It's because a funny moderation doesn't grant you karma but insightful does. Some moderator must have felt kind enough to through you a bone because he or she felt it was funny and true.
There, fixed that for you. Recall that during the Great Purges, Stalin adhered to his harshest treatment toward religion.
Face it, the only thing that can motivate people to mass-murder is an irrational, unjustified belief in some sort of bullshit worldview.
Careful, now. It isn't much of a stretch to suggest that the belief religion is a cancer also requires that it be purged from society. The road to murderous intent goes both ways.
That, and I'd have a hard time believing you'd classify all religions as motivating people toward mass-murder. Even Buddhism?
National Socialism was based on "uncritical loyalty" to the Fuhrer, and embraced such outlandish beliefs as that the Aryans were not descended from apes, but were aliens from outer space sent to rule the Earth...
Nazis were many things, but I think this is stepping into conspiratorial ground.
I sincerely hope you're simply trolling and don't believe a lick of this.
So you're saying by posting anonymous cowardly then I'm advocating abortion?
I almost feel as sorry as when I heard that god kills kittens when I masturbate... those poor kitties.... millions of poor dead kitties...:(
Millions? Damn.
Well, it could be millions under two circumstances:
First, let's assume the poster is 35 years old. If he started--his business--at the ripe age of 13, he would have had an opportunity to tend to his business for about 8000 days. Assuming that by "millions," he implies a value of around 2,000,000 releases of his fluids, he could quite easily hit that target by masturbating around 250 times per day. (Of course, his arm would probably be as big around as a tree trunk by this point, which could serve to impair his function--and I'm certainly not going to discuss the sort of dreadful things that may befall one's member after that much of a workout.)
Conversely, he could be anywhere from 500,000 years old and up, depending on if his average were a more sensible four or fewer times per day.
Now, on a more disturbing note, if this individual did in fact manage to hit the 2 million mark, he would have generated something on the order of about 5,200 gallons of semen which is equivalent to approximately 124 barrels of oil or enough juice to fill up a 15 foot round swimming pool.
And you thought you were going to sleep soundly at night knowing you weren't killing kittens.
In addition, they have thin skins, criticising the CPI(M) is A Bad Thing. "Don't you have any respect? How dare you say something about such a respected party" No, fuck you. Lumpen crap.
That really makes them more Stalinist in nature than Marxist.
I don't disagree with your points at all. I do think that what your described as "charity" isn't so much an issue of giving away for free for the sake of it or for anything else other than making additional profits.
Without the strong investment from those with deep pockets, can Open Source software progress at the rate needed to remain viable in the enterprise? What happens when the product lines funding those projects start losing money?
It's important to bear in mind why "those with deep pockets" often support open source in the first place. In each of the examples you've provided, those companies who employ important figures within the community or who partially or completely fund the development of such products, those companies have something to gain by ensuring further progress of those applications continues.
First, let's take a brief look at Sun. Sure, they may be a bit nuts to provide a fully featured office suite for free, but this boils down to what is effectively free advertising and mind share. They've a number of products and services they offer which also rely on OOo, but ultimately, they wish to be seen as an enterprise-friendly entity that can provide (be it paying for development of, or just simply backing) software necessary to operate in a non-MS environment. I've often wondered why they would open source so many of their core competencies, but when you consider how that variety of charity affects both developers and their employers, it certainly doesn't go unnoticed. If the boss walks in and says "Wait, we don't have to pay for this?" and you answer "Only if you want support, but we can install it on as many systems as we like across our entire company without licensing fees," they start to realize 1) support is cheap, even if you have to pay an annual fee and 2) free isn't all that bad.
The Google/Mozilla relationship is a rather obvious point. Google's revenues could be said to come from browsers, so any browser that prohibits lock-in with a single company (with the exception of Google, of course), particularly Microsoft, is going to help them. Google is also the epitome of a company that has managed to build up an empire using FOSS; therefore, it makes sense for them to reciprocate.
IBM is something of a tough nut to crack in this regard, but being as they've moved to support a huge variety of open source projects for their own benefit, they're something akin to Sun and Google so I won't bother to rehash those points.
So, the question of whether open source could survive without the "charity" of companies like this is really only asking half the question. Or, to put it another way, can open source survive without these companies and could these companies survive without open source? While it certainly wouldn't be any stretch to imagine many of these organizations heading back to their proprietary natures, it is also important to realize that the impact open source has had on them is that of reduced time expenditures and investments in order to build their revenues. To this extent, I think that open source has pushed ahead the "software as a service" model rather than "software as a product."
Remember, it wasn't all that long ago when universities could buy a license to some flavor of Unix to run on their main frame and have access to the OS sources so they could change it as necessary for their environment. Microsoft popularized shrink-wrap product licenses, and that's why the concept of giving out anything for free within the MS world is entirely alien (just try finding packages for.NET development that happen to be open source; it's tough!).
But, to answer the last point:
What happens when the product lines funding those projects start losing money?
They get cut, bought out, or picked up by someone else. Imagine Python no longer making money for Google (hard to imagine, yes, but bear with me), what then would happen to it? It's h
We need to go back to more of a "Darwinian" education system where intellect is rewarded and encouraged even leading to separation from the other children so they do not hold back the smarter ones from excelling. There is no reason why you could not split children in to different "groups" with similar learning potentials except for the "hurt feelings". There just needs to be a way to spin it so no ones feelings are hurt I guess.
I have to agree. In fact, wasn't that the intent of the special education/gifted programs at most schools? (I'm not even sure if they still have the "gifted" programs, since that no doubt makes the less gifted students feel "dumber.")
It's really unfortunate that the system we have now puts greater emphasis on feeling and less on quality.
So we are up to $0.04 now I guess.
LOL! I wonder what the exchange rate is for USD to ideas in this economic clime...?
