In the 1800's, as the United States landholdings increased dramatically, citizens and immigrants began to move west.
The United States Government offered land lotteries, where interested parties obtained land for free, based on a first come, first serve basis. Fair and agreeable terms were initiated, and the squabbles were quite a bit less than the domain squabbles that exist today.
The same lottery should exist today. I rarely sponsor government interference in ANYTHING, but this seems an applicable reason for government: to protect private property 'squatters' from getting a ride they didn't wait for like everyone else. Domain names should be free and first come, first serve. If I want ford.biz, and ford hasn't asked for it, then I get it. Companies need to get over this "company misrepresentation" crap. And the government should give away the domains for free, not form some 'good ole boy' network like the FCC is.
The truth is, I'd be so proud if I had a son who was more proficient than me.
Rather than wasting time feeling out of place, making irreversible mistakes, and generally being miserable, I'd rather my son find productive achievement in technology. Achievement through sports in high school may make kids the envy of certain adults, those kids usually peak at 18 and never really get more than that. However technical knowledge is a lifelong evolution with more subtle but also more valuable rewards. It seems parents want their children to be successful, but turn a blind eye to the activities that breed success. Productive achievement breeds success.
My friend Pat's little brother, at 15, made $27,000 a year working part time as a web designer. He was damn good. A lot of his family told him "don't you want to enjoy your youth?" I think he would say to them : I am enjoying it. Most people , when they say "don't you want to enjoy your youth?" mean: Don't you want to be irresponsible and reckless? Don't you want to be un-goal oriented, poor, and socially accepted? To that I say, no way. I wasn't like that 6 years ago when I was 15. It's about time we applauded these geeks. They're driving the future.
Copyright laws were introduced to make sure that people did not sell items with copied material in them, originating from someone else. However, if someone publishes a book on how something works, based on their research and their disassembly and their reverse engineering, they should be free to do so. Copyright is the idea protecting ideas from illict reproduction, not from informative deconstruction.
The equivalent is Chilton's Car Maintience guide company being sued because they explain how a GM 305 engine works.
I think my beef is with the concept of a monopoly.
Microsoft aquired it's market position, called a monopoly by some, by acting on ideas and marketing them well and selling a sh*tload of software.
Monopolies not created by force are not monopolies. At any time the monopoly can cease to exist by someone who has a better idea and who can back it with enough money, marketing, etc. Now, if the gov't did what it did with railroads in the 1860 - 1900 and grants a company the exclusive right to operate a business, and blocks others from entry, now that's a monopoly. However, when a company uses its leverage as a good business with solid financing and good investment and marketing strategy, well, that's called "being good at what you do".
Other examples of monopolies like utilities were "granted" the right to operate via government recognition and even government *fostering* their existence. Some people just couldn't fathom that telephone lines were owned by some company, and that company can chose to do what it pleases with it, under the principle of private property.
Microsoft is using it's private property (market share, money, products) to further expand its business. It does not force anyone to do anything, it merely says "this product / idea / source is ours, and we will decide the conditions and limitations of its use". Requiring I.E. on the operating system is the same as Subaru making all their cars All Wheel Drive. You can't remove the all wheel drive, you can't change the option, you can't demand otherwise. Even if Subaru were the only car company on the face of the earth, their principle of design and style are theirs, and they can't be forced or legislated into some box that consumers demand.
I mean you can always get the Linux of cars (the kia).
Microsoft's browser is a sales tool and allows people to use passport / hotmail etc. Some software people will pay for, some software people will get for free. Microsoft knows which is which. They include the web browser because it helps them sell products and services. It's a smart business model. (not only that, but how does one easily download a browser? FTP is out of the range of most novice computer users. Most people who didn't like IE used IE to download Netscape.
This is great. Now we should definetly bust GM for including power windows in it's cars. Commingling electronics with mechanics! how greedy!
The evil of microsoft is not, and never was, the ability to package products. It's done in every industry. If you're going to attack microsoft, at least do it on the grounds that it's insecure. I can vouch for that. I had to remove the SirCam worm seven times this week. My users refused to believe that the e-mails were virulent, because they came as "Fax cover letter to Pat Osbourne.doc.pif" files. *sigh*
But really, all I see antitrust doing is punishing companies based on how much market share they have or how much money they have. both market share and money are measures of success, and therefore we're punishing success.
I work at a small business (under seven full time people) and I do the admin'ing for the six machines there, while also working in the shop.
