Ah, see! Rand was right:) She specifically said that men's bellies were what communism appealed to. Feed me and I will believe! But see, in my view of freedom, the ability to feed myself is among the highest attributes one can possess. And freedom is required before one can do that.
Your english is not too bad, sir/ma'am. And your brain seems to work reasonably well. There's something to be said definitely for abuse of monopoly power - but the plain fact is, in 99% of cases, a monopoly can only stay a monopoly if they treat the customers reasonably well. Otherwise people will eventually tire and find alternatives. The only time government should step in to stop a monopoly is if the monopoly cannot be unseated by the public - these are cases where violence and other crimes are used to maintain power. In these situations, it's a different story, and troops move in. Luckily this hasn't happened on any real scale yet, as far as I know.
Also, I just caught Gates' statement about the verdict vacancy and wrote a little rebuttal, a bit of a flame but I think it's reasonably accurate and I had reason to be reasonably angered. You can find it here.
I never said Rand was perfect or any of that. I simply used her writing as an example. Actually, I'm somewhat of an unorthodox Objectivist, in the sense that I disagree with Peikoff and the rest at the ARI on a few things. Nor am I a kelleyite, either. And yes, there are others who have stated the case for this or that idea better than her - but what her true value is is often forgotten: integration, the conceptual, logical, non-contradictory juxtaposition of seemingly disparate areas of human thought. Discovering the symmetries, etc. Taken as a whole, Rand's body of work is the most complete, thorough defense of human freedom I have ever encountered.
And btw, your use of the word 'apologist' to describe capitalist proponents leads me to believe that this is a troll.
A note, first: This is NOT in support of MS - it is an attack on the case against them, but it is NOT in support of them.
Antitrust laws in and of themselves are flawed and are flagrant violations of the U.S. Constitution. They were originally designed to halt the advance of railroad and timber companies run by men who were seen as 'robber barons' - to paraphrase a famous rebuttal of that idea, I pose the question "If they were robber barons, why did they create? A robber does not create. A robber steals. But if they're creating, then it's not theft - if there was nothing, before they created it... what then is there for them to steal?" The problem I have with this antitrust suit is that they are being pursued for being successful - the arguments used against them have little technical merit, and are based soley on the interests of their competitors. Bundling software? Well, it is their product, their effort. Let them do as they please.
Now, don't get me wrong, I have no love for MS, their operating procedures, or their products. I'm simply saying that litigation is not the answer - educating the consumer is. Microsoft is successful because the general computing public does not know much about alternatives, nor even about what is specifically wrong with MS's products. That is changing, slowly but surely, and I suggest the idea that MS is creating its own demise with these invasive technologies such as 'smart tags' and these software registration hoops we're being asked to jump through. The market will regulate itself, people will, if educated, make better choices, they will, often as I've discovered, willingly take the extra time and energy to learn a more complex, less 'fancy' operating system - for the simple purpose of avoiding MS's inherent malfunctions, both in terms of software quality as well as software function insofar as privacy is concerned.
For those of you who think the government needs to protect the consumer, I suggest the idea that you are right - inasmuch as the government should punish fraud, breach of contract, false advertising, etc - but not to the extent that they actually retain a grip on what products and services we have available to us. Has MS committed fraud? I'm sure they have, although I have no direct example to give. Has MS advertised falsely? Indeed, I remember a couple of MSN commercials a couple years ago that were blatantly false, promising faster-than-56k on 56k lines etc. Has MS broken contracts? Microsoft has no contract obligations, they produce a product and the consumer is the one who signs the contract, aka the End-User Licensing Agreement. The EULA even frees MS from the responsibility of technical support, bug fixes, etc. Sue MS all you want, but if you do so, use proper legal grounds - sue them for what they did wrong, not what they did right. Slackware and Redhat and all the other Linux distributions participate in 'bundling', providing media players, web browsers, online help systems, even supplying some packages that notify the package maintainers every time a new installation comes online (example: pine). Are any of these really bad things? No, they're GOOD things, good for me and good for you and good for the software developer. The only difference is, MS's bundled software is all made by MS - and that is not in itself bad, the only bad part is that most MS code is of low quality. And let me note the fact that MS has been defending themselves on the wrong grounds - they claim they have not broken antitrust laws. What they should be doing is following Gates' viewpoint, that antitrust laws are unConstitutional, and then attempting to prove so by way of Constitutional scholarship.
What I'm saying here is that when government sues corporations for crushing their competition, they're really suing them for being ultra-successful. The government should be harrassing MS right now - but not for the things it has chosen to attack. I want MS to win the court case, and I want it for the simple fact that I want what is right. The truth, no matter how hard or brutal, is preferrable to any false bed of coushions. MS is dooming itself to massive revenue losses, the drop of the value of MS stock, and the disfavor of public opinion, as it bludgeons its way down the road it has chosen. Let the consumers and the market as a whole regulate MS. I quote Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged - as an attack on antitrust laws, not as a defense of MS:
The scene is a courtroom, where Henry Rearden, a steel industrialist, is on trial for the sale of his own metal:
Judge: "Are we to understand that if the public deems it necessary to curtail your profits, you do not recognize its right to do so?" Rearden: "Why, yes, I do. The public may curtail my profits any time it wishes - by refusing to buy my product." Judge: "We are speaking of... other methods." Rearden: "Any other method of curtailing profits is the method of looters - and I recognize it as such."...
