The planet I live on has a large number of people who are mixing leaves off a local tree and drinking unsafe water because they cannot afford any food, much less oganically grown, pesticide free food.
It is also filled with people buying the garbage at Walmart instead of the yuppie class farmer's market...because the food fits in their budget.
Anyway, is there anyway from my planet to your planet? I would love to spend my life leaning back, sucking on mangos, dipping my blue corn chips in fresh caviar salsa while talking about how much I despise Americans.
Unfortunately, you will never be able to trust the routers or connections that you come across when traveling.
Carry a laptop.
Judging from the large number of people who've had their laptops, PDAs and cell phones stolen, I suspect that the chance of your getting your laptop stolen on vacation is greater than the chance of losing your email password at a local library.
Actually, I read about twenty/. posts in a row. They all talked about how we should not use the internet while we travel, or otherwise intimated that the people who do are stupid.
Unfortunately, slashdot does not have a way to reply to multiple posts. So, I just stopped randomly. Of course, luddites are probably quicker to post than those who will actually see more to the answer than just a prohibition against using the internet on the road.
The Utah Legislature has a history of passing laws that are meant primarily to be a Conservative statement.
Most Utah ISPs were offering filtering services before the law. There's also quite a few businesses which have been working to develop filtering services...many of the filters are independent of the ISP.
The law is not needed because Utahns already have a large number of choices of self-censoring services. I suspect the main goal of the law was simply to make a political statement and to hawk the state's leadership role in internet censoring techology.
There is a large number of interesting travel sources that travelers will want to use. The modern vacation now includes a lot of information resources along with the recreational and scenic resources.
Being forced into living a state of fear by cyber thugs is really not that great of an option. The fact that we are essentially asking travelers to ignore an intriguing new aspect of travel is quite sad.
I am also disappointed to see our technological elite offering little more than a probation against using the technology.
The biggest cause for the rising incidence of cancer is that people aren't dying from other diseases.
You are right. Things that cure the really nasty diseases are often pretty nasty themselves. Antibiotics and preservatives work because they are hostile to life. Chlorine is a deadly poison that we put in water with the intent of killing the things that grow in water.
I also agree that we are better off eating an organic diet. Not everybody can afford that luxury.
I don't agree with the assessment that since we aren't spinning in circles about the risks of every chemical means that the government is owned by an evil conspiratorial food industry.
If salaries for programmers fall substantially, then this would buy a great deal of programming time.
A million bucks would get pretty far in Bangalore.
Unfortunately, I wanted to be an overpriced American software engineer. I figure a good salary would be around $50k a year with benefits. The cost to my employer would be $100k per year. A million bucks could theoretically buy a programming team of ten people for one year (assuming that there is no support staff.) Of course, they would probably want to hire a pointy haired boss. Those cost $200k a year, minimum, but we could still have six programmers.
Ooops, I forgot. I think we should have a bunch of computers and toys. We can axe another programmer and get hardware.
Dude, you're right, this is totally rad.
Of course, all the houses in this town cost over $150k. So, I guess I would have to work more than one year in my life.
What the linux community needs right now is a strong leader
IMHO, the worst think that happened in the personal computer world was the appearance of a strong leader in the form of Bill Gates and Microsoft. MS corralled the PC industry and dominated it.
In the build up to the MS dominance was a great deal of talk about the need for a leviathan that would dominate and curtail the computer industry. We got what the pundits wished for.
What the computer industry needs is a framework that allows development on multiple fronts.
That people develop rivalries or have egoes is really not a problem. The communitarian belief is that we will have paradise when everyone has denied their ego. If no-one had egoes, then we would all be zombies. The existance of feud between two linux pundits really is not a problem. Nor is the fact that different businesses want to define their place in the market.
The fact that there's too many ideologues like me who want to bubble on about our ideologies is annoying, but not quite a category killer. Although it is a sign of problems in the linux community. Personally, I had a ton of ideas I wanted to develop. I've looked at open source as a way to bring some small new businesses into fruition, but really only see pitfalls and dead ends in linux development. Not being able to see a way to participate in open source software development that does not leave me destitute is a big problem.
It seems to me that the way for a business community to thrive there needs to be a way for the members of the community to invest their time and resources into the community, and receive returns for that investment. Historically, the best way to do that has been with the establishment of property rights.
The last thing open source needs is another leader. It needs a stronger business framework where people are making money and thriving.
I believe that one way to improve the laws would be to debate the difference between the personal use of materials and the publication of materials. I believe that there should be very little restriction on personal use. The laws should deal primarily with publication.
Now, I do realize that there is a blurry line between personal use and publication, especially when you are dealing with presenting information to a small audience, business or classroom. It seems to me that the the aim of the law should be focused on the extent to which a person is publishing an item.