My boss insisted after getting a letter from the BSA that I make sure "all software was compliant". Needless to say my boss has no idea how these things work, so I ended up being able to let him buy very expensive applications like photoshop.
The fines the BSA threatens are ridiculous, like in the hundreds of thousands. That would be our entire company's monthly income. My boss made sure that I made sure that we had all legit software.
I tried making a movement to open source apps here at work, because everyone kept opening VBscript viruses and such and making a whole lot more work for me that I wanted. However, My boss refused. It took our secretary, my boss, and a few others months just to learn windows, and they can't escape the idea that files on the desktop actually exist in a folder called "desktop" in the windows directory. So, it's free software but everyone knows learning curves aren't cheap.
What is the alternative? Capitalism leaves each individual free to decide when and where he will spend his money (capital). This is an incredible departure from the economies of brute physical force that plauged our world previous to the late 1800's.
The internet will become whatever those people with enough ambition and money want to make it. I laugh heartily at all the slashdot crowd who claims some special right to the internet. Trust me, the reason the internet wasn't successful before commerical enterprise took it over was access. Unless you went to a four year university with a computer science department, no one had internet access before 1990. The reason that anyone with a modem and a phone line can find at least some place to dial up is because businesses saw a need, filled it, and made money. No force.
Now businesses see another need: Providing profitability other than just plain service. Right now, like the phone companies, there's no real way to get money. Sure, hotornot.com might make some money since they started charging, but nothing more than Miss Cleo makes on a telephone psychic hotline. There is a possibility for more than just ad driven profit on the net, (like TV is limited to ) and there's a possibility for it to be much more classy than miss cleo.
Many people are probably going to be mad that the internet is going to change. Well, when commercial traffic was still outlawed for the internet, the few people using it felt it threatened them. Little did they know that the internet would flourish. Tell people who met loved ones through online personals that the net should be free of commerce. Tell people who's businesses have increased sales 50% because of their web page that the internet should be free of commerce (this is true for the company I work at: We have thrown out all our yellow pages). Tell the millions of people who have bothered to make the internet more than just 3l33t IRC chat rooms that they can't have what they want. Your claims to something you didn't make is as ridiculous as a king's claim to a peasant's life, regardless of his choice.
Go back and recompile the kernel you didn't write, on the hardware you didn't design, and continue to reject the economy of capitalism and the freedom that economy stands for, even though it made your social mal-adjustment easier through high school and gave you a linux admin job.
The alternative is force. Either force or persuasion, your choice. Force is the antithesis of life. You and I may agree that security in some software applications, and the OS'es they run on, is horrible. But consensus among two (or two billion) individuals does not give right to those individuals to force a third to believe it. Nor does it give us or anyone the right to dictate how businesses must be run. businesses are methods of survival (since it is not automatic) for many people. To tell those people that instead of making choices they deem right about their company, that they must follow your order, is wrong. It tells people that their survival hinges on your force against them.
Individuals should deal with each other as traders, not as ruffians who use force.
By the way, what is greed? You didn't define it. If greed is seeking better and still better ways to make products, survive, thrive, seek individual happiness, be innovative, etc, then I think it's a pretty damn good concept. The desire for money is a desire for survival, and then an increased level of comfort and enjoyment. Since money can't be forced from people, and has to be taken by trade, it's as moral an existence as you could hope for. Your choice: dollars or guns.
force is no way to deal with ANYONE. any civilized society has to agree that no one may initiate the use of physical force against anyone. If Microsoft wants to release unsafe, crappy software, they should be able to release it under their terms. force is not an option.
Persuade microsoft. Use your wallet. Publish articles. Write better software. do everything, but do not demand, by physical force, that microsoft must produce under your conditions, or anyone elses.
The choice is real simple: Give up our industrialized society in exchange for a 1 degree lowering in temperature, saving penguins.
Of course it's not that simple. The real question is: How many people would die if we *didn't* industrialize in the first place? How many people are alive today because of ambulances rushing them to hospitals (powered by gasoline), how many people are saved by plastic helmets, how many people are saved by sterilization, how many people are saved by our industrialized world? Well, a quick answer would be to look at countries that haven't industrialized. What is the average lifespan there? what is the quality of life?
the real problem is no one is even analyzing this. No one cares. No one sees that the world has become a whole hell of a lot better place to be. No longer is everyone starving, wishing to god the forces of nature would be kind and not wipe out their potatoe crop. No longer is the world a malevolent demon... rather it is now a tame beast in the hands of those who want more than ever to live.