"No, I do not what my attitude to be misunderstood. I shall be glad to state it for the record. I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers - with the facts, but not with the evaluation. I work for nothing but my own profit - which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it.... I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I have made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with... the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product.... Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my own living as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it and to do it well... I refuse to apologize for my success, I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me. This is my code - and I will accept no other.... I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation, as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above, and against my own - I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, and I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it"
without saying too much, i've had the pleasure of associating with someone who works four miles away at the big p. they told me some basic non-classified information about their systems, their office and backend servers, but not a whole lot on their actual intelligence stuff. but from what i understand, linux and some bsd form the majority segments of their backbone, for the plain simple fact that they can SEE what it DOES. that's a huge advantage with the coming wave of cyberwarfare. the person i know also told me a bit about that, that there are committees working on the issue, and that opensource is also their utility of attack because of the extensibility of many distributions. star office is just the next logical step. as was said, not a hugely surprising one, but still an important and suggestive event. this, along with other news such as the german government or some segment of it at least passing bills to eliminate all closed-source code from their systems. now microsoft is arrogant (no this is not a flame, it is a simple fact) and wants to impose very restrictive controls on the usage of computers world-wide. any central authority that controls a sufficiently massive control of communications is in effect the dictator of the individual. hussein controls all of the media - and look where he's at - mocking the united states and getting away with it. so as far as the dod etc are concerned, opensource is the only way for them to guarantee that they keep control of their own machines. very intrusive technologies are being implemented in standard software.
Not I. My time, and thus my attention, has never been for sale. I do not watch television, except the rare chunk of CNN or the History Channel - I do not 'browse the web', I know the sites I want to look at, and I rarely follow links leaving them. Radio? Junk email? Magazine propaganda? None of those things exist in my world. I even got a geek.com email account, set up mail filters, and had all still-surviving emails forwarded to my own machine, just to avoid being bothered.
What disturbs me is the opening of this article. Its claim that we have always relied on solid, established media to tell us what to pay attention to is insulting, to say the least. I have watched less than 5 episodes of Friends, I have never seen Melrose Place, and I don't know the names of more than 2 news anchors. Maybe I'm just a 'weirdo' but the idea of someone else choosing what to push into my brain is disgusting in so many ways.
However, I do see the author's point - and have for some time now. We, as a society and as a whole, are relentlessly pursued by anyone who has anything to sell, be it a product or a religion or a political view. I have no problem with commercialism, for the simple reason that it is a necessary and integral part of any semi-Capitalist mode of living. What I do have a problem with is the idea that money equals mindshare in any true and fundamental sense, and the related idea, being that most people are willing to participate. Most people are not willing, at least most of the ones I know (perhaps that's exactly why I associate with them?), and are very tired of this buildup of information spoon-feeding that is now becoming something closer to force-feeding.
it would make Microsoft seem (and in fact be) that much closer to the Borg we see Bill represented as above. To try diversionary tactics and spending massive money to defame a competitor who, by some opinions, is no real threat, cannot bring much damage... I sincerely hope MS is not stooping to this level. I don't run their software but it would force me to consider moving everyone I know over to like a Redhat in retaliation.
On an off-topic note, I posted a story a few days back, Star in a Jar in the Science section, and typed up a copy of the magazine article it came from - I then lost it and wonder if anyone has a copy, perhaps in their cache somewhere? If so it can be mailed to me at the address above, or just use hye@remove.gulch.nitg.org - thanks.
First, the issue of government sponsorship of science. There are two main arguments, only one of which is likely to be heard very often. This view is that government is in a position of stewardship of society, and as such, is justified in investing the product of society when there is reason to expect an outcome that is beneficial to the people the society consists of. Under this theory, taxation for the purpose of research is considered not only 'ok', but further, as a necessary component of governmental activity. The other, less heard view, is that government exists (or should) to fulfill three fundamental roles: 1) a legislature and courts to enact and enforce laws; 2) a military to defend our borders; 3) a police force to protect our lives and property from force and fraud. This, summed up, comes out to one statement: Government exists soley for the protection of the citizens against those who would do them harm. Thomas Jefferson said it best, perhaps: "No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." So what does all of this have to do with government sponsorship of science? A lot, if you consider the fact that the sponsorship part comes in the form of taxes, which are removed from your possession by a gentle yet steady pressure that will, if necessary, come down to the barrel of a gun. Why should you be forced to support programs you do not agree with? I do not agree with government sponsorship of science, or of anything else beyond the three functions mentioned above. But I pay my taxes anyway, because I do not want a gun and boots and a jail cell to educate me on why I was wrong not to do so. In addition, as mentioned by others, this sponsorship often results in applications that are then patented or otherwise made proprietary, forcing the citizen who has just paid for the development of xyz technologies to rush out and pay for them again before s/he can use them.
As for corporate sponsorship, it's the same problem, in many cases - corporations recieve massive tax incentives and legislative favors when they play nice with the government, which amounts to the same thing in the end: government deciding what is best for you, and then using your labor to enact it equally among yourself and all the others who did not contribute. If a corporation funds research on its own, with no governmental assistance in any form, that is a different story, one that I like hearing much better.
