However, a HS kid might not want a difficult job at $6/hr, maybe they want an easy job at $4/hr. However, minimum wage makes that illegal.
There are a whole slew of UNSKILLED jobs with very low pay.
If you're not able to produce anything worthwhile, you're going to just talk yourself out of a job if you raise the minimum wage. And if raising the minimum wage does help you, it just displaces other workers who the company no longer find it profitable to hire. I don't see how any of this is helpful.
Yes, I am a capitalist (although not an absolute capitalist). I don't have a problem with providing aid, but I do have a problem with manipulating the market. Economists know that the former is much more cost effective.
I'm not entirely sure that I follow you about the pills. Anyway...
If $40/hr becomes "the going rate", than that just means inflation. Inflation is good for established people with a mortgage, and bad for renters. I don't see how that helps your argument.
There is a problem. The solution is not to manipulate the economy. If someone needs it, pay them aid, don't sell them on a false solution.
Hey, my dad never paid me $10/hour to help him build a fence. I got $100 for like 50 hours of "work", and I was happy about it. I didn't do anything too useful, so why would my dad pay me $600?
The great thing about working for little is that people have low expectations. That's exactly what I wanted: low expectations. If you're being paid pratically nothing, than it doesn't matter if you take a break or show up late.
I get your point, but I'm not talking about $10 to watch the neighbor's dog or something; that's a one-time shot. When you get into a few hundred dollars, than most people would care whether something is actually being accomplished wihtout necessarily being called "cheap".
"Darn near" is still above minimum wage, and last I checked, those earning minimum wage are taxed as well.
Not only that, for those who are in trouble, you provide real solutions, not free lunch solutions that just muscle out other people into a position of the REAL minimum wage: zero.
A real solution is to pick out the "bamboozled" people and provide them with aid. For many in need, the small boost will get them back on their feet. Raising minimum wage helps many who don't need it (HS kids living with their parents in affluent communities), and hurts many who desperately do need the aid.
Remember, the REAL minimum wage is zero, and nobody can change that. In a down economy or when things just go wrong for someone (because of Enron, et al), raising the minimum wage is a fake solution. There is no free lunch.
Economists know it's much more cost effective to just provide aid to people than to try to manipulate the economy favoring those who you think need it.
Education is expensive, it doesn't particularly surprise me that it's difficult for you to work hard enough to pay for your living expenses and your education, all in the time you have after school.
But, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Why should the retailer be unable to hire you at a low wage because of your personal circumstances? Should we say that they have to pay you more than someone with fewer responsibilities? And furthermore, it's not uncommon, nor is it particularly heart-wrenching, for a 20 year old to be living with his parents as he attends college. Many of my friends do that.
Some people's parents save for their kids' college years precisely because of the difficult situation you're talking about, so they can support you living at home or pay for you to live elsewhere.
Everyone is in a different situation. If you feel that it's necessary to help others in your position, perhaps legislators could institute some means tests and social aid. Why should we pretend that minimum wage solves the problem? Many people who don't need it are helped under that policy, and many that desperately need it are not (because of fewer available job positions due to higher labor prices).
Social aid should be used to help those who find themselves in a difficult financial state. We should not implement policies like "minimum wage" (a misnomer if I've ever heard one; the minimum wage is always precisely zero and can't be any higher no matter how many congressmen you know) and "universal health care" and call them social aid, because they're not social aid. They are efforts to expand the powers of government. Often a politician starts talking about a bad situation with which we can all empathize, then starts talking about social aid (and most of us are still in agreement), and then all of a sudden he starts talking about a "right" to a high wage or a "right" to health care for everyone. What that really means is that we are no longer talking about providing assistance to exceptional cases, but are now talking about changing the system for everyone.
Most would consider me a strong conservative, but I really don't mind allowing the government to confiscate a moderate amount of money to help those in need. What I mind is when they invent a new "right" and then socialize entire industries (medicine, retirement, and the labor market). If you need help we help you and move on. We don't try to continuously rewrite the rules in the middle of the game for every person on the planet.
It is much better for these low-wage companies to go out of business than to have them pay something very low.