I believe that was the intent of uncqual's post, to which I was replying. There are several fields in which we have a deficit, and if our educational system is unable to push through new graduates in those fields, where else are we going to get them?
I do agree that workers (be it reasonably well-educated or otherwise) would be a problem for our own citizens if we were to flood fields with too many of them. That's why work visas exist, and I would expect that any such solution would make use of those. I suppose you could extend my point regarding blue collar workers to the average white collar job; I just happened to find the analog to blue collar immigrants to be far more useful and effective at communicating the point since they're often in the news, nearly everyone is familiar with extensive immigration on that front, and it happens to be something that influences where I live (I live relatively close to the border).
With respect to bullying, I could certainly see that being the case. However, such behavior has forever been present. It doesn't make it right, but it's always been there.
The stupid educators in my country come up with a new way to do math every generation and call it the "new math". My parents couldn't help me with my homework, how stupid can an "educator" be? Then they did it again with my kids, damn them. At least I could help them with science, history, etc.
You wouldn't happen to be here in the US, would you? I've heard some rather interesting horror stories (entirely second-hand, so it could be a HUGE stretch of the truth--but, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction). One such story involves a local school where they elected to adopt a new method of teaching math borrowed from the Boston board of education. In this method, there are no right or wrong answers. If a student happens to write 2 + 2 = 5, so long as he or she can argue why they came to that answer, they get it marked correct.
Now, assuming this is true, I don't see what benefit this is going to do our society in the long run. I sure as HELL don't want to ever fly on an aircraft designed by an engineer who grew up thinking that 2 + 2 can be anything so long as the argument sounds good!
You get these letters to the editor from teachers bemoaning the lack of parental involvement, but they won't allow you to be involved. The only parental involvement they REALLY want is fund raising
Oh Lord, it's funny you'd mention that... I've actually seen those letters! Besides fund raising, I think the other sort of involvement they'd approve would be little more than parents submitting to the teacher as a mindless drone, happily nodding and smiling no matter what asinine "educational" idea the teacher concocts. I know a few parents (I have no children, so again, it's all second-hand information) who have become so absolutely frustrated with their children's teachers--and there's not a damn thing they can do.
It's interesting. Thanks to the manner our educational system is set up, educators, administrators, and politicians seem to feel that it's above criticism. Unfortunately, it's what happens when we give political creatures power over something so important to our nation's future. After all, the politicians just simply know better than we do how our offspring should be educated--even if they can't do simple math!
From my personal experience, the false "self esteem" crap (as I recall it was referred to as something like "damaging the student's psyche" back "in the day") has been around in "progressive" areas for many more years than some may realize. Sigh...
Boy, the verbiage hasn't changed much over the years. Replace "psyche" with "self-esteem," and the argument is virtually identical!
It's interesting to me that it's been around for so long. While I was even able to see changes during my time in high school (brief aside on this in a moment), it's even more fascinating that things REALLY changed drastically in the last five years or less--and it's started at an earlier age.
Even while I was in elementary and middle school, I remember that students were often honored individually for outstanding achievements. This carried up through my time in junior high and my first year or two of high school. It wasn't until my sophomore year toward the very end of last century when things started to change--and by my senior year, things were outrageously different. Political correctness hit with a vengeance, and it got to the point where you were almost afraid to speak your mind. That was also when academic competition seemed to mysteriously dry up. Now, I may be imposing a bit on my memory since things tend to seem clearer in retrospect, but even during that time things simply felt different. I couldn't explain why, but became painfully obvious years down the road what was starting to happen. I don't think my own realization of what was happening to the school struck me until just recently when I was talking with a family friend I hadn't seen in a long while and he struck up a conversation about his adopted daughter who is in the school system right now. The drastic nature of these changes is... frightening at best.
I fear our (USA's) only hope at this point is to allow unlimited legal immigration to anyone with a higher degree from an "accredited" [...] educational institution in a "strategic" field
I think you're absolutely spot-on. We're not going to solve our own educational dilemma for at least another generation or more. So, borrowing from other nations' graduates may very well be the key to our survival. (We have--or had--the economic power to do so, and once our own financial sector woes are over, I think during our recovery, we're going to have no other choice BUT to snatch up educated individuals from around the world. We're certainly not going to fill those quotes from our own pool!)
It's rude, but we can either compete with incompetent "high self esteem" individuals or attract qualified individuals from elsewhere (our gain, their loss)
It's a little embarrassing, but I actually laughed out load at this. It's funny precisely because these "high self-esteem" individuals, thanks in no small part to the system that fostered this "esteem," have such delicate egos that they're bound to suffer down the road.
Unfortunately, the USA is at an important cusp -- if we continue to practice protectionist immigration policies, within twenty or thirty years we will cease to be a place smart educated people want to immigrate to and since we have poisoned our multigenerational American base with "self esteem" and "competition is bad" crap, I fear we are facing the demise of America as the world power.
This is so very true. As it stands, our Congress critters are more interested in catering to immigration of the illegal sort. While I'm all for supporting people who would like to make a better life for themselves and their families, I think we're going to have to make a decision: Do we want to take on millions of people who will--at best--be blue collar workers for the rest of their lives or at worst be a burden to our social services. OR do we want to encourage highly trained, highly skilled professionals with the intent of helpi
I don't think the kids care as much as the parents do.
That's sort of moot point to argue. Kids will never fully understand the world as well as an adult because they lack the life experiences. Having said that, I do think awards (or lack of) affect child behavior, and I think it's very difficult to argue against that. Consider punishment for wrongdoing (negative reinforcement) and praise for tasks or activities that have been done very well (positive reinforcement). Ultimately, that's what it boils down to: Praise the kids for doing well in school, and you'll very likely see a benefit down the road when they go off to college.
Kids have become too much of a status symbol and parents are hell bent on making sure their kid has everything he/she wants and appears to smart and happy so they can flaunt their excellent parenting skills that don't actually exist.
