I'd like to see a 5 year old PC that can run Vista well...
Well, your 5 year old Powerbook certainly won't be running OS X "well". Or, if you think it does, a ca. 6-7 year old PC will run Vista similarly "well".
Actually, I believe 800mhz is the minimum for Vista. Though you'd be insane to try it.
Just for giggles, I installed Vista on a drive plugged into my "older games" PC - 900Mhz P3, 1G RAM, Geforce 5600. It's not blazing, but it's quite usable for email/office/web (sans heavy Flash, etc, of course). Certainly, it runs rings around my 1Ghz/768MB iBook w/Tiger.
Slowest machine I've tried Vista on was a 450Mhz/576MB P3 laptop (no DVD drive, had to do a PXE-boot network install to get it on there). Personally I found it too slow, but the "OS X runs fine on my G3" crowd would be happy.
Vista is XP with a new theme, plus DRM support for the dying HD-DVD, and a bolted on version of Apple's Quartz (WPF) and Cocoa (.Net).
Vista is as big a change from XP as OS X 10.4 (and probably.5) is from NeXT/OPENSTEP 4.
PCs from 2001 would barely run XP, let alone Vista.
Even a low-end (~900Mhz P3) XP-release-era PC with cheap upgrades (newer video card, 1G+ RAM) will quite usably run Vista (and easily run XP). Mid-range (~1.7Ghz P4) and high-end (dual P3/P4 Xeon) machines with the same memory and video card upgrades are more than capable.
The summary is wrong - it confuses "less than 800 MHz G4s" with "non G5s." There are more than a half decade of G4 Macs that will run Leopard.
I've yet to use any G4 Mac that OS X didn't feel sluggish on with anything more than a trivial load. Heck, I find my mum's G5 iMac to be annoyingly sluggish more frquently than I'd like.
Why is the speed of an OS relevant? Aren't the apps really what the end user sees? I would imagine that the responsiveness of Photoshop, once running, is of more importance than the responsiveness of opening Photoshop initially.
If all you're doing is running Photoshop, sure (although there's still things like menus and window resizing).
However, if you're multitasking and the like - actually using the OS as more than a program loaded - it matters, and OS X is pretty sluggish, even on high-end hardware.
It is totally unreasonable to expect to be able to run VISTA on even the fastest Pentium available in 2001.
Stock, yes. But modest (and cheap) RAM and video card upgrades will allow even an average 2001-era PC (assuming that's when it was _new_) the ability to run Vista quite usably.
Even the newest computers have to work hard to run Windows VISTA. With nothing else running VISTA uses about 30% CPU cycles. XP uses only 10%, everything else the same.
Agreed, I bet if you could buy a cheap PC like machine that could run OS-X legitimately (yes I know there are cracks but there are issues with using them both legal and practical), had reasonable but not excessive specs and didn't have a built in monitor then sales of the mac pro would be hurt big time.
Heck, if *Apple* released a machine like that - something people have been clamouring for nearly a decade now - Mac Pro sales would be significantly impacted (which is why they don't).
According to the poster I replied to, they would. He apparently wants vendors to be forced to offer the option for their machines to be provided with any OS on the market. That's a *massive* additional cost for the vendor just in terms of QA, before even going into end-user support costs.
Unbundling Windows just means that people would get the question whether they want Windows, no OS, or something else. What is so bad about that?
It increases costs for the hardware vendor (and hence the buyer). If the hardware vendor has no interest in selling machines with anything except Windows on them, why should he be forced to bear the additional costs of multiple OS choices ?
It is hardly confusing.
It's confusing, because, as you say:
Most people don't even know that there are other operating systems out there, because Windows is bundled with every computer, so they cannot even choose to run something else even if it would cater to all their needs.
Most people do not understand what an OS is. They buy a computer. It's an appliance, like their DVD player or TV.
It's possible, but it's not trivial, to buy a brand-name, vendor-supported PC without a Windows license.
Ah, now we get to the truth. You don't want a PC without Windows, you want a *specific* PC without Windows. Well, you need to take that up with the vendor of the specific PC you want.
This is because Microsoft is allowed to make deals with vendors whereby a version of windows gets shipped with the hardware, and is of course paid for, regardless of whether the PC actually will run windows or not.
No, they're not. Nor have they for well over a decade.
It's so not trivial that all the workplaces I've been in the last 10 years or so buy computers with a version of windows on them, which they pay for, even though they all had a site license and re-formatted the disk first thing. Often the license to the version of windows on the sticker on the PC did not match the version of Windows actually running.
Site licenses are frequently only valid if the machine has shipped with an OEM version of Windows.
What is almost impossible, is to know what proportion of the sale price of any new brand-name PC goes to Microsoft.
Indeed. Just like it's almost impossible to know what proportion goes to all the other individual vendors that made its components.
