Efficiency is a concrete factor and being such can be measured independently with matching results, other factors such as "environment", "convenience", "safety" are sometimes much more difficult to measure.
You're right though, efficiency is usually not the primary factor in most designs.
The question is how much energy is lost by converting it to this form. If the conversion(s) from sources of energy to user-forms actually pollutes or wastes more transforming along the way then it still needs work or other alternatives should be explored. Practically all the energy (excluding nuclear and gravity) we use originates from the Sun (oil used to be plants, topsoil is mostly plant material...) itself so the ideal solution considering thermodynamics would be to have the form to be a minimal number of transformations from the source as possible.
>> Typical moronic open source cant. it is not my responsibility to propose something "perfect". (Thaat's a word I didnt use, as you well know.) But, since you asked, for starters Wikipedia might hire professional editors and professional factcheckers who get paid to review copy for accuracy and avoidance of libel and sslander prior to publication.
If you want a perfect ideal then instead of whining 'boycott it', propose something that would be perfect in all cases. Lies/inaccuracies? I'm sure there's quite a few places in the world where even Britanica is looked at as Western propaganda. Poor idea? I visit Wikipedia pretty much everyday to see what interesting, accurate-enough piece of entertainment/insight is highlighted at the moment. And when I say accurate-enough, I'm saying that for the amount of good information within Wikipedia it far outweighs the relatively very small amount of datums that are contested.
The Universe is really, really big. Probability wise, within huge distances from us the last space-faring civilization died out 6 million years ago and the next won't occur until 4 million years after we're gone.
We could go out and destroy all the hidden data-centre's that they left behind and we could find though.;)
I belive he's talking about those pesky abstractions we all use without a thought everyday. Basically, the scenario unfolds in this way: you recieve information from a entity and the ideas contained within said information can be helpful (like Universal Cure) to harmful or disruptive (something along the lines of a memetic virus).
It would be a nasty trick for an alien civilization to give us the most destructive weapon possible without giving us accompaning social skill's as well. Or we could figuratively be on the 'beads' end in some initial contact scenario.
To quote Morris Berman, "An idea is something you have, an ideology is something that has you.". An old alien civilization out there could just be very good at constructing ideologies. I'm not saying now is the time to consider this chance, rather that it should be considered when alien contact occurs.
For something just as infeasible, why don't we just make it illegal for anyone under the age of majority to use the Internet? He may speak for a majority and if the US wasn't a republic (with that aweful notion of rights whether or not you're a minority) then good for him. But as the world has more tastes than his little mind can hold I'll have to simplify it a bit: Censors, fuck off.
My old computer sitting next to me is about 3 times faster just in megahertz rating than a cray from the mid 80's (iirc ~300Mhz). And that's before you factor in architectural speed gains. What I would really love to have kicking around is the software that ran on those old Crays... 2D nuclear explosion sim's 'n stuff..;)
Bureauocratic waste is the biggest problem with it. Our Premier Ralph Klein has been pushing the idea of a privately run-publically funded organization for quite a while now. He's been having a lot of resistence because of the fact that Universal Health Care is a jewel in our national crown and everyone's afraid to touch it with a political 10 foot pole. I agree with Klein however, a dose of efficiency while providing the same quality of care should be at least experimented with. Let a few hospitals run independant for 5 years and if it works gradually phase in more.
It'd be nice if we could have our cake and eat it too.
I live in a city that is about as atypical as you can get for normal life pressures. I was going to go on about the evil's of capitalism for a bit because the city I live in is very abnormal economy wise, we only make oil and we're in the middle of nowhere. In the last 7 years the cities population has more than doubled and rents have literally increased by about 400% as houses/apartments cannot be built fast enough to meet demand. What's evil is that market forces do not neccesarily correspond to human values. But you're right it all does work out in the end, all but legally sanctioned here the minimum wage has moved up to about the $11CAN mark. But while it was slowly adjusting I've seen many life-long friends (I grew up here) literally forced to move to a city that was cheaper to live in. There's good and evil in all systems I guess, but I do believe that there must be some better system than we have now.
Here's a link to a genetic algorithm scheduler for movie chains. Thinking about what I said above, really people do do it already just people doing their thing, so starting from doing the same thing people do to manage their careers and say from there implement it in software with algorithms such as this constantly reviewing the information and suggesting opportunitys or counselling about possible dangers as people go through their lives. To quote Alfred Whitehead, "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.", if modern life could be made simpler and through computer assistence more pleasent+efficient then I'd love to see it done.