I think this is part of it, and perhaps you could extend my argument to include the self-esteem of parents (and why broad rewards have become so prevalent in today's schools). However, I still stake my claims on the notion that encouraging students to excel helps the student regardless of parental involvement. (Obviously, parental encouragement is important, and I think the lack of encouragement from students' parents has also impacted us, but that still boils down to the notion of positive reinforcement.)
Certainly, while the parents can be blamed to an extent, I look back on stories told to me by my father. He excelled in math but had little encouragement--in fact, probably none! In those days, it seems as those kids did well in spite of their parents--parents who were often struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table. I'd imagine this anecdote would apply to the generation that got us to the moon using slide rules: They probably had little encouragement!
Of course, schools were tougher back then; children were punished for such pitiful things as being left-handed. But, I think that the sink-or-swim aspect of education versus our "push everyone through regardless of performance" may have had its benefits for societal improvement. Am I wrong? Maybe, but I think there's something important to academic competition which we're sorely lacking now.
Do you mean how the exceptional are treated with regards to how they would ideally be singled out (as it used to be) or how they're swept under the rug (currently)?
Forgive me, but your statement seems rather vague.
Competitiveness for the sake of competitiveness has been deemphasized in most public schools except, perhaps, in athletic programs.
I think we ought to start taking bets on how long it'll be before they remove athletic competitions. Hmm. *considers this*
(I do kid--mostly. Sports tends to bring press, community attention, and money to the school and school clubs so it probably wouldn't be economically beneficial for them to remove competition. Then again, I didn't think it'd be economically beneficial for them to strip away education just for the sake of self-esteem... *sigh*)
try convincing your teacher that "the dog ate my stone tablet"
That made me chuckle. REALLY chuckle.
we got crisp numeric scores in math/science classes and in some cases the scores of each test were posted for all to see.
I remember those days. It's been a while since I was in the public schools, and I remember that they used to post final grades (or marks up until that point--just a few weeks before the end) outside of each teacher's classroom with the last four digits of your social. Worse, since they were ordered alphabetically save for the names having been stripped, it was relatively easy to guess which four numbers belonged to what student. My, how barbaric it sounds from a privacy perspective in contrast with today's world!
I worked much harder to try to earn a 100% instead of 95% on science tests than I worked to get the first 95% -- partially because of the competitive nature of the environment.
That's the sentiment I have in mind, too. The nature of schools the way they were almost bred students to do better. Not so much because they wanted to, but because they didn't want to feel ousted by their peers. Friendly competition isn't evil, and that's where I think we've gone horribly wrong!
I've never regretted learning more than just that which I needed to (however, as you may note, I musta slept through the English class about run on sentences and the beauty of brevity).
I'll admit that during my high school years, I wasn't exactly the best student. Then again, it could have been the time frame. I was there during the very, very late 90s when many of these self-esteem policies started taking place; thus, I suppose I could blame the fact that I didn't do well on the lack of a desire (and scholastic laziness). Oddly, though, when I hit university, it dawned on me that it was actually nice to be treated like an adult! (I've always referred to modern high schools as a glorified daycare center since the days I suffered through it--go figure.)
Although, I admit I started to take a strong liking to English rather than math. I hated it in school. University-level English was an entirely different beast, and I absolutely fell in love with it.
Back to the topic: It's both nostalgic and sad to look back at the way our educational system was. I'm sure it could be argued that looking back to the past is generally done through rose-colored glasses; it's easy to forget the harsher memories. But, I honestly do believe that things were better back then. Hell, we did manage to land men on the moon during the slide rule era. Now, we have trouble slinging robotic probes at planets thanks to conversion factors gone a muck.
They give out 'student of the month' awards instead of honor roll type things. You get 'student of the month' because a teacher picks you for needing a self-esteem boost.
Gah, I didn't realize it was quite that bad. When I was a kid, being on the honor roll was something to be proud of. I guess they've decided personal pride is a sin, haven't they?
They also give out citizenship awards for helping other kids and being nice to other kids. My kid got several at first and was all excited so he tried to look for extra opportunities to nice things for other kids so he could win more.
That's exactly why a reward/award system works so well, and it's also a basic tenant of sociology: Positive reinforcement. If a child is doing something that helps others, excels, or otherwise performs exceptional feats, he or she needs to be rewarded for it!
But then they stopped giving him awards because they decided that he was winning too many and other kids needed a chance to win.
...and then there's this side of the coin. Rather than depriving your son of awards (since he has obviously learned at a very young age the benefits of being a good samaritan--beside just rewards), they should encourage him! This is what saddens me so much about the direction our educational system has taken: If a child does so well as to be a potential role model for others--be it for behavior or actions/activities--it should encourage others to "compete" with him for the reward at the end. All in all, that sort of competition is friendly competition and serves nothing more than to help our society as a whole. Unfortunately... the powers that be think it grossly unfair if only one student is outperforming others. i.e. it's somehow a bad thing that he's nicer or more helpful than other students, because it doesn't give them a "chance" to compete.:(
This is true, and I would like to add my $0.02 regarding the school system.
Part of the problem with our educational system is that we don't reward outstanding performance as we once did. I am told by a parent of a young child in a local school that they have an award ceremony where they now have the cut-off for rewards around an average of 70 and up. During the ceremony, at least 3/4ths of the class receives awards.
Anymore, there is simply no need to perform exceptionally well when most of the class is going to wind up with the same recognition. School officials are reluctant to recognize the students who perform better than--for example--98% of the rest of the class because doing so would be considered unfair to the others. Such "de-stratification" doesn't exist at the college level (yet) and as a result, many new high school graduates are dumbfounded to discover that they are no longer pushed through the system with the relative ease they've grown to expect.