What's wrong with hiring a kid to help build a fence on a weekend and paying them little? The kid has few responsibilities, and isn't accomplishing very much. He'd also be happy to get the money.
What's wrong with hiring a highschool student to do low-wage work as he lives with his parents? $4.00 an hour might pay for all the gas & food he needs.
The thing about minimum wage is that you're assuming that it's a career position, when in truth it's often a passing job on the way to bigger and better things. It's not good when young people have no opportunity to work a low-level job. How are they supposed to get experience and become more responsible?
Instead, young people can't find a low-responsibility, low-pay job. So, they just don't work. Then, when they're expected to be independent, they have no job experience at all, they just have a High School degree, which is worth about as much as the paper it's printed on (as far as representing knowledge and responsibility).
Thanks for the advice, it's helpful. I wasn't making the clockspeed mistake, I understand that slower clockspeeds can be faster.
The reason I compared it to my laptop was because I wouldn't mind accepting the lower performance/price ratio if I got something that was as fast as my laptop and as quiet. Of course, I prefer the expandibility of a desktop (right now I've got two video cards and three HDs, which won't fit in a laptop).
Anyway, it sounds like the 2600+ could be a good chip. I'll probably buy one of those, plus a new power supply and fan, and see if the noise level comes down. If I need a new mobo, that will be somewhat annoying, but I gotta do what I gotta do.
I just get really frustrated going to the store a million times and everything seems to claim to be quiet or cool. I probably have a cheap motherboard (or low-quality rather) also, which could be causing some of my problems. Anything I do takes an entire day and might or might not help. And it's not exactly as though I have tough performance requirements if I just want it to be as good as a thinkpad I bought.
Right now my box is working basically like I want it to running a 2200+ from a functionality standpoint.
However, I have two problems: (1) Noise. I can hear my computer from downstairs. I have one of those thermaltake fans with a variable resistor knob that you can hang out the back, and even at the lowest fan speed it's loud. (2) Performance. My computer is much slower than a pentium laptop I bought (1.4ghz pentium M I think). And it's much, much, slower than any pentium server I have used. When I boot my computer, it shows 1500+, although I can up the clockspeed to make it say 1800+. It's unstable at the higher clockspeed (slightly). At neither speed is it even comparable to any recent pentium I've used (including my laptop).
My laptop is silent. What I really want is my desktop to be quiet and well performing without anything crazy (I don't want to buy a water cooling system or anything like that). I don't mind getting a new mobo, fan, and proc, but I don't want to move everything to a new case if I can avoid it.
What should I get? I'll give AMD another go if people really do vouch for it, but I would also try a pentium.
Clearly, in my mind, it can be done since all I really want is my laptop with better video cards.
First off, the desire is not for it to be public domain, it is for it to be Free as in speech. There is a difference. (probably just a slip, but it needs correcting).
Calling this a correction is condescending. I merely posed it as an option, because if I said "free software" it means different things to different people. Is BSD free software? I think it is. Maybe it's not to you.
I chose the term "public domain" specifically because it seems reasonable to me that, as long as people are paying real money, that legal ownership should be transferred to the people, i.e. copyright. There exist many options of course: BSD, GPL, and public domain being several.
Who decided that the "desire" was not for it to be in public domain? I would be content with the public domain. The U.S. Constituion is in the public domain, as are Shakespeare's works, and those seem free enough to me. Although it's debatable, most likely sometime in the future all GPL works will be in the public domain due to copyright time limits (yeah, I know I'm asking for it there, but I would consider it "most likely" that a copyright, somewhere, will expire before the Sun explodes).
Now if you want to be productive and start a GPL pool, that's great. However, a lot of potential donations will be forgone, because it would not be in as many people's interests, which is what I was referring to in the post. If you actually wanted this to work, you need to be compromising and inclusive, which very well could be BSD or public domain.
A society determines how much money it wants to allocate to law enforement. If you're worried about an insufficient police force, you pay more money for officers. I think it's a pretty clear money issue.
Your argument seems to be that if they don't pay the money necessary to handle the delays that officers face, we could be faced with a larger problem and I agree. However, any way you look at it it's all on the taxpayers, and I don't feel sorry for the officer in a delay situation because he's still getting paid.