The unbundling idea is to make the sort of blind Microsoft deal linked to the raw number of PCs sold impossible. This will force everybody to be more open. It will be good for the consumer because it will allow other OS makers to compete on price and features, and it will prevent Microsoft abusing its monopoly by forcing PC vendors to buy their software.
The early 90s called. They want their complaint back.
You can invent all the prices you want, but I outlined a real comparison in my articles the detailed the software costs involved.
You are comparing Windows+Exchange to OS X Server. OS X Server comes with no equivalent to Exchange. Your comparison is flawed.
This is before even going into either the higher support costs you'll have with Windows clients and OS X servers, or the higher costs of Apple hardware for your client machines, which would easily balance out the higher licensing costs of Windows + Exchange.
Quibble about what Dell features you like, but the hardware isn't really different.
Except you pay only a little over half as much for the Dell server. Or, to put it another way, for every one Xserve you buy, you can buy nearly two equivalent Dell PE1950s.
The Microsoft licensing is. It is outrageously expensive once you pay for all the hidden costs. That's why Windows Enthusiasts lie about it.
None of the costs are hidden, nor does anyone lie about them, nor is it "outrageously expensive". Go and price a Lotus Notes solution and see how much that would cost.
Apparently you've never laid eyes on "outrageously expensive" software. That's where a single license costs in the thousands - if not tens of thousands - of dollars.
The cost of Windows + AD CALS + Exchange CALs adds maybe a few hundred dollars to the cost of an employee over the usable lifetime of that software (3-5 years). Let's say $300 over 3 years. Compared to all the other expenses involved in making an employee useful - PC, salary, office space, etc - that $100/yr wouldn't even qualify as a rounding error. That's the reason why no-one outside of the anti-Microsoft parade complains loudly about "how expensive" it is - because in the grand scheme of things, the cost is insignificant.
You're quick to mutter about how I'm wrong about a lot of things, but you can't point anything out. Typical of those without a foundation to stand upon.
I pointed out several areas in where you're "wrong" - and that's being polite, because I think a more accurate description would be lying, since your bias is evident in pretty much everything you write. Sticking your fingers in your ears and ignoring it, doesn't make you any less wrong.
"Ownership does not exist outside [...] the legal system". I'm leaving out the remark about enforcement because that conflates the right of ownership with the fact of possession. I believe I've covered this already.
You've only "covered it" in the sense of asserting you're right and I'm wrong. Perhaps you'd like to "cover it" in more detail, in the context of all the land and property that has been captured during wars, all the property confiscated from criminals, all the "natives" who were displaced during the colonisationation of various lands, repossession of property during divorce, the claiming of "undiscovered" land, etc.
Agreed. I believe intellectual property rights are more deserving of protection than physical property rights. One's intellectual property is entirely one's own creation, whereas nobody has manufactured the atoms of which their physical possessions are comprised, nor the land to which they hold title.
The amount of "intellectual property" that has been "created" since the invention of the concept, that isn't derivative of earlier works, is vanishingly small (I'd say nonexistant, but I'm sure you'll be able to dig up at least one example). Certainly not enough to justify the outrageously unbalanced differences between "owning" physical property and "intellectual property".
I guess there were no "normal" people years ago that went to the store and purchased Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 to upgraded their boxes? They were all nerds and geeks? And people can be a whiz at [insert application] but installing an OS is somehow more complicated than some of the (often complicated) applications people learn to use?
Mainstream a Linux desktop, and by mainstreaming, I mean make it commercial. Make it so Joe Notageek, and his grandmother, can install it with less clicks than it takes to install Windows. Provide apps for it.
This is a vastly overblown issue. Normal people don't install OSes. Normal people don't even understand what an OS is. They buy computers, not OSes.
This is the biggest difference between Joe Average, and geeks. To a geek, a computer is a collection of (mostly replaceable) components. To Joe Average, it's an appliance like his microwave, iPod or DVD player. How many people do you know who upgrade the coil in their microwave ?
The $299 iPod touch music player has a better Web browser than a $1299 Windows Vista PC.
No, no it doesn't. The "$299 iPod touch music player" has a web browser whose only improvement over the browsing experience available a decade ago is tabs.
I dont know.... if Apple thought just once they could get a large enough slice of the MS pie, I think they would jump at the chance. I just think they have been staying out of the 'direct line of fire' with Microsoft because they know they cant compete with MS directly in this build them cheap sell them quick world.
Of course they could. They've been doing it for decades. What they *couldn't* compete against would be the flood of cheap PCs preinstalled with OS X.
Apple's disinterest in licensing OS X to cloners has nothing to do with competing with Microsoft or Windows. It's because they know that they can't compete with PC vendors like Dell.