The same thing has happened in mathematics. When a student merely needs to perform just well enough to make the grade, there's no motive to excel. We've stripped rewards and recognition for those who perform truly outstanding work in comparison to their peers simply on the basis of fearing for the self-esteem of the former. In short, we reap what we sow.
So, there you have it. Our society has fallen so far behind because we cherish mediocrity over bringing harm to the self-esteem of others. Yet, for professional sports, competition among athletes is encouraged; competition among students is increasingly discouraged. Is it any wonder why few children see a need to rise above their peers and become someone exceptional?
Did you happen to catch this from the article linked in the Slashdot submission (at the time I read it, which was a bit after 4PM MDT)?
Earlier Wednesday, Undersheriff Frank Bernard said searchers needed to hurry because the area where Morrow uncovered the items was expected to receive its first snowfall of the season this weekend. Mammoth Lakes is about 10,000 feet, or 30,400 meters, above sea level, and snow makes already difficult terrain largely impassable and could bury plane wreckage.
Seems to me TFA has a conversion factor a bit wrong. With as long as it's been up, I would have expected it to be corrected by now.
Unless I didn't get the memo that the meter has been redeclared such that there are 3.04 meters in a foot.
(Yeah, I know, they added an extra zero on the end by accident, but it sounds more amusing to consider something that absurd.)
Re:From one consumer's perspective...
on
Bad Signs For Blu-ray
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· Score: 3, Insightful
And another consumer's perspective:
I don't watch TV. I don't care about HD or SD. No, really, I don't. It's not important to me. When I watch movies, it's usually in a window on my computer while I'm doing something else. DVD works fine for me. When I feel the need to unwind, I'd rather play a game, read a book, or write.
(Yes, that's intentionally on the opposite end of your spectrum; but that is on purpose. Not all consumers care about television or format wars enough to warrant purchasing new technology as it comes out. That said, I think most consumers fall in line with the GP to whom you posted.)
No, capitalism itself is broken because laze faire economics doesn't work. Monopolies form and competition goes out the window. It seems that only with some government regulation can competition actually occur. Here in the U.S., every instance of deregulation has shown to be ineffective and to result in a lack of competition and worse prices for consumers. Here, monopolies wait around like sharks until something is deregulated and thrown overboard. You're right though that in the case of patents, the government is helping monopolies and providing less competition for them.
I think the system is largely more complicated than that. As an AC stated earlier, the US really is more of a "corporationist" society. I do think free market systems are superior in nature to socialism, however, simply because the latter has few incentives for producers to excel, out-produce, and develop higher quality products (no real competition).
I do agree that deregulation has been a significant problem. I live in a rural part of the US, and deregulation of the telcos resulted in incredibly poor service until true "home-grown" companies were offered State incentives to pick up the slack. This is certainly an instance where government intervention does help, but I still believe governmental influence should be limited and at the very least should be directed toward aiding the consumer. You're definitely correct about sanctioned monopolization--which is all deregulation often is. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. More often, it doesn't, because industries that have been regulated typically require such heavy upfront investments or cover such a large geographical area, that without national infrastructure, anyone who could possibly compete just simply wouldn't have the resources.
I think patents do have a place, however. For most tangible assets, patents can help protect companies or individual who invest the resource into a product. Limitations on the duration of patents should be stricter, the patent system should be restructured such that failure to product a product within two to three years of filing results in the patent becoming null and void, and patents covering software should be eliminated or limited (and their duration no more than a year or two).
I don't think your post is at all off topic. It's very good material, and spot-on with the theme of this discussion. It is unfortunate that the entities who control our content are inept (or perhaps simply greedy) and refuse to acknowledge that freeing up IP like codecs can only help their cause.
If I had no investment into this discussion and mod points, believe me: I'd mod you up.
You're still not helping much, and the fact I'm rather tired at the moment isn't helping at all. You were replying to my comment regarding competition within the context of capitalism and tying that with software patents (which I feel are largely frivolous). How does that tie in with portable cassette players? For the sake of my sanity and especially that of other readers, could you be a little less cryptic?
You give the average border patrol officer too much credit. He doesn't know what an encrypted partition is. If he did then he wouldn't be working a checkpoint in the middle of the desert. As long as you don't mention it he won't know or think to ask. If you are genuinely worried then you can always use TrueCrypt [truecrypt.org] to create a virtual disk (name the file whatever you like and put it anywhere in the filesystem) or even a hidden OS if you are really paranoid. You have to take on the hacker mentality, know how things work (including law enforcement rules and procedures, not just your comptuer), and use your intelligence to outwit your adversaries.
This is probably true and definitely part of the reason why I do use TrueCrypt as you've mentioned. I'm not nearly paranoid enough to use a hidden OS, but encrypting a separate partition for documents and anything else I wouldn't want lifted from casual theft is enough for me. Most of the border patrol agents here appear to be former military or fairly fresh recruits, so while it's plausible they might not have much of an idea what encryption is, I can't say I'd be willing to take the risk in the event they decide to start snagging devices at the checkpoint, hence the crux of the article. If they do grab my stuff (and if they do, it's unlikely they'd even take a look at the device; if you recall an earlier article some weeks back, it was suggested that they send devices to outsourced entities for further examination), I would like some accountability in case they damage it. Data loss isn't as much of an issue as I'd only lose a document or two that I may have forgotten to commit to my repository, but I recall that they could essentially keep devices as long as they felt they needed to. Legislation that limits the duration they can keep my property can only ever be a good thing.
But patents on Software (formulas you know) are not right. Some sort of reward for a developer might be appropriate but it has to be tied to the industry.
And in software that means maybe only for 3 or 5 years max.
