Actually, 10,417 were committed using a firearm. Although this number also includes homocides due to gang wars and wars between criminal organizations. It should be noted that the greatest percentage, by far, of firearm-related homocides is committed by criminals *against each other*. According to the FBI, this accounts for somewhere in excess of 80% of all homocides where a firearm was used.
Among non-criminals, the 'weapon of opportunity' often isn't a gun but a blunt object, followed by kitchenware. Why? Because when a non-criminal commits murder it's usually in a violent rage - the 'heat of passion' - which means they pick up whatever's handy and beat the other guy to death with it. It's spur of the moment, something a personal wouldn't normally do, nor would do if given some small measure of time to think about it.
So, if you're a criminal, especially one in the drug trade, your chances of dying by firearm are much, much higher than if you're an average Joe or Jane on the street. If you are that Joe or Jane, you're far more likely to be beaten or stabbed to death, especially by someone you know (or are married to).
Some have interpreted the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments as including privacy rights, but AFAIK, this is not very solid and really hasn't been flat-out tested in the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court itself has said that the Bill of Rights cannot be supported without privacy, and even anonymity (which is a prerequisite to true free speech). So yes, according to the highest court in the land we supposedly have a right to privacy, without which certain other rights would cease to exist.
A simple google search can lead to enlightenment, in this case.
But, you seem to want to equate first-world democracies with corrupt, terrorist-sponsoring, Islamic-fanatical, totalitarian dictatorships. The latter cannot be trusted with WMD.
As an American I don't trust my own government with weapons of mass destruction. In fact, I think Bush the most likely national leader on the planet to actually use them.
So you think the world was a better place *with* Saddam?
What you don't seem to get is that the affairs of other countries aren't our fucking business. The U.S. has no right to enforce democracy at the point of a gun on other nations, nor to spread 'liberty' across the planet like some goddamn venereal disease.
You talk as if we have some sort of religious calling to enforce our way of life and government on others. As an American I say "bullshit". I don't want an empire, and I don't want my taxes being used for this purpose. In fact, I pretty much want a 'live and let live' sort of government that doesn't go about trying to re-enact 18th century colonialism.
There is nothing at all naive about this desire. I don't swallow the Bush propaganda about pre-emptive strikes, nor do I think we're in Iraq for anything but the oil (and perhaps the ability to tell Israel to go fuck itself). You can spout the party line all you like, but in the end it's just another word for 'imperialism'.
And, as history tells us, imperialism just doesn't work very well.
Opinion, not fact. And I don't trust anyone, no matter what his stated motives, who'd rather see a woman raped and strangled with her own pantyhose rather than defend herself with a gun.
Gun control fanatics are dangerous sorts, who think that outlawing guns will somehow reduce violence, never admitting that laws aren't obeyed by criminals - by definition. The end result of their kind of oppression is to deny law-abiding the citizens the means to defend themselves from harm. They never ask the question: does gun ownership do more good than harm?
According to the National Vital Statistics Report, Volume 49, Number 12, the number of homocides in the U.S. amounted to 16,137 people at the end of 2000. Most of these homocides were committed with 'weapons of opportunity', which means 'whatever was handy' - e.g., usually a blunt instrument of some sort, or a sharp instrument like a kitchen knife. Despite these 'high' numbers, you were more likely to die in a fall (down stairs or a ladder) or from drowning (in a back yard pool or recreational area). So clearly the odds of being murdered were extremely low, and the odds of being murdered by someone with a gun were even lower.
The FBI, in a 1999 study, determined that somewhere between 200,000 and 800,000 violent crimes were deterred because the victim was armed. In less than 1/10 of 1% of these cases was the firearm actually discharged, usually into the air (warning shot). The reason why these statistics vary so widely is because in most cases the intended victim was a woman, carrying the weapon illegally concealed. Quite obviously, these women have no interest in reporting the crime as they will go to jail if they do. The FBI says that the *minimum* number is 200,000, while the likely number is probably much, much higher than this. BTW, a 'violent crime' in their report is an attempted rape, robbery, assault or murder.
So while people can go on and on how terribly violent Americans are, the simple fact is that gun ownership doesn't contribute to violence - indeed, it seems to deter violence. Even the FBI, a rabid proponent of gun control (they *hate* armed citizens), reluctantly agrees with this.
Note: the FBI originally commissioned the study in question to prove that armed citizens were dangerous. The results were the opposite of what they expected, or hoped for.
Michael Moore doesn't give a damn about any of this. He's on a religious crusade to disarm all Americans and to hell with the facts. Like any fanatic he sees what he wants to see and ignores or distorts all the rest.