Dell does not include a free copy of Windows Server or Exchange Server, nor the client access licenses required. Dell has to buy these from Microsoft and resell them. So in addition to your $5000 Dell server, you have to buy two server products and 100 CALs for each, which totals $10,000 in software licensing.
You are deceptively conflating the two separate costs of software and CALs (not to mention using unrealistic prices). That alone destroys your credibility (not, as the author of roughlydrafted.com, you've got a lot to start with).
There's also your hand-waving lie that a $5000 Dell server and a $5000 Apple Xserve are "similarly priced, similarly equipped", because they both cost $5000. In fact, the Dell equivalent of a US$6000[0] Xserve (2*2Ghz dual-core Xeons, 4G RAM, 2*80G HDD, RAID controller, redundant PSU, 3yr warranty) costs only US$3500 (sans OS). Start bumping the specs up and the difference becomes even more disparate (not to mention the Dell server has a much higher ceiling).
In short, your analysis is - as usual - deceptive, inaccurate, and wrong.
[0]I had to add options to get a realistic production-server-ready configuration.
Imagine a future version of the same field, but with "MacOS XVIII", "Plan 10" "FreeBeOS", "ReactOS Hurd", "AmigaOS Phoenix", etc, etc in the list. Real choice, in other words.
If those platforms offer meaningful advantages, then they will be available without forcing vendors to sell and support them.
If they don't, then you are enforcing "choice" for the sake of it. Which is not only inefficient, but damaging to the market. Why should a hardware vendor be forced to support every platform ? Why couldn't he concentrate on only selling high-end Linux workstations for video editing.
Now imagine a world where you could click any one of those OS choices and be confident your data would be usable, that you could connect to any network you needed to, that your investment in software would be portable. A world where you could choose your OS based on price, performance and personal taste, not on format lockin and obfuscated communication protocols.
A world where innovation is impossible, because developers are locked into a rigid and predefined set of of functionality and implementations.
A world where no vendor can specialise in a specific section of the market market, and concentrate on providing the best service possible solely to it.
A world where "choice" is effectively nonexistant, because every choice delivers the same result.
A world of enforced, compulsory mediocrity.
Yes, there's some places to get one but they cost the same, or more, as a computer with Windows.
How can this be when a retail copy of Windows costs {$hundreds}?
Because you don't understand basic economics.
It doesn't need to inconvenience anybody. It just needs to remove Microsoft's automatic inclusion in the sales loop.
It always has been, and remains, trivial to buy a computer without Windows.
So, in essence I agree with the original poster. Monopoly power requires governmental support to create.
Only if you use a stupendously asinine definition of 'government'. Like, say, this one:
If a monopoly develops around a resource, I guarantee you that the resource has an army of thugs protecting it. They might be police, or guns beholden to the local autocrat or whatever. And that constitutes a government.
No you didn't, and claiming otherwise doesn't make it so.
Yes, I did.
Your ability to stop anyone else having it is not what gives you the right to own it.
Yes, it is. Although in modern times it is generally the government, not the individual, who does the stopping.
To claim otherwise conflates ownership with posession/occupation, which you do a lot of in that earlier post.
I'm not conflating them, they're two sides of the same coin.
However, if you own it, that does give you the right to stop anyone else from having it, which was my subsequent point, about the question you were really answering, even if you continue to fail, as I note below, to recognize it as such.
That's because it wasn't the question I was answering.
The fact that I - or the government acting on my behalf - can prevent someone from taking something is what makes ownership real. Not some abstract "right" endowed by - well, I'm not sure what you think it's endowed by, because on the one hand you use the word like it's some magical, universal truth and on the other you agree with me that it's simply a concept invented and sustained by a society's system of laws (and its ability to enforce them).
Ownership of property - like every other "right" - is a legal construct (and a relatively recent one in many parts of the world) and exists only within the legal frameworks that allow it to. Even within that system, all ownership denotes is a formalisation of "might makes right". You "own" something because they government will prevent anyone else from taking it away from you (or attempt get it back and/or seek reparations on your behalf after they have). Absent that, ownership is solely dependent on your own ability to prevent someone taking your possessions away.
There are so many examples of this principle documented throughout history, it's amazing that anyone would try to deny it. Look at any subculture where the regular rules of law do not apply. Look at military actions - both defensive and offensive. Look at colonisation. Look at kids in the schoolyard when they decide they "own" certain parts of it, or certain toys, etc. Heck, look at *animals*. "Ownership" does not exist outside of either the legal system - and the government's ability to enforce it - or your own ability to protect your possessions. That's because ownership and possession are inextricably linked. If you cannot effect the latter, you do not have the former.