If you argue against me, and you say that man has no right to alter the planet to suit his survival and happiness, then consider what you are. You are a man who has used his brain to reason and decide that mankind has no right to live. You have used your only tool of survival, your mind, to extinguish the idea that the mind should exist. There are killers who are acting on the premise of death, who tell you that life digging for survival is immoral.
" we also do believe that each individual
has the right to detailed knowledge about the full implications of the
employed means and possible limitations imposed by it on software
usage.
"
First, listing the limitations of a windows software program might take a while. Theoretically, they'd have to name everything it can't compute... NP complete problems?
Second, I don't think it's that ridiculous that MS doesn't want to publish how the security code works... it's asking people to hack it. Sure, they didn't build some locktight piece of code here, but they did want to keep people from stealing their software. Publishing how to pick a lock isn't going to keep the door locked long.
How about we give third world countries the gift of capitalism, the system that allowed Dreamcasts to be made in the first place? In Russia it was believed that an agricultural society could be transformed into an industrialized one without an "industrial revolution." It didn't work. You can give a third grader a physics textbook but don't expect him to build a rocket. If third world countries do not embrace capitalism, then it will be pressure group warfare over which tribe gets which playstation.
I honestly wondered why a casino, or any other company, would spend the kind of money on computing resources just to know if we liked pickles or not... I mean, why?
Then it dawned on me... (as I work third shift at a Texaco and cleaned out the out-of-code candy)... companies can save and make lots of money, much more that the cost of implementing these computer systems, by having the most likely brand / item / game for customers that frequent the store most often. By minimizing loss in supermarkets by out of code items, and by offering perks that a large percentage of people would want in a casino, they are achieving cost effectiveness. In fact, a lot of supermarkets offer discounts to people who help them keep their prices low by this method. Doesn't seem so evil to me.
But also, by what right do companies do this information gathering and using? Well, by right of free trade. The honest companies that ask for this up front, and don't sneak it out of your computer by 'registration' of software, are attaching a certain condition to a specific sale. Since the companies hold the item/service, and the user holds the exchange medium, BOTH must choose the conditions of the sale, and agree to it. In fact, a company may choose to only make a sale in which they collect personal data. I know we collect personal data for credit reasons at the other job I work for, but only because we can't afford to have a customer bounce a check or default on payment on a $100,000 machine. As long as the companies are explicit in stating that they are taking the information at the time of the sale, it's perfectly legal and moral.
Do not equate this, however, with the sale of this information from one company to the next. Not all companies do this. And if they do, and don't list it in the terms of the sale agreement, (whether its for a slim jim or an e-beam system), they should be sued. My only suggestion to those afraid otherwise is, be an informed consumer.
I think individuals working at Adobe are the best qualified ones to determine whether Adobe has to recognize it as an OS.
Even stranger is the criterion you set...
Linux has gotten big enough
Granted, the linux community is expanding. But it's a community of people who are using a free Operating System. This is the kind of community that is averse to paying for software, in general. Adobe probably has a whole marketing department. I'm sure that the idea has been floated a million times. It's not that linux isn't big enough, it's that the money isn't there. If adobe could make a profit, they would. But I just don't think that it would be worth the time coding the damn thing up for Adobe to do it. They pay a hundred software engineers for a year and they release software to a community that generally gets software for free. Sounds like a losing situation to me.
In conclusion, it's not a operating system's "bigness" that determines if a piece of software is ported, it's an operating system's userbase and their purchasing style.
The real reason why Au has banned gambling is quite evident: it takes away from profitable state and private run gambling. It means someone has their hands in money and is protecting the resources for someone else. I don't know the names involved. But I do know that's horrendous.
Solution: Some media person, some individual, anyone, should be as forthright as we are on slashdot. For instance, if a politician was asked why he supported this bill, he would say:
"Well, to keep our children safe, to stop the slaughter of innocents, to protect those who wouldn't know better..."
Now, that's a ruse. You know it. I know it. All someone has to say is: "Hey, you're not my babysitter, leave me alone!" Governments are instituted among men not to protect a man from himself, but to protect a man from his neighbors, who may use physical force in relationships. The goverment, then, is the only legal use of physical force, and can only use it in retaliation. There's no reason, nor right, that government should be restricting individuals from engaging in free trade, even if it's stupid in your eyes.
By exposing the motive behind the laws (which is money in someone's pocket, not 'protection for te people') , these politicians couldn't worm their way out of anything.
Yes, the U.S. is built on freedom. Not the freedom to have fiber installed to their house, but freedom from physical compulsion from relationships. That's what we founded our government on. We have a right to a pursuit of happiness, not a guaruntee that we will be able to achieve it.