Is playing a CD at a crowded discotech a personal use or a publication of the song.
When I look at a P2P network, it seems to me that when I place something into that shared directory, I am in effect publishing that file. There should be no restriction on my making personal back ups of CDs. However, my placing the my backups in a shared directory is a form of publication.
Giving copies of my CDs to cute girl in a pathetic attempt at seduction is a form of publishing.
P2P is also problematic in that the person who puts a file on the network might be different from the person who owns the machine on the network. The person who published the file is the one violated the copyright. The owner of the computer is complacent if they do not remove the file.
in it's current form it's hard to avoid breaking the law nearly every day
If the laws were aimed only at the publication of material, then copyright issues would really only arise during the act of publishing materials. The above statement would only be true if you were publishing something everyday, or if you had stolen a copyrighted material and are using it everyday. For example if you use the shareware Winzip everyday and did not pay the shareware fee then you are violating its copyright everyday.
Personally, I think we would be in a better position if the laws were centered on differentiating between personal use and publication. In such a system, our debates about when to use and not use a given piece of copyrighted material would could be framed within the question of whether or not we were publishing that information.
If all companies appeared on the scene as mature seasoned veterans, we would have so much less chaos.
IMHO, the patent office should be the seasoned vet with a robust system that allows for discovery and comment. The system should allow for bumbling new companies with few resources for discovery process an little experience with the system.
I do wonder about how many patents really have been filed for test purposes, or simply so that a company shows up in the patent roles.
when I was a child, the first thing that came to my mind was, "I wonder if such things could be made to ride camels".
My first thought was that we might someday be able to make a machine that smokes Camels...the robots would get the lung cancer and the humans would get the buzz.
BTW, getting robots to ride camels doesn't seem to be that hard. You could strap a robosapien atop a dromedary and call it an afternoon. The success of the effort has more to do with the quality of the straps than the robot. It seems that the real trick is to get camels to response to commands issued by a remote device. This seems like more of a communication and training problem than one of robotics.
I think you are on track here, however, I think "economic activity" might be a better description for the motivation that profit. Not every business venture makes a profit. Putting people into space is likely to cost a great deal, but it will also excite imaginations and increase economic activity. This will increase the economic pie. Undoubtedly, some people will make profits, their profits will help sustain the efforts. The motivation for the society to support humans is space is economic activity. The motivations for individuals will range from the desire to discover to making profitable investments.
Personally, I don't like employee ownership. As we are having a/. discussion about CEOs removing their salaries from the expense column and receiving all of the income in the form of profit, I figured the shareholder concept is worth mentioning.
The biggest problem with employee ownership schemes is that it puts all of the employee's asset in a single basket...a basket that they do not control. Employees should diversify their portfolio. Since they have their greatest asset, their labor, invested in their employer, they probably should invest the assets in something else like their house, mutual funds, etc..
[CEOs] in breach of their fiduciary duties to shareholders.
Communitarians note that income statements are entirely geared toward the perspective on one stakeholder...the proprietor. As you mentioned CEOs have fiduciary duties to shareholders but to none of the other stakeholders affected by the company.
I am not a communitarian, that does not mean I don't find their ideas intriguing. BTW, most institutional investors like insurance companies, banks, mutual funds...they all seem to invest in very sheepish ways. This is a great system for the wolves.
The idea I am referring to shows up in several communitarian books. The communitarians want employees to be recognized somehow as stakeholders. The idea sounds intiguing.
I admit, I haven't a clue about what I am talking about, but I do read income statements for companies and can see clearly that the compensation given to employees shows up on the income statement as an expense. The money the owners gets is called profits. It is the bottom line of the statement. The owners can distribute this money to themselves in forms of dividends, re-invest, or what not.
The stakeholder idea is to find ways to put employee compensation down with the profits. The thing we want to maximize. Employee ownership accomplishes this goal. Employee stock options can do the same.
The communitarian argument is actually quite intriguing. We write our financial reports only for the perspective of the owner. This develops a warped view of business.
Now, as you point out, investors will always see employees as expense (someone competing for a piece of the pie. The pie THEY OWN!. Changing the reporting so the employees are recognized as stakeholders essentially puts employees on equal footing with investors. It is a utopian ideal.
Since investors will still only want to see the world from their perspective and will reject the ideal outright. As you pointed out, company's that dolled out employee stock options without sufficient stock reserves had created a de facto expense. The investors considered such action fraudulent leading to the demand that employee stock options be expensed. The communitarian ideal is probably better realized by creating multiple income statements so that we can understand and analyze corporate contributions.
