As a programmer coming out of college, you shouldn't be worrying about what kind of job you can get at 50. You should see what's available to you now and in the next 10 years, and set yourself up for success regardless of what happens. How? Save and invest. If you are coming out of school now with a CS degree, and if you do it right, you should have no trouble retiring at age 50 with several million dollars in the bank.
But, instead, you'll buy every new toy that comes out, you'll rent, you'll party, you'll piss it all away, and then you will have something to worry about. You don't even need a great job to be able to do this - just average computer-tech jobs. If you are a CS major, you know some math - go do some and you'll see what I'm talking about.
If you do this, then you can look forward to contributing to the world's open source software, and to all our freedom in general, instead of managing some proprietary project.
Source code should be free speech. It's just text, after all.
Compiled code is property.
Running code is a person under the law.
Treat these accordingly. ie if a virus causes widespread damage, arrest it and jail/execute it (no pun intended!). If MS-Outlook helps the virus along, indict it as an accomplice to terrorism.
That's very sad. The very vehemence of your words is rather telling, don't you think? The original poster wasn't really saying anything all that astounding, was he? That being rich and well off implies some responsibility on your part to others less fortunate? That's just common sense, except for those who never grow up, who think they live in an isolated bubble of entirely their own creation.
I disagree with your assumptions. Slashdot may be a news and media site, but it isn't a normal one. It's not made by journalists - it's made by programmers. We the audience are the "fact-finding" journalists. And we crunch through many stories every day and sift the wheat from the chaff, fact from fiction. Maybe this model doesn't work for you, but I think it's a more accurate description of Slashdot than yours.
This is a really shitty idea. We definitely don't need a computer moderating for us. If we need more moderation, then assign more people as moderators. A computer won't do better than it's programmed, and it's programmed by one person - which means our filtering is the result of a single set of values rather than a distributed set.
Plus, we don't need to help those who want to write filtering software for other purposes.
I'd rather he worked on a slashdot posting agent! Something that combed the web for potentially interesting Slashdot stories for us to read and comment on.
I don't recall those countries becoming part of the Soviet Union. Maybe I'm missing something. The fact that they were allies with Russia, got support from them, and shared an economic and gov. system in common doesn't make them expressions of Soviet Imperialism. If that were true, the US would be much more guilty of conquest for it's forays into South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe etc. Israel? Germany? Japan? Hong Kong? Taiwan? South Korea? etc etc.
You can check that they're following the safety rules and that they aren't planning to cut corners or intentionally cause harm. Terrorists are immediately ruled out. As are those who are lazy or who want to cut costs.
Of course, part of the point is that, once we have the ability to accurately censor, it most likely will be put into practice, because when it comes down to it, we, as a people, prefer security to freedom. If it can be guaranteed that you can catch all the criminals before they do their crime, people will give up their right to their private thoughts and submit to periodic examinations. That's what's scary, and it's probably what's coming.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned James Halperin. He writes purely science fiction (as in characterization? What's that?). He has some startling ideas about future technology developments and the effects they could have on society. One of his books is called "The Truth Machine", and it's essentially an infallible lie detector that becomes the basis of all legal proceedings. Privacy vanishes entirely as a result, which has the surprising effect of increasing the pace and daring of technological research and advancement (ie no need to worry about dangerous technologies when you can always trust the motives of those working on it).
Sure, but if you look too far forward, something unexpected comes along in the meantime and smacks you silly. It might take RedHat 5 years to achieve the size you talk about. In five years, they may no longer even be the top Linux seller, much less a challenger to Microsoft. The legal landscape could easily turn against open-source software. Their investments might turn sour. A 3 billion market capitalization is looking way too far in the future for RedHat. They don't really have much of a history of revenue growth even. The fact that you're here saying 10% of Microsoft is reasonable is scary, cause when people think like that, they buy it on margin, and then when it drops another 50% (no, that couldn't possibly happen!), they have to sell, and then sell something else to cover their margin debt. That's what makes the market fall so fast and so hard after people get too optimistic and dreamy-eyed.
