I'm not saying I don't run things in a test environment.
I'm just staying that when some new big patch or OS comes out, I don't rush to test it. Invariably, big patches will still have problems. I'll wait and let the dust settle for a couple weeks/months and let version x.1 come out. THEN I put it on test machines and see how it's going to work in my environment. Often things will appear to work and problems will only surface later... these are complex systems.
The only exception is that if the lack of patch or upgrade leaves our network severely vulnerable to a problem. In that case I'm more likely to push things along.
Actually, you CAN apply for my job. I'm leaving at the end of the month to get back to "civilization". Watch the papers in Newport, OR. If you like small towns, you'll love it there, plus it has the ocean. But don't go if you're looking for a date or spouse... you'll need to bring your own.
You have a point, but that still takes time. Unless I had a dire need to get SP2 tested and on my systems, I'd let the dust clear a bit. There will most likely be some problems, and I have other things I can be doing than test it now and then have to test it again later. I suppose that makes me a leech on the work of other harder-working people.
Yeah, but why rush to wreck them when you can let other people do it! If anything, it's a waste of time to test it when you can wait to find out problems may affect you. Hopefully the rest of your infrastructure is secure enough to weather another 2 weeks without SP2. If not, you have bigger problems!
The ultimate goal is to have them never leave the office.
Only to those unenlightened souls who believe that by spending more hours at the office you're getting more done. People simply aren't machines... they require more than just food, drink, and sleep.
Sadly, too many people believe in the concept you've brought up.
That's what I get for posting from work (not enough time to make a good repsonse). I started out working towards a BSEE. But after 2 years, I joined the army, learned Arabic, and when I got out, decided to get the BA in Mideast Studies. So, I wasn't completely non-technical. I had taken some physics, math, etc.
I also worked at the school, which helped, but I was not the only person who was able to get into this situation... so that's not the only factor.
But, in talking with my advisor, it had to do with accreditation. When the accrediting body goes through its process for undgraduate schools, things are very strict. The school will get penalized if they, for example, let a student take and get credit for "advanced physics" without taking the pre-reqs of calculus and "standard physics". This is why most undergraduate schools don't like to let people skip pre-reqs without a good, documentable, reason.
In graduate programs, though, the schools have a lot more lattitude. They can allow people to get credit for classes, even if they have not completed the pre-reqs. So, suppose you've worked for a company doing advanced research in radar. There's a good chance that you understand enough to take a class that might normally have "electricty & magnetism" as a pre-req. In the graduate program, it's more about what you can do - and what you want to accomplish in your program.
Now, keep in mind that the grad program at this school was not particularly competitive. You're not going to get into a MA Engineering program at Stanford without really good credentials. But you might have a better chance at a smaller local school.
In any case, everyone advised me that it is FAR better to get a masters degree, even if in another field, rather than get 2 bachelors. You may have to do a bunch of undergrad catch-up (which I still would have to do), but in the end, you'll take less course-work and all of it will be degree-related. In the end, you'll have a masters degree, which all else being equal, is a better qualification than just a bachelors, or even two bachelors.
You want to go for a masters degree. I have a BA in Middle East Studies and was going to start a Masters in Engineering. I was accepted then changed my mind to go for an MBA. (Engineers tend to be just high-paid general labor/FRUs any more.)
Now, you'll have to catch up stuff that you NEED, but you won't spend time on a lot of fluff. You may need some pre-reqs but what's funny is that accreditation is less strict for masters level stuff. So, if you can demonstrate that you can handle do the work in a 500 level "contol systems" class, they won't make you take diff-equ.
It seems to me that you cannot use the poster's "1 Australian Dollar is worth 70 to 80 US cents" to make a meaningful evaluation of a harddrive costing Australian $5999 at some time in the past.
To get a meaningful comparison, you'd either need to adjust the $5999 for inflation of the $Australian, THEN convert to dollars, OR convert the $Austrialian to $USD way back then, THEN adjust for the inflation of the $USD.