Before you get the idea that I have a beef with Moore, I don't (I loved TV Nation). On just about everything except for gun control I think the man does good work. But when it comes to gun control, he turns into a glassy-eyed loon.
The irony, of course, is that they don't really hate Americans; they actually hate their own repressive governments.
You mean, the repressive governments that we Americans have funded, and often helped take power in the first place? Yes, I can see how I, too, would hate a foreign power that supported, or even installed, the regime that oppresses me.
Yet another argument that goes along the lines of 'things are still pretty good, so don't complain'.
I will continue to complain so long as the Constitution of these United States is violated. I will settle for nothing less than full compliance with the Constitution. Arguments to the contrary are irrelevant; if you want to change the Constitution in order to legally install your repressive state, then do so - the mechanism is there, and it's been done numerous times in the past.
But until you pass that amendment, you *will* abide by the Constitution whether you like it or not. And if you or the government violates the supreme law of the land, you can bet your ass that I and others like me will stand up and cry 'foul!'.
Wrong. Words are defined by people. If a word takes on a common meaning, that becomes the meaning regardless of what a minority claims.
Linux is the OS and kernel. That is how it's defined by the vast majority of people that use it. Whether you object to how the definition has changed or not over the years is of absolutely no importance, as you have no power whatsoever to gainsay the new definition.
All you'll end up doing is looking silly and annoying people who think that folks who walk around telling them how to speak are assholes. Which, by the way, they are.
t bothers me to use "Linux" as the name of a kernel *and* the name of a class of operating systems. That's just plain confusing.
Bullshit. Sophistry, nothing more. The average Linux geek has no problem at all differentiating between the kernel and the OS; the non-geek doesn't even know there's a difference in the first place, nor do they care (or should they).
This shit about 'confusion' that you and some other posters go on about is nothing more than a political ploy, a poor attempt to come up with a legitimate argument for telling the rest of us how to speak and what terms we should use. Your efforts are pathetically shallow, your motives easy to discern.
Why call the complete OS Linux? Because we want to. And that's all that matters.
There's nothing honest about writing "RMS is an asshole" on a free software news site.
Sure there is. The guy is an asshole. He goes around constantly correcting people who use the word "Linux", insisting they replace the term with "GNU/Linux". I'll call if whatever the fuck I please, thanks, and if RMS doesn't like it he can eat my shorts.
It's an oversimplification that can be avoided by being specific.
Bullshit. If the listener knows what you're talking about that is the definition of the word. Common usage defines the definition, not some pedantic assholes who insist that they, and they alone, get to define terms. That's how language evolves, Jack.
It doesn't matter what you, RMS, or anyone has to say about the matter. If the vast majority of folks refer to the kernel, OS, and tools as "Linux" then it is Linux - and that's all there is to it.
No analogies, please. I can see the strawman arguments coming a mile away. Take them somewhere else.
Who gives a fuck what they're up to? It isn't our business what other nations do within their own borders, or even to each other; it isn't our 'religious calling' to free the world from oppression and impose the American way of life on everyone, whether they want it or not.
I realize there are Americans who think that conquering the world sounds like a dandy idea, if only to teach the 'barbarians' how to be civilized. The British once thought the same thing, and look at what's left of their empire. As they taught us, and the rest of the world, only a fool or a megalomaniac aspires to global domination.
Because that's what socialism is. It's the state sponsoring people who don't have jobs
Perhaps we should do a better job of funding our 'socialist' eductation system, because it's clear you don't have the first damned clue what socialism actually is.
And no, job creation by the government is not a socialist act. It is, in fact, a method the government can use to stimulate a depressed capitalist economy, which I think most of the posters here have a pretty decent grasp of.
The argument is whether it's better to have the feds use the money on the war department (I won't bother with the Orwellian doublespeak here) or use it to employ people for non-military projects, like road construction and dam building.
Or if it would be better to look to other alternatives, like perhaps slashing the federal tax rate - and budget - in half.
I also live in Oregon and find your comments naive at best. Of course the state government wastes money on frivolous things; all governments do. This is one of the many things inherent in giving money to government: it will always waste a certain percentage of that money.
Contrary to your opinion, waste increases as the size of the government body gets bigger. The feds waste a far larger percentage of their 'take' than Oregon ever will. And Linn County wastes far less of it's money than the State of Oregon.
If you want efficiency you send the money to the *smallest* government body, not the largest. The smallest body has less administrative overhead and is much more responsible to the locals. It becomes progressively more difficult to justify waste as you move down the food chain and the eyes of those watching get closer to the source.
