It's not long release cycles that are the problem; it's unpredictable ones.
To the second question, Debian has a different perception of "support" than Gentoo does. Release critical bugs dictate when the distribution is released, and there needs to be a clear, problem-free upgrade path between releases. Debian is to date the only system where I've upgraded the same machine between multiple stable releases without having any problems at all.
As to "forcing" you to buy something? Parent indicated a CITIZEN REFERENDUM OR INITIATIVE putting the taxes for this service to a popular vote. If people don't want it, it'll fail overwhelmingly and no one will be "forced" into anything.
And if it does pass, those who didn't want it will be forced into paying for it. Even if they don't use it. This country was founded on the principles of a Republic, not a Democracy. Majority rule quickly becomes a tyranny of the people, which is why we favor majority rule while respecting minority rights.
Obviously the level to which the majority can overrule the opposition of the minority is a hotly-debated topic. However, it seems disingenuous to me to make people pay for services they don't use, don't benefit from, and are opposed to. Especially when there already exist opt-in alternatives.
Government intervention is supposed to be there for when no opt-in alternatives exist, or when this would require duplication of massive physical infrastructure (e.g., sewers and plumbing). Not when there's already a myriad of choices.
And if it passes, and the government service sucks as badly as you think it will, private companies will come along and offer better service and make tons of money.
Hardly. It's been well-documented that most privately-educated kids are more well-rounded, do better in life, and score better on standardized tests than do publicly-educated kids. And yet our often-criticized public education system is alive and well. Why? Because anyone who sends their child to private school is paying not only for their child to go to school twice, but they're paying significantly more than a private school would cost under free market conditions, since it's a niche industry.
I don't predict the demise of telecom, and nor do I believe they are only looking out for the public good. But no matter how bad the government service is, people will continue to use it because it's "free".
And of course, with government in the mix, we open the door for concerned mothers to try and block sites with "questionable content" for the sake of children. It's been pointed out in other threads that government is less likely than a private company to fall to this kind of pressure, but I beg to differ. Private companies continually have to earn profits, which means they're extremely unlikely to spend money on limiting their services. Municipal services are less concerned with this, since their revenues stay the same no matter what; it's all collected through taxes anyways. And hell, look at the FCC debacle with Janet Jackson's breast and increased fines for swearing on broadcast TV. I don't want the same thing happening to my Internet connection.
You so-called "lovers of the free market" are the ones who tell us that it's OUR problem to figure out how to get health insurance when it's prohibitively expensive, and OUR problem to get a job. Well great, fine. Then it's the CORPORATION'S problem to figure out how to break into a government's market area...
This is such a nonsequitur I don't know where to begin.
For starters, this is the government breaking into the corporations' market. Not the other way around.
Given, but my point was that they were large and independent areas. Obviously the point can be argued either way, but French-Canadians are fairly-well clustered inside Quebec. And they're, from what I can tell, extremely loyal to France. Not so much for the U.S. and the U.K. And there are many French islands, but I would question whether or not they acutally speak pristine, academy-mandated French.
It comes back to the fact that americans are apathetic towards politics.
Actually, most Americans aren't apathetic about politics. The problem is that everybody thinks that they and only they are right. When anyone tries to debate, it devolves into a shouting match where nobody can agree that the other side has valid points. After a few episodes of that, nobody wants to discuss anything even remotely politically related any more.
I love debate, and it pisses me off because ninety-five percent of the time, whenever politics is brought up and the other person has a differing opinion, the other person starts acting agitated and switches topics. I'm not a scathing or caustic person, and other people have reported similar occurrences, so I'm doubtful that it's just me. Hell, look at the most recent election:
Bush is horrible! Ignore anything bad about Kerry and elect him anyways! Since Bush is Satan, Kerry could not possibly be worse!
And, of course, similar statements from the other, equally closed-minded, side of the political spectrum.
The fact is that France, because of the Academie Francaise, is preventing language degeneration, unlike in the US, where any word you want you can put in a dictionary and people will start to use it. Spelling is also an issue. French and English both have roots that go back very far, but English has evolved and degenerated so much that in fact there are now at least two english languages: American english and British english, with different spelling and grammar rules. French is still very much held together...