This just goes to show how much perspective people have lost. RedHat's revenues for the last four quarters totals about $24 million. The market valuation is around $3.5 billion. Ratio of cap/rev=145.
Now, take AMD as a counter example. Revenues for the last 4 quarters totals around $3.1 billion. Capitalization ~= $13 billion. Ratio=4.2.
And that doesn't even count earnings after expenses, etc. Of course, RedHat has yet to earn anything.
Unlike most others who responded to this, I think there's actually a germ of a good idea here (sorry, couldn't resist:-)
Skipping his talk of commercializing virus creation, there's merit to the idea of de-criminalizing digital "crimes" - cracking, virus writing, etc.
1. It saves law enforcement money 2. It forces systems to be well designed to resist this activity 3. The damage done by this activity is not life-threatening (and if you're going to argue that it could be, like for air-traffic controller software or military software, then go check out #2 again and think about it).
Someone else parodied his idea based on real viruses, but if you think about it, you can't legislate away real viruses. What good does it do to arrest, convict, and (gasp!) put to death the virus that killed you? None. We instead want bio-technology to come up with defenses for our bodies against viruses. The fact that people are the creators of the virus is no reason to forget this.
You can't legislate morality. Nor solutions to problems. In the end, action is required. Find the most efficient action to take - who really thinks the best counter to viruses is sending the FBI to investigate all the time? Why not make security a blatantly visible part of our computer/network design. Seems to me we'll just wind up with a better system and better users.
If writing the ILOVEYOU virus were legal, do you think Microsoft would get away with enabling Outlook to do this? As it is, they have a convenient scapegoat - "it's not us, it's a criminal!" Take away the criminal, and what do you have? Criminally negligent software from Microsoft. No one would tolerate it, no matter how big Microsoft got.
...used to be my favorite author. I know I'm in the minority when I say I loved the Thomas Covenant series. I know everyone hates the main character cause he's a whiny loser, but get over it. There are dozens of great characters in those books. And the storyline and themes go quite a bit beyond anything else in the genre.
But, Donaldson is a classic "overwriter", as I call them. His descriptions are over the top. His depiction of his character's internal struggles is particularly overdone, and, to me, painful to read. The gap series had all the same self-conflicted characters as Thomas Covenant series, but without any really memorable characters, I thought. The themes are all the same though, which is interesting.
These days, I enjoy more simply told stories (not necessarily simpler stories), and my current favorite author is Lois Bujold.
Regarding Dune (oh, yeah, that's what this thread is about), I thought it was a great book. The movie would have been fine, except it was such a great book, and I'd read it, so I was disappointed. The rest of the series is worthless except for #4 ("God Emperor of Dune").
I've heard that you sued your record company for the rights to your own music and won. Most artists, I gather, never win such a "luxury. Now, your fighting on the side of the record companies - helping them maintain their power over artists. Wouldn't it be better to rather encourage a new distribution means whereby an artist didn't need the help of a large producer to distribute their music? Couldn't Napster evolve into something that would benefit artists?
The ability to move a Java program from one platform to the other without having to recompile is overrated I humbly suggest that the reason you think this is that you have not seen the future of computers and networks. In the future, bytecode will be flying around from computer to computer - and it will have to run flawlessly wherever it ends up. You could send around source code, I suppose, but you'd still need a rock-solid standard to ensure that source code would compile and run everywhere.
Open Source movement has the right approach
on
Thus Spake Stallman
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· Score: 2
Stallman has the right goal, but the open source movement has the right approach. Stallman should get over his emotion about our natural rights. It's bogus and ungrounded. To assert natural rights is to assert some god, and then you're just in a mess of trouble.
Instead, let's see what ethics really boils down to - it all comes to what we, as a society, want. It's that simple. What do we want. How do we want to live. What do we want life to be like? How best do we achieve it? We decide to make murder against the law because it suits us, not because it's "wrong". We don't like it.
Open/Free software is the same - if it creates a more effective, higher quality life for us, then it's good. If not, then not. It's the process of deciding and convincing others what's best that gets us into this useless argument of ethics. What Stallman is really saying, is life what be improved if I could use only Free Software. I think he's correct. But, it is a question of optimization rather than ethics, and the Open Source movement has the better approach.