And copyright law becomes an issue of choice, in the same way that you still have the choice to close-source your software. You think copyright terms should be shorter? Vote with your work. You think it should be 130 years? You have that option.
Ideas are not property. Inventions are not property. Copyright laws weren't invented to protect 'property' (there are other laws for this, dealing with 'theft') but to allow creative sorts some measure of time to profit from their work before said work was turned over to the commons.
It was a fundamental assumption of the Founding Fathers that no man could own an idea or an invention, that all creative work was derivate of work that came before it, and therefore that it must eventually be given over to the public (in essence, nothing you do in this regard is ever truly original). One of the great Orwellian word-plays of the day is to take intellectual labor and turn it into intellectual 'property', equating it to physical property. Just look how many people buy into the nonsense, and actually argue in support of it!
Copyrights are not about protecting property but about protecting the motivation of people to create, by giving them a decent time to profit from creativity. There is no 'property' in these endeavors, nor has there ever been any property. The entire concept of property is utterly irrelevant when it comes to copyright, although there are plenty of brainwashed idiots who take what's spoon-fed to them and parrot it endlessly, letting others do their thinking for them.
The problem with long copyrights is relatively straight-forward: what you invent is by necessity based upon all relevant inventions, research, and science that's gone before you. Your invention would not have been possible if these things had not been available to you. Overly long copyrights make it possible to stifle or even bring creation to a screeching halt because they profit only those invested in the status quo. Why bother to invent thing x if Company ABC is going to sue you for it, or require an enormous licensing fee, because your invention stands upon the shoulders of what they've done? In essence, these copyright laws claim that Company ABC is perfectly justified in claiming ownership not only in what they invented, but also everything that's gone before their invention - and that future potential inventors aren't allowed to do the same.
Remember, we live in a society where copyright extends to 1-click shopping and naturally occurring phenomena, like genes. You don't even have to invent something derivate, you simply have to yell 'dibs!' fast enough to get a patent. And once you do, it's wholely within your power to put an end to any invention based upon whatever you've copyrighted, or to make the price of entry so high most folks won't bother.
According to the U.S. Constitution, the highest law in the land, there exists one and only one justifiable reason for copyright:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; "
Anything else is bullshit, and uncontitutional besides.
There's an argument running through this discussion which on the surface is coherent, yet in practice doesn't reflect reality. It goes like this:
"there is no alternative to brand X, and only one company sells brand X, so there is no viable competition. Therefore, the company can set pretty much any price it wants."
Yep, in a very basic, Econ 101 way of thinking, this is entirely true - up to a point, of course (i.e., where price exceeds consumer desire to purchase). If you have no viable competition you're in a monopoly position (corporate oligarchy, for the RIAA) and you can price fix all you like. So long as you don't raise the price beyond what the consumer will bear you can rake in the profit every time production costs decline.
What folks are missing is that competition isn't limited to these simplistic factors. As price approaches the limit that the consumer will bear, alternate methods of distribution will be developed to satisfy the desires of consumers who wish to purchase the product, but not at the price set by the monopoly. These are known as 'black markets' because they distribute the product without the sanction of the monopoly (and in contravention to law) and at a lower price than the monopoly itself (for goods that *can* be distributed at all - obviously, SAMs and the like will cost more just because distribution exists at all).
The more 'unjust' the price of a product is gauged to be, the larger and more developed a black market becomes. That is, each time you jack up the price of the product (or refuse to lower the price, when production costs decline), more and more of your consumers pass the point where the price is something they're willing to bear - whether or not they can afford the price. If percentage A of consumers find a CD ridiculously overpriced at $15 a pop, this percentage will turn to the black market for its needs. If percentage B of consumers find the price of the CD too much at $16, now percentage A + percentage B turns to the black market, and so on, minus those who simply stop purchasing in any form whatsoever.
(Note: there will also be a certain subset of consumers who find the only acceptable price to be 0. But unlike what many slashdotters seem to believe, in practice this subset is always tiny and has no observable effect on the market for that product. This isn't speculation, it's fact - do some research if you need it spelled out for you. People aren't by nature thieves, and an enormous amount of economic and psychological evidence bears this out; if you think otherwise, this isn't a statement about the character of the human race, but your character.)
