Yeh but you could still give certain users rights to update the package db, the security of trying to do stuff like ldconfig or modifying/etc would still be handled as any attempt to install stuff that requires root privileges would crap out with a security message. I'm not sure what I'm missing as to the difference between doing it that way and how Windows does it.
But the cost of living doesn't go down much. Rents haven't fallen, house prices haven't fallen, utility prices haven't fallen. They've all gone up and by a lot more than inflation. So what if DVD players are dirt cheap, if I barely have enough to cover my rent I won't buy one. This is the point you're missing, and one which you can't answer. Making customers poorer is going to have serious long-term consequences. This isn't like the buggy whip makers whose industry was supplanted by one that created many more jobs than it removed. This is the wholesale removal of jobs without anything to replace them.
It's about balance and also realising that the more industries you do it to the poorer your consumers get and ergo they buy less, reducing profits. You seem to have this crazy idea that corporations couldn't make a profit or consumers afford to buy them until jobs were shipped abroad to be done by people who will never ever be able to afford the goods they produce. Here's a clue. 20 cents an hour is garbage no matter what country you live in, I'm not dim enough to think that lower wages in a far poorer country means that they're badly paid in general. The thing is they are badly paid and badly treated. I'm not focusing on just one industry I'm focusing on all of them. The economic model you think is so wonderful is gradually cannibalising the very thing that made our economies successful. Debt is currently making up for the shortfall but how long before that immense bubble collapses as fewer and fewer people can afford to get into debt. As for your camera remark, erm my old man who has never been particularly rich has owned various cameras for thirty to forty years. They've been a commodity item a hell of a lot longer than the current outsourcing craze. Next you'll be trying to tell me that no-one poor owned a TV until 1991.
I'm British and swig beer and walk with an arrogant swagger (although not at the same time or I spill it). Would you like me to generalise about Americans? You slurp supersize cokes and walk with a waddle perhaps?
The buggy whip manufacturers were put out of business by an industry that created many more good jobs than it destroyed. That has nothing in common with sweatshop jobs replacing previously well-paid jobs. Lower prices are only good if wages go up or stay the same. If they go down then there is no long-term benefit as consumers are less able to afford the goods produced. That is bad for the economic well-being of the world and it's quite worrying that it's being ignored for short-term stock price gains.
People from different parts of the UK have different attitudes it's true but someone from London and someone from Manchester would have a great deal more in common than someone from Finland and someone from Spain. I presume the same applies to the United States.
People did pretty well out of Keynesian economics in the previous century. The new economic model of making customers poorer rather than richer by sending their jobs overseas seems a bit self-defeating in the long-term. But then fashion rather than exact science seems to be the way of the economist, just like the (now discredited) downsizing craze in the 90s.
Spain and Finland are completely different countries with different languages and cultures. The United States is one country with one language and culture and to an extent it's not surprising that you would be judged in that way. I'm used to foreigners thinking that London is the whole British experience when in fact it's an overcrowded shit hole full of rude people and the rest of the country is a lot nicer.
Japanese media is full of sex, violence and swearing and it isn't kept away from children, yet the violence rate there is far lower than the US or the UK where I live which suggests to me that there's something else wrong with our culture than media excess. I personally wouldn't want my nephews playing realistically violent video games but on the other hand I doubt it would affect them unless they have psychological problems already.
Absolutely right where there is choice. Where there is collusion or even worse only one provider what will the magic hand of the market do? Nothing for several years until technology can advance to prevent this sort of crap. The government however can take immediate steps. Your nightclub analogy is flawed, there are a lot of nightclubs.
with all of the politics, backstabbing and ineffective bureaucracy that goes along with them.
I'm guessing you've never worked in a large bank then as that describes the ones I've worked in very well and as for the previous statement, there are plenty of providers who should never do business with major banks again, but due to the above statement (and probably kickbacks as well) still do very well out of them. Just because a large organisation isn't governmental doesn't mean it can't be just as bad or worse. Having a profit motive doesn't mean that the above problems magically disappear.
DRM is really good for Microsoft if the only 'trusted' OS is Windows. You think the world's largest software company would do anything but say fuck off to the entertainment cartels if there wasn't anything in it for them?
flashblock is brilliant, it puts a play button on each piece of flash and only runs them if you click it so perfect for avoiding so many annoying ads while still being able to use sites that require it.
What rubbish. Socialism promotes nothing of the kind. It was a socialist/communist nation that put the first man into space. Hardly a mediocre achievement. Bureaucracy and inefficiency are not a uniquely socialist phenomenon as anyone who's worked for a large corporation can easily see.
Okay I'll put it a little better. Consumers don't know any better, they don't know that computers shouldn't crash, host spyware, get virus-infected etc. And before you give me the MS shill spiel I've just had XP SP2 blue screen on me. My heinous crime? Plugging in a USB MP3 player. No non-MS drivers involved. Sorry Mr Shill but there is no excuse whatsoever for that having happened and in a properly competitive market, you know the sort that Microsoft has stamped out at every turn, there would be financial penalties for such incompetence in terms of consumers telling them where to stick it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeh but you could still give certain users rights to update the package db, the security of trying to do stuff like ldconfig or modifying /etc would still be handled as any attempt to install stuff that requires root privileges would crap out with a security message. I'm not sure what I'm missing as to the difference between doing it that way and how Windows does it.
What would be the obstacle to doing that on Linux with permissions or ACLs on the required files?