The same goes for copying music. Does it create a better life if we allow copying of music? On the one hand, it obviously enjoyable to be able to listen to any music anytime for free, but on the other hand, will it mean less music and lower quality music will ever be created? I personally don't think the music will suffer. But, that's the argument we're embroiled in, and it's gonna be a while working it out.
happens when you're information is "out there" and you don't have legal access to it. Take credit reports. YOu can't legally get all the information about you without help from a lawyer. Ironically, others frequently can get this info.
The problem here is, what happens when they've got it wrong? What happens when reports about you have it down that you're a convicted felon, but you aren't? Can you fix it? Without consulting a lawyer, you won't find out, first of all. Secondly, once you do find out, you may discover that this information has been sold, copied, propagated to thousands of data-collecting organizations. You may find it's impossible to track it all down and fix it. It's effectively permanent.
Note: I didn't make any of that up. It has already happened to a man in Florida.
They are only human, they also make mistakes. Right, so let's have moderated story submission and cancel out human error.
There are several different admins, not just one of them. Sometimes they don't each know what the other admins have reviewed or posted recently. One admin may accept a story another rejects. Moderated story submission, so there's just one queue we're all looking at.
Guestimating the amount of crap they must have to filter out on a daily basis, I figure their record is pretty good. Moderated story submission, so we can all help out.
They probably gauge the importance of a topic on how many submissions they get. Being the first submitter gets you nothing. If you are the first one (or the only one), you probably won't get the credit unless it's earth-shattering news. Moderated story submission, so the importance of a topic can be more accurately gauged.
If you feel slighted by having them reject your stories, you really need something better to do with your time (unless you are a journalist;) ). Moderated story submission, so we have no one to pin blame on for being rejected.
If you're looking to make an impression on the/. community do it with well written posts rather than with story submissions. Ok.
I don't know about open source, but government should absolutely be using open standards technology whenever possible. Does it make sense for public documents to be in a proprietary file format when open formats exist? They belong to the people, right? It would be a shame if the company that supported those proprietary formats went under.
A similar argument could be made for the government using only open-source software. After all, using proprietary software for public and national uses could lead to trouble.
So, I think there is an argument for the government using only open standards and open source, where possible and practical. Not as policy designed to bolster the open-source movement, but just because it makes sense.
I probably shouldn't respond, since it's obvious your intent is simply to disagree with everything I say, but....
Your above argument is incoherant You keep saying that. Let's see you show it, in detail. To me, it's clear you aren't really thinking about my Amazon example.
In both the present and the proposed situation, the pricing [is controlled by Amazon] Only the tax is controlled by Amazon... and thus the effective control of the usage, is entirely up to Amazon No, usage is not under Amazon's control. Anyone can use the 1-click, if they choose. The only condition, is that the tax is paid each time.
They may or may not sell anything at the specified price There is no specified price. There is a specified Tax. There's a difference there you need to consider. Amazon can't make all their products cost the same whether or not 1-click is used. The tax only applies to 1-click, and so it boosts the price after the price of the item is determined. Amazon could give a discount for all 1-click purchases, but then the 1-click simply has the effect of reducing their profits.
For all intents and purposes though, this gives Amazon the ability to stop anyone from using it. The power to determine the pricing lies in Amazon's hands in both situation Not pricing - tax! Again, think about the difference. Amazon can, in practice, stop anyone from using 1-click, by assigning a tax of 50% to it (no user would ever use it, so no retailer would use it). But, Amazon also would not be able to use the technology, since the tax would apply to them as well, and the users would simply bypass the 1-click, or go elsewhere if you were forced to use 1-click at Amazon's site. So, yes, Amazon could patent it and put the tax ridiculously high, and no one could use it. But Amazon would also get no benefit, and they would, without doubt, bow to public pressure to remove or reduce the tax rate in such a situation.