I think the notion of Intellectual Property begins with placing a value on things to begin with. To me, capitalism consists of combining natural market optimization forces (E.g. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand) with an arbritrary system of cost values. Diamonds are just rocks, man, but not to me. Fair payment can still be arrived at without depending on natural market forces, perhaps something along the lines of a genetic algorithm scheduling system taking into account skill sets instead of hourly rates then everyone just does their assigned work and recieves universal services. And I would love so see it all automated using the brand new Information Age wonder (at least in Civ) called the Internet. When I can get up in the morning and have my computer give me a list of clients who need their computer fixed that day (or whatever someone does) and I go do it and I don't even think of paying rent because it's all covered. In a way it does need social institutions to be implemented such as universal health care here in Canada. It's damn expensive but practically everyone thinks it's a damn good idea.
Hey man,;), maybe capitalism is just a transitory stepping stone along how we go about doing things... A future where we don't have to eat soma would be nice too... Now, if this dang IntarWEb would just work all the time...
Not when you constantly have to vote the bastards out like here with our Liberal party at the moment (massive kick-back scandal and all they have to really say for themselves is "we paid back all the money!", yeah, only because they got caught). The system is already corrupted, we're not starting from step one so everythings mixed in at all stages. Knock some laws down while slowly turning the tide of voting against whoever happens to suck most.
I don't get you US consumers. What can you do to resist? Slashdot is great for bitching and whining but other than awareness-of does little to correct the issues. I don't need to yet in my country (Canada) but you guys from my point-of-view need to engage in some armed insurrection. Not physical arms of course, somebody might get hurt. Instead how about organizing and really using the first box in the defense of liberty, the soap box?
Here's the quote about boxes if I remember it right:
There are four boxes to defend liberty with: the soap box, the jury box, the voter box and the ammo box. Use in that order.
(Bad) reviews are a form of condensed information about the book that attests to it's quality, so here's a choice qoute from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. (or close to that)
In my opinion this guys a fuckhead who thinks that whining and crying will always get him what he wants. That said - also in my opinion - he also seems to be on a puritanical crusade to ban everything that offends him. Fuck off Jack Thompson, you don't speak for me or probably anything resembling a majority either.
... I can't think of a better analogy, but using that one allows people to poke holes in the argument for no DRM, which we don't want to happen...
Practically, if every file-sharing-type of program enforced and handled micropayments (maybe mandated by law for every program that spreads information) then anyone who went to the Internet to share files with their "friends" would always see a pay your 99 cents and a buy now! button in the search results if the content wasn't free. It's kind of like choosing mutual cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilema, everybody pays so they don't lock down.
At the worst within the above context (ALL legal file-sharing programs collect payment if there is one required) the only infringement would be casual piracy where someone go's over to a real friends home and plugs in a portable hard drive but this hole has existed long before the invention of the Internet - you could do the same thing with audio tapes pre-'net - and it is also known as fair use (at least here in Canada).
Warez sites come and go, I have little sympathy for them - they know it happens. But, I've been known to sample a new artist here and there *cough* and I like getting my movies, songs, books, and software through the Internet so I really do want copyright holders to get their heads out of their collective ass and wise up a bit.
The Internet is the most amazing distribution system for Information ever invented by us and no matter how content is distributed be it bittorrent, gnutella, ftp, or http that is not the real problem the media companies are facing. The real problem is that they don't have a means of payment built into whatever communications protocol is being levereged at the moment to move data. iTunes, Napster to Go, and the like simply suck and I'm not going to bite because in my opinion I will only accept purchasing a copy of a high-quality content source with *no* drm so I could transcode it into an appropriate quality and format for the other devices I own, instead of forcing the purchase of the same content on multiple media types.
Here's how I see it, it's just like making a withdrawal at the bank, I go to a teller, swipe my card, tell her how much I want, and that's it. It's all simple and just works. Getting online information however is a daunting task as usually at the minimum a credit card is required. Then you have to know what format your music is going to arrive in wrapped in drm (which adds further confusion to the market as consumers scratch their head when their.wma file won't play on an ipod - something to do with.aac I guess? Seriously it's a mess from an average persons point of view) and then you're limited on how many your devices that can store your purchased copy of the information and millions of other little things that piss me off. What I'm trying to get to is content sources: make it friggin' simple. I want to go from ooooooh! shiny song must buy to got it in seconds with only a minimal amount of new payment complexity (swipe card; enter pin vs. fill out form 1074 in triplicate along with supplemental schedule B and maybe, just maybe we'll let you have a license to it...). Debits here, it works, make it go.