Fortunately - and this is the implication I was making - ownership is a legal construct that evolved from a solid grounding of actual, physical reality (which is why it is pretty much essential for modern society to function). However, "intellectual property", is a completely arbitrary legal fiction with no relation whatsoever to how the universe actually operates. When you write a book and someone reads it, you can't make them "unread" it. When they listen to a piece of music you play, you can't make them "unhear" it. When some scientist discovers that E=mc^2, all they're doing is documenting factual data about how the universe operates. That is the fundamental difference between physical property and "intellectual property" and why you can't "own" the latter. "Intellectual propety" being equivalent to physical property is a nonsensical concept.
So, to go back to the original point, the reason I have "right" to "own" land is because I can stop other people from taking it away. Today, I would do this via the legal system (and I might even fail, in which case I wouldn't "own" it anymore - eg: eminent domain, divorce proceedings). However, even if the legal system collapsed (or didn't exist), I would still potentially be able to prevent my land from being taken by defending it myself (or recovering it after it had been taken from me). This latter aspect does not apply to "intellectual property", hence the reason it is fundamentally different to physical property. The legal concept
The thing is, it appears that there are a lot of people defending that a state should murder those that are considered to have failed society in some way.
No, there are a lot of people defending that the state should remove known threats to its members. Not because they have "failed", but because they have *caused damage*.
As you described it, some perceived it as "removing a demonstrable threat to society". But the thing is, no one ever takes the time to try to understand what, in fact, are the causes to those problems.
There are, in fact, lots of people who try and figure this stuff out. After all, not many people *want* violent crimes to occur.
They perceive that the cause of the problem is in fact the crime and punishing the criminals is how that problem is fought.
No, they perceive that the crime and its "cause" (assuming there is one) are, in fact, separate issues.
That idea is idiotic, to say the least. The problem is not the crime but the conditions which lead to the crime. You do not solve the crime problem by punishing the criminals. That bay be seen as justice but it absolutely will not solve any crime problem. It won't because crime is a very profound social problem, which social causes and social consequences. It's a deeply intertwined system which flourishes when the negative social factors are ignored. You don't treat an infection by cutting off the deeply infected part and still preserving both the infection and the causes of that infection.
Of course it won't "solve" the crime problem. It will, however, reduce it.
Unless you want to try and argue that criminals don't re-offend, so acting on them after they have committed crimes has no effect.
So killing someone in order to "permanently remove a demonstrable threat to society" will not diminish that threat to society. It does not nor will it ever solve anything.
It most certanly does removes the threat that individual presents to society. An executed violent criminal cannot commit any more crimes.
You are disingenuously trying to conflate two completely separate issues. Further, you making the HUGE assumption that every crime has calculable, preventable "cause".
Yes, I did. He asked what "right" I (and,by extension, anyone) had to own property ("land" specifically, but the implication was clear). One of the points of my answer is that you don't have a "right" to own anything. You have the legal concept of ownership that is predicated (at least in modern times) on your government's ability to enforce the law.
You answered a different question, namely, "What right does owning the land give you?". However, the confusion is understandable.
Uh, no, that's not a question I answered at all. Nothing like it, in fact.
My apologies. Although I feel my assumption, based on your opinions, was reasonable.
2) I know every well what communism is, having read The Capital myself. I also studied the history of most "communist" countries (which weren't that communist, after all). To a point that what Karl Marx wrote, these days, is referred as Marxism, and not communism, due to the distortion of his idea as implemented on many places. Actually, most of the concepts attributed to Karl Marx were not his own, but really ideas that were floating around for a long time. You can find the base of many of his theories old Greek and Roman texts.
Then why are you trying to disingenuously equate "cannot be owned" with "community ownership" ? They are two quite different things. Ownership implies control. If there is one that everyone should have learnt by now from the Internet, it's that you can't control information once it has been publically disclosed.
You really should take time to understand how much effort, study, and work it took to come up with many of those ideas you want to be free. Unless you think all research should be publically funded, including the study and education for those who are producing that material.
I understand quite well. That doesn't change my opinion. Copyright - especially as it exists today - is an anachronism. Patents are more defensible in principle, but appear to be just as deeply flawed in practice.
One of the few easily defensible aspects of copyright is attribution - that one person's ideas should not be misrepresented as another's - but even *that* falls into a grey area because of "derivative works", and pretty much anything covered by copyright is a "derivative" of an earlier work from before copyright even existed.
There are plenty of ways to make phenomenal amounts of money, even with a substantial overhaul - if not complete elimination - of "IP". Further, given that a greater rate of technological and cultural development is pretty much guaranteed with a larger dissemination of information, the net benefit to society would almost certainly be positive.
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I'd like to see a 5 year old PC that can run Vista well...
Well, your 5 year old Powerbook certainly won't be running OS X "well". Or, if you think it does, a ca. 6-7 year old PC will run Vista similarly "well".
Actually, I believe 800mhz is the minimum for Vista. Though you'd be insane to try it.
