1) America has the largest tax receipts in the world.
Yes, we do - at 30% of income. 30% of the largest economy in the world is still going to be more than 40% (or higher - the average in Scandanavia) of a smaller economy.
2) America spends more on its military than any other country in the world.
Okay, fine - I don't see how this is detremental to free trade. I don't like the military, but remember - Commodore Perry used military force to open up Japan to...what? Free Trade. Sounds like a useful application of military force (from a capitialist standpoint.)
3) American corporations are amongst some of the most monopalistic in the world.
Not true - America has anti-monopoly laws. Yes, here in the Slashdot community all we hear about are Microsoft and the RIAA - but we all agree that these are illegal in the US, and will (hopefully) be overturned. Japan has kiretsu - coalitions of companies that control not 40% or 50% of the market but *one hundred percent* of a given market in Japan. The same with the socialist democracies of Europe - many countries have government-sponsered monopolies. The US has no (with the exception of Amtrak and professional sports teams) government-sponsered monopolies.
4) When forced to compete on a level playing field, US corporations fail dismally. E.g. the auto industry. You will not see ANYONE driving an Amercian car in Europe. Like most Amreicans, we would prefer a quality vehicle from BMW, Mercedez-Benz, Volkswagen, Seat, Skoda, Porshe, or even a Japanese made vehichle rather than the American low quality product.
Actually, it is the other countries who do not compete on a level playing field in your argument. First off, it will almost always be cheaper to buy a car (or other large product) from a local (or near-local) manufacturer. The percentage of people driving American-built cars in Europe is about the same as people driving European-built cars in America. As for Japan - they don't compete on a level playing field at all. They refuse to allow American car imports unless *every single car* is tested at the dock for enviromental standards. This makes them much more expensive than the American method of testing a statistically reasonable sample. There was also a time in Japan where buying an American car rather than a Japanese one got you audited by the tax authorities.
5) Exploitation of resources and inefficiency. America leads the world in the destruction of the natural environment. Like the farme who eats his seed corn, they will surely reap their rewards.
I'll agree with you here - we are horrible to the environment. But so is China, Russia, Japan, Korea, Great Britian (not to the same extent, but London is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and the British Government still sponsers strip mining over some of the most beautiful land in England), most of Africa and South America, and Italy. Only Germany and Canada seem to have their environmental policies even close to right (this is of nations in the G7 - Scandanavian nations and the Swiss have *wonderful* environmental policies.)
Anyway, just my two cents. Sorry for such the long post.
"If you use MY code, you go with MY license!" - Wait a second. Why can we say that and not be hypocritical? I want to use a DVD player. The DVD industry insists that the discs I use be encrypted. I want to watch THEIR movies, shouldn't I agree to THEIR license? What about Napster? I want to listen to THEIR (the artists') music, should I obey THEIR wishes?
Oh wait, everything's okay if it's done in the name of the GPL. Sorry, I don't mean to rant, but we can get pretty hypocritical around here...
Not that I'm discounting this guy's work - it is amazing. But it's not impossible or miraculous. An infinite Life board *is* Turing-complete after all, it's already been proven that it can solve any computationally-solvable problem. And, therefore, it's simply an isomorphism (if you could really apply such a term to a process) of this Turing machine - or, more accurately - a Life board is a superset of all non-working and working Turing machine configurations.
Anyway, just my two cents...
People are upset that Netscape is doing things that make money for it's company. Netscape was started to make money - it has never been an altruistic company that decided to give away its browser for free. It's always been free for non-commericial use - but until Microsoft made IE free, you still had to pay for Netscape for commercial applications.
Well, then they're upset that they're using Mozilla's codebase - Mozilla was started by Netscape. Netscape can do what they damn well please with the code - anyone who volunteered for the project knew what they were getting in to.
In short - Netscape is doing things to make money because, well, that's what companies do. Yes, they have commerical applications (FastTrack web server, etc), but...well, a company is supposed to make money. Nobody bitches about RedHat (well, okay, they *do*, but...) making money off the Linux kernel, but it boils down to the same thing...
Just my two cents...
Noting that "it can be used to link GPL'd and non-GPL'd code", Open Source Guru RMS condemned the GNU project's 'ld' linker today as a "serious violation of the GPL."
Other projects found to be in violation are GCC, the GNU compiler suite; FreeBSD (it uses that evil BSD liscence); and a small dog named Bob.
Actually, not all quantum actions are reversable. The time it takes a neutral kaon to decay is slightly longer in a time-reversed universe than in one in which time goes in the current direction. No one knows why; it's a minor welding flaw in Reality.
C'mon, admit it - if it were Linux.com taking the design of another site, site design would *of course* be in the Public Domain and fall under the provisions of Fair Use. If he simply copied the code whole cloth, it would be a copyright violation - but writing code that *looks similar* - well, if that's illegal, then so is HackersQuest, every Rogue-like game ever made, every RedHat based Linux Distro. Please, guys, keep perspective.
It's right - there is no UNIX anymore. UNIX is now just a "standard" promulgated by the X/Open Consortium. When you buy a Sun workstation, you don't get UNIX for an operating system - you get Solaris. When you buy an IBM workstation, it's not running UNIX, it's running AIX. In the past, the word "Unix" was an operating system - now it's just a name for a list of features that an OS has to implement to be UNIX-compliant. It's like CDE - CDE is software, it a set of features a desktop has to implement to be compliant with the CDE standard; hell, Windows 3.1 was based on CDE.
