Of course, all of your rationale implies that we do everything for a purpose, which I cannot agree with. Haven't you ever done something gratuitously?
Yes, I have. I have done things to make myself feel better about myself, to convince myself that I am a worthwhile human being. That feeling is the benefit I am gaining from the opportunity cost (and other costs) of my activity. Once again, everything has a cost and benefit:)
I will agree with you about economics being a very murky realm, but I have yet to see a good refutation of its main premises.
There is nothing more humerous than watching computer geeks discuss economics (I suppose watching economists code would probably be up on the list, but most economists are smart enough to know how foolish they would look:) If you think that RMS, Linus, and Larry Wall have not earned tangible economic benefit from thier work you are seriously deluded. RMS has received various grants and sycophantic followers to provide for him, Linus got a US visa and job at Transmeta, and Larry got a book contract or two. These are just a few of the benefits which were won by those individuals who were willing to pay the "opportunity costs" (that is an important word there for econ study into such fuzzy realms, please remember it) of writing code and giving it away rather than selling it.
Free software does have a price, and it is measured in standard units (dollars, euros, whatever) but you have to understand how the big picture works in order to see it in action. Even if someone does an activity for nothing more than personal satisfaction that is an economic activity; they have chosen to forgo doing something else (time is the only currency that really matters) and instead did something which gave them self-satisfaction and pleasure (comfort/pleasure and power being the major goals of most economic activity.)
In fact, there are whole sub-fields of economics dedicated to the analysis and explanation of mundane human activity in economic terms. All of these "intangibles" you describe can be explained as rational choices made for some form or another of personal gain. Sorry, but none of us are saints and, as always, TANSTAAFL.
HandKey has been building the Twiddler for a years, this particular site has been referenced in comments by just about every article on wearables to appear on/. Just where is the "news" here?
Your statement that the RoundupReady (tm) crops are leading to an increased application of this herbicide (and therefore increasing the risk to groundwater supplies, etc.) is completely wrong. In fact, the major advantage of the RoundupReady line of crops is that it allows the farmer to apply the herbicide very early in the crop cycle and directly to the area where the seedling is growing. This leads to less herbicide being applied and less need to till the soil between crop rows so that less wind erosion is an added benefit. The entire selling point of this particular germline is that it allows the farmer to use less herbicide. This is a big cost savings to the farmer. Your statement about the supposed danger of the terminator technology which causes GM seeds to produce plants whose seed are sterile would be quite laughable if it were not the case that these luddite fears are in danger of threatening research and development of other useful GM technology. Here is the most simple and direct refutation of this claim that plants with terminator genes will cause the rest of the food supply to disappear: it is a non-stable system in evolutionary terms; it is not self-sustaining because the terminator line is by definition one which cannot perpetuate itself. The termiator genes could not "infect" the original plant stock because when it comes down to measuring the fitness of the germline in that age-old dance of reproduction the terminator pollen automatically loses. The only way that it can spread into the general genetic mix is if mutation turns off the terminator part of the genetic modification.
And how exactly do you think you will key your encryption? How will you do I/O to this perfect little black box? Why is is that keyboard sniffers still work? Do you use a tempest shielded system? Are you doing all of your work in a room which you have checked for video cameras? The reality of how crypto is used is pretty much a joke at the user level.
Strong crypto on modern operating systems is like putting a 10cm iron door onto a paper mache house (and for Linux/FreeBSD/etc the house is one of tinfoil; a little better but still not good enough.) BTW, you are the one who should go back and read AC...there is only one unbreakable system which is called a one-time pad and you have to use as many bits as you have message bits, so it is kind of impractical.
Think of how this works as a big quantum one-time pad cryptosystem. You can actually transmit the message at FTL speeds, but you cannot decrypt the message until you get a copy of the key pad. The key pad is restricted to travelling no faster than the speed of light. The end result is that the data does move FTL but you can't decode it until the key arrives. [No this is not quite how it works, but is a good enough explanation on why this little trick will never provide the FTL communication system everyone thinks it should be able to provide.]
Hmmmm... if it is sterile (so that farmers cannot reuse the seeds produced) then it can't hybridize other crops. If it is not sterile then Monsanto loses, boo hoo. Don't worry about this somehow causing all crops to develop such a genetic variation, because such a variant is by its very nature one which is unable to sustain itself without the assiastance of farmers. Think about it, a "feature" which crosses over to a plant and causes it to _fail to reproduce_ is an evolutionary dead-end.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I have. I have done things to make myself feel better about myself, to convince myself that I am a worthwhile human being. That feeling is the benefit I am gaining from the opportunity cost (and other costs) of my activity. Once again, everything has a cost and benefit
I will agree with you about economics being a very murky realm, but I have yet to see a good refutation of its main premises.