Just for giggles, I installed Vista on a drive plugged into my "older games" PC - 900Mhz P3, 1G RAM, Geforce 5600. It's not blazing, but it's quite usable for email/office/web (sans heavy Flash, etc, of course). Certainly, it runs rings around my 1Ghz/768MB iBook w/Tiger.
Slowest machine I've tried Vista on was a 450Mhz/576MB P3 laptop (no DVD drive, had to do a PXE-boot network install to get it on there). Personally I found it too slow, but the "OS X runs fine on my G3" crowd would be happy.
Vista is XP with a new theme, plus DRM support for the dying HD-DVD, and a bolted on version of Apple's Quartz (WPF) and Cocoa (.Net).
Vista is as big a change from XP as OS X 10.4 (and probably .5) is from NeXT/OPENSTEP 4.
PCs from 2001 would barely run XP, let alone Vista.
Even a low-end (~900Mhz P3) XP-release-era PC with cheap upgrades (newer video card, 1G+ RAM) will quite usably run Vista (and easily run XP). Mid-range (~1.7Ghz P4) and high-end (dual P3/P4 Xeon) machines with the same memory and video card upgrades are more than capable.
The summary is wrong - it confuses "less than 800 MHz G4s" with "non G5s." There are more than a half decade of G4 Macs that will run Leopard.
I've yet to use any G4 Mac that OS X didn't feel sluggish on with anything more than a trivial load. Heck, I find my mum's G5 iMac to be annoyingly sluggish more frquently than I'd like.
Why is the speed of an OS relevant? Aren't the apps really what the end user sees? I would imagine that the responsiveness of Photoshop, once running, is of more importance than the responsiveness of opening Photoshop initially.
If all you're doing is running Photoshop, sure (although there's still things like menus and window resizing).
However, if you're multitasking and the like - actually using the OS as more than a program loaded - it matters, and OS X is pretty sluggish, even on high-end hardware.
(actually SP2 *did* add features, IIRC. The firewall for one)
XP had a firewall from day 1. SP2 just enabled defaulted it to "on".
It is totally unreasonable to expect to be able to run VISTA on even the fastest Pentium available in 2001.
Stock, yes. But modest (and cheap) RAM and video card upgrades will allow even an average 2001-era PC (assuming that's when it was _new_) the ability to run Vista quite usably.
Even the newest computers have to work hard to run Windows VISTA. With nothing else running VISTA uses about 30% CPU cycles. XP uses only 10%, everything else the same.
FUD.
Agreed, I bet if you could buy a cheap PC like machine that could run OS-X legitimately (yes I know there are cracks but there are issues with using them both legal and practical), had reasonable but not excessive specs and didn't have a built in monitor then sales of the mac pro would be hurt big time.
Heck, if *Apple* released a machine like that - something people have been clamouring for nearly a decade now - Mac Pro sales would be significantly impacted (which is why they don't).
They wouldn't.
According to the poster I replied to, they would. He apparently wants vendors to be forced to offer the option for their machines to be provided with any OS on the market. That's a *massive* additional cost for the vendor just in terms of QA, before even going into end-user support costs.
Unbundling Windows just means that people would get the question whether they want Windows, no OS, or something else. What is so bad about that?
It increases costs for the hardware vendor (and hence the buyer). If the hardware vendor has no interest in selling machines with anything except Windows on them, why should he be forced to bear the additional costs of multiple OS choices ?
It is hardly confusing.
It's confusing, because, as you say:
Most people don't even know that there are other operating systems out there, because Windows is bundled with every computer, so they cannot even choose to run something else even if it would cater to all their needs.
Most people do not understand what an OS is. They buy a computer. It's an appliance, like their DVD player or TV.
It's possible, but it's not trivial, to buy a brand-name, vendor-supported PC without a Windows license.
Ah, now we get to the truth. You don't want a PC without Windows, you want a *specific* PC without Windows. Well, you need to take that up with the vendor of the specific PC you want.
This is because Microsoft is allowed to make deals with vendors whereby a version of windows gets shipped with the hardware, and is of course paid for, regardless of whether the PC actually will run windows or not.
No, they're not. Nor have they for well over a decade.
It's so not trivial that all the workplaces I've been in the last 10 years or so buy computers with a version of windows on them, which they pay for, even though they all had a site license and re-formatted the disk first thing. Often the license to the version of windows on the sticker on the PC did not match the version of Windows actually running.
Site licenses are frequently only valid if the machine has shipped with an OEM version of Windows.
What is almost impossible, is to know what proportion of the sale price of any new brand-name PC goes to Microsoft.
Indeed. Just like it's almost impossible to know what proportion goes to all the other individual vendors that made its components.