Slashdot Mirror
Some problems:
1) America has the largest tax receipts in the world.
Yes, we do - at 30% of income. 30% of the largest economy in the world is still going to be more than 40% (or higher - the average in Scandanavia) of a smaller economy.
2) America spends more on its military than any other country in the world.
Okay, fine - I don't see how this is detremental to free trade. I don't like the military, but remember - Commodore Perry used military force to open up Japan to...what? Free Trade. Sounds like a useful application of military force (from a capitialist standpoint.)
3) American corporations are amongst some of the most monopalistic in the world.
Not true - America has anti-monopoly laws. Yes, here in the Slashdot community all we hear about are Microsoft and the RIAA - but we all agree that these are illegal in the US, and will (hopefully) be overturned. Japan has kiretsu - coalitions of companies that control not 40% or 50% of the market but *one hundred percent* of a given market in Japan. The same with the socialist democracies of Europe - many countries have government-sponsered monopolies. The US has no (with the exception of Amtrak and professional sports teams) government-sponsered monopolies.
4) When forced to compete on a level playing field, US corporations fail dismally. E.g. the auto industry. You will not see ANYONE driving an Amercian car in Europe. Like most Amreicans, we would prefer a quality vehicle from BMW, Mercedez-Benz, Volkswagen, Seat, Skoda, Porshe, or even a Japanese made vehichle rather than the American low quality product.
Actually, it is the other countries who do not compete on a level playing field in your argument. First off, it will almost always be cheaper to buy a car (or other large product) from a local (or near-local) manufacturer. The percentage of people driving American-built cars in Europe is about the same as people driving European-built cars in America. As for Japan - they don't compete on a level playing field at all. They refuse to allow American car imports unless *every single car* is tested at the dock for enviromental standards. This makes them much more expensive than the American method of testing a statistically reasonable sample. There was also a time in Japan where buying an American car rather than a Japanese one got you audited by the tax authorities.
5) Exploitation of resources and inefficiency. America leads the world in the destruction of the natural environment. Like the farme who eats his seed corn, they will surely reap their rewards.
I'll agree with you here - we are horrible to the environment. But so is China, Russia, Japan, Korea, Great Britian (not to the same extent, but London is one of the most polluted cities in the world, and the British Government still sponsers strip mining over some of the most beautiful land in England), most of Africa and South America, and Italy. Only Germany and Canada seem to have their environmental policies even close to right (this is of nations in the G7 - Scandanavian nations and the Swiss have *wonderful* environmental policies.)
Anyway, just my two cents. Sorry for such the long post.
"If you use MY code, you go with MY license!" - Wait a second. Why can we say that and not be hypocritical? I want to use a DVD player. The DVD industry insists that the discs I use be encrypted. I want to watch THEIR movies, shouldn't I agree to THEIR license? What about Napster? I want to listen to THEIR (the artists') music, should I obey THEIR wishes?
Oh wait, everything's okay if it's done in the name of the GPL. Sorry, I don't mean to rant, but we can get pretty hypocritical around here...
Not that I'm discounting this guy's work - it is amazing. But it's not impossible or miraculous. An infinite Life board *is* Turing-complete after all, it's already been proven that it can solve any computationally-solvable problem. And, therefore, it's simply an isomorphism (if you could really apply such a term to a process) of this Turing machine - or, more accurately - a Life board is a superset of all non-working and working Turing machine configurations. Anyway, just my two cents...
People are upset that Netscape is doing things that make money for it's company. Netscape was started to make money - it has never been an altruistic company that decided to give away its browser for free. It's always been free for non-commericial use - but until Microsoft made IE free, you still had to pay for Netscape for commercial applications. Well, then they're upset that they're using Mozilla's codebase - Mozilla was started by Netscape. Netscape can do what they damn well please with the code - anyone who volunteered for the project knew what they were getting in to. In short - Netscape is doing things to make money because, well, that's what companies do. Yes, they have commerical applications (FastTrack web server, etc), but...well, a company is supposed to make money. Nobody bitches about RedHat (well, okay, they *do*, but...) making money off the Linux kernel, but it boils down to the same thing... Just my two cents...
Noting that "it can be used to link GPL'd and non-GPL'd code", Open Source Guru RMS condemned the GNU project's 'ld' linker today as a "serious violation of the GPL." Other projects found to be in violation are GCC, the GNU compiler suite; FreeBSD (it uses that evil BSD liscence); and a small dog named Bob.
Actually, not all quantum actions are reversable. The time it takes a neutral kaon to decay is slightly longer in a time-reversed universe than in one in which time goes in the current direction. No one knows why; it's a minor welding flaw in Reality.
C'mon, admit it - if it were Linux.com taking the design of another site, site design would *of course* be in the Public Domain and fall under the provisions of Fair Use. If he simply copied the code whole cloth, it would be a copyright violation - but writing code that *looks similar* - well, if that's illegal, then so is HackersQuest, every Rogue-like game ever made, every RedHat based Linux Distro. Please, guys, keep perspective.
It's right - there is no UNIX anymore. UNIX is now just a "standard" promulgated by the X/Open Consortium. When you buy a Sun workstation, you don't get UNIX for an operating system - you get Solaris. When you buy an IBM workstation, it's not running UNIX, it's running AIX. In the past, the word "Unix" was an operating system - now it's just a name for a list of features that an OS has to implement to be UNIX-compliant. It's like CDE - CDE is software, it a set of features a desktop has to implement to be compliant with the CDE standard; hell, Windows 3.1 was based on CDE.
Just my two cents...