Yep, this the rut we are in. Libertarians are a bunch of chumps because they get so caught up in their anti government ideology that they prevent the government from breaking up monopolies.
Socialists know that after the society transitions for a free market to a monopoly dominated market and the body politic will be willing to revolt and hand the reigns of power from the monopolists to the socialists.
People try to point out the stupidity of this revolutionary cycle are labeled as paranoid. The theory works well, does it not?
I agree that the owners of Google are pulling a publicity stunt. If we want to assign a nefarious motive to the stunt we could note that salaries are recorded as an expense, so the stunt reduces the amount in the expense column on the company's income statements.
There are people who dislike that we label salaries as an expense (something to be reduced) and would prefer a system where employees were treated more like profits (something to be maximized). Sadly, it seems that most of the efforts to make employees equal stakeholders in a company fail when a clever MBA realizes that high minded ideals provide an easy way to externalize the risk of the company onto the backs of the employees.
There is a very strong argument that the climate for the megamerger trend was set in the Reagan era. Likewise the momentum of the AT&T break started well before Reagan. The nasty truth about economics is that we rarely see the full effects of a policy during the administration that passed the policy.
I agree that Libertarians routinely shoot themselves in the foot on the monopoly issue. They fail to see that the break up of the companies that dominated the economic climate was a necessary step for their economic revolution.
Socialists are a bit more clever in this regards. Socialists support the consolidation of industry in a small number of hands while trying at every turn to fan envy and resentment toward the owners. Once the monopolies have a lock on the market, they can use the political capital of wealth envy to step in and take over.
Libertariens should be the first (and sometimes are) the first to support anti trust actions.
that source code be provided for all of the code on that computer that is covered by the GNU GPL.
Now, how thin of a hair are we trying to slice. He wants all code on computers covered with the GPL to be open sourced.
So, I guess what you are saying is that he does not want as many computers as possible to be runing GPL code, which seems contrary to the actions that free software fanatics are taking in the market.
Would you point out the paragraph in the GNU GPL that specifically states that it only covers software on CD?
In theory/. threads are about the article cited in the thread. That means that we make references to parts of the article. The article states:
The current version of the GPL, which was last updated in 1991, fails to trigger the open source license if a company alters the code, but does not distribute its software through a CD or floppy disk.
You are right in my reference to the article I did not say "CD and floppy disk" as is stated in the article. However, in the contxt of this/. debate, I beieve that alluding to the section of the article is sufficient. The assumption is that we all read the article.
The article seems to be about code that is being distributed by means other than floppy or cd. For example, there are conversations in this overall discussion about Google distributing fully functional turnkey computers that contain some GPL code. Stallman would want all of the code on that computer open sourced.
Now then, the next logical jump after distributed code brings us into the hornets nest of client server computing. The wording of the article really makes it seem that server side code is the next big issue on the GPL discussion block.
Right-click and select "View Source".
I realize that you are probably new to the internet technology. The Internet uses an idea called "client/server" architecture. Some people use the term "thin client". In this architectural design the main logic resides on the server. The server sends to the client small packets of HTML that the thin client (the web browser) formats and displays for the user.
When you "view source" you only see the HTML produced by the server. The main logic is hidden. HTML is pretty brain dead.
People developing server side applications have a completely different view of copyright than those who deliver their works as a deliverable product. Copyright, after all, was designed to protect distributed works. Web programmers really don't care that much about the HTML. The meat of their program is the logic hidden on the servers.
In most complex web sites, the meat of the program is the computer code that generates the HTML. For example, I could write a program that generates the first hundred thousands decimals of pi and displays it on my web site. Stallman would protest and say that he wants to see the code, and not the result. The code exists solely on my computer, I never distributed it and can claim exemption.
Now, I suspect that the article in question is about closing the loophole that allowed for certain means of distributing compiled computer code without the source. The real battle will come down the road when GPL wants to demand the publishing of all server side code. This would, of course, include all of the business logic so carefully guarded by businesses.
The question of closing a few loopholes that might allow the distribution of compiled code is one issue. The demand to see all code that exists on computers that contain GPL code will be another can of worms altogether.
Having developed programs with object oriented techniques. I know that there really is not a clear delineation between code and data. Code is just a bunch of data. Data really only has meaning within the context of the logic that interprets it, and so on. It is not difficult to escalate the demand to see the code on a computer to a demand to see all of the data as well.
Stallman disciples will say that the demand for full access to computers only applies to servers. To make life even more interesting, every computer on the internet has the potentional to function as a server. Well, you can take this argument where ever you like.
My take on the article is that they are trying to make a distinction between distributed applications and hosted applications. Right now you only have to make your source code available when you distribute via a CD. If you distribute through another technology, you don't have to open source.