The unbundling idea is to make the sort of blind Microsoft deal linked to the raw number of PCs sold impossible. This will force everybody to be more open. It will be good for the consumer because it will allow other OS makers to compete on price and features, and it will prevent Microsoft abusing its monopoly by forcing PC vendors to buy their software.
The early 90s called. They want their complaint back.
You can invent all the prices you want, but I outlined a real comparison in my articles the detailed the software costs involved.
You are comparing Windows+Exchange to OS X Server. OS X Server comes with no equivalent to Exchange. Your comparison is flawed.
This is before even going into either the higher support costs you'll have with Windows clients and OS X servers, or the higher costs of Apple hardware for your client machines, which would easily balance out the higher licensing costs of Windows + Exchange.
Quibble about what Dell features you like, but the hardware isn't really different.
Except you pay only a little over half as much for the Dell server. Or, to put it another way, for every one Xserve you buy, you can buy nearly two equivalent Dell PE1950s.
The Microsoft licensing is. It is outrageously expensive once you pay for all the hidden costs. That's why Windows Enthusiasts lie about it.
None of the costs are hidden, nor does anyone lie about them, nor is it "outrageously expensive". Go and price a Lotus Notes solution and see how much that would cost.
Apparently you've never laid eyes on "outrageously expensive" software. That's where a single license costs in the thousands - if not tens of thousands - of dollars.
The cost of Windows + AD CALS + Exchange CALs adds maybe a few hundred dollars to the cost of an employee over the usable lifetime of that software (3-5 years). Let's say $300 over 3 years. Compared to all the other expenses involved in making an employee useful - PC, salary, office space, etc - that $100/yr wouldn't even qualify as a rounding error. That's the reason why no-one outside of the anti-Microsoft parade complains loudly about "how expensive" it is - because in the grand scheme of things, the cost is insignificant.
You're quick to mutter about how I'm wrong about a lot of things, but you can't point anything out. Typical of those without a foundation to stand upon.
I pointed out several areas in where you're "wrong" - and that's being polite, because I think a more accurate description would be lying, since your bias is evident in pretty much everything you write. Sticking your fingers in your ears and ignoring it, doesn't make you any less wrong.
"Ownership does not exist outside [...] the legal system". I'm leaving out the remark about enforcement because that conflates the right of ownership with the fact of possession. I believe I've covered this already.
You've only "covered it" in the sense of asserting you're right and I'm wrong. Perhaps you'd like to "cover it" in more detail, in the context of all the land and property that has been captured during wars, all the property confiscated from criminals, all the "natives" who were displaced during the colonisationation of various lands, repossession of property during divorce, the claiming of "undiscovered" land, etc.
Agreed. I believe intellectual property rights are more deserving of protection than physical property rights. One's intellectual property is entirely one's own creation, whereas nobody has manufactured the atoms of which their physical possessions are comprised, nor the land to which they hold title.
The amount of "intellectual property" that has been "created" since the invention of the concept, that isn't derivative of earlier works, is vanishingly small (I'd say nonexistant, but I'm sure you'll be able to dig up at least one example). Certainly not enough to justify the outrageously unbalanced differences between "owning" physical property and "intellectual property".
I guess there were no "normal" people years ago that went to the store and purchased Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 to upgraded their boxes? They were all nerds and geeks? And people can be a whiz at [insert application] but installing an OS is somehow more complicated than some of the (often complicated) applications people learn to use?
Yes.
Mainstream a Linux desktop, and by mainstreaming, I mean make it commercial. Make it so Joe Notageek, and his grandmother, can install it with less clicks than it takes to install Windows. Provide apps for it.
This is a vastly overblown issue. Normal people don't install OSes. Normal people don't even understand what an OS is. They buy computers, not OSes.
This is the biggest difference between Joe Average, and geeks. To a geek, a computer is a collection of (mostly replaceable) components. To Joe Average, it's an appliance like his microwave, iPod or DVD player. How many people do you know who upgrade the coil in their microwave ?
The $299 iPod touch music player has a better Web browser than a $1299 Windows Vista PC.
No, no it doesn't. The "$299 iPod touch music player" has a web browser whose only improvement over the browsing experience available a decade ago is tabs.
I dont know.... if Apple thought just once they could get a large enough slice of the MS pie, I think they would jump at the chance. I just think they have been staying out of the 'direct line of fire' with Microsoft because they know they cant compete with MS directly in this build them cheap sell them quick world.
Of course they could. They've been doing it for decades. What they *couldn't* compete against would be the flood of cheap PCs preinstalled with OS X.
Apple's disinterest in licensing OS X to cloners has nothing to do with competing with Microsoft or Windows. It's because they know that they can't compete with PC vendors like Dell.
Dell does not include a free copy of Windows Server or Exchange Server, nor the client access licenses required. Dell has to buy these from Microsoft and resell them. So in addition to your $5000 Dell server, you have to buy two server products and 100 CALs for each, which totals $10,000 in software licensing.