There are certain standards that would improve computing in general that don't exist yet: A standard to embed video and audio streams (down to the level of which codecs are used) in a way that all future web browsers should commonly agree on. Imagine if the w3c standardized video! No more going to CNN with firefox on linux and not having access to the good news feeds.
A lot of things are being thrown about with all the hoopla lately about web 2.0. It's hard to reach any kind of understanding with the wide variety of opinions being thrown around but to me, it should be about evolving the browser so that it can be the best multimedia application possible in a standards based way so that the maximum users regardless of platform are able to participate.
I do believe in evolving/inventing as we go so I must reiterate from my grandparent post that it is a cycle of explore then simplify. I think now is a time to simplify things and that the idea of the Information conduit should be the focus. Imagine access protected video being routed around the 'net from the surgery ward of a hospital not only streamed in real time to a doctor halfway across the country but to the anxious parents at home as well.
Then another focus of web 2.0 is providing a method again built into future browsers to determine the relevance of search results to a given query. Sound like Google? It is. But it's a big hairy problem that current ideas are trying to solve using agent methodology which means the addition of a whole new layer of information to the web - the semantic web - for software agents to do their thing with.
So yes, a lot of hindsight is going into the new web and thats good but more tools to organize and create useful information are needed and the standards that govern them should be designed with as much forsight as humanly possible.
All of human progress including technology is characterized by a repeating cycle of exploration and simplification. I do think that Open Source software is a better way to make software but does not always result in better software.
What I think is far more important than Open Source methodology is the setting of standards in the first place. Consider all of networking, it was formalized as a framework called OSI (Open Systems Interconnect) and was structured in such a way that it could be modularily extended with minimal disruption to other areas. Imagine what the Internet would be today without the OSI model. I think we would instead of a world wide system would be stuck for quite a few years with a mish-mash of protocols that wouldn't communicate well with each other. What I mean by that is there would be AOL networks, Microsoft networks, Sun networks, and so on and they would only communicate with each other through kludges at best. I don't see that situation as a healthy one at all. Now, given enough time everything clears up so eventually one(ish) networking standard would come to prevail but there would have been a lot more resources wasted to arrive at the equivalent point of a designed from the outset standard.
I don't think that very many people would disagree if I said that the Internet is an essential service and in many different ways that alone implies a need for regulation. Internet service is run as a free market right now and market forces are great at optimization of variables but are not intelligent and do not always do smart things (beta vs. vhs anyone?). What I'm trying to say is that governments should introduce new standards into the Internet, things that try to make it the most efficient and flexible Information conduit it can be. It's all about where you start and where you end, and with standards as a better starting point than random less effort is expended traveling to where we should be.
So where I'm going with all this is that the conflict between proprietary and open software vendors could be easier to resolve if regulations were established that in effect stated that all the pipes were going to be the same size so they would fit together. This is where the commons doesn't have to be a tragety, the removal of scarcity from the system does allow for "The Magic Cauldron" effect and that is where Open Source should be. Now, if all the basic information infrastucture is regulated, what does that leave for private enterprise? Content, baby, content. That's where all the real money is;).
The army will invest lot's of good money into each soldier too, and yes the army is doing it for their own benefit but the soldier gains skills as part of the transaction as well. In a Machiavellian way it is all about combat readiness and that is necessary as a base but from there the values drilled into each soldier originate from the values of the nation as a whole. The values are all we have to hold onto when it comes down to it and I think the US values tend to be the kind that are suitable for real people to hold onto in times of duress.
Not disagreeing with anything you've said, I think we agree with different language.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a condensed version of Adam Smith's: An Inquiry Into The Nature And Causes Of The Wealth Of Nations.
And it's still read in Economics 101 BTW.
Efficiency is a concrete factor and being such can be measured independently with matching results, other factors such as "environment", "convenience", "safety" are sometimes much more difficult to measure.
You're right though, efficiency is usually not the primary factor in most designs.