Also, you seem to make a distinction between police and citizens, as though police are military. They are not, and you should not treat them as such. They are citizens we trust to investigate and arbitrate (to an extent) problems that occur. They are not a military force (even if they act like it at times).
The only distinction that I intended to make is that officers are trained and trusted, and therefore held to a higher standard. I made an analogy to doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals who are also citizens, but held to a higher standard.
Well, they gotta learn sometime. I don't think it's good that stupid people can be exploited. Unfortunately, since their stupidity is given, no policy in place could possibly protect them. So, I don't like it either, but what do we do? I think the greater question is what can we do to change the incentives away from police picking on kids for BS crimes, and give them more incentives to prevent worse crimes?
Well, that again is in the eye of the beholder: some people consider selling drugs to be like murder.
Police officer has to be one of the most thankless jobs around. These people take their lives in to their own hands with every traffic stop, every domestic abuse call, every bar fight, etc.
I agree. However, to become a cop you accept a higher level of responsibility. If you're a citizen, and you kill someone in self defense, there aren't any problems. If you're an officer, people immediately question whether deadly force was required, and whether the officer followed every procedure properly from the start, and whether the officer had neglected trainning that may have ended the situation peacefully.
Is it a double standard? Yes, of course, as it should be. We are empowering these armed individuals, with our own tax dollars, to enforce the law against ourselves. They better follow procedure. They better be well trained and alert. We hold surgeons to a different standard because we need to trust them. When they violate that trust, that's a serious problem. Citizens can go about their lives normally and all we ask in a self defense case is "did they THINK their life was in danger and did they THINK that the only way to avoid it was to use deadly force?". That doesn't cut it with cops, sorry. People can make mistakes, surgeons and lawyers and cops CAN'T.
These high law enforcement standards we hold are more valuable than the supposed reduced crime you might get from unaccountable officers.
Oh, and nobody can waste an officer's time. They can only waste taxpayer money. The officer is being paid, so as far as he's concerened, he's working no matter how many delays he's faced with.
Asking for ID should be perfectly legal and fine, just like it's legal to ask if you can search someone's house. But when they refuse, take a hike unless you've got probable cause. There better be some real CHARGES.
However, the perception is that java is largely a free, open platform. And that perception is largely accurate.
In the article the question is raised: why has nobody created a free java platform? One answer is that it's a deep platform and expensive to build and maintain. However, look at GNU/Linux and FreeBSD, which are even larger. So why no free java? Because it's already free enough for most people. Sun has reached a compromise (gasp!).
Linux and FreeBSD are answers to something like windows or propretary UNIX, which aren't anywhere near a compromise in terms of freedom. So it was much more critical.
Maybe it's good for Sun to open java more. It's definitely better for the community (and how could you argue otherwise?), but Sun needs to look out for itself to a degree. And don't think for a second that it's an "evil company" or something.
If 10% of the people who want java open donated 10% of the increased usefulness of java being open to Sun, java would be bought into the public domain in no time. So, don't blame Sun.
Perhaps what we need is a little organization. If someone started a fund to buy Java into the public domain, or buy sun engineers to maintain an open java implementation and standard, I'd donate. I don't even use java, but I figure it would benefit me indirectly enough to make it worthwhile. Of course, we need real organization, I want to either see java be open or my money again, one or the other.
I didn't say Java couldn't do it, but rather that Java has enough by itself to be independent, whereas python pretty much requires working with C. It's the exception rather than the rule when you need to use C in Java, but I never said it couldn't be done.
It seems to me that the main difference between Java and languages like python/perl is that python and perl still depend on C for many tasks (perhaps python more than perl). Java is not meant to be used with C, but meant to be completely independent.
When I need compatibility with something, or some feature avilable only in C, or when I need speed or tight memory for a routine, I use a C module. So python is still heavily dependent on C, unless you're just scripting.
That problem was already solved. Split the offending company into two. Bush intervened before it actually happened.
I don't buy that solution. I don't think it would help anyone. A lot of people have theories, but nobody really knows.
While a small amount of free software is good. If the amount of free software increased to say, 50%, software, as a profession, would disappear.
