It's legal, of course. The First Amendment doesn't apply to private schools. They can make whatever rules they want.
Does this mean that sections of your constitution don't apply to private schools? How so, I thought the constitution was all-powerful (or am I misunderstanding this?)
Here's the First Amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
These are limits on Congress. So schools are not limited ( I wonder about schools that have sold out for the Almighty Federal Subsidy) . Nor am I in my own home prevented from restricting speech.
Capitalism is the reason that employee loyalty doesn't exist. Just like companies only care about the bottom line so employees only care about the bottom line. Why should we hold higher ideals when the employers don't?
There's an old Soviet joke: "As long as they pretend to pay us, we'll pretend to work." It's not Capitalism or Communism, but human nature.
Well, at least we'll be able to see a nation with these practices in use. Then those of us in the States (or other countries) can see if it's actually any good.
Why, we in the USA do it best already! Why would we care how others do it? Just like those Brits, they drive on the wrong side of the road already...
Ok Americans, you don't have anyone destroying the first amendment? Why Stalin and first amendment here? When did Stalin stepped on first amendment? When do you stop thinking that the world starts in New England and ends in Alaska?
Stalin was a butcher. But he was a Soviet butcher who lead Soviet Union and not America. And there were no First or Last Amendments of the likes. Pick up you OWN people for that and point out and leave Stalin alone. If anyone has anything to say about Stalin then it is Germans, Poles, Czecks, Slovaks, Yougoslavians, Chinese, Koreans, Georgians, Azeris, Tatarians, Russians and a several other tens of nations that lived in the grip of the Butcher of Nations. But you should THANK GOD that there was Stalin as he saved the world and YOU from being swallowed by the Nazi machinery. And NEVER DARE to forget about that!
Hitler couldn't even get across the English Channel. I think the Atlantic Ocean is a bit wider...
In fact, the internet was really based upon the idea of *freely* *shared* *community* resource at its roots. If everyone tried to offer a service and charged for it, then the Internet would have died at its inception. And the people who joined this community truly learned this concept and were educated by the other people in the community -- as I did. It's sorry to see that the hordes of people jumping on the bandwagon later on never learned this principle. Rather than learning to give back, the majority became the mass of clueless AOL newbies spamming and ruining the newsgroups with their "Me Too!" posts. Rather than learning the benefits of cooperation, people learned to line their pockets with what other people freely provided.
Isn't this what the "Tragedy of the Commons" is all about?
You idiots! All you/. people ever scream is FREE FREE FREE. You want the world and you don't want to pay for it. I want a free OS - I want free music - I want a free database. Well, FU all - someone has to write the OS - someone has to write and perform the music - someone has to setup and maintain the databases (as well as machines, Internet connectivity, etc.)
...
Buy a license or don't. I don't care. But don't bitch about companies that are just following simple supply and demand.
Well, you've got it. Basic consumer nature: pay less. Basic business nature: get more. It's not an either-or thing, it's both, and the tension is what makes the free market work.
I know this is redundant, but I too have called Linux "Windows NT Service Pack 7". I also have the office Linux server show up (since it's running Samba) in the 'Hood as "NT++ Server".
If you want a more appropriate example, think of it like mandatory, 100% effective condoms for, say, the population of Nebraska. People in Nebraska won't be able to conceive, and eventually the population of Nebraska dwindles and dies off. You think people in Texas are going to be affected, or that this is going to seriously impact the rest of the human race?
Texas college football teams would do better without Nebraska kicking them around. I think Texans might go for this, since it's such a major impact in their lives.
Maybe the intend to continue mass-producing these things and releasing them into the wild until all traces of healthy moths are extinguished. Just a thought.
Why eliminate moths? They eat suits, which is truly progress.
1. Release glowing sterile moths into environment.
2. Hungry bats eat glowing moths for dinner.
3. Bats start glowing. (Or some other abberation occurs.)
4. Glowing bats can't fly "invisibly" anymore and can't hunt other insects.
5. Bats go hungry and die.
6. Other insect populations are underhunted and grow exponentially, damaging farmers' crops.
7. Scientists design glowing sterile version of insect [insert species here] and release it into the wild in hopes of saving farmers' crops.
You get the idea...