Could this be somehow related to the fact that, oh I don't know, the English language is spoken in two extremely large, geographically-independent countries, and French is spoken in one?
In Capitalism and Freedom he lays out a fairly clear case that government-run monopolies are often far worse than privately-held ones. It's been awhile, but I think the main gist is that corporate monopolies may do worse things, but in the end they're still potentially vulnerable to a newcomer or internal collapse. Governments, on the other hand, are resilient as hell, and their monopolies tend to last significantly longer. Especially in the presence of an apathetic populace.
If the community one "will be poorly and insecurely run, slow to respond (for instance, blocking ports to stem the spread of viruses), and twice as expensive as anything else" no one will use it.
Right. Nobody uses Microsoft products.
Cheap shot, I know. But the point stands that 95% of people would use it regardless because they don't understand the first two points. For the third, the cost is often hidden by subsidization. It's similar to public/private schools. Most people send their children to public schools because they can't afford private. In many cases, they can't afford private because they're already being forced to pay for public schools through property taxes. And of course, there's always the concern that by sending you child to private school you're paying for their education twice. They're quite similar.
I would, of course, have a huge problem with government monopolizing control over access to the Internet. But I do not have a problem with muni governments offering an internet service that I can either take or leave as a service option.
I suppose my concern is that governments would use their leverage on this to push the competing services out of the municipal area. I'm not naieve enough to believe that the telecom companies have no dirt on their hands in trying to block these municipal-run services entirely. But imagine a situation in which nearly every major city starts offering broadband at a subsidized cost. Telecom pulls out of the city since the meager revenues aren't worth the cost of running/maintaining cable, and all you're left with is the one municipal service.
Also, a question about your figures. Do you know whether or not the service was subsidized by taxpayers, i.e., like the post office? I'd like to know.
...have a problem with government controlling access to the Internet? Anyone at all?
I know this is Slashdot and we're supposed to hate big buisiness and everything, but isn't government-provided Internet access just a bad idea? First off we have the fact that government can always undercut the opponent and hide the costs in taxes; few will ever complain. So clearly there's the risk that in the end we'll end up paying even more for broadband than we used to. Second, once government is involved, this throws the door wide open for "concerned mothers" to start lobbying for state-, county-, or city-wide controls on the content. You know how draconian those content filters are at government-run schools? In all likelihood these will go on municipal broadband offerings, too.
If it's like any other government service, it will be poorly and insecurely run, slow to respond (for instance, blocking ports to stem the spread of viruses), and twice as expensive as anything else. And by the time it's in, we'll be stuck with it for the rest of eternity (Amtrak, anyone?).
The qmail license? You mean the one that, for no reason other than djb's being a prick, disallows repackaging of his software or changing which directories it uses to something a bit less crack-addled?
You're actually trying to claim that Winamp's design is good?
Winamp and other players which try to emulate the look and feel of a "new wave" stereo do nothing but piss me off. Stereo systems have the bad interfaces they do because of an inherent lack of physical space; something that's still a concern with computers, but much less of one.
Here's to more programs like Rhythmbox and iTunes which have the *important* controls accessible, allow for easy categorisation of songs, and use screen space nicely. All that without having to resort to 6pt fonts.
Nobody's arguing this. However, they're only saying it's' somewhat of an unfair comparison: Windows consists of Explorer, the GUI,.NET, the APIs, etc., when youre average Linux distro comes with office applications, games, tons of utilities, compilers, etc. It's not making an accurate or fair comparison. If we were to compare security holes for Windows versus the bare-minimum install for most Linux distros, plus X, plus GDM and GNOME (or KDM and KDE), that would be a far fairer comparison. And one which Microsoft would probably have a hard time winning.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not long release cycles that are the problem; it's unpredictable ones.
To the second question, Debian has a different perception of "support" than Gentoo does. Release critical bugs dictate when the distribution is released, and there needs to be a clear, problem-free upgrade path between releases. Debian is to date the only system where I've upgraded the same machine between multiple stable releases without having any problems at all.
Um, no.
Porting and supporting are two very different things.
Like yum now?
Fair enough, but don't we already have laws against attempts to defraud?