The higher the price goes, and the more unjust that price seems to be, the more your consumers turn to the black market instead of buying from the monopoly. This has nothing to do with ethics or morals regardless of what ranting slashdotter decides to scream 'theft!' in response to this post. The fact is, increasing consumer use of the black market is an economic indicator that the product is overpriced and needs to be reduced in cost to the consumer. It's the economic form of 'civil disobedience'; when the powers that be don't listen to your complaints, you take action that hits them where it counts to drive your point home. Even if you yourself are unaware of the results of your actions (you just want cheaper CDs and don't care about the ramifications), from an economic point of view the group that turns to the black market is making a very clear statement about the price of the product provided by the monopoly, whether or not the individuals of that group care a whit one way or another about anything beyond buying the CD for less than the list price.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, there exists a 'black market' in the form of file sharing that makes turning to an alternative distribution source easier than ever before in history. While short-sighted twerps post on slashdot, going on and on about 'stealing' and 'piracy' and whatnot, this
Anything that comes out of the mouth of Rick "everything I touch turns to shit" Berman should be taken in the worst possible context. That is, when he says that this embarrassingly shameful series is 'taking a new direction', read this as 'we're going to make it even worse than it already is, if you can believe it'.
It's amazing that series as fucked up as Enterprise - which should never have seen the light of day - can continue no matter how bad they are, while something as interesting as Firefly is shut down after one season. You have to wonder, given Berman's record of fucking up everything he puts his hands on, just what sort of blackmail material he has to keep his projects alive.
Since this 'new' kind of theft can bring down the system of capitalism
Copyright violation is not theft. It has nothing to do with theft. Confusing the two indicates either gross ignorance or malicious misdirection.
As for 'bringing down capitalism', let's all pause for a moment while anyone with the meagerest understanding of economic theory laughs their ass off.
Economics 101: failed or archaic business models *die* and are eventually replaced with something else. The attempt to support an obsolete business model through legislation isn't capitalistic; it's utterly un-capitalistic and directly opposed to the tenets of a free market system. What the RIAA is doing is anathema to even the most watered-down version of capitalism.
The mere fact that the RIAA can continue to impose such a model, and do so with overt government backing, is proof positive you don't live in anything remotely approaching a capitalistic society despite the rhetoric you've been spoon-fed by the powers that be.
I'm glad to see that Linux distributions are so sophisticated now that the user can now be blamed for any problems that cause them not to work on a given setup!
They usually can. Most of the 'problems' I see with Linux installations are with morons who don't bother to see if their hardware is actually supported before doing an install. Then they get all sorts of strange problems and blame Linux for their own lazy stupidity.
Linux isn't for everyone. If you can't stir yourself to do a minimum of research prior to installing - like checking out your hardware to make sure it's supported - then you should really stick with Windows.
That's right, I said "stick with Windows". Not only would it cut down on posts like this complaining that Linux 'doesn't work right' (when in reality it's the user that isn't working right), but it would put an end to all those twits arguing over whether Linux is 'ready for the desktop'.
If you think SuSE is a nice distro for newbies: forget it. It takes ages until you've got it running smoothly. Once it works, it works, but it's not much different from any other disto. The install's horrible.
Here we have yet another boy who thinks he's the center of the universe, and therefore whatever affects him personally applies to everyone else.
I've done so many installs of 8.2 by now I've lost count, and not a single one of them had any problems. No crashes, no lockups, no hardware difficulties, very quick and painless. So my (now extensive) experience directly contradicts your own, for which I have to say: it's either you or your system, and not SuSe.
Privacy: This might be a good buzzword, but a bad argument. Why can't open source software transmit or leak privacy data? The vague monopoly reference I suppose will play well in a state that was one of the parties to the DOJ Microsoft lawsuit.
Given that MS is a corporation with a well-documented history of criminal activity, the government should be goddamned well concerned with privacy when it comes to a product they can't examine. Simply taking Microsoft's word for what's in the product and what it does would, at this point, be criminally negligent.
I wouldn't mind if MS products were used by the government so long as the government has access to the source code. This would allow them to verify MS claims, examine the security of the system itself, and - most of all - confirm that the software isn't being used to breach privacy. Relying on MS to provide truthful statements about their products constitutes a practical misuse of public funds, in light of the company's well-documented record of lying to both consumers and government bodies.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, 10,417 were committed using a firearm. Although this number also includes homocides due to gang wars and wars between criminal organizations. It should be noted that the greatest percentage, by far, of firearm-related homocides is committed by criminals *against each other*. According to the FBI, this accounts for somewhere in excess of 80% of all homocides where a firearm was used.
Among non-criminals, the 'weapon of opportunity' often isn't a gun but a blunt object, followed by kitchenware. Why? Because when a non-criminal commits murder it's usually in a violent rage - the 'heat of passion' - which means they pick up whatever's handy and beat the other guy to death with it. It's spur of the moment, something a personal wouldn't normally do, nor would do if given some small measure of time to think about it.