My take on the article is that it still leaves the loophole that people don't have to open source their code if they host the applications themselves.
Personally, I will not be surprised if the GPL doesn't soon demand open sourcing all applications designed with GPL software. Look at all the clever little web sites on the Internet. We don't get to see their source code on the web server. For that matter, I suspect that the greatest investment being made in computer technology right now is in the form hosted applications (web sites, etc).
I suspect that in the years to come there will need to be another retroactive change to the GPL to force the open sourcing of the code used to create web sites.
My computer says 1+1 = 10. It sometimes does a binary-decimal translation to clue me in on what it is thinking.
1 apple plus 1 orange seems to equal 1 fruit salad.
I suppose that's an offensive statement if you live in a higher dimension with non-Euclidian geometry.
Are you saying then that we live in a Euclidean geometry? I had deluded myself into thinking that Euclidean Geometry, Riemannian geometry, Hyperbolic Geometry and all of that stuff was just different models that we can use to describe the world around us...with different success.
gaaa enough with the broad generalizations that look like wisdom
The statement "All Information is Biased" sounds to me a bit more like a "fairly sound premise" than as "a broad generalization". We can find uncertainty at all levels of existence...even in the quantum level. Realizing that any information we receive might have a bias is also extremely helpful. So, I wouldn't label the parent's post as a broad generalization.
The statement also fits well within the context of the debate. It was a direct response to a person stating that it is increasingly difficult to find unbiased information.
If you start with the premise that all information is biased, then you know that you have to sort through information in making judgments. For many people, the internet is providing a sounding board that helps them see the bias in the media.
I agree with the statement that most people seek out web sites that confirm rather than challenge their world view. Of course, the main topic of debate on many of these sites is the bias and hidden intentions (both imagined and real) of one's enemies.
When media was dominated by a few big broadcasters, we had an illusion that news was unbiased. Partisan discussions on the web pretty much break that illusion. The bias of partisan sites is generally quite apparent. The topic of debate often forces the parties in the debate to reflect on their own views.
The post in question directly answers its parent by say that it is difficult to find unbiased information because there is no such thing.
The question of the nature of information is also topical to the governance of the internet. The biggest challenge in the history of thought is that different thinkers come up with different methods of thought that don't mesh with each other.
There are two ways to handle this multiplicity of ideas: The first is to create a central authority that governs intellectual discourse and that authoratively gives answers. The second is to revel in the different points of view that exist.
This ancient debate is relevant to the development of the internet. The argument for a supernational unelected governing board to oversee the internet comes from the tradition that tries to handle the multiplicity of opinions creating a central authority. I am of the opinion that we are better off allowing a diverse climate with hundreds of different technologies and ideas and to actively resist groups that try to set themselves up as governing authorities.
The international community, of course, can claim that such reveling in diverse opinions is in fact unilateralism on the part of the US. The actual debate about such issues, however, will need to include a lot of defining and debating of different premises and ideals.
Realizing that all information is biased and that even a nonelected supernational governing board will be biased in its dictates is a good start of an argument against the creation of a nonelected supernational governing board for the Internet. Dissing the parent's post contribution as a "broad generalization" is less of a contribution to the debate.
supressing images and images of text to people who didn't own a proof-of-purchase
Rather than saying that they block images from people who don't own a proof a purchase to saying that they allow you access to the electronic images of the text if you purchase from Amazon, then you get a completely different picture of the meaning of such a patent.
Basically, Amazon would be able to give people who purchase through Amazon more than their competitors. When you purchase a book through Amazon, you get both an eBook and the book. While if you purchase through the quaint bookstore down the street, you get just the book.
Giving both an ebook and a book when you purchase through Amazon.com, and using a patent to essentially block other dot coms from doing the same could really firm up Amazon's position in the book selling industry.
This looks a little bit like the Beam It Up case that cost MP3.com its hide. MP3.com said that if you owned a copy of a CD, then that entitled you to add it to your MP3.com playlist. The record industry quickly extracted the soul from MP3 for its beam it up technology. I doubt the author's guild has sufficient power to extract Amazons.com's soul. First, the pirating of music on Napster made it easy for the RIAA to paint the punk kids using MP3.com as anarchists. Books are often purchased by staid and true baby boomers. There are even some Republicans who read books. Amazon.com is probably smart enough not to put their technology forward as something that will move the earth. MP3.com seemed convinced they were transforming the enire culture.
Well, when you consider all of the things that icons do, they certain are worth the money you spend on the icon editor.
Have you ever clicked on an icon? You click on an icon and, bammo, there's a big spread sheet or email program on your screen or something. Icon editors must be complex and expensive to accomplish that. Seeing all of the amazing things icons do, it is the one software expense that the guys in purchasing will have no problem approving.