And fusion reactors would destroy the coal-mining profession. I think free software helps people, including me, so I might send patches if I see a problem. I send a patch, the maintainer gets free coding, I get free maintanence. We both benefit by using a better product for our application. Since marginal cost is so low, we can get many people involved, and before you know it, we have a professional maintanence team, and professional coders all working together, all for their own benefit, all getting free work from everyone else.
No altruism required. Just add water. Somehow that model ends up putting me as a professional coder, even though I might not be paid directly for the code I write. I write a little code, and trade it for a lot of code. I benefit.
Heck, I could write 0 code, and trade it for a lot of existing code. But in many situations, writing a little code can improve the product enough that just the benefit that you get makes it worthwhile.
I don't understand why everyone is out hunting for an OSS "model" all the time. IBM has figured it out. It's right there in front of us all. We don't sell code. It's the same reason we speak to eachother. It's similar to bouncing ideas off on another.
And who ends up getting punished? A bunch of shareholders who really didn't understand what was happening. Nobody is going to avoid the stock of a company because they are worried about the company's anti-competitive behavior. Nobody can really tell except for the victim (e.g. Netscape, Sun, whoever) until long after it's done. Too many industry-specific technical nuances.
As for the remedies, that's a fair point. Maybe someone thinks that if they break MS in two than everything will magically work out. I disagree. One thing that seems a lot more effective to me is to get busy making a better product.
And, yes, people do use better products sometimes. All the "market power" that MS has can't force me to run windows, which I have running maybe 1% of the time I'm running GNU/Linux, on one machine of about 10. People are getting the idea, and as free software really does overtake windows in desktop usability (for the average person), so will its market share.
I don't really like anti-anti-competitive laws, but let's assume for a second they are good.
What do you propose that we do? As long as we're talking about realistic behavior, nobody is ever going to be deterred from buying stock because they think the company is anti-competitive, and are worried about the government coming in. It's so difficult for an investor to determine. Investors only have a limited amount of information, and you'd have to expect the average investor to be an antitrust lawyer.
It's certainly not cut-and-dry what is legal and what is not, as far as these kinds of laws are concerned. And you can't take for granted that investors would have the necessary information to make that judgement even if it was more clear. Most of Microsofts "evil ways" involved technical nuances and subtle distinctions that only the victim could really understand (e.g. Netscape) until long after it has happened.
All these things destroy the deterrent factor, over-empower federal judges and the Justice Department, and cloud the entire basis for law.
Murderers know they could get life imprisonment or the death penalty for killing someone, and they know easily how to avoid committing the crime. They also know -- with absolute certainty -- when they've done it (in the vast majority of cases).
So that's why laws against murder are good, and laws against "unfair market practices" are bad. Too much "what if..." kind of fortune telling involved at the bench.
Microsoft practiced "blatantly anti-competitive behavior" for a long time. The problem is what to do about it.
If you get too involved, you're just going to end up turning the software industry into a public good run and regulated by the government. While you could make a case for that, I think most people would agree that turning over control from a big entity (MS) to an even bigger entity (U.S. government) that we have even less control over might worsen the problem.
Since I basially think that would just destroy the commercial software industry, why not do it outright? Free software works for me. Well, the obvious answer is that it doesn't really hurt MS nearly as much as it hurts MS's customers who have to try to transistion.
There are all kinds of problems with anti-anti-competitive law. You really don't know when you're in violation, for one thing. Different judges do different things to different people, and nobody can really guess what that will be.
Anything you do to try to enforce just ends up hurting the customers. Nobody really has a solution that doesn't involve micromanaging, which like I said above just turns it into a public good (i.e. socializes it).
What's the real solution? Do it better than MS, and eventually consumers will see the light. My OSS patches are in the single digits right now, but I'm getting better. And many other coders around the world are doing it better than MS, also, which is why many sysadmins are choosing OSS.
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There are a ton of jobs at minimum wage!
However, a HS kid might not want a difficult job at $6/hr, maybe they want an easy job at $4/hr. However, minimum wage makes that illegal.
There are a whole slew of UNSKILLED jobs with very low pay.