There are two sides to this issue. On the one hand, a domain name is property - private property, earned (read: paid for) by the person who registers it. Under the law, and under any reasonable code of morality, none may reject the property claims of another, providing that ownership is earned. On the other hand, there are such things as slander, libel, defamation of character. Under these concepts, it is wrongful to publicly attempt to damage the name of an individual or a company, provided that attempt is unprovoked, or undeserved. whateversux.com domains are a difficult call, it would seem, then.
However, the fact is that a domain name itself is not inherently damaging to anyone. The content available at such a domain may be, but the domain itself is not. If the content is derogatory in any reasonably illegal manner, then the content may be forced to be changed - but the domain itself stays. If I, as an individual, register a domain such as xyzcompanysucksabigone.com for example, I am simply using the company name or the individual's name according to fair-use laws. If I were a for-profit interest, especially one with a vested interest in defeating the company named in the domain, that would be a totally different case.
No, it was not a troll. I am serious, I remember Hawking's A Brief History of Time claiming that light does have mass. However, I could be badly mistaken, I might have misunderstood, the mass spoken of might have been related to motion the way most neutrino mass is. If so, I stand corrected. I'll check my sources.
Light does have mass - light is simply a collection of packets called photons. Experimentation and observation has shown that light beams from distant stars are wrapped around gravity wells. One of the first verifications of Einstein's General Relativity was a solar eclipse being used to measure the locations of stars in the sky, their light coming from behind/around the sun, and it was seen that their locations were changed because of the gravity bending the stream of light.
For some reason, Netscape is crashing when I hit reply on this. So lynx it is and forgive any malfunctions.
On the question of the original view of the mass of neutrinos as taught in high school science class, I think it bears pointing out, once again, the exact nature of the energy/mass/velocity relationship. Quoting myself, e=mc^2 is " e in one sense is the energy an object has, and m is the mass resulting. in another sense, e is the energy needed to accelerate m, the given mass." Both sides of the equation represent the same things, only different facets. Thus we can extrapolate from this that neutrinos have mass, inasmuch as they have energy while in motion, since energy is directly proportional to mass. In the question of whether they themselves have mass, at a resting state, no definitive answer has been discovered. This new experiment would indicate yes, but I suggest we all remain skeptical - this is a simple experiment that could have been done years ago, which makes me wonder
why it is being done just now.
.. believe that this is an excellent thing? Think about it: someone loves coding and linux etc so much that they spend their flight times not on sleep, but on coding bizarre kernel installs. This gives me some hope of escaping the 'geek OS' image and onto desktops. But that brings up something that's been on my mind.
Why do we want to do such a thing? What is there to gain? Sure, more support for devices and perhaps some food and shelter for the bignames who keep the major projects going. And of course tech work at various levels for the rest of us. But I submit that this may just serve to pollute the environment, so to speak. Bringing your average desktop person to linux is a good thing for them, but is it a good thing for you? Won't you spend a lot of time not learning, but fixing stupid mistakes for the inductees? Where is the value? Notice how every time something good comes along, higher-ups play with it first and let it slowly then leak to the public, reducing its value. But with our 'good thing', it's not a game. It's something we deeply enjoy, and many of us strongly believe in. Regardless of licensing flavor, it's all a common idea. If the average desktop user runs it en masse, it will be diluted and choked with commercialism. The funny thing about the net and its trappings is that it's the opposite of the real world - communism will work. One potato, when grown, can feed an entire population. I am a die-hard capitalist, a supporter of F.A. Hayek and Miss Rand, but even I recognize the radically different exchange dynamic within this community, and it's not something I personally want to see brought down to the common level. For a very nice example of what I mean, check here. Of course I'm not suggesting that we should never go to the desktop. Simply that we should make a conscious effort to continue and expand upon the roadmap that's already been in place - which is, specifically, to fork our OS's into commercial and 'hobbyist' branches. This allows a friendly useful cheap GNU/Linux office terminal, with very low support requirements and excellent software and capabilities. I will personally keep my FreeBSD and Slack for a while.
So does anyone else believe that this kernel configuration game is a good sign?
First, to the person who got +3 for insightful, yes this is not exactly 'news' in the sense that FreeBSD has long been known to inhabit the Hotmail servers. It is news in the sense that MS bashes opensource as 'dangerous' and the GPL as 'cancer', then make use of opensource code in their products and full opensource products in their services. The news here, to put it another way, is OSS isn't good enough for the general public, but it's good enough for MS, which indicates the low quality of MS products, services, and people. Not that OSS is low-quality, but quite the opposite - that it is high quality, and beats anything MS has come up with, and their low-quality establishment chooses to leech from it and then kick it in the face on the way out. BSD's TCP/IP code running on Windows 2000.... biting the hand that feeds you, anyone?
I was discussing this with my girlfriend the other day... saying I wouldn't be surprised if MS had incorporated code from OSS in their major products, and saying that any exposure of such activity would be some of the best public-relations material we anti-MS folks could ever have. This news item this morning put a large smile on my face and made my eyes water as I read the WSJ article. The last statement made in the article, while not news and simply opinion, was succinct enough to warrant a repeat: "Microsoft owns you." I can only chuckle and shake my head.