On an unrelated note, being a manager of a large software development team, I had been wondering why you techies like Dilbert so much. I have a big informative staff meeting. Afterwards, the techies gather around to pick the Dilbert that matches the meeting. I don't get it.
Yeah, I want Lucas to make me feel like I did when I was a kid. Anything less is a betrayal. Damn, I am going to end up watching this thing and end up feeling like some type of lame slashdot reading middle aged computer hack.
Slashdot Mirror
The planet I live on has a large number of people who are mixing leaves off a local tree and drinking unsafe water because they cannot afford any food, much less oganically grown, pesticide free food.
It is also filled with people buying the garbage at Walmart instead of the yuppie class farmer's market...because the food fits in their budget.
Anyway, is there anyway from my planet to your planet? I would love to spend my life leaning back, sucking on mangos, dipping my blue corn chips in fresh caviar salsa while talking about how much I despise Americans.
Unfortunately, you will never be able to trust the routers or connections that you come across when traveling.
Judging from the large number of people who've had their laptops, PDAs and cell phones stolen, I suspect that the chance of your getting your laptop stolen on vacation is greater than the chance of losing your email password at a local library.
Actually, I read about twenty /. posts in a row. They all talked about how we should not use the internet while we travel, or otherwise intimated that the people who do are stupid.
Unfortunately, slashdot does not have a way to reply to multiple posts. So, I just stopped randomly. Of course, luddites are probably quicker to post than those who will actually see more to the answer than just a prohibition against using the internet on the road.
The Utah Legislature has a history of passing laws that are meant primarily to be a Conservative statement.
Most Utah ISPs were offering filtering services before the law. There's also quite a few businesses which have been working to develop filtering services...many of the filters are independent of the ISP.
The law is not needed because Utahns already have a large number of choices of self-censoring services. I suspect the main goal of the law was simply to make a political statement and to hawk the state's leadership role in internet censoring techology.
There is a large number of interesting travel sources that travelers will want to use. The modern vacation now includes a lot of information resources along with the recreational and scenic resources.
Being forced into living a state of fear by cyber thugs is really not that great of an option. The fact that we are essentially asking travelers to ignore an intriguing new aspect of travel is quite sad.
I am also disappointed to see our technological elite offering little more than a probation against using the technology.
The biggest cause for the rising incidence of cancer is that people aren't dying from other diseases.
You are right. Things that cure the really nasty diseases are often pretty nasty themselves. Antibiotics and preservatives work because they are hostile to life. Chlorine is a deadly poison that we put in water with the intent of killing the things that grow in water.
I also agree that we are better off eating an organic diet. Not everybody can afford that luxury.
I don't agree with the assessment that since we aren't spinning in circles about the risks of every chemical means that the government is owned by an evil conspiratorial food industry.
A million bucks would get pretty far in Bangalore.
Unfortunately, I wanted to be an overpriced American software engineer. I figure a good salary would be around $50k a year with benefits. The cost to my employer would be $100k per year. A million bucks could theoretically buy a programming team of ten people for one year (assuming that there is no support staff.) Of course, they would probably want to hire a pointy haired boss. Those cost $200k a year, minimum, but we could still have six programmers.
Ooops, I forgot. I think we should have a bunch of computers and toys. We can axe another programmer and get hardware.
Dude, you're right, this is totally rad.
Of course, all the houses in this town cost over $150k. So, I guess I would have to work more than one year in my life.
Damn.
IMHO, the worst think that happened in the personal computer world was the appearance of a strong leader in the form of Bill Gates and Microsoft. MS corralled the PC industry and dominated it.
In the build up to the MS dominance was a great deal of talk about the need for a leviathan that would dominate and curtail the computer industry. We got what the pundits wished for.
What the computer industry needs is a framework that allows development on multiple fronts.
That people develop rivalries or have egoes is really not a problem. The communitarian belief is that we will have paradise when everyone has denied their ego. If no-one had egoes, then we would all be zombies. The existance of feud between two linux pundits really is not a problem. Nor is the fact that different businesses want to define their place in the market.
The fact that there's too many ideologues like me who want to bubble on about our ideologies is annoying, but not quite a category killer. Although it is a sign of problems in the linux community. Personally, I had a ton of ideas I wanted to develop. I've looked at open source as a way to bring some small new businesses into fruition, but really only see pitfalls and dead ends in linux development. Not being able to see a way to participate in open source software development that does not leave me destitute is a big problem.
It seems to me that the way for a business community to thrive there needs to be a way for the members of the community to invest their time and resources into the community, and receive returns for that investment. Historically, the best way to do that has been with the establishment of property rights.
The last thing open source needs is another leader. It needs a stronger business framework where people are making money and thriving.