My example, in case you did not understand, was: 2000 (monopoly rents) + 4000 (manufacturing and administrative costs) = 6000 (selling price). The point being that the power to reduce prices really does not rest in the competitions hand, as the price is mainly a function of monopoly rents, not manufacturing costs. Do you not really read stuff I'm writing? It seems obvious that I understood your breakdown of 2000 and 4000. It also is clear you're still talking about price, and not understanding the concept of tax. A tax is a percentage. Their is no fixed $2000 price. I translated this to a tax rate of 33% in my reworking of your example. This seems to make it clear that competitors have a great deal of control over the final cost of the product. A 50% reduction in the base manufacturing price ($4000 reduced to $2000), reduces the final cost to $2666, less than half the original $6000.
The pharma-company with the "life saving" medication can still determine the selling price. Yeah, basically, they can. Minor manufacturing cost savings could result, but overall, the pharmaceuticals are going to be good at predicting likely prices and at fixing a tax rate to their benefit. So? You like the present tax system for pharms-companies, and my system doesn't seem to harm their chances. That's a good thing. But it does make tech open. It forces patents to truly be worthwhile to the end user. And, it would avoid a lot of costly, inefficient court battles.
That is non sequitur. Amazon, under your system, is still entitled to charge whatever they please
I disagree. I don't think you've thought it through. If Amazon patents the 1-click under the tax idea, and applies, say, a 5% tax on it. Competitors will simply opt not to use it, because end users will opt not to pay it. End users will simply decide, "well, if I use the slightly longer method to buy my products, I avoid this stupid 5% tax", and thus, the users have determined the "value" of the patent. Amazon would have to drop the tax to nothing basically for something so useless. As it is now, other companies can opt not to use the 1-click, but it may put them at a disadvantage, or they can fight a big huge expensive very inefficient court battle, and maybe win, maybe lose.
Your pancreas example seems flawed.
For instance, if I spend 500m inventing an artificial pancreas, and I know the market for my product is only so big (e.g., diabetics), and that my patent is not going to be worth much in 2 years, I would be sure to set my per unit tax up such that I collect atleast 2000 dollars on every sale. Thus, when the competition comes along, they have variable costs of atleast 2000 dollars plus materials and labor, not to mention the fixed costs of setting up a plant, buying the machinery, etc. So what we have in a product that sells for at least 6000 dollars, quite possibly more expensive (because I set the tax) than my operation
The cost for anyone to manufacture the pancreas is essentially the same. Normally, if you had a monopoly, you'd set the price to say $2000 above cost. So, the end price comes to $6000, as in your example, but the manufacturing cost was only $4000. You're making a 33% profit. If you set up a 33% tax under my system, others can then manufacture and sell the pancreas at a base price of their choosing, and you get 33% extra from each sale. If someone out there develops better manufacturing techniques than you, then we have some savings.
And I disagree the tax system would necessarily be burdensome. It would take some clever programming to make a system that runs smoothly, but I would take full advantage of large, powerful databases and the internet to store all the information and make it easily retrievable, so that costs and tax per product can be looked up and found very easily by retailers.
Thus, worthless patents are worthless. Worthwhile patents are worth a lot. Your system does not change this. It would appear that most companies think all patents are worthwhile, since they don't hesitate to patent anything and everything they can think of. Given my Amazon example, I think my system would discourage frivolous patents.
I'm going to distill this argument because I don't feel you're responding to my central points.
If the tax system is unrestricted, then you argue that it's the same as we have now, and costs would not be any better than they are now. Here are my two main points:
The advantage for the tax system is that patented technology is completely unrestricted in use by others. Thus, one of our complaints is resolved - the technology is allowed to flourish and be used freely. Under the current system, it's common for a few licenses to be signed, and everyone else locked out. Or, in the case of medicine, for a monopoly to be held as long as possible.
The value of patents varies tremendously. Those patents that deserve maximum compensation and reward can still get it. Those patents that are worth a small amount get that. And those that are worthless, like the 1-click, really would be worthless.
I believe these are our main complaints about patents - the restrictive nature of them, and that even silly things can be patented and enforced.
Slashdot Mirror
As a programmer coming out of college, you shouldn't be worrying about what kind of job you can get at 50. You should see what's available to you now and in the next 10 years, and set yourself up for success regardless of what happens. How? Save and invest. If you are coming out of school now with a CS degree, and if you do it right, you should have no trouble retiring at age 50 with several million dollars in the bank.