I disagree with the usage of the word 'altruism' - and with the concept. My small contributions to opensource, while gpl'd, have nothing at all to do with 'altruism'. I view altruism as one of the cardinal sins, as a giving-up of one's values with no guarantee of a return of value. One's life and work must be held as the highest values, because they are what can achieve the ultimate value - happiness. My reasons for contributing to opensource are as simple as 'giving back to those who have already given to me' - I'm paying back a debt, not trying to get others to repay my un-requested effort.
As for the value of the GPL - I absolutely LOVE the GPL.... although I prefer the BSD-style licensing in some cases. I like the idea of "if you're at home, use it for free - if you're at work, trying to use it in your money-making activities, pay me please because my effort helped you get paid". Generosity is fine, charity is not. I'll help someone change a flat tire for free, but I won't help them run their business for free.
Re:Entire article available
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UM COULD YOU STOP LOOKING FOR IT AT THE FIRST ADDRESS AND USE THIS?????
[Thu Jun 14 16:11:02 2001] [error] [client 12.111.37.145] File does not exist:/var/lib/apache/htdocs/lasernova.html
[Thu Jun 14 16:11:04 2001] [error] [client 12.111.37.145] File does not exist:/var/lib/apache/htdocs/lasernova.html
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[Thu Jun 14 16:17:32 2001] [error] [client 64.122.5.99] File does not exist:/var/lib/apache/htdocs/lasernova.html
Re:Entire article available
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oops here's the addy: http://24.15.183.13/nova
It's absolutely beautiful
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That these guys are finally getting to do actual experimentation, perhaps sometime soon being able to tweak parameters to alter behaviors, to better test the theories. Observation of celestial activity will always be the predominant method of learning, but being able to recreate some of these events in the lab is a massive step forward. Up-close observation is something I never dreamed possible.
I don't know much about UNIVAC, but it's always nice to see where we've come from - so we can guage how far we've actually come, and where we might be going. It's a bit like watching Mir splash down, it shows us milestones and crucial events
'Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.' So spoke Miss Rand. What this means is that in order to be master of my own life, I must first understand the laws that govern it, and then use those laws to my own advantage. The laws of nature dictate that I must use the only weapon I have, my mind, to gather the tools necessary to preserve my survival. This means I will develop a spear and kill an animal to eat and to clothe myself, or in modern times, I will study harder and learn more and get a better job. It's all the same process, the same abstract, only the concretes of the situation are different. I do hunt, I do not feel guilty. I do succeed in business, I do not feel guilty. And there's absolutely no difference between the two.
... Nor a particularly surprising one. Why does this even qualify as news? It's something that made logical sense to me long ago. Think about it - there's a lot of meat, bone, fat, and hide on large mammals, and we needed those things in ever-increasing amounts. We didn't have agriculture or synthetic materials, where else would we get them? I don't get why this is news.
That was my whole point - except I find the concept of MS backdooring wind0ze for the NSA to be ludicrous. My take on it was the humor and contradiction etc
Anyone remember the old NSAKey hidden in the Win95 registry? Remember all the conjecture about how it was some secret backdoor for the NSA to peer into foreign government computers? *chuckle* um all that was silly, and was never taken serious by anyone but idiots - but I found it amusing to consider the possibilities (regardless of their probability or lack thereof). Reminds me also of the recent/. item about the German gov't banning MS products due to the fact that it couldn't see source, thus couldn't guarantee the security of MS products. I find it amusing that the NSA has lower standards than the German gov't.
As for the guy who mentioned the forked Linux kernel the gov't deemed was necessary to provide for security - what you're forgetting here, guy, is that Linux kernel source is AVAILABLE while Win2k is NOT AVAILABLE - thus no forking is possible. And btw, if the source to Win2k were available, what do you think the chances are that the NSA would find it acceptable? Would they even bother forking, or just shrug and go Linux/BSD/etc totally instead?
An attempt at using the concept of 'eminent domain', which is a common excuse for governmental entities to seize control of legitimately-held private property. Take a look at Jacob Hornberger's work with the Future of Freedom Foundation, and take a look at Harry Brown's (Libertarian candidate for US President, '96 and 2000) running mate's record of fighting eminent domain in California for good reasons why the concept is flawed, immoral, unjust, corrupt, and intellectually bankrupt (if you need reasons other than your own, that is)
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Ah, see! Rand was right :) She specifically said that men's bellies were what communism appealed to. Feed me and I will believe! But see, in my view of freedom, the ability to feed myself is among the highest attributes one can possess. And freedom is required before one can do that.
Your english is not too bad, sir/ma'am. And your brain seems to work reasonably well. There's something to be said definitely for abuse of monopoly power - but the plain fact is, in 99% of cases, a monopoly can only stay a monopoly if they treat the customers reasonably well. Otherwise people will eventually tire and find alternatives. The only time government should step in to stop a monopoly is if the monopoly cannot be unseated by the public - these are cases where violence and other crimes are used to maintain power. In these situations, it's a different story, and troops move in. Luckily this hasn't happened on any real scale yet, as far as I know.
Also, I just caught Gates' statement about the verdict vacancy and wrote a little rebuttal, a bit of a flame but I think it's reasonably accurate and I had reason to be reasonably angered. You can find it here.