I believe that one way to improve the laws would be to debate the difference between the personal use of materials and the publication of materials. I believe that there should be very little restriction on personal use. The laws should deal primarily with publication.
Now, I do realize that there is a blurry line between personal use and publication, especially when you are dealing with presenting information to a small audience, business or classroom. It seems to me that the the aim of the law should be focused on the extent to which a person is publishing an item.
Is playing a CD at a crowded discotech a personal use or a publication of the song.
When I look at a P2P network, it seems to me that when I place something into that shared directory, I am in effect publishing that file. There should be no restriction on my making personal back ups of CDs. However, my placing the my backups in a shared directory is a form of publication.
Giving copies of my CDs to cute girl in a pathetic attempt at seduction is a form of publishing.
P2P is also problematic in that the person who puts a file on the network might be different from the person who owns the machine on the network. The person who published the file is the one violated the copyright. The owner of the computer is complacent if they do not remove the file.
If the laws were aimed only at the publication of material, then copyright issues would really only arise during the act of publishing materials. The above statement would only be true if you were publishing something everyday, or if you had stolen a copyrighted material and are using it everyday. For example if you use the shareware Winzip everyday and did not pay the shareware fee then you are violating its copyright everyday.
Personally, I think we would be in a better position if the laws were centered on differentiating between personal use and publication. In such a system, our debates about when to use and not use a given piece of copyrighted material would could be framed within the question of whether or not we were publishing that information.
If all companies appeared on the scene as mature seasoned veterans, we would have so much less chaos.
IMHO, the patent office should be the seasoned vet with a robust system that allows for discovery and comment. The system should allow for bumbling new companies with few resources for discovery process an little experience with the system.
I do wonder about how many patents really have been filed for test purposes, or simply so that a company shows up in the patent roles.
My first thought was that we might someday be able to make a machine that smokes Camels...the robots would get the lung cancer and the humans would get the buzz.
BTW, getting robots to ride camels doesn't seem to be that hard. You could strap a robosapien atop a dromedary and call it an afternoon. The success of the effort has more to do with the quality of the straps than the robot. It seems that the real trick is to get camels to response to commands issued by a remote device. This seems like more of a communication and training problem than one of robotics.
I think you are on track here, however, I think "economic activity" might be a better description for the motivation that profit. Not every business venture makes a profit. Putting people into space is likely to cost a great deal, but it will also excite imaginations and increase economic activity. This will increase the economic pie. Undoubtedly, some people will make profits, their profits will help sustain the efforts. The motivation for the society to support humans is space is economic activity. The motivations for individuals will range from the desire to discover to making profitable investments.
Personally, I don't like employee ownership. As we are having a /. discussion about CEOs removing their salaries from the expense column and receiving all of the income in the form of profit, I figured the shareholder concept is worth mentioning.
The biggest problem with employee ownership schemes is that it puts all of the employee's asset in a single basket...a basket that they do not control. Employees should diversify their portfolio. Since they have their greatest asset, their labor, invested in their employer, they probably should invest the assets in something else like their house, mutual funds, etc..
Communitarians note that income statements are entirely geared toward the perspective on one stakeholder...the proprietor. As you mentioned CEOs have fiduciary duties to shareholders but to none of the other stakeholders affected by the company.
I am not a communitarian, that does not mean I don't find their ideas intriguing. BTW, most institutional investors like insurance companies, banks, mutual funds...they all seem to invest in very sheepish ways. This is a great system for the wolves.
The idea I am referring to shows up in several communitarian books. The communitarians want employees to be recognized somehow as stakeholders. The idea sounds intiguing.
I admit, I haven't a clue about what I am talking about, but I do read income statements for companies and can see clearly that the compensation given to employees shows up on the income statement as an expense. The money the owners gets is called profits. It is the bottom line of the statement. The owners can distribute this money to themselves in forms of dividends, re-invest, or what not.
The stakeholder idea is to find ways to put employee compensation down with the profits. The thing we want to maximize. Employee ownership accomplishes this goal. Employee stock options can do the same.
The communitarian argument is actually quite intriguing. We write our financial reports only for the perspective of the owner. This develops a warped view of business.
Now, as you point out, investors will always see employees as expense (someone competing for a piece of the pie. The pie THEY OWN!. Changing the reporting so the employees are recognized as stakeholders essentially puts employees on equal footing with investors. It is a utopian ideal.
Since investors will still only want to see the world from their perspective and will reject the ideal outright. As you pointed out, company's that dolled out employee stock options without sufficient stock reserves had created a de facto expense. The investors considered such action fraudulent leading to the demand that employee stock options be expensed. The communitarian ideal is probably better realized by creating multiple income statements so that we can understand and analyze corporate contributions.