But, instead, you'll buy every new toy that comes out, you'll rent, you'll party, you'll piss it all away, and then you will have something to worry about. You don't even need a great job to be able to do this - just average computer-tech jobs. If you are a CS major, you know some math - go do some and you'll see what I'm talking about.
If you do this, then you can look forward to contributing to the world's open source software, and to all our freedom in general, instead of managing some proprietary project.
Source code should be free speech. It's just text, after all.
Compiled code is property.
Running code is a person under the law.
Treat these accordingly. ie if a virus causes widespread damage, arrest it and jail/execute it (no pun intended!).
If MS-Outlook helps the virus along, indict it as an accomplice to terrorism.
You're being C-centric for no apparent reason.....
When Iced Earth or Nevermore plays at a club in your town...
:-)
Eek, I think my head would explode if I actually heard Warren (is that his name?) singing live.
"Seeking no truth, winning is all, find it so grim, so true, so real."
Hetfield: Ouch!
Lars: Ouch!
Hammet: Ouch!
Newstead: Ouch!
Burton: Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
That's very sad. The very vehemence of your words is rather telling, don't you think? The original poster wasn't really saying anything all that astounding, was he? That being rich and well off implies some responsibility on your part to others less fortunate? That's just common sense, except for those who never grow up, who think they live in an isolated bubble of entirely their own creation.
Grow up, Slashdotter.
I disagree with your assumptions. Slashdot may be a news and media site, but it isn't a normal one. It's not made by journalists - it's made by programmers. We the audience are the "fact-finding" journalists. And we crunch through many stories every day and sift the wheat from the chaff, fact from fiction. Maybe this model doesn't work for you, but I think it's a more accurate description of Slashdot than yours.
Jeez, lighten up. Can't he be interested in what other people might think of?
This is a really shitty idea. We definitely don't need a computer moderating for us. If we need more moderation, then assign more people as moderators. A computer won't do better than it's programmed, and it's programmed by one person - which means our filtering is the result of a single set of values rather than a distributed set.
Plus, we don't need to help those who want to write filtering software for other purposes.
I'd rather he worked on a slashdot posting agent! Something that combed the web for potentially interesting Slashdot stories for us to read and comment on.
I don't recall those countries becoming part of the Soviet Union. Maybe I'm missing something. The fact that they were allies with Russia, got support from them, and shared an economic and gov. system in common doesn't make them expressions of Soviet Imperialism. If that were true, the US would be much more guilty of conquest for it's forays into South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Europe etc.
Israel? Germany? Japan? Hong Kong? Taiwan? South Korea? etc etc.
You can check that they're following the safety rules and that they aren't planning to cut corners or intentionally cause harm. Terrorists are immediately ruled out. As are those who are lazy or who want to cut costs.
Of course, part of the point is that, once we have the ability to accurately censor, it most likely will be put into practice, because when it comes down to it, we, as a people, prefer security to freedom. If it can be guaranteed that you can catch all the criminals before they do their crime, people will give up their right to their private thoughts and submit to periodic examinations. That's what's scary, and it's probably what's coming.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned James Halperin. He writes purely science fiction (as in characterization? What's that?). He has some startling ideas about future technology developments and the effects they could have on society.
One of his books is called "The Truth Machine", and it's essentially an infallible lie detector that becomes the basis of all legal proceedings. Privacy vanishes entirely as a result, which has the surprising effect of increasing the pace and daring of technological research and advancement (ie no need to worry about dangerous technologies when you can always trust the motives of those working on it).
Sure, but if you look too far forward, something unexpected comes along in the meantime and smacks you silly. It might take RedHat 5 years to achieve the size you talk about. In five years, they may no longer even be the top Linux seller, much less a challenger to Microsoft. The legal landscape could easily turn against open-source software. Their investments might turn sour. A 3 billion market capitalization is looking way too far in the future for RedHat. They don't really have much of a history of revenue growth even. The fact that you're here saying 10% of Microsoft is reasonable is scary, cause when people think like that, they buy it on margin, and then when it drops another 50% (no, that couldn't possibly happen!), they have to sell, and then sell something else to cover their margin debt. That's what makes the market fall so fast and so hard after people get too optimistic and dreamy-eyed.