The conceit parodied here is that the scientists think they are modifying a variable, and they know what the output is. They look at it like it's an equation, y=f(x). Reality is, they don't have much knowledge, and will press on as if they do, and we'll get the above scenario, or worse. Maybe not with these moths, but with something. But I've gone into fear-mongering: "something terrible will happen, a Frankenstein at the least!"... I guess I'm a little tired of scientific hubris.
If we somehow wind up in a world of "proprietary" disk drives and such, there will be ways around it. Even if M$ gets lots of people in the USA to pay monthly rent for their software, there are a few billion people around the world who can't afford it (Mexico) or whose governments will oppose such things as a matter of policy (China, probably India). These people will want Linux, and they are not only a market, they are manufacturers of a lot of this hardware. They'll be more than willing to supply the US market if US companies are stupid enough to abandon it.
When open hard drives are outlawed, only criminals will have open hard drives.
"I am pleased that this legislation declaring war on open hard drives was passed in a landslide. Our children will thank us."
"The Kennedy Family has doubled its wealth running hard drives from China into the US."
Name one example other than this where a politician has acted purely on principle (as opposed to party/personal politicking, special interest pandering, pork, or quid pro quo favors).
Senators Robert A. Taft and John LaFollette, but that was a long time ago.
Capitalism has nothing to do with encoraging free markets; it is a the description of a system whereby people inves capital and obtain a return on that capital. If fostering a healthy market maimises return on investment, individuals and companies will do so. If not, they will act against customer choice.
Free market theory is concerned with maximising value, usually to the consumer, through competition. Capitalism is interested in maximising value to the owners of capital. The entertainment industry is lousy at markets, but great at capitalism.
Companies in the US have always tried to influence government to privilege them, to make laws that privilige their company in some way to the detriment of their competition.
For example, while the USPS is not a corporation (is it?), it has a government-granted monopoly on First class mail delivery. You know that FedEx could do it better and cheaper, but the USPS is covering its butt. If FedEx tries to do it, they get nailed by the government.
There are two kinds of monopolies: market monopolies, where a company really did beat the tails off the competition, and government-sponsored monopolies, where the government weighs in with its coercive power to restrict competitors. And MOST monopolies in the US are gov't-sponsored.
OK, this went offtopic, but it's a hot button for me.
It's all about double standards. The US runs double agents in Russia too. So it's okay for the us the have double agents, but are shocked when russia does the same thing?
A double standard? I think it's more about using the scum-of-the-earth: people who'd betray their own people, family, friends. There are Russians like that, and the US gov't will use them, but I don't think there's any particular love or admiration for them.
I remember back in '89, I worked a small internship project with AT&T. It was to set up a manufacturing info system at a small facility. My faculty advisor commented that there was a major cultural issue, in that we were now gathering lots of data. And now we could correlate much better the products with who made them. And the issue was, "will they use this data against me somehow?" This is a natural, and legitimate, fear. The response was that the data could be used to identify who needed more training, since they were having problems. Duh, and who needed to purged.
And it continues apace. Sometimes I think technologists do something because they can, not because they should. It's called hubris.
Don't buy anything with the Nike Schwooshtika on it, they are almost as bad as walmart.
Offtopic:
I don't like WalMart, because they're a huge, impersonal company that really doesn't give a flip about the locals. (I have Chestertonian Distributist leanings.)
To bring it back on topic, Nike I suppose is the same way: a typical global multinational, which will work hand-in-hand with government; that's why the Democrat/Republican coalition is so dangerous: big business + big government means you end up a slave. We should be scared when they cooperate. And if you are not in the US, you may be the next country we bomb, if you look at us funny.
You can't blame the locals for working there (Nike), it's a good opportunity economically for them. But they do give up something in the end. They support the global multinationals, but not everyone is cut out to be a hero for the cause, eh?
OTOH, I like WalMart, because I can go there when I want to feel thin.
Because it's true. You describe lots of problems third world workers face, but what you don't mention is that Nike didn't cause those problems. Those countries were poor long before Nike arrived on the scene, and would even poorer if Nike were to close it's "sweatshops" and produce shoes elsewhere.
it's fine to sympathize with how bad conditions are in the third world. But don't blame Nike for those conditions. They are providing jobs that --while we may not think they're good-- are better than most other jobs in the country. It hardly makes sense to demonize Nike for providing jobs for poor people just because they didn't improve conditions enough. Those people would be worse off without Nike, not better.