If you're not able to produce anything worthwhile, you're going to just talk yourself out of a job if you raise the minimum wage. And if raising the minimum wage does help you, it just displaces other workers who the company no longer find it profitable to hire. I don't see how any of this is helpful.
Yes, I am a capitalist (although not an absolute capitalist). I don't have a problem with providing aid, but I do have a problem with manipulating the market. Economists know that the former is much more cost effective.
I'm not entirely sure that I follow you about the pills. Anyway...
If $40/hr becomes "the going rate", than that just means inflation. Inflation is good for established people with a mortgage, and bad for renters. I don't see how that helps your argument.
There is a problem. The solution is not to manipulate the economy. If someone needs it, pay them aid, don't sell them on a false solution.
Hey, my dad never paid me $10/hour to help him build a fence. I got $100 for like 50 hours of "work", and I was happy about it. I didn't do anything too useful, so why would my dad pay me $600?
The great thing about working for little is that people have low expectations. That's exactly what I wanted: low expectations. If you're being paid pratically nothing, than it doesn't matter if you take a break or show up late.
I get your point, but I'm not talking about $10 to watch the neighbor's dog or something; that's a one-time shot. When you get into a few hundred dollars, than most people would care whether something is actually being accomplished wihtout necessarily being called "cheap".
"Darn near" is still above minimum wage, and last I checked, those earning minimum wage are taxed as well.
Not only that, for those who are in trouble, you provide real solutions, not free lunch solutions that just muscle out other people into a position of the REAL minimum wage: zero.
A real solution is to pick out the "bamboozled" people and provide them with aid. For many in need, the small boost will get them back on their feet. Raising minimum wage helps many who don't need it (HS kids living with their parents in affluent communities), and hurts many who desperately do need the aid.
Remember, the REAL minimum wage is zero, and nobody can change that. In a down economy or when things just go wrong for someone (because of Enron, et al), raising the minimum wage is a fake solution. There is no free lunch.
Economists know it's much more cost effective to just provide aid to people than to try to manipulate the economy favoring those who you think need it.
Education is expensive, it doesn't particularly surprise me that it's difficult for you to work hard enough to pay for your living expenses and your education, all in the time you have after school.
But, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Why should the retailer be unable to hire you at a low wage because of your personal circumstances? Should we say that they have to pay you more than someone with fewer responsibilities? And furthermore, it's not uncommon, nor is it particularly heart-wrenching, for a 20 year old to be living with his parents as he attends college. Many of my friends do that.
Some people's parents save for their kids' college years precisely because of the difficult situation you're talking about, so they can support you living at home or pay for you to live elsewhere.
Everyone is in a different situation. If you feel that it's necessary to help others in your position, perhaps legislators could institute some means tests and social aid. Why should we pretend that minimum wage solves the problem? Many people who don't need it are helped under that policy, and many that desperately need it are not (because of fewer available job positions due to higher labor prices).
Social aid should be used to help those who find themselves in a difficult financial state. We should not implement policies like "minimum wage" (a misnomer if I've ever heard one; the minimum wage is always precisely zero and can't be any higher no matter how many congressmen you know) and "universal health care" and call them social aid, because they're not social aid. They are efforts to expand the powers of government. Often a politician starts talking about a bad situation with which we can all empathize, then starts talking about social aid (and most of us are still in agreement), and then all of a sudden he starts talking about a "right" to a high wage or a "right" to health care for everyone. What that really means is that we are no longer talking about providing assistance to exceptional cases, but are now talking about changing the system for everyone.
Most would consider me a strong conservative, but I really don't mind allowing the government to confiscate a moderate amount of money to help those in need. What I mind is when they invent a new "right" and then socialize entire industries (medicine, retirement, and the labor market). If you need help we help you and move on. We don't try to continuously rewrite the rules in the middle of the game for every person on the planet.
It is much better for these low-wage companies to go out of business than to have them pay something very low.
What's wrong with hiring a kid to help build a fence on a weekend and paying them little? The kid has few responsibilities, and isn't accomplishing very much. He'd also be happy to get the money.
What's wrong with hiring a highschool student to do low-wage work as he lives with his parents? $4.00 an hour might pay for all the gas & food he needs.