Exactly, and well said. It's unfortunate that those of us who speak out against software patents are labeled amongst the tin-foil hat socialist crowd that is somehow against inventors, the free market, or demand government intervention (which is what patents are). As you suggested, software for specific purposes is very limited in duration (presumably because it becomes outdated within that time frame). I think patents are a very important protection for tangible inventions, but they're a horrible thing when it comes to software--or formulae, as you stated. As an aside, I love that simplification you offer, because it brings everything to the crux of the matter which is that software patents are oftentimes very narrow in scope and involve either an algorithm or a user interface that is so blatantly obvious, prior art has likely preceded any patent by years!
I am not sure that this is a problem with the patent system or capitalism. The patent system is largely protecting the inventor. I don't think any of the right holders of these codecs are poor, although the inventors might well be. Likewise the market is doing what it always does; provide products. This is why, for the most part, market economies do not have empty shelves, or people waiting in line for hours for product that does not exist. This is the working part of the market system.
You raise very good points, but I think it's important that I indicate I'm not at all against capitalism. In fact, I was defending it since the OP seemed to believe that the simple stranglehold patentholders have on codecs is made by way of capitalism.
Truth be told, I do think patents have their place. They were more or less established to help small inventors and prevent their inventions from being stolen by others with more resources who could effectively screw them over out of their own creativity. Unfortunately, our patent system better applies to tangible goods and less so to intangible software and thus "intellectual property." For example, if authors had been permitted to patent their story ideas, I think it's entirely plausible that every single one would be infringing on another's work. With the manner our patent system protects software, it's almost impossible for software developers to design a system without somehow infringing on one of many hundreds of stealth patents that exist in the line of work that developer might be implementing his software within no matter how narrow or broad. Your example of Gucci bags is a pretty good one in this line; but remember, those bags are physical entities--tangible goods that have limited analogs in the digital world.
What I find interesting is that the patent system isn't really the result of capitalism but of government impositions upon capitalism. Without such a system, those who have greater resources would be able to steal from lesser entities without regard or remorse. However, that very system can be exploited by the entities it was intended to prevent from such activities! In the age of free software, innovation is being limited not by capitalism or by the free market, but by the very limitations on the system that were intended to prevent wealthier entities from capitalizing over someone else's hard work. In my mind, it's a rather ironic twist of fate and is by no way a failure of capitalism but by the system that was put into place to prevent dishonesty from hurting small inventors.
So, in this case, there is no simple legal and free way to get a driver for linux, so the market created one, in terms of gray market drivers. The market has also created a 100% above board driver.
We're not talking about device drivers. We're talking about codecs that are used to take data or a data stream purchased by the consumer so that the consumer can use what they purchased with their hard-earned cash. This is not an issue of government regulation, socialism, capitalism, or any other -ism. The problem software patents impose in terms of playing DVDs legally on GNU/Linux systems is that they prevent the consumer from using the products they purchased without the express blessing of the entity that owns rights to the content. A codec in this case is simply little more than an idea used to encode data and therein lies the problem. I fail to see how prohibiting the free software world from playing content purchased legally by the consumer is in any way hurting the free market or why this notion is somehow considered "socialist."
Slashdot Mirror
It's because a funny moderation doesn't grant you karma but insightful does. Some moderator must have felt kind enough to through you a bone because he or she felt it was funny and true.
There, fixed that for you. Recall that during the Great Purges, Stalin adhered to his harshest treatment toward religion.
Careful, now. It isn't much of a stretch to suggest that the belief religion is a cancer also requires that it be purged from society. The road to murderous intent goes both ways.
That, and I'd have a hard time believing you'd classify all religions as motivating people toward mass-murder. Even Buddhism?
Nazis were many things, but I think this is stepping into conspiratorial ground.
I sincerely hope you're simply trolling and don't believe a lick of this.
Well, it could be millions under two circumstances:
First, let's assume the poster is 35 years old. If he started--his business--at the ripe age of 13, he would have had an opportunity to tend to his business for about 8000 days. Assuming that by "millions," he implies a value of around 2,000,000 releases of his fluids, he could quite easily hit that target by masturbating around 250 times per day. (Of course, his arm would probably be as big around as a tree trunk by this point, which could serve to impair his function--and I'm certainly not going to discuss the sort of dreadful things that may befall one's member after that much of a workout.)
Conversely, he could be anywhere from 500,000 years old and up, depending on if his average were a more sensible four or fewer times per day.
Now, on a more disturbing note, if this individual did in fact manage to hit the 2 million mark, he would have generated something on the order of about 5,200 gallons of semen which is equivalent to approximately 124 barrels of oil or enough juice to fill up a 15 foot round swimming pool.
And you thought you were going to sleep soundly at night knowing you weren't killing kittens.
That really makes them more Stalinist in nature than Marxist.
I don't disagree with your points at all. I do think that what your described as "charity" isn't so much an issue of giving away for free for the sake of it or for anything else other than making additional profits.
It's important to bear in mind why "those with deep pockets" often support open source in the first place. In each of the examples you've provided, those companies who employ important figures within the community or who partially or completely fund the development of such products, those companies have something to gain by ensuring further progress of those applications continues.
First, let's take a brief look at Sun. Sure, they may be a bit nuts to provide a fully featured office suite for free, but this boils down to what is effectively free advertising and mind share. They've a number of products and services they offer which also rely on OOo, but ultimately, they wish to be seen as an enterprise-friendly entity that can provide (be it paying for development of, or just simply backing) software necessary to operate in a non-MS environment. I've often wondered why they would open source so many of their core competencies, but when you consider how that variety of charity affects both developers and their employers, it certainly doesn't go unnoticed. If the boss walks in and says "Wait, we don't have to pay for this?" and you answer "Only if you want support, but we can install it on as many systems as we like across our entire company without licensing fees," they start to realize 1) support is cheap, even if you have to pay an annual fee and 2) free isn't all that bad.
The Google/Mozilla relationship is a rather obvious point. Google's revenues could be said to come from browsers, so any browser that prohibits lock-in with a single company (with the exception of Google, of course), particularly Microsoft, is going to help them. Google is also the epitome of a company that has managed to build up an empire using FOSS; therefore, it makes sense for them to reciprocate.