Yep, this the rut we are in. Libertarians are a bunch of chumps because they get so caught up in their anti government ideology that they prevent the government from breaking up monopolies.
Socialists know that after the society transitions for a free market to a monopoly dominated market and the body politic will be willing to revolt and hand the reigns of power from the monopolists to the socialists.
People try to point out the stupidity of this revolutionary cycle are labeled as paranoid. The theory works well, does it not?
I agree that the owners of Google are pulling a publicity stunt. If we want to assign a nefarious motive to the stunt we could note that salaries are recorded as an expense, so the stunt reduces the amount in the expense column on the company's income statements.
There are people who dislike that we label salaries as an expense (something to be reduced) and would prefer a system where employees were treated more like profits (something to be maximized). Sadly, it seems that most of the efforts to make employees equal stakeholders in a company fail when a clever MBA realizes that high minded ideals provide an easy way to externalize the risk of the company onto the backs of the employees.
There is a very strong argument that the climate for the megamerger trend was set in the Reagan era. Likewise the momentum of the AT&T break started well before Reagan. The nasty truth about economics is that we rarely see the full effects of a policy during the administration that passed the policy.
I agree that Libertarians routinely shoot themselves in the foot on the monopoly issue. They fail to see that the break up of the companies that dominated the economic climate was a necessary step for their economic revolution.
Socialists are a bit more clever in this regards. Socialists support the consolidation of industry in a small number of hands while trying at every turn to fan envy and resentment toward the owners. Once the monopolies have a lock on the market, they can use the political capital of wealth envy to step in and take over.
Libertariens should be the first (and sometimes are) the first to support anti trust actions.
Now, how thin of a hair are we trying to slice. He wants all code on computers covered with the GPL to be open sourced.
So, I guess what you are saying is that he does not want as many computers as possible to be runing GPL code, which seems contrary to the actions that free software fanatics are taking in the market.
In theory /. threads are about the article cited in the thread. That means that we make references to parts of the article. The article states:
You are right in my reference to the article I did not say "CD and floppy disk" as is stated in the article. However, in the contxt of this /. debate, I beieve that alluding to the section of the article is sufficient. The assumption is that we all read the article.
The article seems to be about code that is being distributed by means other than floppy or cd. For example, there are conversations in this overall discussion about Google distributing fully functional turnkey computers that contain some GPL code. Stallman would want all of the code on that computer open sourced.
Now then, the next logical jump after distributed code brings us into the hornets nest of client server computing. The wording of the article really makes it seem that server side code is the next big issue on the GPL discussion block.
I realize that you are probably new to the internet technology. The Internet uses an idea called "client/server" architecture. Some people use the term "thin client". In this architectural design the main logic resides on the server. The server sends to the client small packets of HTML that the thin client (the web browser) formats and displays for the user.
When you "view source" you only see the HTML produced by the server. The main logic is hidden. HTML is pretty brain dead.
People developing server side applications have a completely different view of copyright than those who deliver their works as a deliverable product. Copyright, after all, was designed to protect distributed works. Web programmers really don't care that much about the HTML. The meat of their program is the logic hidden on the servers.
In most complex web sites, the meat of the program is the computer code that generates the HTML. For example, I could write a program that generates the first hundred thousands decimals of pi and displays it on my web site. Stallman would protest and say that he wants to see the code, and not the result. The code exists solely on my computer, I never distributed it and can claim exemption.
Now, I suspect that the article in question is about closing the loophole that allowed for certain means of distributing compiled computer code without the source. The real battle will come down the road when GPL wants to demand the publishing of all server side code. This would, of course, include all of the business logic so carefully guarded by businesses.
The question of closing a few loopholes that might allow the distribution of compiled code is one issue. The demand to see all code that exists on computers that contain GPL code will be another can of worms altogether.
Having developed programs with object oriented techniques. I know that there really is not a clear delineation between code and data. Code is just a bunch of data. Data really only has meaning within the context of the logic that interprets it, and so on. It is not difficult to escalate the demand to see the code on a computer to a demand to see all of the data as well.
Stallman disciples will say that the demand for full access to computers only applies to servers. To make life even more interesting, every computer on the internet has the potentional to function as a server. Well, you can take this argument where ever you like.
My take on the article is that they are trying to make a distinction between distributed applications and hosted applications. Right now you only have to make your source code available when you distribute via a CD. If you distribute through another technology, you don't have to open source.
My take on the article is that it still leaves the loophole that people don't have to open source their code if they host the applications themselves.
Personally, I will not be surprised if the GPL doesn't soon demand open sourcing all applications designed with GPL software. Look at all the clever little web sites on the Internet. We don't get to see their source code on the web server. For that matter, I suspect that the greatest investment being made in computer technology right now is in the form hosted applications (web sites, etc).