I love this quote
Users of the Windows operating systems reported sluggish machines and computers that quit or rebooted for no reason.
How could they tell the difference?
No, no programming is a simple job that can be done by anyone, just ask any outsourcing corporation.
But the cost of living doesn't go down much. Rents haven't fallen, house prices haven't fallen, utility prices haven't fallen. They've all gone up and by a lot more than inflation. So what if DVD players are dirt cheap, if I barely have enough to cover my rent I won't buy one. This is the point you're missing, and one which you can't answer. Making customers poorer is going to have serious long-term consequences. This isn't like the buggy whip makers whose industry was supplanted by one that created many more jobs than it removed. This is the wholesale removal of jobs without anything to replace them.
Please point me to an economic textbook that can tell me that making consumers poorer is a good thing for an economy.
It's about balance and also realising that the more industries you do it to the poorer your consumers get and ergo they buy less, reducing profits. You seem to have this crazy idea that corporations couldn't make a profit or consumers afford to buy them until jobs were shipped abroad to be done by people who will never ever be able to afford the goods they produce. Here's a clue. 20 cents an hour is garbage no matter what country you live in, I'm not dim enough to think that lower wages in a far poorer country means that they're badly paid in general. The thing is they are badly paid and badly treated. I'm not focusing on just one industry I'm focusing on all of them. The economic model you think is so wonderful is gradually cannibalising the very thing that made our economies successful. Debt is currently making up for the shortfall but how long before that immense bubble collapses as fewer and fewer people can afford to get into debt.
As for your camera remark, erm my old man who has never been particularly rich has owned various cameras for thirty to forty years. They've been a commodity item a hell of a lot longer than the current outsourcing craze. Next you'll be trying to tell me that no-one poor owned a TV until 1991.
I'm British and swig beer and walk with an arrogant swagger (although not at the same time or I spill it). Would you like me to generalise about Americans? You slurp supersize cokes and walk with a waddle perhaps?
I hear they've just started chair-fu lessons there too.
The buggy whip manufacturers were put out of business by an industry that created many more good jobs than it destroyed. That has nothing in common with sweatshop jobs replacing previously well-paid jobs. Lower prices are only good if wages go up or stay the same. If they go down then there is no long-term benefit as consumers are less able to afford the goods produced. That is bad for the economic well-being of the world and it's quite worrying that it's being ignored for short-term stock price gains.
People from different parts of the UK have different attitudes it's true but someone from London and someone from Manchester would have a great deal more in common than someone from Finland and someone from Spain. I presume the same applies to the United States.
People did pretty well out of Keynesian economics in the previous century. The new economic model of making customers poorer rather than richer by sending their jobs overseas seems a bit self-defeating in the long-term. But then fashion rather than exact science seems to be the way of the economist, just like the (now discredited) downsizing craze in the 90s.
"Honey, junior said his first RTFM!"
Spain and Finland are completely different countries with different languages and cultures. The United States is one country with one language and culture and to an extent it's not surprising that you would be judged in that way. I'm used to foreigners thinking that London is the whole British experience when in fact it's an overcrowded shit hole full of rude people and the rest of the country is a lot nicer.
Japanese media is full of sex, violence and swearing and it isn't kept away from children, yet the violence rate there is far lower than the US or the UK where I live which suggests to me that there's something else wrong with our culture than media excess. I personally wouldn't want my nephews playing realistically violent video games but on the other hand I doubt it would affect them unless they have psychological problems already.
Absolutely right where there is choice. Where there is collusion or even worse only one provider what will the magic hand of the market do? Nothing for several years until technology can advance to prevent this sort of crap. The government however can take immediate steps. Your nightclub analogy is flawed, there are a lot of nightclubs.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I was sure Sony didn't get into the music/film business until long after the VHS court case.
with all of the politics, backstabbing and ineffective bureaucracy that goes along with them.
I'm guessing you've never worked in a large bank then as that describes the ones I've worked in very well and as for the previous statement, there are plenty of providers who should never do business with major banks again, but due to the above statement (and probably kickbacks as well) still do very well out of them.
Just because a large organisation isn't governmental doesn't mean it can't be just as bad or worse. Having a profit motive doesn't mean that the above problems magically disappear.
You vote Green
DRM is really good for Microsoft if the only 'trusted' OS is Windows. You think the world's largest software company would do anything but say fuck off to the entertainment cartels if there wasn't anything in it for them?
flashblock is brilliant, it puts a play button on each piece of flash and only runs them if you click it so perfect for avoiding so many annoying ads while still being able to use sites that require it.
Can you turn the GUI off on a Windows server?
What rubbish. Socialism promotes nothing of the kind. It was a socialist/communist nation that put the first man into space. Hardly a mediocre achievement. Bureaucracy and inefficiency are not a uniquely socialist phenomenon as anyone who's worked for a large corporation can easily see.
Okay I'll put it a little better. Consumers don't know any better, they don't know that computers shouldn't crash, host spyware, get virus-infected etc. And before you give me the MS shill spiel I've just had XP SP2 blue screen on me. My heinous crime? Plugging in a USB MP3 player. No non-MS drivers involved. Sorry Mr Shill but there is no excuse whatsoever for that having happened and in a properly competitive market, you know the sort that Microsoft has stamped out at every turn, there would be financial penalties for such incompetence in terms of consumers telling them where to stick it.
Consumers do not like what Microsoft offer they buy it because there is no realistic alternative.