The thing about minimum wage is that you're assuming that it's a career position, when in truth it's often a passing job on the way to bigger and better things. It's not good when young people have no opportunity to work a low-level job. How are they supposed to get experience and become more responsible?
Instead, young people can't find a low-responsibility, low-pay job. So, they just don't work. Then, when they're expected to be independent, they have no job experience at all, they just have a High School degree, which is worth about as much as the paper it's printed on (as far as representing knowledge and responsibility).
Thanks for the advice, it's helpful. I wasn't making the clockspeed mistake, I understand that slower clockspeeds can be faster.
The reason I compared it to my laptop was because I wouldn't mind accepting the lower performance/price ratio if I got something that was as fast as my laptop and as quiet. Of course, I prefer the expandibility of a desktop (right now I've got two video cards and three HDs, which won't fit in a laptop).
Anyway, it sounds like the 2600+ could be a good chip. I'll probably buy one of those, plus a new power supply and fan, and see if the noise level comes down. If I need a new mobo, that will be somewhat annoying, but I gotta do what I gotta do.
I just get really frustrated going to the store a million times and everything seems to claim to be quiet or cool. I probably have a cheap motherboard (or low-quality rather) also, which could be causing some of my problems. Anything I do takes an entire day and might or might not help. And it's not exactly as though I have tough performance requirements if I just want it to be as good as a thinkpad I bought.
Informative (although I haven't any modpoints).
Right now my box is working basically like I want it to running a 2200+ from a functionality standpoint.
However, I have two problems:
(1) Noise. I can hear my computer from downstairs. I have one of those thermaltake fans with a variable resistor knob that you can hang out the back, and even at the lowest fan speed it's loud.
(2) Performance. My computer is much slower than a pentium laptop I bought (1.4ghz pentium M I think). And it's much, much, slower than any pentium server I have used. When I boot my computer, it shows 1500+, although I can up the clockspeed to make it say 1800+. It's unstable at the higher clockspeed (slightly). At neither speed is it even comparable to any recent pentium I've used (including my laptop).
My laptop is silent. What I really want is my desktop to be quiet and well performing without anything crazy (I don't want to buy a water cooling system or anything like that). I don't mind getting a new mobo, fan, and proc, but I don't want to move everything to a new case if I can avoid it.
What should I get? I'll give AMD another go if people really do vouch for it, but I would also try a pentium.
Clearly, in my mind, it can be done since all I really want is my laptop with better video cards.
First off, the desire is not for it to be public domain, it is for it to be Free as in speech. There is a difference. (probably just a slip, but it needs correcting).
Calling this a correction is condescending. I merely posed it as an option, because if I said "free software" it means different things to different people. Is BSD free software? I think it is. Maybe it's not to you.
I chose the term "public domain" specifically because it seems reasonable to me that, as long as people are paying real money, that legal ownership should be transferred to the people, i.e. copyright. There exist many options of course: BSD, GPL, and public domain being several.
Who decided that the "desire" was not for it to be in public domain? I would be content with the public domain. The U.S. Constituion is in the public domain, as are Shakespeare's works, and those seem free enough to me. Although it's debatable, most likely sometime in the future all GPL works will be in the public domain due to copyright time limits (yeah, I know I'm asking for it there, but I would consider it "most likely" that a copyright, somewhere, will expire before the Sun explodes).
Now if you want to be productive and start a GPL pool, that's great. However, a lot of potential donations will be forgone, because it would not be in as many people's interests, which is what I was referring to in the post. If you actually wanted this to work, you need to be compromising and inclusive, which very well could be BSD or public domain.
A society determines how much money it wants to allocate to law enforement. If you're worried about an insufficient police force, you pay more money for officers. I think it's a pretty clear money issue.
Your argument seems to be that if they don't pay the money necessary to handle the delays that officers face, we could be faced with a larger problem and I agree. However, any way you look at it it's all on the taxpayers, and I don't feel sorry for the officer in a delay situation because he's still getting paid.
Also, you seem to make a distinction between police and citizens, as though police are military. They are not, and you should not treat them as such. They are citizens we trust to investigate and arbitrate (to an extent) problems that occur. They are not a military force (even if they act like it at times).