IBM is something of a tough nut to crack in this regard, but being as they've moved to support a huge variety of open source projects for their own benefit, they're something akin to Sun and Google so I won't bother to rehash those points.
So, the question of whether open source could survive without the "charity" of companies like this is really only asking half the question. Or, to put it another way, can open source survive without these companies and could these companies survive without open source? While it certainly wouldn't be any stretch to imagine many of these organizations heading back to their proprietary natures, it is also important to realize that the impact open source has had on them is that of reduced time expenditures and investments in order to build their revenues. To this extent, I think that open source has pushed ahead the "software as a service" model rather than "software as a product."
Remember, it wasn't all that long ago when universities could buy a license to some flavor of Unix to run on their main frame and have access to the OS sources so they could change it as necessary for their environment. Microsoft popularized shrink-wrap product licenses, and that's why the concept of giving out anything for free within the MS world is entirely alien (just try finding packages for .NET development that happen to be open source; it's tough!).
But, to answer the last point:
They get cut, bought out, or picked up by someone else. Imagine Python no longer making money for Google (hard to imagine, yes, but bear with me), what then would happen to it? It's h
I have to agree. In fact, wasn't that the intent of the special education/gifted programs at most schools? (I'm not even sure if they still have the "gifted" programs, since that no doubt makes the less gifted students feel "dumber.")
It's really unfortunate that the system we have now puts greater emphasis on feeling and less on quality.
LOL! I wonder what the exchange rate is for USD to ideas in this economic clime...?
Thank you for the correction.
Hopefully the gist of what I was attempting to convey isn't terribly marred by that mistake. ;)
I believe that was the intent of uncqual's post, to which I was replying. There are several fields in which we have a deficit, and if our educational system is unable to push through new graduates in those fields, where else are we going to get them?
I do agree that workers (be it reasonably well-educated or otherwise) would be a problem for our own citizens if we were to flood fields with too many of them. That's why work visas exist, and I would expect that any such solution would make use of those. I suppose you could extend my point regarding blue collar workers to the average white collar job; I just happened to find the analog to blue collar immigrants to be far more useful and effective at communicating the point since they're often in the news, nearly everyone is familiar with extensive immigration on that front, and it happens to be something that influences where I live (I live relatively close to the border).
With respect to bullying, I could certainly see that being the case. However, such behavior has forever been present. It doesn't make it right, but it's always been there.
I imagine you have a better example, however.
You wouldn't happen to be here in the US, would you? I've heard some rather interesting horror stories (entirely second-hand, so it could be a HUGE stretch of the truth--but, truth is sometimes stranger than fiction). One such story involves a local school where they elected to adopt a new method of teaching math borrowed from the Boston board of education. In this method, there are no right or wrong answers. If a student happens to write 2 + 2 = 5, so long as he or she can argue why they came to that answer, they get it marked correct.
Now, assuming this is true, I don't see what benefit this is going to do our society in the long run. I sure as HELL don't want to ever fly on an aircraft designed by an engineer who grew up thinking that 2 + 2 can be anything so long as the argument sounds good!
Oh Lord, it's funny you'd mention that... I've actually seen those letters! Besides fund raising, I think the other sort of involvement they'd approve would be little more than parents submitting to the teacher as a mindless drone, happily nodding and smiling no matter what asinine "educational" idea the teacher concocts. I know a few parents (I have no children, so again, it's all second-hand information) who have become so absolutely frustrated with their children's teachers--and there's not a damn thing they can do.
It's interesting. Thanks to the manner our educational system is set up, educators, administrators, and politicians seem to feel that it's above criticism. Unfortunately, it's what happens when we give political creatures power over something so important to our nation's future. After all, the politicians just simply know better than we do how our offspring should be educated--even if they can't do simple math!
Boy, the verbiage hasn't changed much over the years. Replace "psyche" with "self-esteem," and the argument is virtually identical!
It's interesting to me that it's been around for so long. While I was even able to see changes during my time in high school (brief aside on this in a moment), it's even more fascinating that things REALLY changed drastically in the last five years or less--and it's started at an earlier age.
Even while I was in elementary and middle school, I remember that students were often honored individually for outstanding achievements. This carried up through my time in junior high and my first year or two of high school. It wasn't until my sophomore year toward the very end of last century when things started to change--and by my senior year, things were outrageously different. Political correctness hit with a vengeance, and it got to the point where you were almost afraid to speak your mind. That was also when academic competition seemed to mysteriously dry up. Now, I may be imposing a bit on my memory since things tend to seem clearer in retrospect, but even during that time things simply felt different. I couldn't explain why, but became painfully obvious years down the road what was starting to happen. I don't think my own realization of what was happening to the school struck me until just recently when I was talking with a family friend I hadn't seen in a long while and he struck up a conversation about his adopted daughter who is in the school system right now. The drastic nature of these changes is... frightening at best.
I think you're absolutely spot-on. We're not going to solve our own educational dilemma for at least another generation or more. So, borrowing from other nations' graduates may very well be the key to our survival. (We have--or had--the economic power to do so, and once our own financial sector woes are over, I think during our recovery, we're going to have no other choice BUT to snatch up educated individuals from around the world. We're certainly not going to fill those quotes from our own pool!)
It's a little embarrassing, but I actually laughed out load at this. It's funny precisely because these "high self-esteem" individuals, thanks in no small part to the system that fostered this "esteem," have such delicate egos that they're bound to suffer down the road.
