumption number three. And the ethical principle behind libre software is (possibly overriding an efficient result; possibly not) that copyright is unethical -- that it is wrong a priori to use violence (the coercion of the state -- copyright violations can be a criminal offense) to stop something which is not harming you, and indeed, you may not be able to detect. If you gave me a copy of his software, and I was not in the market for it, how does that harm him? How is he ethically justified in bringing in the long arm of the law?
The first reason Bertrand is in a muddle is because he contradicts himself. He says that you shouldn't worry about the source of ideas -- that the Nazis building of the autobahn does not bring approbriation on all highways. Then he goes on to talk about ESR's gun advocacy.
The second reason is that he claims that ethics should overrule economics, then he uses an economics argument to overrule Stallman's ethics. Bertrand is just confused, and his writing reflects that. He's speaking from the partisan position of a proprietary software producer. Small wonder he doesn't like open source -- it threatens his business model.
-russ