I'm not sure if you'll get the same results. I doubt that currency conversions and inflation rates are path-independent. Otherwise, arbitrage would seem to be possible.
So, suppose Joe decides to kill someone because they are black and hates blacks and Mike kills someone just because he thought it would be fun to do but doesn't give a shit about who it is.
Are you saying that Joe's crime is worse than Mike's?
Or suppose Bill is a white racist, lives in LA, and hates Mexicans. He's even written literature about it. But he's also a psychopath and decides just for kicks that he's going to kill the next 2 people he sees, regardless of who they are. He ends up killing a mexican and a white guy. Should he get more time for killing the mexican, even though this was a case of indescriminate killing?
We already incorporate motive into deciding what charges to apply.
It's dubious to decide that motives related to race are more important or deserve harsher treatment than other motives.
For me, using either Mozilla or Firefox, on both Windows 98 & XP and Suse 9.1 as well, sometimes the main body of Slashdot goes right over to the left hand side. The stuff that's normally on the left side sits on top of the main content.
Sure, you can go check to see if your vote appears to have been counted like you wanted. But how does that validate the integrity of the system? In a recount scenario, to get anything useful from this, you'd need to round up all the people who voted and have them present their receipts.
If electronic voting is to be used, the best way is to have one machine that helps you generate a machine and human readable ballot that is free of errors. You put this ballot in a box. Those ballots are then counted by another machine.
This approximates what we do now, but helps get rid of the problems of ballots not actually reflecting what people wanted to vote. That was the problem in Florida-2000.
Giving people a verifiable receipt only lets the voter go back home and do a big "doh!" when they realized they pushed the wrong button.
It's really simple. One machine has a touch screen with audio prompts, brail readers, etc. All it does is help you generate a ballot that indicates your actual voting desires. It doesn't count anything. It helps you generate a ballot and that's all.
You then take this printed ballot that is both human and machine readable (maybe using a font like you find on the numbers of your checks) and put it in a box. These ballots are now counted by another machine.
Now you have solved the problems that people were so concerned about in Florida: 1) confusing ballot forms are elminated 2) antiquated systems with chads and ballots that can degrade during a recount are eliminated
It's better than touch screen voting with a database because the process of creating the ballot and counting it are seperated. There is a paper ballot, and nobody has to trust the voting machine. The voter can look at the ballot and see if it says what they want it to. There is a "paper trail" of real ballots that can be manually counted.
If someone prints a ballot and doesn't put it in the box, it doesn't count... it's not a vote.
I thought that was called "political contributions"?!
It's so confusing. In one case you give money in exchange for favors. In the other, you get favors in exchange for giving money. I'm starting to see the difference now!
I wish I could remember his name. I saw a doctor on a local public access channel describe this problem.
You're a poor African and you break your arm. You go to your local NGO-run medical center to get help. They ask if you have AIDS. If you say "no", they tell you that if you don't have AIDS that they cannot treat you. So you say "yes", and they put you down as having "AIDS and broken arm". Now they can treat you.
He talked at length about the costs of the tests to properly diagnose HIV and AIDS. He said it wasludicrous to think that these governments are spending the large amounts of money necessary to actually diagnose AIDS cases.
Now this isn't to say they don't have an AIDS crisis in Africa. But I think AIDS is not their only problem, and giving them all condoms is not going to solve problems like lack of potable water.
I think the major problem with famine in these areas is that there is little water and the land is not very suitable for growing things. You can't grow much stuff if there's no water. It's a hard problem to solve, really.
And people wonder why most tech people do not recommend Dell. Frankly, they suck. Our school district switched from Dell to a no-name computer outfit. Sure, there are some teachers complain, because they see the Dell commercials and think they're better. I ask them to give me evidence that the Dell computer is better than our no-name brand. It never comes.... the "Dell Dude" does not count as a qualified source for computer information!
I love it when the Dell salespeople call and ask why we switched, and we tell them, "because your computers suck, and your service is even worse."