However, Canada is forcing its wealthy citizens, or ANYONE who is taxed for that matter, to have this service. Even if they don't want it, even if they don't need it. It doesn't matter if this technology saved babies lives and multiplied IQ's by the hundreds, it was derived from the choice of a majority, not an individual. If you don't have individual rights, there are no others. There is no action forbidden to an individual (in this case robbery) but permitted to a mob (the gov't.)
Of course , being a proud canadian, you've never tasted individualism.
I refuse to pay for someone else's porn habit. Internet access, laying cable, and bandwidth all cost money. Whose money would fund universal access? Mine. For what? For poor people to download smut. It's a right, didn't you know? We all have a RIGHT to other people's time, money, bandwidth.
here's slipperly slope application #2. Do you want to know what the internet would look like after gov't funding? PBS. or worse. Government now is pressure group warfare. do you want Jesse Helms or Bill Clinton telling people what they can or cannot see? How does anyone see a free internet with the government's hand?
Listen, I get my net access through AT&T. They don't filter, as far as I know. Even if they did, I have DSL, dial up,... alternatives. Hell, for $375 a month I can get a T1 from Allegiance telecom, which would be 16 static IPs and 8 phone lines... I have a choice. With the government, I'm lucky if I get the Big Dig done 14 years after schedule.
I first read about a gold standard in an article published in the sixties by Alan Greenspan.
The article basically defined how our paper money works, which made me gasp in horror. Paper money is not actually worth ANYTHING... it is a promissary note on FUTURE taxing power of the government... but if the economy tanks, how can the government be able to collect all those taxes, especially when a tanking economy leads people to cash in such measures?
Greenspan, in his article, outlined why gold is good. It is homogenous, divisible, precious and rare, a luxury... things that make it worth something objective. So, if an economy does tank, you have a physical resource that can be traded, not reciepts of checks the goverment may never honor.
I think the gold company listed in this article is a great idea. Why? Because it gives freedom to consumers to choose a money supply. They can go government, or private industry. While the price of gold may fluctuate on the market, it is much more stable than the inflationary value of the dollar.
They won't install the charger in a residence outside AZ or CA.
The vehicle is a lease, which means all maintnence must be done at a dealership, so you have to remain in close proximity to a dealership for its yearly tune -up and trade in after three years.
I applaud innovation, but I believe fuel cells won't be viable. the next step has to be electric vehicles, and their electricity should come from nuclear power plants in the United States. GM already manufactures an ALL electric vehicle.(www.ev1.com) it goes about 150 miles on a single overnight charge. Now most people don't drive more than 150 miles and could charge their cars at night. The only problem is, GM only sells these vehicles in Cali and AZ (which is one reason I'm moving to AZ soon)
Now, for the info that will get me modded down as flamebait: I don't believe drilling for more energy is immoral. I believe that it is highly moral, as oil and every other natural resource is used to save our lives. The ambulance that saves a heart attack victim's life is gasoline powered, the oil heats our homes so we can live more than 200 miles above the equator line, and oil / natural gas helps keep lights on in research facilities that are trying to make new and cheaper energy. do you think by eliminating oil companies and electric companies sources of income, by denying them energy, they will have more money for R & D? do you think that by making energy a plethora of government regulation, of weaving generalities, of moral wrongness, that ANYONE would ever want to be innovative?
a vast entity that is, in fact, above the law and more powerful than the government which enables it.
Ok, this is the last time I'm going to point this out. Government only ENABLES microsoft so far as it keeps bill gates from being beat up by linux junkies. Actually, what I really mean is that the only real job of government is the retalitory use of force, or more clearly, to ban physical force from relationships.
The only way microsoft would become more powerful that a government would be for it to purchase tanks and guns, and start using them. Even then, just because a company purchased weapons, doesn't make it evil and ungovernable, either. Brinks has an army of security guards, some armed with two pistols apiece, driving around in nearly indestructable vehicles. No one's scared of them, but I bet if push came to shove, brinks officers could kick microsoft's programmers asses.
What this rant really is about is the difference between political power and economic power. Katz is missing the difference between the two. The only power the government has is with guns... they can pass laws forcing people to act a certain way. The only power Microsoft has is to offer a value or product... which must be traded for money, which cannot be forced on someone. Sure, maybe microsoft can make it easier to get their os by prepackaging it with every machine avail, but alternatives will always exist because microsoft cannot legally use physical force. the government , however, can. Any questions?