There is nothing more humerous than watching computer geeks discuss economics (I suppose watching economists code would probably be up on the list, but most economists are smart enough to know how foolish they would look :) If you think that RMS, Linus, and Larry Wall have not earned tangible economic benefit from thier work you are seriously deluded. RMS has received various grants and sycophantic followers to provide for him, Linus got a US visa and job at Transmeta, and Larry got a book contract or two. These are just a few of the benefits which were won by those individuals who were willing to pay the "opportunity costs" (that is an important word there for econ study into such fuzzy realms, please remember it) of writing code and giving it away rather than selling it.
Free software does have a price, and it is measured in standard units (dollars, euros, whatever) but you have to understand how the big picture works in order to see it in action. Even if someone does an activity for nothing more than personal satisfaction that is an economic activity; they have chosen to forgo doing something else (time is the only currency that really matters) and instead did something which gave them self-satisfaction and pleasure (comfort/pleasure and power being the major goals of most economic activity.)
In fact, there are whole sub-fields of economics dedicated to the analysis and explanation of mundane human activity in economic terms. All of these "intangibles" you describe can be explained as rational choices made for some form or another of personal gain. Sorry, but none of us are saints and, as always, TANSTAAFL.
HandKey has been building the Twiddler for a years, this particular site has been referenced in comments by just about every article on wearables to appear on /. Just where is the "news" here?
Your statement that the RoundupReady (tm) crops are leading to an increased application of this herbicide (and therefore increasing the risk to groundwater supplies, etc.) is completely wrong. In fact, the major advantage of the RoundupReady line of crops is that it allows the farmer to apply the herbicide very early in the crop cycle and directly to the area where the seedling is growing. This leads to less herbicide being applied and less need to till the soil between crop rows so that less wind erosion is an added benefit. The entire selling point of this particular germline is that it allows the farmer to use less herbicide. This is a big cost savings to the farmer. Your statement about the supposed danger of the terminator technology which causes GM seeds to produce plants whose seed are sterile would be quite laughable if it were not the case that these luddite fears are in danger of threatening research and development of other useful GM technology. Here is the most simple and direct refutation of this claim that plants with terminator genes will cause the rest of the food supply to disappear: it is a non-stable system in evolutionary terms; it is not self-sustaining because the terminator line is by definition one which cannot perpetuate itself. The termiator genes could not "infect" the original plant stock because when it comes down to measuring the fitness of the germline in that age-old dance of reproduction the terminator pollen automatically loses. The only way that it can spread into the general genetic mix is if mutation turns off the terminator part of the genetic modification.
And how will we find you?
And how exactly do you think you will key your encryption? How will you do I/O to this perfect little black box? Why is is that keyboard sniffers still work? Do you use a tempest shielded system? Are you doing all of your work in a room which you have checked for video cameras? The reality of how crypto is used is pretty much a joke at the user level.
Strong crypto on modern operating systems is like putting a 10cm iron door onto a paper mache house (and for Linux/FreeBSD/etc the house is one of tinfoil; a little better but still not good enough.) BTW, you are the one who should go back and read AC...there is only one unbreakable system which is called a one-time pad and you have to use as many bits as you have message bits, so it is kind of impractical.
jim
Think of how this works as a big quantum one-time pad cryptosystem. You can actually transmit the message at FTL speeds, but you cannot decrypt the message until you get a copy of the key pad. The key pad is restricted to travelling no faster than the speed of light. The end result is that the data does move FTL but you can't decode it until the key arrives. [No this is not quite how it works, but is a good enough explanation on why this little trick will never provide the FTL communication system everyone thinks it should be able to provide.]
The sad thing is most of the people who populate slashdot are too new to the net (i.e. "ARPAnet? whazzat...more OSS dude") to understand the pun :(
Hmmmm... if it is sterile (so that farmers cannot reuse the seeds produced) then it can't hybridize other crops. If it is not sterile then Monsanto loses, boo hoo. Don't worry about this somehow causing all crops to develop such a genetic variation, because such a variant is by its very nature one which is unable to sustain itself without the assiastance of farmers. Think about it, a "feature" which crosses over to a plant and causes it to _fail to reproduce_ is an evolutionary dead-end.