The question is how much energy is lost by converting it to this form. If the conversion(s) from sources of energy to user-forms actually pollutes or wastes more transforming along the way then it still needs work or other alternatives should be explored. Practically all the energy (excluding nuclear and gravity) we use originates from the Sun (oil used to be plants, topsoil is mostly plant material...) itself so the ideal solution considering thermodynamics would be to have the form to be a minimal number of transformations from the source as possible.
>> Typical moronic open source cant. it is not my responsibility to propose something "perfect". (Thaat's a word I didnt use, as you well know.) But, since you asked, for starters Wikipedia might hire professional editors and professional factcheckers who get paid to review copy for accuracy and avoidance of libel and sslander prior to publication.
:p
Quietism: The worthless attitude of 'let others do it'.
>> So what? If people want to believe their own lies, let them.
I choose to believe Wikipedia's lies and I'm disgruntled when you try to force your lies on me.
>> If you want to be entertained, watch TV or buy an iPod or a comic book. An encyclopedia is supposed to be accurate, not "interesting".
Actually I think learning is fun unlike being punished to learn everything by rote.
If you want a perfect ideal then instead of whining 'boycott it', propose something that would be perfect in all cases. Lies/inaccuracies? I'm sure there's quite a few places in the world where even Britanica is looked at as Western propaganda. Poor idea? I visit Wikipedia pretty much everyday to see what interesting, accurate-enough piece of entertainment/insight is highlighted at the moment. And when I say accurate-enough, I'm saying that for the amount of good information within Wikipedia it far outweighs the relatively very small amount of datums that are contested.
...Let's go kill them all !...
;)
The Universe is really, really big. Probability wise, within huge distances from us the last space-faring civilization died out 6 million years ago and the next won't occur until 4 million years after we're gone.
We could go out and destroy all the hidden data-centre's that they left behind and we could find though.
I belive he's talking about those pesky abstractions we all use without a thought everyday. Basically, the scenario unfolds in this way: you recieve information from a entity and the ideas contained within said information can be helpful (like Universal Cure) to harmful or disruptive (something along the lines of a memetic virus).
It would be a nasty trick for an alien civilization to give us the most destructive weapon possible without giving us accompaning social skill's as well. Or we could figuratively be on the 'beads' end in some initial contact scenario.
To quote Morris Berman, "An idea is something you have, an ideology is something that has you.". An old alien civilization out there could just be very good at constructing ideologies. I'm not saying now is the time to consider this chance, rather that it should be considered when alien contact occurs.
For something just as infeasible, why don't we just make it illegal for anyone under the age of majority to use the Internet? He may speak for a majority and if the US wasn't a republic (with that aweful notion of rights whether or not you're a minority) then good for him. But as the world has more tastes than his little mind can hold I'll have to simplify it a bit: Censors, fuck off.
My old computer sitting next to me is about 3 times faster just in megahertz rating than a cray from the mid 80's (iirc ~300Mhz). And that's before you factor in architectural speed gains. What I would really love to have kicking around is the software that ran on those old Crays... 2D nuclear explosion sim's 'n stuff.. ;)
Bureauocratic waste is the biggest problem with it. Our Premier Ralph Klein has been pushing the idea of a privately run-publically funded organization for quite a while now. He's been having a lot of resistence because of the fact that Universal Health Care is a jewel in our national crown and everyone's afraid to touch it with a political 10 foot pole. I agree with Klein however, a dose of efficiency while providing the same quality of care should be at least experimented with. Let a few hospitals run independant for 5 years and if it works gradually phase in more.
It'd be nice if we could have our cake and eat it too.
Ok, define your views of capitalism and communism and how you view the communist ills within capitalism.
I live in a city that is about as atypical as you can get for normal life pressures. I was going to go on about the evil's of capitalism for a bit because the city I live in is very abnormal economy wise, we only make oil and we're in the middle of nowhere. In the last 7 years the cities population has more than doubled and rents have literally increased by about 400% as houses/apartments cannot be built fast enough to meet demand. What's evil is that market forces do not neccesarily correspond to human values. But you're right it all does work out in the end, all but legally sanctioned here the minimum wage has moved up to about the $11CAN mark. But while it was slowly adjusting I've seen many life-long friends (I grew up here) literally forced to move to a city that was cheaper to live in. There's good and evil in all systems I guess, but I do believe that there must be some better system than we have now.