One of my marketing teachers spelled it out really well. You can always get away with cheating in a one-turn game. But when you have to keep playing, you eventually find that you can only cheat for a while before you finally get burned.
This isn't anyone voting with their wallet. It's the RIAA trying to foist old and virtually worthless inventory as a way of paying off their settlement.
This would be like someone successfully suing Elvis, but instead of paying money, they agree that he'll pay by sending personal items of memorabelia to libraries, schools, and museums. Then he ships out piles of used toilet paper. Sure there might be 3 people that want that, but most of the rest of us will see that it's worthless, and he's just dodging the settlement by shovelling off his shit.
What is wrong with it? It's just another way the media is trivializing the institution of marriage.
How dare you! Only Gays can trivialize and demean marriage by wanting to have it, just like *normal* people. Everything in the media sanctifies marriage.. only those homosexuals have the power to threaten the institution of marriage.
They're probably in it with the aliens. And don't you forget it!
he GPL only kicks in when you DISTRIBUTE your modifications.
My thoughts exactly. Now suppose someone like Sveasoft wants to have beta testers of their product, and to become one, you pay $49. You're now part of the club and maybe could be considered part of the organization.
So, they send you binaries to test. Are you considered internal to the organization now? Or is this an external distribution? If it's the former, they may not have to give you the source at all. And if they do give you the source, they could "kick you out of the club" if you chose to distribute that source that is in beta form. If it's the latter, then what actually constitutes "in-house" vs a public distribution?
This issue will be of interest to many businesses considering working with FLOSS as part of their business model. Many could be uncomfortable with not-quite-finished versions of their software gaining world-wide distribution, especially when their name is attached to it. By forcing them to distribute source to their beta-versions, they really lose the ability to beta test with any more people than are actual employees. Losing beta testing could be a factor to decide against adopting FLOSS.
On the other hand, by allowing beta "in-house" distributions, there is the risk of being perpetually in beta. Here, if someone wants the software at all, they put their name on a web form to become a "member". The software never exits "beta" and they never have to distribute their source code changes.
I agree it's a weak example. But slavery is not my point. I probably shouldn't have picked on Walmart either.
The point I'm trying to make is that companies will only be as ethical as the people they are accountable to. That is the government, shareholders, and customers. As a group, the customers have the most strength, but not so much as individuals.
The government has the strongest effect as an entity, as it has the force of law. But it also sets a pretty low bar for ethical behavior.
The shareholders may be able to vote, but individual members have little effect unless they own a lot of shares. Those with ethical concerns about the company probably will chose to sell their shares if they don't have a strong enough voice for change.
Customers as a group have a strong effect on the ethical behavior of the company, even though individual costomers have little effect at all. En masse, the customers can compel a company to change its operations and strive to be more ethical. Look at how Nike is working to improve conditions in the factories it contracts with. Everyone I know at Nike are nice people, but I imagine that things would not have changed without the large outcry from customers.
So, while using slavery as an example was not a solid way to make my point, I think the point is still valid.
As long as the customers don't care how they get a good deal, then the companies that sell them their products have little ethical incentive to make a change. Without an industry-wide push for ethics, then a company striving for more tethical behavior will be undercut by its less ethical competitors. Only with a large enough customer base that values ethics can a company be more ethical than its competitors and survive in the long term.
But ultimately, if the customers, as a group, chose to purchase from companies who act in unethical ways, then they too are complicit in the unethical behavior. Many chose to simply remain ignorant than have to make difficult decisions that mean they may have to pay more for less-tainted/taint-free products.
But, please don't paint me as a radical. I choose not to identify with any political party and strive to take positions based on the facts I can find, on each issue I'm faced with. I find, though, that I tend towards the libertarian, but I also believe there are certain economic truths that make certain social programs desirable.