I never said Rand was perfect or any of that. I simply used her writing as an example. Actually, I'm somewhat of an unorthodox Objectivist, in the sense that I disagree with Peikoff and the rest at the ARI on a few things. Nor am I a kelleyite, either. And yes, there are others who have stated the case for this or that idea better than her - but what her true value is is often forgotten: integration, the conceptual, logical, non-contradictory juxtaposition of seemingly disparate areas of human thought. Discovering the symmetries, etc. Taken as a whole, Rand's body of work is the most complete, thorough defense of human freedom I have ever encountered.
And btw, your use of the word 'apologist' to describe capitalist proponents leads me to believe that this is a troll.
A note, first: This is NOT in support of MS - it is an attack on the case against them, but it is NOT in support of them.
...
... I am rich and I am proud of every penny I own. I have made my money by my own effort, in free exchange and through the voluntary consent of every man I dealt with... the voluntary consent of those who work for me now, the voluntary consent of those who buy my product.... Do I wish to sell it at a loss or give it away? I do not. If this is evil, do whatever you please about me, according to whatever standards you hold. These are mine. I am earning my own living as every honest man must. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact of my own existence and the fact that I must work in order to support it. I refuse to accept as guilt the fact that I am able to do it and to do it well... I refuse to apologize for my success, I refuse to apologize for my money. If this is evil, make the most of it. If this is what the public finds harmful to its interests, let the public destroy me. This is my code - and I will accept no other. ... I could say to you that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation, as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise. If it were true that men could achieve their good by means of turning some men into sacrificial animals, and I were asked to immolate myself for the sake of creatures who wanted to survive at the price of my blood, if I were asked to serve the interests of society apart from, above, and against my own - I would refuse, I would reject it as the most contemptible evil, I would fight it with every power I possess, I would fight the whole of mankind, if one minute were all I could last before I were murdered, and I would fight in the full confidence of the justice of my battle and of a living being's right to exist. Let there be no misunderstanding about me. If it is now the belief of my fellow men, who call themselves the public, that their good requires victims, then I say: The public good be damned, I will have no part of it"
Antitrust laws in and of themselves are flawed and are flagrant violations of the U.S. Constitution. They were originally designed to halt the advance of railroad and timber companies run by men who were seen as 'robber barons' - to paraphrase a famous rebuttal of that idea, I pose the question "If they were robber barons, why did they create? A robber does not create. A robber steals. But if they're creating, then it's not theft - if there was nothing, before they created it... what then is there for them to steal?" The problem I have with this antitrust suit is that they are being pursued for being successful - the arguments used against them have little technical merit, and are based soley on the interests of their competitors. Bundling software? Well, it is their product, their effort. Let them do as they please.
Now, don't get me wrong, I have no love for MS, their operating procedures, or their products. I'm simply saying that litigation is not the answer - educating the consumer is. Microsoft is successful because the general computing public does not know much about alternatives, nor even about what is specifically wrong with MS's products. That is changing, slowly but surely, and I suggest the idea that MS is creating its own demise with these invasive technologies such as 'smart tags' and these software registration hoops we're being asked to jump through. The market will regulate itself, people will, if educated, make better choices, they will, often as I've discovered, willingly take the extra time and energy to learn a more complex, less 'fancy' operating system - for the simple purpose of avoiding MS's inherent malfunctions, both in terms of software quality as well as software function insofar as privacy is concerned.
For those of you who think the government needs to protect the consumer, I suggest the idea that you are right - inasmuch as the government should punish fraud, breach of contract, false advertising, etc - but not to the extent that they actually retain a grip on what products and services we have available to us. Has MS committed fraud? I'm sure they have, although I have no direct example to give. Has MS advertised falsely? Indeed, I remember a couple of MSN commercials a couple years ago that were blatantly false, promising faster-than-56k on 56k lines etc. Has MS broken contracts? Microsoft has no contract obligations, they produce a product and the consumer is the one who signs the contract, aka the End-User Licensing Agreement. The EULA even frees MS from the responsibility of technical support, bug fixes, etc. Sue MS all you want, but if you do so, use proper legal grounds - sue them for what they did wrong, not what they did right. Slackware and Redhat and all the other Linux distributions participate in 'bundling', providing media players, web browsers, online help systems, even supplying some packages that notify the package maintainers every time a new installation comes online (example: pine). Are any of these really bad things? No, they're GOOD things, good for me and good for you and good for the software developer. The only difference is, MS's bundled software is all made by MS - and that is not in itself bad, the only bad part is that most MS code is of low quality. And let me note the fact that MS has been defending themselves on the wrong grounds - they claim they have not broken antitrust laws. What they should be doing is following Gates' viewpoint, that antitrust laws are unConstitutional, and then attempting to prove so by way of Constitutional scholarship.
What I'm saying here is that when government sues corporations for crushing their competition, they're really suing them for being ultra-successful. The government should be harrassing MS right now - but not for the things it has chosen to attack. I want MS to win the court case, and I want it for the simple fact that I want what is right. The truth, no matter how hard or brutal, is preferrable to any false bed of coushions. MS is dooming itself to massive revenue losses, the drop of the value of MS stock, and the disfavor of public opinion, as it bludgeons its way down the road it has chosen. Let the consumers and the market as a whole regulate MS. I quote Ayn Rand, from Atlas Shrugged - as an attack on antitrust laws, not as a defense of MS:
The scene is a courtroom, where Henry Rearden, a steel industrialist, is on trial for the sale of his own metal:
Judge: "Are we to understand that if the public deems it necessary to curtail your profits, you do not recognize its right to do so?"