Here's a link to a genetic algorithm scheduler for movie chains. Thinking about what I said above, really people do do it already just people doing their thing, so starting from doing the same thing people do to manage their careers and say from there implement it in software with algorithms such as this constantly reviewing the information and suggesting opportunitys or counselling about possible dangers as people go through their lives. To quote Alfred Whitehead, "Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.", if modern life could be made simpler and through computer assistence more pleasent+efficient then I'd love to see it done.
I think the notion of Intellectual Property begins with placing a value on things to begin with. To me, capitalism consists of combining natural market optimization forces (E.g. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand) with an arbritrary system of cost values. Diamonds are just rocks, man, but not to me. Fair payment can still be arrived at without depending on natural market forces, perhaps something along the lines of a genetic algorithm scheduling system taking into account skill sets instead of hourly rates then everyone just does their assigned work and recieves universal services. And I would love so see it all automated using the brand new Information Age wonder (at least in Civ) called the Internet. When I can get up in the morning and have my computer give me a list of clients who need their computer fixed that day (or whatever someone does) and I go do it and I don't even think of paying rent because it's all covered. In a way it does need social institutions to be implemented such as universal health care here in Canada. It's damn expensive but practically everyone thinks it's a damn good idea.
Hey man, ;), maybe capitalism is just a transitory stepping stone along how we go about doing things... A future where we don't have to eat soma would be nice too... Now, if this dang IntarWEb would just work all the time...
Not when you constantly have to vote the bastards out like here with our Liberal party at the moment (massive kick-back scandal and all they have to really say for themselves is "we paid back all the money!", yeah, only because they got caught). The system is already corrupted, we're not starting from step one so everythings mixed in at all stages. Knock some laws down while slowly turning the tide of voting against whoever happens to suck most.
I don't get you US consumers. What can you do to resist? Slashdot is great for bitching and whining but other than awareness-of does little to correct the issues. I don't need to yet in my country (Canada) but you guys from my point-of-view need to engage in some armed insurrection. Not physical arms of course, somebody might get hurt. Instead how about organizing and really using the first box in the defense of liberty, the soap box?
Here's the quote about boxes if I remember it right:
There are four boxes to defend liberty with: the soap box, the jury box, the voter box and the ammo box. Use in that order.
(Bad) reviews are a form of condensed information about the book that attests to it's quality, so here's a choice qoute from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri:
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. (or close to that)
In my opinion this guys a fuckhead who thinks that whining and crying will always get him what he wants. That said - also in my opinion - he also seems to be on a puritanical crusade to ban everything that offends him. Fuck off Jack Thompson, you don't speak for me or probably anything resembling a majority either.
In other news, Windows was cracked 68% faster than Linux and didn't warn that it was happening at 40%....
:)
...they might actually produce more energy than they burn...
;)
[HOMER]
In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
[/HOMER]
... I can't think of a better analogy, but using that one allows people to poke holes in the argument for no DRM, which we don't want to happen ...
Practically, if every file-sharing-type of program enforced and handled micropayments (maybe mandated by law for every program that spreads information) then anyone who went to the Internet to share files with their "friends" would always see a pay your 99 cents and a buy now! button in the search results if the content wasn't free. It's kind of like choosing mutual cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilema, everybody pays so they don't lock down.
At the worst within the above context (ALL legal file-sharing programs collect payment if there is one required) the only infringement would be casual piracy where someone go's over to a real friends home and plugs in a portable hard drive but this hole has existed long before the invention of the Internet - you could do the same thing with audio tapes pre-'net - and it is also known as fair use (at least here in Canada).
Warez sites come and go, I have little sympathy for them - they know it happens. But, I've been known to sample a new artist here and there *cough* and I like getting my movies, songs, books, and software through the Internet so I really do want copyright holders to get their heads out of their collective ass and wise up a bit. .wma file won't play on an ipod - something to do with .aac I guess? Seriously it's a mess from an average persons point of view) and then you're limited on how many your devices that can store your purchased copy of the information and millions of other little things that piss me off. What I'm trying to get to is content sources: make it friggin' simple. I want to go from ooooooh! shiny song must buy to got it in seconds with only a minimal amount of new payment complexity (swipe card; enter pin vs. fill out form 1074 in triplicate along with supplemental schedule B and maybe, just maybe we'll let you have a license to it...). Debits here, it works, make it go.