So, if you're a criminal, especially one in the drug trade, your chances of dying by firearm are much, much higher than if you're an average Joe or Jane on the street. If you are that Joe or Jane, you're far more likely to be beaten or stabbed to death, especially by someone you know (or are married to).
Max
Some have interpreted the First, Fourth and Fifth amendments as including privacy rights, but AFAIK, this is not very solid and really hasn't been flat-out tested in the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court itself has said that the Bill of Rights cannot be supported without privacy, and even anonymity (which is a prerequisite to true free speech). So yes, according to the highest court in the land we supposedly have a right to privacy, without which certain other rights would cease to exist.
A simple google search can lead to enlightenment, in this case.
Max
But, you seem to want to equate first-world democracies with corrupt, terrorist-sponsoring, Islamic-fanatical, totalitarian dictatorships. The latter cannot be trusted with WMD.
As an American I don't trust my own government with weapons of mass destruction. In fact, I think Bush the most likely national leader on the planet to actually use them.
I doubt I'm alone in this way of thinking.
Max
So you think the world was a better place *with* Saddam?
What you don't seem to get is that the affairs of other countries aren't our fucking business. The U.S. has no right to enforce democracy at the point of a gun on other nations, nor to spread 'liberty' across the planet like some goddamn venereal disease.
You talk as if we have some sort of religious calling to enforce our way of life and government on others. As an American I say "bullshit". I don't want an empire, and I don't want my taxes being used for this purpose. In fact, I pretty much want a 'live and let live' sort of government that doesn't go about trying to re-enact 18th century colonialism.
There is nothing at all naive about this desire. I don't swallow the Bush propaganda about pre-emptive strikes, nor do I think we're in Iraq for anything but the oil (and perhaps the ability to tell Israel to go fuck itself). You can spout the party line all you like, but in the end it's just another word for 'imperialism'.
And, as history tells us, imperialism just doesn't work very well.
Max
He's ideas are still correct
Opinion, not fact. And I don't trust anyone, no matter what his stated motives, who'd rather see a woman raped and strangled with her own pantyhose rather than defend herself with a gun.
Gun control fanatics are dangerous sorts, who think that outlawing guns will somehow reduce violence, never admitting that laws aren't obeyed by criminals - by definition. The end result of their kind of oppression is to deny law-abiding the citizens the means to defend themselves from harm. They never ask the question: does gun ownership do more good than harm?
According to the National Vital Statistics Report, Volume 49, Number 12, the number of homocides in the U.S. amounted to 16,137 people at the end of 2000. Most of these homocides were committed with 'weapons of opportunity', which means 'whatever was handy' - e.g., usually a blunt instrument of some sort, or a sharp instrument like a kitchen knife. Despite these 'high' numbers, you were more likely to die in a fall (down stairs or a ladder) or from drowning (in a back yard pool or recreational area). So clearly the odds of being murdered were extremely low, and the odds of being murdered by someone with a gun were even lower.
The FBI, in a 1999 study, determined that somewhere between 200,000 and 800,000 violent crimes were deterred because the victim was armed. In less than 1/10 of 1% of these cases was the firearm actually discharged, usually into the air (warning shot). The reason why these statistics vary so widely is because in most cases the intended victim was a woman, carrying the weapon illegally concealed. Quite obviously, these women have no interest in reporting the crime as they will go to jail if they do. The FBI says that the *minimum* number is 200,000, while the likely number is probably much, much higher than this. BTW, a 'violent crime' in their report is an attempted rape, robbery, assault or murder.
So while people can go on and on how terribly violent Americans are, the simple fact is that gun ownership doesn't contribute to violence - indeed, it seems to deter violence. Even the FBI, a rabid proponent of gun control (they *hate* armed citizens), reluctantly agrees with this.
Note: the FBI originally commissioned the study in question to prove that armed citizens were dangerous. The results were the opposite of what they expected, or hoped for.
Michael Moore doesn't give a damn about any of this. He's on a religious crusade to disarm all Americans and to hell with the facts. Like any fanatic he sees what he wants to see and ignores or distorts all the rest.
Before you get the idea that I have a beef with Moore, I don't (I loved TV Nation). On just about everything except for gun control I think the man does good work. But when it comes to gun control, he turns into a glassy-eyed loon.
Max
The irony, of course, is that they don't really hate Americans; they actually hate their own repressive governments.