I suspect that in the years to come there will need to be another retroactive change to the GPL to force the open sourcing of the code used to create web sites.
1 apple plus 1 orange seems to equal 1 fruit salad.
Are you saying then that we live in a Euclidean geometry? I had deluded myself into thinking that Euclidean Geometry, Riemannian geometry, Hyperbolic Geometry and all of that stuff was just different models that we can use to describe the world around us...with different success.
The statement "All Information is Biased" sounds to me a bit more like a "fairly sound premise" than as "a broad generalization". We can find uncertainty at all levels of existence...even in the quantum level. Realizing that any information we receive might have a bias is also extremely helpful. So, I wouldn't label the parent's post as a broad generalization.
The statement also fits well within the context of the debate. It was a direct response to a person stating that it is increasingly difficult to find unbiased information.
If you start with the premise that all information is biased, then you know that you have to sort through information in making judgments. For many people, the internet is providing a sounding board that helps them see the bias in the media.
I agree with the statement that most people seek out web sites that confirm rather than challenge their world view. Of course, the main topic of debate on many of these sites is the bias and hidden intentions (both imagined and real) of one's enemies.
When media was dominated by a few big broadcasters, we had an illusion that news was unbiased. Partisan discussions on the web pretty much break that illusion. The bias of partisan sites is generally quite apparent. The topic of debate often forces the parties in the debate to reflect on their own views.
The post in question directly answers its parent by say that it is difficult to find unbiased information because there is no such thing.
The question of the nature of information is also topical to the governance of the internet. The biggest challenge in the history of thought is that different thinkers come up with different methods of thought that don't mesh with each other.
There are two ways to handle this multiplicity of ideas: The first is to create a central authority that governs intellectual discourse and that authoratively gives answers. The second is to revel in the different points of view that exist.
This ancient debate is relevant to the development of the internet. The argument for a supernational unelected governing board to oversee the internet comes from the tradition that tries to handle the multiplicity of opinions creating a central authority. I am of the opinion that we are better off allowing a diverse climate with hundreds of different technologies and ideas and to actively resist groups that try to set themselves up as governing authorities.
The international community, of course, can claim that such reveling in diverse opinions is in fact unilateralism on the part of the US. The actual debate about such issues, however, will need to include a lot of defining and debating of different premises and ideals.
Realizing that all information is biased and that even a nonelected supernational governing board will be biased in its dictates is a good start of an argument against the creation of a nonelected supernational governing board for the Internet. Dissing the parent's post contribution as a "broad generalization" is less of a contribution to the debate.
Rather than saying that they block images from people who don't own a proof a purchase to saying that they allow you access to the electronic images of the text if you purchase from Amazon, then you get a completely different picture of the meaning of such a patent.
Basically, Amazon would be able to give people who purchase through Amazon more than their competitors. When you purchase a book through Amazon, you get both an eBook and the book. While if you purchase through the quaint bookstore down the street, you get just the book.
Giving both an ebook and a book when you purchase through Amazon.com, and using a patent to essentially block other dot coms from doing the same could really firm up Amazon's position in the book selling industry.
This looks a little bit like the Beam It Up case that cost MP3.com its hide. MP3.com said that if you owned a copy of a CD, then that entitled you to add it to your MP3.com playlist. The record industry quickly extracted the soul from MP3 for its beam it up technology. I doubt the author's guild has sufficient power to extract Amazons.com's soul. First, the pirating of music on Napster made it easy for the RIAA to paint the punk kids using MP3.com as anarchists. Books are often purchased by staid and true baby boomers. There are even some Republicans who read books. Amazon.com is probably smart enough not to put their technology forward as something that will move the earth. MP3.com seemed convinced they were transforming the enire culture.
Well, when you consider all of the things that icons do, they certain are worth the money you spend on the icon editor.
Have you ever clicked on an icon? You click on an icon and, bammo, there's a big spread sheet or email program on your screen or something. Icon editors must be complex and expensive to accomplish that. Seeing all of the amazing things icons do, it is the one software expense that the guys in purchasing will have no problem approving.
On an unrelated note, being a manager of a large software development team, I had been wondering why you techies like Dilbert so much. I have a big informative staff meeting. Afterwards, the techies gather around to pick the Dilbert that matches the meeting. I don't get it.
Yeah, I want Lucas to make me feel like I did when I was a kid. Anything less is a betrayal. Damn, I am going to end up watching this thing and end up feeling like some type of lame slashdot reading middle aged computer hack.
Mr. Lucas, YOU ARE FAILING YOUR FAN BASE!!!!