This just goes to show how much perspective people have lost. RedHat's revenues for the last four quarters totals about $24 million. The market valuation is around $3.5 billion. Ratio of cap/rev=145.
Now, take AMD as a counter example. Revenues for the last 4 quarters totals around $3.1 billion. Capitalization ~= $13 billion. Ratio=4.2.
And that doesn't even count earnings after expenses, etc. Of course, RedHat has yet to earn anything.
Unlike most others who responded to this, I think there's actually a germ of a good idea here (sorry, couldn't resist :-)
Skipping his talk of commercializing virus creation, there's merit to the idea of de-criminalizing digital "crimes" - cracking, virus writing, etc.
1. It saves law enforcement money
2. It forces systems to be well designed to resist this activity
3. The damage done by this activity is not life-threatening (and if you're going to argue that it could be, like for air-traffic controller software or military software, then go check out #2 again and think about it).
Someone else parodied his idea based on real viruses, but if you think about it, you can't legislate away real viruses. What good does it do to arrest, convict, and (gasp!) put to death the virus that killed you? None. We instead want bio-technology to come up with defenses for our bodies against viruses. The fact that people are the creators of the virus is no reason to forget this.
You can't legislate morality. Nor solutions to problems. In the end, action is required. Find the most efficient action to take - who really thinks the best counter to viruses is sending the FBI to investigate all the time? Why not make security a blatantly visible part of our computer/network design. Seems to me we'll just wind up with a better system and better users.
If writing the ILOVEYOU virus were legal, do you think Microsoft would get away with enabling Outlook to do this? As it is, they have a convenient scapegoat - "it's not us, it's a criminal!" Take away the criminal, and what do you have? Criminally negligent software from Microsoft. No one would tolerate it, no matter how big Microsoft got.
...used to be my favorite author. I know I'm in the minority when I say I loved the Thomas Covenant series. I know everyone hates the main character cause he's a whiny loser, but get over it. There are dozens of great characters in those books. And the storyline and themes go quite a bit beyond anything else in the genre.
But, Donaldson is a classic "overwriter", as I call them. His descriptions are over the top. His depiction of his character's internal struggles is particularly overdone, and, to me, painful to read. The gap series had all the same self-conflicted characters as Thomas Covenant series, but without any really memorable characters, I thought. The themes are all the same though, which is interesting.
These days, I enjoy more simply told stories (not necessarily simpler stories), and my current favorite author is Lois Bujold.
Regarding Dune (oh, yeah, that's what this thread is about), I thought it was a great book. The movie would have been fine, except it was such a great book, and I'd read it, so I was disappointed. The rest of the series is worthless except for #4 ("God Emperor of Dune").
I've heard that you sued your record company for the rights to your own music and won. Most artists, I gather, never win such a "luxury. Now, your fighting on the side of the record companies - helping them maintain their power over artists. Wouldn't it be better to rather encourage a new distribution means whereby an artist didn't need the help of a large producer to distribute their music? Couldn't Napster evolve into something that would benefit artists?
So, will there be a thought standard?
It only works if you think like me
The ability to move a Java program from one platform to the other without having to recompile is overrated
I humbly suggest that the reason you think this is that you have not seen the future of computers and networks. In the future, bytecode will be flying around from computer to computer - and it will have to run flawlessly wherever it ends up. You could send around source code, I suppose, but you'd still need a rock-solid standard to ensure that source code would compile and run everywhere.
Stallman has the right goal, but the open source movement has the right approach. Stallman should get over his emotion about our natural rights. It's bogus and ungrounded. To assert natural rights is to assert some god, and then you're just in a mess of trouble.
Instead, let's see what ethics really boils down to - it all comes to what we, as a society, want. It's that simple. What do we want. How do we want to live. What do we want life to be like? How best do we achieve it? We decide to make murder against the law because it suits us, not because it's "wrong". We don't like it.