They'd be unemployed, which is worse. I guess they could subsitence farm, or handcraft cardboard shanties. Are they being coerced into working there? Are they in a collectivist state that doesn't give them the liberty to work as they choose? If so, _that's_ the problem, because you can bet those people are simply slaves of the state, and sweatshop conditions are of no account. Or would you say Southern slaves who had masters who took good care of their property were better off than being dirt-poor-but-free?
I seriously doubt these folks are working there because the state is forcing them to. They are there because it's their best opportunity to advance economically. The rest of the opportunities for them are worse. Any you can bet they know the risks of working there, and they are factored into their decisions to work there.
We in the USA have the luxury to worry about lots of things poorer countries can't. Such as a pristine environment. Sweatshops in other countries. Seals. Miniscule risks of every kind. Most people around the world are doing what they can and need to to survive. We spend our time roaming the countryside on vacations in our SUVs, camping, hiking, fishing, sporting. Are we really happy here? We seem paralyzed by risks of all sorts, and loaded down with guilt because of our prosperity.
The best law I've seen in dealing with this subject is Old-Testament law (and probably other laws from that period/area). What they do, is, instead of trying to give a precise description, is they give several for-instances, and let the human mind do what it does best - generalize. Instead of trying to write down the generalizations (which are never properly understood), you have several instances, and the situation-at-hand is matched against the given instances to find which it best correlates with. Some may find this archaic, but it is much better because it keeps the spirit of law much better. Now, there are always bad judges and poor interpretations, but this method of law I think gives the best framework.
I agree if the populace isn't decadent, but in the Western world, it is. Decadent cultures don't have the will to maintain liberty; i.e., self-governance. They just want their personal peace and prosperity and security. Somewhere property rights get trashed. In the end, the people end up being property of the state.
Some say that property is theft. Of course, this is a nonsense left wing Marxist viewpoint. However, it appears that some reactionaries are trying to apply this discredited idea to copyright law. I am afraid I have to dissent from this.
The notion of property is fundamental to any society. Property is in itself an intellectual idea, and as such does not just have remit over physical objects, but can be just as well applied to the world of ideas.
I still don't see how ideas can be property. So if idea A is someone else's property, and I think of it, is that a theft? A thought-crime?
I heartily agree that property is fundamental; it is fundamental to liberty. Notice how in collectivized societies, where property is shamed, people are routinely abused. In places where property is protected under law, people enjoy more liberty.
Most law is full of holes, since you can't cover every single thing that creative, ingenious people will try to do. And if you have every single possible thing on the books (You can do this:...; You can't do this:...), where is liberty? You can only do what is explicitly permitted. So we typically take the approach that we can do whatever is not forbidden. And that includes lots of things that RIAA and lots of others don't like.
Notice how all the movement in the USA is toward restricting us more in some way? It seems like everybody with lawyers is trying to deploy the coercive power of the state to reduce someone else's liberty. Wasn't it somewhere on/. that there was an article about how remembering something would be a copyright violation? Because you're copying it into your memory? Oh yeah, the licensed chairs, I'd forgotten that. Oops, I remembered!
Heck, I remember the American Way as doing everything for yourself with your own two hands, even to the point of making your own tools, working in communities in a few projects and not relying on companies for your survival. Of course there is a lot more to it, good and bad, but if they are trying to remove the hobbyist 'hacker' and force them to use commercial products then they really are a monopolistic evil entity. They must get their ideas from the tragedy / satire "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley.
I also thought the American Way was about Liberty. And RMS has always emphasized that, in my impression of his writings. It's also a voluntary thing--you join up in the free software movement.
Allchin seems to have been directing his comments to Congress. (At least, there was a comment in the article: "Microsoft has told U.S. lawmakers of its concern while discussing protection of intellectual property rights.") Why? He wants to leverage the coercive power of government to favor Microsoft! He would like very much for Microsoft to be a government-privileged company again; meaning: the road to Monopoly. This is common for companies: use the government to harm your competition. Of course, you could also say Netscape and Sun do that, too (which they do).
Slashdot Mirror
I spent 7 years there in grad school. I'll take a dialup connection rather than go back. And they're always begging for money from me!
Does this mean that sections of your constitution don't apply to private schools? How so, I thought the constitution was all-powerful (or am I misunderstanding this?)