Rearden: "Why, yes, I do. The public may curtail my profits any time it wishes - by refusing to buy my product."
Judge: "We are speaking of... other methods."
Rearden: "Any other method of curtailing profits is the method of looters - and I recognize it as such."
"No, I do not what my attitude to be misunderstood. I shall be glad to state it for the record. I am in full agreement with the facts of everything said about me in the newspapers - with the facts, but not with the evaluation. I work for nothing but my own profit - which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it.
without saying too much, i've had the pleasure of associating with someone who works four miles away at the big p. they told me some basic non-classified information about their systems, their office and backend servers, but not a whole lot on their actual intelligence stuff. but from what i understand, linux and some bsd form the majority segments of their backbone, for the plain simple fact that they can SEE what it DOES. that's a huge advantage with the coming wave of cyberwarfare. the person i know also told me a bit about that, that there are committees working on the issue, and that opensource is also their utility of attack because of the extensibility of many distributions. star office is just the next logical step. as was said, not a hugely surprising one, but still an important and suggestive event. this, along with other news such as the german government or some segment of it at least passing bills to eliminate all closed-source code from their systems. now microsoft is arrogant (no this is not a flame, it is a simple fact) and wants to impose very restrictive controls on the usage of computers world-wide. any central authority that controls a sufficiently massive control of communications is in effect the dictator of the individual. hussein controls all of the media - and look where he's at - mocking the united states and getting away with it. so as far as the dod etc are concerned, opensource is the only way for them to guarantee that they keep control of their own machines. very intrusive technologies are being implemented in standard software.
Not I. My time, and thus my attention, has never been for sale. I do not watch television, except the rare chunk of CNN or the History Channel - I do not 'browse the web', I know the sites I want to look at, and I rarely follow links leaving them. Radio? Junk email? Magazine propaganda? None of those things exist in my world. I even got a geek.com email account, set up mail filters, and had all still-surviving emails forwarded to my own machine, just to avoid being bothered.
What disturbs me is the opening of this article. Its claim that we have always relied on solid, established media to tell us what to pay attention to is insulting, to say the least. I have watched less than 5 episodes of Friends, I have never seen Melrose Place, and I don't know the names of more than 2 news anchors. Maybe I'm just a 'weirdo' but the idea of someone else choosing what to push into my brain is disgusting in so many ways.
However, I do see the author's point - and have for some time now. We, as a society and as a whole, are relentlessly pursued by anyone who has anything to sell, be it a product or a religion or a political view. I have no problem with commercialism, for the simple reason that it is a necessary and integral part of any semi-Capitalist mode of living. What I do have a problem with is the idea that money equals mindshare in any true and fundamental sense, and the related idea, being that most people are willing to participate. Most people are not willing, at least most of the ones I know (perhaps that's exactly why I associate with them?), and are very tired of this buildup of information spoon-feeding that is now becoming something closer to force-feeding.
it would make Microsoft seem (and in fact be) that much closer to the Borg we see Bill represented as above. To try diversionary tactics and spending massive money to defame a competitor who, by some opinions, is no real threat, cannot bring much damage... I sincerely hope MS is not stooping to this level. I don't run their software but it would force me to consider moving everyone I know over to like a Redhat in retaliation.
On an off-topic note, I posted a story a few days back, Star in a Jar in the Science section, and typed up a copy of the magazine article it came from - I then lost it and wonder if anyone has a copy, perhaps in their cache somewhere? If so it can be mailed to me at the address above, or just use hye@remove.gulch.nitg.org - thanks.
First, the issue of government sponsorship of science. There are two main arguments, only one of which is likely to be heard very often. This view is that government is in a position of stewardship of society, and as such, is justified in investing the product of society when there is reason to expect an outcome that is beneficial to the people the society consists of. Under this theory, taxation for the purpose of research is considered not only 'ok', but further, as a necessary component of governmental activity. The other, less heard view, is that government exists (or should) to fulfill three fundamental roles: 1) a legislature and courts to enact and enforce laws; 2) a military to defend our borders; 3) a police force to protect our lives and property from force and fraud. This, summed up, comes out to one statement: Government exists soley for the protection of the citizens against those who would do them harm. Thomas Jefferson said it best, perhaps: "No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." So what does all of this have to do with government sponsorship of science? A lot, if you consider the fact that the sponsorship part comes in the form of taxes, which are removed from your possession by a gentle yet steady pressure that will, if necessary, come down to the barrel of a gun. Why should you be forced to support programs you do not agree with? I do not agree with government sponsorship of science, or of anything else beyond the three functions mentioned above. But I pay my taxes anyway, because I do not want a gun and boots and a jail cell to educate me on why I was wrong not to do so. In addition, as mentioned by others, this sponsorship often results in applications that are then patented or otherwise made proprietary, forcing the citizen who has just paid for the development of xyz technologies to rush out and pay for them again before s/he can use them.