You mean, the repressive governments that we Americans have funded, and often helped take power in the first place? Yes, I can see how I, too, would hate a foreign power that supported, or even installed, the regime that oppresses me.
Max
Yet another argument that goes along the lines of 'things are still pretty good, so don't complain'.
I will continue to complain so long as the Constitution of these United States is violated. I will settle for nothing less than full compliance with the Constitution. Arguments to the contrary are irrelevant; if you want to change the Constitution in order to legally install your repressive state, then do so - the mechanism is there, and it's been done numerous times in the past.
But until you pass that amendment, you *will* abide by the Constitution whether you like it or not. And if you or the government violates the supreme law of the land, you can bet your ass that I and others like me will stand up and cry 'foul!'.
Our Founding Fathers would expect no less.
Max
So if I look silly and annoying, it's not because I go around telling people how to speak and being an asshole.
If I say "Linux" and you say "It's GNU/Linux", then you're an annoying asshole. What part of this don't you understand?
Max
Linux is the kernel. That's all.
Wrong. Words are defined by people. If a word takes on a common meaning, that becomes the meaning regardless of what a minority claims.
Linux is the OS and kernel. That is how it's defined by the vast majority of people that use it. Whether you object to how the definition has changed or not over the years is of absolutely no importance, as you have no power whatsoever to gainsay the new definition.
All you'll end up doing is looking silly and annoying people who think that folks who walk around telling them how to speak are assholes. Which, by the way, they are.
Max
t bothers me to use "Linux" as the name of a kernel *and* the name of a class of operating systems. That's just plain confusing.
Bullshit. Sophistry, nothing more. The average Linux geek has no problem at all differentiating between the kernel and the OS; the non-geek doesn't even know there's a difference in the first place, nor do they care (or should they).
This shit about 'confusion' that you and some other posters go on about is nothing more than a political ploy, a poor attempt to come up with a legitimate argument for telling the rest of us how to speak and what terms we should use. Your efforts are pathetically shallow, your motives easy to discern.
Why call the complete OS Linux? Because we want to. And that's all that matters.
Max
There's nothing honest about writing "RMS is an asshole" on a free software news site.
Sure there is. The guy is an asshole. He goes around constantly correcting people who use the word "Linux", insisting they replace the term with "GNU/Linux". I'll call if whatever the fuck I please, thanks, and if RMS doesn't like it he can eat my shorts.
It's an oversimplification that can be avoided by being specific.
Bullshit. If the listener knows what you're talking about that is the definition of the word. Common usage defines the definition, not some pedantic assholes who insist that they, and they alone, get to define terms. That's how language evolves, Jack.
It doesn't matter what you, RMS, or anyone has to say about the matter. If the vast majority of folks refer to the kernel, OS, and tools as "Linux" then it is Linux - and that's all there is to it.
No analogies, please. I can see the strawman arguments coming a mile away. Take them somewhere else.
Max
the free software ideals Linux alone does not represent.
And thank the gods for that.
Max
It seems that this professor of yours has a serious anti-nerd slant
No, he's just a realist. The Matrix is pure fantasy, and most nerds are just as they appear: losers.
Which is no doubt why the Matrix is such a great escape for them.
Max
Who gives a fuck what they're up to? It isn't our business what other nations do within their own borders, or even to each other; it isn't our 'religious calling' to free the world from oppression and impose the American way of life on everyone, whether they want it or not.
I realize there are Americans who think that conquering the world sounds like a dandy idea, if only to teach the 'barbarians' how to be civilized. The British once thought the same thing, and look at what's left of their empire. As they taught us, and the rest of the world, only a fool or a megalomaniac aspires to global domination.
But I suppose with Bush, we've got both....
Max
Because that's what socialism is. It's the state sponsoring people who don't have jobs
Perhaps we should do a better job of funding our 'socialist' eductation system, because it's clear you don't have the first damned clue what socialism actually is.
And no, job creation by the government is not a socialist act. It is, in fact, a method the government can use to stimulate a depressed capitalist economy, which I think most of the posters here have a pretty decent grasp of.
The argument is whether it's better to have the feds use the money on the war department (I won't bother with the Orwellian doublespeak here) or use it to employ people for non-military projects, like road construction and dam building.
Or if it would be better to look to other alternatives, like perhaps slashing the federal tax rate - and budget - in half.
Max
I also live in Oregon and find your comments naive at best. Of course the state government wastes money on frivolous things; all governments do. This is one of the many things inherent in giving money to government: it will always waste a certain percentage of that money.