For example, suppose you have a lot of unemployed people. You can: 1) ignore them 2) give them money (welfare) 3) invest in their eduction and the economy to build new jobs 4) kick them out of town/state/country 5) simply kill them
Each, though, has a cost: 1) they will probably turn to crime. You now have paid in whatever they have damaged, and in the costs to prosecute and put them in prison. Property values probably go down too. 2) costs are self-evident 3) costs are self-evident 4) you have to pay to transport them and set up a guard-force to keep them out 5) executioner costs, and difficult to measure costs in the impact on the moral fiber of the community
In all 4 cases there is a cost to bear. It's a matter of picking the one that has the least cost and is most just. So, for me, I'd lean towards 3.
No I didn't say that, or didn't mean to. And I probably was not writing as clearly as I was thinking.
What I was trying to expres was: 1) some people claim that China uses slave labor in the form of political prisoners forced to work 2) Walmart imports a lot of Chinese-made products (which may or may not be made by these people) 3) many Americans like to buy the cheaper products at Walmart and enjoy the deal they get.
If 1 is true, then 3 is bad. But, most Americans are comfortable with not knowing, or even investigating the claim in 1.
A similar chain can be made for oil or diamonds. For example, oil companies have been known to use voilence in Nigeria to keep workers in line, as well as polluting the environment in ways that would not be tolerated in the US. Yet, that oil may possibly be sold in the US. The practices used by the oil company in Nigeria means the oil is cheaper, which means the gas is cheaper. Americans like cheap gas and probably don't want to know who has suffered to bring the gas to them at that price.
In some cases, people find out and don't want to burry their heads in the sand. The "blood diamonds" issue is an example. Enough people realized what was happening in parts of the industry and demanded change.
So, no, I'm not saying that Walmart uses slave labor, but I am saying that end-user consumers can often benefit from practices in the supply chain that they would not condone.
The bad thing is that these end-users do not want to know about the bad practices. The good thing is that often, when enough of them find out, they do actually do something about it.
They required too much maintenance that normal vending people didn't want to deal with. The oil goes bad after a certain amount of time and puts of a terrible smell as well. It has to be replaced and the average vending maintainer doesn't want to deal with vats of oil and such.
I think they were also expensive to run. You not only have to keep the oil hot, you have to keep the fries frozen.
Then, you still have to wait a minute for them to come out. Most Americans, sadly, won't wait a minute for their fast food to come out!
Of course, re: ethics, the consumer base has shown repeatedly that it really doesn't care about how companies act. Sure, there are a few anti-Exxon/Microsoft/Union Carbide folks out there, but those companies jst keep making money hand over fist.
Sadly, that's more a condemnation of our society, rather than just the companies. If people did care, or cared to even know about these things, then they wouldn't let these companies get away with it. People cry about slave-labor in China, but head off to Walmart, thrilled about the great deal they just got on the socks they bought... that were made in China. I don't believe that most people would condone slave labor, but I think most people don't want to think about it. Ignorance is blissful. It's very troubling to know how bad the world can be.
We're making progress, but it's slow. Look at the environmental restrictions that we have on companies that didn't exist 100 years ago. Enough people said that it was important that companies not pollute the environment - thereby pushing costs off on the populace as a whole.
Because the defining purpose of any public corporation is to maximize profit for the shareholders, then by definition all public corporations behave unethically.
It's actually to maximize value rather than profit.
A company can sell all of its assets and fire all its employees and they'll show great profits for that quarter. Unfortunatley they did not maintain the value of the company.
Acting unethically has an impact on the value of a company, but only as much as the society and pool of potential investors estimate that value. A company can only act as unethically as the society will allow.
This guy is saying "what if the GPL code from Linux was used in SCO?"
He then asks if that would mean that the rest of SCO's code would be brought under the GPL because they knowingly used GPL code in their code.
My guess is that if this is, in fact, the case, then SCO would have to remove the GPL code, possibly pay some damages to the copyright holders, or release their affected work under the GPL.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not saying I don't run things in a test environment.
I'm just staying that when some new big patch or OS comes out, I don't rush to test it. Invariably, big patches will still have problems. I'll wait and let the dust settle for a couple weeks/months and let version x.1 come out. THEN I put it on test machines and see how it's going to work in my environment. Often things will appear to work and problems will only surface later... these are complex systems.