Here's the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." These are limits on Congress. So schools are not limited ( I wonder about schools that have sold out for the Almighty Federal Subsidy) . Nor am I in my own home prevented from restricting speech.
There's an old Soviet joke: "As long as they pretend to pay us, we'll pretend to work." It's not Capitalism or Communism, but human nature.
Why, we in the USA do it best already! Why would we care how others do it? Just like those Brits, they drive on the wrong side of the road already...
Stalin was a butcher. But he was a Soviet butcher who lead Soviet Union and not America. And there were no First or Last Amendments of the likes. Pick up you OWN people for that and point out and leave Stalin alone. If anyone has anything to say about Stalin then it is Germans, Poles, Czecks, Slovaks, Yougoslavians, Chinese, Koreans, Georgians, Azeris, Tatarians, Russians and a several other tens of nations that lived in the grip of the Butcher of Nations. But you should THANK GOD that there was Stalin as he saved the world and YOU from being swallowed by the Nazi machinery. And NEVER DARE to forget about that!
Hitler couldn't even get across the English Channel. I think the Atlantic Ocean is a bit wider...
Whoops, next comment mentioned this! Sorry, but great minds can't help but think alike...
Isn't this what the "Tragedy of the Commons" is all about?
...
Buy a license or don't. I don't care. But don't bitch about companies that are just following simple supply and demand.
Well, you've got it. Basic consumer nature: pay less. Basic business nature: get more. It's not an either-or thing, it's both, and the tension is what makes the free market work.
I know this is redundant, but I too have called Linux "Windows NT Service Pack 7". I also have the office Linux server show up (since it's running Samba) in the 'Hood as "NT++ Server".
Texas college football teams would do better without Nebraska kicking them around. I think Texans might go for this, since it's such a major impact in their lives.
Why eliminate moths? They eat suits, which is truly progress.
2. Hungry bats eat glowing moths for dinner.
3. Bats start glowing. (Or some other abberation occurs.)
4. Glowing bats can't fly "invisibly" anymore and can't hunt other insects.
5. Bats go hungry and die.
6. Other insect populations are underhunted and grow exponentially, damaging farmers' crops.
7. Scientists design glowing sterile version of insect [insert species here] and release it into the wild in hopes of saving farmers' crops.
You get the idea...
The conceit parodied here is that the scientists think they are modifying a variable, and they know what the output is. They look at it like it's an equation, y=f(x). Reality is, they don't have much knowledge, and will press on as if they do, and we'll get the above scenario, or worse. Maybe not with these moths, but with something. But I've gone into fear-mongering: "something terrible will happen, a Frankenstein at the least!"... I guess I'm a little tired of scientific hubris.
When open hard drives are outlawed, only criminals will have open hard drives.
"I am pleased that this legislation declaring war on open hard drives was passed in a landslide. Our children will thank us."
"The Kennedy Family has doubled its wealth running hard drives from China into the US."
etc, etc, etc.
Senators Robert A. Taft and John LaFollette, but that was a long time ago.
Free market theory is concerned with maximising value, usually to the consumer, through competition. Capitalism is interested in maximising value to the owners of capital. The entertainment industry is lousy at markets, but great at capitalism.
Companies in the US have always tried to influence government to privilege them, to make laws that privilige their company in some way to the detriment of their competition.
For example, while the USPS is not a corporation (is it?), it has a government-granted monopoly on First class mail delivery. You know that FedEx could do it better and cheaper, but the USPS is covering its butt. If FedEx tries to do it, they get nailed by the government.
There are two kinds of monopolies: market monopolies, where a company really did beat the tails off the competition, and government-sponsored monopolies, where the government weighs in with its coercive power to restrict competitors. And MOST monopolies in the US are gov't-sponsored.
OK, this went offtopic, but it's a hot button for me.
How does a monopoly expand? Whose competitors' markets do they take over? With a monopoly, there _are_ no competitors.
A double standard? I think it's more about using the scum-of-the-earth: people who'd betray their own people, family, friends. There are Russians like that, and the US gov't will use them, but I don't think there's any particular love or admiration for them.
As long as it's free beer.