You are deceptively conflating the two separate costs of software and CALs (not to mention using unrealistic prices). That alone destroys your credibility (not, as the author of roughlydrafted.com, you've got a lot to start with).
There's also your hand-waving lie that a $5000 Dell server and a $5000 Apple Xserve are "similarly priced, similarly equipped", because they both cost $5000. In fact, the Dell equivalent of a US$6000[0] Xserve (2*2Ghz dual-core Xeons, 4G RAM, 2*80G HDD, RAID controller, redundant PSU, 3yr warranty) costs only US$3500 (sans OS). Start bumping the specs up and the difference becomes even more disparate (not to mention the Dell server has a much higher ceiling).
In short, your analysis is - as usual - deceptive, inaccurate, and wrong.
[0]I had to add options to get a realistic production-server-ready configuration.
I don't think it would be a problem for Apple... in fact it might be the best opportunity for apple to sell OSX on beige box PCs.
Apple has no interest in doing this, as show by their complete lack of any attempt to do so, despite ample - indeed, near infinite - opportunity.
Imagine a future version of the same field, but with "MacOS XVIII", "Plan 10" "FreeBeOS", "ReactOS Hurd", "AmigaOS Phoenix", etc, etc in the list. Real choice, in other words.
If those platforms offer meaningful advantages, then they will be available without forcing vendors to sell and support them.
If they don't, then you are enforcing "choice" for the sake of it. Which is not only inefficient, but damaging to the market. Why should a hardware vendor be forced to support every platform ? Why couldn't he concentrate on only selling high-end Linux workstations for video editing.
Now imagine a world where you could click any one of those OS choices and be confident your data would be usable, that you could connect to any network you needed to, that your investment in software would be portable. A world where you could choose your OS based on price, performance and personal taste, not on format lockin and obfuscated communication protocols.
A world where innovation is impossible, because developers are locked into a rigid and predefined set of of functionality and implementations.
A world where no vendor can specialise in a specific section of the market market, and concentrate on providing the best service possible solely to it.
A world where "choice" is effectively nonexistant, because every choice delivers the same result.
A world of enforced, compulsory mediocrity.
No, thank you.
Answer: I can't.
You can.
Yes, there's some places to get one but they cost the same, or more, as a computer with Windows.
How can this be when a retail copy of Windows costs {$hundreds}?
Because you don't understand basic economics.
It doesn't need to inconvenience anybody. It just needs to remove Microsoft's automatic inclusion in the sales loop.
It always has been, and remains, trivial to buy a computer without Windows.
So, in essence I agree with the original poster. Monopoly power requires governmental support to create.
Only if you use a stupendously asinine definition of 'government'. Like, say, this one:
Let me guess: you're an anarchist ?
No you didn't, and claiming otherwise doesn't make it so.
Yes, I did.
Your ability to stop anyone else having it is not what gives you the right to own it.
Yes, it is. Although in modern times it is generally the government, not the individual, who does the stopping.
To claim otherwise conflates ownership with posession/occupation, which you do a lot of in that earlier post.
I'm not conflating them, they're two sides of the same coin.
However, if you own it, that does give you the right to stop anyone else from having it, which was my subsequent point, about the question you were really answering, even if you continue to fail, as I note below, to recognize it as such.
That's because it wasn't the question I was answering.
The fact that I - or the government acting on my behalf - can prevent someone from taking something is what makes ownership real. Not some abstract "right" endowed by - well, I'm not sure what you think it's endowed by, because on the one hand you use the word like it's some magical, universal truth and on the other you agree with me that it's simply a concept invented and sustained by a society's system of laws (and its ability to enforce them).
Ownership of property - like every other "right" - is a legal construct (and a relatively recent one in many parts of the world) and exists only within the legal frameworks that allow it to. Even within that system, all ownership denotes is a formalisation of "might makes right". You "own" something because they government will prevent anyone else from taking it away from you (or attempt get it back and/or seek reparations on your behalf after they have). Absent that, ownership is solely dependent on your own ability to prevent someone taking your possessions away.
There are so many examples of this principle documented throughout history, it's amazing that anyone would try to deny it. Look at any subculture where the regular rules of law do not apply. Look at military actions - both defensive and offensive. Look at colonisation. Look at kids in the schoolyard when they decide they "own" certain parts of it, or certain toys, etc. Heck, look at *animals*. "Ownership" does not exist outside of either the legal system - and the government's ability to enforce it - or your own ability to protect your possessions. That's because ownership and possession are inextricably linked. If you cannot effect the latter, you do not have the former.