The Internet is the most amazing distribution system for Information ever invented by us and no matter how content is distributed be it bittorrent, gnutella, ftp, or http that is not the real problem the media companies are facing. The real problem is that they don't have a means of payment built into whatever communications protocol is being levereged at the moment to move data. iTunes, Napster to Go, and the like simply suck and I'm not going to bite because in my opinion I will only accept purchasing a copy of a high-quality content source with *no* drm so I could transcode it into an appropriate quality and format for the other devices I own, instead of forcing the purchase of the same content on multiple media types.
Here's how I see it, it's just like making a withdrawal at the bank, I go to a teller, swipe my card, tell her how much I want, and that's it. It's all simple and just works. Getting online information however is a daunting task as usually at the minimum a credit card is required. Then you have to know what format your music is going to arrive in wrapped in drm (which adds further confusion to the market as consumers scratch their head when their
There are certain standards that would improve computing in general that don't exist yet: A standard to embed video and audio streams (down to the level of which codecs are used) in a way that all future web browsers should commonly agree on. Imagine if the w3c standardized video! No more going to CNN with firefox on linux and not having access to the good news feeds.
A lot of things are being thrown about with all the hoopla lately about web 2.0. It's hard to reach any kind of understanding with the wide variety of opinions being thrown around but to me, it should be about evolving the browser so that it can be the best multimedia application possible in a standards based way so that the maximum users regardless of platform are able to participate.
I do believe in evolving/inventing as we go so I must reiterate from my grandparent post that it is a cycle of explore then simplify. I think now is a time to simplify things and that the idea of the Information conduit should be the focus. Imagine access protected video being routed around the 'net from the surgery ward of a hospital not only streamed in real time to a doctor halfway across the country but to the anxious parents at home as well.
Then another focus of web 2.0 is providing a method again built into future browsers to determine the relevance of search results to a given query. Sound like Google? It is. But it's a big hairy problem that current ideas are trying to solve using agent methodology which means the addition of a whole new layer of information to the web - the semantic web - for software agents to do their thing with.
So yes, a lot of hindsight is going into the new web and thats good but more tools to organize and create useful information are needed and the standards that govern them should be designed with as much forsight as humanly possible.
All of human progress including technology is characterized by a repeating cycle of exploration and simplification. I do think that Open Source software is a better way to make software but does not always result in better software. ;).
What I think is far more important than Open Source methodology is the setting of standards in the first place. Consider all of networking, it was formalized as a framework called OSI (Open Systems Interconnect) and was structured in such a way that it could be modularily extended with minimal disruption to other areas. Imagine what the Internet would be today without the OSI model. I think we would instead of a world wide system would be stuck for quite a few years with a mish-mash of protocols that wouldn't communicate well with each other. What I mean by that is there would be AOL networks, Microsoft networks, Sun networks, and so on and they would only communicate with each other through kludges at best. I don't see that situation as a healthy one at all. Now, given enough time everything clears up so eventually one(ish) networking standard would come to prevail but there would have been a lot more resources wasted to arrive at the equivalent point of a designed from the outset standard.
I don't think that very many people would disagree if I said that the Internet is an essential service and in many different ways that alone implies a need for regulation. Internet service is run as a free market right now and market forces are great at optimization of variables but are not intelligent and do not always do smart things (beta vs. vhs anyone?). What I'm trying to say is that governments should introduce new standards into the Internet, things that try to make it the most efficient and flexible Information conduit it can be. It's all about where you start and where you end, and with standards as a better starting point than random less effort is expended traveling to where we should be.
So where I'm going with all this is that the conflict between proprietary and open software vendors could be easier to resolve if regulations were established that in effect stated that all the pipes were going to be the same size so they would fit together. This is where the commons doesn't have to be a tragety, the removal of scarcity from the system does allow for "The Magic Cauldron" effect and that is where Open Source should be. Now, if all the basic information infrastucture is regulated, what does that leave for private enterprise? Content, baby, content. That's where all the real money is
The army will invest lot's of good money into each soldier too, and yes the army is doing it for their own benefit but the soldier gains skills as part of the transaction as well. In a Machiavellian way it is all about combat readiness and that is necessary as a base but from there the values drilled into each soldier originate from the values of the nation as a whole. The values are all we have to hold onto when it comes down to it and I think the US values tend to be the kind that are suitable for real people to hold onto in times of duress.
Not disagreeing with anything you've said, I think we agree with different language.