*sigh* Ok, Mars is not capable of supporting any real life. It's the only moral thing to do to turn the planet into a useable space for humans. Humanity is an end in itself, planets have no value other than how valueable they are to us. the most valuable thing is Human Life. We respect earth not because it is a good in itself, we respect it because it's our home, and we need to survive on it. Things in nature just "are", they have no volition and therefore can't be "good" or "evil"... They can only be good in reference to something, i. e. human life. If you're going to call things good or bad, you've got to have a value system. and if you love life, your value system starts with man's life. We can leave mars a barren wasteland, or we can terraform it into a beautiful habitat for us.
"I might buy $1000 worth myself if they did this, just for the hell of it. Would you?"
right after I smoked a big bag of crack, maybe.
This would not be an issue of Mandrake was sold full-price as a product and not distributed for free. Mandrake is a good linux distro, I don't see why they just don't sell it exclusively.
I don't have $1000 to shell out for a stock that won't make returns. But I do have about a hundred dollars that I spend every two years on a new Operating System.
Not only that, but if Mandrake sold well, other companies might write more software for it, and it might get better driver support.
If mandrake was right next to win2k at the store...
Oh god, I'm having capitalism hallucinations where people trade value for value!
Slashdot Mirror
The United States Government offered land lotteries, where interested parties obtained land for free, based on a first come, first serve basis. Fair and agreeable terms were initiated, and the squabbles were quite a bit less than the domain squabbles that exist today.
The same lottery should exist today. I rarely sponsor government interference in ANYTHING, but this seems an applicable reason for government: to protect private property 'squatters' from getting a ride they didn't wait for like everyone else. Domain names should be free and first come, first serve. If I want ford.biz, and ford hasn't asked for it, then I get it. Companies need to get over this "company misrepresentation" crap. And the government should give away the domains for free, not form some 'good ole boy' network like the FCC is.
Rather than wasting time feeling out of place, making irreversible mistakes, and generally being miserable, I'd rather my son find productive achievement in technology. Achievement through sports in high school may make kids the envy of certain adults, those kids usually peak at 18 and never really get more than that. However technical knowledge is a lifelong evolution with more subtle but also more valuable rewards. It seems parents want their children to be successful, but turn a blind eye to the activities that breed success. Productive achievement breeds success.
My friend Pat's little brother, at 15, made $27,000 a year working part time as a web designer. He was damn good. A lot of his family told him "don't you want to enjoy your youth?" I think he would say to them : I am enjoying it. Most people , when they say "don't you want to enjoy your youth?" mean: Don't you want to be irresponsible and reckless? Don't you want to be un-goal oriented, poor, and socially accepted? To that I say, no way. I wasn't like that 6 years ago when I was 15. It's about time we applauded these geeks. They're driving the future.
Copyright laws were introduced to make sure that people did not sell items with copied material in them, originating from someone else. However, if someone publishes a book on how something works, based on their research and their disassembly and their reverse engineering, they should be free to do so. Copyright is the idea protecting ideas from illict reproduction, not from informative deconstruction.
The equivalent is Chilton's Car Maintience guide company being sued because they explain how a GM 305 engine works.
Microsoft aquired it's market position, called a monopoly by some, by acting on ideas and marketing them well and selling a sh*tload of software.
Monopolies not created by force are not monopolies. At any time the monopoly can cease to exist by someone who has a better idea and who can back it with enough money, marketing, etc. Now, if the gov't did what it did with railroads in the 1860 - 1900 and grants a company the exclusive right to operate a business, and blocks others from entry, now that's a monopoly. However, when a company uses its leverage as a good business with solid financing and good investment and marketing strategy, well, that's called "being good at what you do".
Other examples of monopolies like utilities were "granted" the right to operate via government recognition and even government *fostering* their existence. Some people just couldn't fathom that telephone lines were owned by some company, and that company can chose to do what it pleases with it, under the principle of private property.
Microsoft is using it's private property (market share, money, products) to further expand its business. It does not force anyone to do anything, it merely says "this product / idea / source is ours, and we will decide the conditions and limitations of its use". Requiring I.E. on the operating system is the same as Subaru making all their cars All Wheel Drive. You can't remove the all wheel drive, you can't change the option, you can't demand otherwise. Even if Subaru were the only car company on the face of the earth, their principle of design and style are theirs, and they can't be forced or legislated into some box that consumers demand.
I mean you can always get the Linux of cars (the kia).