As to "forcing" you to buy something? Parent indicated a CITIZEN REFERENDUM OR INITIATIVE putting the taxes for this service to a popular vote. If people don't want it, it'll fail overwhelmingly and no one will be "forced" into anything.
And if it does pass, those who didn't want it will be forced into paying for it. Even if they don't use it. This country was founded on the principles of a Republic, not a Democracy. Majority rule quickly becomes a tyranny of the people, which is why we favor majority rule while respecting minority rights.
Obviously the level to which the majority can overrule the opposition of the minority is a hotly-debated topic. However, it seems disingenuous to me to make people pay for services they don't use, don't benefit from, and are opposed to. Especially when there already exist opt-in alternatives.
Government intervention is supposed to be there for when no opt-in alternatives exist, or when this would require duplication of massive physical infrastructure (e.g., sewers and plumbing). Not when there's already a myriad of choices.
And if it passes, and the government service sucks as badly as you think it will, private companies will come along and offer better service and make tons of money.
Hardly. It's been well-documented that most privately-educated kids are more well-rounded, do better in life, and score better on standardized tests than do publicly-educated kids. And yet our often-criticized public education system is alive and well. Why? Because anyone who sends their child to private school is paying not only for their child to go to school twice, but they're paying significantly more than a private school would cost under free market conditions, since it's a niche industry.
I don't predict the demise of telecom, and nor do I believe they are only looking out for the public good. But no matter how bad the government service is, people will continue to use it because it's "free".
And of course, with government in the mix, we open the door for concerned mothers to try and block sites with "questionable content" for the sake of children. It's been pointed out in other threads that government is less likely than a private company to fall to this kind of pressure, but I beg to differ. Private companies continually have to earn profits, which means they're extremely unlikely to spend money on limiting their services. Municipal services are less concerned with this, since their revenues stay the same no matter what; it's all collected through taxes anyways. And hell, look at the FCC debacle with Janet Jackson's breast and increased fines for swearing on broadcast TV. I don't want the same thing happening to my Internet connection.
You so-called "lovers of the free market" are the ones who tell us that it's OUR problem to figure out how to get health insurance when it's prohibitively expensive, and OUR problem to get a job. Well great, fine. Then it's the CORPORATION'S problem to figure out how to break into a government's market area...
This is such a nonsequitur I don't know where to begin.
For starters, this is the government breaking into the corporations' market. Not the other way around.
Necessary? How so? We already have laws against fraud that could easily be used rather than having to draft up entirely new legislation.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Close, but it's got two i's. :(
Speaking of which, Profane MuthaFucka, how did you get your nickname?
And how, precisely, do you propose to deliver this power to the earth's surface?
As light. Duh. ;)
And, unless they are able to document loss as a result of the loss...
Well that shouldn't be too hard ;)
...and Slashdotted already.
Perhaps because you could, I dunno, PLUG IT INTO YOUR CAR? =P
Given, but my point was that they were large and independent areas. Obviously the point can be argued either way, but French-Canadians are fairly-well clustered inside Quebec. And they're, from what I can tell, extremely loyal to France. Not so much for the U.S. and the U.K. And there are many French islands, but I would question whether or not they acutally speak pristine, academy-mandated French.
It comes back to the fact that americans are apathetic towards politics.
Actually, most Americans aren't apathetic about politics. The problem is that everybody thinks that they and only they are right. When anyone tries to debate, it devolves into a shouting match where nobody can agree that the other side has valid points. After a few episodes of that, nobody wants to discuss anything even remotely politically related any more.
I love debate, and it pisses me off because ninety-five percent of the time, whenever politics is brought up and the other person has a differing opinion, the other person starts acting agitated and switches topics. I'm not a scathing or caustic person, and other people have reported similar occurrences, so I'm doubtful that it's just me. Hell, look at the most recent election:
Bush is horrible! Ignore anything bad about Kerry and elect him anyways! Since Bush is Satan, Kerry could not possibly be worse!
And, of course, similar statements from the other, equally closed-minded, side of the political spectrum.