Open/Free software is the same - if it creates a more effective, higher quality life for us, then it's good. If not, then not. It's the process of deciding and convincing others what's best that gets us into this useless argument of ethics. What Stallman is really saying, is life what be improved if I could use only Free Software. I think he's correct. But, it is a question of optimization rather than ethics, and the Open Source movement has the better approach.
The same goes for copying music. Does it create a better life if we allow copying of music? On the one hand, it obviously enjoyable to be able to listen to any music anytime for free, but on the other hand, will it mean less music and lower quality music will ever be created? I personally don't think the music will suffer. But, that's the argument we're embroiled in, and it's gonna be a while working it out.
happens when you're information is "out there" and you don't have legal access to it. Take credit reports. YOu can't legally get all the information about you without help from a lawyer. Ironically, others frequently can get this info.
The problem here is, what happens when they've got it wrong? What happens when reports about you have it down that you're a convicted felon, but you aren't? Can you fix it? Without consulting a lawyer, you won't find out, first of all. Secondly, once you do find out, you may discover that this information has been sold, copied, propagated to thousands of data-collecting organizations. You may find it's impossible to track it all down and fix it. It's effectively permanent.
Note: I didn't make any of that up. It has already happened to a man in Florida.
They are only human, they also make mistakes.
;) ).
/. community do it with well written posts rather than with story submissions.
Right, so let's have moderated story submission and cancel out human error.
There are several different admins, not just one of them. Sometimes they don't each know what the other admins have reviewed or posted recently. One admin may accept a story another rejects.
Moderated story submission, so there's just one queue we're all looking at.
Guestimating the amount of crap they must have to filter out on a daily basis, I figure their record is pretty good.
Moderated story submission, so we can all help out.
They probably gauge the importance of a topic on how many submissions they get. Being the first submitter gets you nothing. If you are the first one (or the only one), you probably won't get the credit unless it's earth-shattering news.
Moderated story submission, so the importance of a topic can be more accurately gauged.
If you feel slighted by having them reject your stories, you really need something better to do with your time (unless you are a journalist
Moderated story submission, so we have no one to pin blame on for being rejected.
If you're looking to make an impression on the
Ok.
I don't know about open source, but government should absolutely be using open standards technology whenever possible. Does it make sense for public documents to be in a proprietary file format when open formats exist? They belong to the people, right? It would be a shame if the company that supported those proprietary formats went under.
A similar argument could be made for the government using only open-source software. After all, using proprietary software for public and national uses could lead to trouble.
So, I think there is an argument for the government using only open standards and open source, where possible and practical. Not as policy designed to bolster the open-source movement, but just because it makes sense.
I probably shouldn't respond, since it's obvious your intent is simply to disagree with everything I say, but....
Your above argument is incoherant
You keep saying that. Let's see you show it, in detail. To me, it's clear you aren't really thinking about my Amazon example.
In both the present and the proposed situation, the pricing [is controlled by Amazon]
Only the tax is controlled by Amazon...
and thus the effective control of the usage, is entirely up to Amazon
No, usage is not under Amazon's control. Anyone can use the 1-click, if they choose. The only condition, is that the tax is paid each time.
They may or may not sell anything at the specified price
There is no specified price. There is a specified Tax. There's a difference there you need to consider. Amazon can't make all their products cost the same whether or not 1-click is used. The tax only applies to 1-click, and so it boosts the price after the price of the item is determined. Amazon could give a discount for all 1-click purchases, but then the 1-click simply has the effect of reducing their profits.
For all intents and purposes though, this gives Amazon the ability to stop anyone from using it. The power to determine the pricing lies in Amazon's hands in both situation
Not pricing - tax! Again, think about the difference. Amazon can, in practice, stop anyone from using 1-click, by assigning a tax of 50% to it (no user would ever use it, so no retailer would use it). But, Amazon also would not be able to use the technology, since the tax would apply to them as well, and the users would simply bypass the 1-click, or go elsewhere if you were forced to use 1-click at Amazon's site. So, yes, Amazon could patent it and put the tax ridiculously high, and no one could use it. But Amazon would also get no benefit, and they would, without doubt, bow to public pressure to remove or reduce the tax rate in such a situation.