This is so very true. As it stands, our Congress critters are more interested in catering to immigration of the illegal sort. While I'm all for supporting people who would like to make a better life for themselves and their families, I think we're going to have to make a decision: Do we want to take on millions of people who will--at best--be blue collar workers for the rest of their lives or at worst be a burden to our social services. OR do we want to encourage highly trained, highly skilled professionals with the intent of helpi
That's sort of moot point to argue. Kids will never fully understand the world as well as an adult because they lack the life experiences. Having said that, I do think awards (or lack of) affect child behavior, and I think it's very difficult to argue against that. Consider punishment for wrongdoing (negative reinforcement) and praise for tasks or activities that have been done very well (positive reinforcement). Ultimately, that's what it boils down to: Praise the kids for doing well in school, and you'll very likely see a benefit down the road when they go off to college.
I think this is part of it, and perhaps you could extend my argument to include the self-esteem of parents (and why broad rewards have become so prevalent in today's schools). However, I still stake my claims on the notion that encouraging students to excel helps the student regardless of parental involvement. (Obviously, parental encouragement is important, and I think the lack of encouragement from students' parents has also impacted us, but that still boils down to the notion of positive reinforcement.)
Certainly, while the parents can be blamed to an extent, I look back on stories told to me by my father. He excelled in math but had little encouragement--in fact, probably none! In those days, it seems as those kids did well in spite of their parents--parents who were often struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table. I'd imagine this anecdote would apply to the generation that got us to the moon using slide rules: They probably had little encouragement!
Of course, schools were tougher back then; children were punished for such pitiful things as being left-handed. But, I think that the sink-or-swim aspect of education versus our "push everyone through regardless of performance" may have had its benefits for societal improvement. Am I wrong? Maybe, but I think there's something important to academic competition which we're sorely lacking now.
Do you mean how the exceptional are treated with regards to how they would ideally be singled out (as it used to be) or how they're swept under the rug (currently)?
Forgive me, but your statement seems rather vague.
I think we ought to start taking bets on how long it'll be before they remove athletic competitions. Hmm. *considers this*
(I do kid--mostly. Sports tends to bring press, community attention, and money to the school and school clubs so it probably wouldn't be economically beneficial for them to remove competition. Then again, I didn't think it'd be economically beneficial for them to strip away education just for the sake of self-esteem... *sigh*)
That made me chuckle. REALLY chuckle.
I remember those days. It's been a while since I was in the public schools, and I remember that they used to post final grades (or marks up until that point--just a few weeks before the end) outside of each teacher's classroom with the last four digits of your social. Worse, since they were ordered alphabetically save for the names having been stripped, it was relatively easy to guess which four numbers belonged to what student. My, how barbaric it sounds from a privacy perspective in contrast with today's world!
That's the sentiment I have in mind, too. The nature of schools the way they were almost bred students to do better. Not so much because they wanted to, but because they didn't want to feel ousted by their peers. Friendly competition isn't evil, and that's where I think we've gone horribly wrong!
I'll admit that during my high school years, I wasn't exactly the best student. Then again, it could have been the time frame. I was there during the very, very late 90s when many of these self-esteem policies started taking place; thus, I suppose I could blame the fact that I didn't do well on the lack of a desire (and scholastic laziness). Oddly, though, when I hit university, it dawned on me that it was actually nice to be treated like an adult! (I've always referred to modern high schools as a glorified daycare center since the days I suffered through it--go figure.)
Although, I admit I started to take a strong liking to English rather than math. I hated it in school. University-level English was an entirely different beast, and I absolutely fell in love with it.
Back to the topic: It's both nostalgic and sad to look back at the way our educational system was. I'm sure it could be argued that looking back to the past is generally done through rose-colored glasses; it's easy to forget the harsher memories. But, I honestly do believe that things were better back then. Hell, we did manage to land men on the moon during the slide rule era. Now, we have trouble slinging robotic probes at planets thanks to conversion factors gone a muck.
Gah, I didn't realize it was quite that bad. When I was a kid, being on the honor roll was something to be proud of. I guess they've decided personal pride is a sin, haven't they?
That's exactly why a reward/award system works so well, and it's also a basic tenant of sociology: Positive reinforcement. If a child is doing something that helps others, excels, or otherwise performs exceptional feats, he or she needs to be rewarded for it!
How ridiculously absurd!
This is true, and I would like to add my $0.02 regarding the school system.
Part of the problem with our educational system is that we don't reward outstanding performance as we once did. I am told by a parent of a young child in a local school that they have an award ceremony where they now have the cut-off for rewards around an average of 70 and up. During the ceremony, at least 3/4ths of the class receives awards.
Anymore, there is simply no need to perform exceptionally well when most of the class is going to wind up with the same recognition. School officials are reluctant to recognize the students who perform better than--for example--98% of the rest of the class because doing so would be considered unfair to the others. Such "de-stratification" doesn't exist at the college level (yet) and as a result, many new high school graduates are dumbfounded to discover that they are no longer pushed through the system with the relative ease they've grown to expect.
The same thing has happened in mathematics. When a student merely needs to perform just well enough to make the grade, there's no motive to excel. We've stripped rewards and recognition for those who perform truly outstanding work in comparison to their peers simply on the basis of fearing for the self-esteem of the former. In short, we reap what we sow.
So, there you have it. Our society has fallen so far behind because we cherish mediocrity over bringing harm to the self-esteem of others. Yet, for professional sports, competition among athletes is encouraged; competition among students is increasingly discouraged. Is it any wonder why few children see a need to rise above their peers and become someone exceptional?
It would make Everest green with envy (tree line not withstanding).
LOL! With the way they've been teaching math for the last, oh, 15+ years... consider yourself lucky!
Did you happen to catch this from the article linked in the Slashdot submission (at the time I read it, which was a bit after 4PM MDT)?
Seems to me TFA has a conversion factor a bit wrong. With as long as it's been up, I would have expected it to be corrected by now.
Unless I didn't get the memo that the meter has been redeclared such that there are 3.04 meters in a foot.
(Yeah, I know, they added an extra zero on the end by accident, but it sounds more amusing to consider something that absurd.)