The only exception is that if the lack of patch or upgrade leaves our network severely vulnerable to a problem. In that case I'm more likely to push things along.
Actually, you CAN apply for my job. I'm leaving at the end of the month to get back to "civilization". Watch the papers in Newport, OR. If you like small towns, you'll love it there, plus it has the ocean. But don't go if you're looking for a date or spouse... you'll need to bring your own.
You have a point, but that still takes time. Unless I had a dire need to get SP2 tested and on my systems, I'd let the dust clear a bit. There will most likely be some problems, and I have other things I can be doing than test it now and then have to test it again later. I suppose that makes me a leech on the work of other harder-working people.
Yeah, but why rush to wreck them when you can let other people do it! If anything, it's a waste of time to test it when you can wait to find out problems may affect you. Hopefully the rest of your infrastructure is secure enough to weather another 2 weeks without SP2. If not, you have bigger problems!
The ultimate goal is to have them never leave the office.
Only to those unenlightened souls who believe that by spending more hours at the office you're getting more done. People simply aren't machines... they require more than just food, drink, and sleep.
Sadly, too many people believe in the concept you've brought up.
That's what I get for posting from work (not enough time to make a good repsonse). I started out working towards a BSEE. But after 2 years, I joined the army, learned Arabic, and when I got out, decided to get the BA in Mideast Studies. So, I wasn't completely non-technical. I had taken some physics, math, etc.
I also worked at the school, which helped, but I was not the only person who was able to get into this situation... so that's not the only factor.
But, in talking with my advisor, it had to do with accreditation. When the accrediting body goes through its process for undgraduate schools, things are very strict. The school will get penalized if they, for example, let a student take and get credit for "advanced physics" without taking the pre-reqs of calculus and "standard physics". This is why most undergraduate schools don't like to let people skip pre-reqs without a good, documentable, reason.
In graduate programs, though, the schools have a lot more lattitude. They can allow people to get credit for classes, even if they have not completed the pre-reqs. So, suppose you've worked for a company doing advanced research in radar. There's a good chance that you understand enough to take a class that might normally have "electricty & magnetism" as a pre-req. In the graduate program, it's more about what you can do - and what you want to accomplish in your program.
Now, keep in mind that the grad program at this school was not particularly competitive. You're not going to get into a MA Engineering program at Stanford without really good credentials. But you might have a better chance at a smaller local school.
In any case, everyone advised me that it is FAR better to get a masters degree, even if in another field, rather than get 2 bachelors. You may have to do a bunch of undergrad catch-up (which I still would have to do), but in the end, you'll take less course-work and all of it will be degree-related. In the end, you'll have a masters degree, which all else being equal, is a better qualification than just a bachelors, or even two bachelors.
You want to go for a masters degree. I have a BA in Middle East Studies and was going to start a Masters in Engineering. I was accepted then changed my mind to go for an MBA. (Engineers tend to be just high-paid general labor/FRUs any more.)
Now, you'll have to catch up stuff that you NEED, but you won't spend time on a lot of fluff. You may need some pre-reqs but what's funny is that accreditation is less strict for masters level stuff. So, if you can demonstrate that you can handle do the work in a 500 level "contol systems" class, they won't make you take diff-equ.
It seems to me that you cannot use the poster's "1 Australian Dollar is worth 70 to 80 US cents" to make a meaningful evaluation of a harddrive costing Australian $5999 at some time in the past.
To get a meaningful comparison, you'd either need to adjust the $5999 for inflation of the $Australian, THEN convert to dollars, OR convert the $Austrialian to $USD way back then, THEN adjust for the inflation of the $USD.
I'm not sure if you'll get the same results. I doubt that currency conversions and inflation rates are path-independent. Otherwise, arbitrage would seem to be possible.
Any economists out there?