The only distinction that I intended to make is that officers are trained and trusted, and therefore held to a higher standard. I made an analogy to doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals who are also citizens, but held to a higher standard.
I live there, and here's the rule:
If you're poor you're a murderer, if you're rich it's self-defense.
Just thought I'd clear that up.
No current == no megnetic field
Well, they gotta learn sometime. I don't think it's good that stupid people can be exploited. Unfortunately, since their stupidity is given, no policy in place could possibly protect them. So, I don't like it either, but what do we do? I think the greater question is what can we do to change the incentives away from police picking on kids for BS crimes, and give them more incentives to prevent worse crimes?
Well, that again is in the eye of the beholder: some people consider selling drugs to be like murder.
Police officer has to be one of the most thankless jobs around. These people take their lives in to their own hands with every traffic stop, every domestic abuse call, every bar fight, etc.
I agree. However, to become a cop you accept a higher level of responsibility. If you're a citizen, and you kill someone in self defense, there aren't any problems. If you're an officer, people immediately question whether deadly force was required, and whether the officer followed every procedure properly from the start, and whether the officer had neglected trainning that may have ended the situation peacefully.
Is it a double standard? Yes, of course, as it should be. We are empowering these armed individuals, with our own tax dollars, to enforce the law against ourselves. They better follow procedure. They better be well trained and alert. We hold surgeons to a different standard because we need to trust them. When they violate that trust, that's a serious problem. Citizens can go about their lives normally and all we ask in a self defense case is "did they THINK their life was in danger and did they THINK that the only way to avoid it was to use deadly force?". That doesn't cut it with cops, sorry. People can make mistakes, surgeons and lawyers and cops CAN'T.
These high law enforcement standards we hold are more valuable than the supposed reduced crime you might get from unaccountable officers.
Oh, and nobody can waste an officer's time. They can only waste taxpayer money. The officer is being paid, so as far as he's concerened, he's working no matter how many delays he's faced with.
Asking for ID should be perfectly legal and fine, just like it's legal to ask if you can search someone's house. But when they refuse, take a hike unless you've got probable cause. There better be some real CHARGES.
Agreed.
However, the perception is that java is largely a free, open platform. And that perception is largely accurate.
In the article the question is raised: why has nobody created a free java platform? One answer is that it's a deep platform and expensive to build and maintain. However, look at GNU/Linux and FreeBSD, which are even larger. So why no free java? Because it's already free enough for most people. Sun has reached a compromise (gasp!).
Linux and FreeBSD are answers to something like windows or propretary UNIX, which aren't anywhere near a compromise in terms of freedom. So it was much more critical.
Maybe it's good for Sun to open java more. It's definitely better for the community (and how could you argue otherwise?), but Sun needs to look out for itself to a degree. And don't think for a second that it's an "evil company" or something.
If 10% of the people who want java open donated 10% of the increased usefulness of java being open to Sun, java would be bought into the public domain in no time. So, don't blame Sun.
Perhaps what we need is a little organization. If someone started a fund to buy Java into the public domain, or buy sun engineers to maintain an open java implementation and standard, I'd donate. I don't even use java, but I figure it would benefit me indirectly enough to make it worthwhile. Of course, we need real organization, I want to either see java be open or my money again, one or the other.
To a certain extent, there is a global government, albeit a weak one compared with any national government.
If you murder someone, you're pretty much screwed wherever you go.
If there was no global government at ALL, that would imply anarchy, which doesn't exist in an absolute state anywhere more than one person exists.
Plug it into SQL server and you're good to go.
I didn't say Java couldn't do it, but rather that Java has enough by itself to be independent, whereas python pretty much requires working with C. It's the exception rather than the rule when you need to use C in Java, but I never said it couldn't be done.
It seems to me that the main difference between Java and languages like python/perl is that python and perl still depend on C for many tasks (perhaps python more than perl). Java is not meant to be used with C, but meant to be completely independent.
When I need compatibility with something, or some feature avilable only in C, or when I need speed or tight memory for a routine, I use a C module. So python is still heavily dependent on C, unless you're just scripting.
I misunderstand something: does Sun have some kind of patent that prevents people from implementing their own jre/jdk?
If so, how does gcj do it?