Microsoft's browser is a sales tool and allows people to use passport / hotmail etc. Some software people will pay for, some software people will get for free. Microsoft knows which is which. They include the web browser because it helps them sell products and services. It's a smart business model. (not only that, but how does one easily download a browser? FTP is out of the range of most novice computer users. Most people who didn't like IE used IE to download Netscape.
The evil of microsoft is not, and never was, the ability to package products. It's done in every industry. If you're going to attack microsoft, at least do it on the grounds that it's insecure. I can vouch for that. I had to remove the SirCam worm seven times this week. My users refused to believe that the e-mails were virulent, because they came as "Fax cover letter to Pat Osbourne.doc.pif" files. *sigh*
But really, all I see antitrust doing is punishing companies based on how much market share they have or how much money they have. both market share and money are measures of success, and therefore we're punishing success.
My boss insisted after getting a letter from the BSA that I make sure "all software was compliant". Needless to say my boss has no idea how these things work, so I ended up being able to let him buy very expensive applications like photoshop.
The fines the BSA threatens are ridiculous, like in the hundreds of thousands. That would be our entire company's monthly income. My boss made sure that I made sure that we had all legit software.
I tried making a movement to open source apps here at work, because everyone kept opening VBscript viruses and such and making a whole lot more work for me that I wanted. However, My boss refused. It took our secretary, my boss, and a few others months just to learn windows, and they can't escape the idea that files on the desktop actually exist in a folder called "desktop" in the windows directory. So, it's free software but everyone knows learning curves aren't cheap.
The internet will become whatever those people with enough ambition and money want to make it. I laugh heartily at all the slashdot crowd who claims some special right to the internet. Trust me, the reason the internet wasn't successful before commerical enterprise took it over was access. Unless you went to a four year university with a computer science department, no one had internet access before 1990. The reason that anyone with a modem and a phone line can find at least some place to dial up is because businesses saw a need, filled it, and made money. No force.
Now businesses see another need: Providing profitability other than just plain service. Right now, like the phone companies, there's no real way to get money. Sure, hotornot.com might make some money since they started charging, but nothing more than Miss Cleo makes on a telephone psychic hotline. There is a possibility for more than just ad driven profit on the net, (like TV is limited to ) and there's a possibility for it to be much more classy than miss cleo.
Many people are probably going to be mad that the internet is going to change. Well, when commercial traffic was still outlawed for the internet, the few people using it felt it threatened them. Little did they know that the internet would flourish. Tell people who met loved ones through online personals that the net should be free of commerce. Tell people who's businesses have increased sales 50% because of their web page that the internet should be free of commerce (this is true for the company I work at: We have thrown out all our yellow pages). Tell the millions of people who have bothered to make the internet more than just 3l33t IRC chat rooms that they can't have what they want. Your claims to something you didn't make is as ridiculous as a king's claim to a peasant's life, regardless of his choice.
Go back and recompile the kernel you didn't write, on the hardware you didn't design, and continue to reject the economy of capitalism and the freedom that economy stands for, even though it made your social mal-adjustment easier through high school and gave you a linux admin job.
The alternative is force. Either force or persuasion, your choice. Force is the antithesis of life. You and I may agree that security in some software applications, and the OS'es they run on, is horrible. But consensus among two (or two billion) individuals does not give right to those individuals to force a third to believe it. Nor does it give us or anyone the right to dictate how businesses must be run. businesses are methods of survival (since it is not automatic) for many people. To tell those people that instead of making choices they deem right about their company, that they must follow your order, is wrong. It tells people that their survival hinges on your force against them.
Individuals should deal with each other as traders, not as ruffians who use force.
By the way, what is greed? You didn't define it. If greed is seeking better and still better ways to make products, survive, thrive, seek individual happiness, be innovative, etc, then I think it's a pretty damn good concept. The desire for money is a desire for survival, and then an increased level of comfort and enjoyment. Since money can't be forced from people, and has to be taken by trade, it's as moral an existence as you could hope for. Your choice: dollars or guns.
force is no way to deal with ANYONE. any civilized society has to agree that no one may initiate the use of physical force against anyone. If Microsoft wants to release unsafe, crappy software, they should be able to release it under their terms. force is not an option.
Persuade microsoft. Use your wallet. Publish articles. Write better software. do everything, but do not demand, by physical force, that microsoft must produce under your conditions, or anyone elses.
first of all, we hunted the dodos out of existence. second of all, do you miss them? would anyone?