Contrary to your opinion, waste increases as the size of the government body gets bigger. The feds waste a far larger percentage of their 'take' than Oregon ever will. And Linn County wastes far less of it's money than the State of Oregon.
If you want efficiency you send the money to the *smallest* government body, not the largest. The smallest body has less administrative overhead and is much more responsible to the locals. It becomes progressively more difficult to justify waste as you move down the food chain and the eyes of those watching get closer to the source.
Max
This idea was implemented ages ago, using a device called a "gardener".
No story here.
And copyright law becomes an issue of choice, in the same way that you still have the choice to close-source your software. You think copyright terms should be shorter? Vote with your work. You think it should be 130 years? You have that option.
Ideas are not property. Inventions are not property. Copyright laws weren't invented to protect 'property' (there are other laws for this, dealing with 'theft') but to allow creative sorts some measure of time to profit from their work before said work was turned over to the commons.
It was a fundamental assumption of the Founding Fathers that no man could own an idea or an invention, that all creative work was derivate of work that came before it, and therefore that it must eventually be given over to the public (in essence, nothing you do in this regard is ever truly original). One of the great Orwellian word-plays of the day is to take intellectual labor and turn it into intellectual 'property', equating it to physical property. Just look how many people buy into the nonsense, and actually argue in support of it!
Copyrights are not about protecting property but about protecting the motivation of people to create, by giving them a decent time to profit from creativity. There is no 'property' in these endeavors, nor has there ever been any property. The entire concept of property is utterly irrelevant when it comes to copyright, although there are plenty of brainwashed idiots who take what's spoon-fed to them and parrot it endlessly, letting others do their thinking for them.
The problem with long copyrights is relatively straight-forward: what you invent is by necessity based upon all relevant inventions, research, and science that's gone before you. Your invention would not have been possible if these things had not been available to you. Overly long copyrights make it possible to stifle or even bring creation to a screeching halt because they profit only those invested in the status quo. Why bother to invent thing x if Company ABC is going to sue you for it, or require an enormous licensing fee, because your invention stands upon the shoulders of what they've done? In essence, these copyright laws claim that Company ABC is perfectly justified in claiming ownership not only in what they invented, but also everything that's gone before their invention - and that future potential inventors aren't allowed to do the same.
Remember, we live in a society where copyright extends to 1-click shopping and naturally occurring phenomena, like genes. You don't even have to invent something derivate, you simply have to yell 'dibs!' fast enough to get a patent. And once you do, it's wholely within your power to put an end to any invention based upon whatever you've copyrighted, or to make the price of entry so high most folks won't bother.
According to the U.S. Constitution, the highest law in the land, there exists one and only one justifiable reason for copyright:
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; "
Anything else is bullshit, and uncontitutional besides.
Max
There's an argument running through this discussion which on the surface is coherent, yet in practice doesn't reflect reality. It goes like this:
"there is no alternative to brand X, and only one company sells brand X, so there is no viable competition. Therefore, the company can set pretty much any price it wants."
Yep, in a very basic, Econ 101 way of thinking, this is entirely true - up to a point, of course (i.e., where price exceeds consumer desire to purchase). If you have no viable competition you're in a monopoly position (corporate oligarchy, for the RIAA) and you can price fix all you like. So long as you don't raise the price beyond what the consumer will bear you can rake in the profit every time production costs decline.
What folks are missing is that competition isn't limited to these simplistic factors. As price approaches the limit that the consumer will bear, alternate methods of distribution will be developed to satisfy the desires of consumers who wish to purchase the product, but not at the price set by the monopoly. These are known as 'black markets' because they distribute the product without the sanction of the monopoly (and in contravention to law) and at a lower price than the monopoly itself (for goods that *can* be distributed at all - obviously, SAMs and the like will cost more just because distribution exists at all).
The more 'unjust' the price of a product is gauged to be, the larger and more developed a black market becomes. That is, each time you jack up the price of the product (or refuse to lower the price, when production costs decline), more and more of your consumers pass the point where the price is something they're willing to bear - whether or not they can afford the price. If percentage A of consumers find a CD ridiculously overpriced at $15 a pop, this percentage will turn to the black market for its needs. If percentage B of consumers find the price of the CD too much at $16, now percentage A + percentage B turns to the black market, and so on, minus those who simply stop purchasing in any form whatsoever.
(Note: there will also be a certain subset of consumers who find the only acceptable price to be 0. But unlike what many slashdotters seem to believe, in practice this subset is always tiny and has no observable effect on the market for that product. This isn't speculation, it's fact - do some research if you need it spelled out for you. People aren't by nature thieves, and an enormous amount of economic and psychological evidence bears this out; if you think otherwise, this isn't a statement about the character of the human race, but your character.)