The fact is that France, because of the Academie Francaise, is preventing language degeneration, unlike in the US, where any word you want you can put in a dictionary and people will start to use it. Spelling is also an issue. French and English both have roots that go back very far, but English has evolved and degenerated so much that in fact there are now at least two english languages: American english and British english, with different spelling and grammar rules. French is still very much held together...
Could this be somehow related to the fact that, oh I don't know, the English language is spoken in two extremely large, geographically-independent countries, and French is spoken in one?
Milton Freidman would disagree with you :)
In Capitalism and Freedom he lays out a fairly clear case that government-run monopolies are often far worse than privately-held ones. It's been awhile, but I think the main gist is that corporate monopolies may do worse things, but in the end they're still potentially vulnerable to a newcomer or internal collapse. Governments, on the other hand, are resilient as hell, and their monopolies tend to last significantly longer. Especially in the presence of an apathetic populace.
If the community one "will be poorly and insecurely run, slow to respond (for instance, blocking ports to stem the spread of viruses), and twice as expensive as anything else" no one will use it.
Right. Nobody uses Microsoft products.
Cheap shot, I know. But the point stands that 95% of people would use it regardless because they don't understand the first two points. For the third, the cost is often hidden by subsidization. It's similar to public/private schools. Most people send their children to public schools because they can't afford private. In many cases, they can't afford private because they're already being forced to pay for public schools through property taxes. And of course, there's always the concern that by sending you child to private school you're paying for their education twice. They're quite similar.
I would, of course, have a huge problem with government monopolizing control over access to the Internet. But I do not have a problem with muni governments offering an internet service that I can either take or leave as a service option.
I suppose my concern is that governments would use their leverage on this to push the competing services out of the municipal area. I'm not naieve enough to believe that the telecom companies have no dirt on their hands in trying to block these municipal-run services entirely. But imagine a situation in which nearly every major city starts offering broadband at a subsidized cost. Telecom pulls out of the city since the meager revenues aren't worth the cost of running/maintaining cable, and all you're left with is the one municipal service.
Also, a question about your figures. Do you know whether or not the service was subsidized by taxpayers, i.e., like the post office? I'd like to know.
...have a problem with government controlling access to the Internet? Anyone at all?
I know this is Slashdot and we're supposed to hate big buisiness and everything, but isn't government-provided Internet access just a bad idea? First off we have the fact that government can always undercut the opponent and hide the costs in taxes; few will ever complain. So clearly there's the risk that in the end we'll end up paying even more for broadband than we used to. Second, once government is involved, this throws the door wide open for "concerned mothers" to start lobbying for state-, county-, or city-wide controls on the content. You know how draconian those content filters are at government-run schools? In all likelihood these will go on municipal broadband offerings, too.
If it's like any other government service, it will be poorly and insecurely run, slow to respond (for instance, blocking ports to stem the spread of viruses), and twice as expensive as anything else. And by the time it's in, we'll be stuck with it for the rest of eternity (Amtrak, anyone?).
Best I can tell, ClamAV doesn't have a daemon that sits resident in memory and checks for files as they're created/read/executed.
The qmail license? You mean the one that, for no reason other than djb's being a prick, disallows repackaging of his software or changing which directories it uses to something a bit less crack-addled?
(being pedantic) Actually, you mean UTF-16. Unicode is just a set of code points; it doesn't actually specify how many bits are used to encode them.
You're actually trying to claim that Winamp's design is good?
Winamp and other players which try to emulate the look and feel of a "new wave" stereo do nothing but piss me off. Stereo systems have the bad interfaces they do because of an inherent lack of physical space; something that's still a concern with computers, but much less of one.
Here's to more programs like Rhythmbox and iTunes which have the *important* controls accessible, allow for easy categorisation of songs, and use screen space nicely. All that without having to resort to 6pt fonts.
If only I had mod points =(
Nobody's arguing this. However, they're only saying it's' somewhat of an unfair comparison: Windows consists of Explorer, the GUI, .NET, the APIs, etc., when youre average Linux distro comes with office applications, games, tons of utilities, compilers, etc. It's not making an accurate or fair comparison. If we were to compare security holes for Windows versus the bare-minimum install for most Linux distros, plus X, plus GDM and GNOME (or KDM and KDE), that would be a far fairer comparison. And one which Microsoft would probably have a hard time winning.