Of course it's not that simple. The real question is: How many people would die if we *didn't* industrialize in the first place? How many people are alive today because of ambulances rushing them to hospitals (powered by gasoline), how many people are saved by plastic helmets, how many people are saved by sterilization, how many people are saved by our industrialized world? Well, a quick answer would be to look at countries that haven't industrialized. What is the average lifespan there? what is the quality of life?
the real problem is no one is even analyzing this. No one cares. No one sees that the world has become a whole hell of a lot better place to be. No longer is everyone starving, wishing to god the forces of nature would be kind and not wipe out their potatoe crop. No longer is the world a malevolent demon... rather it is now a tame beast in the hands of those who want more than ever to live.
If you argue against me, and you say that man has no right to alter the planet to suit his survival and happiness, then consider what you are. You are a man who has used his brain to reason and decide that mankind has no right to live. You have used your only tool of survival, your mind, to extinguish the idea that the mind should exist. There are killers who are acting on the premise of death, who tell you that life digging for survival is immoral.
First, listing the limitations of a windows software program might take a while. Theoretically, they'd have to name everything it can't compute... NP complete problems?
Second, I don't think it's that ridiculous that MS doesn't want to publish how the security code works... it's asking people to hack it. Sure, they didn't build some locktight piece of code here, but they did want to keep people from stealing their software. Publishing how to pick a lock isn't going to keep the door locked long.
Just a suggestion.
Then it dawned on me... (as I work third shift at a Texaco and cleaned out the out-of-code candy) ... companies can save and make lots of money, much more that the cost of implementing these computer systems, by having the most likely brand / item / game for customers that frequent the store most often. By minimizing loss in supermarkets by out of code items, and by offering perks that a large percentage of people would want in a casino, they are achieving cost effectiveness. In fact, a lot of supermarkets offer discounts to people who help them keep their prices low by this method. Doesn't seem so evil to me.
But also, by what right do companies do this information gathering and using? Well, by right of free trade. The honest companies that ask for this up front, and don't sneak it out of your computer by 'registration' of software, are attaching a certain condition to a specific sale. Since the companies hold the item /service, and the user holds the exchange medium, BOTH must choose the conditions of the sale, and agree to it. In fact, a company may choose to only make a sale in which they collect personal data. I know we collect personal data for credit reasons at the other job I work for, but only because we can't afford to have a customer bounce a check or default on payment on a $100,000 machine. As long as the companies are explicit in stating that they are taking the information at the time of the sale, it's perfectly legal and moral.
Do not equate this, however, with the sale of this information from one company to the next. Not all companies do this. And if they do, and don't list it in the terms of the sale agreement, (whether its for a slim jim or an e-beam system), they should be sued. My only suggestion to those afraid otherwise is, be an informed consumer.
Even stranger is the criterion you set...
Linux has gotten big enough
Granted, the linux community is expanding. But it's a community of people who are using a free Operating System. This is the kind of community that is averse to paying for software, in general. Adobe probably has a whole marketing department. I'm sure that the idea has been floated a million times. It's not that linux isn't big enough, it's that the money isn't there. If adobe could make a profit, they would. But I just don't think that it would be worth the time coding the damn thing up for Adobe to do it. They pay a hundred software engineers for a year and they release software to a community that generally gets software for free. Sounds like a losing situation to me.
In conclusion, it's not a operating system's "bigness" that determines if a piece of software is ported, it's an operating system's userbase and their purchasing style.
The real reason why Au has banned gambling is quite evident: it takes away from profitable state and private run gambling. It means someone has their hands in money and is protecting the resources for someone else. I don't know the names involved. But I do know that's horrendous.
Solution: Some media person, some individual, anyone, should be as forthright as we are on slashdot. For instance, if a politician was asked why he supported this bill, he would say:
"Well, to keep our children safe, to stop the slaughter of innocents, to protect those who wouldn't know better..."
Now, that's a ruse. You know it. I know it. All someone has to say is: "Hey, you're not my babysitter, leave me alone!" Governments are instituted among men not to protect a man from himself, but to protect a man from his neighbors, who may use physical force in relationships. The goverment, then, is the only legal use of physical force, and can only use it in retaliation. There's no reason, nor right, that government should be restricting individuals from engaging in free trade, even if it's stupid in your eyes.
By exposing the motive behind the laws (which is money in someone's pocket, not 'protection for te people') , these politicians couldn't worm their way out of anything.
However, Canada is forcing its wealthy citizens, or ANYONE who is taxed for that matter, to have this service. Even if they don't want it, even if they don't need it. It doesn't matter if this technology saved babies lives and multiplied IQ's by the hundreds, it was derived from the choice of a majority, not an individual. If you don't have individual rights, there are no others. There is no action forbidden to an individual (in this case robbery) but permitted to a mob (the gov't.)