My example, in case you did not understand, was: 2000 (monopoly rents) + 4000 (manufacturing and administrative costs) = 6000 (selling price). The point being that the power to reduce prices really does not rest in the competitions hand, as the price is mainly a function of monopoly rents, not manufacturing costs.
Do you not really read stuff I'm writing? It seems obvious that I understood your breakdown of 2000 and 4000. It also is clear you're still talking about price, and not understanding the concept of tax. A tax is a percentage. Their is no fixed $2000 price. I translated this to a tax rate of 33% in my reworking of your example. This seems to make it clear that competitors have a great deal of control over the final cost of the product. A 50% reduction in the base manufacturing price ($4000 reduced to $2000), reduces the final cost to $2666, less than half the original $6000.
The pharma-company with the "life saving" medication can still determine the selling price.
Yeah, basically, they can. Minor manufacturing cost savings could result, but overall, the pharmaceuticals are going to be good at predicting likely prices and at fixing a tax rate to their benefit. So? You like the present tax system for pharms-companies, and my system doesn't seem to harm their chances. That's a good thing. But it does make tech open. It forces patents to truly be worthwhile to the end user. And, it would avoid a lot of costly, inefficient court battles.
That is non sequitur. Amazon, under your system, is still entitled to charge whatever they please
I disagree. I don't think you've thought it through. If Amazon patents the 1-click under the tax idea, and applies, say, a 5% tax on it. Competitors will simply opt not to use it, because end users will opt not to pay it. End users will simply decide, "well, if I use the slightly longer method to buy my products, I avoid this stupid 5% tax", and thus, the users have determined the "value" of the patent. Amazon would have to drop the tax to nothing basically for something so useless. As it is now, other companies can opt not to use the 1-click, but it may put them at a disadvantage, or they can fight a big huge expensive very inefficient court battle, and maybe win, maybe lose.
Your pancreas example seems flawed.
For instance, if I spend 500m inventing an artificial pancreas, and I know the market for my product is only so big (e.g., diabetics), and that my patent is not going to be worth much in 2 years, I would be sure to set my per unit tax up such that I collect atleast 2000 dollars on every sale. Thus, when the competition comes along, they have variable costs of atleast 2000 dollars plus materials and labor, not to mention the fixed costs of setting up a plant, buying the machinery, etc. So what we have in a product that sells for at least 6000 dollars, quite possibly more expensive (because I set the tax) than my operation
The cost for anyone to manufacture the pancreas is essentially the same. Normally, if you had a monopoly, you'd set the price to say $2000 above cost. So, the end price comes to $6000, as in your example, but the manufacturing cost was only $4000. You're making a 33% profit. If you set up a 33% tax under my system, others can then manufacture and sell the pancreas at a base price of their choosing, and you get 33% extra from each sale. If someone out there develops better manufacturing techniques than you, then we have some savings.
And I disagree the tax system would necessarily be burdensome. It would take some clever programming to make a system that runs smoothly, but I would take full advantage of large, powerful databases and the internet to store all the information and make it easily retrievable, so that costs and tax per product can be looked up and found very easily by retailers.
Thus, worthless patents are worthless. Worthwhile patents are worth a lot. Your system does not change this.
It would appear that most companies think all patents are worthwhile, since they don't hesitate to patent anything and everything they can think of. Given my Amazon example, I think my system would discourage frivolous patents.
If the tax system is unrestricted, then you argue that it's the same as we have now, and costs would not be any better than they are now. Here are my two main points:
Thus, one of our complaints is resolved - the technology is allowed to flourish and be used freely. Under the current system, it's common for a few licenses to be signed, and everyone else locked out. Or, in the case of medicine, for a monopoly to be held as long as possible.
Those patents that deserve maximum compensation and reward can still get it. Those patents that are worth a small amount get that. And those that are worthless, like the 1-click, really would be worthless.
I believe these are our main complaints about patents - the restrictive nature of them, and that even silly things can be patented and enforced.