That problem was already solved. Split the offending company into two. Bush intervened before it actually happened.
I don't buy that solution. I don't think it would help anyone. A lot of people have theories, but nobody really knows.
While a small amount of free software is good. If the amount of free software increased to say, 50%, software, as a profession, would disappear.
And fusion reactors would destroy the coal-mining profession. I think free software helps people, including me, so I might send patches if I see a problem. I send a patch, the maintainer gets free coding, I get free maintanence. We both benefit by using a better product for our application. Since marginal cost is so low, we can get many people involved, and before you know it, we have a professional maintanence team, and professional coders all working together, all for their own benefit, all getting free work from everyone else.
No altruism required. Just add water. Somehow that model ends up putting me as a professional coder, even though I might not be paid directly for the code I write. I write a little code, and trade it for a lot of code. I benefit.
Heck, I could write 0 code, and trade it for a lot of existing code. But in many situations, writing a little code can improve the product enough that just the benefit that you get makes it worthwhile.
I don't understand why everyone is out hunting for an OSS "model" all the time. IBM has figured it out. It's right there in front of us all. We don't sell code. It's the same reason we speak to eachother. It's similar to bouncing ideas off on another.
And who ends up getting punished? A bunch of shareholders who really didn't understand what was happening. Nobody is going to avoid the stock of a company because they are worried about the company's anti-competitive behavior. Nobody can really tell except for the victim (e.g. Netscape, Sun, whoever) until long after it's done. Too many industry-specific technical nuances.
As for the remedies, that's a fair point. Maybe someone thinks that if they break MS in two than everything will magically work out. I disagree. One thing that seems a lot more effective to me is to get busy making a better product.
And, yes, people do use better products sometimes. All the "market power" that MS has can't force me to run windows, which I have running maybe 1% of the time I'm running GNU/Linux, on one machine of about 10. People are getting the idea, and as free software really does overtake windows in desktop usability (for the average person), so will its market share.
Good point.
I don't really like anti-anti-competitive laws, but let's assume for a second they are good.
What do you propose that we do? As long as we're talking about realistic behavior, nobody is ever going to be deterred from buying stock because they think the company is anti-competitive, and are worried about the government coming in. It's so difficult for an investor to determine. Investors only have a limited amount of information, and you'd have to expect the average investor to be an antitrust lawyer.
It's certainly not cut-and-dry what is legal and what is not, as far as these kinds of laws are concerned. And you can't take for granted that investors would have the necessary information to make that judgement even if it was more clear. Most of Microsofts "evil ways" involved technical nuances and subtle distinctions that only the victim could really understand (e.g. Netscape) until long after it has happened.
All these things destroy the deterrent factor, over-empower federal judges and the Justice Department, and cloud the entire basis for law.
Murderers know they could get life imprisonment or the death penalty for killing someone, and they know easily how to avoid committing the crime. They also know -- with absolute certainty -- when they've done it (in the vast majority of cases).
So that's why laws against murder are good, and laws against "unfair market practices" are bad. Too much "what if..." kind of fortune telling involved at the bench.
Microsoft practiced "blatantly anti-competitive behavior" for a long time. The problem is what to do about it.
If you get too involved, you're just going to end up turning the software industry into a public good run and regulated by the government. While you could make a case for that, I think most people would agree that turning over control from a big entity (MS) to an even bigger entity (U.S. government) that we have even less control over might worsen the problem.
Since I basially think that would just destroy the commercial software industry, why not do it outright? Free software works for me. Well, the obvious answer is that it doesn't really hurt MS nearly as much as it hurts MS's customers who have to try to transistion.
There are all kinds of problems with anti-anti-competitive law. You really don't know when you're in violation, for one thing. Different judges do different things to different people, and nobody can really guess what that will be.
Anything you do to try to enforce just ends up hurting the customers. Nobody really has a solution that doesn't involve micromanaging, which like I said above just turns it into a public good (i.e. socializes it).
What's the real solution? Do it better than MS, and eventually consumers will see the light. My OSS patches are in the single digits right now, but I'm getting better. And many other coders around the world are doing it better than MS, also, which is why many sysadmins are choosing OSS.