As for corporate sponsorship, it's the same problem, in many cases - corporations recieve massive tax incentives and legislative favors when they play nice with the government, which amounts to the same thing in the end: government deciding what is best for you, and then using your labor to enact it equally among yourself and all the others who did not contribute. If a corporation funds research on its own, with no governmental assistance in any form, that is a different story, one that I like hearing much better.
There are two sides to this issue. On the one hand, a domain name is property - private property, earned (read: paid for) by the person who registers it. Under the law, and under any reasonable code of morality, none may reject the property claims of another, providing that ownership is earned. On the other hand, there are such things as slander, libel, defamation of character. Under these concepts, it is wrongful to publicly attempt to damage the name of an individual or a company, provided that attempt is unprovoked, or undeserved. whateversux.com domains are a difficult call, it would seem, then.
However, the fact is that a domain name itself is not inherently damaging to anyone. The content available at such a domain may be, but the domain itself is not. If the content is derogatory in any reasonably illegal manner, then the content may be forced to be changed - but the domain itself stays. If I, as an individual, register a domain such as xyzcompanysucksabigone.com for example, I am simply using the company name or the individual's name according to fair-use laws. If I were a for-profit interest, especially one with a vested interest in defeating the company named in the domain, that would be a totally different case.
No, it was not a troll. I am serious, I remember Hawking's A Brief History of Time claiming that light does have mass. However, I could be badly mistaken, I might have misunderstood, the mass spoken of might have been related to motion the way most neutrino mass is. If so, I stand corrected. I'll check my sources.
Light does have mass - light is simply a collection of packets called photons. Experimentation and observation has shown that light beams from distant stars are wrapped around gravity wells. One of the first verifications of Einstein's General Relativity was a solar eclipse being used to measure the locations of stars in the sky, their light coming from behind/around the sun, and it was seen that their locations were changed because of the gravity bending the stream of light.
For some reason, Netscape is crashing when I hit reply on this. So lynx it is and forgive any malfunctions.
On the question of the original view of the mass of neutrinos as taught in high school science class, I think it bears pointing out, once again, the exact nature of the energy/mass/velocity relationship. Quoting myself, e=mc^2 is " e in one sense is the energy an object has, and m is the mass resulting. in another sense, e is the energy needed to accelerate m, the given mass." Both sides of the equation represent the same things, only different facets. Thus we can extrapolate from this that neutrinos have mass, inasmuch as they have energy while in motion, since energy is directly proportional to mass. In the question of whether they themselves have mass, at a resting state, no definitive answer has been discovered. This new experiment would indicate yes, but I suggest we all remain skeptical - this is a simple experiment that could have been done years ago, which makes me wonder why it is being done just now.
.. believe that this is an excellent thing? Think about it: someone loves coding and linux etc so much that they spend their flight times not on sleep, but on coding bizarre kernel installs. This gives me some hope of escaping the 'geek OS' image and onto desktops. But that brings up something that's been on my mind.
Why do we want to do such a thing? What is there to gain? Sure, more support for devices and perhaps some food and shelter for the bignames who keep the major projects going. And of course tech work at various levels for the rest of us. But I submit that this may just serve to pollute the environment, so to speak. Bringing your average desktop person to linux is a good thing for them, but is it a good thing for you? Won't you spend a lot of time not learning, but fixing stupid mistakes for the inductees? Where is the value? Notice how every time something good comes along, higher-ups play with it first and let it slowly then leak to the public, reducing its value. But with our 'good thing', it's not a game. It's something we deeply enjoy, and many of us strongly believe in. Regardless of licensing flavor, it's all a common idea. If the average desktop user runs it en masse, it will be diluted and choked with commercialism. The funny thing about the net and its trappings is that it's the opposite of the real world - communism will work. One potato, when grown, can feed an entire population. I am a die-hard capitalist, a supporter of F.A. Hayek and Miss Rand, but even I recognize the radically different exchange dynamic within this community, and it's not something I personally want to see brought down to the common level. For a very nice example of what I mean, check here. Of course I'm not suggesting that we should never go to the desktop. Simply that we should make a conscious effort to continue and expand upon the roadmap that's already been in place - which is, specifically, to fork our OS's into commercial and 'hobbyist' branches. This allows a friendly useful cheap GNU/Linux office terminal, with very low support requirements and excellent software and capabilities. I will personally keep my FreeBSD and Slack for a while.
So does anyone else believe that this kernel configuration game is a good sign?
First, to the person who got +3 for insightful, yes this is not exactly 'news' in the sense that FreeBSD has long been known to inhabit the Hotmail servers. It is news in the sense that MS bashes opensource as 'dangerous' and the GPL as 'cancer', then make use of opensource code in their products and full opensource products in their services. The news here, to put it another way, is OSS isn't good enough for the general public, but it's good enough for MS, which indicates the low quality of MS products, services, and people. Not that OSS is low-quality, but quite the opposite - that it is high quality, and beats anything MS has come up with, and their low-quality establishment chooses to leech from it and then kick it in the face on the way out. BSD's TCP/IP code running on Windows 2000.... biting the hand that feeds you, anyone?