Fortunately - and this is the implication I was making - ownership is a legal construct that evolved from a solid grounding of actual, physical reality (which is why it is pretty much essential for modern society to function). However, "intellectual property", is a completely arbitrary legal fiction with no relation whatsoever to how the universe actually operates. When you write a book and someone reads it, you can't make them "unread" it. When they listen to a piece of music you play, you can't make them "unhear" it. When some scientist discovers that E=mc^2, all they're doing is documenting factual data about how the universe operates. That is the fundamental difference between physical property and "intellectual property" and why you can't "own" the latter. "Intellectual propety" being equivalent to physical property is a nonsensical concept.
So, to go back to the original point, the reason I have "right" to "own" land is because I can stop other people from taking it away. Today, I would do this via the legal system (and I might even fail, in which case I wouldn't "own" it anymore - eg: eminent domain, divorce proceedings). However, even if the legal system collapsed (or didn't exist), I would still potentially be able to prevent my land from being taken by defending it myself (or recovering it after it had been taken from me). This latter aspect does not apply to "intellectual property", hence the reason it is fundamentally different to physical property. The legal concept
The thing is, it appears that there are a lot of people defending that a state should murder those that are considered to have failed society in some way.
No, there are a lot of people defending that the state should remove known threats to its members. Not because they have "failed", but because they have *caused damage*.
As you described it, some perceived it as "removing a demonstrable threat to society". But the thing is, no one ever takes the time to try to understand what, in fact, are the causes to those problems.
There are, in fact, lots of people who try and figure this stuff out. After all, not many people *want* violent crimes to occur.
They perceive that the cause of the problem is in fact the crime and punishing the criminals is how that problem is fought.
No, they perceive that the crime and its "cause" (assuming there is one) are, in fact, separate issues.
That idea is idiotic, to say the least. The problem is not the crime but the conditions which lead to the crime. You do not solve the crime problem by punishing the criminals. That bay be seen as justice but it absolutely will not solve any crime problem. It won't because crime is a very profound social problem, which social causes and social consequences. It's a deeply intertwined system which flourishes when the negative social factors are ignored. You don't treat an infection by cutting off the deeply infected part and still preserving both the infection and the causes of that infection.
Of course it won't "solve" the crime problem. It will, however, reduce it.
Unless you want to try and argue that criminals don't re-offend, so acting on them after they have committed crimes has no effect.
So killing someone in order to "permanently remove a demonstrable threat to society" will not diminish that threat to society. It does not nor will it ever solve anything.
It most certanly does removes the threat that individual presents to society. An executed violent criminal cannot commit any more crimes.
You are disingenuously trying to conflate two completely separate issues. Further, you making the HUGE assumption that every crime has calculable, preventable "cause".
Are you an artist ? Have you tried to make a living out of your art without the "backing" of some RIAA-like group ? Specially early on your career.
Have you considered this is simply a reflection of how the market (society) values the production of the average "artist" ?
You did not answer his question.
Yes, I did. He asked what "right" I (and,by extension, anyone) had to own property ("land" specifically, but the implication was clear). One of the points of my answer is that you don't have a "right" to own anything. You have the legal concept of ownership that is predicated (at least in modern times) on your government's ability to enforce the law.
You answered a different question, namely, "What right does owning the land give you?". However, the confusion is understandable.
Uh, no, that's not a question I answered at all. Nothing like it, in fact.
1) I'm not an American
My apologies. Although I feel my assumption, based on your opinions, was reasonable.
2) I know every well what communism is, having read The Capital myself. I also studied the history of most "communist" countries (which weren't that communist, after all). To a point that what Karl Marx wrote, these days, is referred as Marxism, and not communism, due to the distortion of his idea as implemented on many places. Actually, most of the concepts attributed to Karl Marx were not his own, but really ideas that were floating around for a long time. You can find the base of many of his theories old Greek and Roman texts.
Then why are you trying to disingenuously equate "cannot be owned" with "community ownership" ? They are two quite different things. Ownership implies control. If there is one that everyone should have learnt by now from the Internet, it's that you can't control information once it has been publically disclosed.
You really should take time to understand how much effort, study, and work it took to come up with many of those ideas you want to be free. Unless you think all research should be publically funded, including the study and education for those who are producing that material.
I understand quite well. That doesn't change my opinion. Copyright - especially as it exists today - is an anachronism. Patents are more defensible in principle, but appear to be just as deeply flawed in practice.
One of the few easily defensible aspects of copyright is attribution - that one person's ideas should not be misrepresented as another's - but even *that* falls into a grey area because of "derivative works", and pretty much anything covered by copyright is a "derivative" of an earlier work from before copyright even existed.
There are plenty of ways to make phenomenal amounts of money, even with a substantial overhaul - if not complete elimination - of "IP". Further, given that a greater rate of technological and cultural development is pretty much guaranteed with a larger dissemination of information, the net benefit to society would almost certainly be positive.