And another consumer's perspective:
I don't watch TV.
I don't care about HD or SD. No, really, I don't. It's not important to me.
When I watch movies, it's usually in a window on my computer while I'm doing something else.
DVD works fine for me.
When I feel the need to unwind, I'd rather play a game, read a book, or write.
(Yes, that's intentionally on the opposite end of your spectrum; but that is on purpose. Not all consumers care about television or format wars enough to warrant purchasing new technology as it comes out. That said, I think most consumers fall in line with the GP to whom you posted.)
I think the system is largely more complicated than that. As an AC stated earlier, the US really is more of a "corporationist" society. I do think free market systems are superior in nature to socialism, however, simply because the latter has few incentives for producers to excel, out-produce, and develop higher quality products (no real competition).
I do agree that deregulation has been a significant problem. I live in a rural part of the US, and deregulation of the telcos resulted in incredibly poor service until true "home-grown" companies were offered State incentives to pick up the slack. This is certainly an instance where government intervention does help, but I still believe governmental influence should be limited and at the very least should be directed toward aiding the consumer. You're definitely correct about sanctioned monopolization--which is all deregulation often is. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. More often, it doesn't, because industries that have been regulated typically require such heavy upfront investments or cover such a large geographical area, that without national infrastructure, anyone who could possibly compete just simply wouldn't have the resources.
I think patents do have a place, however. For most tangible assets, patents can help protect companies or individual who invest the resource into a product. Limitations on the duration of patents should be stricter, the patent system should be restructured such that failure to product a product within two to three years of filing results in the patent becoming null and void, and patents covering software should be eliminated or limited (and their duration no more than a year or two).
I don't think your post is at all off topic. It's very good material, and spot-on with the theme of this discussion. It is unfortunate that the entities who control our content are inept (or perhaps simply greedy) and refuse to acknowledge that freeing up IP like codecs can only help their cause.
If I had no investment into this discussion and mod points, believe me: I'd mod you up.
You're still not helping much, and the fact I'm rather tired at the moment isn't helping at all. You were replying to my comment regarding competition within the context of capitalism and tying that with software patents (which I feel are largely frivolous). How does that tie in with portable cassette players? For the sake of my sanity and especially that of other readers, could you be a little less cryptic?
This is probably true and definitely part of the reason why I do use TrueCrypt as you've mentioned. I'm not nearly paranoid enough to use a hidden OS, but encrypting a separate partition for documents and anything else I wouldn't want lifted from casual theft is enough for me. Most of the border patrol agents here appear to be former military or fairly fresh recruits, so while it's plausible they might not have much of an idea what encryption is, I can't say I'd be willing to take the risk in the event they decide to start snagging devices at the checkpoint, hence the crux of the article. If they do grab my stuff (and if they do, it's unlikely they'd even take a look at the device; if you recall an earlier article some weeks back, it was suggested that they send devices to outsourced entities for further examination), I would like some accountability in case they damage it. Data loss isn't as much of an issue as I'd only lose a document or two that I may have forgotten to commit to my repository, but I recall that they could essentially keep devices as long as they felt they needed to. Legislation that limits the duration they can keep my property can only ever be a good thing.
Exactly, and well said. It's unfortunate that those of us who speak out against software patents are labeled amongst the tin-foil hat socialist crowd that is somehow against inventors, the free market, or demand government intervention (which is what patents are). As you suggested, software for specific purposes is very limited in duration (presumably because it becomes outdated within that time frame). I think patents are a very important protection for tangible inventions, but they're a horrible thing when it comes to software--or formulae, as you stated. As an aside, I love that simplification you offer, because it brings everything to the crux of the matter which is that software patents are oftentimes very narrow in scope and involve either an algorithm or a user interface that is so blatantly obvious, prior art has likely preceded any patent by years!
You raise very good points, but I think it's important that I indicate I'm not at all against capitalism. In fact, I was defending it since the OP seemed to believe that the simple stranglehold patentholders have on codecs is made by way of capitalism.
Truth be told, I do think patents have their place. They were more or less established to help small inventors and prevent their inventions from being stolen by others with more resources who could effectively screw them over out of their own creativity. Unfortunately, our patent system better applies to tangible goods and less so to intangible software and thus "intellectual property." For example, if authors had been permitted to patent their story ideas, I think it's entirely plausible that every single one would be infringing on another's work. With the manner our patent system protects software, it's almost impossible for software developers to design a system without somehow infringing on one of many hundreds of stealth patents that exist in the line of work that developer might be implementing his software within no matter how narrow or broad. Your example of Gucci bags is a pretty good one in this line; but remember, those bags are physical entities--tangible goods that have limited analogs in the digital world.
What I find interesting is that the patent system isn't really the result of capitalism but of government impositions upon capitalism. Without such a system, those who have greater resources would be able to steal from lesser entities without regard or remorse. However, that very system can be exploited by the entities it was intended to prevent from such activities! In the age of free software, innovation is being limited not by capitalism or by the free market, but by the very limitations on the system that were intended to prevent wealthier entities from capitalizing over someone else's hard work. In my mind, it's a rather ironic twist of fate and is by no way a failure of capitalism but by the system that was put into place to prevent dishonesty from hurting small inventors.
We're not talking about device drivers. We're talking about codecs that are used to take data or a data stream purchased by the consumer so that the consumer can use what they purchased with their hard-earned cash. This is not an issue of government regulation, socialism, capitalism, or any other -ism. The problem software patents impose in terms of playing DVDs legally on GNU/Linux systems is that they prevent the consumer from using the products they purchased without the express blessing of the entity that owns rights to the content. A codec in this case is simply little more than an idea used to encode data and therein lies the problem. I fail to see how prohibiting the free software world from playing content purchased legally by the consumer is in any way hurting the free market or why this notion is somehow considered "socialist."