I was discussing this with my girlfriend the other day... saying I wouldn't be surprised if MS had incorporated code from OSS in their major products, and saying that any exposure of such activity would be some of the best public-relations material we anti-MS folks could ever have. This news item this morning put a large smile on my face and made my eyes water as I read the WSJ article. The last statement made in the article, while not news and simply opinion, was succinct enough to warrant a repeat: "Microsoft owns you." I can only chuckle and shake my head.
I disagree with the usage of the word 'altruism' - and with the concept. My small contributions to opensource, while gpl'd, have nothing at all to do with 'altruism'. I view altruism as one of the cardinal sins, as a giving-up of one's values with no guarantee of a return of value. One's life and work must be held as the highest values, because they are what can achieve the ultimate value - happiness. My reasons for contributing to opensource are as simple as 'giving back to those who have already given to me' - I'm paying back a debt, not trying to get others to repay my un-requested effort.
As for the value of the GPL - I absolutely LOVE the GPL.... although I prefer the BSD-style licensing in some cases. I like the idea of "if you're at home, use it for free - if you're at work, trying to use it in your money-making activities, pay me please because my effort helped you get paid". Generosity is fine, charity is not. I'll help someone change a flat tire for free, but I won't help them run their business for free.
UM COULD YOU STOP LOOKING FOR IT AT THE FIRST ADDRESS AND USE THIS????? /var/lib/apache/htdocs/lasernova.html
[Thu Jun 14 16:11:04 2001] [error] [client 12.111.37.145] File does not exist: /var/lib/apache/htdocs/lasernova.html
[Thu Jun 14 16:11:06 2001] [error] [client 12.111.37.145] File does not exist: /var/lib/apache/htdocs/lasernova.html
[Thu Jun 14 16:17:32 2001] [error] [client 64.122.5.99] File does not exist: /var/lib/apache/htdocs/lasernova.html
[Thu Jun 14 16:11:02 2001] [error] [client 12.111.37.145] File does not exist:
oops here's the addy: http://24.15.183.13/nova
That these guys are finally getting to do actual experimentation, perhaps sometime soon being able to tweak parameters to alter behaviors, to better test the theories. Observation of celestial activity will always be the predominant method of learning, but being able to recreate some of these events in the lab is a massive step forward. Up-close observation is something I never dreamed possible.
I don't know much about UNIVAC, but it's always nice to see where we've come from - so we can guage how far we've actually come, and where we might be going. It's a bit like watching Mir splash down, it shows us milestones and crucial events
'Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.' So spoke Miss Rand. What this means is that in order to be master of my own life, I must first understand the laws that govern it, and then use those laws to my own advantage. The laws of nature dictate that I must use the only weapon I have, my mind, to gather the tools necessary to preserve my survival. This means I will develop a spear and kill an animal to eat and to clothe myself, or in modern times, I will study harder and learn more and get a better job. It's all the same process, the same abstract, only the concretes of the situation are different. I do hunt, I do not feel guilty. I do succeed in business, I do not feel guilty. And there's absolutely no difference between the two.
... Nor a particularly surprising one. Why does this even qualify as news? It's something that made logical sense to me long ago. Think about it - there's a lot of meat, bone, fat, and hide on large mammals, and we needed those things in ever-increasing amounts. We didn't have agriculture or synthetic materials, where else would we get them? I don't get why this is news.
is a redneck bar in the south. My dad's business cards read:
" Connections - Rt. 5 East
SERVICES RENDERED
Labotamies * Mixed Drinks * Hair Cuts
Liquor Distilled * Brain Serguries * Auto Repair
Tooth Extractions * Child Births * Dictations
Civil Wars Started * Executions * Space Travel
Dogs Trained and Women Tamed
Willy D. Shrader, Owner - Operator - Bar Tender"
And of course all typographical errors are actually part of the card, and knowing dad, I can't say whether they were intentional or not.
That was my whole point - except I find the concept of MS backdooring wind0ze for the NSA to be ludicrous. My take on it was the humor and contradiction etc
Anyone remember the old NSAKey hidden in the Win95 registry? Remember all the conjecture about how it was some secret backdoor for the NSA to peer into foreign government computers? *chuckle* um all that was silly, and was never taken serious by anyone but idiots - but I found it amusing to consider the possibilities (regardless of their probability or lack thereof). Reminds me also of the recent /. item about the German gov't banning MS products due to the fact that it couldn't see source, thus couldn't guarantee the security of MS products. I find it amusing that the NSA has lower standards than the German gov't.
As for the guy who mentioned the forked Linux kernel the gov't deemed was necessary to provide for security - what you're forgetting here, guy, is that Linux kernel source is AVAILABLE while Win2k is NOT AVAILABLE - thus no forking is possible. And btw, if the source to Win2k were available, what do you think the chances are that the NSA would find it acceptable? Would they even bother forking, or just shrug and go Linux/BSD/etc totally instead?
An attempt at using the concept of 'eminent domain', which is a common excuse for governmental entities to seize control of legitimately-held private property. Take a look at Jacob Hornberger's work with the Future of Freedom Foundation, and take a look at Harry Brown's (Libertarian candidate for US President, '96 and 2000) running mate's record of fighting eminent domain in California for good reasons why the concept is flawed, immoral, unjust, corrupt, and intellectually bankrupt (if you need reasons other than your own, that is)