So, suppose Joe decides to kill someone because they are black and hates blacks and Mike kills someone just because he thought it would be fun to do but doesn't give a shit about who it is.
Are you saying that Joe's crime is worse than Mike's?
Or suppose Bill is a white racist, lives in LA, and hates Mexicans. He's even written literature about it. But he's also a psychopath and decides just for kicks that he's going to kill the next 2 people he sees, regardless of who they are. He ends up killing a mexican and a white guy. Should he get more time for killing the mexican, even though this was a case of indescriminate killing?
We already incorporate motive into deciding what charges to apply.
It's dubious to decide that motives related to race are more important or deserve harsher treatment than other motives.
For me, using either Mozilla or Firefox, on both Windows 98 & XP and Suse 9.1 as well, sometimes the main body of Slashdot goes right over to the left hand side. The stuff that's normally on the left side sits on top of the main content.
Hitting refresh 2 or 3 times usually fixes it.
But what's the real benefit of a voter receipt?
Sure, you can go check to see if your vote appears to have been counted like you wanted. But how does that validate the integrity of the system? In a recount scenario, to get anything useful from this, you'd need to round up all the people who voted and have them present their receipts.
If electronic voting is to be used, the best way is to have one machine that helps you generate a machine and human readable ballot that is free of errors. You put this ballot in a box. Those ballots are then counted by another machine.
This approximates what we do now, but helps get rid of the problems of ballots not actually reflecting what people wanted to vote. That was the problem in Florida-2000.
Giving people a verifiable receipt only lets the voter go back home and do a big "doh!" when they realized they pushed the wrong button.
It's really simple. One machine has a touch screen with audio prompts, brail readers, etc. All it does is help you generate a ballot that indicates your actual voting desires. It doesn't count anything. It helps you generate a ballot and that's all.
You then take this printed ballot that is both human and machine readable (maybe using a font like you find on the numbers of your checks) and put it in a box. These ballots are now counted by another machine.
Now you have solved the problems that people were so concerned about in Florida:
1) confusing ballot forms are elminated
2) antiquated systems with chads and ballots that can degrade during a recount are eliminated
It's better than touch screen voting with a database because the process of creating the ballot and counting it are seperated. There is a paper ballot, and nobody has to trust the voting machine. The voter can look at the ballot and see if it says what they want it to. There is a "paper trail" of real ballots that can be manually counted.
If someone prints a ballot and doesn't put it in the box, it doesn't count... it's not a vote.
I thought that was called "political contributions"?!
It's so confusing. In one case you give money in exchange for favors. In the other, you get favors in exchange for giving money. I'm starting to see the difference now!
I wish I could remember his name. I saw a doctor on a local public access channel describe this problem.
You're a poor African and you break your arm. You go to your local NGO-run medical center to get help. They ask if you have AIDS. If you say "no", they tell you that if you don't have AIDS that they cannot treat you. So you say "yes", and they put you down as having "AIDS and broken arm". Now they can treat you.
He talked at length about the costs of the tests to properly diagnose HIV and AIDS. He said it wasludicrous to think that these governments are spending the large amounts of money necessary to actually diagnose AIDS cases.
Now this isn't to say they don't have an AIDS crisis in Africa. But I think AIDS is not their only problem, and giving them all condoms is not going to solve problems like lack of potable water.
I think the major problem with famine in these areas is that there is little water and the land is not very suitable for growing things. You can't grow much stuff if there's no water. It's a hard problem to solve, really.
And people wonder why most tech people do not recommend Dell. Frankly, they suck. Our school district switched from Dell to a no-name computer outfit. Sure, there are some teachers complain, because they see the Dell commercials and think they're better. I ask them to give me evidence that the Dell computer is better than our no-name brand. It never comes.... the "Dell Dude" does not count as a qualified source for computer information!
I love it when the Dell salespeople call and ask why we switched, and we tell them, "because your computers suck, and your service is even worse."
One of my marketing teachers spelled it out really well. You can always get away with cheating in a one-turn game. But when you have to keep playing, you eventually find that you can only cheat for a while before you finally get burned.