The higher the price goes, and the more unjust that price seems to be, the more your consumers turn to the black market instead of buying from the monopoly. This has nothing to do with ethics or morals regardless of what ranting slashdotter decides to scream 'theft!' in response to this post. The fact is, increasing consumer use of the black market is an economic indicator that the product is overpriced and needs to be reduced in cost to the consumer. It's the economic form of 'civil disobedience'; when the powers that be don't listen to your complaints, you take action that hits them where it counts to drive your point home. Even if you yourself are unaware of the results of your actions (you just want cheaper CDs and don't care about the ramifications), from an economic point of view the group that turns to the black market is making a very clear statement about the price of the product provided by the monopoly, whether or not the individuals of that group care a whit one way or another about anything beyond buying the CD for less than the list price.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, there exists a 'black market' in the form of file sharing that makes turning to an alternative distribution source easier than ever before in history. While short-sighted twerps post on slashdot, going on and on about 'stealing' and 'piracy' and whatnot, this
I was thinking it was more of an egotistical, self-important, usually angst-ridden form of self-worship. But I guess YMMV.
Max
Anything that comes out of the mouth of Rick "everything I touch turns to shit" Berman should be taken in the worst possible context. That is, when he says that this embarrassingly shameful series is 'taking a new direction', read this as 'we're going to make it even worse than it already is, if you can believe it'.
It's amazing that series as fucked up as Enterprise - which should never have seen the light of day - can continue no matter how bad they are, while something as interesting as Firefly is shut down after one season. You have to wonder, given Berman's record of fucking up everything he puts his hands on, just what sort of blackmail material he has to keep his projects alive.
Max
Since this 'new' kind of theft can bring down the system of capitalism
Copyright violation is not theft. It has nothing to do with theft. Confusing the two indicates either gross ignorance or malicious misdirection.
As for 'bringing down capitalism', let's all pause for a moment while anyone with the meagerest understanding of economic theory laughs their ass off.
Economics 101: failed or archaic business models *die* and are eventually replaced with something else. The attempt to support an obsolete business model through legislation isn't capitalistic; it's utterly un-capitalistic and directly opposed to the tenets of a free market system. What the RIAA is doing is anathema to even the most watered-down version of capitalism.
The mere fact that the RIAA can continue to impose such a model, and do so with overt government backing, is proof positive you don't live in anything remotely approaching a capitalistic society despite the rhetoric you've been spoon-fed by the powers that be.
Max
I'm glad to see that Linux distributions are so sophisticated now that the user can now be blamed for any problems that cause them not to work on a given setup!
They usually can. Most of the 'problems' I see with Linux installations are with morons who don't bother to see if their hardware is actually supported before doing an install. Then they get all sorts of strange problems and blame Linux for their own lazy stupidity.
Linux isn't for everyone. If you can't stir yourself to do a minimum of research prior to installing - like checking out your hardware to make sure it's supported - then you should really stick with Windows.
That's right, I said "stick with Windows". Not only would it cut down on posts like this complaining that Linux 'doesn't work right' (when in reality it's the user that isn't working right), but it would put an end to all those twits arguing over whether Linux is 'ready for the desktop'.
Max
If you think SuSE is a nice distro for newbies: forget it. It takes ages until you've got it running smoothly. Once it works, it works, but it's not much different from any other disto. The install's horrible.
Here we have yet another boy who thinks he's the center of the universe, and therefore whatever affects him personally applies to everyone else.
I've done so many installs of 8.2 by now I've lost count, and not a single one of them had any problems. No crashes, no lockups, no hardware difficulties, very quick and painless. So my (now extensive) experience directly contradicts your own, for which I have to say: it's either you or your system, and not SuSe.
Max
Privacy: This might be a good buzzword, but a bad argument. Why can't open source software transmit or leak privacy data? The vague monopoly reference I suppose will play well in a state that was one of the parties to the DOJ Microsoft lawsuit.
Given that MS is a corporation with a well-documented history of criminal activity, the government should be goddamned well concerned with privacy when it comes to a product they can't examine. Simply taking Microsoft's word for what's in the product and what it does would, at this point, be criminally negligent.
I wouldn't mind if MS products were used by the government so long as the government has access to the source code. This would allow them to verify MS claims, examine the security of the system itself, and - most of all - confirm that the software isn't being used to breach privacy. Relying on MS to provide truthful statements about their products constitutes a practical misuse of public funds, in light of the company's well-documented record of lying to both consumers and government bodies.
Max