I remember back in '89, I worked a small internship project with AT&T. It was to set up a manufacturing info system at a small facility. My faculty advisor commented that there was a major cultural issue, in that we were now gathering lots of data. And now we could correlate much better the products with who made them. And the issue was, "will they use this data against me somehow?" This is a natural, and legitimate, fear. The response was that the data could be used to identify who needed more training, since they were having problems. Duh, and who needed to purged.
And it continues apace. Sometimes I think technologists do something because they can, not because they should. It's called hubris.
Offtopic:
I don't like WalMart, because they're a huge, impersonal company that really doesn't give a flip about the locals. (I have Chestertonian Distributist leanings.)
To bring it back on topic, Nike I suppose is the same way: a typical global multinational, which will work hand-in-hand with government; that's why the Democrat/Republican coalition is so dangerous: big business + big government means you end up a slave. We should be scared when they cooperate. And if you are not in the US, you may be the next country we bomb, if you look at us funny.
You can't blame the locals for working there (Nike), it's a good opportunity economically for them. But they do give up something in the end. They support the global multinationals, but not everyone is cut out to be a hero for the cause, eh?
OTOH, I like WalMart, because I can go there when I want to feel thin.
it's fine to sympathize with how bad conditions are in the third world. But don't blame Nike for those conditions. They are providing jobs that --while we may not think they're good-- are better than most other jobs in the country. It hardly makes sense to demonize Nike for providing jobs for poor people just because they didn't improve conditions enough. Those people would be worse off without Nike, not better.
They'd be unemployed, which is worse. I guess they could subsitence farm, or handcraft cardboard shanties. Are they being coerced into working there? Are they in a collectivist state that doesn't give them the liberty to work as they choose? If so, _that's_ the problem, because you can bet those people are simply slaves of the state, and sweatshop conditions are of no account. Or would you say Southern slaves who had masters who took good care of their property were better off than being dirt-poor-but-free?
I seriously doubt these folks are working there because the state is forcing them to. They are there because it's their best opportunity to advance economically. The rest of the opportunities for them are worse. Any you can bet they know the risks of working there, and they are factored into their decisions to work there.
We in the USA have the luxury to worry about lots of things poorer countries can't. Such as a pristine environment. Sweatshops in other countries. Seals. Miniscule risks of every kind. Most people around the world are doing what they can and need to to survive. We spend our time roaming the countryside on vacations in our SUVs, camping, hiking, fishing, sporting. Are we really happy here? We seem paralyzed by risks of all sorts, and loaded down with guilt because of our prosperity.
I agree if the populace isn't decadent, but in the Western world, it is. Decadent cultures don't have the will to maintain liberty; i.e., self-governance. They just want their personal peace and prosperity and security. Somewhere property rights get trashed. In the end, the people end up being property of the state.
The notion of property is fundamental to any society. Property is in itself an intellectual idea, and as such does not just have remit over physical objects, but can be just as well applied to the world of ideas.
I still don't see how ideas can be property. So if idea A is someone else's property, and I think of it, is that a theft? A thought-crime?
I heartily agree that property is fundamental; it is fundamental to liberty. Notice how in collectivized societies, where property is shamed, people are routinely abused. In places where property is protected under law, people enjoy more liberty.
Most law is full of holes, since you can't cover every single thing that creative, ingenious people will try to do. And if you have every single possible thing on the books (You can do this: ...; You can't do this:...), where is liberty? You can only do what is explicitly permitted. So we typically take the approach that we can do whatever is not forbidden. And that includes lots of things that RIAA and lots of others don't like.
/. that there was an article about how remembering something would be a copyright violation? Because you're copying it into your memory? Oh yeah, the licensed chairs, I'd forgotten that. Oops, I remembered!
Notice how all the movement in the USA is toward restricting us more in some way? It seems like everybody with lawyers is trying to deploy the coercive power of the state to reduce someone else's liberty. Wasn't it somewhere on
I also thought the American Way was about Liberty. And RMS has always emphasized that, in my impression of his writings. It's also a voluntary thing--you join up in the free software movement.
Allchin seems to have been directing his comments to Congress. (At least, there was a comment in the article: "Microsoft has told U.S. lawmakers of its concern while discussing protection of intellectual property rights.") Why? He wants to leverage the coercive power of government to favor Microsoft! He would like very much for Microsoft to be a government-privileged company again; meaning: the road to Monopoly. This is common for companies: use the government to harm your competition. Of course, you could also say Netscape and Sun do that, too (which they do).