This isn't anyone voting with their wallet. It's the RIAA trying to foist old and virtually worthless inventory as a way of paying off their settlement.
This would be like someone successfully suing Elvis, but instead of paying money, they agree that he'll pay by sending personal items of memorabelia to libraries, schools, and museums. Then he ships out piles of used toilet paper. Sure there might be 3 people that want that, but most of the rest of us will see that it's worthless, and he's just dodging the settlement by shovelling off his shit.
We already *have* freeways. Traffic engineers should work on slowing cars on surface streets.
Don't worry... they are! Search for "Traffic Calming" and you'll find things like:
http://www.trafficcalming.org/
http://www.ite.org/traffic/
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/tcalm/
What is wrong with it? It's just another way the media is trivializing the institution of marriage.
How dare you! Only Gays can trivialize and demean marriage by wanting to have it, just like *normal* people. Everything in the media sanctifies marriage.. only those homosexuals have the power to threaten the institution of marriage.
They're probably in it with the aliens. And don't you forget it!
he GPL only kicks in when you DISTRIBUTE your modifications.
My thoughts exactly. Now suppose someone like Sveasoft wants to have beta testers of their product, and to become one, you pay $49. You're now part of the club and maybe could be considered part of the organization.
So, they send you binaries to test. Are you considered internal to the organization now? Or is this an external distribution? If it's the former, they may not have to give you the source at all. And if they do give you the source, they could "kick you out of the club" if you chose to distribute that source that is in beta form. If it's the latter, then what actually constitutes "in-house" vs a public distribution?
This issue will be of interest to many businesses considering working with FLOSS as part of their business model. Many could be uncomfortable with not-quite-finished versions of their software gaining world-wide distribution, especially when their name is attached to it. By forcing them to distribute source to their beta-versions, they really lose the ability to beta test with any more people than are actual employees. Losing beta testing could be a factor to decide against adopting FLOSS.
On the other hand, by allowing beta "in-house" distributions, there is the risk of being perpetually in beta. Here, if someone wants the software at all, they put their name on a web form to become a "member". The software never exits "beta" and they never have to distribute their source code changes.
I agree it's a weak example. But slavery is not my point. I probably shouldn't have picked on Walmart either.
The point I'm trying to make is that companies will only be as ethical as the people they are accountable to. That is the government, shareholders, and customers. As a group, the customers have the most strength, but not so much as individuals.
The government has the strongest effect as an entity, as it has the force of law. But it also sets a pretty low bar for ethical behavior.
The shareholders may be able to vote, but individual members have little effect unless they own a lot of shares. Those with ethical concerns about the company probably will chose to sell their shares if they don't have a strong enough voice for change.
Customers as a group have a strong effect on the ethical behavior of the company, even though individual costomers have little effect at all. En masse, the customers can compel a company to change its operations and strive to be more ethical. Look at how Nike is working to improve conditions in the factories it contracts with. Everyone I know at Nike are nice people, but I imagine that things would not have changed without the large outcry from customers.
So, while using slavery as an example was not a solid way to make my point, I think the point is still valid.
As long as the customers don't care how they get a good deal, then the companies that sell them their products have little ethical incentive to make a change. Without an industry-wide push for ethics, then a company striving for more tethical behavior will be undercut by its less ethical competitors. Only with a large enough customer base that values ethics can a company be more ethical than its competitors and survive in the long term.
But ultimately, if the customers, as a group, chose to purchase from companies who act in unethical ways, then they too are complicit in the unethical behavior. Many chose to simply remain ignorant than have to make difficult decisions that mean they may have to pay more for less-tainted/taint-free products.
But, please don't paint me as a radical. I choose not to identify with any political party and strive to take positions based on the facts I can find, on each issue I'm faced with. I find, though, that I tend towards the libertarian, but I also believe there are certain economic truths that make certain social programs desirable.