Of course , being a proud canadian, you've never tasted individualism.
here's slipperly slope application #2. Do you want to know what the internet would look like after gov't funding? PBS. or worse. Government now is pressure group warfare. do you want Jesse Helms or Bill Clinton telling people what they can or cannot see? How does anyone see a free internet with the government's hand?
Listen, I get my net access through AT&T. They don't filter, as far as I know. Even if they did, I have DSL, dial up,... alternatives. Hell, for $375 a month I can get a T1 from Allegiance telecom, which would be 16 static IPs and 8 phone lines... I have a choice. With the government, I'm lucky if I get the Big Dig done 14 years after schedule.
*sigh*
The article basically defined how our paper money works, which made me gasp in horror. Paper money is not actually worth ANYTHING... it is a promissary note on FUTURE taxing power of the government... but if the economy tanks, how can the government be able to collect all those taxes, especially when a tanking economy leads people to cash in such measures?
Greenspan, in his article, outlined why gold is good. It is homogenous, divisible, precious and rare, a luxury... things that make it worth something objective. So, if an economy does tank, you have a physical resource that can be traded, not reciepts of checks the goverment may never honor.
I think the gold company listed in this article is a great idea. Why? Because it gives freedom to consumers to choose a money supply. They can go government, or private industry. While the price of gold may fluctuate on the market, it is much more stable than the inflationary value of the dollar.
The vehicle is a lease, which means all maintnence must be done at a dealership, so you have to remain in close proximity to a dealership for its yearly tune -up and trade in after three years.
and I like Az, it's a nice state.
Now, for the info that will get me modded down as flamebait: I don't believe drilling for more energy is immoral. I believe that it is highly moral, as oil and every other natural resource is used to save our lives. The ambulance that saves a heart attack victim's life is gasoline powered, the oil heats our homes so we can live more than 200 miles above the equator line, and oil / natural gas helps keep lights on in research facilities that are trying to make new and cheaper energy. do you think by eliminating oil companies and electric companies sources of income, by denying them energy, they will have more money for R & D? do you think that by making energy a plethora of government regulation, of weaving generalities, of moral wrongness, that ANYONE would ever want to be innovative?
Ok, this is the last time I'm going to point this out. Government only ENABLES microsoft so far as it keeps bill gates from being beat up by linux junkies. Actually, what I really mean is that the only real job of government is the retalitory use of force, or more clearly, to ban physical force from relationships.
The only way microsoft would become more powerful that a government would be for it to purchase tanks and guns, and start using them. Even then, just because a company purchased weapons, doesn't make it evil and ungovernable, either. Brinks has an army of security guards, some armed with two pistols apiece, driving around in nearly indestructable vehicles. No one's scared of them, but I bet if push came to shove, brinks officers could kick microsoft's programmers asses.
What this rant really is about is the difference between political power and economic power. Katz is missing the difference between the two. The only power the government has is with guns... they can pass laws forcing people to act a certain way. The only power Microsoft has is to offer a value or product... which must be traded for money, which cannot be forced on someone. Sure, maybe microsoft can make it easier to get their os by prepackaging it with every machine avail, but alternatives will always exist because microsoft cannot legally use physical force. the government , however, can. Any questions?
*sigh* Ok, Mars is not capable of supporting any real life. It's the only moral thing to do to turn the planet into a useable space for humans. Humanity is an end in itself, planets have no value other than how valueable they are to us. the most valuable thing is Human Life. We respect earth not because it is a good in itself, we respect it because it's our home, and we need to survive on it. Things in nature just "are", they have no volition and therefore can't be "good" or "evil"... They can only be good in reference to something, i. e. human life. If you're going to call things good or bad, you've got to have a value system. and if you love life, your value system starts with man's life. We can leave mars a barren wasteland, or we can terraform it into a beautiful habitat for us.
Ed
right after I smoked a big bag of crack, maybe.
This would not be an issue of Mandrake was sold full-price as a product and not distributed for free. Mandrake is a good linux distro, I don't see why they just don't sell it exclusively.
I don't have $1000 to shell out for a stock that won't make returns. But I do have about a hundred dollars that I spend every two years on a new Operating System.
Not only that, but if Mandrake sold well, other companies might write more software for it, and it might get better driver support.
If mandrake was right next to win2k at the store...
Oh god, I'm having capitalism hallucinations where people trade value for value!