For example, suppose you have a lot of unemployed people. You can:
1) ignore them
2) give them money (welfare)
3) invest in their eduction and the economy to build new jobs
4) kick them out of town/state/country
5) simply kill them
Each, though, has a cost:
1) they will probably turn to crime. You now have paid in whatever they have damaged, and in the costs to prosecute and put them in prison. Property values probably go down too.
2) costs are self-evident
3) costs are self-evident
4) you have to pay to transport them and set up a guard-force to keep them out
5) executioner costs, and difficult to measure costs in the impact on the moral fiber of the community
In all 4 cases there is a cost to bear. It's a matter of picking the one that has the least cost and is most just. So, for me, I'd lean towards 3.
Now I'm way off-topic!
No I didn't say that, or didn't mean to. And I probably was not writing as clearly as I was thinking.
What I was trying to expres was:
1) some people claim that China uses slave labor in the form of political prisoners forced to work
2) Walmart imports a lot of Chinese-made products (which may or may not be made by these people)
3) many Americans like to buy the cheaper products at Walmart and enjoy the deal they get.
If 1 is true, then 3 is bad. But, most Americans are comfortable with not knowing, or even investigating the claim in 1.
A similar chain can be made for oil or diamonds. For example, oil companies have been known to use voilence in Nigeria to keep workers in line, as well as polluting the environment in ways that would not be tolerated in the US. Yet, that oil may possibly be sold in the US. The practices used by the oil company in Nigeria means the oil is cheaper, which means the gas is cheaper. Americans like cheap gas and probably don't want to know who has suffered to bring the gas to them at that price.
In some cases, people find out and don't want to burry their heads in the sand. The "blood diamonds" issue is an example. Enough people realized what was happening in parts of the industry and demanded change.
So, no, I'm not saying that Walmart uses slave labor, but I am saying that end-user consumers can often benefit from practices in the supply chain that they would not condone.
The bad thing is that these end-users do not want to know about the bad practices. The good thing is that often, when enough of them find out, they do actually do something about it.
They required too much maintenance that normal vending people didn't want to deal with. The oil goes bad after a certain amount of time and puts of a terrible smell as well. It has to be replaced and the average vending maintainer doesn't want to deal with vats of oil and such.
I think they were also expensive to run. You not only have to keep the oil hot, you have to keep the fries frozen.
Then, you still have to wait a minute for them to come out. Most Americans, sadly, won't wait a minute for their fast food to come out!
Of course, re: ethics, the consumer base has shown repeatedly that it really doesn't care about how companies act. Sure, there are a few anti-Exxon/Microsoft/Union Carbide folks out there, but those companies jst keep making money hand over fist.
Sadly, that's more a condemnation of our society, rather than just the companies. If people did care, or cared to even know about these things, then they wouldn't let these companies get away with it. People cry about slave-labor in China, but head off to Walmart, thrilled about the great deal they just got on the socks they bought... that were made in China. I don't believe that most people would condone slave labor, but I think most people don't want to think about it. Ignorance is blissful. It's very troubling to know how bad the world can be.
We're making progress, but it's slow. Look at the environmental restrictions that we have on companies that didn't exist 100 years ago. Enough people said that it was important that companies not pollute the environment - thereby pushing costs off on the populace as a whole.
Because the defining purpose of any public corporation is to maximize profit for the shareholders, then by definition all public corporations behave unethically.
It's actually to maximize value rather than profit.
A company can sell all of its assets and fire all its employees and they'll show great profits for that quarter. Unfortunatley they did not maintain the value of the company.
Acting unethically has an impact on the value of a company, but only as much as the society and pool of potential investors estimate that value. A company can only act as unethically as the society will allow.
This guy is saying "what if the GPL code from Linux was used in SCO?"
He then asks if that would mean that the rest of SCO's code would be brought under the GPL because they knowingly used GPL code in their code.
My guess is that if this is, in fact, the case, then SCO would have to remove the GPL code, possibly pay some damages to the copyright holders, or release their affected work under the GPL.